The shares of SoftBank Group declined by 12% during Monday's trading; And that's after the company failed to announce a widely expected share buyback.
According to Arabiya Net, this decline is the largest daily decline in the group's shares since the outbreak of the Corona epidemic in early 2020.
The company's Vision Fund posted a loss of $7.2 billion in the July-September quarter, after a record loss of 2.33 trillion yen ($17 billion) in the previous period, as falling valuations of startups forced the world's largest tech investor to enter a position defensive and practically stopped investing, according to Bloomberg.
SoftBank is struggling with declines in its portfolio of more than 400 investments in both public and private technology companies around the world, which includes China's SenseTime Group Inc, US food delivery company Dordash, and Indonesian e-commerce company GoTo Group.
Cumulative returns for the Vision Fund and Latin America Portfolio fell from a gain of $56 billion a year ago to a total loss of $1.5 billion in its most recent report.
Huge losses
SoftBank's share price soared in the first weeks of the current quarter as the Tokyo-based company scrambled to complete two share buybacks; A 1 trillion yen buyback program was announced last year and a 400 billion yen program in August. The violent pace of buybacks spurred expectations of fresh infusion and speculation that billionaire founder Masayoshi Son was planning to spearhead a buyout to make the company private.
But the lack of a new share buyback program prompted analysts at Deutsche Bank, CLSA and Jefferies to downgrade their ratings on the stock. Citibank placed SoftBank in a junk rating, citing capital market uncertainty and the impact on the company's earnings.
The company's total interest-bearing debt, excluding the company's telecom arm, was 13.7 trillion yen, down from more than 17 trillion yen at the end of June.
