The Harvest Phase for SoftBank Is Here
Softbank, the Japanese investor, is having a great season. The company hit a record quarter on profit, Wall Street Journal reports. This is indeed the inflection point the company has hoped for, and it is coming out in big style. We can all say one thing: provided technology will continue to fix market frictions, those betting on them will not miss a pulse.
TOKYO— SoftBank Group Corp.’s massive tech funds are finally starting to produce golden eggs. That is how Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s ebullient chief executive, characterized a record-breaking quarter for the Japanese company’s signature $100 billion Vision Fund.
That fund, along with a smaller successor, rode red-hot markets to investment gains of $13 billion in the three months ending December, their best quarter ever. Those gains underpinned a net profit of ¥1.17 trillion for SoftBank, equivalent to about $11 billion.
Mr. Son said he expected SoftBank’s funds—which have investments in 164 companies when a third capital pool focused on Latin America is included—could produce between 10 and 20 initial public offerings a year.
“We’ve finally entered the harvest phase,” for the funds, Mr. Son said at a Tokyo news conference, standing in front of a slide showing a goose laying golden eggs, representing SoftBank’s hit IPOs and exits. A later slide depicted the golden eggs marching out of the goose to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “March of the Toy Soldiers.”
