Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said the
company already has raised in several months
nearly all the 4.5 trillion yen ($41 billion) it had
promised in March to attain within a year.
But he acknowledged worries about a second or
third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company compared the crisis to the hard
times of the Great Depression of the late 1920s
and early 1930s.
SoftBank announced last month that it’s setting
up a new subsidiary company to carry out
coronavirus tests and will start giving them first
to its employees and members of the SoftBank
Hawks professional baseball team.
SoftBank got a lift from U.S. carrier Sprint’s
merger with T-Mobile, a deal in the works for
a few years that was finally completed in April.
That means Sprint is no longer part of SoftBank’s
group or earnings.
Other companies in the SoftBank fold include
British “Internet of Things” company Arm and
Brightstar Corp., a U.S. wireless service provider. The
Pepper humanoid robot is also a SoftBank product.
SoftBank also benefited from its Vision Fund
investments, as it sold parts of its global portfolio,
and stock prices of its holdings recovered, it said.
Analysts have constantly expressed doubts
about some of the investments. But even global
office-space sharing company WeWork may
be doing better than expected thanks to the
expansion of remote working.
WeWork just opened in a new locale in Japan, in
northern Sendai. It already operates in Tokyo, as
well as Nagoya, Fukuoka and other urban areas
in Japan.