Thank you very much for waiting, everyone. We would like to start SoftBank Group Corp earnings results briefing for the nine-month period ended December 31st, 2022. First of all, I would like to introduce today's participants. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO. Kazuko Kimiwada, Senior Vice President and Head of Accounting Unit. Navneet Govil, CFO, Member of the Executive Committee, SB Global Advisers. He's joining remotely due to unavoidable reasons. Thank you for your understanding. Ian Thornton, Investor Relations Vice President, Arm. Today's briefing is live broadcast over internet. I would like to invite Mr. Goto, Board Director and CFO, to present you the earnings results and business overview. Mr. Goto, please.
This is Goto speaking. Thank you very much for your time today. Good afternoon. Since last quarter, we have changed approach for these earnings from Masa to myself. I'm not, I'm still working on making better presentations, hopefully that I will be able to make it a good presentation for you. The first that I would like to start covering from most important indicators for SBG. I would also talk about the environment and market later on. As you know, the indicators are somehow unstable, especially looking at the equity market. January to March, April to June last year was very unstable. After then we see some improvement signs, but still, we cannot be optimistic at this moment yet.
As a result, we've been seeing a lot of fluctuation in interest rates. Key rates been moving around in many markets. But at the same, but I believe it's important for us to show you the robust balance sheet. As an in-investment company, of course, one of the most important engines for the business overall is Vision Fund. I would also like to share with you the current status of Vision Fund. Including all those factors, I like to first of all show you the robustness and healthiestness of our balance sheet. Net asset value. This is about JPY 13.9 trillion. The loan to value to check the safetiness of the debt, which is 18.2%. This is to calculate loan against how much we have as an assets.
For the short-term period, cash position is one of the important indicator to check our healthiness. This was JPY 3.8 trillion. These three indicators are well managed in safe level. Being in this position, we believe as an investment company, as long as we're being conservative in terms of new investment activities and so on, we believe that we'll be able to maintain this healthy organizations, healthy business. Compared to the end of September, net asset value has decreased a bit. September end was JPY 16.7 trillion, this time December quarter, JPY 13.9 trillion. We did have a foreign exchange impact, which was not small. JPY 1.5 trillion equivalent was about an impact to net asset value, so that not directly from the fundamentals from the portfolio companies or investees.
Foreign exchange, September end was JPY 144 per dollar. December end was JPY 132 per dollar. This was quite volatile, and that made an impact to our assets as well as P&L. Loan to value. 18.2% at the third quarter. From the 15% of second quarter, we had increased by 3% point. For your information this 25% itself is already safe number, and we do have a very maintained low compared to 25. Even we have a slight increase compared to last quarter in teens level, that we believe we are very much safe enough. Number-wise, it looks a bit increased. However, as you can see on page eight, this has some foreign exchange impact. If we exclude foreign exchange impact, it was 16.2%. Foreign exchange impact was about 2% point. Cash position, end of September, JPY 4.3 trillion, JPY 3.8 trillion for December end.
Slight decrease, some are used for the debt repayments, therefore, that we don't think any changes in our healthiness. Also this has some impact from foreign exchange. About JPY 200 billion or so was due to the foreign exchange impact. Based on these KPI, our status, we are very much solid defense mode. No change, no issues here at all. We have a very ample cash position. What is this for, you may ask. This is whenever we would like to switch our mode to offense, we would be able to play for that and we would like to be prepared for the time to come. As of today, safetiness is as you saw, but for the Vision Fund, in over past one year or so, environment was very tough and very severe management has been executed.
With the tightened management, and based on that, we would like to see how the market and environments will go and change. When do we start playing offense? Which is a quite difficult question, but I want you to also see the market situation. This is equity market. We have September end and the December end for the quarter end. From December end to as of today, to date basis, on your far right on the chart. This is actually showing some increasing trend since December end. One example is S&P 500, NASDAQ, and also Golden Dragon China. This is which is the Chinese companies in NASDAQ.
Each actually that we also picked up the examples of our public securities that are held by Vision Fund 1, Vision Fund 2, and SBG itself. These are the major investee of each party. You see it has some characteristics, trend wise in the past one year or two years, it has hit the bottom and actually showing the sign of increasing. That's something that I believe we can summarize as a kind of a one-year history. From now, what's happening now after this? We believe that there will be three scenario that we can think of, and we are actually prepared for each of these three scenarios for our financial strategies or for the time of to switch our mode from defense to offense. Scenario one is the optimistic scenario, which is the linear recovery. Scenario two, instability followed by recovery from second half this year.
Which is based on the view by analyst or market, I believe that the majority of the people are actually looking into this scenario two. The scenario three is a further decline followed by recovery after 2024. In each scenarios, actually we are fully prepared for that. Because as an investment company, we need to face those reality. In that case, do we want to, and we do want to being very robust in terms of balance sheet so that we'll be able to be prepared for the any risk case scenario. Optimistic case, pessimistic case, or the base case. As an investment company, we believe it is very even more important for us to keep the defense mode. I believe we can change our mode to offense mode any time.
As you saw that we have a very ample cash positions so that we can change our mode anytime if we wish to, which means we don't have to rush. We don't want to waste money either. This is the market view. Private equity is the main directions for the Vision Fund investments. We've been seeing the factors that we need to focus, which includes inflation trend, key interest rate, possible recessions. In addition, we also need to focus and pay attention to this tension situations caused by this geopolitical risks and situations. We do need to kind of make a outlook based on those movements.
For the equity market recovery, there are many voices are said that second half of this year it's something that we may see in recovery, but also we need to pay attention to the pessimistic scenario of further decline. Majority of our investees are the private companies, therefore, can they do the financing under such circumstance? Also can they look for IPO event in the course of their process? Those are the things that we need to pay attention to. As a group overall, including Vision Fund, this is the investment strategies as a group as a whole. No change at all. We will be being there as a vision capitalist for the information revolution, and also our fund is managed by the long term.
We want to be the biggest players in the information revolution. Well, once again, we are in a defense mode so that we are financially prepared for all the scenarios. For the Vision Fund case, they have about 500 and some investees, which requires the good re-monitoring and good support. From the SoftBank Group's point of view, we have a direct investment in Arm, which is the very much focused. Other than that, we have SoftBank Corp. mobile operators, and also the Z Holdings, which we recently announced the mergers with the, amongst the Yahoo Japan Corporation and LINE Corporation. As a shareholder of those companies that we do need to be prepared in being ready for any scenarios to come.
I have talked about the current snapshot, and let me move on to consolidated results, which is shown on page 19. This is result from the first quarter through third quarter of FY 2022. Net sales, JPY 4.8 trillion. Loss on investment, JPY 1.3 trillion. Income before income tax, JPY -290 billion. Net loss, JPY -912 billion. We are still against wind. These are consolidated numbers, and we have some specific characteristics when it comes to gain or loss on investment. Last financial result announcement, we explained a little bit about Alibaba's transaction. We did early settlement of Alibaba's, and we had about JPY 3.7 trillion. That was a big gain in the last nine months.
However, looking at loss, from Q1 through Q3, we are looking at a JPY 5 trillion loss from the SoftBank Vision Fund. Loss has increased. In net, we are looking at loss on investment by JPY 1.3 trillion. Again, this is loss on investment. Another number I'd like to mention here is income before income tax by the segment. SoftBank Vision Fund income before income tax was a J PY -4 trillion. Different between loss in investment and income before income tax is because LP's holding was deducted or not. When it comes to loss on investment, Alibaba's gain was included. SoftBank, Arm, all in good, especially Arm. We are looking at consecutive positive numbers, which I'll come back to later in my presentation. Net income by the quarterly, it's shown on this slide. On the far right, JPY -783. This is third quarter number.
In the second quarter, because of the gain from Alibaba transaction, we are looking at a JPY +3 trillion. This was one time, and if we didn't have that Alibaba transaction, we would have seen negative numbers in the second quarter. We are also looking at the trend of improvement of net loss by quarter by quarter. The next slide shows impact of Forex. In terms of net asset value, weaker yen has a positive impact. Why? Because most of our assets are held in foreign denominated currency. So for example, if yen gets weaker against USD, assets in USD term is improved. However, in recent months, yen is getting a little bit stronger. That's why this number compared to the September number is a little bit smaller. In terms of consolidated net income, Forex impact is negative.
Again, since yen is getting stronger a little bit, the impact was little bit milder compared to first half of this fiscal year. When it comes to monetization, we will see real value. Of course, foreign exchange goes up or down, we are not exercising extreme hedging. Again, most of our payment is in dollar terms. Most of the assets, like I said earlier, are held in a dollar currency. Like I said earlier, we have ample cash position. We have a good balance of assets held in yen and assets held in foreign currencies. Next slide shows net asset value. The trend since 1999. In the last 12 months, the trend is downward due to market conditions. Still, we have a net asset value as much as JPY 14 trillion .
In the history of SoftBank, we believe this NAV is good enough. From September through December, net asset value decreased from JPY 19.7 trillion- JPY 16.9 trillion. If you go deeper, impact from Forex is JPY 1.5 trillion. Also, share price had impact by about JPY 0 trillion. Share repurchases impact about JPY 0.5 trillion, and also we paid tax. Therefore, NAV as of December 31st is JPY 14 trillion. Net asset value per share and share price is shown here. Also you can see discount against actual market price, which I'm sure investors are interested in. As of September end, discount was about 55%. Stock price was less than JPY 5,000. As of December end, discount was 40%, so 15% improvement it looks like.
Stock price went up, which is good. Fact of the matter is, assets went down. Even though discount was improved, we can't be 100% happy about this. We need to make sure that our investees will gain values, improve values, while we can improve our discount. By the way, our stock prices have been performing well. As of February 3rd, the price was 6,328. Now, equity value of holdings. As of December end, it was JPY 16.9 trillion. One year ago, if you look at the far-right bar, excuse me, far left bar, Alibaba's portion decreased from Q3 FY 2021- Q3 FY 2022. Of equity value of holding, Alibaba accounts for 12%. In fact, SoftBank Corp. accounts for 13%, which is bigger than Alibaba.
SoftBank Vision Fund accounts for 43%, and Arm, which is a private company, accounts for 16%, which is a good presence here in terms of equity value of holdings. How should we look at decrease of equity value of holdings? At the beginning of the term or end of March last year, if you compare to the end of March last year, the equity value of holdings was 23%, and now 16.9%. Was that a significant decrease? Well, not necessarily so, because JPY 3.2 trillion was for monetization. That's one driver of the decrease. It's not a simple decrease from 23- 16. In reality, it would have been from 23 to 20, and 3 is for monetization or exchange to cash, which is stronger.
It could be said we had JPY 3.3 of improvement in terms of equity value of holdings. If you look at the diversified portfolio in pie chart, like I said earlier, a big increase came from Alibaba. Big decrease, excuse me, came from Alibaba. In Vision Fund, 43%. You may say that this still has a big portion of the pie chart, and 43% consists of about 500 companies in the portfolio. Diversification of the portfolio is very important from a value perspective and a safetiness perspective. From credit perspective and a value perspective, from the April 1st through December 31st, we have been further diversified portfolio. From the rating perspective, portion of public shares, if you look at the right top corner, as of March 31st, 2022, percent of listed shares was 52%.
As of December 31st, it went down to 44%. When Arm is listed again, that percentage, it would go even further. I believe that you'll feel more comfortable about our safetiness and stabilitiness of the business. Now let me touch upon SoftBank Vision Funds. This slide, which is page 32, is gain or loss on investment since the inception of SoftBank Vision Fund. Unfortunately, however, in the latest second quarter, we are looking at increased loss. This fund, longevity is long and, we need to make sure that, we will do our best to increase the value of the funds even further. The next slide shows gain or loss in investments on quarterly basis. In the latest quarter, which is the third quarter of 2022, we are looking at minus of JPY 5.1 billion. Loss continues.
As far as the graph goes, the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year were most challenging, it's been improving since then, so we are on the improvement trend. This trend is in line of the trend of the equity market. We try to value our assets as conservative as possible, especially when it comes to private companies. Evaluating private company is very important and also difficult. We are looking at the third party's views and also we combined with other indexes and every quarter we mark those investments. Again, our investment longevity is long and we will do new investments and also we will increase the value of the portfolio so that we can make the funds a success as a core business of our Group.
As you know, we have SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. This slide shows SoftBank Vision Fund 1's cumulative investment return. Investment cost, $89.6 billion. Cumulative investment return as of December 31st was $100 billion. As you can see, exited portion increased, private companies currently held, we have high expectation from those private companies. The public companies currently held not exited yet. Currently, return is getting smaller. Cost is bigger than the return for the public companies currently held. That's a challenge for us. Vision Fund 2's cumulative investment return is shown here. It's relatively new fund, they have been looking at very challenging market condition since the inception. Investment cost was $49 billion and cumulative investment return, $33 billion. That's a very conservative view of ours.
Part of the investments were exited and this portfolio, the management team is working on improving the value of the portfolio. Again, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is relatively new and again, we need to make sure that Vision Fund 2 will do their best to increase the value of the portfolio. From a different angle of the underperformance of the fund business, if you look at this pie chart, on the left-hand side it shows as of March 31, 2022, 450 company consisted of the portfolio, and whether the value was gained or lost. At that point, 169 company lost values, whereas 163 companies gained value. Again, since then, market condition has been very, very challenging. Although the company invested increased to 472, of that, 344 lost their values.
Even though the condition, market condition was very tough, 100 companies gained value. Some companies were doing good, but most of the companies, however, are struggling. That shows the overall trend globally. I believe that other similar funds like us are against the tough wind. We as a venture capital are committed to supporting emerging businesses going forward. This slide shows gain or loss on investments and factors behind gain or loss. If you look at marked down cases, 38 companies, public portfolio companies, JPY 16.6 million marked down. Performance of a portfolio company was another reason why 138 companies are marked down by JPY 12 million.
That's something specific in the quarter. Not only the market, but also economic environment and supply chain and disruptions. There are some risks and challenges that those portfolio companies are struggling against. Investment amounts are shown here. We remain focused on defense. In fact, in the last quarter, we invested only about $0.3 billion compared to the last year. As you can see, we limit investment to 1/10. This slide shows stock offerings and sales and monetization. We don't have many number of stock offerings, only four companies. Sales or monetization, we did by $6.5 billion. We are not desperate in terms of monetization. We are looking at potential of the portfolio companies and also balance of the holdings.
We will make sure that we have a most appropriate policy for monetization or sales in the future. We don't want to pick seeds that have huge potentials in the future. I understand there are some concerns from investors or the markets for SoftBank Vision Funds, and I pick up some examples here. What's the policy in our portfolio companies' cash runways or right? Are we adding value to portfolio companies, or how are we operating and also for any IPO plans? I believe these are the kind of common concerns or questions that you may have. Starting from the policy, this is almost similar with the SoftBank Group's investment policy. The AI revolution is actually the base for the establishing this fund so that no change in belief in AI revolution.
Also, at this moment, focus on defense in the current situation, therefore, that we are heightened disciplines for new investments and also enhancing the value of current portfolios. Based on the needs from portfolios, we are also supporting a variety of the actions and events, expansion of business or entering into new market through the M&A and through the partnership of opening new channels and accelerating innovations. Also, efficiency improvement is one of the biggest agenda so that the driving OpEx reductions and so on. Those are the support and sometimes recommend for the concerned parties. Cash runways of portfolio companies. When you look at Vision Fund 1, 99% of the companies does have an cash runways of over 12 months.
When it comes to Vision Fund 2, compared to Vision Fund 1, of course, because, small new companies, new investments, than Vision Fund 1, it's not 99%, but about 90% of the companies are securing 12 months or above, more cash runways. SoftBank Latin America Fund is a little bit lower than that, close to 80%. It looks the same circles in the three respective funds, but actually, the size of each fund is different so that it cannot be a apple-to-apple comparison. This is the current situations for the cash runway for each respective fund. For Vision Fund 1 and 2, roughly speaking that I would say that those portfolios are very stable in terms of cash management.
For the fund-level initiatives, we are very much paying attention to diversification of portfolio and very much disciplined monetization. We are not desperate to monetize everything, but actually that we would like to have a very much disciplined way of monetization. In addition to that, distributions are another initiative that we're working on. One of the biggest characteristic of the Vision Fund is that the ticket size is large. One ticket size is larger than the others. So taking advantage of such characteristic, We can invest in late stage or sometimes unicorns, and we can actually Make many investments in such companies or such businesses, and that's one of the benefits that we have to have operating such an huge fund.
These companies of the JPY 37 billions or above investment in late stage is something that we can say that are in a better positions for future IPO. Once that the environments and the markets are becoming clearer, I believe that we can have good expectations for the future. One of the driver or the engine for the SoftBank Group is Vision Fund, and the other engine is. Let me summarize or let me also explain about the current status and also the semiconductor industry. In the past 20 years or 30 years, semiconductor industry itself has changed a lot. We have heard media reports about Japan's semiconductor industry and its weakened market positions. In the 20th century, the global semiconductor market was dominated by Japan, U.S., or European countries.
However, in the 21st century, we have seen the rise of Taiwan or the South Korea. Recently we've been witnessing U.S.-China trade frictions and so on. Japan used to account for nearly, I would say, 50% of the global market about 30 years ago, 40 years ago. However, now estimated to be around or below 10%. At the time that Japan used to, Japan had a share of 50%, the role of semiconductors was different. Those days the electrics appliances were the kind of a main user, and they were actually integrated model that where the all the processes starting from design through manufacturing are completed in one group company.
That's why that we were able to have a 50% of the share of the global market, and that's been changing. In 21st century, disaggregated approach become more popular, where design and the manufacturing are separated. In the design stage, fabless firms focus on chip design and development using open architecture like Arm, where the foundry firms focus on manufacturing. They are also not having any plans, but actually they are designing the chip and asking OEMs to the manufacture. We are in a very much changed to disaggregated approach. That change itself is actually even boosting the value of Arm in the market and making Arm stronger in the market.
The value chain of semiconductor, as you can see, are semiconductor IP to start with, and then on to chip design, manufacture, OEM product, and software and applications. With those process, semiconductor product is available for you so that you can enjoy using the service. Computer chips are now so complex that the semiconductor industry has disaggregated into specialists, and these specialist companies provide building blocks or tools such as CPU, GPU, memory controller, and display interface. These building blocks are used by fabless chip design companies to design the semiconductor. This design step is accelerated by using the pre-built components from the IP specialist. These foundries are design companies will subcontract the manufacturing to a foundry.
Due to the huge cost of building a fab where chips are made, few design companies can afford to do this themselves. Only few companies can afford that by themselves. Once a chip is made, it becomes part of the materials going into an OEM product such as smartphone or car. As you can see on this page 49, Arm is kind of a starting point of relay and then bringing onto chip design manufacturer OEM product to software and applications. You'll be able to see the one completed product for you. Arm-based products are indeed everywhere. I believe that almost everything with electricity is using these products and 250 billion chip has been shipped. This is the graph to show the shipments that have been made.
Right immediately after we invested in Arm that you may recall 1 slide that we show at the earnings results announcement, which is something that made me feel something, and this is just to remind you that this was a slide that been used back then. This was one year after the Arm acquisition, so 2017 March, that actually these are the forecast numbers. We are expecting that 200 billion shipments is expected for 2021. Actually, March 2021 already we have exceeded 200 billion and at the end of December 2021, 230 billion. Actually we are over achieved what we have forecasted back then one year after the acquisition of Arm.
Now that we are achieving 250 billion Arm-based chip shipped. The number of such shipments is actually even more growing, and we expecting to expand the business. 8 billion. What's this number? Arm-based chips shipped from July to September 2022. This is the recorded number. One third. What's this? Of all chips with processors are Arm-based. Arm market share is this big, and 70% of the world's population uses Arm technology every day. I think it's in sync with the penetration of mobile phones. Arm's technology helps them to work in good performance. Arm is gaining market share as the shipment number grows in four spaces.
For example, mobile market share grew from 90% in 2016- 95% in 2021. IoT from 30%- 63%, automotive from 10%- 24%, and cloud 0%- 5%. In fact, in mobile space, close to 100%. It can't be exceeding 100%, but Arm can go into adjacent areas from this mobile space. When it comes to IoT, since Arm has most advanced technology, Arm was not really adopted at an early stage of Internet of Things, but it's been changing.
High-performing chips are needed in IoT market and accordingly, Arm's market share grew from 30%- 63% in the space of automotive, as automobiles have more functions and high-performing chips inside automobiles are needed more and more. Space of cloud, initially the share was 0%. Working with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, those big cloud players which have adopted Arm chips technology, accordingly, Arm has grown market share from 0%- 5%.
Consumers want new technologies and new products. In order to meet consumers' expectations, manufacturers need to deliver high-end products continuously. That's due to smartphones. In fact, one smartphone has 50 semiconductors per device and game console, 100 semiconductors per console. When it comes to high-end automotive, maybe Lexus, for example, or Porsche and Tesla, very different cars than traditional cars. Those high-end automobile has 10,000 semiconductors per car, in those spaces, Arm has great opportunities. Arm is looking at the growth of revenue. Our CAGR is 19%. Adjusted EBITDA even further growing. In the latest nine months it grew by 71%. Size of semiconductor industry is going to be bigger and bigger for long term.
In very short-term silicon cycle, in the long run, sometimes you may see ups and downs, but I don't think that currently used chips will go down. As products get higher end and have more functionalities and more almost semiconductors will be used in those devices, and Arm's strength can meet our strong expectations. The future of Arm is tremendous. Arm's strategy is not to sit and wait for the market to grow. In fact, Arm's strategy have four pillars to maintain or gain share in long-term growth markets. Because they've got almost a 100% share of smartphone, they want to keep the share, and also they want to develop more advanced IP, delivering a greater value.
While maintaining a strong hold, Arm wants to invest in emerging technology areas and to make sure that they have appropriate price points by gaining market share in CPU and by increasing a GPU market, then loyalty per piece should go up. Loyalty, they need to make sure that their loyalty is a most appropriate level for them. In the long term, they want to create a sustainable business fit for the future, not only developing things that can sell now, but they want to also focus on developing technologies that can grow in ten years or even further down the road. In fact, what's happening is efforts paid off by the people that they took in some time ago. We announced a plan of Arm IPO, and we are planning to have Arm's IPO sometime in 2023.
The preparation is underway, and we will see how the market condition goes. Last but not least, no change in financial strategy. I don't go into much detail as it has no change, but while we keeping our financial policy, we will look into and explore the investment opportunity. It's not that we're gonna be prioritize investment to a financial policy. I've been talking about this financial policy for over, I would say 14 years. Even one quarter that we miss these words, and maintain loan to value below 25% in normal times, maintain at least two-year worth of bond redemption and secure recurring distributions and dividend income.
In the monetizations and the capital allocation, when you see the waterfall of these, at the end of last fiscal year, March 2022, we had cash position of JPY 2.7 trillion. With the monetization, we had increase of JPY 4.3 trillion, and we used only JPY 0.4 trillion for the Vision Fund investment. JPY 2.7 trillion is our use for the debt repayments to improve our balance sheet, so the credit investors or the loan investors that we wanted to return. Share repurchase, of course, is a return to shareholders. We always are keeping these three factors in mind.
Money, o nce it's available, of course, the investments by Vision Fund is something that we wanted to use. New investment, return to shareholders and the debt repayments, we always like to keep the good balance in between those three. While keeping those, we have 3.8, including undrawn commitment lines, for the cash position for the December end. Cash position JPY 3.8 trillion. Again, this is fully covered to equivalence of the bond redemptions. Buyback since last year, we had repurchased total JPY 1.4 trillion. You may, or the investors may wonder do we have any other program to announce, actually we have already done JPY 1.4 trillion. Buyback or the share repurchase is always the very important agenda for the board of directors meeting.
We always keep discussing about it. In the capital allocation, always explore the best balance of those three factors. Last but not least, SoftBank Group's vision, what we need to do, we have no change in principle, always being a vision capitalist for the information revolution. We would like to be the player to lead IoT AI. As an engine for the SoftBank Group overall, we have we are looking at the company as a net asset value based on the assets. We say that the Vision Fund and Arm ecosystem, those are the two major engine for the company, Vision Fund, ones that had went through the restructuring. Now that with those members that we are working on further good managements.
We are having a very steady and good performance. Masa, who is not here today, but he has been very excited about the future of Arm and the chip future. That the deepness of the market or the size of the transactions, those can be something that we are very much expecting, and we are very much sure that this business or this technology is gonna make a big change to our lifestyle or the working style. Based on such huge, such an huge assumption and the hypothesis that we would like to go on for and explore for all the further steps of the business. Masa is very much working hard on that too.
I believe such now steps for the growth is something that we always needs to keep in mind for the future and the development and growth of SoftBank Group. Of course we need to keep in good defense mode, but at the same time, we want to keep a good focus on something that we should be focusing on, including those drivers, and that's been done mainly led by Masa. We believe that once the time comes, we would like to make a good another step for playing offense. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Now we'd like to move on to Q&A session. First, we would like to take questions from the floor. Please wait for the microphone. If you are called out, start with your name and affiliation. For those who are on Zoom, please press Raise Hand button and wait for your name to be called. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press Lower Hand button. If you access to a Japanese line, you ask questions in Japanese. We like to take up to two questions per person so that we can take questions from as many people as possible. We are starting from the floor now. Please raise your hand if you have questions.
Wada from Nikkei. I have two questions. First, maybe very small thing. When it comes to new investment of a Vision Fund, from October to December, 0.3 billion, is it only one company or not? That's the first question. Second question, as interest rates are going up, when it comes to repayment or when the bonds are redeemed, are you going to borrow again, or how do you see increasing interest rates? Thank you very much.
The number of company invested by SVF in the third quarter. Navneet, can you answer that question, please?
Yes, sure. It's not one company, it's more than one company that we invested in. It's a couple of companies.
Couple of, right? Two companies.
It's more than two. It's a handful of companies.
Thank you very much. The second question about increasing interest rate. Of course, we are looking at that trend in Japan and governor of Bank of Japan, next governor of Bank of Japan, his view has a strong impact in terms of cost of our bonds. In terms of Japanese bond, maybe 1% increase can be possible, but our target financing cost should have no risk for foreseeable future. The impact of increasing interest on our financing cost, while 80% is fixed rate, so we don't see any impact from the increased interest rate.
For variable rate, not only debts, but also we have deposits. In terms of USD denominated, our financing cost is huge, but also return on the deposit, interest on the deposit is also big. For Japanese bond, even though risk is materialized by increased rate of interest, maybe JPY 6 billion-JPY 7 billion impact. From our total borrowing perspective, you can be reassured.
Thank you. Any other questions, please? The second row from the right, from the front. Black shirt. Gentleman, please.
My name's Nakayama from NewsPicks. I have two questions. First, Vision Fund. I understand there were restructuring in Vision Fund, which was also mentioned in last quarter. How much reduction has been made in terms of headcounts? Also, you said that there are monitoring and supporting the existing portfolio. With this reduced organization, can you still maintain the operation for the supporting portfolio? My second question, the buyback has been done, and I believe that Masa's ownership stake in SoftBank Group has exceed 1/3. How do you feel about that? There are some discussion about the management buyouts and so on the speculations. What is your view on that?
Thank you for your questions. For the first question, for the Vision Fund, Navneet, can you please also answer that?
The reduction in headcount was previously reported to be greater than 30%. In terms of our portfolio companies, we are very well-resourced, with over 300 professionals to support our portfolio companies. We feel we are right-sized in the current environment.
Yes, thank you. For your next questions regarding Masa's ownership. This is only as a result of buyback. JPY 1.4 trillion, which was quite a huge size of the buyback, has been executed. This was also in view of return to shareholders. As a result, the increased stake by Masa, we are not intending to do anything, we don't have any specific comments on that. I would say he is also the stable investor. He is a stable shareholders as well. For the company's point of view, having stable shareholders, increasing the ownership stake is actually good for the company. It's not like a tens of the percent point or so. That's nothing much for that. For the management buyout, I have no comments on that. Thank you.
Are there any other questions from the floor? Hugo from Bloomberg.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Two questions. Actually, first about accounting. Press release of earnings calls, and the second is Vision Fund. First, I think a press conference is done by Goto-san alone for the first time. As you can see, we are only a few journalists here on the venue, and investors may want to hear directly from Masa-san. What's your view on your press conference like this without Masa's presence? Can I continue my question?
The second question is about SoftBank Vision Fund. Analyst estimate was loss JPY 100 billion to maybe JPY 50 billion. That was at most analyst estimate. Now we are looking at the number few bigger. Is that something that you anticipated or loss was bigger than you anticipated from SoftBank Group's perspective? In the full year, if you lose for the full year, you will have two consecutive years of loss. What's your view, Goto-san?
Thank you very much. The first about the press conference of financial results, Masa is not present anymore. If we have fewer journalists than before, maybe that's my fault, but I don't know. We have fewer empty excuse me, we have empty seats, but we have arranged more number of seats on the floor. I wonder if the reporters on the floor were fewer than before. I'm not sure. If that's true, maybe that's my fault.
It's of course good for Masa to be here to talk directly to you about management strategy. That opportunity should be good for people like you. In the past, rather than talking about financial numbers, Masa were talking about strategy mainly. That was in the past every quarter. I think only a few companies do so, like talking about company strategy on quarterly basis. Masa wants to focus his time on whatever he wants to focus on for now. We don't know when, but, hopefully sooner, I hope that you will have opportunity to see and talk with Masa directly, and give us more time, and please be patient with me. Your second question about Vision Fund. Initially, SoftBank Group as a holding company, we are on the position as investment company.
What will happen in the next quarter? What happen in the following quarter? Of course, we have some estimate and assumption, but also, we need to make sure that we look at markets and market condition environment conservatively. Of course, smaller loss is better than bigger loss, apparently. I think as an investment company, as a management of investment company, it's, I think, right to view our performance conservatively. Navneet, would you like to add anything from your perspective?
Yeah. Thank you, Goto-san. The performance for the quarter reflects the market conditions at the end of December, and it also reflects the performance of our portfolio companies at the end of December. In March, at the end of March, we'll see what the market conditions are and how our portfolio companies are performing.
Thank you. Any other questions, please? We would like to take one questions from the floor.
My name is Yamaguchi from Mainichi Newspaper. IPO market, stock exchange for Arm. Masa mentioned that, looking at NASDAQ, but London, New York, any specific comments on that?
It's Arm, so Ian, why don't you comment?
We're looking at all the available markets, but no decision has been taken just yet.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. In the interest of time, that's all from the audience on the floor. Move on to questions from participants online. Please make sure that you turn off live stream other than Zoom online to avoid echo. Again, if you join Zoom on the Japanese line, please ask your questions in Japanese. First, Mr. Nagoshi from NHK.
Thank you for taking my question. My name is Nagoshi from NHK. Maybe somebody asked a question before about Arm's IPO. There was a news article that you discussed with the government about the listing in London. Are you considering London or NASDAQ? What's your progress on the preparation of Arm IPO? That's my first question. Second, JPY 1.5 trillion of capacity to issue bond. What's the intention? Is it for the purpose of new investment in the future or not?
Thank you. First, about Arm. Maybe, Ian, once again about Arm.
We are indeed considering NASDAQ, NYSE and London, but no decision has been taken at this time. In terms of the IPO itself, I mean, for the IPO to proceed, both Arm needs to be ready and the market needs to be ready. Arm's IPO preparations are well advanced. The markets appear to be improving and hopefully will continue to do so, and Arm itself remains fully committed to listing in calendar 2023.
Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Yes, we are grateful that a lot of our markets have high interest in Arm's future IPO. We are grateful for that. About your second question, it's rather technical. In fact, we only have little capacity to issue bonds. When we did expand that, we did the same thing. When once you issue 200, 300, then the remaining capacity goes down. We don't have intention to issue like JPY 1.5 trillion of bond. It's just a technical matter.
Thank you. Now we would like to take our next question. Mr. Nakajima from Kyodo Tsushin, please unmute.
Yes. Thank you very much for taking my question. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, please.
I would like to ask you or your expectation on interest rate policy by Bank of Japan. I believe that, compared to central banks in U.S. and European countries, they are very much normalized, but we believe that Japanese banks are behind the steps. There are many focus on how the Bank of Japan is gonna be bringing the interest rate back to normal. With your view, what is your expectation on the interest rate policy by BOJ?
Our company doesn't have any specific comments on your question. What I can say is that expectations on interest rate being commented by many banks and industries. Hopefully, without any surprise, we will be able to see the good lending without any hurdles. For us, or our business itself, of course, cheaper is better when it comes to the interest rate. I am not in position to say any things about that. I believe that it's even more important to see the Japan overall when it comes to interest rates. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That's all for Q&A session. Thank you very much for your questions. This concludes the SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results briefing for the nine-month period ended December 31st, 2022. The video footage of this briefing will be uploaded on our corporate website. Thank you very much once again for joining the SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results briefing for the nine-month period ended December 31st, 2022 .