(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. swung to its biggest quarterly profit in two years, helped by a series of successful Indian listings that give founder Masayoshi Son more ammunition for his next bet.
The Tokyo-based company is stepping up investments in artificial intelligence, providing $500 million in OpenAI’s most recent fundraising round, which values the startup at a post-money valuation of $157 billion. SoftBank has the financial strength to make such bets in artificial intelligence, Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said on an earnings call.
“That value is not high at all for us,” Goto said. Whether in the arena of chips, centering around SoftBank’s ownership of Arm Holdings Plc, data centers or robots, “we are always making preparations so that we are ready for new investments,” he said.
SoftBank earned a net income of ¥1.18 trillion ($7.7 billion) in the September quarter, springing back from a loss of ¥931 billion last year and outperforming the average of analysts’ projections. The Vision Fund segment reported a profit of ¥373 billion, helped by its Indian portfolio as well as a rebound in the values of companies like Didi Global Inc. and Coupang Inc. The company also logged a ¥387.1 billion gain on its T-Mobile US Inc. stake.
A boom in the India IPO market is buoying the Vision Fund, which for years struggled to win returns commensurate with its $100 billion-plus scale. Seven years since the investment unit’s launch, it’s reaping gains from the debuts of startups such as e-scooter maker Ola Electric Mobility Ltd. and online retailer Brainbees Solutions Ltd., which sells baby products under the brand name FirstCry. The SoftBank-backed food-delivery app Swiggy Ltd.’s imminent $1.3 billion IPO was subscribed more than three times.
SoftBank is seeing a “harvest season in India,” said Devi Subhakesan, an independent analyst from Investory Pte who publishes on SmartKarma.
It’s encouraging that a good portion of SoftBank’s second-quarter gain stemmed from Indian IPOs, said Kirk Boodry, an analyst with Astris Advisory. If the IPO pipeline in the US reopens, that would further boost earnings, “but what they plan to do with AI is probably more important,” he said.
It’s a rare moment of victory for an investment team that suffered two straight years of hefty losses that erased prior gains, before swinging to a mild profit in fiscal 2023. The fund, which sought to funnel private equity-sized bets into tiny companies, has had to scale back new investments until recently.
Rajeev Misra, who helped Son raise money from the Saudi and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds in 2017, is formally stepping down as co-chief executive officer of the Vision Fund, Goto said. His departure brings to a close a chapter that sought to scale up Son’s investment instincts across hundreds of startups. Alex Clavel will be the Vision Fund’s sole CEO, Goto said.
SoftBank and the Vision Fund have since adopted a more targeted approach toward investing that focuses on a few key areas, including artificial intelligence.
The Vision Fund is now helping SoftBank in what appears to be a large-scale push into AI and semiconductor investments. The company had a net asset value of ¥29 trillion at end-September, indicating its ability to go on the offensive.
Shares of SoftBank have risen and fallen with investors’ shifting sentiment about AI’s ability to meaningfully improve people’s lives. The stock tumbled after hitting a record high in July, but has since regained some ground.
--With assistance from Vlad Savov.
(Updates with comments from earnings briefing)
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