SoftBank Back In Black Thanks To Vision Fund

Media reports indicated that profits from its Chinese portfolio companies, which include ByteDance, balanced losses from organisations such as AutoStore and Symbotic (SYM). Overall, its Vision Fund division recorded a loss of 204.3bn JPY compared to its profitable status in the same quarter in 2023. This, however, includes administrative costs and the investment ups and downs of third parties.

Based on CNBC data, SoftBank also announced that it would buy back 6.8% of available shares up to a value of 500bn JPY. During the same time last year, the group reported a 159.77bn JPY Vision Fund gain but published a loss of 57.53bn JPY for this tech segment in March 2024.

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According to media reports, this is SoftBank’s first annual gain since 2021 and it is mainly thanks to the Vision Fund tech stock rallies and a few other key holdings. Analysts believe that Vision Fund’s achievements are in great part due to the initial public offering (IPO) of its microchip designer segment. According to CNBC, SoftBank owns approximately 90% of this segment.

Monday 5 August 2024 was a bad day for stocks globally and SoftBank shares fell by almost 19% during the course of trading. The Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) interest rate hike impacted Japanese stocks across the board.

Japan’s markets regained some traction on Tuesday 6 August 2024. Experts, however, warned that global markets are still volatile.