The SoftBank Vision Fund, which has backed a number of real estate startups including Compass and Opendoor, posted a net investment gain of approximately $12.9 billion in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, which accounts for the final three months of the year.
Masayoshi Son | Photo credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
In an investor presentation Monday, SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son compared the SoftBank Vision Fund — which is the venture capital investment vehicle of the Japanese multinational conglomerate — to a golden goose that laid a lot of golden eggs in the third quarter.
“Since the Vision Fund launched, the number of golden eggs are actually increasing in an accelerating mode,” Son said, during an investor presentation, through a translator. “Just about a year ago, many in the media were saying that we are only laying rotten eggs.”
“Now, we are in the harvesting period,” Son added.
Leading the way was the company’s investment in DoorDash, which, as of December 31, had netted the company more than $8 billion in investment gains.
The company’s only publicly traded U.S. real estate company, Opendoor, went public via a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings II, a special purpose acquisition company. As of December 31, the SoftBank Vision fund had turned a $450 million investment into a value north of $1.2 billion.
SoftBank also backed Beike, a Chinese real estate brokerage and transaction platform that is publicly-traded. SoftBank invested $1.3 billion in Beike and that investment was worth more than $5 billion as of December 31, 2020.
Overall, SoftBank has turned an $11 billion investment into $29.1 billion, on the company’s that have already gone public. Son also noted that more initial public offerings are coming in the next months.
While he didn’t mention it by name, Compass has filed the initial paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. SoftBank has led multiple funding rounds for Compass.
The strong investment gains on the company’s Vision Fund led to an overall strong quarter for the company, which was routinely posting big losses in 2019 as investments in companies like Uber and WeWork floundered. SoftBank posted a net income north of $11 billion in the third quarter.
