Earnings Call: Q4 2021

May 11, 2021

Thank you very much for waiting, everyone. We would like to now start Soft Bank Group's earnings results announcement for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. Now I would like to introduce today's participants. On your left, Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group. Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director, Senior Vice President and CFO Kazuko Kimiwada, Senior Vice President, Head of Accounting. Today's announcement is available on Internet, broadcasting over Internet. Now that we like to invite Masai Son, Chairman and CEO, to explain you SoftBank Group's earnings result. Mr. Son, please. Masai san speaking. Thank you very much for your time today. So let me start my presentation, and I have a photo which has not too much relevant to the earnings result. As a matter of fact, this is one photo. Can you guess what it is? People here attending today or people who are listening over the Internet may not No, if you may I don't believe that there is anyone who knows about this photo. For me, this is very important. One page, one photo. Back in 1981, at the year that we founded SoftBank Actually, SoftBank did not born in Tokyo, but born in Fukuoka Prefecture, very small town called Dasho no kuma. Back when I was 16, I went to United States and spend the time in a big city in United States. Also So the birth of the microchip, also big development of technology in Silicon Valley and the evolvements of the technology. And after I graduated, came back to Japan. At the time I went to United I told my mother that I will be back to Japan for sure after I graduated. So at the time at the same time as graduation that I came back to Japan. And since then, every day, about 18 months before I founded Soft Bank. I was thinking what kind of business I should be doing, what kind of entrepreneur I should be doing, what should be the vision for me to raise my business? So I've been asking myself for about 18 months at this small town called Zaso no kuma, at the 2nd floor, a very small building. In just a small room there in the second floor, I was exploring and thinking about what I should be doing. So I have crossed this road several times and also waiting for the train to go through. I just remember hearing the sound off train sound of the town. And once this sound stops and I hear the signal, green lights, and I get the station of the Sasho no Kuma after I pass this road. In over there, there is a Hakata station. And even further there, Tokyo Station is there. So above across the train crossing, there is some dream there. Sometime I should be able to cross this train crossing with my huge passion and vision. So that's the kind of time when the SoftBank was born. And 2 employees that I hired, 2 of them And at the morning session morning meeting, I told them, although that we are starting a business at a very small town like this, but sometime in later, I will make sure to grow our business to count our market cap, like 1,000,000,000,000 or 2,000,000,000,000 And those 2 employees actually left the company in a few years a few days later. I have I talked about this several times, and you may recall I have spoken about this. But, look at this photo. This is a place. This was a town and a very small building. And a guy like me that start thinking about dreaming of making our business to 1,000,000,000,000 yen to 2,000,000,000 yen from this such a small town in such an suburb area, you don't imagine that, but actually, I did. Actually, after foundation of our business, 1st here, we made a revenue of JPY 3,600,000,000. And after then, we relocated our office to Tokyo. Of course, the Tokyo office was still small, only about 3 staffs with in me sharing the small desk altogether, asking sharing the office back then of the other people's office and start our business in Tokyo. So for today's announcement officially, I would like to announce our net income, JPY 4,990,000,000,000. Finally, our revenue in sales now counting EUR 1,000,000,000,000 yen 2,000,000,000,000 and so on. Just about a year ago, actually, we are making a big, huge loss. And going forward, in the future, depending on the equity market, we may see some ups and downs. For SoftBank Group, the revenue profit or loss of $1,000,000,000,000 is not something surprise, actually, that something could happen? So today's announcement, main message summarizing this one photo, I believe. 40 years of our history, put it into one slide, one photo, and I believe this is it. Many dramas, of course, many crisis. Sometimes I was so happy. Sometimes I was so depressed, but this is a history of SoftBank for 40 years. But evaluation by investors were not always supportive, of course. JPY 4,990,000,000,000 net income. May people say that the onetime gain from Sprint included. Global stock market rallied. And also in the Q4, we had several large scale IPOs. DoorDash or some others. So this is just a coincident. This is a lucky plus lucky plus lucky for us and made a onetime gain. So this is just a kind of by exaggeration of luck. And of course, for me, there are many regrets as well. There are some failures in investment. For example, WeWork, GreenSeal. Many investments which failed. Those are my regrets, but at the same time, even more regrets is that I have also missed so many great opportunities for investments. For example, put it in baseball, you just didn't hit, just didn't really swing your bat. Also, in many ways, there are lack of systematic approach, so we would like to address such an issues sincerely. About 4 years ago that we have transformed ourselves into investment company. So now that our core business is investment activities, So not in as an operating company or telecom business, which is operated by SoftBank Corp, led by Ken Miyauchi and now starting from this year that our CEO has in the he has passed the torch to Junichi Miyakawa, new CEO. So as a SoftBank Group, such Z Holdings, Yahoo! Or the SoftBank Corp. There are many companies that we have underneath of us, but mainly led by SoftBank Vision Fund, we would like to continuously show our gains. So even we call ourselves as an investment company, but we don't expect any gambling, just a onetime gain because of the market rallies that we made money onetime. That's not the way that we are looking for. We like to be looking at continuous gains through AI for new technologies, new ways. And we would like to start investing or turbocharging such and small startup companies to develop theirselves and so that we will be able to see the many IPOs from our group companies. And for that, what we need to do We do need to have enough capability to discover and analyze those startup companies, enhance our organization and also have a good financing structure as in our systems inside of our company. The producer of golden egg is something that we explained in the previous earnings results announcement, and that's something we would like to be more in detail. Consolidated results here. You see, net income, I have already touched on in earlier pages. What is more important is the NAV, net asset value. That's also been discussed at the previous or previous earnings results announcement. So this is net asset value. So those that the share value of the shares that we held, we less Net interest bearing debt, that's the net asset value. About a year ago compared to a year ago, that JPY 4,400,000,000,000 increased compared to the last year. So that net asset value has increased because of the increase of the net income. What is the things that not accounted into our net income calculation is Alibaba, for example. Those are, equity method calculations. Some of them are calculated in assets. So the net income is not 100% straight in building into net asset value, but roughly speaking, that we could say net income will be added to net asset value. And here, in the past 20 years, this is a kind of movement for the net asset value for the past 20 years, JPY 26,100,000,000,000 as of the end of March, net asset value of SoftBank Group. Here inside, if I break down Alibaba, Vision Fund and others, we can break into 3. Just about 6 months ago, ratio of Alibaba was about 60% out of our total net asset value so that many people criticize that SoftBank Group is very heavily depending on Alibaba. But as of today, Alibaba's share out of net asset value is about 43% and also Vision Fund. About a few years ago, it was just about 5% to 10% out of our net assets value, but now that it's taking about 25%, sometime near future, we believe the ratio, this blue portion out of net asset value of SoftBank Group will be increasing and can be the biggest out of our total net asset value. That's how I expect in the future. Net, although that we have a lot of net asset value, but if, people may also doubt or criticize that the SoftBank Group has huge debt. And I want you to see the fact here. Our net interest bearing debt, out of the total JPY 30,000,000,000,000 of equity value holding, only 12% are the our debt. So in a normal time, we would like to manage our loan to value less than 25%. If we come closer, being 25%, we should be slowing down the pace of investment or we should be considering divesting some of our assets holdings. So that's how we see our loan to value LTV. This ratio is very important from our, defensive point of view. In the 12%, normal case, less than 25% that we would like to operate our business. That's how I basically think. And at this moment, it's 12%, which is very healthy and sound ratio. Even in abnormal case that we would like to manage less than 35% of loan to value. Last year, just about a year ago, we start seeing a big damage due to the COVID-nineteen, and we need to be defensive. And that is why we have announced the monetizing program of JPY 4,500,000,000,000 out of our holding assets that we would like to divest and monetize those so that we will be able to be more defensive at the time of the risk or at the time of danger because back then, we didn't know we couldn't imagine how deep the value of the COVID-nineteen will be. Therefore, we I said that we should be defense more than necessary so that we'll be able to protect our company. So JPY 4.5 to the yen program and within a year that we need to monetize, that was an announcement we made. In reality, we achieved or, commitment in 6 months. In addition, about 10,000,000,000,000 yen of the monetization was achieved, so we were able to meet our goal because that we have announced the selling to NVIDIA, that comes bring us to close to JPY 10,000,000,000,000. In being defensive, we also announced a share buyback, share repurchase. JPY 2,500,000,000,000 buyback was also announced. Just about today, 3 we closed at the time of close, our market happened to be able to complete JPY 2,500,000,000 share buyback. Exactly JPY 2,500,000,000 of share buyback was completed. And I would like to announce that we're going to retire this amount of treasury stock. We purchase own stocks and retire them. That means net income per share and net per share should go up. The number of shares decrease. By the way, average repurchase price was 6,815 And currently trading at 9,000 yen or so. As of end of March 31, the share price was about 9,300 yen which is about the same as the current level, and since the number of shares went down, earning per share Soft was a 9869 EM or 3.3x, grew by 3.3x compared to the end of March. Usually, PE ratio, price earning ratio, 3.3x, is very low. SoftBank should last longer than 3 years, that means that the value is relatively cheap, but depends on how you look at because stock market is moving ups and downs, and again, you may say that you just had onetime gain. That's why our valuation was low. I understand that. But Net asset per share is, what, 15,000 yen roughly as of today. So today's Stock price was about 9,200 yen at the closing of the trading today, And equity value of holdings, including Alibaba, Vision Fund and T Mobile and KK, NAV per share is 15,000. So from shareholders' perspective, Compared to 1 year ago, which was about 3,000 yen maybe some shareholders might see it as overvalued, but don't worry. Even taking into account of debt, Per share, the value is JPY 15,000. In fact, bills you have in the wallet value more than the total value of the bills and wallet combined. In other words, undervalued. That's my point. Anyway, 12 months ago, most people were worried about our performance of Vision Fund. And 1 year ago, when we made an earnings announcement, I said that we were in red ink. Our books were red ink all over. And we had net loss huge net loss, 2 consecutive terms or so. For example, WeWork and Uber, those shares were really underperforming, and we suffered a loss. But the at the latest quarter, we made 3,000,000,000,000 yen of income. If you take a look at this graph, you see ups and down. But in the last 12 months, we recorded And some people criticize Masa's view or insights are not always correct, but I'm not overjoyed or depressed so easily. Just stay calm. Coupa, we invested above 300,000,000,000 yen and gross gain to Vision Fund 1 was about $28,000,000,000 And view also grew by 0.4x and Compass grew by 1.9x, and margin also grew by 2.3x compared to the investment that we made, we've got Vision Fund 12, and blue buckets are listed public investment. And the left hand side is investment cost and right hand side is gross return as of end of March. We invested 1,700,000,000,000 yen and now the gross return JPY 6,700,000,000,000 which means JPY 5,000,000,000,000 increase. Likewise, Vision Fund 2, JPY JPY 500,000,000,000 gain was achieved. There were some unlisted stock investments, but as far as listed companies go compared to investment cost, gross return grew for both Vision Fund 1 and 2, Vision Fund 1 was 10,000,000,000,000 yen fund, as you remember. And of that 10,000,000,000,000 yen SoftBank's own money was 3,000,000,000,000 yen out of 10,000,000,000,000 yen of the fund, but 60% of the gain should go into our SoftBank Group of 10,000,000,000 yen 4,000,000,000,000 yen So as preferred equity portion, it's not borrowing but kind of close to borrowing and the remaining 6,500,000,000,000 yen is equity portion. Of equity, about half, dollars 3,000,000,000,000 was financed by SoftBank Group. So of the gain SoftBank Vision Fund Made, about 40% would go to our partners. And from a limited partners' perspective, return to investment per year is shown here. For equity, 30% IRR. Preferred Equity, 7% IRR. It's a fixed distribution. And blended IRR, 22%. So the partners that invested together with us From SoftBank Group's perspective, again, those numbers I just shown R from partners' perspective. And from SoftBank Group's perspective, net equity IRR is 39%. Why? We've got the performance based distribution as well as fixed sorry. We have performance based distribution. So since the performance was pretty good, we enjoyed much better return. 1 year ago, we saw her suffer the huge loss. But compound term, IRR is roughly 40%. Looking back, Fund 1's performance was pretty good. And by the time we started Fund 2, which was about 12 months ago, we invited partners, but we were not popular at all. So nobody came to us. So we started Vision Fund 2 with our own money, 100%. So the gain from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 should go 100% to SoftBank Group. And net equity IRR of Fund 2 is 119%. We just started Fund 2, And this over 100 percent IRR is not going to stay forever, but we made a pretty good start, and currently, we are looking at 119 percent of IRR. Combining Fund 1 and Fund 2, net equity IRR is 43%. By the way, Other than Vision Funds, entities like Yahoo! And Board of sorry, SoftBank KK, Alibaba, Supercell and Sprint. We invested in those businesses. And over the last 20 years or so, SoftBank recorded about 40% or so. Equity IRR of SoftBank Vision Fund 1 +2, 43%, and SoftBank's Own Investments, IRR, is also about 43%. Again, this should go up and down depending on the environment. So we should not be overjoyed, I understand. And LatAm Fund we launched quite recently led by Marcelo and his team, this LatAm Fund made a good start as well. They invested 288,000,000,000 and also made huge gain. And over 10 top unicorn companies in Latin America, LatAm Fund invested in 6 companies on the list. In LatAm Fund, we own 100 percent, no other partners. And LatAm Fund net equity, IRR, is 62%, so again, good start. The size is still small. So if you combine Vision Fund 1, 2 and LatAm Fund together, IRR is about 40 something percent. So as investment company, IRR is the most important, major. Vision Fund 1 +2's IRR, 43% and SoftBank Group's IRR, 39% And all combined, 43%. So I kept talking about percentage of return. And you may say that now Masa is just a gambler. Well, that may be true, so I don't disagree or deny such a view. But I'm not just interested in money. I am interested in most advanced technologies, AI and business model, driven by AI, those are the things that I'd like to dig deeper and bring them into our group to deliver synergies. So how AI's technical revolution go? And what kind of evolution, revolution are taking place? And computing evolution, those are the things that I am strongly interested in, and I keep learning to sharpen my insights. [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] In the most important in AI world is GPU performance. GPU performance, the biggest company in the world for this one is NVIDIA. So setting ARM to NVIDIA, it's like sales, but at the same time, we will be receiving NVIDIA shares, so that we will be we will become the leading shareholder of NVIDIA. In the this advancement of GPU is also equivalent to the advancement of our group has failed and 13x in 5 years. Also, for sure that the autonomous driving is coming. And high-tech representative was the smartphone. Smartphone becoming Also bringing the Apple to the market cap Global No. 1 Company, but smartphone is the advanced or the core of the high-tech technology, high-tech device. But going forward, I believe autonomous driving will be also one of the such an advancement autonomous driving is kind of becoming the core, not the level 2 or level 3, but rather level 4 or above, will be available to the market in the future. And the basic for that is the dedicated chip for autonomous driving, which will be mounted in the car. And in 6 years, it becomes about 1000x. By 2024, Atlan we'll have a capacity of 1,000 times In about, last month, NVIDIA announced its grace compared to the traditional chip, AI learning speed became 1 tenth, And I think this Grace is it was very important announcement because number 1 of GPU, NVIDIA, using ARM CPU design, taking advantage of such technology in Powered by ARM GPU, will be building cloud servers It will be the latest edge technology, which was just announced. So NVIDIA plus ARM announcing such Chip for computing platform for AI, this will be very essential. And also, this merger is still under process for the regulatory approval, and I'm convinced that we'll be able to received such approval and engineer from an NVIDIA and ARM by collaborating each other, they'll be the strongest chip dedicated for AI or building great performance off the platform so that they're not the same time continuously will be able to serve for the clients. So for the industry, we believe that will be a great news. So AI, just the beginning. AI is disrupting every industry and making even more developments. Vision Fund 1, 2 and LatAm Fund in total, Number of total companies are 224, including those approved by our investment committee. Just about 3 months ago, when we announced our earnings, it was 164 companies. So we have added about 60 companies in 3 months. Vision Fund 1 has already finished its investment period so that it will be supported by IPOs and other event. That fund 2 is now just begun, so that number of the company wise, it's already exceeded the number of company, which is 95 Envision Fund 2 compared to 92 Envision Fund 1. Fund 2 just has begun and because SoftBank doesn't have money, and you cannot really invite 3rd party investors so that the people may say that we just are slowing down slow start for Vision Fund 2, and many people may think that way, but actually Vision Fund 2 has already invested more than number of Companies and Vision Fund 1. In addition, LATAM has also invested in 37 Companies and also growing together with others, 224 companies. Over last year, 14 companies went public. Before then, 6 companies went public. So 6, 14, that's how we see the increase of the number of companies went public in 2021. Actually, we believe we'll be able to see more IPOs than the last year or this last fiscal year. So has already been seeing up lines of those IPOs with specific companies that we are expecting that they are preparing for going public. And by increasing such more companies or the investment company invested companies number increase, the more that we invest, the more we see the IPO, so it's not the luck. It's not the bad luck or good luck, but it's just a matter of certain possibilities that we believe we'll be able to see the good work out of our ecosystem. And that's what I have said in the beginning. I said that the lack of a systematic approach, that was missing and that was my regret in the past, so that's something that I would like to strengthen and enhance so that we'll be able to improve and even develop further. Out of 224 companies, I cannot go every company to introduce to you, so I would like to pick up some interesting one for you, as an example, GoPass. You may not know, I believe, the name of the company, but simply put, online convenience store, so it's like a micro warehouse you put the inventory in the warehouse, and there are about 3,000 items. In the if you receive your order, in average, 23 minutes or so that you'll be able to deliver to your home, So about 20, 25 minutes. I will say, as of today, 23 minutes or so. And also, we ask for delivery fee for about $1.95 and the subscription fee is $5.95 per month. So we have a quite robust business model here and also have a very good high margin. So it's very good business in terms of profitability. I want you to see some video here. Using your smartphone, you'll be able to pick up. It's like a convenience stores for you. So like you usually shop, you'll be able to to deliver to you to your home. And also you can inform you, you'll be receiving information that your stuff has arrived, and you'll be able to be receiving. So after you shop, you'll be able to deliver. It's not the next day or it's not 24 hours. It's about immediately almost immediately. So that's a goal path. So the base for logistics, micro warehouse, there are about 450 locations with 60 650 cities in United States and these days are now expanding to Europe. And they have a partner brands where that has an convenient source, but they are the partners. They limited to the number of SKU instead of expanding to 1,000,000, 2,000,000, anything, but rather limited to most frequently, purchased goods. That's the model for goPuff. So using AI, you'll be able to see the user contribution, regionalities, day of the week, time of the day, event, those data are accumulated, and AI will forecast the demands real time by time, by store, by locations and analyze those in deep so that you'll be able to optimize the inventory in the warehouse so that you'll be able to deliver in 20 to 25 minutes, which is making a rapid growth better. This just announced last night of Japan time that the merger of SPAC has just announced yesterday, last night. Mortgage loan, people So purchasing home, house is the biggest shopping of your life, I believe, for most people. And when you purchase there are many complicated processes in United States. If you have about 10x of sales and buy, then that's going to be so or TDS, many complicated registration process. If then that will allow you to do on one stop, all in online in AI so that you don't need to transact with people. And also loan process is very, wrap quick and not asset heavy. And the financing as institution or banks can be arranged with low interest rate and, immediate, loaning process can be matched to the client, so matching engine is run by, AI. From banks' or financial institutions' point of view, they don't need to do the interview with clients, check the paper box, insurance, all those things does not really need it. Just one package better will do it for you In just banks or financial institutions, based on the clients' credit scoring that you'll be able to tell the value of the housing itself, matching all those that you'll be able to make the process complete so that hours per loan estimate 1.20 2. And also, hours per funded loan, 1 third. So that at the same time, loan per month has increased by 2.5x, and the labor cost has decreased to onethree. As a result, loan origination has increased from €4,900,000,000 to €24,200,000,000 It's not the better balance sheet using, but the better it's just introducing to banks, financial institutions. It's a kind of agent in matching between clients and financial institutions. And the sales from that matching comes 10x in 1 year and has already making €876,000,000 of net revenue. I have high expectation on this company. Jelly smack. This is the 21st century type of creator group. Creator groups like Hollywood Movie Stars, Musicians, those people are the group of creators and the people manage such creator group is, for example, Universal Music, Sony Pictures. There are so such and such management company and also distribute such products to the to people. A 21st century type of creator is Jellys Mag here. Won't you also see the video here again? Longer than TV, so that the Instagrams, TikToks, there are a variety of the short clips are now available and the young generations are spending more time in short clips than TV. And, creators, So many creators in JellisMAX has been viewed. And here, 200 people, popular creator is in this, group and dedicated, contract like Hollywood, 200 top creators are dedicated to Jettismarck, and their sales comes in, certain ratio out of their sales is coming to Jellysmack. In the YouTuber, for example, it's a very popular YouTuber. In the YouTube, about the medium followers, if you have 1000000, followers, once you became popular, you may be able to get the revenue of about 1 1,000,000 yen but that's coming from the advertisement revenue share will be distributed to YouTubers, but even they become a star in YouTube, about 80% is stopped at YouTube. They cannot go over cross sell sales, like Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, only about 20% can do the cross sell to the other SNS, which is very hard job, hard work. For creators, the most complicated part is editing, for their content. So this editing, probably shooting the video is not that hard, but you have to do the good quality of editing. Otherwise, you cannot really bring impressive show clips. YouTube versus 10 minutes. Facebook, that's about 3 minutes or so. TikTok, about 15 seconds. So for those that for 10 minutes has to be edited again for 3 minutes or 15 seconds. The editing process every time is very hard working, and also you need know how for that. So as a result, you'll be only sticked at the one content. That's about 80% of YouTubers. Cross selling, requires tools, technologies, consultations or the charged advertisement and increase, that's what the Jellis Smack does. For example, Brad, which is who is popular in United States, he has a follow-up above 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 in YouTube, but by belonging to, Jerry Smack that they'll be he became increasing the number of followers and further cross sell With the advice and support by Jerry Marksmark, he has now got 9,700,000 followers in Facebook. In addition, Snapchat, he has he acquired about 4,500,000 followers. So if you are only receiving 1,000,000 yen per month now that you'll be able to increase your revenue by 10x, 100x and so on, so for those that who are popular in YouTube, the AI every day, real time that checking new stars discover those great talents in YouTube dedicated, they are asking, those popular YouTubers, introducing to Jellys Mark. And now that the JD's Mac total the followers of 360,000,000 and more than 10,000,000,000 monthly viewer. So number of viewers, it's already number 3 out of total number of viewers. 1st is Disney. 2nd is Viacom. Much more than Fox and Comcast, so this J. S. Mac can be viewed as media. It's huge and tracks. AI can image recognition, as you know, [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] But recognizing images doesn't mean a lot. The image [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] To secure shelf space, for example, one of the most important the responsibilities that sales guys should bear is to make sure that you've got shelf space at retail shops, you need to negotiate with the owners of the shops, and you need to go through some mitigations and surveys, and also you need to check prices of competitors. Just show you a video. And so we pioneered a new way forward for the industry. We built a breakthrough computer vision and analytics platform that execution in store visits and retailers to enhance their offerings. For example, some products are in short supply. When SoftBank was doing publishing business and selling software at retail shops. I visited shops every day, and it's important to secure the space, location, Michelle's to catch customers' eyes And also, space close to cash flows are very important. And Not taking notes, but just shooting image and upload to trucks, Then Trucks can give you advice by processing images. And cost of inference reduced dramatically from 1,000,000 yen to only 3 yen in 2 years, so AI contributed a huge cost reduction. So sales guys go out there and take photos and upload the images to this tracks. Then brand and package category amount price size should be analyzed by AI. Then effects of AIUs will be like this. For example, stock duration, stock out duration Number of stores per sales team grew dramatically, and revenue grew by 1.2x. So revenue grew by 1.2x, and then profit should be doubled. So very household name of the brands, American brands, want to sign a deal with trucks because they can expect better cost performance and better sales and profit. And from retail's perspective, they can reduce the time to manage shelves and to prevent going to redefine how the sales guides work. And recently, automatic process is taking place, and tracks is growing exponentially, and job and talent is AI Talent Matching. Part time workers, temp workers for a shorter period of time, even though the term is very short, you have to go through face to face interviews and paperwork processing and decentralized information. That's a traditional way, but with AI, Everything can be matched. Currently, 95,000 workers signed a contract with this job and talent, and over 1,000 employers are using this platform and worker satisfaction increased, worker retention increased, and again, big brand names like Walmart and Cisco and Pfizer, those Companies are using job and talent for, talent matching. So the list goes on and gone, and I review those companies that invested in every day. The number of companies grew by 20 per month. So we are making investment decision almost every day. So again, to summarize, I showed you a lot of numbers like NAV, net income, LPV and IRR. A lot of numbers I talked about in this presentation, but the most important thing is summarize here on this one photo. Over the rail crossing, there's a huge dream and grab that dream no matter what it takes. The sound of the signal and the sound of my heartbeat I had such motivation and drive and excitement like a chemical reaction. That excitement of me. And so long as I have this passion and excitement and heartbeat, I will keep chasing my dream over the wheel cross. I will keep chasing bigger dream and achieve the goal That drive and motivation and excitement are the most important weapon and asset for SoftBank. No matter how many shares we have, no matter how much profit we delivered, that's probably, one snapshot, but I'm not satisfied with JPY 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or even with JPY 10,000,000,000,000 I keep going so long as I am excited. That's my passion. Yes, there are some regrets and lessons learned, but there is an opportunity for growth so long as we learn a lesson. So not gambling, not onetime gain. We have systematic approach in place so that we can be a true producer of Golden ex AI revolution has just begun. I talked a lot about money, but money is just a tool. From SoftBank's perspective, what matters most is our vision that has been remaining the same since the foundation of the company. Information Revolution, Happiness for Everyone. Reduce sorrow, increase happiness. That's our ultimate vision. Thank you very much for your attendance and participation. Thank you. Thank you. Let's have a question and answer session. We take questions from those on-site, and we will bring you a microphone. If you have a question, raise your hand and state your name and the company. And people Online. Please access to Zoom webinar and press raise hand button and hold on for a moment until you are called. And if you want to withdraw your question, please make sure to put press retract question. And we take one question per person so that we can take as many questions as possible. So participants from the site, please. Thank you very much. My name is Iwata from Nikkei Newspaper. Vision Fund 2, I have a question. So we have you have already spent $30,000,000,000 Do you have any plan to invite 3rd party investors ups in the future. And are you planning to provide a fixed fee like you did in the first vision, the number of the company invested has increased than number, Beijing Fund 1. But is it the smaller size of the investment per company? Or do you change have you changed your investment policy compared to Vision Fund 1? We have spent about a few months after launch of Vision 1.2 and doing pretty good. So in the beginning, we were inviting many outside investors, it was nobody actually So we have started by ourselves. But actually, after we started it, we thought, hey, it's okay. Only with us do this fund because just about a year ago, we have announced the JPY 4,500,000,000,000 monetization program and actually that we have raised war achieved about €10,000,000,000,000 monetization, about half of those are from the sales of ARM, of course. So that's still waiting for the approval by the regulators. But money wise, we have quite enough cash in hands. So only by our cash, we could do our investment activities by ourselves. Therefore, that right now that we would like to continue investing using our own cash, Fund 1, we will see the exit like the divestment or sales of the shares after they go public so that we'll be able to receive the distribution so that we believe that we'll be able to recycle those money for the new investments. So that's the status we have already achieved. So the situation has changed since then. Having said that, it's not that we don't invite at all from the 3rd party investor, the but we don't have to beg for participation, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we don't ask any other third party participation. At this moment, we just will be able to run our investment business by our own money. Next question from the floor. Thank you very much. Ichikawa from Yomiuri Paper. Question about mid- to long term growth strategy. Looking at the latest profit, your level as big as Berkshire Hathaway, for example. But Berkshire, the market cap is much better than their profit level. Of course, you have different portfolio and history from Berkshire Hathaway. And for you to grow further as an investment company, what kind of strategy or view or investment policy NAV, which excludes debt, But in order for us to be properly valued, we need to learn a lot of lessons, and we need to keep improving ourselves so that we make, a lot of people comfortable and confident with what we are doing, how we are doing. We make, gain sustainably, not just by one time. Then at some point, I believe that we will enjoy premium on our value. But until then, we keep just going forward and keep working on ourselves. Then once we are properly valued. That would make us happy. But even if that's not the case, what I do will remain the same, and we will continue striving for, the better days. And hopefully, eventually, so long as we keep striving for better, we will see some good results. Next question, please. My name is Sephora from Wall Street Journal. I have one question. Investment vision for the future. I would like you to elaborate a bit. For example, will you be creating another fund like Vision Fund 2? Or are you going to create Vision 1.3 or 4, inviting 3rd party money? As I mentioned earlier, In Vision Fund 2, 100% our own money, we've been doing our good investment. We still have some room there, and also we will be able to expect, distribution from Vision Fund 1 and 2 by going by portfolio going public and so on so that at this moment, I think we will be able to continue the current status. In the future, we may consider inviting 3rd party money, but we don't know yet at this moment. At this moment, we just like to continue what we are doing right now as the current structure. So 60 companies added in 3 months. So we believe we'll be able to continuously doing the same. Next question on the floor. Kikuchi from Toyo Keizai. Question about Vision Fund 2. As of end of December, commitment was 10,000,000,000 And as of March sorry, May, dollars 30,000,000,000 And you said you added 16 companies on your portfolio in just a few months. So what kind of view you have in terms of the size of the investment? Since we have plenty of cash in hand, So long as there is an investment opportunity, we will put together the money that is needed. So depending on how much we have in our hands and what kind of investment opportunities out there. So far, we have been seeing and discovering great AI companies. And those AI companies that we want to keep investing in those potential businesses, and we get return from exit and other ways. Then we should be able to see further growth. For example, like you mentioned, from 1,000,000,000,000 yen to 3,000,000,000,000 yen we grew by size, but we will continue doing that so long as there are opportunities. My name is Takagi from Sankei Newspaper. At the European Committee that there were a regulatory for the control over AI and also some regulations over the platform. So there are some movements on the enhancement of restrictions on such AI. Does that impact to your vision on AI the future. I believe we need regulations on that. If there is no regulation at all, serve issues which may arise in the society. So regulation itself is, I believe necessary for new such a new industry in any country that always needs to address the new arising issues whenever there is new industry, so society requires such new regulations. But at the same time, development of the AI technology is advancing rapidly so that the regulations or the rules within such umbrella, we believe that the development of technology will continue and for opportunities for that to be even more in the future. That's how I see. [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] And one more, 2 more from the floor. Akato from NHK. Follow-up on that question. Regulation and investment policy, especially in China, regulations on IT companies are stricter and stricter. Due to that, I wonder if you have different view from investment policy perspective, for example, Right. Not only in China but Western countries, new regulations are coming up. Like I said earlier, new issue needs to be addressed by new regulation. I think, in principle, it's good for healthy growth of the society. So I welcome such regulations. But from our perspective, I don't expect that would have an impact on our investment policy, especially since we are looking at unicorn, not giants like a golfer companies. We are looking at new pioneers that would to explore new fields. So the current regulation discussions are probably different from what we are looking at. My name is Goto from Mynichi Newspaper. I want to ask you about the holding policy for Alibaba share. Alibaba, some incident, some news coverage and so on, but the performance business performance wise, actually, they are providing necessary service for the people so that business performance is actually growing, continuously growing. So our policy of Alibaba is, in principle, no change. And gentlemen over there. Sam from Reuters. Question about Bitcoin. Tesla, Nexon, they made an investment in Bitcoin. So under that background, have you ever thought about investing in Bitcoin? Well, Bitcoin, per se, whether it's good or bad, there are a lot of debates going on. How much Bitcoin But I also note that there are a lot of people who want to own bitcoins or those currencies, virtual currencies and platform or infrastructure that delivered things like Bitcoin probably are growing because there are a lot of people out peer who are investing in bitcoin like investing in gold, stocks and bonds, but we still have a discussion with my team whether or not we invest in Bitcoin or not. So now we'd like to take questions from people online. The first question is Inagaki san from Financial Times. [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:] So now that we would like to take questions from the team, So to avoid any echoing, please make sure to disconnect the live streaming other than Zoom webinar. Now that we would like to take a question from Inagaki san from Financial Times. Yes, this is Inagaki from Financial Times. Mapbox that Investime SoftBank Vision Fund and the spike by SoftBank Group merger end going public, that was a news coverage that I saw or news coverage. So for the way of using spec To list Vision Fund Company, are you going to use the SPEP that established by SoftBank Group. And is that something healthy rate to do the IPO? That's something that I would like to ask you, your view on that. Possibility wise, yes, which means in any companies, we have invested 20%, 30% or 40%. And more than 51% or majority is not the way that we invest in such companies. And each company, for for example, Mapbox that you just mentioned, I don't believe that there is no any official announcements or anything like that, but even if there is such a discussion going on, but each company in their own Board meeting, analyze many offers out of many specs in any proposal or offer from the Vision Fund's back should be the good one from such company. And even from our point of view, if it is attractive, then the size or the company's status in many terms are satisfied in both way, if it's a win win relationship, then that kind of matching could be happens. I don't deny that possibility. End, we have about 224 companies under our umbrella. Even we do the SPAC, it's only going to be just a handful Majority of the companies will be going public in traditional way. That's the main route that we are looking at. Just a part of those can be, we may be the sponsor for the SPAC side. It's all case by case. It's not violating any rules or it's not healthy or anything. It's just the company itself decide based on the offer from many spec proposal. And in the board meeting of such company decide our taking our offer if we are proposing any, And that can be the competition amongst the SPAC sponsors. If we are the only sponsor for this SPAC for the offer, may not be the case for many cases from my understanding. That could be very unhealthy, but so that we would not be the only offer or only sponsor candidates for the SPAC. But amongst the many offers all the proposals by the sponsor candidates of SPAC, we may be also the one. That's one possibility we don't deny. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question is from Brumberg. Mr. Or Ms. Pavel, please unmute Pavel. I have a question about share buyback. So the existing program should be completed by the end of this day today. You spent about JPY 200,000,000,000 per month to repurchase shares. And I wonder if there will be another commitment. Or if not, How much do you think you can support our share price going forward? At an appropriate time, We may make an announcement of further share buyback, but at the moment, there's no decision made with regards to further share buyback. And you mentioned that supporting share price, well, Once you make announcement and do share buybacks, in many cases, share price may go back go up. But supporting share price is not the goal. If you think it's beneficial for us to buy back shares, we will do. And at the same time, we need to keep looking at investment opportunities and also need to keep looking at LTV and the balance sheet. And if share price remained underperformed for a long time, yes, we will consider buying back our own shares. So we are looking at a lot of options and balances and make profit decisions accordingly. Next question, please. Thank you very much. We will take a question from Owada san from I would like to ask you the utilization of digitals in Japan. So digital agency has established, and now that digitalization is ongoing in Japan, but at the same time, the benefits distributions has been complicated. Vaccination systems still have a challenge in IT side. And you must mention that Japan should be advanced country in digital or digitalization or IT. And to increase such an capability, what should we do? What we should do? So you, the IRR, 43%, how can you contribute to Japanese society in terms of digitalization? I believe there are about 1,000 unicorns around the world, especially focusing AI. In Japan, there are only 3 companies. Definitely, we are behind in terms of AI revolution, and that's the fact. And digital transformation or in the next steps, AI transformation is waiting for us, ahead of us. So digital is already the common sense. If it's not digitalized, already we are not in the starting line yet. There are many people still using Facsimile for sharing the result of PCR testing, for example. That's very embarrassing. Even cannot talk about that. So that digital transformation is, of course, we have to do, but on top of that, now that the global society is now competing against AI technology so that we should be in the on the same starting line, not behind the starting line. So we have to be on the same stage with the other countries. So if there's 1,000 companies around the world, we should have about 110 scent should be coming from Japan, so that means that that concerns me a lot as well, but at the same time, I'm not a politician. I am not a decision making body or process person or anything. So that what we're doing as one company, we just show the showcase showcasing our success track record by doing our businesses, investing in global companies and hoping that we'll be able to judge. The panel will be motivated to do the same and hoping that we'll be able to have good unicorns to be raised in Japanese market as well. So I'm thinking, how can we set the environment. I do have some ideas, but it's too early to tell. But hope that we'll be able to have a ground so that the Japanese unicorn will be able to raise in Japanese market, and probably it's too early to discuss at this moment regarding what kind of idea I have at this moment, but I'm pretty sad to see the current situation of Japan. Thank you. Next question is from Yamamoto san from Asahi Newspaper. Thank you very much Yamamoto from Asahi Newspaper. Looking at earnings results, You mentioned that some people may see it as by accident, but also you said that you're not satisfied with five, 6, 10,000,000,000,000 yen yen yen But you delivered the biggest income amongst the Japanese companies. And in the past, Toyota had been the top on the list in terms of income, but you are exceeding Toyota. What's your view? Yes. Well, JPY 6,000,000,000 of net income, just actually by accident, broadly speaking. So we are not over proud of that, but we achieved that, and I don't want it to be just one time. I want to make sure that we can go further with systematic approach. Again, we have learnings and regrets. And so long as we learn from those lessons, we have opportunity for improvement and growth. And eventually, Many people hopefully will start stop saying that, oh, it's just one time by accident. We will definitely be a sustainable profit maker. That's our passion. Thank you very much. We are about time, so next question will be the last question. Now that we would like to take a question from Ishikawa san from Freelance. Yes, this is Ishikawa speaking. So 40 years of history in SoftBank Group. There are NTT, MIT or MIC that you've been battling or competing, that there are some entertainment dinner issue between NTT and Sea, but how did you take the discussion? Our supervised agency wise that we are not receiving any parachuting from such supervising We have been communicating internally and externally. Dinner or, entertainment with, supervising agency should not be happening. We don't do that. But actually, even more bigger issue is Tens of 1,000,000 of yen paid to receive parachuting from a supervising agency, that can be a human resource issue. It's a human resource bribery. So JPY 50000, JPY 10,000 dinner is rather small amount. Actually, tens of 1,000,000 of yen, parachuting from such government agency taking the position in the company just about 2 years in between and continuously receive such parachuting resources from, governmental offices. That's if not the bribery, what is? Why people don't really doubt about or ask about it? It's not only the same company, but it's actually industry, in any industry, that's structural issue. I believe that should be even more we should be more upset about vaccinations, for example, Pharmaceutical companies or there are so many things that I would like to discuss here, but today's just earning results announcement. I shouldn't be off the course, in terms of such discussions. So And also, if I say one word, SoftBank Corp. Employees' managements, they be it will be negatively received, so I always put up is what I remember I want to say because it's going to be negatively damaged to our SoftBank Corp Management. But sometimes, I may need to say a thing, but for today, this is earnings result announcements and very end of the year's my presentation. I don't want to make any off the course discussion or speech, but