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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 their program to temporarily stash proceeds from recent asset sales.
As of June 30, SoftBank had a $ 1 billion stake in e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN), according to a submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also held $ 475 million worth of Alphabet (GOOGL) share, and nearly $ 250 million in Adobe (ADBE).
Other major profits 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 net gains of $ 611.5 million in the second quarter after $ 10 billion in cash invested in large-cap stocks. SoftBank held on to $ 3.4 billion worth of assets, which was recorded in Monday’s revelation.
SoftBank was quick in the second quarter with cash after completing most of a $ 42 billion sale, including some of its holdings in Alibaba (BABA), T-Mobile US (TMUS), and SoftBank Corp., it majority owned company wireless telephone company.
In reporting its June earnings, SoftBank changed the presentation of financial results to recognize that it is an investment firm and not a management firm. This is the first time in recent years that the company has submitted 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 shareholdings acquired with the money from the sale of SoftBank, the listing also appears to include shares for a new equity fund co-owned by the company and founder and CEO Masayoshi Son.
Last week, SoftBank announced that a separate $ 555 million investment fund was two-thirds of the company and one-third by founder Son to buy shares in large-cap stocks.
The submission of 13-F does not specify when SoftBank purchased and sold shares. It’s just a snapshot of his June 30 portfolio. But the company’s investments were perfectly timed.
The 25 shares included in the submission (excluding T-Mobile) had an average return of June in June of more than 80%; 7 out of 25 more than doubled in the quarter.
The revelation of SoftBank on Monday seems to give many of the shares a lift. The shares 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 good at the time, the decision to invest in equities shows an open appetite for risk that some SoftBank investors are likely to be concerned about. The cash from SoftBank’s asset sales is earmarked for share purchases and debt payback. Stocks are a risky place to put those funds.
If SoftBank had made the same move a quarter earlier, the results would have been terrible, as tech shares fell in February and into mid-March.
The company declined to comment on the submission.
Write to Eric J. Savitz by [email protected]
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