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By now SoftBanks only saving grace is setting tons of Saudi money on fire...

by hef19898 3y ago

CSMastermind 3y ago
Have they even lost money in aggregate? Like I know WeWork and others ended up being worthless but didn't they also have some homeruns?
- morelisp 3y ago
  They have lost tens of billions on ~150 billion invested, much of that during boom years.
  - Kye 3y ago
    On the other hand, they might be on the verge of profitability depending on how some of their investments go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund#Notable_investments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund#Notable_i... For example: Arm, ByteDance, Mapbox, Nvidia, Slack. All real companies with real businesses that have huge potential.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      > they might be on the verge of profitability depending on how some of their investments go. Just like everyone else.
      - Kye 3y ago
        There's a whole post there. It's not just one out of context sentence. Maybe focus on the examples I gave to support that sentence.
        morelisp 3y ago
        Sure, let's take an example. Nvidia might be a real company with real products but that has little bearing on your investment value if if you sold it all in 2019. Even less if you invested with a different fund than you sold it as part of so it looks more successful than it was. ("Successful" being an awful word, since they lost 400 million.)
    - some_random 3y ago
      I don't have any context for other funds, but I have a really hard time believing that it's hard to do better than break even at that scale of capital.
- jsemrau 3y ago
  https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SFTBY/softbank-group/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SFTBY/softbank-gro...
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I wonder why those numbers are so different than the ones on this website: https://companiesmarketcap.com/softbank/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/softbank/earnings/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brianbreslin 3y ago
I was surprised to see Adam Neumann as a keynote speaker at the Future investment conference in Riyadh a few weeks ago. I thought perhaps he'd be persona non-grata due to burning so much in saudi $.
- justrealist 3y ago
  NEOM is a $500B project. Neumann barely registers.
- furyofantares 3y ago
  My understanding is that the best thing you can do in finance is make loads of money, but the second best thing you can do is set loads of money on fire.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    This. Nothing succeeds like failure. I've actually heard of VCs who prefer founders who have had high-profile failures because their theory is those founders will have learned a bunch of valuable (expensive) lessons. The null hypothesis for me is those founders may not have learned those lessons and may just not be that great.
    - rurp 3y ago
      This seems to me like expecting that someone indicted for a crime will learn their lesson and be less likely than average to commit crimes in the future. It makes some sense in the abstract, except that we have tons of empirical evidence that those people are more likely to commit future crimes.
      - hezralig 3y ago
        Or perhaps expecting someone who committed crimes and got caught to have learned how to not get caught.
- ShrigmaMale 3y ago

By now SoftBanks only saving grace is setting tons of Saudi money on fire...

Have they even lost money in aggregate? Like I know WeWork and others ended up being worthless but didn't they also have some homeruns?

morelisp 3y ago
They have lost tens of billions on ~150 billion invested, much of that during boom years.
- Kye 3y ago
  On the other hand, they might be on the verge of profitability depending on how some of their investments go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund#Notable_investments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund#Notable_i... For example: Arm, ByteDance, Mapbox, Nvidia, Slack. All real companies with real businesses that have huge potential.
  - morelisp 3y ago
    > they might be on the verge of profitability depending on how some of their investments go. Just like everyone else.
    - Kye 3y ago
      There's a whole post there. It's not just one out of context sentence. Maybe focus on the examples I gave to support that sentence.
      - morelisp 3y ago
        Sure, let's take an example. Nvidia might be a real company with real products but that has little bearing on your investment value if if you sold it all in 2019. Even less if you invested with a different fund than you sold it as part of so it looks more successful than it was. ("Successful" being an awful word, since they lost 400 million.)
  - some_random 3y ago
    I don't have any context for other funds, but I have a really hard time believing that it's hard to do better than break even at that scale of capital.
jsemrau 3y ago
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SFTBY/softbank-group/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SFTBY/softbank-gro...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I wonder why those numbers are so different than the ones on this website: https://companiesmarketcap.com/softbank/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/softbank/earnings/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

brianbreslin 3y ago

I was surprised to see Adam Neumann as a keynote speaker at the Future investment conference in Riyadh a few weeks ago. I thought perhaps he'd be persona non-grata due to burning so much in saudi $.

justrealist 3y ago
NEOM is a $500B project. Neumann barely registers.
furyofantares 3y ago
My understanding is that the best thing you can do in finance is make loads of money, but the second best thing you can do is set loads of money on fire.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  This. Nothing succeeds like failure. I've actually heard of VCs who prefer founders who have had high-profile failures because their theory is those founders will have learned a bunch of valuable (expensive) lessons. The null hypothesis for me is those founders may not have learned those lessons and may just not be that great.
  - rurp 3y ago
    This seems to me like expecting that someone indicted for a crime will learn their lesson and be less likely than average to commit crimes in the future. It makes some sense in the abstract, except that we have tons of empirical evidence that those people are more likely to commit future crimes.
    - hezralig 3y ago
      Or perhaps expecting someone who committed crimes and got caught to have learned how to not get caught.
ShrigmaMale 3y ago