[itsoktocry]

>from their bad investments.

Do they have any good investments?

They were heavy into WeWork and WireCard. They have about $10 billion into Uber. Lots of small oddballs like investing in Wag at $300MM valuation. Lost a bunch buying bitcoin at the peak. Now this.

[iav]

Unlike VC funds, SoftBank releases full accounting of the Vision fund quarterly, so this question is entirely answered here: https://group.softbank/system/files/pdf/ir/presentations/202...

They had 6 full exits generating $5B of gains, plus another dozen companies went public and the mark to market on the whole is a $3B gain. I don’t see that they’ve ever invested in Bitcoin. The remaining portfolio is down about $5B on $60B invested - I have a lot of questions about how they are marking those securities, but surely it’s similar to the VC model of “Mark to the last third party investment, even if we led the investment, unless something really bad happened”. That’s where the WAG and WeWork losses would be. So all in they still think they are in the black by $3B on $80B invested. Even if they are mis marking the private book by 20%, the fund would generate a 0.9x return or disappointing but not a complete disaster.

[itsoktocry]

>I don’t see that they’ve ever invested in Bitcoin.

Apparently it was a personal investment:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/masayoshi-son-invested-in-bi...

>the fund would generate a 0.9x return or disappointing but not a complete disaster.

Definitely disappointing, with a nearly exclusive biotech/tech portfolio during once of the biggest tech bull runs ever.

[iav]

True, and if I recall Apple is even a “small” LP in the Vision Fund. So Tim Cook could have bought his own stock but instead thought giving a few billion to Masa was a better trade! But hindsight is 20/20 and we don’t know what the fund is ultimately going to return. I have friends who work there - the sad part is the amount of sheer work that had to be done to keep the returns where they are today, restructuring old investments and squeezing every drop from the winners to make up for the total write offs.

[valuearb]

It’s very likely they are mismarking and those returns are overstated to some level.

[thrwyoilarticle]

$20 million to $150 billion in Alibaba would be considered pretty good.

[itsoktocry]

>$20 million to $150 billion in Alibaba would be considered pretty good.

True, but Alibaba, as far as I know, is an unaudited company. A good investment for Softbank, but are the sales figures real? Would Softbank even exist without the Alibaba returns?

[netsharc]

Confusing luck with genius, and believing with said genius you can repeat such performance...

[djmobley]

It was a $300m investment for a ~45% stake in Wag.

Absolute madness.

[blueline]

they used to own 100B of alibaba

i have to assume bytedance has/will work out favorably for them.. maybe im wrong there

[xenospn]

Wag wired those $300M back a few months ago.