Shares in retail giant Walmart (WMT) dialed lower today despite reports that it will retain most of its stake in Indian payments firm PhonePe after its upcoming $1.5 billion IPO.
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Walmart Keeps in Control
Walmart will cut its stake in PhonePe by about 12% to around 60%. Other stakeholders, Tiger Global and tech titan Microsoft (MSFT), plan to exit their stakes.
Walmart, which holds an about 72% stake in PhonePe, is selling nearly 46 million shares in the IPO. The three firms will together sell around 50.7 million shares in the offering. PhonePe will not issue any new shares in the IPO and will not receive proceeds from the sale. It aims to list by mid-2026, according to a Reuters report.
The company, founded in 2015, is the leading payments platform on India’s popular unified payments interface (UPI), commanding more than 45% market share by transaction volume, as of December 2025.
However, PhonePe’s loss widened to 14.44 billion rupees ($157.80 million) in the six-month period ended September 30, from 12.03 billion rupees a year ago, while revenue rose about 22% to 39.18 billion rupees, the filing showed.
Its main competitors in India are Google (GOOGL) Pay and Paytm.
Crucial Expansion Plans
PhonePe has more than 657 million registered users and offers payment solutions to over 47 million merchants.
PhonePe had been part of Flipkart, an India-based e-commerce group that is also majority-owned by Walmart. Both have been a crucial part of Walmart’s international expansion plans in the world’s most populous country.
PhonePe’s IPO plan comes amid buoyant Indian primary markets, where fundraising hit a record high in 2025. India ranked as the world’s second-largest primary market in 2025 after the United States, with 367 IPOs raising $21.8 billion, according to LSEG-compiled data.
Is WMT a Good Stock to Buy Now?
On TipRanks, WMT has a Strong Buy consensus based on 25 Buy and 1 Hold ratings. Its highest price target is $135. WMT stock’s consensus price target is $126.09, implying a 6.45% upside.
