(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. shares fell as much as 9.1% on Monday after its Vision Fund arm posted a $7.2 billion loss and the company failed to announce a widely-expected stock buyback.
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The Vision Fund segment’s July-September came on the heels of a record 2.33 trillion yen ($17 billion) loss in the preceding period, and sliding startup valuations have forced the world’s biggest technology investor to virtually halt investments.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Latin America portfolio, spanning more than 400 investments, has plummeted from a cumulative gain of $56 billion a year ago to an overall loss of $1.5 billion in its most recent report.
The Tokyo-based company has just completed two share repurchases: a 1 trillion yen buyback program announced last year and a 400 billion yen program announced in August. Expectations of a fresh injection of support were therefore high.
SoftBank has been grappling with declines on public investments, with the Vision Fund recording net valuation losses totaling 1.19 trillion on its public holdings in the quarter just ended. Of those, China’s SenseTime Group Inc. accounted for 364 billion yen, while US food delivery firm DoorDash Inc. accounted for 225 billion yen and Indonesian ride-hailing and e-commerce firm GoTo Group 108 billion yen, it said.
“We were looking for another round of buyback announcement but there was none,” Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal said in a report, downgrading his rating on the stock. “We believe the risk-reward has now become unfavorable and asymmetric.”
Overall, the Japanese conglomerate logged net income of 3.03 trillion yen in the last quarter, buoyed by the disposal of a chunk of its Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. stake. The company said its total profit on its disposal of Alibaba shares was 5.37 trillion yen.
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