SoftBank reported a net loss of 1.12 trillion yen, or $7 billion, for its fiscal second quarter on Tuesday, November 10, reversing a profit of 2.5 trillion yen in the same period a year earlier. Investment losses and increased financing costs weighed on the Japanese investment group's earnings.
Quarterly revenue reached 2.22 trillion yen, exceeding the 2.02 trillion yen forecast in LSEG estimates. Despite the loss, SoftBank shares finished Tuesday's trading session 13.9% higher. The advance coincided with gains in Asian technology stocks, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, after an overnight recovery on Wall Street.
For the six months through September 30, revenue increased 13.3%, with telecommunications and AI computing businesses supporting growth. SoftBank said sales rose across every business within its SoftBank segment, while its AI computing segment also generated higher revenue. The company separately booked a 597.2 billion yen loss over those six months related to changes in plans to procure power generation equipment for U.S. AI data center projects.
The Vision Fund segment recorded a fiscal second-quarter loss of 81.58 billion yen, compared with a 2.38 trillion yen profit a year earlier. Its investment gains fell sharply to 85.45 billion yen from 2.81 trillion yen in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
Within that investment total, Vision Fund 2 generated gains of 89.26 billion yen, while Vision Fund 1 posted investment losses of 3.86 billion yen. Vision Fund 1's quarterly investment loss was $20 million despite a $1.3 billion gain on ByteDance, as publicly traded holdings, including Coupang and Grab, declined.
SoftBank also disclosed the value of its investment in OpenAI at the end of September. The company said its cumulative investment totaled $54.6 billion and had a fair value of $99.6 billion, representing a cumulative investment gain of $45 billion.
The earnings announcement followed plans unveiled Monday by SoftBank Group, Grab and Malaysia's PETROS to develop AI infrastructure in Malaysia. The companies plan to commit a combined $1.85 billion in initial capital to the effort, with a long-term goal of establishing at least five gigawatts of AI computing capacity.
