SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the brainchild of the company’s founder Masayoshi Son, has faced a number of headwinds including a slump in technology stocks as a result of rising interest rates, a tough China market and geopolitics.
Kentaro Takahash | Bloomberg | Getty Images
SoftBank posted one of its biggest losses at its Vision Fund investment unit for its fiscal first quarter, as technology stocks continue to get hammered amid rising interest rates.
The Japanese giant’s Vision Fund posted a 2.93 trillion Japanese yen ($21.68 billion) loss for the June quarter. This is the second-largest quarterly loss for the Vision Fund.
That contributed to a 3.16 trillion yen net loss for the quarter for SoftBank versus a 761.5 billion yen profit in the same period last year.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which began in 2017 and invests in technology companies, has been hit by a slump in high-growth stocks as a result of rampant inflation that has led the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates.
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s outspoken founder and the mastermind behind the Vision Fund, said in May the company would go into “defense” mode and be more “conservative” with the pace of investments after posting a record 3.5 trillion Japanese yen loss at the investment unit for the last fiscal year.
SoftBank said it saw a decline in the share prices of a wide range of its portfolio companies, which was “mainly caused by the global downward trend in share prices due to growing concerns over economic recession driven by inflation and rising interest rates.”
Shares of companies ranging from South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang to DoorDash in the United States were hit hard in the second quarter of the year.
SoftBank said the share prices of private companies in its portfolio also declined.
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