Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma says ‘the worst is behind us’ after Q4 results

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Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told shareholders in a post-earnings call on Wednesday that the worst is behind the company after One97 Communications, its parent firm, reported lower quarterly revenue and a bigger loss on Wednesday."We learned a lot of our lessons to become better and resilient. We also resolved to be fully compliant according to the regulators expectations in letter and spirit," Sharma said in the earnings call.

Earlier this year the RBI directed Paytm Payments Bank Ltd to halt new credit and deposit operations, top-ups and fund transfers, among other banking activities. The action followed a comprehensive audit by external auditors, which uncovered consistent non-compliance and supervisory concerns at the bank.As a result of these sanctions, February and March were "uncomfortably bad" and filled with lessons for "long term sustainability and growth of the company," Sharma said.

Also read: Can Vijay shekhar Sharma reinvent Paytm once again? He must.The company reported a drop in revenue to ₹2,399 crore in Q4 from ₹2,465 crore a year earlier. Losses widened to ₹551 crore in a quarter from ₹168 crore a year earlier, largely due to an impairment of ₹227 crore on the company's investment in Paytm Payments Bank Ltd, in which it holds 49%.

Shares of Paytm gained nearly 5% to closed at ₹369 on Wednesday.The company's active device base on the merchants side decreased by about 10 lakh owing to higher attribution in these months and no new additions from February. Subscription revenue was also affected by lower new-merchant addition and a temporary rental waiver to ring-fence certain cohorts of merchants, the company said in a statement.The active rate and per-device subscription revenue were also