SoftBank Group's $6.5bn profit buoyed by Indian IPOs

TOKYO — SoftBank Group on Tuesday announced its net profit for the first half of the fiscal year through next March came to 1 trillion yen ($6.5 billion), improving from a net loss of 1.4 trillion yen for the year-earlier period thanks to large investment gains.

The April-September performance was well above the market consensus of 42.3 billion yen in a survey by QUICK.

The company’s Vision Fund gains recorded 168.8 billion yen. The quarterly profit through September was 373.1 billion yen, up from a loss of 204.3 billion for the previous quarter.

Vision Fund profits were lifted by the rising valuations of South Korea’s Coupang, China’s Didi Global and other companies in which SoftBank Group owns shareholdings. Initial public offerings of portfolio companies Firstcry and OLA Electric in India also contributed to the gains. Food delivery service Swiggy, another Indian portfolio company, meanwhile, is preparing to IPO.

Vision Fund 1 is increasingly supported by listed shares, while “the late-stage portfolio companies that can aim for IPOs are increasing for Vision Fund 2,” said Yoshimitsu Goto, SoftBank’s chief financial officer.

In the second quarter, SoftBank made new investments through the Vision Fund, including in the U.S. generative artificial intelligence startup Open AI.