SoftBank Group suffered the biggest loss in history!
SoftBank Group suffered huge losses
3On August 8, Japan's SoftBank Group announced its first quarter financial report for the 2022 fiscal year. The actual time refers to April to June. In this quarter, the net loss of SoftBank Group reached 3.1627 trillion yuan, equivalent to RMB 158.4 billion!
In the same period last year, SoftBank Group's net profit was 761.5 billion yen, which shows the serious deterioration in operations. The loss of 3.16 trillion yen also successfully broke the quarterly report record of Japanese domestic companies!
It is worth mentioning that in the last quarter, SoftBank Group's net loss was 2.1 trillion yen, which is already the two consecutive quarters of SoftBank Group's major losses.
Chairman of SoftBank Group Masayoshi Son said that a total of 5 trillion yen has been caused and will reflect on it.
Most of the major losses this time are due to investment losses, which are even more inseparable from its SoftBank Vision Fund.
data shows that SoftBank Vision Fund's investment loss was 2933.8 billion yen, of which Vision Fund's first phase recorded a realized loss of 30.5 billion yen, and an unrealized loss of 121.53 billion yen, and a total unrealized valuation loss of 134.1 billion yen in the second phase.
In the final analysis, Vision Fund is an investment-oriented enterprise, and most of the losses are from investments in the stock market.
For example, the Korean e-commerce giant Coupang, which it invested in, and the American takeaway leader DoorDash, stocks plummeted in the first and second quarters, with a sharp decline in valuation.
In addition, there are also SenseTime Technology , Beike House Search , etc. in China.
SenseTime is a famous thunder stock. It plummeted continuously on June 29 and June 30, and its stock price instantly fell from HK$6.18 to HK$2.91 per stock, a drop of more than half!
To date, SenseTime Group's stock is still hovering at a low level, with the latest stock price of HK$2.19 per share, constantly falling to new lows. Compared with SenseTime Technology, the stock price of
Beike is not that big. After experiencing the stock price plummeting in 2021, the stock price continued to hover at a low level throughout the first half of 2022. The latest data from
shows that Beike's stock price is $14.29 per share, which has fallen by 80% compared to the high of $75 per share after its listing.
Invest in SoftBank Group, which is the financial report of these two companies. Can it look good?
In addition, there is another company that is the focus of SoftBank Group, that is Alibaba .
As we all know, in the early stages of Alibaba's business, it once sought investment due to capital issues. Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group directly invested US$20 million and obtained about one-third of its shares.
Based on the stock price in 2021, this investment has brought SoftBank more than 2,000 times the return!
However, according to relevant documents, SoftBank sold about 213 million Alibaba shares in the form of prepayment of forward contract in 2022, accounting for one-third of its holdings, raising a total of about 22 billion US dollars.
SoftBank is the largest shareholder of Alibaba . SoftBank's large-scale share reduction is undoubtedly a huge negative for Alibaba. Alibaba's stock price continued to fall in 2021. After entering 2022, the stock price is still hovering at a low level and keeps falling.
SoftBank's sale of one-third of Alibaba's shares will only cause Alibaba's stock price to continue to fall, and the valuation of the remaining two-thirds of the shares it holds will decline significantly.
Of course, SoftBank Group's loss of more than 3 trillion yen has another deeper reason, that is, the sharp depreciation of the yen.
yen depreciates
Latest exchange rate data shows that the exchange rate of the US dollar against the Japanese yen has reached 134.92, which means that 1 US dollar can be exchanged for 134.92 yen.
The exchange rate of the yen has become so low, not in an instant, but was formed by the sharp depreciation of the exchange rate in 2022.
From the exchange rate chart, since February 2022, the US dollar has continued to soar against the Japanese yen, from the average of around 103.95 to a high point around 139. During
, although the US dollar also pulled back against the Japanese yen, it is still in the rising band and is still at a high level now.
appreciation will naturally lead to the depreciation of the yen. Once the yen depreciates, assets depreciated in the yen will shrink significantly, and debt depreciated in the US dollar will rise sharply.
So, SoftBank Group's assets fell sharply, while debt rose sharply.
According to data, SoftBank's foreign exchange loss in the second quarter was as high as 820 billion yen, and without doing anything, it lost more than 800 billion yen! Why is the exchange rate of
yen depreciated so quickly? This is related to Fed 's continuous rate hikes .
Since 2022, in order to cope with the continued rising inflation in the United States, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points in March, 50 basis points in May, 100 basis points in June, and 75 basis points in July.
The continuous rate hikes are beneficial to curbing US inflation, but have caused the world's foreign exchange market to shake violently.
The Federal Reserve raises interest rates , and the US dollar will naturally appreciate, and it is reasonable to have a relative depreciation of the yen.
In fact, this time, Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group made the biggest loss in history, which was an indirect consequence of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike.
In terms of the stock market, the Fed's interest rate hike caused the US stock bubble to burst, and the stock market plummeted continuously, which directly affected the stock markets in China, Japan and even the world, and it was a downward trend.
Therefore, whether it is Alibaba, SenseTime, Beike Real Estate, or South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang, most of the companies invested in SoftBank Group cannot escape this stock market decline.
At the same time, after the appreciation of the US dollar, assets denominated in Japanese yen depreciated significantly. Even if Son lies and does nothing, his assets will decline.
In addition, the impact of this Fed rate hike may be far deeper than expected.
SoftBank Group is the richest company in Japan, and Masayoshi Son also became the richest man in Japan with SoftBank.
However, after the Fed raised interest rates, the global economy was hit. SoftBank Group lost more than 5 trillion yen in two quarters. So how much did those Japanese companies that are weaker than SoftBank Group lose?
Before 2021, Japan has always been a country with a trade surplus. However, in the first half of 2022, Japan's trade deficit reached 7.92 trillion yen, setting a record! The data of
is considered by the international community to be a manifestation of Japan's economic recession, and the Japanese economy may continue to decline in the future.
The ancients said that one leaf knew the autumn, and the Japanese SoftBank Group's from its once glory to its huge losses today also reveals the changes in the Japanese economy.
SoftBank Group invests almost all global unicorns and is a leading enterprise in various industries.
However, as Masayoshi Son said, the global stock markets have soared due to the Federal Reserve's huge profits, and the valuations of these unicorn companies have also continued to rise, and even reached an inflated position.
Now, the tide has faded, and the inflated valuation will return to the normal range. This will be a long-term loss process for SoftBank Group and is very difficult.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, SoftBank Group only suffered a loss of 39.79 billion yen, while in the second quarter of 2022, it had soared to 3.1 trillion yen.
According to this trend, SoftBank's losses may further expand, and Masayoshi Son's position as the richest man in Japan may be out of stock this year!
