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SoftBank Says Selling Its Entire Flipkart Stake to Walmart

SoftBank Says Selling Its Entire Flipkart Stake to Walmart

By Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 23 May 2018 10:06 IST

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Highlights

SoftBank is selling its roughly 20 percent stake in Flipkart
Walmart will pay $16 billion for roughly 77 percent stake in Flipkart
Deal will help Walmart fortify and boost market share against Amazon

SoftBank Group said on Wednesday it is selling its roughly 20 percent stake in Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart to Walmart.

Walmart said earlier this month it will pay $16 billion (roughly Rs. 1.1 lakh crores) for a roughly 77 percent stake in Flipkart, the US retailer's largest-ever deal.

A SoftBank spokesman declined to give further details.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said earlier this month the $2.5 billion (roughly Rs. 17,000 crores) investment through its private equity fund in Flipkart made last year was worth $4 billion (roughly Rs. 27,000 crores).

Walmart earlier in May said in a filing with a US regulator that it may take Flipkart public in as early as four years, detailing for the first time a potential listing timeline for Walmart's largest-ever acquisition.

Minority investors holding 60 percent of Flipkart's shares "acting together, may require Flipkart to effect an initial public offering" (IPO) four years after the close of the Walmart-Flipkart transaction, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said in a May 11 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The IPO should be done at no less a valuation than that at which Walmart invested in the Indian firm, the filing said.

Walmart-Flipkart deal, capping almost two years of talks, will help Walmart fortify and boost market share against Amazon.com, which reportedly had tried to make a competing offer for a stake.

Buying a stake in Flipkart, which sells everything from soaps to smartphones and from books to clothes, gives Walmart access to the fledgeling Indian e-commerce market that could potentially be worth $200 billion (roughly Rs. 13.4 lakh crores) in a decade, according to Morgan Stanley.

Edited by Gadgets 360 Staff From Original Story by Reuters

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