Vision Fund shines in third quarter; Masayoshi Son hails 'golden eggs'

SoftBank Group Corp Chief Executive Masayoshi Son boasted of delivering “golden eggs” on Monday, after his company's Vision Fund unit rebounded from a loss to record an 844 billion yen ($8 billion) third quarter profit.

The profit marks a sea change from a year earlier when high-profile misses such as the flopped IPO of office sharing firm WeWork and the Covid-19 pandemic forced Son to sell assets to stabilise his investing empire.

“Our vision never changed,” Son told a news conference in Tokyo after his company announced its latest results. "Golden eggs are not produced by chance," he added, returning to a favoured analogy that describes SoftBank as a goose that backs fast-growing companies such as Alibaba that are its golden eggs. One of Japan's wealthiest people, Son is viewed as a maverick in a business culture that generally eschews risk taking. Rock bottom interest rates and frothy markets that have driven tech stock gains have helped the turnaround at his Vision Fund unit.

Softbank-backed firms that went public during the quarter include selling platform Opendoor and food delivery app operator Doordash, with unrealised gains in the latter totalling $10.7 billion.

Son, who was dressed in a white turtleneck and dark suit, said he had turned to back-to-back online meetings to run his investing empire during the pandemic. Almost half of the first Vision Fund's portfolio, which includes a stake in Uber Technologies, was exited or listed at the end of December, offering liquidity to the fund backed by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.