Bond Market News

Japanese conglomerate Softbank reported earnings for the nine months ended December with net income falling by 87% YoY to JPY 392.6bn ($3.5bn), primarily due to a reduction in value of its portfolio companies and the value of its stake in Alibaba. Its net asset value fell 10% QoQ to $168bn with the Vision Fund accounting for 49%, Alibaba 24% and Others including Sprint, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, and Arm 27%. By region, Japan, Asia (ex-China) and Europe accounted for 46%, China 32% and US 22%. During the period, the Masayoshi Son-led company recorded losses on investments of JPY 552bn ($4.8bn), largely on the back of JPY 768bn ($6.65bn) of losses at its Vision Funds. This was offset by JPY 1.1tn ($9.6bn) of derivative gains on prepaid forward contracts using Alibaba shares. The company formally announced the termination of its deal to sell Arm to Nvidia with Son stating, “So we are excited to go Plan B…a big IPO, a very successful IPO.” Total interest-bearing debt increased by 12% to JPY 20.7tn with net debt to equity value of holdings at 22%, up from 19% in the previous quarter.

Softbank’s 6% Perps are trading 3 points higher since Monday to 97.375 cents on the dollar, yielding 7.96%.

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