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| SoftBank tech betting cost $ 1.3 billion |
Japanese giant SoftBank suffered a loss of 131.7 billion yen ($ 1.3 billion) on Monday due to unexpected diversification in trading in listed technology shares and other instruments in the six months prior to September. .
Billionaire Sun Zhengyi's massive bet on publicly traded tech stocks in recent months doesn't seem to have paid off.
The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times reported on Sun Chengi's bet in September.
The newspapers said SoftBank had bought nearly $ 4 billion in contracts in relation to past purchases of core stocks in companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix.
Some observers describe the founder and CEO of SoftBank as a "whale" of the NASDAQ stock exchange - a solid investor with the power to move the market independently.
Sun on Monday rejected that description, describing SoftBank's latest strategy to invest in liquid companies and derivatives as a "pilot program."
He said, "When you talk about derivatives it seems a bit risky, but it is only 1% of the total value of assets that we hold."
He added: If the investment fails, the loss does not exceed 1% of SoftBank's total assets, which is only a small part of the picture.
Sun could reap the investment income elsewhere, as the Vision Fund (SoftBank's powerful technology investment vehicle backed by Saudi Arabia) returns.
The company said that its total investments in 83 companies amounted to 75 billion dollars, to reach 76.4 billion dollars by the end of September.
The company said the fund received 141.4 billion yen ($ 1.4 billion) in the six months ending in September after selling shares in four companies and securing foreign exchange funds in six others. . .
SoftBank reported net income for the July-September quarter was 627 billion yen ($ 6 billion), to offset a loss of 700 billion yen ($ 6.8 billion) in the same period last year.
With sales of up to $ 40 billion in assets, share buybacks pushed the company's shares to their highest level in nearly 20 years, raising its market value to 14.8 trillion yen ($ 143 billion).