Japan-headquartered telecommunications and internet group SoftBank has increased the size of its Vision Fund 2 from $10bn to $30bn, chief financial officer Navneet Govil told Reuters yesterday.
The company’s original Vision Fund closed at $98.6bn in 2017 with contributions from corporate limited partners and sovereign wealth funds, but it has so far been unable to secure backing for its successor, instead committing the capital itself, though Govil said it is mulling external contributions.
The first Vision Fund booked a $16.8bn net loss for 2019 due to bankruptcies for portfolio companies OneWeb and Brandless, the failure of workspace provider WeWork to successfully float and lacklustre share performance for others such as ride hailing service Uber.
However, the coronavirus pandemic has caused tech stocks in several industries to skyrocket while also driving the pre-IPO funding market, leading to a considerable turnaround in the corporate’s fortunes.
SoftBank’s latest full-year results were published yesterday and reveal the values of its holdings in several portfolio companies have increased sharply, giving the Vision Funds a $37bn paper profit.
The unit has booked increases of $2.3bn in the value of its stakes in Uber and precision oncology technology provider Guardant Health while those values for stakes in Relay Therapeutics, Slack, Vir Biotechnology and 10x Genomics have all more than doubled.
The overall fair value of Vision Fund 1 and 2 stood at $154bn as of the end of March this year, according to Reuters, and SoftBank has returned $22.3bn to its LPs.
