SoftBank Corp Chief Executive Masayoshi Son attends a news conference in Tokyo May 7, 2014. REUTERS/Toru Hanaiwas returning to “offence mode” to take advantage of opportunities in artificial intelligence. Shareholders already had good reason to take that with a pinch of salt. Tuesday’s first-quarter earnings reinforced that.
The Japanese conglomerate’s 478 billion yen net loss, which missed analysts’ estimates, included an increase in the carrying value of chip designer Arm, even though revenue dipped. That allowed the company’s Vision Fund to post a $1.1 billion profit, its first in six quarters. Meanwhile, Son’s lieutenants also appeared to partly contradict his professed return to attacking form. Group finance chief Yoshimitsu Goto said the company was only “timidly’ going after new investments, while his counterpart at the Vision Fund, Navneet Govil, added that “the bar for investing is very high…focused on next-generation AI with high growth potential".
Granted, such caution may pay off if it helps avoid disasters like at portfolio company WeWork, which on