Re <<Softbank>> I love ZeroHedge zerohedge.com , beating FT and WSJ by the 24 hours that mattered.
I love Softbank, for my very first post on SI was on the Softbank thread Message 8574480 circa 1999
At the time I bought a stake at the get-go Message 8705446 and through thick and thin the pie grew by 15X by same year's end Message 12385639
I used the Softbank winnings to buy a full-ocean view apartment, all cash, one that I still hold to this day, and since the buy HK real estate has inflated 5.6X in the interim to now. A tax-free win-win by 84X is reasonable, thanks to ... and I was correct Message 8594129 circa 1999
<<My retirement depends on Bill Gate, Mr. Son, and Zhu Rong Ji (Chinese premier)>>
I had noted to Follies that Message 32692566
<<I suspect that as long as TSLA not broken, the selling on the market on all shares not done, for sincerity is lacking. I am ready to turn tail on a dime. The nice feature about shorting calls is that in an "I do not have to mark to market day-by-day" regime, I do not have to turn-tail because of any temporary bum-rushing. Can stare down the %$#@!2ams on the other side of the %$#W@58 screen, at least for a few I&^%* days.>>Can stare down the %$#@!2ams on the other side of the %$#W@58 screen, at least for a few I&^%* days.>>
Now, knowing that Softbank has my back, by dispensing free money via conduit that is TSLA, I am thankful, counting my lucky stars, and trying to aggregate as much of the free cash as possible so that I can get more gold
Now that the secret is out, let's see Softbank try to get out of its own way and exit the positions, which if I understand correctly also involved buying call options that I must have sold :0) what a fun game!
barrons.com
SoftBank Made Big Bets on Amazon, Tesla, and 23 Other Tech Stocks. The Timing Was Perfect.
Updated Aug. 18, 2020 8:06 am ET / Original Aug. 17, 2020 5:14 pm ET
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SoftBank Group made big bets on Amazon. com, Alphabet, Adobe, and other technology stocks in the June quarter as part of its program to temporarily stash proceeds from recent asset sales.
As of June 30, SoftBank held a $1 billion stake in e-commerce giant Amazon (ticker: AMZN), according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also held $475 million worth of Alphabet (GOOGL) stock, and nearly $250 million in Adobe (ADBE).
Other big bets include Netflix (NFLX), Microsoft (MSFT), and Nvidia (NVDA), all between $180 million and $190 million, with nine other stockholdings around $100 million, including Tesla (TSLA), Shopify (SHOP), PayPal (PYPL), DocuSign (DOCU), Zoom Video Communications (ZM), Square (SQ), Spotify (SPOT), Paycom (PAYC), and ServiceNow (NOW). See table below for the full list.
As Barron’s reported last week, SoftBank netted equity gains of $611.5 million in the second quarter after investing $10 billion of cash in large-cap stocks. SoftBank held on to $3.4 billion worth of stock, which was included in Monday’s disclosure.
SoftBank was flush with cash in the second quarter after completing most of a $42 billion asset sale, including some of its holdings in Alibaba (BABA), T-Mobile US (TMUS), and SoftBank Corp., the company’s majority owned wireless phone business.
SoftBank's Big Tech PortfolioHere are the stocks that SoftBank held as of June 30, 2020, according to a regulatory filing Monday.
Source: FactSet
In reporting June quarter earnings, SoftBank changed the presentation of financial results to acknowledge that it’s an investment company and not an operating business. This is the first time in recent years that the company has filed a 13F, a form typically used by investment firms to report their holdings.
The filing includes a $13.7 billion position in T-Mobile, the remaining portion of its long held stake in the U.S. wireless carrier. In addition to the short-term equity stakes acquired with the cash from SoftBank’s asset sales, the filings also appears to include stocks acquired for a new equity fund co-owned by the company and founder and CEO Masayoshi Son.
Last week, SoftBank announced a separate $555 million investment fund owned two-thirds by the company and one-third by founder Son to buy shares in large-cap technology shares.
The 13-F filing doesn’t specify when SoftBank bought and sold stock. It’s only a snapshot of its June 30 portfolio. But the company’s investments were perfectly timed.
The 25 stocks included in the filing (aside from T-Mobile) had an average June quarter return of more than 80%; 7 of the 25 more than doubled in the quarter.
SoftBank’s ownership disclosure seemed to give many of the stocks a lift on Monday. The stocks disclosed in the 13-F had an average gain of 2.8%, more than twice the gain of the Nasdaq Composite, and two full percentage points better than the 0.3% rise in S&P 500.
While SoftBank’s investments were well timed, the decision to put the cash in stocks shows an eye-opening appetite for risk that some SoftBank investors are likely to find worrisome. The cash from SoftBank’s asset sales has been earmarked for stock buybacks and debt paydown. Stocks are a risky place to put those funds.
Had SoftBank made the same move a quarter earlier, the results would have been terrible, as tech stocks plummeted in late February and throughout March.
The company declined to comment beyond the filing.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
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