- SoftBank’s flagship investment arm, Vision Fund, posted its fourth straight quarterly loss on Tuesday as a decline in technology valuations continues to hit the Japanese giant.
- Some of SoftBank’s worst-performing investments were Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and Indonesian technology group GoTo, both of which have seen shares decline nearly 60% over the past year.
- Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s outspoken founder and mastermind of the Vision Fund, said in May that the company would go into “defense” mode and be more “conservative” with the pace of investments.
softbank’s Flagship investment arm Vision Fund posted its fourth straight quarterly loss on Tuesday, as declining technology valuations continue to hit the Japanese giant.
The Vision Fund segment posted a pre-tax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen ($5 billion) for the December quarter. Losses on SoftBank’s Vision Fund investments came to 730.35 billion yen over the three-month period.
Related Investment News
SoftBank Group reported an overall net loss of 783.4 billion yen, returning to a quarterly loss after posting a profit in the July-September quarter.
It’s been a tough time for SoftBank, whose Vision Fund holds stakes in a range of tech companies, from start-ups to listed behemoths, amid a sharp drop in technology valuations over the past year.
SoftBank said some of the larger losses last quarter reflected “an overall decrease in the fair value of portfolio companies, primarily markdowns of underperforming companies and share price declines in market comparables.”
Some of SoftBank’s worst-performing investments include Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime, which is down 57% over the past year, and Indonesian technology group go forWhose shares have seen a decline of more than 65%.
Masayoshi Son, the outspoken founder of SoftBank and the mastermind behind the Vision Fund, said in May that the company would go into “defense” mode and be more “conservative” with the pace of investments after the unit lost a record 3.5 trillion Japanese yen. last financial year.
SoftBank said it made just $2.76 billion in new and follow-on investment in the nine months to December 31, a “significant decrease” from $39.24 billion in 2021.
Over the past year, SoftBank has been exiting some of its highest-profile investments to raise cash. In August, it said it had sold its remaining stake in the US ride-hailing giant Uber, And last year, it sold some of its Alibaba shares through derivatives called forward contracts. Son made his fortune more than two decades ago with an early investment in Alibaba.
Son, who is known for his colorful investor presentations, was not present on the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.
SoftBank’s CEO is currently focused on trying to pull off a public listing of ARM, the British chip designer it bought in 2016. The company’s finance chief Yoshimitsu Goto said on Tuesday that ARM’s listing would happen this year.
“Preparations are underway and we will see how the market situation plays out,” Goto said.
Credit: www.cnbc.com /