GoTo shares fall to record low as major holders’ lock-up expires

SHARES of GoTo Group plunged to a record low as a lock-up on its major shareholders’ stakes neared expiry, suggesting investors are expecting some of them to reduce their holdings.

The stock fell as much as 6.8 per cent in Jakarta trading and headed for its eighth straight daily drop, leaving it down 55 per cent since its initial public offering (IPO) in late March. Indonesia’s largest tech company now has a market value of about US$11 billion.

Early backers such as Alibaba Group Holding and SoftBank Group agreed to an eight-month lock-up expiring on Nov 30 to support the stock price following the IPO. GoTo has been trying to avoid a situation where a large part of the backers would seek to cash out at the same time, attempting a novel plan to find buyers for controlled sales of their stakes.

Yet on a conference call last week, chief executive officer Andre Soelistyo said that there were no assurances that such a controlled share sale will take place.

About one trillion GoTo shares, or more than 90 per cent of the total outstanding, are becoming eligible to be sold. Still, that includes holders such as GoTo’s employee fund that are unlikely to sell. Alibaba and SoftBank each own about 9 per cent of GoTo.

Formed via a merger of ride-hailing provider Gojek and e-commerce firm Tokopedia, GoTo raised US$1.1 billion in one of this year’s largest IPOs. The share sale boosted the value of stakes of China’s Alibaba and SoftBank’s Vision Fund to almost US$5 billion combined.

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In late June, Chinese artificial intelligence software maker SenseTime Group slumped as much as 51 per cent in Hong Kong trading after a lock-up of its shares expired following its December IPO. BLOOMBERG