SoftBank posts a quarterly profit of $11 billion to end a turbulent 12 months.

Since then, the market has grown hotter still. In December, the value of SoftBank’s investments in DoorDash and the biotech company Seer, among others, skyrocketed as investors piled into the companies’ initial public offerings as part of a broader frenzy for new share sales. A market rally in shares of Uber was also a major profit driver for SoftBank this quarter, it said.

In a triumphant earnings conference, SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, compared his company to the goose that laid the golden egg. In February of last year, the media was saying that the company was laying only “rotten eggs,” Mr. Son said. But this earnings report has proved the skeptics wrong, he argued.

“We have a turbocharger strategy to turn white eggs into golden eggs,” he said, adding, “Those golden eggs are laid not by chance but by plan.”

Investors so far seemed to agree. After a precipitous drop this summer, SoftBank’s share price has surged. The stock was trading at 9,485 yen, or about $90, per share in Tokyo by market close Monday, almost matching its highs in early 2000, just before the collapse of the first internet stock bubble.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/business/softbank-posts-a-quarterly-profit-of-11-billion-to-end-a-turbulent-12-months.html