Technology
Richard Windsor argues SoftBank’s $2bn investment in INTC, alongside a potential 10% US government stake, may keep the company alive but does little to resolve its strategic paralysis. INTC faces a stark choice: either invest heavily to catch up with TSMC or break up the business - yet under new CEO Mr. Tan, neither path is clear. The board abandoned Pat Gelsinger’s catch-up strategy due to mounting costs, leaving INTC exposed to further share losses in PCs (to AMD and Qualcomm) and in data centres (to Nvidia and AMD). Richard warns that without decisive strategy, customer confidence will erode, competitors will gain share with ease and capital injections alone cannot avert decline. He sees no attractive entry point in INTC shares.
Edition: 218
- 22 August, 2025
Communications
SoftBank to invest up to $40bn in OpenAI starting with a $10bn tranche this month of which it will fund 75% itself. It will source the funds from Mizuho Bank although the group has sufficient cash on hand already. SoftBank's LTV ratio increases from 12.9% at Q3 end to c.17%. It should be able to raise up to $46bn in funding through asset-backed finance and borrowing up to the 25% LTV level relative to commitments of c.$47bn (OpenAI, Ampere, Aug payment to SVF for ARM and the initial Stargate push). SoftBank will probably lose money this quarter but not so much it doesn’t end the year in the black. Vision Fund was down $1.1bn, largely on India weakness (-$1.2bn across its four public investments) with the rest of the portfolio moving sideways. The discount to NAV has widened slightly to 55% but remains well within the recent trading range. TP ¥11,000 (65% upside).
Edition: 208
- 04 April, 2025
Communications
Galliano's Financials Research
The current share price discount to the stated NAV of 53% may seem optically attractive, but Victor Galliano believes this figure will be subject to valuation headwinds going forward. Arm (45% of SoftBank Group’s equity value) is starting to experience limits to its “growth at any price” stock status. It trades at super-premium valuations which are unsustainable, not least as Nvidia trades on less than half the prospective earnings multiple for just slightly lower forward consensus EPS growth. Furthermore, while the JPY’s depreciation is supportive of the group NAV, with the Fed’s hawkish stance well known and BoJ expected to raise interest rates, JPY weakness may be largely done.
Edition: 184
- 19 April, 2024
Generative AI: With Japanese LLMs coming online, 2024 will be more eventful
In 2023, generative AI took the world by storm but the impact in Japan was less exciting as language and heavy computing loads dampened performance. That should change with the deployment of Japanese-specific LLMs which are already performing modestly better in some tests versus larger general-purpose English LLMs and with less power intensity. Kirk Boodry lays out the basics and state of play for generative AI in Japan within his Telecom / Internet coverage. SoftBank Group and NTT have been early winners thanks to exposure at the infrastructure / platform layer, but true gen AI deployments are only just starting.
Edition: 178
- 26 January, 2024
Communications
Galliano's Financials Research
The tough market environment for publicly listed and unlisted tech companies remains, and yet SoftBank’s share price has held up since the end of Sept. In part, this is due to the share buybacks in place, and its reduced exposure to Alibaba through its derivative contracts. Nonetheless, Victor Galliano shows that SoftBank’s share price strength is unlikely to last, given the declining valuations of its listed holdings and the recent down rounds relating to its unlisted holdings which will be at least partially captured in 2Q22 results.
Edition: 148
- 11 November, 2022