SoftBank says it sees a loss of ~$6.6B in the year ending March on its WeWork investment held outside the Vision Fund, extending its expected net loss to $8.4B
TOKYO (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) said it sees a loss of around 700 billion yen ($6.6 billion) …
Context & Ripple Effects
SoftBank has been walking its loss guidance upward all spring: two weeks ago it forecast a $7B net loss for the year ending March, blaming coronavirus and WeWork, after taking a $4.6B WeWork charge inside the Vision Fund last November alongside its first quarterly operating loss in 14 years.
Today's disclosure adds a second, separate WeWork wound — the ~$6.6B hit sits on the investment SoftBank holds outside the Vision Fund — pushing the group's expected net loss to $8.4B. The final tally landed worse still: the fund itself went on to post a $17.7B annual loss, and the same pattern of concentrated write-downs reappeared two years later in a $26.2B Vision Fund loss.
First-order effects
- SoftBank Group's expected net loss for the year ending March widens from $7B to $8.4B, with the incremental damage coming from the WeWork position it holds directly rather than through the Vision Fund.
Second-order effects
- WeWork losses are now hitting SoftBank twice through two vehicles — the earlier $4.6B Vision Fund charge plus today's ~$6.6B outside holding — compounding pressure on the group's reported results just as the Vision Fund's own annual numbers come due.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — mega-losses in 2020 followed by another $26.2B Vision Fund loss in 2022 — markets will keep pricing SoftBank at a persistent discount to its net asset value, forcing founder Masayoshi Son to defend the conglomerate structure itself rather than any single bet.
The trend: SoftBank's concentrated, balance-sheet-backed venture bets keep converting single-asset failures like WeWork into recurring group-level losses, eroding confidence in the Vision Fund model.