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SoftBank’s flagship investment arm, the Vision Fund, reported losses for a fourth consecutive quarter as its tech firm stakes continue to shrink in valuation.
The Japanese conglomerate said on Tuesday that its Vision Funds segment posted 730 billion Japanese yen ($5.5 billion) in pre-tax losses for the quarter to Dec. 31, compared with a 108 billion yen profit for the same period last year.
The flagship tech investment vehicle Vision Fund has historically poured into start-ups and listed tech giants but has admitted that the tech rout in the past year has led to an “overall decrease in the fair value of portfolio companies”.
Softbank
9984,
chalked the losses down to mainly the “markdowns of weaker-performing companies and share price declines in market comparable companies.”
The weaker-performing companies it’s talking about include Hong-Kong-listed AI firm SenseTime
20,
which has plummeted 58% in the last 12 months, and Indonesian technology firm GoTo
GOTO,
which is down 68% in the last year.
The fund has been on selling stakes. Last August, Softbank sold its entire stake in Uber
UBER,
and reduced its holdings in Alibaba
9988,
BABA,
from 23.7% to 14.6% via forward contracts.
The company has opted for a more conservative strategy in making new investments. In the nine months to Dec. 31, it made just $2.76 billion in new and follow-on investments, much lower than the $39.24 billion in 2021.
Read: Softbank discloses $100 million investment in FTX but mostly avoids crypto bets
Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said he wouldn’t speak at quarterly earnings presentations, instead focusing on a possible public listing of Arm, a U.K. chip-design company, by March 2024.
SoftBank’s shares fell 1% on Tuesday in Tokyo trading.
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