Walmart-owned Flipkart poised to list publicly, says SoftBank

Walmart-owned e-commerce giant Flipkart is among SoftBank’s list of portfolio companies which are poised to go public. Other such portfolio companies of the Japanese investor which are expected to list publicly include the British chip designer arm, TikTok parent ByteDance, mobile payment system PayPay, Mexican online used-car dealership Kavak and Brazilian real estate startup QuintoAndar.

SoftBank said the fair value of its late-stage portfolio is over $37 billion. It said the public listing readiness of the firms included strong fundamentals, resilient business models, sustainable growth profiles, governance, operating and financial discipline.

In India, SoftBank has backed many companies, and unicorns or start-ups with over $1 billion in valuation. These include Paytm, Oyo, Ola, Lenskart, PolicyBazaar, FirstCry, Meesho, Unacademy, Zeta, Swiggy, Ola Electric, and InMobi.

In 2021, Flipkart Group carved a niche for itself in the global league by raising $3.6 billion, including from SoftBank, which had exited the firm, valuing the company at $37.6 billion, which is more than a 50 per cent rise in a year.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment unit remained in the red for a fourth straight quarter. The Vision Fund's investment loss stood at 730.36 billion yen ($5.52 billion) in the latest quarter, according to Reuters. This is on top of the combined loss of 7.3 trillion yen during the first nine months of 2022

At SoftBank itself, the net loss totalled 783.42 billion yen, compared with a 29.05 billion yen profit a year earlier.

SoftBank said it is in "defence mode" during its earning call with analysts. Masayoshi Son, founder and chief executive of SoftBank Group, skipped the analysts' call.

SoftBank Chief Financial Officer, Yoshimitsu Goto said an investment company, the firm believes it is more necessary for it to continue in the defence mode. “We can change our mode to offence mode anytime.... have very ample cash positions so that we can change our mode any time if we wish to.”

(With inputs from Reuters)