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SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the brainchild of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, faces a number of headwinds, including a slump in tech stocks as a result of rising interest rates, a tough Chinese market and geopolitics.
Kentaro Takahashi | Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Softbank’s The Vision Fund, the main investment arm, posted its fourth consecutive quarter of losses on Tuesday. That’s as sluggish technology valuations continue to hit the Japanese giant.
The Vision Fund segment posted a pre-tax loss of ¥660 billion ($5 billion) in the December quarter. SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment loss in his three months amounted to 730.35 billion yen.
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The net loss of the SoftBank Group as a whole was 783.4 billion yen, and after recording a profit in the July-September quarter, it fell into the red again for the quarter.
It’s been a tough time for SoftBank, whose Vision Fund has invested in tech companies ranging from startups to publicly traded giants, as technology valuations have plummeted over the past year.
SoftBank said some of the major losses in the last quarter were “due to an overall decline in the fair values of portfolio companies, mainly due to markdowns in underperforming companies and declines in the share prices of market-comparable companies. It reflects the.” … says.
SoftBank’s worst investments include Chinese artificial-intelligence firm SenseTime, which has plunged 57% over the past year, and an Indonesian technology group. jumpshares have plummeted by more than 65%.
SoftBank’s outspoken founder and Vision Fund mastermind, Masayoshi Son, said in May that the company would go into “defensive” mode after the division posted a record ¥3.5 trillion ($30 billion) loss, prompting investors to cut back on investments. He said he would be more “conservative” about pacing. Last year.
SoftBank said it had made only $2.76 billion in new and additional investments in the nine months ended December 31.
Over the past year, SoftBank has ditched some of its most high-profile investments to raise cash. In August, it announced that it had sold its remaining stake in the U.S. ride-hailing giant. uberAnd last year, it sold a portion of its Alibaba stake through a derivative called a forward contract. Son made his fortune with an early investment in Alibaba over 20 years ago.
Son, who is known for his prolific presentations to investors, did not attend the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.
SoftBank’s CEO is now focusing his efforts on listing British chip designer ARM, which he acquired in 2016.
“Preparations are underway, let’s see how the market goes,” Goto said.
