Pedestrians walk past signs for SoftBank Group outside a store in Tokyo, Japan, November 29, 2018.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
SoftBank Group Corp on Monday recorded a profit of 844 billion yen ($ 8 billion) at its Vision Fund unit in the three months to December 31 against a loss a year ago as it gained from investments in Uber Technologies and other companies.
The earnings mark a sea change from an earlier year when a loophole like the IPO flopped the WeWork office division company and the Covid-19 pandemic on Masayoshi Son to sell assets to stabilize its investment empire .
With rock bottom flat rates, the ebullient market is driving the benefits of tech stock and turnaround at the Vision Fund unit. In the quarter Doordash, a food delivery app operator backed by Softbank and Opendoor’s home sales platform, went public.
Nearly half of the first fund of the Vision Fund was issued or listed at the end of December, offering liquidity to the fund whose sponsors include Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund .
82 $ 100 billion worth of Vision Fund investments were valued at $ 90 billion, compared to their purchase price of $ 76.3 billion. The fund has also recorded $ 20.4 billion in full profit since its inception.
26 Vision Fund 2 investments were valued at $ 9.3 billion compared to their purchase price of $ 4.3 billion.
Softbank SB Northstar trading unit showed stakes in listed tech stocks including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. worth $ 22 billion at the end of December.
It recorded a loss of 169.8 billion yen on its investments in the quarter.
In the third quarter, net profit rose more than 20 times to 1.17 trillion yen ($ 11.09 billion). That compared to an estimate of 171 billion yen from four analysts surveyed by Refinitiv SmartEstimate.