SoftBank Group Corp.Figures

SoftBank Group is a Japanese investment company in which a single asset accounts for sixty per cent of value. Arm Holdings, held with 86.7% of the voting rights and listed on Nasdaq, is worth JPY 49.91tn net of margin loans at 30 June 2026, out of JPY 83.11tn of holdings. The second pocket, the SVF2 fund, accounts for 23.2%, and itself rests largely on a single private estimate, that of OpenAI. Published net assets reach JPY 72.30tn at 30 June 2026, that is JPY 12,686 per share, against JPY 40.06tn and JPY 7,029 per share three months earlier, while the reference share price at the same date is JPY 5,963. The company was founded in 1981 by Masayoshi Son, who has sat on the board for forty-four years and nine months and holds 32.73% of the capital excluding treasury shares. It is listed in Tokyo under the code 9984, not to be confused with 9434, SoftBank Corp., its separately listed telecoms subsidiary.

The allocation doctrine is unusual: there is no fixed investment budget. The ceiling is not an annual envelope, it is a balance sheet ratio. The stated policy is to keep leverage, defined as adjusted net debt over the value of holdings, below 25% in normal times, with an upper threshold of 35% in exceptional circumstances, and to hold cash covering at least two years of bond repayments. The consequence for a shareholder is direct: the pace of investment is not predictable, only its ceiling is.

What that leverage actually did deserves attention. Across nine successive reporting dates it never left the 25% limit, peaking at 20.6% at 31 December 2025. But net debt tripled over the period, from JPY 3.0tn to JPY 10.81tn, and the ratio improved only because the other term moved: the value of holdings more than doubled, from JPY 38.3tn to JPY 83.11tn. A ratio whose denominator is a market value improves when markets rise and worsens when they fall, without any management decision being taken. A second caution applies: the published ratio is read on debt restated by 61%, recalculated, gross consolidated debt of JPY 27.79tn at 30 June 2026 becoming JPY 10.81tn once consolidated cash, self-financed entities and adjustments are removed. That is not a criticism of the method, which the company sets out, it is a reading warning.

Turnover shows the doctrine in action. Over the year to 31 March 2026, USD 44.0bn was invested, of which USD 32.4bn in OpenAI alone and USD 6.5bn in Ampere Computing; against that, USD 49.6bn of financing, of which USD 27.2bn from monetising assets, T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NVIDIA and SoftBank Corp. shares, USD 14.1bn from additional loans pledged on Arm and USD 8.3bn from net bond issues. Three quarters of the money invested went to a single unlisted company, and none of the funding came from earnings. SoftBank does not fund its bets with dividends, it funds them by selling what is liquid and pledging what is not yet. The declared thesis is explicit, to become the world's leading provider of a platform for artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence, structured around four pillars, the model with OpenAI, the chip with Arm and Ampere, infrastructure, and robotics. The company even sets a target, net assets of one quadrillion yen in 2042, which would require 17.8% compound annual growth from the level of 30 June 2026, recalculated. Part of that thesis can be verified, the chip pillar, which is listed and publishes accounts; part cannot, the model pillar, whose value rests on a private estimate that no share price arbitrates, and the company itself acknowledges that it is only a minority shareholder in OpenAI, with limited ability to influence its strategy. The industrial counterpart of the bet must finally be stated: the segment carrying that pillar lost JPY 137,266m before tax over the year, and JPY 200,841m in the following quarter alone. The pillar that carries sixty per cent of net assets consumes earnings while it carries market value, and both facts are true at the same time.