The SoftBank Corp. logo is displayed on the glass door of the company’s store in Tokyo on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. SoftBank Group Corp. is scheduled to announce its financial results on May 13th. Photographer: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg, image via Getty
Toru Hanai | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Japanese giant Softbank Vision Fund’s technology investment arm posted a profit of 608.5 billion yen ($3.96 billion) in the second quarter of its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, after turning profitable in the three months to June. , recorded a significant increase on a quarterly basis.
The broader Vision Fund division, which includes non-investment results such as management fees and gains and losses attributable to third-party investors, reported a profit of 373.1 billion yen. The company posted a loss of 204.3 billion yen in the first quarter.
The company attributed most of the increase to valuation gains recorded in SoftBank Vision Fund 1, as well as rising share prices in e-commerce company Coupang and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, as well as increased investment in China. pointed out. high-tech company ByteDance;
Meanwhile, Vision Fund 2 posted a net loss of 232.6 billion yen, due to declines in stocks such as Norwegian robotics company Autostore and US automation technology company Symbotik.
Vision Fund profits from smartphone chip design company’s successful listing in September 2023 arm holdingsowns an overwhelming majority of approximately 90% of the shares.
Masayoshi Son’s high-tech conglomerate has been controversial in recent years for making large investments in companies that have gone bankrupt or whose valuations have been significantly reduced. It is currently repositioning itself as the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, a place players prefer. Nvidia It is benefiting from explosive demand for chips and data center GPUs.
Early investor in Yahoo! And Alibaba, my son. I’ll call you now $3.57 trillion US giant Nvidia is ‘undervalued’ and predicts the emergence of AI 10,000 times smarter than humans within 10 years – mid-late September media coverage SoftBank plans to invest $500 million in the latest funding round of leading artificial intelligence player OpenAI.
Sales for the SoftBank Group as a whole increased by 6% to 1.77 trillion yen.
The group’s print products benefited from investment gains of 1.28 trillion yen in shares of Chinese retail giant Alibaba and 566.2 billion yen in shares of T-Mobile.
As of Tuesday morning, SoftBank’s Tokyo-listed stock had risen about 50% since the beginning of the year. The company released its latest quarterly results after the close of trading on the Japanese stock exchange.
The company is facing pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, which owns about $2 billion in SoftBank stock and pushed for a $15 billion share buyback, CNBC reported in June. The group announced in August that it would buy back 6.8% of the company’s available shares for a total of 500 billion yen ($3.25 billion). On Tuesday, the company announced that it had repurchased a total of 153.8 billion yen by the end of the second quarter.
Japanese companies struggled with large fluctuations this summer amid a rapid appreciation of the yen in August and a significant sell-off of risk assets. Domestic markets have calmed down compared to the summer turmoil as Japan moves away from ultra-low interest rate policies, but Barclays analysts say the country’s economic situation is not yet stable. I am doing it.
“Importantly, this volatility is likely to continue.Wage growth, particularly in the service sector, is progressing in line with the Bank of Japan’s forecasts, and many expect another rate hike in December 2024 or January 2025. I expect that to happen.” they wrote on November 8th.
