SoftBank reports 2nd quarter loss of ¥397.9 bil

With their billing rates??? How!?

Looks like the Hawks will have to stop buying all their rivals best players

The Vision Fund seems to be where the bulk of the losses were. The story doesn't mention how the fund is obliged to pay a 7% coupon to the Saudi investors, regardless of the fund's performance, and on top of gains. That's gotta hurt. Borrowing at 7% in a near-zero-interest rate world. Wow, that Son is a genius. LOL.

Best news I've heard in a long time, terrible company, terrible vision and service.

The leader of softwank is an utterly deplorable human, just hoping the company goes under soon

“I feel that Vision Fund is producing results,” said Son.

Right Bad Results.

So is it a tech company or managed fund?

Oh that's great news! I don't like them at all, had terrible experience with them.

It's a mixed bag. Everyone got hit by the pandemic and the responses to it, and then by the Chinese crackdown. That's just bad luck. But SB do have a history of paying too much and getting into ventures too late in the cycle. Due diligence was questionable in some cases, which they have openly admitted.

To make money in tech, get in early. Really early - get your hands dirty and get in pre-formation at the design stage. Tech is split between incubators (often based within universities) and VC, but it is better to get in as early as possible (incubation/design) and then support it through to a working build (when VC normally comes in). Then continue and take it on through to IPO. Leave late stage investment to banks.

SB should be fine. We are on the cusp of an entirely new cycle of tech innovation with distributed processing, new advertising technologies that don't depend upon data trawls and iffy AI, and personalised spec products. GAFA is old and slow, lacks innovation and is being taken down in the West by politicians. SB's financial muscle, properly deployed, can fund GAFA 2, in Japan, South Korea or India. Add to that all the new green tech and low power technologies that will emerge. There is lots coming.

Post WWII, Japan was world class at producing smaller and smaller versions of things. Japanese companies are well versed in this incremental improvement, and making things work with less and less power is going to be important going forward.