SoftBank Reports Huge Vision Fund Loss

According to Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, his investment judgement was poor after the company revealed a loss of $8.9 billion in its Vision Fund.

It was this week that Softbank reported quarterly results and revealed its first quarterly loss in 14 years. The company had marked down investments in WeWork and Uber.

“My investment judgment was poor in many ways and I am reflecting deeply on that,” Son, 62, told a news conference
The company’s $100 billion Vision Fund contributed an operating loss of 970 billion yen, or $8.9 billion, during the July-September quarter, and an unrealized loss of 537.9 billion yen for the six months of the year.

The Vision Fund has invested $70.7 billion in 88 companies at the end of September.

Son had said he turned a blind eye to problems with WeWork’s leader Adam Neumann. It was in October that SoftBank was forced last month to spend more than $10 billion to bail out the office-sharing startup after its IPO attempt flopped.

SoftBank will make “no investment for the purpose of rescue,” Son told investors.

The company had an operating loss of 704 billion yen ($6.5 billion) in the July-September quarter compared to a 706 billion yen profit in the same period a year earlier. This was also higher thanthe 48 billion yen loss forecast by analysts, according to Refinitiv.