Softbank Group 4% Call 19.09.2029 ISIN XS1684385591

[pietro17elettra]

UPDATE 1-Indian payments firm Paytm approves $103 mln share buyback
13/12/2022 17:53 - RSF
(Adds background, details from the company's statement)
BENGALURU, Dec 13 (Reuters) - SoftBank-backed digital payments firm Paytm said on Tuesday its board unanimously approved a share buyback worth up to 8.5 billion rupees ($103.06 million), as it looks to build investor confidence and shore up its battered stock price.

The buyback will be priced at a maximum of 810 rupees per share, 50.2% higher than the stock's Tuesday close of 539.40 rupees, the company said in an exchange filing, adding that it will follow the open market route.

The board believes that the buyback is a "sign of confidence that the company is on a clear path to deliver cash flow profitability", and that it will not have any impact on Paytm's growth plans in the near future or on its profitability plans.

The company's directors and key management personnel will not sell any shares during the buyback period.

Formally known as One97 Communications, Paytm listed last year after a mega $2.5 billion initial public offer (IPO). Since then, however, the stock has plunged as investors worried about the sky-high valuations of tech companies amid fears of a global economic recession.

As of last close, the stock was down around 75% from its IPO offer price of 2,150 rupees.

There is surplus liquidity that can be productively applied to the buyback of shares and proceeds from the IPO are not being directed towards the share repurchase plan, Paytm said.

The buyback plan was met with criticism from some analysts and proxy advisory firms which questioned Paytm's move to repurchase shares while not making profits.

Last month, Paytm said it would become free cash flow positive in the next 12-18 months.

Paytm had net cash, cash equivalents and investable balance of 91.82 billion rupees at the end of September, according to its latest quarterly earnings report.

($1 = 82.4740 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman, Chris Thomas and Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
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UPDATE 2-U.S., UK export controls hit China's access to Arm's chip designs -FT
Oggi 00:33 - RSF
(Adds statement from Arm Ltd)
Dec 14 (Reuters) - Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd cannot buy some of the most advanced chip designs after the SoftBank-owned British chip tech firm Arm Ltd determined that U.S. and Britain would not approve licences to export technology to China, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

This is the first known time that Arm has decided it could not export its most cutting-edge designs to China, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The British chip tech firm concluded that the United States and Britain would not approve the sale of its latest Neoverse V series because the performance was too high, the report added.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Arm said it was fully-compliant with the latest export controls, and "for Alibaba and other China partners, we have a process in place to deliver optimized solutions that address their performance requirements".

The development comes two months after the United States published a sweeping set of export controls, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. tools, vastly expanding its reach to slow Beijing's technological and military advances.

The Biden administration also plans to place Chinese chip maker Yangtze Memory Technologies and 35 other Chinese firms on a trade blacklist that would prevent them from buying certain American components, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

Arm launched its next generation of data center chip technology called Neoverse V2 earlier this year to meet the explosive growth of data from 5G and internet-connected gadgets.

Over the past year, Arm has released several new core designs, including Neoverse N2 and Neoverse V1 and V2, the latter of which are the highest- performance cores to date, the report said.

Chinese companies have been blocked from purchasing Neoverse V2 and its previous generation V1 because of the U.S. and British export controls that are connected to technologies listed under Wassenaar, an agreement that limits the movement of "dual-use" technologies sought for both peaceful and military purposes, FT said, citing people briefed on the reasoning behind the move.

(Reporting by Rhea Binoy in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Stephen Coates)
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India's Paytm CEO says there will be no more cash burn

SoftBank-backed Paytm said on Wednesday that going ahead there will be no more cash burn in the business and that the Indian digital payments firm was far ahead on re-setting its ambition on controlling spends.

www.reuters.com

MUMBAI, Dec 21 (Reuters) - SoftBank-backed Paytm (PAYT.NS) said on Wednesday that going ahead there will be no more cash burn in the business and that the Indian digital payments firm was far ahead on re-setting its ambition on controlling spends.

"It has got decided last month that it (cash burn) would no more be continuing. As far as Paytm is concerned, we have publicly declared that we are far ahead of our ambitions — far meaning the border of magnitude ahead — in terms of re-setting our cash burns" founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said at newspaper Business Standard's annual banking event.


In November, Paytm said it would become free cash flow positive in the next 12-18 months.

Paytm had net cash, cash equivalents and investable balance of 91.82 billion rupees at the end of September, according to its latest quarterly earnings report.

CLSA had also upgraded Paytm last month saying that cash burn could end in another four to six quarters.

Formally known as One97 Communications, Paytm listed last year after a mega $2.5 billion initial public offer (IPO). Since then, however, the stock has plunged as investors worried about the sky-high valuations of tech companies amid fears of a global economic recession.

 

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BORSA TOKYO-Ai massimi di 2 settimane su spinta settore tech
10/01/2023 08:30 - RSF
TOKYO, 10 gennaio (Reuters) - L'azionario nipponico ha chiuso ai massimi di due settimane, grazie al balzo dei titoli tech, ma i guadagni sono stati limitati dalla cautela in vista della riunione della Banca del Giappone, prevista per la prossima settimana.
** L'investitore tecnologico SOFTBANK ha chiuso in rialzo del 2,36% dopo che, secondo indiscreszioni, il primo ministro britannico Rishi Sunak avrebbe riavviato i colloqui con l'azienda giapponese in merito a una quotazione a Londra della società di progettazione di chip Arm Ltd.

(Tradotto da Chiara Bontacchio, editing Claudia Cristoferi)
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UPDATE 1-Investors of India's GoMechanic seek audit into 'inflated' financials
19/01/2023 06:02 - RSF
(Adds statement from major investors)
BENGALURU, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Major investors of Indian car service and repair firm GoMechanic have ordered a probe after they were made aware of serious inaccuracies in the startup's financial reporting.

The investors - Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and Chiratae Ventures - have jointly appointed a third-party firm to investigate the matter in detail, they said in a statement.

GoMechanic's co-founder Amit Bhasin, on Wednesday, admitted errors in the company's financial reporting in a LinkedIn post.

"We are deeply distressed by the fact that the founders knowingly misstated facts, including but not limited to the inflation of revenue, which the founders have acknowledged," the investors said in the joint statement.

"We will be working together to determine next steps for the company," they added.

GoMechanic's Bhasin had also said that it would lay off 70% of its workforce.

"We made errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs, including (with) regard to financial reporting, which we deeply regret," he said in his post.

Founded in 2016, the Sequoia India-backed startup has serviced and repaired more than two million cars in India through its service centres and says it costs 40% less than automakers' own offerings.

Last year, Reuters reported that SoftBank was in talks to invest $35 million in the company at a valuation of around $600-700 million.

Indian startups raised $24 billion last year, a third lesser than in 2021, according to Venture Intelligence.

They have let go thousands of employees in recent months to become profitable, as investors have become more circumspect of high valuations in a turbulent stock market that has hammered tech shares across the globe.

(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam, Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Sriram Mani in Mumbai; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Janane Venkatraman)
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UPDATE 2-PhonePe raises $350 mln, becomes India's most valuable payments firm
19/01/2023 11:08 - RSF
(Adds details from spokesperson)
BENGALURU, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Walmart-backed PhonePe said on Thursday it raised $350 million from private equity firm General Atlantic at a $12 billion valuation, making it India's most valuable payments firm and giving it funds to expand into the lucrative lending space.

A second tranche of investments from marquee global and Indian investors is expected to close next month, a PhonePe spokesperson said, declining to give further details.

Despite a funding winter, the Indian digital payments space has been a bright spot due to the popularity of online payments and startups' ambitions to branch into the lucrative financial services space.

PhonePe will use the funds for infrastructure and new businesses, including insurance, wealth management and lending, founder and chief executive Sameer Nigam said in a statement.

While the Indian government has pushed the country's cash-loving merchants and consumers to adopt digital payments, it wants to control the clout of payments firms, seeking to cap any one firm's market share at 30% by the end of 2024.

PhonePe had a 46% market share in December, according to National Payments Corporation of India data. Alphabet Inc-owned Google's (GOOGL.O) payments app had a 34% share and SoftBank-backed Paytm had 14.7%.

Paytm, whose current market value of $4.2 billion is now dwarfed by PhonePe, has recently reported strong growth in its financial services such as buy-now-pay-later, personal and merchant loans.

PhonePe, in which U.S. retail giant Walmart Inc (WMT.N) took a majority stake in 2018, shifted its registered headquarters from Singapore to India last year and also completed its separation from Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart.

The company's shift to India, according to some reports, has been to ensure an easier entry into the country's highly-regulated financial services industry.

(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Savio D'Souza)
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BORSA TOKYO-In rialzo, settore tech azzera perdite svolta ultra-accomodante BoJ dicembre
Oggi 08:10 - RSF
TOKYO, 24 gennaio (Reuters) - Il Nikkei ha chiuso ai massimi di oltre un mese, recuperando tutte le perdite subite dopo la modifica a sorpresa della politica monetaria della Banca del Giappone il mese scorso, con i titoli tech che guadagnano terreno sulla scia dei rialzi di Wall Street.

** Il Nikkei

** La modifica a sorpresa della politica monetaria della BoJ del 20 dicembre, che ha ampliato la banda di oscillazione del rendimento dei titoli di Stato a 10 anni, ha spinto l'indice al ribasso.

** Il più ampio Topix

** Wall Street ha chiuso in forte rialzo durante la notte, alimentata dall'impennata dei titoli tech, mentre gli investitori hanno iniziato una settimana ricca di utili con un rinnovato entusiasmo per i titoli leader di mercato che hanno subito una battuta d'arresto lo scorso anno.

** In Giappone, il produttore di apparecchiature per la produzione di chip TOKYO ELECTRON è avanzato del 2,04%, facendo salire il Nikkei al massimo. L'analoga ADVANTEST è balzata del 3,11%.

** L'investitore tecnologico SOFTBANK è salito del 3,39% e l'azienda di condizionamento DAIKIN INDUSTRIES ha guadagnato il 2,07%.

(Tradotto da Chiara Bontacchio, editing Stefano Bernabei)
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CORRECTED-(OFFICIAL) UPDATE 4-SoftBank tumbles to loss as Vision Fund in red for fourth straight quarter
07/02/2023 12:28 - RSF
(Changes to reflect company's correction of timeframe for Arm IPO)
By Kiyoshi Takenaka
TOKYO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Japan's SoftBank Group Corp fell to a quarterly loss on Tuesday, as its giant Vision Fund investment unit remained in the red for a fourth straight quarter, sharpening focus on when markets will recover enough to allow it to list some assets.

The Vision Fund, which upended the world of technology with its big bets on startups, reported an investment loss of 730.36 billion yen ($5.52 billion) in the fiscal third quarter.

At SoftBank itself, the net loss totalled 783.42 billion yen, compared with a 29.05 billion yen profit a year earlier.

The results could make investors even more keen to see an initial public offering (IPO) of British chip designer Arm, considered one of the sprawling conglomerate's prize assets.

SoftBank aims to list Arm by the end of 2023, the company said.


Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto sounded cautious about business overall.

"The situation remains tough," he said.

The market turmoil since last year - and SoftBank's results themselves - show how rising interest rates, deepening U.S.-China tensions and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have worked to blunt investor appetite for riskier assets, casting a shadow over the Japanese group's vast portfolio of startup investments.

Arm has made "good progress in terms of being IPO-ready," Navneet Govil, the fund's chief financial officer, told Reuters after the results, adding there were about 30 companies in the fund's portfolio that are set to go public when markets are ready.

SoftBank said the Vision Fund unit had significantly curtailed new investments and was continuing to sell some older ones as part of "prudent defensive financial management" amid the challenging market environment.

Notably, founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son - who is synonymous with SoftBank - did not speak at the results presentation. He said in November he would not be making such appearances for the time being, to better focus on Arm's growth.


GOOD ARM
The bulk of the loss at the Vision Fund unit came from a steep decline in the valuation of investments in unlisted companies. The unit had investments in 348 companies as of end-December, of which 311 are private firms.

Among listed portfolio companies, Indonesian ride hailing company Goto Gojek Tokopedia PT , South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang Inc (CPNG.N) and workspace provider WeWork Inc (WE.N) contributed to the loss.

Arm posted a 28% jump in quarterly net sales to $746 million, helped by higher royalty revenues of its high-end 5G smartphone chips.

It has more than 95% market share of the main communication chips used in mobile devices. Still, SoftBank warned the chip designer is also bracing for the impact of a broader tech industry slowdown.

"Some of Arm's customers have indicated that inventory levels are very high across the value chain, which may result in their revenues declining for a short period until inventory levels are lower," it said in a statement.

The net loss also marked a sharp turnaround from the 3 trillion yen profit SoftBank reported in the prior quarter, for July-September, when it was buoyed by the sale of some of its stake in China's Alibaba Group Holding .

Son invested heavily in artificial intelligence and other high-tech startups through the Vision Fund in recent years, delivering both record profits and heady optimism about future valuations.

He has since been forced to cut back on investment activity and disappointed the market in November when the company did not announce further share buybacks. SoftBank did not unveil a fresh buyback scheme on Tuesday, either.

($1 = 132.2200 yen)
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by David Dolan, Jamie Freed and Jacqueline Wong)
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CORRECTED-DCG sells shares in Grayscale crypto trusts in push to raise funds - FT
Oggi 02:39 - RSF
(Corrects headline to add dropped words "crypto trusts")
Feb 7 (Reuters) - Digital Currency Group (DCG) is selling shares in several of its cryptocurrency funds at a high discount, and has started offloading its holdings in investment vehicles run by subsidiary Grayscale, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Woes have piled up for SoftBank-backed DCG with its lending unit Genesis filing for bankruptcy protection, owing creditors at least $3.4 billion after being toppled by a market rout along with exchange FTX and lender BlockFi.

The reported move comes as DCG is trying to raise funds to support its collapsed lending units under Genesis.

A quarter of DCG's stock in its ethereum fund has been sold, raising as much as $22 million in several trades since January 24, the newspaper said, citing U.S. securities filings seen by them.

DCG has also moved to sell smaller blocks of shares in its Litecoin Trust, Bitcoin Cash Trust, Ethereum Classic Trust and Digital Large Cap Fund, the report added.

DCG and Grayscale did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

DCG, owned by Barry Silbert, owns a portfolio of crypto companies in addition to Genesis, including crypto news and events site CoinDesk and New York-based Grayscale, a major digital asset manager. Those companies are not bankrupt.

(Reporting by Sneha Bhowmik and Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng)
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UPDATE 2-Shares of Japan's Nintendo, SoftBank and Sharp tumble after earnings
Oggi 03:56 - RSF
(Recasts, adds Sharp results and shares)
TOKYO, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Shares of Japan's Nintendo Co Ltd and SoftBank Group Corp and Sharp Corp fell steeply on Wednesday, after the companies jolted investors with disappointing results, emphasising the dim demand outlook for global tech firms.

Shares of Nintendo dropped 6% after the maker of the Switch video game console reported lower sales and profit and cut its full-year outlook. It also cut its sales target for the Switch console. Nintendo shares were on track for their biggest one-day loss since November.

SoftBank shares fell 6.2% after it reported a quarterly loss, hit by its massive Vision Fund investment unit, which fell into the red for the fourth straight quarter. The global tech investor also gave a cautious outlook.

Sharp Corp was also hit, tumbling 11.2% and putting it on track for its biggest one-day drop in 3-1/2 years.

The maker of displays and telecoms equipment, a unit of Taiwan's Foxconn , reported a quarterly operating loss and said it expected a loss for the full year.

The results from the three companies illustrate how tech firms have been squeezed by a downturn in consumer demand driven by rising inflation and interest rates.

Nintendo is struggling with softer sales for the ageing Switch, while SoftBank has seen valuations weaken for its sprawling tech portfolio.

"The situation remains tough," SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto told a briefing following results on Tuesday, referring to the broad difficulties for the tech sector.

The technology company declines pulled the Nikkei 225 index into slightly negative territory.

"The Nintendo Switch is now a six-year-old console and demand is now exhausted," analyst Mark Chadwick said on Smartkarma.

"Our thesis is that the hardware cycle has peaked and that the share price will head lower in tandem with the dwindling top line."
(Reporting by David Dolan; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim, Lincoln Feast and Jamie Freed)
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