Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, has been weighing up various options for chipmaker Arm after Nvidia walked away from buying the company.
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SoftBank offered a sharp rebuke on Wednesday to S&P Global Ratings, after the agency downgraded the Japanese giant’s credit rating.
“Over the past year, our strict defensive financial management has strengthened our financial position as never before,” SoftBank said. “It is extremely regrettable that our financial soundness was not properly assessed, and we will continue our dialogue with S&P.”
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S&P Global Ratings on Tuesday cut SoftBank’s rating to “BB” from “BB+” — where it deems a company’s credit rating as “speculative grade” or “junk.”
SoftBank shares closed down 2.3% in Tokyo on Wednesday.
SoftBank has turned itself into one of the world’s biggest tech investors over the last few years, putting billions of dollars into some of the biggest technology firms, including Uber, via its two Vision Funds. SoftBank mainly invests in companies that are not publicly listed.
SoftBank has been cutting its stake in Chinese e-commerce Alibaba, which it has held for more than two decades and made the Japanese firm’s founder Masayoshi Son his fortune. The aim is to shore up SoftBank’s balance sheet, as the company’s management has pledged to play “defense” and be more prudent with its investment strategy.
S&P Global Ratings nevertheless argues that SoftBank’s Vision Funds have a high exposure to unlisted company shares, which are more volatile, as a result of selling Alibaba stock that are listed in both the U.S. and Hong Kong.
“Ongoing sales of shares in China-based Alibaba Group Holding Ltd … previously a major asset for the company, have eroded the proportion of listed assets in its portfolio,” S&P said. “Furthermore, the technology stocks in which the company has primarily invested have been depressed for a prolonged period.”
SoftBank argues that S&P is not taking into account its cash position, which rose to 5.1 trillion yen in the fiscal year ended Mar. 31, versus 2.3 trillion in the same period of 2022.
“It should be noted that S&P’s assessment of the proportion of listed assets excludes cash and deposits, etc. (JPY 5.1 trillion), which are the most liquid assets,” SoftBank said.
Going public with Arm would be a “positive factor” for SoftBank, S&P noted, but it hasn’t included this development in its assessment because the timing and valuation of the company remain “uncertain.”
SoftBank said it has “strongly urged S&P to consider an upgrade once the proposed initial public offering of Arm is completed.”
S&P also noted that SoftBank is aiming for “disciplined financial management even in a difficult operating environment,” which continues to “underpin the company’s creditworthiness.”
Ultimately, the negative factors outweighed the positives, the ratings agency said.
“We therefore downgraded the company. The volatility of its investment portfolio and rising asset risk drive the negatives for the group. Meanwhile, financial management capability; a high level of cash; and holdings of shares in Arm, which could be listed, are positives.”
People wait in line for t-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an IPO earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.
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It was a bad day for tech stocks, and a brutal one for fintech.
As the Nasdaq suffered its steepest decline since 2022, some of the biggest losers were companies that sit at the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
Stock trading app Robinhood tumbled 20%, bitcoin holder Strategy fell 17% and crypto exchange Coinbase lost 18%. Much of the slide in those three stocks was tied to the drop in bitcoin, which fell almost 5%, continuing its downward trajectory. The price of the leading cryptocurrency is now down 19% in the past month, falling after a big-post election pop in late 2024.
Beyond the crypto trade, online lenders and payments companies also fell more than the broader market. Affirm, which popularized buy now, pay later loans, dropped 11%, as did SoFi, which offers personal loans and mortgages. Shopify, which provides payment technology to online retailers, fell more than 7%.
JPMorgan Chase fintech analysts on Monday highlighted declining consumer confidence as a potential challenge for companies that rely on consumer spending for growth. In late February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 98.3 for the month, down nearly 7%, the largest monthly drop since August 2021. Walmart recently reported a shift away from discretionary purchases, underscoring the potential trouble.
“Our universe has modestly outperformed the S&P 500 since the election, but sentiment has soured of late on declining consumer confidence and signs of slowing discretionary spend,” the JPMorgan analysts wrote.
The fintech selloff follows a strong rally in the fourth quarter, driven by Fed rate cut expectations and hopes for a more favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration.
Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.
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Oracle issued quarterly results on Monday that trailed analysts’ estimates, but the company offered bullish comments on its cloud infrastructure segment.
Here is how Oracle did compared to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $1.47 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
Revenue: $14.13 billion vs. $14.39 billion expected
Revenue increased 6% from $13.3 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 22% to $2.94 billion, or $1.02 a share, from $2.4 billion, or 85 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in Oracle’s cloud services business jumped 10% from a year earlier to $11.01 billion, accounting for 78% of total sales.
The company’s cloud infrastructure segment, which helps businesses move workloads out of their own data centers, has been booming due to demand for computing power that can support artificial intelligence projects. Oracle said revenue in its cloud infrastructure unit increased 49% from a year earlier to $2.7 billion.
“We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this calendar year,” Oracle Chair Larry Ellison said in a release. “Customer demand is at record levels.”
In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. in collaboration with Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank. The first initiative of the joint venture, called Stargate, will be to construct data centers in Texas — an effort that is already underway, Ellison said during the announcement at the White House.
Oracle’s cloud and on-premises licenses business contributed $1.1 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 10% year over year.
Oracle also said it is increasing its quarterly dividend to 50 cents a share from 40 cents.
As of Monday’s close, the stock is down almost 11% year to date.
Oracle will hold its quarterly call with investors and will share its outlook at 5 p.m. ET.
Asana CEO and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz
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Dustin Moskovitz, the CEO of Asana and one of the original founders of Facebook, is retiring from the software company he started in 2008.
Asana announced Moskovitz’s retirement on Monday as part of the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, and its board has retained an executive search firm to help choose a new CEO. Moskovitz notified its board “of his intention to transition to the role of Chair when a new CEO begins,” the company said Monday.
“As I reflect on my journey since co-founding Asana nearly 17 years ago, I’m filled with immense gratitude,” Moskovitz said in a statement. “Creating and leading Asana has been more than just building a company — it’s been a profound privilege to work alongside some of the most talented minds in the industry.”
Asana said fourth-quarter sales rose 10% year-over-year to $188.3 million, which was in-line with analyst estimates.
The company said its fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share was breakeven, ahead of analyst estimates of a loss of one cent per share.
Asana said it expects fiscal first-quarter revenue of $184.5 million to $186.5 million, trailing analyst expectations of $191 million.
Asana’s stock price was down more than 25% in after-hours trading Monday.