TOKYO: SoftBank Group Corp. said Tuesday that it plunged into a consolidated net loss of 912,513 million yen in April-December 2022, against a profit of 392,617 million yen a year before.

The large loss in the first three quarters of fiscal 2022 came as the group’s mainstay SoftBank Vision Fund business, which invests in emerging firms, remained sluggish amid faltering global stock prices.

SoftBank Vision Fund’s investment losses exceeded 5 trillion yen, due to valuation losses on companies including Chinese facial recognition technology startup SenseTime Group Inc. and Indonesian technology firm PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia Tbk.

SoftBank Group has reduced the fund’s staff by 30 pct amid the deteriorating investment environment since last year. It is now prioritizing financial discipline, drastically curbing new investments.

At an earnings briefing in Tokyo the same day, SoftBank Group Senior Vice President Yoshimitsu Goto stressed that the company has plenty of cash on hand.

“Our defense is solid, and we are watching for a time for offense,” Goto said, suggesting that the Japanese technology investment group will carefully consider when to resume making new investments.

For the October-December third quarter alone, SoftBank Group reported a net loss of 783,415 million yen, against the year-before profit of 29,048 million yen, after posting a profit of over 3 trillion yen in July-September on gains from the sale of some of its shareholdings in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.

At the briefing, meanwhile, Ian Thornton, an executive of the group’s British semiconductor designer unit Arm Ltd., said that Arm is strongly determined to go public during 2023.

Arm’s stock listing was initially planned for the ongoing fiscal year through March.

JIJI Press