Major tech investor SoftBank Group is looking at another quarter of bleak results, but for the first time on record, Masayoshi Son is going to miss the earnings call, according to a Bloomberg report. It added that it will be the sole responsibility of the Japanese company’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto to field investors’ concerns when the company declares its third-quarter results on Tuesday.
In November, SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son bade farewell to the earnings presentations he has led for decades. He said he was going to focus on taking chip designer Arm Ltd public.
“This is a negative given Masa’s management style. He is in charge. What he says in terms of investments, etc, happens. He calls the shots. If we do not know what he is thinking, then we run the risk of surprises, reducing the attractiveness of the shares.”
Gibson expects SoftBank will need to reset the value of its unlisted assets over the coming 12 months.
SoftBank has various investments in India also. It sold 29 million shares of Paytm parent One97 Communications in November through a block deal to raise about Rs 1,631 crore. Shares were sold at Rs 555.67 apiece.
Japanese investor SoftBank Group in September also reduced the valuation of OYO Hotels on its books by over 20 per cent as the Indian startup prepares for an initial public offering (IPO). The investor cut its valuation from $3.4 billion to $2.7 billion in the June 2022 quarter.
SoftBank cut the valuation after benchmarking it against peers with similar operations. The company was aiming for a valuation of $9 billion in its IPO after preliminary talks with potential investors.
“A majority of the investments they’ve made is losing money, and whether that turns around or not over the long term we don’t know,” said Kirk Boodry, an analyst at Redex Research who publishes on Smartkarma, according to the Bloomberg report.
It added that the key for SoftBank lies with Arm’s IPO, which was once said could be valued at $60 billion and hold the ability to jump start SoftBank’s stalled investment machine.
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