SoftBank, the Japanese internet and telecommunications giant who is also known as a prolific investor in the Indian startup ecosystem, has today reported its third quarterly earnings. The company managed to beat analyst estimates by a margin because of the turnaround growth witnessed by Sprint in the States.
In the said fiscal quarter, the company posted an operating profit of 295 billion yen as compared to 172 billion yen in the same quarter previous year. It attributes to a massive 71 percent jump in the profit numbers. According to Thomson Reuters analysts, the company should’ve brought in nearly 246.3 billion yen in this quarter.
The net profit for SoftBank, on the other hand, came out at 91.2 billion yen when compared to 2.29 billion yen in the same quarter previous year. The revenues for Q3 2017 stood at 2.30 trillion yen, which is slightly lower than 2.38 trillion yen in the previous year. This is similar to the second quarter where also the company has been unable to push its revenue numbers beyond those predicted by market analysts. But, it can surely be seen that its acquisitions have outperformed themselves while adding much value to the overall business.
But, one cannot attribute the growth of the company to its overseas businesses. SoftBank also witnessed improvements in their domestic telecom business, which was only a mere 2 percent. This was also contributed by the massive 57 percent revenue jump in their broadband business, which managed to offset decline seen in the mobile telecom business. After reporting its quarterly results, the company also saw an upsurge in its stock prices, though it was only minimal as the day was coming to a close. The stock had opened at 8,700 yen but closed at 8,684 yen.
Sprint, the U.S telecom major acquired by SoftBank back in 2013 for a whopping $22 billion has, however, been continuously trimming its losses each quarter. The losses for the third quarter narrowed to $479 million from $836 million last year, with the operating level building further pressure by moving to $311 million from a loss of $197 million. The revenue numbers managed to increase from $8.1 billion to $8.5 billion in the quarter ended in December 2016. has also shown improvement as the Sprint continued to expand its network as well as the consumer base.
For this quarter, the company has shown improvement due to the continued expansion of its network as well as the consumer base. Sprint managed to top Wall Street estimates by adding 368,000 post-paid mobile phones (ones with monthly bills) to their network. The increase in subscriber count is not only the company’s highest in about four years but is also more than those of its rivals AT&T and T-Mobile. Thus, talking about the future prospects of this telecom business, SoftBank founder
Thus, talking about the future prospects for this U.S-based telecom business, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son says that he is “open to all options” to further grow their operations. Sprint is also open to acquisition offers from rival U.S telecom giants, including the third largest T-Mobile. Speaking on the same in the earnings call, he says,
We are not exclusively devoted to an acquisition. Sprint now has a foundation to continue increasing profits on its own. But we will be open to studying every kind of possibility.
Further, the third fiscal quarter was also the first one to reflect the full reporting period for SoftBank’s $32 million acquisition of U.K-based chipmaker ARM Holdings. The company, who supplies the core technology used by most smartphone devices, was already profitable when it was picked up last year. ARM’s revenue for the 9-month period from April to December was 138.1 billion yen, which is a 8 percent uptick from last year. The chipmaker also contributed over 10 percent towards SoftBank’s overall profit figures.
