Japan tech giant SoftBank posts 23 billion dollar quarterly loss

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group posted a 23.4 billion dollar (£19.2 billion) loss in the April-June quarter as the value of its investments sank amid global worries about inflation and interest rates.

SoftBank Group’s loss of 3.16 trillion yen was a reversal from its 762 billion yen (£4.6 billion) profit in the same quarter a year earlier.

The company said on Monday that quarterly sales rose 6%.

For the fiscal year that ended in March, Softbank racked up losses of 1.7 trillion yen (£10.7 billion), a reversal from the 4.9 trillion yen profit for the previous year. Annual sales grew 10.5% to 6.2 trillion yen (£38 billion).

Although Softbank’s portfolio is not directly exposed to the war in Ukraine, the company warned that global uncertainty as well as inflation and soaring energy costs would be likely to hurt its profitability. Foreign exchange losses also bit into its earnings.

Softbank’s intended sale of British semiconductor and software design company Arm to Nvidia failed earlier this year. SoftBank is now promising lucrative future growth at Arm, including an initial public offering, although a date has not been announced for that offering.

SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016. Arm is a leader in artificial intelligence, IoT, cloud, the metaverse and autonomous driving. Its semiconductor design is widely licensed and used in virtually all smartphones, the majority of tablets and digital TVs. Such technology is considered key for autonomous driving cars.

SoftBank also owns stakes in the SoftBank mobile carrier, Yahoo web services provider, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and vehicle-for-hire company Didi. SoftBank also has funds that include other global investors called Vision Funds.