Silicon Investor - Softbank Group Corp

[zax] 9984 Closed +11.8% in Tokyo. Tomorrow more than likely to be an extremely good ...

zax — 9/4/2026 6:32:39 AM

9984 Closed +11.8% in Tokyo. Tomorrow more than likely to be an extremely good day to be long SFTBY.

[zax] 9984 is ripping in Friday's Tokyo session.

zax — 9/3/2026 9:55:12 PM

[zax] SoftBank Plans Record Retail Bond Issuance Amid AI Push Retail bonds have been ...

zax — 8/24/2026 1:49:21 AM

SoftBank Plans Record Retail Bond Issuance Amid AI Push

Retail bonds have been a vital source of financing for SoftBank

SoftBank Group plans to issue a record volume of retail bonds to help fund AI investments. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

TOKYO— SoftBank Group 9984 -4.81% plans to issue a record volume of retail bonds to help fund artificial-intelligence investments as it deepens multibillion-dollar commitments to OpenAI and related projects.

... wsj.com

[zax] SFTBY (9984) +5% barely into JP market open. This 20 year NVIDIA / OpenAI campu...

zax — 8/17/2026 8:32:19 PM

SFTBY (9984) +5% barely into JP market open. This 20 year NVIDIA / OpenAI campus deal is huge.

Nvidia is putting $1.5B directly into SB Energy, and Nvidia is providing up to $105B of guarantees supporting the project.

[zax] Message 35609720

zax — 8/17/2026 2:56:00 PM

[zax] Softbank +14% overnight in Japan.

zax — 8/5/2026 4:14:25 AM

[zax] The 9984 overnight chart is a thing of beauty. Nikkei has definitely been the l...

zax — 7/14/2026 5:38:50 AM

The 9984 overnight chart is a thing of beauty. Nikkei has definitely been the leader past few sessions, Nasdaq the follower.

[zax] Holding at +11.8% at 2PM in Japan. Volume 15-20% above average.

zax — 7/10/2026 1:27:26 AM

[zax] SFTBY $18.72 +3.2% 9984:JP 6423 JPY +11.6%. While still off its 8632 Yen June...

zax — 7/9/2026 11:01:06 PM

SFTBY $18.72 +3.2%
9984:JP 6423 JPY +11.6%.

While still off its 8632 Yen June 2nd all time high, a strong break in that direction. Great things are coming.

[zax] OTCM: SFTBY 19.75+2.04 (+11.51%) today SoftBank Enters the AI Cloud Wars with N...

zax — 7/2/2026 10:19:49 AM

OTCM: SFTBY
19.75 +2.04 (+11.51%) today

SoftBank Enters the AI Cloud Wars with NeoCloud — Challenging CoreWeave and Nebius

medium.com

Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is making a bold move into the high-growth AI cloud infrastructure market. This new “NeoCloud” initiative signals a major escalation in the competition for GPU-powered computing power.

SoftBank has announced its entry into the AI cloud market through a new service called NeoCloud, directly challenging established players like CoreWeave and Nebius.

This is a significant development in the rapidly expanding market for specialized AI infrastructure. While hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud dominate general-purpose cloud, specialized GPU cloud providers have seen explosive growth due to surging demand for AI training and inference. SoftBank’s move suggests it sees an opportunity to leverage its vast capital, global relationships, and technology investments to carve out a meaningful share.

As a professional investor focused on AI infrastructure, this announcement highlights several important dynamics beyond just one company’s strategy.

[zax] SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY) 19.45 +1.73 (+9.77%) as of 9:40:20 AM EDT [gra...

zax — 7/2/2026 9:55:59 AM

SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY)
19.45 +1.73 (+9.77%) as of 9:40:20 AM EDT

SoftBank Plans AI Cloud Services in US to Tap Surging Demand

(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. and its telecom unit will start renting AI computing resources to US companies next fiscal year in a bid to capitalize on the company's growing pipeline of data center projects.

[zax] Masayoshi Son Double Down: SoftBank Completes $10 Billion Additional Investmen...

zax — 7/1/2026 5:27:40 PM

Masayoshi Son Double Down: SoftBank Completes $10 Billion Additional Investment in OpenAI, Japan's First Round of 387.3 Billion Yen AI Subsidy Implemented. Noetra

tradingkey.com

TradingKey - During the Asian session on July 1, SoftBank announced that it has completed an additional $10 billion investment in OpenAI through its Vision Fund II. This marks the second installment of its previously announced $30 billion follow-on investment plan. Under the plan, the final $10 billion investment is scheduled to be completed on October 1.

Including the first installment that closed in February, SoftBank's cumulative investment in OpenAI has now crossed the $60 billion threshold. Based on OpenAI's current valuation of $730 billion, SoftBank's ownership stake is expected to rise to approximately 13% once all three investments are completed.

Just on June 30, according to Japanese media reports, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced that it will allocate 387.3 billion yen in development consignment fees to Noetra, a new company led by SoftBank. This represents the first installment for fiscal year 2026. Noetra boasts a heavyweight lineup of shareholders: SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and Sony Group have joined forces with the goal of building Japan's own proprietary AI foundational model from scratch.

The company does not intend to compete head-on with OpenAI in the general-purpose track, but is instead targeting specific weak points, namely Japanese language comprehension and multimodal recognition. Images, video, audio, and even physical space perception and modeling are all included in the training objectives. The project has already qualified for support from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) with a planned five-year cycle, and METI's total budget expectation is approximately 1 trillion yen. Noetra plans to officially kick off R&D this month and deliver Japan's largest self-developed AI model by 2027.

... tradingkey.com

[zax] Japan to Fund SoftBank-Led Noetra With 387.3 Billion Yen ($2.4B USD) to Develop...

zax — 7/1/2026 3:29:25 PM

Japan to Fund SoftBank-Led Noetra With 387.3 Billion Yen ($2.4B USD) to Develop Domestic AI Models

binance.com

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it planned to provide 387.3 billion yen in support for a new company led by SoftBank to develop domestic artificial intelligence foundation models.

According to Jin10, Kyodo News reported that the ministry disclosed on June 30 that the funding would be paid as development commissioning fees for fiscal 2026.

The ministry said it aimed to back research in “physical AI” that combines robotics and AI technologies, with the goal of strengthening the competitiveness of Japan’s manufacturing sector.

The new company is named Noetra and was established with SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and Sony Group as core participants. In addition to advanced Japanese-language understanding and reasoning capabilities, Noetra said it would work on foundation models that can recognize images, video, audio, and physical spaces.

The company has been selected for a support program under the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), which is affiliated with the ministry.

[nicewatch] The greatest degenerate gambler now questions the greatest self-promoter. Popcor...

nicewatch — 6/27/2026 10:35:58 AM

The greatest degenerate gambler now questions the greatest self-promoter. Popcorn time...

Why one of tech’s biggest gamblers is betting against Elon Musk’s AI vision

Story by Tim Higgins 6/27/26

Some people have expressed skepticism about Elon Musk’s idea for putting AI data centers in outer space.

But what does it say when even Masa thinks it’s too far out there?

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son, after all, isn’t exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to wild ideas. He has his 300-year business plan and was talking about the singularity a decade ago before the idea of AGI (artificial general intelligence, or basically AI superintelligence) became a Silicon Valley buzzword. He even thought Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, was a visionary leader.

Yet this past week, Son questioned Musk’s plans for orbital data centers. “What’s the point?” Son asked investors in Japan.

Son and Musk have been at the center of the biggest tech investments of a generation and each is intent on steering what might become the biggest technological disruption since the advent of electricity. Whose vision for the future—on this planet or beyond—can be pulled off fastest might determine the outcome of the AI race.

Let’s not call Son pragmatic just yet. Rather, what was on display this past week was the difference in tactics for achieving what are really similar visions for the sci-fi future. Musk is thinking first principles while Son is applying his go-big-or-go-home investment approach.

First, some back story. A big part of the thesis behind SpaceX’s $2 trillion market value is Musk’s plan to put data centers in orbit. He has argued the vast amounts of energy from solar power will make the economics far better than those on Earth.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Musk said earlier this year. The company’s IPO paperwork said it expects to deploy the technology as soon as 2028.

That can sound especially appealing as hyperscalers across the U.S. face increasing hostility over the construction of new data centers required to fuel the creation and deployment of powerful AI models. And so the appeal of space.Musk isn’t alone in seeing the potential. Billionaire Jeff Bezos has been talking about the idea, too, but has cautioned he doesn’t think it’s as near term. “People would talk about two or three years—that’s probably a little ambitious,” he told CNBC in May.

Son is skeptical about the savings in space, noting that just 7% of operating a data center on earth is the cost of electricity. The rest, he said, are the chips and other things.

Yet Musk has heard such criticisms many times throughout his career. SpaceX and Tesla, where he is also CEO, are built around first principles thinking, the idea that the laws of physics dictate whether something is possible.

It’s a philosophy that’s helped Musk do what many thought was impractical, such as developing reusable rockets. Or making electric cars cool and profitable.

His approach isn’t always the quickest way to solve a problem.

Alphabet’s Waymo has a fleet of driverless vehicles operating in several U.S. cities. Tesla, meanwhile, is still in the early stages of trying to prove it, too, can deploy a robust robotaxi service.

A big difference between the two companies has been Waymo’s embrace of laser sensors that Musk says are unneeded. Instead, his cars see the world much in the way humans do with camera vision. The physics might be on his side, but Waymo is currently in the lead.

And that’s the rub for Son. What really seems to worry him is the speed of change occurring around AI. It’s hard to pick a winner when every few weeks a model changes or an AI star jumps ship and the deck of rivals gets reshuffled.

While Musk believes orbital AI centers are a near-term breakthrough, Son sees lots of hurdles that could delay things. Son suggested that it could take years, perhaps a decade or more, to figure out how to address the challenges of orbital data centers. (Maintenance in space?)

For him and his winner-takes-all philosophy, 10 years is too long to wait to win in AI. “The winner will be decided in the next some years, so rather than focusing on space where we have no idea what will happen in terms of AI-related business, we would like to focus on … the nearsighted perspective and we would like to become first comer in any business related to AI,” Son said.

Moving fast to be first is the approach that Son has built his reputation on, most notably with his early investment in Alibaba. He’s known for the mantra: “We only live once, so I want to think big. I have no intention of making small bets.”

Practically, that means he’s all about locking in first-mover advantages with transformative companies. He funnels huge amounts of money into those picks so they can win markets and drown out rivals.

That was the thesis behind the 2017 creation of the $100 billion Vision Fund, the giant tech-investing vehicle. It doesn’t always work. WeWork, the office space startup, was a big beneficiary of Son’s philosophy and its descent into bankruptcy became a blemish on his record.

Yet this past week, Son was clear that he’s doubling down on AI.

At SoftBank’s annual meeting Wednesday, he outlined four pillars around his strategy: AI models, semiconductors, robotics and infrastructure. Those pieces can be seen in SoftBank’s huge investment in OpenAI and its chips subsidiary, Arm, as well as its huge investments in data centers globally.

In an apparent acknowledgment that his plans are grandiose, Son chided modern business leaders for failing to talk about big visions. “SoftBank Group is the factory of golden eggs,” he told shareholders. “Our role is to help the businesses that we have to become a golden egg.”

While the puzzle pieces are different, together they create a similar picture to what Musk is doing with his businesses: SpaceXAI competes against OpenAI, the SpaceX-Tesla collaboration aims to create a chip factory, Tesla is pivoting to robotics and then there are those orbital data centers.

The implicit part of these gambles is that, in a way similar to the rise of search and smartphones, the winner takes all.

For Musk, Son and the handful of other giants in the AI race, timing will indeed be everything.

msn.com

[zax] Masayoshi Son Says ARM’s Valuation Could Soar Over 10X From $391B, Defends INTC...

zax — 6/24/2026 8:25:06 PM

Masayoshi Son Says ARM’s Valuation Could Soar Over 10X From $391B, Defends INTC Investment — ‘US Has No Choice But To Strengthen Intel’

finance.yahoo.com

Arm shares have surged about 231% in 2026 so far, but Son believes this is just the beginning.

He credited Arm's success to its decision to begin manufacturing its own chips, while also noting that AI computing requirements are shifting toward CPU-centric architectures.

Son also defended SoftBank's investment in Intel, touting that the initial $2 billion stake has multiplied in value.

SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY) CEO Masayoshi Son on Wednesday praised Arm Holdings (ARM) and Intel Corp. (INTC) during the company's annual shareholder meeting.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Son said that Arm is positioned to become one of the world's most important suppliers of central processing units (CPUs) due to the shifting needs of AI computing.

Arm shares were up nearly 4% in Wednesday's pre-market trade, while Intel shares were up around 2%.
Son Sees ARM Valuation Rocketing Over 10X

Son added that he sees Arm's valuation skyrocketing more than 10 times from its current market capitalization of $391 billion.

Arm shares have surged about 231% in 2026 so far, but Son believes this is just the beginning. He credited Arm's success to its decision to begin manufacturing its own chips, while also noting that AI computing requirements are shifting toward CPU-centric architectures, away from relying solely on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

A 10-fold increase from Arm's current valuation would imply a market capitalization approaching $4 trillion, making Arm one of the most valuable companies in the world.

SoftBank owns an 86.39% stake in Arm through the Vision Fund, after acquiring it in 2016 for $31.4 billion in cash. While SoftBank took Arm private following the acquisition, the U.K.-based chip designer went public again in 2023. Arm's shares surged 553% since then.
Son Defends SoftBank's Investment In INTC

Son also defended SoftBank's investment in Intel, touting that the initial $2 billion stake has multiplied in value. He credited the increase in Intel's valuation to support from the U.S. government, as well as the chipmaker's deals with Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Nvidia Corp. (NVDA). "The U.S. has no choice but to strengthen Intel," he said.

Son also added that Intel's manufacturing prowess will be increasingly important as tech companies look to diversify away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM). He also said that Intel is a national security asset for the U.S.

SoftBank invested $2 billion in Intel in August last year. Since then, Intel's shares have soared 459%.
Son Bets On Artificial Superintelligence

Son is also betting on artificial superintelligence (ASI), targeting a net asset value of 1,000 trillion yen ($6.189 trillion) for SoftBank over the next decade.

Son touted SoftBank's focus on becoming a leading robotics company, which he said aligns with the shift towards physical AI. He also said the company plans to scale up the Stargate AI initiative, which includes OpenAI, Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Nvidia, Microsoft, and others.

ARM stock is up 231% year-to-date, while INTC stock is up 258%. The S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) is up 22% over the past 12 months, while the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) is up 34%.

The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) is up 166% during this period.

[zax] 9984:JP: ¥7,310.00 +838.00 (+12.95%) [youtube video]

zax — 6/14/2026 9:56:31 PM

[zax] 9984:JP:¥7,075.00 +603.00 (+9.32%) As of Jun-14-2026 8:25:39 PM ...

zax — 6/14/2026 8:28:20 PM

9984:JP: ¥7,075.00 +603.00 (+9.32%)
As of Jun-14-2026 8:25:39 PM ET

Nikkei 225: 68,750.45 +4.14% (+2,730.41) Today

[zax] SoftBank $6 billion OpenAI margin loan talks stall finance.yahoo.com [graphic...

zax — 6/10/2026 11:47:07 AM

SoftBank $6 billion OpenAI margin loan talks stall

finance.yahoo.com

An effort by SoftBank Group to secure at least $6 billion via a margin loan collateralized by its OpenAI holdings has hit a wall, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Other fundraising avenues are being weighed, and a return to the margin loan remains possible down the road, those sources said.

The reasons for the breakdown are unclear. Before the process broke down, approximately $5 billion had already been lined up for the loan, with sources noting uncertainty over whether the pledges were formal or informal. SoftBank declined to comment.

The stalled talks mark a further setback for the fundraising effort. The loan target had previously been trimmed by 40% — from $10 billion down to at least $6 billion — after a number of prospective lenders balked. Among the issues that gave creditors pause was how to put a price tag on a private company like OpenAI that has no public market to set its worth.

OpenAI's announcement Monday that it had confidentially submitted IPO paperwork — with Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley tapped for a listing potentially arriving as early as autumn — had nudged some prospective lenders toward a more favorable view of the deal. Despite that development, the loan discussions have not moved forward.

Pressing down on all of this is a $40 billion bridge loan SoftBank took on to fund its OpenAI commitments, with repayment due in March 2027. The company has indicated it intends to cover that obligation by drawing on assets it already holds alongside additional financing steps.

Hua Cheng, head of Asia credit research at AllianceBernstein, said the stalled loan is not necessarily cause for alarm on its own. "The margin loan is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, and unless we see a clear deterioration in their ability to raise funds this way, we don't view it as a standalone red flag," Cheng said. "The best-case scenario is an OpenAI IPO this year, with SoftBank offloading part of its stake to pay down debt."

Wednesday's session saw SoftBank shares drop as much as 9.7%, a single-day move that compounded a broader rout totaling more than 20% across the previous five trading days, MarketWatch noted. Until last week, SoftBank had held the distinction of being the highest-valued publicly traded company in Japan.

finance.yahoo.com

[zax] France Reportedly Attracts $108 Billion In Foreign Investment As SoftBank Plans ...

zax — 6/9/2026 11:32:00 AM

France Reportedly Attracts $108 Billion In Foreign Investment As SoftBank Plans Massive AI Data Center Expansion

pulse2.com

France announced a record €93 billion ($108 billion) in foreign investment commitments at the 2026 Choose France summit, with roughly half of the pledged capital tied to a major SoftBank-backed artificial intelligence infrastructure project, according to Reuters. The investments span 71 projects and are expected to create more than 15,600 jobs across the country.

The largest commitment comes from SoftBank, which plans to invest €45 billion to build three AI-focused data centers in the Hauts-de-France region by 2031. According to SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son, the investment could ultimately grow to as much as €75 billion as the company expands its AI infrastructure footprint in Europe.

The three facilities are expected to deliver a combined capacity of 3.1 gigawatts and form a cornerstone of France’s efforts to become a leading European hub for artificial intelligence. The project is part of SoftBank’s broader global AI infrastructure strategy, which includes significant investments in OpenAI and participation in the $500 billion Stargate data center initiative in the United States.

French President Emmanuel Macron highlighted the record investment figures as evidence of the country’s growing appeal to international investors. Annual investment commitments at the Choose France summit more than doubled from €40.8 billion in 2025, exceeding the cumulative total announced across all summits from 2018 through 2025.

A key factor behind France’s attractiveness is its extensive nuclear power infrastructure. With 57 nuclear reactors and a growing electricity surplus, the country is positioning itself as an ideal location for energy-intensive AI computing facilities and large-scale data centers.

SoftBank’s commitment follows discussions between Macron and Son during the French president’s state visit to Tokyo in April. The investment is intended to strengthen Europe’s AI computing capacity and help the region compete more effectively with the United States and China in the race to build advanced AI infrastructure.

Since launching the Choose France initiative in 2018, Macron has used the annual gathering to attract multinational corporations, investors, and technology leaders. The event has now generated investment announcements totaling approximately €180 billion across hundreds of projects.

[zax] * BREAKING * OpenAI files for IPO, the latest in a stream of possible AI me...

zax — 6/8/2026 6:50:14 PM

*** BREAKING ***

OpenAI files for IPO, the latest in a stream of possible AI mega-sales

New York — OpenAI has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, setting it up for what may be the most highly anticipated market debut in recent history and a massive payday for early investors.
The decision comes just after OpenAI’s chief rival Anthropic announced plans to go public and ahead of SpaceX’s planned Friday debut.

The three listings are expected to tally as much as hundreds of billions of dollars in massive sales, both an opportunity for everyday investors to buy into some of the buzziest AI startups and a major test of the market’s appetite for AI firms.

OpenAI said it has not decided on timing yet. And because the filing is confidential, it’s not yet clear how many shares the company plans to sell or at what price.

“It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” it said in a post on its newsroom page. But the company said the filing “gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

The transition to a public company will give Wall Street a window into OpenAI’s finances as the company pours billions into AI infrastructure and computing resources. Investors dumped tech stocks last week as they questioned whether a recent run-up in those shares had gone too far.

OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion after raising $122 billion in March, but it’s faced pressure to demonstrate it can generate the cash to match that valuation. Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, raised eyebrows last November when she made comments suggesting the US government should “backstop” the company’s massive spending on chips and data centers, which she later walked back.

OpenAI expanded its monetization options for ChatGPT, its popular chatbot and flagship product, over the past year by launching a cheaper $8 tier and introducing ads. It reportedly expects that cheaper plan to drive its subscriber count up to 122 million this year and projects ads to be its biggest revenue driver by 2030, The Information reported in April.

OpenAI has also sought to prove that it’s more than just ChatGPT over the past year. It’s released a web browser, announced plans to develop consumer hardware products, introduced an AI agent that can code and manage apps on a person’s computer, and developed AI tools and programs for use in government, health and finance.

OpenAI was recently handed a courtroom victory when Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company was barred by the statute of limitations. The lawsuit, had it gone in Musk’s favor, could have resulted in a major shakeup to OpenAI’s leadership just ahead of the IPO. (Musk’s attorney has said he plans to appeal.)

Still, OpenAI’s path to an IPO hasn’t been entirely smooth. The company is grappling with escalating competition from chief rivals Anthropic and Google, faces lawsuits alleging ChatGPT played a role in shootings and suicides and is combatting general consumer backlash against AI. In 2023, OpenAI almost fell into disarray after CEO Sam Altman was briefly ousted as CEO.

Anthropic’s valuation recently surged past OpenAI’s with a May fundraising round that valued it at $965 billion — highlighting the intense competition between the firms. The two are racing to capture both consumers and businesses, which are spending big on AI tools.

[zax] Looking at today's chart of SFTBY and to me it is clear today's lower open was s...

zax — 6/3/2026 4:06:03 PM

Looking at today's chart of SFTBY and to me it is clear today's lower open was strictly arbitrage with Japan close and profit taking. It swam against the Nasdaq current the entire session.

[zax] >> You mean we should buy it today and hold for the rest of the year? Basically...

zax — 6/1/2026 2:07:03 PM

>> You mean we should buy it today and hold for the rest of the year?

Basically, yes. It was a no-brainer before today and it will be a no-brainer until OpenAI IPO.

Then, you might have to think.

[Elroy] No-brainer investment of the year You mean we should buy it today and hold for ...

Elroy — 6/1/2026 1:33:43 PM

No-brainer investment of the year

You mean we should buy it today and hold for the rest of the year?

Or something else?

[zax] SFTBY $28.57 +20.5% 11:56 AM EDT No-brainer investment of the year

zax — 6/1/2026 12:21:17 PM

[zax] STFBY $14.25, (+6.9%) Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI,...

zax — 1/29/2026 4:28:32 PM

STFBY $14.25, (+6.9%)

Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, in which SoftBank is a major existing investor. This follows earlier news this week that SoftBank itself was considering an additional $30 billion investment in OpenAI. The recent flurry of major tech investments in the AI space, particularly in OpenAI, is generating significant bullish sentiment for SoftBank and its AI-focused portfolio.

[zax] STFBY $76.06 +5.08% SoftBank Group has sold its stake in Nvidia for $5.8 billio...

zax — 11/11/2025 9:55:32 AM

STFBY $76.06 +5.08%

SoftBank Group has sold its stake in Nvidia for $5.8 billion, as the global tech investor shakes its pockets for cash to plow into its massive bet on OpenAI.

[zax] So sad that Glenn is not with us anymore. I will say that Softbank seems to be ...

zax — 11/10/2025 3:15:36 PM

So sad that Glenn is not with us anymore.

I will say that Softbank seems to be to a very promising investment right about now.

No company's shares stand more to gain more and more directly from the OpenAI IPO, which is said to take place next year.

And the OpenAI IPO will, without a doubt, be the IPO of the century.

SFTBY is trading at a 30 day low right now.

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank gets $7.6 billion T-Mobile stake windfall, shares soar By Sam Nussey ...

Glenn Petersen — 12/27/2023 11:05:30 AM

SoftBank gets $7.6 billion T-Mobile stake windfall, shares soar

By Sam Nussey
Reuters
December 26, 20239:33 PM CST
Updated 7 hours ago

TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) said it would receive shares in telco T-Mobile US (TMUS.O) worth some $7.59 billion at no additional cost, driving the Japanese conglomerate's shares up 5%.

Masayoshi Son's conglomerate said late on Tuesday it had told T-Mobile US to issue 48.75 million shares in common stock to it after conditions set out in an agreement made as part of the merger of SoftBank's U.S. telco Sprint and T-Mobile were met.

The transaction bolsters the listed assets in SoftBank's portfolio, doubling its T-Mobile US stake to 7.64% from 3.75% currently, following the blockbuster listing of chip designer Arm in September.

"This increases the proportion of listed, measurable equity in hand on (SoftBank Group's) balance sheet, and, even better, proportions of marginable equity relative to indebtedness," Macquarie analyst Paul Golding wrote in a client note.

SoftBank's shares were on track for their biggest gain in more than a month. The conglomerate has risen only around 14% year-to-date, compared with an almost 30% rise in the benchmark index (.N225). The group trades at a discount of around 45.5% to the value of its assets, according to Macquarie calculations.

Son has been a leading investor in late stage startups but has suffered a series of reversals including the bankruptcy of office-sharing firm WeWork, which was once the most valuable U.S. startup.

The T-Mobile US transaction bumps SoftBank's internal rate of return (IRR) on its Sprint investment to 25.5%.

Other positives for the company include the recent rally in Arm's shares, which closed on Tuesday around 44% above the initial public offering price.

Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Tom Hogue and Muralikumar Anantharaman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

SoftBank gets $7.6 billion T-Mobile stake windfall, shares soar | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank posts $6.2 billion quarterly loss as WeWork collapse, tech slump drag b...

Glenn Petersen — 11/9/2023 5:46:10 AM

SoftBank posts $6.2 billion quarterly loss as WeWork collapse, tech slump drag bottom line

PUBLISHED THU, NOV 9 20231:15 AM EST
UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Arjun Kharpal @ARJUNKHARPAL
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

SoftBank posted an investment gain on its Vision Fund in the fiscal second quarter but booked another quarterly loss.
The company said the Vision Fund gain was due to a gain arising from the sale of shares in chipmaker Arm to a subsidiary of SoftBank.
This offset a decline in the value of companies SoftBank is invested in such as Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime.

SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son is pictured here in 2019 during an earnings presentation.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images
--------------------------------

SoftBank posted an investment gain on its Vision Fund in the fiscal second quarter but booked another quarterly loss.

Here’s how SoftBank did in the September quarter against LSEG estimates:

Net sales: 1.67 trillion Japanese yen ($11 billion) versus 1.6 trillion yen expected
Net loss: 931.1 billion yen ($6.2 billion) versus an expected loss of 114.1 billion yen

For the first half of SoftBank’s fiscal year, it posted a 1.41 trillion loss ($9.3 billion). This compares to a 3 trillion yen profit in the same period last year. SoftBank said a weaker yen hit the company since it has a lot of U.S.-dollar denominated liabilities.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund posted an investment gain of 21.3 billion yen, its second straight quarter of gains. The company said this was due to a gain arising from the sale of shares in chip designer Arm to a subsidiary of SoftBank.

This offset a decline in the value of companies SoftBank is invested in, such as Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime.

“The environment is still tough … but we believe we have hit a bottom and are making good moves towards positive figures,” SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said on Thursday during an earnings presentation.

WeWork bankcruptcy hit

However, the overall SoftBank Vision Fund segment posted a pre-tax loss of 258.86 billion yen.

SoftBank recorded a loss of 234.4 billion yen for the half-year period related to the investment and financial support provided to WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. this week. SoftBank was one of the biggest backers of the co-working space firm, which tried and failed to go public five years ago.

Critics of SoftBank’s investment strategy point toward WeWork as an example of a lack of discipline, at times, from the Vision Fund. SoftBank’s high-profile founder Masayoshi Son once said WeWork is at the forefront of a “revolution” in the way people work.

Goto addressed the WeWork bankruptcy and said SoftBank should learn lessons from it.

“First of all, I am very story to hear that. As a company we need to accept this reality and also need to learn the lesson from this for our future investment activity,” Goto said.

SoftBank’s flagship tech investment arm had a rough time in the fiscal year that ended in March this year, posting a record loss of around $32 billion. A slump in tech stock prices and the souring of some of SoftBank’s bets in China were to blame.

In the June quarter, the Vision Fund posted its first investment gain in five consecutive quarters, signalling early signs of growth again. This has coincided with recoveries in the prices of technology stocks.

Last year, Son noted the firm would go into “defense” mode, slowing the pace of its investment and being more cautious. In June, Son flagged a shift into “offense” mode, touting his excitement around the potential of artificial intelligence technology.

“We are investing in AI and that’s the main strategy for our company,” Goto said.

Son, who used to lead SoftBank’s earnings presentations with colorful presentations, has not been present for several quarters. But Son has been “devoting himself and involved in the discussion, how and what is going to be the changes in people’s lives from the AI revolution,” Goto said.

The CFO added that SoftBank wants to be a front runner of the AI revolution.

Chip designer Arm went public in the U.S during SoftBank’s fiscal second quarter. The company acquired Arm in 2016 for around $32 billion at the time. The initial public offering of Arm valued the company at over $50 billion.

Arm on Wednesday reported its first set of results since its IPO, posting an annual rise in revenue for the September quarter. However, the semiconductor firm gave guidance for the December quarter that disappointed investors, sending its shares lower in after-hours trade in the U.S.

Correction: The headline of this article has been updated to reflect a $6.2 billion quarterly loss.

SoftBank earnings Q2 FY 2023 (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says Reuters ...

Glenn Petersen — 11/1/2023 5:09:18 AM

WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says

Reuters
November 1, 20232:27 AM CDT
Updated 2 hours ago

Oct 31 (Reuters) - WeWork (WE.N) plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, as the SoftBank Group-backed company struggles with a massive debt pile and hefty losses.

Shares of the flexible workspace provider fell 32% in extended trading after the Wall Street Journal first reported the news. They have fallen roughly 96% this year.

New York-based WeWork is considering filing a Chapter 11 petition in New Jersey, the WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter

WeWork declined to comment.

Earlier on Tuesday, WeWork said it had entered into an agreement with creditors for temporary postponement of payments for some of its debt, with the grace period nearing an end.

The company had net long-term debt of $2.9 billion as of June end and more than $13 billion in long-term leases, at a time when rising borrowing costs are hurting the commercial real estate sector.

WeWork's filing for bankruptcy would mark a stunning reversal of fortune for the company that was privately valued at $47 billion in 2019 and a black spot for investor SoftBank that sunk billions.

The company has been in turmoil ever since its plans to go public in 2019 imploded following investors' skepticism over its business model of taking long-term leases and renting them for the short term and worries over its hefty losses.
WeWork's woes did not abate in subsequent years. It finally managed to go public in 2021 at a much-reduced valuation. Its major backer, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, sunk tens of billions to prop up the startup, but the company has continued to lose money.

WeWork raised "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operations in August, with numerous top executives, including CEO Sandeep Mathrani, departing this year.

Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York, Manas Mishra and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Anil D'Silva

WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, source says | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] Arm climbs 25% in Nasdaq debut after pricing IPO at $51 a share PUBLISHED THU, ...

Glenn Petersen — 9/14/2023 8:08:46 PM

Arm climbs 25% in Nasdaq debut after pricing IPO at $51 a share

PUBLISHED THU, SEP 14 202312:11 PM EDT
Rohan Goswami @IN/ROHANGOSWAMICNBC/ @ROGOSWAMI
Kif Leswing @KIFLESWING

KEY POINTS

-- Arm Holdings has started trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ARM.”

-- The chip design company is valued at a steep premium relative to the rest of the semiconductor market.

-- SoftBank still holds about 90% of Arm’s stock.

Arm CEO Rene Haas and executives cheer as Softbank’s Arm, a chip design firm, holds an initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Sept. 14, 2023. / Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
-----------------------------------

Arm Holdings, the chip design company controlled by SoftBank, jumped nearly 25% during its first day of trading Thursday after selling shares at $51 a piece in its initial public offering.

At the open, Arm was valued at almost $60 billion. The company, trading under ticker symbol “ARM,” sold about 95.5 million shares. SoftBank, which took the company private in 2016, controls about 90% of shares outstanding.

On Wednesday, Arm priced shares at the upper end of its expected range. On Thursday, the stock first traded at $56.10 and ended the day at $63.59.

It’s a hefty premium for the British chip company. At a $60 billion valuation, Arm’s price-to-earnings multiple would be over 110 based on the most recent fiscal year profit. That’s comparable to Nvidia’s valuation, which trades at 108 times earnings, but without Nvidia’s 170% growth forecast for the current quarter.

Arm Chief Financial Officer Jason Child told CNBC in an interview that the company is focusing on royalty growth and providing products to its customers that cost and do more.

Many of Arm’s royalties come from products released decades ago. About half the company’s royalty revenue, which totaled $1.68 billion in 2022, comes from products released between 1990 and 2012.

“As a CFO, it’s one of the better business models I’ve seen. I joke sometimes that those older products are like the Beatles catalog, they just keep delivering royalties. Some of those products are three decades old,” Child said.

In a presentation to investors, Arm said it expects the total market for its chip designs to be worth about $250 billion by 2025, including growth in chip designs for data centers and cars. Arm’s revenue in its fiscal year that ended in March slipped less than 1% from the prior year to $2.68 billion.

Arm’s architecture is used in nearly every smartphone chip and outlines how a central processor works at its most basic level, such as doing arithmetic or accessing computer memory.

Child said the company sold $735 million in shares to a group of strategic investors comprising Apple, Google, Nvidia, Samsung, AMD, Intel, Cadence, Synopsis, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It’s a testament to Arm’s influence among chip companies, which rely on Arm’s technology to design and build their own chips.

“There was interest to buy more than what was indicated, but we wanted to make sure we had a diverse set of shareholders,” Child said.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son emphasized how Arm’s technology is used in artificial intelligence chips, as he seeks to tie the firm to the recent boom in AI and machine learning. He also said he wanted to keep the company’s remaining Arm stake as long as possible.

The debut could kick open the market for technology IPOs, which have been paused for nearly two years. It’s the biggest technology offering of 2023.

Arm IPO: (ARM) starts trading on the Nasdaq in win for SoftBank (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] That sounds about right, but I will readily admit that I know very little about ...

Glenn Petersen — 9/13/2023 9:09:36 PM

That sounds about right, but I will readily admit that I know very little about chip manufacturing.

The IPO price strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

[Elroy] Is one way to think about Arm as they license subroutines that are used by other...

Elroy — 9/13/2023 8:15:04 PM

Is one way to think about Arm as they license subroutines that are used by other chip makers in designing chips?

So you can use Arm's "cores" to provide some off the shelf chip functions, and then your chip designers customize your IP around the cores, and together you've got a chip with some function, and the chip designer owes Arm some license fee based on the core useage?

In other words, chip design subroutines?

[Glenn Petersen] Arm prices IPO at $51 per share, valuing company at over $54 billion PUBLISHED ...

Glenn Petersen — 9/13/2023 5:22:55 PM

Arm prices IPO at $51 per share, valuing company at over $54 billion

PUBLISHED WED, SEP 13 20234:14 PM EDT
UPDATED 2 MIN AGO
Leslie Picker @LESLIEPICKER
Kif Leswing @KIFLESWING
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Chip design company Arm priced its long-awaited initial public offering on Wednesday.

-- Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank will own about 90% of the company after the offering.

-- Arm customers, including Apple, Google, Nvidia and Samsung, have said they will buy shares in the IPO.

Arm, the chip design firm that supplies core technology to companies including Apple and Nvidia, priced its initial public offering at $51 a share, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Arm’s fully diluted market cap, which includes outstanding restricted stock units, is over $54 billion at the $51 offer price.

The U.K.-based company is listing at least 95.5 million American depository shares on the Nasdaq, and SoftBank, its current owner, will control about 90% of the company’s outstanding shares.

The offering is at the top of Arm’s expected price range of $47 to $51. The company will start to trade Thursday under the symbol “ARM.”

Arm said in its prospectus that revenue in its fiscal year that ended in March slipped less than 1% from the prior year to $2.68 billion. Net income in fiscal 2023 dropped 22% to $524 million.

Arm is riding the wave of excitement around artificial intelligence as it aims to crack open the tech IPO market after a nearly two-year pause. It’s set to be the biggest technology offering of the year.

Arm’s valuation for a chip company is exceedingly rich when compared to any player in the market other than Nvidia. At $54 billion, Arm would carry a price-to-earnings multiple of about 104, based on profit in the latest fiscal year.

Nvidia is valued at 108 times earnings, but that’s after forecasting revenue growth of 170% for the current quarter, driven by AI chips. The Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF, which is designed to measure the performance of the 30 biggest U.S. chip companies, has a price-to-earnings ratio of about 25.

Many of Arm’s most important customers, including Apple, Google, Nvidia, Samsung, AMD, Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, said they would buy shares as part of the offering. Arm’s technology is used in 99% of mobile processors around the world.

Arm’s architecture outlines how a central processor works at its most basic level, such as how to do arithmetic or how to access computer memory. The company was originally founded in 1990 to build chips for devices with batteries and took off when it started to be widely used in smartphone chips. Arm’s instruction set uses less power than the x86 architecture used in PC and server chips by Intel and AMD.

While some of Arm’s customers just use the instruction set and design their own CPUs, Arm also licenses entire designs of its own to chipmakers they can use as CPU cores in their own chips. Amazon uses Arm CPU designs in some of its server chips.

In a presentation to investors, Arm officials said the company has room to grow beyond just smartphones and wants to design more chips for data centers and AI applications. It said it expects the total market for chip designs to be worth about $250 billion by 2025.

Correction: A prior version of this story had the incorrect IPO price

Arm prices IPO at $51 a share, valuing company at over $54 billion (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Exclusive: Arm signs up big tech firms for IPO at $50 bln-$55 bln valuation -sou...

Glenn Petersen — 9/1/2023 9:01:02 PM

Exclusive: Arm signs up big tech firms for IPO at $50 bln-$55 bln valuation -sources

By Echo Wang
Reuters

September 1, 20236:39 PM CDT
Updated an hour ago

NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Customers of Arm Holdings Ltd including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) have agreed to invest in the chip designer's initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.

Intel Corp (INTC.O), Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), Cadence Design Systems Inc (CDNS.O) and Synopsys Inc (SNPS.O) have also agreed to participate as investors in the offering, the sources added. The talks are ongoing and some other potential investors are also in discussions to invest in the IPO, the sources added.

SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T), which owns Britain-based Arm, is targeting a valuation between $50 billion and $55 billion, Reuters reported earlier on Friday. Arm's clients have agreed to invest in that valuation range, the sources said.

While it is possible that demand for Arm's shares will lead to a higher valuation by the time the IPO prices, the move represents a climb-down from the $64 billion valuation at which SoftBank acquired the 25% stake in the company it did not already own from its $100 billion Vision Fund last month.

Apple, Nvidia and the other strategic investors have agreed to invest between $25 million and $100 million each in the blockbuster IPO, the sources said. Arm and SoftBank have set aside 10% of the shares to be sold in the IPO for its clients, Reuters has previously reported.

Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), which had previously held talks to invest in the IPO, has decided not to participate, one of the sources said, requesting anonymity as the discussions are confidential.

A scramble among Arm's clients, comprising the world's biggest technology companies, to snap up shares in the IPO is testing the semiconductor designer's adherence to not picking sides in the chip industry.

The interest is fueled by a desire by companies to expand their commercial relationship with Arm and make sure rivals do not gain an edge, Reuters has previously reported.

While an investment in the IPO would not come with a seat on Arm's board or ability to dictate strategy, it could strengthen ties with each participating company and make it harder for a competitor to acquire Arm later.

Arm and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AMD, Intel, Synopsys and Nvidia declined to comment. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and Cadence did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal reported on Arm's valuation target earlier on Friday.

Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Anirban Sen and Rosalba O'Brien

Exclusive: Arm signs up big tech firms for IPO at $50 bln-$55 bln valuation -sources | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] The Arm F-1: F-1 (sec.gov) Arm files for Nasdaq listing, as SoftBank aims to s...

Glenn Petersen — 8/21/2023 5:26:24 PM

The Arm F-1: F-1 (sec.gov)

Arm files for Nasdaq listing, as SoftBank aims to sell shares in chipmaker it bought for $32 billion

PUBLISHED MON, AUG 21 20234:29 PM EDT
UPDATED 5 MIN AGO
Kif Leswing @KIFLESWING
Arjun Kharpal @ARJUNKHARPAL
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Arm, which is owned by SoftBank, filed on Monday to list on the Nasdaq.

-- The U.K.-based chipmaker is looking to go public during a historically slow period for U.S. IPOs.

-- SoftBank agreed to acquire Arm for $32 billion in 2016.

Arm, the chipmaker owned by Japan’s SoftBank, filed for a Nasdaq listing on Monday, positioning itself to go public during a historically slow period for tech IPOs.

The company wants to trade under the ticker symbol “ARM.”

Arm reported $524 million in net income on $2.68 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, which ended in March, according to the filing. Arm’s 2023 revenue was slightly down from the company’s 2022 sales of $2.7 billion.

The U.K.-based company filed confidentially for a listing in the U.S. earlier this year after previously announcing it would go public in the U.S. over the U.K., dealing a blow to the London Stock Exchange.

Arm is one of the most important chip companies. It sells licenses to an instruction set at the heart of nearly every mobile chip, and increasingly, PC and server chips as well. In recent years, it has aimed to sell more complete chip designs, which is more lucrative.

ARM chips are made by companies including Amazon, Alphabet, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Samsung, according to the filing. Its technology is also included in Apple’s chips for iPhones. Arm said that its technology was included in over 30 billion chips shipped in its fiscal 2023. Arm typically takes a fee on every chip that is shipped using its technology.

SoftBank originally sought to sell Arm to chip giant Nvidia, but the deal faced major pushback from regulators, who raised concerns over competition and national security. SoftBank took Arm private in 2016 in a deal valued at $32 billion.

Arm did not provide a projected share price, so it’s not yet possible to estimate its valuation.

A critical component

Arm, with just under 6000 employees, plays a pivotal role in the world of consumer electronics, designing the architecture of chips that are found in 99% of all smartphones, making it a key provider of technology to Apple, Google and Qualcomm.

The company was founded in 1990 as a joint venture between several companies and Apple to create a low-power processor for battery-powered devices. It first went public in 1998, before being taken private in 2016 by SoftBank.

But the company is also facing headwinds from a slowdown in demand for products like smartphones, which has hit chip firms across the board. Arm’s net sales fell 4.6% year-on-year in the second quarter, while the unit swung to a loss, according to SoftBank’s earnings release. SoftBanks’ beleaguered Vision Fund, meanwhile, has racked up billions of dollars in losses of late due to tech bets that soured in a high interest rate environment.

In its filing, Arm made the case that its technology would be essential for AI applications, although it focuses on central processors, not the graphics processors that are required for creating big AI models. “The CPU is vital in all AI systems, whether it is handling the AI workload entirely or in combination with a co-processor, such as a GPU or an NPU,” Arm said in the filing.

Arm identified x86, the instruction set used in Intel and AMD processors, as well as RISC-V, an open source instruction set backed by several big tech companies, as sources of competition.

Arm is poised to hit the market at a time when investors are flocking to next-generation semiconductors because of the demand spurred by artificial intelligence, most notably the soaring popularity of generative AI applications. Nvidia, the chipmaker most at the heart of the generative AI boom, has seen its stock price triple this year.

However, the tech IPO market has been largely dormant for the past 20 months, with no notable venture-backed deals since Dec. 2021. Last October, Intel spun out self-driving car technology company Mobileye. That stock is up just 17% since its first day close.

Some tech investors may be looking to ARM’s offering as an indication of demand for new offerings. Grocery delivery company Instacart is among late-stage startups that are reportedly preparing to submit IPO paperwork to the SEC.

Arm files for Nasdaq listing, as SoftBank sells shares in chipmaker (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank buys Vision Fund's stake in Arm at valuation of $64 bln-sources By An...

Glenn Petersen — 8/18/2023 2:32:52 PM

SoftBank buys Vision Fund's stake in Arm at valuation of $64 bln-sources

By Anirban Sen
Rueters
August 18, 202311:39 AM CDT
Updated 2 hours ago

NEW YORK, Aug 18 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) has acquired the 25% stake in Arm Ltd it does not directly own from its Vision Fund unit in a deal that values the chip designer at $64 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Details of the transaction will be unveiled on Monday when Arm makes public the filing for its blockbuster stock market launch, the sources said, requesting anonymity as these discussions are confidential.

SoftBank is now expected to sell fewer Arm shares in the initial public offering (IPO) and would likely be retaining a stake of as much as 90% in the company, according to the sources, adding that Arm's capital raising from the IPO would be less than the range of $8 billion to $10 billion it was earlier planning.

SoftBank is currently in talks to list Arm at a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion in the IPO, which is expected to happen in September, Reuters has previously reported. SoftBank, which took Arm private for $32 billion in 2016, sold a 25% stake in the company to Vision Fund 1 (VF1) for $8 billion in 2017.

The deal removes a potential overhang for Arm's stock following the IPO, because VF1 had initially planned to cash out its stake in the stock market over time following the listing, while SoftBank has indicated it will remain a long-term strategic investor.

Reuters was first to report earlier in August that SoftBank was in talks to buy the stake from the Vision Fund. The Wall Street Journal reported the financial terms of the deal earlier on Friday.

The deal also delivers a major victory for VF1's biggest investors, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. They nursed losses after many of SoftBank's bets on startups such as workspace provider WeWork Inc (WE.N) and ride-sharing firm Didi Global (92Sy.MU) soured.

Arm's plans to go public come as the U.S. IPO market shows early signs of a recovery after a barren spell that lasted a year and a half. Grocery delivery service Instacart and marketing automation firm Klaviyo Inc are also expected to go public in New York in September, the sources said.

Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York Additional reporting by Milana Vinn in New York and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Potter

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

SoftBank buys Vision Fund's stake in Arm at valuation of $64 bln-sources | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank’s Arm Targets $60 Billion-Plus Value for September IPO -- Chip design ...

Glenn Petersen — 8/2/2023 4:49:11 AM

SoftBank’s Arm Targets $60 Billion-Plus Value for September IPO

-- Chip design firm may raise as much as $10 billion in debut

-- Nvidia, Intel are in discussions to be anchor investors

By Min Jeong Lee, Giles Turner, and Ian King
Bloombeerg
August 2, 2023 at 12:45 AM EDT

SoftBank Group Corp.’s semiconductor unit Arm Ltd. is targeting an initial public offering at a valuation of between $60 billion and $70 billion as soon as September, a sign of bullish interest in artificial-intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter.

The roadshow is scheduled to start the first week of September with pricing for the IPO the following week, said one of the people, asking not to be named because the talks are private. The latest target for Arm’s valuation underscores a shift in market mood in favor of technologies linked to generative AI and chips. Earlier this year, bankers were pitching a range of valuations for the chip designer from $30 billion to $70 billion, Bloomberg News has reported.

SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, and Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas long considered the bottom of that range too low. Arm executives may still be gunning for a valuation of as high as $80 billion, but the odds of achieving such a target are uncertain, one of the people said. The chip company is looking to raise as much as $10 billion in the IPO, Bloomberg News has reported.

Arm has “had a hugely important but behind-the-scenes and not-very-well-understood role for a very long time,” said Bob O’Donnell, president of TECHnalysis Research. “There’s this raised awareness now of what Arm does and the role that it plays.”

Rene Haas, chief executive officer of Arm.Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
-----------------------------------------

SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.

Arm made a confidential filing for a US listing in April. A handful of big industry names, including Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp., have been engaged in preliminary talks to become anchor investors in the IPO, which could be the year’s biggest market debut.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. were named as IPO banks in the filing, Bloomberg News has reported.

While the Cambridge, UK-based company’s technology is used in almost every smartphone on the planet, its place in the industry has long been obscure. Arm sells the blueprints needed to design microprocessors, and licenses technology known as instruction sets that dictate how software programs communicate with those chips. The power efficiency of Arm’s technology helped make it ubiquitous on phones, where battery life is critical.

Haas, who took over as CEO last year, is now working to expand beyond the smartphone market, which has stagnated in recent years. He’s targeting more advanced computing, particularly the chips for data centers for cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications.

Processors for that market are among the most expensive — and profitable — in the industry. Amazon.com Inc. has adopted Arm-based chips for its Amazon Web Services because it says they are more efficient both in terms of energy and economics. They are used by 40,000 AWS customers.

Estimates for Arm’s value have fluctuated wildly in tandem with chip stocks since SoftBank acquired the company for $32 billion in 2016, de-listing it from the London Stock Exchange. SoftBank founder Son has regularly talked up the potential for Arm’s future growth and dominance in chip IP. In February last year, Son said he wants Arm’s debut to be “the biggest” in the history of the semiconductor industry.

A successful Arm IPO would mark a rare victory for SoftBank, which struggled after an ill-fated foray into startup investing. The company’s Vision Fund arm lost 6.9 trillion yen ($48 billion) in the last two fiscal years as the value of its holdings tumbled.

— With Edwin Chan

SoftBank’s Arm Targets $60 Billion-Plus Value for September IPO - Bloomberg (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] Nvidia in talks to be an anchor investor in Arm IPO World’s most valuable semic...

Glenn Petersen — 7/12/2023 5:18:22 AM

Nvidia in talks to be an anchor investor in Arm IPO

World’s most valuable semiconductor group discusses acquiring stake in SoftBank-owned chip designer ahead of New York listing

Tabby Kinder in San Francisco, Qianer Liu in Hong Kong, Nicholas Megaw in New York, Kana Inagaki in Tokyo and Tim Bradshaw in London
Financial Times

3 HOURS AGO

Chip designer Arm is in talks to bring in Nvidia as an anchor investor, while the SoftBank-owned company presses ahead with plans for a New York listing as soon as September, several people briefed on the talks said.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, was forced last year to abandon its planned $66bn acquisition of Arm after the deal was challenged by regulators.

The Silicon Valley-based chipmaker is one of several existing Arm partners, including Intel, that the UK-based company is hoping will take a long-term stake at the initial public offering stage, according to the people.

The prospective investors are still negotiating with Arm over its valuation. One person familiar with the discussions said Nvidia wanted to come in at a share price that would put Arm’s total value at $35bn to $40bn, while Arm wants to be closer to $80bn.

The aim of bringing in large anchor investors as Arm launches an IPO in New York would be to help to support the stock as SoftBank, which bought Arm for £24bn ($32bn) in 2016, sells down its stake.

Many private tech companies and their advisers are watching closely to see if Arm can succeed in launching its IPO in 2023 after a year-long slump in new listings.

Securing the advance support of a few anchor investors is a popular tactic during difficult IPO markets, serving as a way to ensure demand and reassure other potential investors.

Arm and Nvidia declined to comment. A person close to the situation said the talks had not been concluded and might not lead to an investment.

Arm is expected to be the most valuable company to go public in the US since automaker Rivian, which listed with an initial market capitalisation of $70bn in late 2021.

It is widely considered to be a less risky prospect than many IPO candidates given its previous record as a public company.

People close to SoftBank said its founder Masayoshi Son has been personally involved in seeking anchor investors for Arm. Son has been focusing on expanding the chip designer’s revenue ahead of its IPO. SoftBank declined to comment.

Arm and Nvidia have contacted regulators in the US to smooth over any potential concerns about what is likely to be a small minority investment, in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, according to people close to the discussions.

When Nvidia first announced plans to take over Arm in September 2020, competition authorities in the US and Europe objected. They said the deal might restrict rivals’ access to Arm’s intellectual property, which can be found in the vast majority of smartphones and a growing portion of the automotive market, as well as give Nvidia access to competitively sensitive information.

Nvidia is already an Arm customer but its talks to invest in the company point to bigger ambitions to expand from its core business in “graphics processing units” — dedicated chips for accelerating specialised tasks, including 3D rendering and training artificial intelligence — into the “central processing units” that handle most other computing functions.

One person familiar with the plans said Arm was keen to bring in Nvidia in its bid as a way to position AI as central to the UK group’s growth plans. “AI will be every third word in the offering document,” the person said. “Nvidia is so important as its involvement implies AI.”

The move would bring Nvidia into closer competition with Intel, whose CPUs have long dominated the PC and data centre markets.

Nvidia, which became the first chipmaker to hit a $1tn valuation in May, recently produced its first CPU using Arm’s designs as part of a so-called superchip, dubbed Grace Hopper and designed for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

Global listing volumes plummeted last year as investors were put off by falling stock prices, rising market volatility and the uncertain economic outlook. However, activity has begun to pick up in recent weeks, thanks in part to a broader upswing in stock prices led by Nvidia.\

Additional reporting by Richard Waters

Nvidia in talks to be an anchor investor in Arm IPO | Financial Times (archive.ph)
```

[Glenn Petersen] Masayoshi Son says SoftBank ready to go on ‘counteroffensive’ Billionaire chief...

Glenn Petersen — 6/21/2023 5:12:46 AM

Masayoshi Son says SoftBank ready to go on ‘counteroffensive’

Billionaire chief talks up AI and reveals he had breakdown in October where he questioned his achievements as an entrepreneur

Kana Inagaki in Tokyo
2 HOURS AGO
Financial Times

SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son has said the company will go on the “counteroffensive” after nearly three years of asset sales and hoarding cash to resume the technology group’s investments in artificial intelligence.

In his first major presentation to investors since November, the 65-year-old founder of the Japanese conglomerate said he would devote the rest of his life to being “an architect for the future of humanity”.

“We have done enough being on the defensive,” Son said on Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Tokyo. “I feel that the timing for us to go on the counteroffensive is soon. I’m very excited.”

Following heavy losses incurred by SoftBank’s Vision Funds in recent years, the tech conglomerate halted new investments and used almost all of its shares in Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba for financing. As a result, the group is now sitting on more than ¥5tn ($35bn) in cash.

“I regret big mistakes,” Son said in response to a shareholder’s question on whether the Vision Funds’ investments were actually focused on artificial intelligence.

“But still, we made investments in roughly 500 companies...and I think at least I have found more than several that are going to be big successes out of the 500. I think that’s enough.”

In May, SoftBank’s chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto said the company would not miss opportunities to invest in new technology such as ChatGPT but cautioned that it was not ready to accelerate its deal activity following record annual investment losses of ¥5.3tn. Ahead of Son’s presentation, shares in SoftBank rose as much as 4 per cent. Investor sentiment has improved ahead of the blockbuster listing of its UK chip designer Arm in New York.

During the AGM, Son revealed he had a crisis in October where he broke down in tears for a few days and questioned how much he had achieved as an entrepreneur.

“I realised that what I really wanted to become was an architect, to design the future of humanity,” Son said. “I want to achieve several [of my inventions] one by one and Arm will provide the key. By using Arm’s position and combining it with my ideas, there will be an amazing opportunity.”

The SoftBank boss warned that companies would fall behind if they shunned the use of generative AI but also called for regulations to ensure the technology would not be misused.

“There is a risk of scarier consequences than the atomic bomb if [AI] is misused by the wrong people .?.?. so regulations should be debated and introduced,” he said.

Masayoshi Son says SoftBank ready to go on ‘counteroffensive’ | Financial Times (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] Arm in talks with big clients about investing in IPO -sources Reuters June 13, ...

Glenn Petersen — 6/14/2023 6:21:30 AM

Arm in talks with big clients about investing in IPO -sources

Reuters
June 13, 20233:05 PM CDT Updated 12 hours ago

June 12 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp's (9984.T) Arm is in talks with some of its biggest customers and end users about bringing on one or more anchor investors in the chip designer's initial public offering (IPO), two sources familiar with the matter said.

Arm is talking to at least ten companies, including Intel Corp (INTC.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), Apple Inc. (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O), TSMC (2330.TW), and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. (005930.KS), about their potential participation in the IPO, one of the sources said.

The talks are preliminary and any decision about an anchor investment in Arm's IPO won't come till August, the source added. The investment would not come with any board seat or control, according to the source.

Arm plans to sell its shares on Nasdaq later this year, seeking to raise $8 billion-$10 billion, Reuters reported earlier in April.

Arm's designs are used to manufacture chips made by most of the world's major semiconductor companies, including Intel, AMD (AMD.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O) and Qualcomm (QCOM.O). It was not immediately clear what impact any IPO investment by one or more of those companies would have on Arm's commercial relationships.

The chip designer had filed with regulators confidentially for a U.S. stock market listing in April, setting the stage for this year's largest IPO.

Arm and Intel declined a Reuters request for comment. Bloomberg News first reported on the cornerstone investment deliberations.

Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, TSMC and Samsung didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reporting by Anirban Sen and Echo Wang in New York and Yana Gaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich, Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Edward Tobin

Arm in talks with big clients about investing in IPO -sources | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] I think that Softbank invested $355 million into Zume, Fallen Pizza Startup Zum...

Glenn Petersen — 6/4/2023 6:04:42 AM

I think that Softbank invested $355 million into Zume,

Fallen Pizza Startup Zume Shuts Down After Raising Millions

-- The company pulled in about $450 million from SoftBank, others

-- Baking pizza with robots in trucks was a technical challenge

A robot places a pizza into an oven at Zume Pizza in Mountain View, California, in 2016.Photographer: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
----------------------------
By Sarah McBride
Bloomberg
June 3, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

Zume Inc., a one-time robot pizza business that came to represent the excesses of pre-pandemic venture investing, has shut operations, two people familiar with the matter said.

The company had raised about $450 million from SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund and others. It has retained Sherwood Partners, a restructuring firm, to sell its assets, one of the people said. The Information first reported the shuttering.

Zume did not respond to requests for comment.

Founded in 2015, the company was one of many attempting to use robots to make pizza. The concept never took off, and the technology was plagued by technical challenges, such as keeping melting cheese from sliding off while the pizzas baked in moving trucks.

In January 2020, the company cut over half its employees and switched to compostable packaging, based on the know-how of a southern California company it had acquired, Pivot Packaging.

Fallen Pizza Startup Zume Shuts Down After Raising Millions - Bloomberg (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank Vision Fund Loses $32 Billion on Weak Startup Values By Min Jeong Lee...

Glenn Petersen — 5/11/2023 5:41:09 AM

SoftBank Vision Fund Loses $32 Billion on Weak Startup Values

By Min Jeong Lee and Takahiko Hyuga
Bloomberg
May 11, 2023, 6:05 AM UTC

SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund unit reported a record annual loss after a recent global stock market rebound failed to outweigh three straight quarters of hefty writedowns.

The Vision Fund unit lost ¥4.3 trillion ($32 billion) in the year ended March, compared with a ¥2.6 trillion loss the previous year. It was the segment’s biggest loss since founder Masayoshi Son launched his first Saudi and Abu Dhabi-backed fund in 2017.

The Nasdaq 100 index, a benchmark for tech stock performance, rallied 20% during the March quarter, lifting share prices for some of SoftBank’s biggest investments. Coupang Inc. gained around 9% and Didi Global Inc. about 20% during the period. But most of the Vision Fund portfolio firms are still reeling from the brunt of last year’s stock market collapse.

Many of the privately-held companies that SoftBank’s invested in are not yet profitable, while the IPO market remains lackluster. “I remain cautious about the rest of the year, and private companies could continue to drag down valuations,” said Victor Galliano, an independent analyst who publishes on Smartkarma.

The billionaire Son has said the company will remain in defense mode until financial markets recover. SoftBank is in the process of divesting a number of its assets to clean up its balance sheet and appease worried investors, while promoting the highly-anticipated initial public offering of Arm Ltd.

Bankers have pitched a valuation of between $30 billion to $70 billion for Arm’s listing, a wide range reflecting the challenges of valuing the firm against a backdrop of volatile semiconductor equity prices.

“The Arm story is key and valuation is important, but that may be more at the mercy of markets than SoftBank would like,” said Mio Kato, an analyst from LightStream Research who publishes on Smartkarma.

SoftBank offloaded an additional $7.3 billion in Alibaba shares this year through prepaid forward contracts, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings. This may have reduced SoftBank’s Alibaba stock to around 3.8%. Last month, the Japanese conglomerate said it is selling its early-stage venture capital arm SoftBank Ventures Asia Corp. to an entity led by Taizo Son, the younger brother of Son. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The sale of the startup incubator could ease SoftBank’s financing burden, while offloading Alibaba shares in the wake of the e-commerce leader’s plans to split into six parts would help maximize SoftBank’s divestment income, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Marvin Lo wrote in a note last month.

SoftBank is nearing a deal to sell Fortress Investment Group to Mubadala for as much as $3 billion, the Financial Times reported, citing unidentified people briefed on the matter.

That would help SoftBank’s share price, Galliano said. “The focus for now has to be realizing investments where possible and reducing leverage, and we look forward to perhaps more disclosure on Masa’s debts with the group.”

Investors are not yet declaring the bottom for the venture capital sector, given the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, which provided funding support to the startup ecosystem.

“Markets remain volatile and the near-term outlook for Vision Fund remains murky,” said Kirk Boodry, an analyst with Astris Advisory.
\
SoftBank Vision Fund Loses $32 Billion on Weak Startup Values - Bloomberg (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank's Arm registers for blockbuster U.S. IPO By Anirban Sen and Echo Wan...

Glenn Petersen — 4/29/2023 2:30:33 PM

SoftBank's Arm registers for blockbuster U.S. IPO

By Anirban Sen and Echo Wang
Reuters
April 29, 2023

NEW YORK, April 29 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp's (9984.T) chip maker Arm Ltd has filed with regulators confidentially for a U.S. stock market listing, Arm said on Saturday, setting the stage for this year's largest initial public offering.

The IPO registration shows that Softbank is pressing ahead with the blockbuster offering despite adverse market conditions, after saying in March that it planned to list Arm in the U.S. stock market.

U.S. IPOs, excluding listings for special purpose acquisition companies, are down about 22% to a total of just $2.35 billion year-to-date, according to Dealogic, as stock market volatility and economic uncertainty put many IPO hopefuls off.

Arm plans to sell its shares on Nasdaq later this year, seeking to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion, people familiar with the matter said. In a statement, which confirmed an earlier Reuters report on the planned IPO, Arm said the size and price range for the offering has not yet been determined.

The sources cautioned that the exact timing and size of the IPO are subject to market conditions and asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.

SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.

There are signs that the IPO market is beginning to thaw. Johnson & Johnson Inc (JNJ.N) is preparing to list its consumer health business Kenvue Inc (KVUE.N) in New York next week, hoping to raise about $3.5 billion.

SoftBank has been targeting a listing for Arm since its deal to sell the chip designer to Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) for $40 billion collapsed last year because of objections from U.S. and European antitrust regulators.

Since then, Arm's business has fared better than the broader chip industry thanks to its focus on data center servers and personal computers that generate higher royalty payments. The company said sales were up 28% in its most recent quarter.

Arm's IPO is expected to boost the fortunes of SoftBank, which is battling to turn around its giant Vision Fund, which has been hit by losses due to the declining valuations of many of its holdings in technology startups.

Earlier this year, Arm rebuffed a campaign from the British government to list its shares in London and said it would pursue a flotation on a U.S. exchange.

Arm's IPO preparations are being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Barclays (BARC.L) and Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T).

Reporting by Anirban Sen and Echo Wang in New York; additional reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Jonathan Oatis

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank moves to sell down most of its Alibaba stake Japanese investor makes $7...

Glenn Petersen — 4/12/2023 7:55:24 PM

SoftBank moves to sell down most of its Alibaba stake
Japanese investor makes $7.2bn from forward sales of shares in Chinese ecommerce group as lucrative
Ryan McMorrow in Beijing, Eleanor Olcott in Hong Kong and Kana Inagaki in Tokyo
AN HOUR AGO
Financial Times

SoftBank has moved to sell almost all of its remaining shareholding in Alibaba, limiting its exposure to China and raising cash as the market downturn pummels the value of its technology investments.

The Japanese group, led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, has sold about $7.2bn worth of Alibaba shares this year through prepaid forward contracts, after a record $29bn selldown last year.

The forward sales, revealed through a Financial Times analysis of regulatory filings sent by post to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, will eventually cut SoftBank’s stake in the $262bn Chinese ecommerce group to just 3.8 per cent.

The contracts allow SoftBank the option to buy back the shares, but the group has settled previous deals by handing over the stock. The Japanese investor once owned as much as 34 per cent of Alibaba.

SoftBank’s selldown comes at a pivotal moment for the Japanese group, which is planning a blockbuster listing of UK chip designer Arm as it seeks to recover from a spate of failed investments and unprecedented losses. For Alibaba, it will mean the retreat of a longtime backer just as the Chinese group attempts to reinvent itself by splitting into six entities.

SoftBank’s selling spree has come as the Chinese group’s shares have plumbed six-year lows, a disappointing conclusion to one of the most successful technology investments ever made. Son paid $20mn for the bulk of SoftBank’s holding in the fledgling Chinese group more than two decades ago after meeting founder Jack Ma.

“He had no business plan and zero revenue, employees maybe 35 [or] 40,” Son later said on Bloomberg TV. “But his eyes [were] very strong, strong eyes, strong shining eyes. I could tell from the way he talked, the way he looked [at things], he has a charisma, he has a leadership.”

Ma’s penchant for speaking his mind turned into a liability in October 2020 when he criticised China’s state-owned banks at a financial summit in Shanghai. Beijing then suspended the blockbuster IPO of Alibaba’s sister company Ant, as President Xi Jinping launched a campaign to rein in the country’s tech groups.

The crackdown has cut Alibaba’s share price by 70 per cent, leaving SoftBank selling most of its holding at prices on a par with where Alibaba opened for trading in New York eight years ago.

Over the past 14 months, SoftBank reaped, on average, $92 a share from the forward sales of 389mn Alibaba shares, far below the company’s all-time high of $317 a share, according to filings supplied by data provider The Washington Service.

They show SoftBank most recently raised about $4.5bn in February from the forward sales of 46mn shares, coming after the sale of 30mn shares for $2.7bn in late December. SoftBank said the latter sale was not fully completed by the end of December and would be accounted for in its yet to be released financial report for the quarter that ended on March 31.

SoftBank declined to comment on the regulatory filings. But it said the Alibaba transactions reflected its shift to “a defensive mode” to address a more uncertain business environment. “We are bolstering our financial stability by increasing our liquidity on hand by raising cash,” it said.

It added that the additional amount it raised from Alibaba shares would be revealed when it reports its fourth-quarter results in May.

With forward sales, SoftBank generally lends its Alibaba shares to a broker, which sells the shares into the market over a period of days or weeks. The broker takes a fee before returning the proceeds to the Japanese group.

When the contracts come due, SoftBank can either fully relinquish its claim to the shares or pay the broker the market price to repurchase the shares on its behalf.

The filings show most of the recent deals were handled by Barclays, Mizuho Securities and SMBC Nikko Securities, which would earn less than 1 per cent of the proceeds as fees, according to a banker familiar with the deals. Their structure allows SoftBank to delay paying capital gains tax until settlement.

At the end of February, SoftBank had only 98mn shares of Alibaba left to sell, according to the FT’s estimates. On March 30, the group shifted how it held another 22.3mn shares “in light of the potential to use them for financing in the future,” SoftBank said in a statement.

While SoftBank has said that the monetisation of Alibaba shares was to shore up its finances, some investors have seen the move as a desperate means to lift its earnings figures, with analysts projecting a second consecutive year of heavy losses.

SoftBank has put cash harvested from the Alibaba selldown into its Vision Fund II, paid off debt and repurchased shares. Billions are also piling up in cash on its balance sheet, which stood at ¥5.8tn ($43bn) at the end of December, leading to a growing internal debate over how to spend the money, according to a person close to SoftBank.

SoftBank said it would continue to be selective with its investments, citing uncertain market conditions.

“There are divergent views internally on whether we should continue to be a bit more defensive?.?.?.?or whether now is the time to get back into investing,” said the person close to SoftBank. “[Executives] are coming around more and more to opening the spigot again.”

SoftBank moves to sell down most of its Alibaba stake | Financial Times (archive.ph)

[Julius Wong] Softbank's stock rose after Alibaba revealed plans to split up into six units M...

Julius Wong — 3/29/2023 7:28:21 AM

Softbank's stock rose after Alibaba revealed plans to split up into six units

Mar. 29, 2023 5:46 AM ET
SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY), SFTBF, BABA
By: Niloofer Shaikh, SA News Editor

Carl Court

Softbank Group ( OTCPK:SFTBY) ( OTCPK:SFTBF) soared on Wednesday after Chinese e-commerce Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) announced a major restructuring plan - Reuters reported Wednesday.

With 13.7% stake, Alibaba is a key portfolio company of Softbank.

The Tokyo-based company's stock rose about 6.2% in intraday trading on Wednesday, the largest intraday gain since October.

E-commerce giant Alibaba ( BABA) announced on Tuesday to split into six units and explore fundraising or IPOs for most of them.

This initiative will allow the company's main divisions: Cloud Intelligence Group, Taobao Tmall Commerce Group, Local Services Group, Cainiao Smart Logistics Group, Global Digital Commerce Group, and Digital Media and Entertainment Group to operate with far greater autonomy, laying the groundwork for future spinoffs and market debuts.

Following the announcement of the split, Alibaba ( BABA) shares rose 14%, bringing the company's market value to around $255B.

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank's Arm aims to raise at least $8 billion in U.S. IPO, sources say By E...

Glenn Petersen — 3/6/2023 5:10:21 AM

SoftBank's Arm aims to raise at least $8 billion in U.S. IPO, sources say

By Echo Wang and Anirban Sen
Reuters
March 5, 2023

NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) - Arm Ltd, the British chip designer owned by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T), is likely to aim to raise at least $8 billion from what is expected to be a blockbuster U.S. stock market launch this year, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

Arm is expected to confidentially submit paperwork for its initial public offering in late April, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential. The listing is expected to happen later this year and the exact timing will be determined by market conditions, the sources added.

SoftBank has picked four investment banks to lead what is expected to be the most high-profile stock market flotation in recent years. Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Barclays (BARC.L) and Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T) are expected to be the lead underwriters for the deal, the sources said, adding that no bank has been picked for the much-coveted "lead left" position yet.

The Australian Financial Review reported on the lead banks earlier on Sunday.

The preparations for the IPO are expected to be kick-started in the U.S. in the coming days, the sources said. The valuation range has not yet been finalized but Cambridge, England-based Arm is hoping to be valued at more than $50 billion during its share sale, the sources said.

Barclays, JPMorgan and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Arm, Goldman Sachs and Mizuho declined to comment.

A successful listing for Arm this year would provide a boost to the IPO market, which has been largely frozen since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered market volatility and a huge sell-off in tech stocks.

The IPO market briefly flickered back to life last month as a number of companies including solar tech firm Nextracker Inc (NXT.O) and Chinese sensor maker Hesai Group (HSAI.O) listed their shares on U.S. stock exchanges, but investors still remain wary of betting on new stocks.

IPO advisors are not expecting a full-blown recovery in capital markets until the latter half of this year. read more

Arm said last week it would pursue a U.S.-only listing this year, dashing the British government's hopes that the tech giant would return to the London stock market. read more

SoftBank has been pursuing a listing for Arm since its deal to sell the chip designer to Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) for $40 billion collapsed last year because of objections from U.S. and European antitrust regulators.

Reporting by Echo Wang and Anirban Sen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

SoftBank's Arm aims to raise at least $8 billion in U.S. IPO, sources say | Reuters

[Glenn Petersen] Arm CEO says form fully committed to a market listing this year By Stephen Nel...

Glenn Petersen — 2/8/2023 4:28:38 AM

Arm CEO says form fully committed to a market listing this year

By Stephen Nellis
Reuters
February 7, 20231:56 PM CST

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Softbank-owned British chip technology firm Arm told Reuters on Tuesday that the company is committed to a stock market float this year.

"The plans are actually fairly well developed and underway now," Rene Haas said in an interview after Arm's corporate parent reported its fourth straight quarter of losses. "We're doing everything we can and are committed to have it happen this year."

Arm's fiscal third quarter sales were up 28% to $746 million, one of the few growth areas for Softbank (9984.T) as its vast portfolio of early stage technology startup investments weighed on its results.

Arm is the world's biggest supplier of chip design elements used in smartphones, selling intellectual property to companies like Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O). Arm makes money off upfront licensing deals with such companies and then a royalty on each chip sold using its technology.

Part of Haas' strategy has been to speed up Arm's push into other markets such as data center servers, where companies like Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) cloud unit are using Arm-based chips.

Those efforts helped boost upfront license revenue 65% to $300 million as Arm signed new deals in cloud computing and other segments, though company executives conceded that some of the growth was driven by multiple deals landing at once.

Arm said per-chip royalties, which are steadier than its deal-making business, were up 12% to $446 million in the quarter. That growth came amid a slowdown in the smartphone business that dragged down results at Apple and Qualcomm.

Haas said Arm is "not immune" to the softening smartphone market but that the company has licensed more intellectual property into each chip than in the past. With the most advanced phone chips now using 10 to 12 computing cores along with the newest version of Arm's computing architecture, he said that translates into higher royalties for each chip sold.

"The diversification that we've done and, in core markets, just having more technology in the chips means that we've been able to withstand the downturn better than most," Haas said.

Additional reporting by Muvija M and Paul Sandle; Editing by Alistair Smout and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Arm CEO says firm fully committed to a market listing this year | Reuter

[Glenn Petersen] SoftBank’s Vision Fund posts fourth straight quarter of losses as tech slump hit...

Glenn Petersen — 2/7/2023 5:13:22 AM

SoftBank’s Vision Fund posts fourth straight quarter of losses as tech slump hits Japanese giant

PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 7 20233:14 AM EST
UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Arjun Kharpal @ARJUNKHARPAL
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- SoftBank’s flagship investment arm, the Vision Fund, posted its fourth straight quarterly loss on Tuesday as a slump in technology valuations continues to hit the Japanese giant.

-- Some of SoftBank’s worst-performing investments were Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and Indonesian technology group GoTo, both of which have seen shares plummet around 60% over the last year.

-- Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s outspoken founder and the mastermind behind the Vision Fund, said in May that the company would go into “defense” mode and be more “conservative” with the pace of investments.

SoftBank’s flagship investment arm the Vision Fund posted its fourth straight quarterly loss on Tuesday as a slump in technology valuations continues to hit the Japanese giant.

The Vision Fund segment posted a pre-tax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen ($5 billion) for the December quarter. SoftBank’s Vision Fund’s loss on investments came in at 730.35 billion yen over the three-month period.

SoftBank Group overall reported a net loss of 783.4 billion yen, sinking back to a quarterly loss after posting a profit in the July-to-September quarter.

It has been a tough time for SoftBank whose Vision Fund has stakes in a range of tech companies, from start-ups to listed behemoths, amid a massive drop in technology valuations over the past year.

SoftBank said some of the major losses in the last quarter were due to an “overall decrease in the fair value of portfolio companies, mainly reflecting markdowns of weaker-performing companies and share price declines in market comparable companies.”

Some of SoftBank’s worst-performing investments include Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime, which is down 57% over the past year, and Indonesian technology group GoTo, which has seen its shares plummet over 65%.

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s outspoken founder and the mastermind behind the Vision Fund, said in May that the company would go into “defense” mode and be more “conservative” with the pace of investments after the unit posted a record 3.5 trillion Japanese yen loss for last fiscal year.

SoftBank said that it made just $2.76 billion in new and follow-on investments in the nine months to Dec. 31, a “significant reduction” from $39.24 billion in 2021.

Over the past year, SoftBank has been exiting some of its highest-profile investments to raise cash. In August, it said it had sold its remaining stake in U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber. And last year, it sold some of its Alibaba shares via a derivative called a forward contract. Son made his fortune with an early investment in Alibaba more than two decades ago.

Son, who is known for his colourful investor presentations, was not present on the company’s earnings call Tuesday.

The SoftBank CEO is currently focused on trying to pull off a public listing of ARM, the British chip designer it bought in 2016. The company’s finance chief Yoshimitsu Goto said on Tuesday that the listing of ARM will take place this year.

“Preparation is underway and we will see how the market condition goes,” Goto said.

SoftBank Vision Fund posts another quarterly loss as tech slump bites (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Masayoshi Son owes $4.7bn to SoftBank following tech rout Market crash also wi...

Glenn Petersen — 11/18/2022 6:43:26 AM

Masayoshi Son owes $4.7bn to SoftBank following tech rout

Market crash also wipes out value of Japanese founder’s stake in second Vision Fund 0

Robert Smith in London and Kana Inagaki and Leo Lewis in Tokyo
Financial Times
YESTERDAY

Masayoshi Son personally owes SoftBank close to $5bn because of growing losses on the Japanese conglomerate’s technology bets, which have also rendered the value of his stake in the group’s second Vision Fund worthless.

The billionaire’s ballooning personal liabilities, discovered through a Financial Times analysis of SoftBank’s recent filings, comes as the world’s biggest tech investor was hammered by plunging tech stocks and valuations in private companies over the past year.

The 65-year-old chief executive and founder of SoftBank last week said he would step back from running day-to-day operations at the group. His main focus, he said, would be on the company’s British chip subsidiary Arm, after the technology conglomerate posted quarterly investment losses of $10bn.

The widening losses in SoftBank’s various investment vehicles have also added billions of dollars to the tab that Son owes the group in relation to its technology bets. This is because SoftBank fronted him the money to invest in its technology-related funds, which he is under no obligation to repay for many years.

The value of Son’s 17.25 per cent stake in SoftBank’s $56bn second Vision Fund was also wiped out entirely by the end of September, having been valued at $682mn during the previous quarter. His stake in the investment vehicle climbed as high as $2.8bn at the end of 2021, when heady valuations for start-ups enabled SoftBank to sell shares in public listings of portfolio companies such as WeWork and AutoStore.

SoftBank has not yet collected $2.8bn that Son owes in relation to his stake in the fund. Previously, SoftBank netted off the value of his equity from the amount he owed the group, meaning at the end of 2021 this stood at just $4mn.

Son also owes SoftBank $669mn under a similar arrangement on its Latin American fund, which has backed start-ups across the continent, although this is reduced to $252mn when his equity value in the fund is taken into account.

The total amount the Japanese executive owes his company is now at $4.7bn, when losses in the group’s shortlived internal hedge fund SB Northstar are also taken into account, SoftBank confirmed to the FT.

Son’s growing liabilities to his own company have emerged as SoftBank shareholders have questioned its decision to sharply accelerate the pace of share buybacks in recent weeks, which pushed its share price to a 12-month high earlier this month and left its stock buoyant despite the heavy losses at its Vision Funds.

Son has to personally cover a third of the losses in Northstar, which earned notoriety for carrying out the “Nasdaq whale” trades in US technology stocks in 2020. The stock-trading unit’s total investment losses grew to nearly $6bn at the end of September as the group continued to liquidate its investments.

If the internal hedge fund’s outsized derivative bets had paid off, Son would have reaped a third of the gains.

Similarly, if Vision Fund 2’s investments in private technology companies had been profitable, the SoftBank founder stood to gain handsomely without putting up any upfront capital. Instead the arrangement has wiped billions of dollars off the net worth of one of Japan’s richest men.

In contrast to SoftBank’s first $100bn Vision Fund, which secured tens of billions of dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, its second major technology investment vehicle has no outside backers. The only investors are SoftBank and Son, with a slug of the company’s stake held as preference shares that rank ahead of its founder.

The second Vision Fund was one of a number of blue-chip investors that wrote off its stake in collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX last week, with SoftBank’s total losses standing at about $100mn.

In both Vision Fund 2 and the Latin America Fund, Son has pledged both his stake in the funds and a portion of his SoftBank stake as collateral for the amount he owes the company. On top of this, the billionaire founder has also provided a personal guarantee in relation to the unpaid bill.

Masayoshi Son owes $4.7bn to SoftBank following tech rout | Financial Times