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SoftBank has clocked a steep quarterly increase in profits having earned a net income of ¥1.18 trillion ($7.7 billion) in the September quarter, compared with a net loss of ¥931 billion last year, as per a Bloomberg News report.
The Japanese giant attributed the lion’s share of the increase to valuation gains recorded at the SoftBank Vision Fund 1. The Vision Fund reported a gain of ¥373 billion, thanks to strong initial public offerings for Indian startups and valuation gains in Coupang and Didi Global.
The two Vision funds also fully or partially exited investments to the tune of $1.85 billion. While Vision Fund 1 has had a gross gain of $22.6 billion since inception, it saw a net loss of $21 billion, following declines in share prices including those of Norwegian robotics firm AutoStore and U.S. automation tech company Symbotic.
SoftBank has reported that its Vision Fund 1 made 94 investments with an acquisition cost of $89.6 billion, yielding a cumulative return of $106.3 billion, driven by successes in companies like ByteDance (TikTok-parent) and Coupang.
SoftBank has also reported substantial gains from its international exits, including NVIDIA with a gross gain of $2.9 Billion, Uber with a gross gain of $1.5 Billion, and Slack with a gross gain of $684 million. In comparison, its Vision Fund 2, with 277 investments at an acquisition cost of $52.4 billion, has a total cumulative return of $33.1 billion.
In 2022, after a $32 billion loss in the Vision Fund, Son suggested that SoftBank would shift away from aggressive investments and into “defence” mode, selling down stakes in Alibaba and preparing to take Arm public.
Over the last 15-18 months, SoftBank has followed the strategy of diluting holdings through secondary sales while staying away from new investments is in line with most growth and late-stage investors, such as Tiger Global.
Softbank’s India portfolio consists of about 27 startups. It has backed 21 unicorns—InMobi, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, Ola Cabs, Ola Electric, PolicyBazaar, OYO, Delhivery, Lenskart, Unacademy, FirstCry, Meesho, Zeto, OfBusiness, MindTickle, Blinkit, Globalbees, Polygon, ElasticRun
Over the past decade, SoftBank has invested approximately $10.6 billion (Rs 88,700 crore) in Indian tech startups and has recorded exits amounting to $6-6.8 billion (over Rs 50,000 crore), including $4 billion stake sale exit in Flipkart to Walmart, but reinvested in 2021.
Seven years since the investment unit’s launch, the Japanese giant is reaping gains from the debuts of startups such as Ola Electric, FirstCry and Swiggy imminent $1.3 billion IPO was subscribed more than three times.
Companies backed by SoftBank Vision Funds accounted for 50% of all growth capital invested in FY23 and 60% of all capital raised through Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) since 2021.
Softbank has sold stakes worth $1.8-1.9 billion in IPOs and Post-Listing sales in Paytm, Zomato (via Blinkit’s acquisition), PB Fintech and Delhivery, which all went public in 2021 and 2022. The fund had invested $2.3-2.4 billion in these four companies.
Paytm was the big loss—In August 2024, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 1 reported a gross loss of $544 million on its $1.6 billion investment. It has so far realised $800-900 million of its stake. SoftBank garnered over 3x returns from recent Indian IPOs, including Ola Electric, FirstCry, and Unicommerce.
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