Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief government officer of SoftBank Group on the SoftBank World 2018 occasion in Tokyo, Japan.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Off the heels of a blowout quarterly report, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son informed CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that he expects to see even more exits from firms within the Vision Fund’s portfolio.
“I wish to create an ecosystem… the place we’d have a number of firms going for IPOs,” Masa Son stated within the interview, which was recorded Wednesday night time. He stated 14 of SoftBank’s Vision Fund firms had an IPO or different exit over the past 12 months, up from eight exits the 12 months earlier than.
SoftBank on Wednesday reported $45.88 billion in web revenue for the final quarter, largely because of the IPO of one of many crown jewels in its Vision Fund portfolio, the South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang.
SoftBank additionally benefitted from the rising inventory value of Uber, which it had invested billions in earlier than the ride-haling firm had its IPO. DoorDash, one other Vision Fund portfolio firm, additionally had a profitable IPO final 12 months.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund, a $100 billion fund for putting large bets on expertise start-ups, has investments in firms like the net grocer GoPuff, self-driving automobile firm Aurora and health tech firm Whoop. SoftBank is invested in about 200 firms via its two Vision Funds.
The large quarter comes after a exceptional stoop for firms SoftBank made large bets on, particularly WeWork. WeWork botched its high-profile IPO in 2019, nuking billions in worth from the buzzy start-up and finally resulting in the ouster of its co-founder and CEO, Adam Neumann.
Still, Masa Son appeared optimistic about WeWork when requested if he had any regrets about his investments.
“WeWork is popping round now,” Masa Son stated, including that he expects the corporate to be worthwhile “someday within the subsequent a number of quarters.”
But past the WeWork debacle, Masa Son stated he has greater regrets for the investments he handed on, equivalent to Airbnb and software program firm Snowflake. He stated he did not put money into Airbnb as a result of he thought it was too costly on the time. Shares of Airbnb are down about 4% 12 months up to now, but it surely nonetheless maintains an $85 billion market cap.
“I noticed they are a fairly good firm, an incredible enterprise mannequin, nice expertise an so on,” Masa Son stated of Airbnb. “I assumed the value was a bit too costly. We have been discussing to speculate, however I used to be not sensible sufficient to just accept the value tag that that they had a few years in the past.”
Masa Son stated most investments he missed occurred due to the value to get in on an funding. He additionally stated that even although the Vision Fund tends to put money into high-growth, money-losing firms, he nonetheless seems for a constructive consequence in the long run.
“So you must have a fairly lengthy view… and you must think about and so forth,” Masa Son stated. “Sometimes you might think about the consequence could be a nasty consequence, as we have now skilled, however generally you must be courageous sufficient to think about, , more on the constructive facet.”