Thank you very much for waiting, everyone. We would like to start the SoftBank Group Corp earnings results briefing for the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2023. 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 Executive Committee, SB Global Advisers , and Deputy CEO, SB Investment Advisers. 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. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for your time today. Let me dive into the summary of our fiscal year, and at the same time, I would like to give you some colors on our future strategies and so on.
First, I would like to kind of look back the past one year. It's been a very unstable one year. There are big geopolitical risk, including Russia situations, US-China situations, which are kind of a expected status, but we have not been able to see any improvements so far. Also, towards the end of the fiscal year, we've been seeing the financial system instability, including Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, and so on, which was unexpected event for all of us. Because of the change of such a big event, but at the same time, we've been keeping our defense mode, which actually been fully executed for this fiscal year.
When it comes to the next fiscal year, on your left-hand side on the slide, we listed up the market environments. Which we don't see big changes. Fourth quarter, we may be able to see some signs of the improvement. However, we are not expecting that the fundamental resolutions or solutions for those issues. On your right-hand side, evolution of technology, which we've been keeping as our vision, which is AI. Era has been making a dramatical progress and making a big move around the world. With those situation, should we just keep in defense, or should we have a balance with offense? That's a kind of one agenda we have to analyze from the various angles.
First, I would like to share with you our consolidated results for the past one year. Here, as a net sales of consolidated results, we have a slight increase, JPY 6.5 trillion. As an holding company and also investment company, investment profit and loss of investments is a kind of a large impact for us. Year-on-year basis, increased by JPY 2.6 trillion. It's quite a big incrementals. As a numbers for fiscal 2022, it's still negative numbers here. Based on such loss on investments, that also gives you the numbers for income before income tax and the net income. Compared to the previous, it's making incrementals, however, that the number itself is still the negative.
At the same time, I believe we do need to have a better colors on the loss on investments. Here, against gain and loss on investments for Vision Fund segment, the last year, last fiscal year, fiscal 2021, we have a negative of JPY 3.6 trillion. In fiscal 2022 was a even more difficult year. It was a negative JPY 5 trillion as a loss on investment in fiscal 2022. Compared to 2021, it was even tougher. At the same time, as SoftBank Group's own balance sheet investments-wise, we have a large shares in Alibaba, and the transactions utilizing Alibaba share has gain us, gave us a quite a good gain of JPY 4.6 trillion, which I will touch on that later.
Starting from 1999, we start the investments on this in this company. This is a kind of a good results that we've been able to receive after such an investment. Net, net, as an comparison for the gain and loss on investments, it's been materially improved on consolidated basis. Investment strategy, including SoftBank Vision Fund, has been lots of learnings. We also need to study how we should be in offense mode for the future. If you break it down to by segments, maybe it's much easier for you to understand. Investment business of holding companies, which is mainly contributed by Alibaba, JPY 2.3 trillion in incrementals compared to previous fiscal year.
In the fiscal year 2022, JPY 3.3 trillion. In the Vision Fund as a segment, it was negative JPY 4.3 trillion, which was minus a decrease, minus a JPY 1.7 trillion compared to the previous year. net income on consolidated base, I want you to see kind of a movement of the net income by quarter basis. When it comes to Alibaba-related transaction, that has been recorded largely on the Q2 of last fiscal year. This is something quite remarkable. like we should put this aside the ones, and first should do the comparison with the first quarter and also the to the third quarter. These are the kind of most difficult time for us.
Compared to that moment, we believe that we'll be making good improvements so far. For the Forex, throughout the fiscal year, there was the fluctuations. For the this fiscal year, it was relatively depreciated. That itself is actually Net Asset Value should be the biggest impact, actually this was a 1.3 trillion increase. On the P&L basis, it's about 0.8 trillion negative. The equity basis is a 1.3 trillion JPY increase on accounting basis. In total, Forex was a kind of positive for our company. Also interest rate. I would like to emphasize this once again.
Our company, usually that many people think that we are the debt-heavy company. If you are debt-heavy company, interest rate would be the negative for you. Increasing the interest rate is negative for you. I understand that the many newspaper articles concerned about us. Actually, we don't have much impact from the interest rate raise. Because if you see, about 77% of our debt is fixed rate. Floating is about 23%, of which 14% are the US dollar and 9% are the Japanese yen basis. Dollar, interest rate is hiking, at the same time, the management rate is also high as well, so that the increase in the receivables of interest that actually giving us a positive.
In Japanese yen, even increasing it 1% in interest rate of, in Japan, but still impact is only JPY 7.5 billion. JPY 7.5 billion means our This is gonna be very minor compared to our total huge kind of number of assets. In addition, along with the increase in rates, fixed rate price is gonna go down. Those bonds that we will be able to buy back by having a decrease in price, then that we'll be able to gain from that gap. That's something that we've been working on for the past few months. About close to JPY 50 billions of the gain on redemptions has been recorded for fiscal 2022. There are several initiatives being taken place in agile basis for the past one year.
Rate hike in macroeconomist point of view, there are many things to the market itself and also the equity market as well. For the impact to SoftBank Group's finance, it's very minor as on impact-wise.
I-
Let me talk about the Vision Fund, which I'm sure you're interested in most. Vision Fund started in 2017. At the close of FY 2022, cumulative gain or loss in investment was $8.5 billion, lower than the book value, which we are
Disappointed, but we have to figure out how we can improve this trend. If you take a look at the numbers by quarter and the trend, on consolidated basis, we presented previously, and likewise, Vision Fund, January to March, April to June last year were the toughest time, and we have to record a lot of valuation loss. At certain point of time, we look at valuation very severely. Every quarter, the negative numbers have been smaller and smaller, so it's coming back to the level that we started. We have Vision Fund 1 and 2, as you know, and first, Vision Fund 1. We invested about $90 billion, which is shown on the left-hand side. The cumulative investment return was over 101. We are looking at the positive trend here.
If you look at left-hand side of investment, 70% already public and $34 billion private companies, which includes Arm. Vision Fund 1's performance, we will keep looking at and expect a lot from the investment of Vision Fund 1. For Vision Fund 2, which is still facing a difficult time, it started 3 years ago, they started investing 2 years ago. Investment cost so far, $50 billion. According to our conservative valuation, currently fair value is around $31 billion. For Vision Fund 2 compared to Vision Fund 1, we have more diversified. We have varieties of portfolio companies. After they go through the tough period, we will continue supporting them to make sure that they will turn around their businesses. Looking back the last year, left-hand side shows end of March 2022. Pie charts have 3 colors, blue, gray, and orange.
Blue indicates gain, red indicates loss, gray indicates no change. Looking at the right-hand side, you see bigger pie chart portion has loss, about 73%. Looking at portfolio companies that have lost their values, there are different reasons why they lost values. Performance of portfolio companies, market factors, and also rate change, especially when it comes to value. Private companies, it has impact because you have to apply discount for private companies, and they calculate based upon the rent interest rate. When interest rate goes up, then present value gets smaller. All in all, the last 12 months have been very tough, and we have to learn a lesson from that. Again, tough year, we limited investment in such difficult period of time. We invested $2.2 billion in the Q1 but after that, less than $1 billion.
In 2021, 10 times more investment we have made in 2020. Against the background, there were some successes in terms of stock offerings and monetization. As you can see here, there are 4 stock offerings. On the right-hand side, it shows sales or monetization before listing or listed companies have been monetized. All in all, we are looking at $7.7 billion in terms of sales or monetization of the portfolio companies. If you take a look at the period from January through March, combined fair value was $2.1 billion negative. Compared to 1st quarter and 2nd quarter, $2.1 billion is very small in terms of negativity. Vision Fund One, in fact, recorded plus. For Vision Fund Two, very tough because most of the portfolio companies are private. In fact, public investments drive Vision Fund One's good performance.
Lot of index turned positive in the last year, and we have to take this opportunity going forward. Again, the last quarter of 2022, the results were like this. Vision Fund has invested in around 500 companies, and we get a lot of questions about financing against such tough market condition. Ninety-four percent of portfolio companies are well capitalized. They have 12+ month runway. Overall, they have enough financial capabilities on their own. Also, valuation method remained the same. Late stage portfolio companies that are ready for listing with appropriate size is $37 billion. Those companies should give us high hope in terms of their growth opportunities. Since inception of the fund, we keep disciplined monetization strategy because we have external third party LPs. We need to make sure that we give back distribution.
Also for preferred stockholders, we want to repay the capital as soon as possible. Cumulative proceeds since inception is $56 billion. Now, touch upon Arm. We have Navneet and Kimiwada-san with me today. Arm's Ian is not here today because they have come so far in terms of preparation for IPO, so we are not allowed to disclose a lot of things. All in all, I can say Arm has been performing much better than we expected. In fact, three-year CAGR is 16%, and in terms of adjusted EBITDA, three-year CAGR, 60%. Business model-wise, Arm has unique strength. Arm has attracted a lot of attention, and they have been performing so well in terms of finance. Recently, they submitted Form F-1.
After that, we are limited in terms of what we can say publicly. Again, I can say our preparation for IPO is going smoothly.
Let me also give you a summary on fiscal 2022's initiatives. Environment, it stays unstable. When you look at the stock market trends, look at over 1 year trends, you see the very bottom yellow graph is a Venture Capital Index. Compared to the beginning of the year, it's reduced, declined by 30%. In the very top, a little bit above a high volatility one, which is a Golden Dragon China, these are the Chinese companies index, and still is showing about a decline by 10% or so. In any market, it's been a tough year for everyone.
In the past one year that we've been in defense, what did we do in terms of defense? First of all, we made a full effort in monetization in earlier schedule. The reason for making it earlier, that's something that based on an experience. The equity, whenever you monetize, the biggest risk is time. If you have a shorter time, that risk is smaller. If you wait longer, there will be a variety of factors may be impacting and made us difficult to monetize. Well, once we decide to monetize, we try to make it quick movements as quick as possible. That's something that we've been thinking and we execute as along with that thinking. Even more important is to kind of slow down the investment activities.
In the past one year, investment activities was one-tenth compared to the previous year. The previous year, we invested about JPY 5 trillion. It was not that we had the same amount budget for this fiscal year, but compared to last year that there were JPY 5 trillion cash out on the last fiscal year, and this year it was one-tenth of the cash out. That's actually even more effective compared to the financing itself. Also, lean organization, because when the time of the investing in JPY 5 trillion and at the time that we investing one-tenth of that, the organization needs to change and address the changes as well. At the same time, not only cash position, but also gross debt reduction is also important.
to show you the safetiness of our balance sheet, cash is not the only way that we can tell you the safetiness of our balance sheet, but also, we should be able to communicate you our gross debt reduction, so that that's gonna give you more comfort on our safetiness of our balance sheet. Those are the kind of our main defense initiative that we've been doing. As a result, as you can see, these three indexes are always the most important indicators for us as an investment company. When it comes to the different business or different company, of course, they have their own important indicator. for us, of course, the margins is important for some companies, but us, we are the investment company, so we believe these three indicators are the most important KPIs.
Net Asset Value compared to last year in amount has in has decreased from JPY 18.5 trillion to JPY 14.1 trillion. As you recall from the previous page, by keeping a defense mode, Loan-to-Value has been improved from 20.4% to 11%. Cash position from JPY 2.9 trillion to JPY 5.1 trillion, largely increased here. This is a kind of a one summary of the one year in the past, and I would like to go through one by one. Biggest reason for the Net Asset Value decrease is the share price. As I mentioned earlier, the Forex impact is positive for us, but the valuation of each portfolio companies has declined, so that was a big impact for our Net Asset Value.
This slide, if it's not the full year, what happened if it was only the fourth quarter? Actually, Net Asset Value is increasing to. Also Loan-to-Value cash position is about the same as the full year. From the December end, till up to date, that it's been very much improvement. The change in Net Asset Value, so the share price movements in positive way has been impacting to us. Starting from 1998, over 25 years, Net Asset Value history here. These past 2 years we've been seeing a big drop, but still JPY 14.1 trillion. We have repeatedly seen the volatility, but at the same time we are making a good growth, and that's the kind of a strategy we have in our mind.
Loan-to-Value, I believe since we became this investment company style, I think that we've been this is a kind of a best improvements ever for the Loan-to-Value this time. 25% is our financial policy number as a threshold. This number is not something that that's gonna give us a big damage if we exceed or anything like that. The 25% is already very safe level, but we would like to make sure that we will be able to manage our company within a very safe level. That is why that we kind of have this 25% as a threshold, and now we are in 11%. That tells you how safe we are from that sense.
In the cash position, JPY 5 trillion, I don't recall this number actually in the history of our company, but with this cash position, JPY 5.1 trillion, you can see this waterfall. A year ago, JPY 2.9 trillion, we had a monetization program executed JPY 5.7 trillion. Not that we had just accumulated, but we had some cash allocation too. We have reduced JPY 2.4 trillion of the debt repayments. I believe JPY 2.4 trillion is a quite a large number that we can do for debt repayments. Here, that is actually return to the credit or the bond investors. At the same time, we have done the buyback, which is the return to shareholders. New investments of JPY 0.4 trillion, so relatively small.
Those JPY 3.8 trillion has been used as a cash out. Still we keep JPY 5.1 trillion of the cash position with us. This is a breakdown of Net Asset Value. What are our holdings and how are those holdings being changed? I just wanted to show you the kind of a 3 years history starting from 2021. Orange portion has been decreasing dramatically. That's something easy to tell. This is the Alibaba holdings. 3 years ago, we had a share in Alibaba of 43% amongst our net asset. That's been monetized over years. We have 5%.
We have a forward contract which that settle in 1 year ahead or 2 years ahead, that means that that is still with us as in our holdings. The agreement itself has already been made and concluded, so I believe that that can be effectively monetized. As a result, other assets proportion been increasing. Very, Second from the bottom is the Vision Fund is increasing Vision Fund portion. This dark blue portion is actually diversified over almost 500 companies. This is well diversified already. In that we have about T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom and so on. It is going to be a very liquid assets once they go public.
Listed company T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom is also maintain, give us a good strength in terms of the liquidity as well. Regions, looking at the political situation, this is also important to keep in mind. Three years ago, investment in China was take in account for about 50%. This is Alibaba and others. As a result of some monetization, I believe that we've been well managed and balanced in terms of diversifications amongst the regions. Now that the China's proportion has been decreased down to 15%, and now we have more kind of proportions in U.S. and European countries now. Europe, Middle East and Africa looks a bit large because that also includes and Alibaba.
We pretty much gone through our monetization. I would like to give you the kind of a summary for the investment in Alibaba. First investment, the investment cost was JPY 7.4 billion. Over 22 years, it has grown to JPY 9.7 trillion and gave us as a monetization. Over 22 years, IRR is 57%, which is tremendous number, I believe. IRR, if you sell immediately after you buy, then that you may have such a good number. If you hold for over 20 years and still keeping this 57% level of the IRR is surprising, I believe. You see the very beginning of the investments, the handshaking between Jack and Masa, they are both young, aren't they?
Actually, once that I joined SoftBank, the first foreign entrepreneur that I met was Jack Ma and also Joe Tsai. They were just 0 revenue back then, but they were actually full of energy, and they are very positive about the market. I was so impressed to see them. That's something that I remember. But I didn't expect this much of the growth. I think that Masa has a great eyes to kind of pick them up to invest in. Defense is very much look solid. Going forward, how we will operate in 2023. From defense only year to offense year, we need to look at both external factors and internal factors. Latest market trend is shown here from December to March. Both Nasdaq and Venture Index exceeded 110.
It's been showing great return. Looking at our portfolio, Vision Fund 1 and Vision Fund 2
Although they are under Nasdaq, but still they are performing well. Interest rate is tricky. In the U.S., there is lot of discussion what they are going to do going forward in terms of rate. Financial turmoil that is happening recently may slow down interest rate hike. From a stock market perspective, the climate might be better, and the volatility index has been sort of stabilized. Geopolitical risk indicator which is created by BlackRock, when a surprise risk takes place, you see a huge hike. For example, on the far right, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they had a huge peak. Even though trend-wise the line goes down, but that doesn't mean there's no risk. Those risks have been factored in, then things should be stabilized. We showed you 3, 4 charts in the last quarter. We see sign of improvement.
However, from our perspective, that's not exactly the case because geopolitical risk, Russia, Ukraine, U.S., China, friction around China. Unfortunately, those geopolitical risk in the last one year have not been addressed, and we don't see any solution. We have to keep that risk in mind. Even though we see sign of improvement in the last three months, we can't simply restart investment. That said, we have to look at different aspect, which is technological evolution. Since we founded our company, we wanted to make people happy through information revolution. Since we founded Vision Fund, what was our vision? AI revolution has been a part of our vision always. AI can redefine every industry. From that perspective, we want to identify and invest in opportunities. A lot of things are happening and evolving now. Especially visible recently is generative AI, which has been growing exponentially.
Sometime around 2017, we started using the term technological singularity. Even before that, 10 years ago, we released a 30-year vision, we communicated same message. We thought that it could take 10 years or 20 years, now, we are seeing much faster speed in terms of technological evolution. AI is finally come. Maybe some people are still skeptical, but we believe AI is finally here, even though there are some risks. Like I said earlier, in 2017, when we announced the financial results, Mr. Son said, "Someday we will see data being analyzed and re-reasoned about by AI." Back then, we didn't know when it would come, but we said we believed that day would come. This image is a part of annual report released in that year.
It says, "A singularity when AI surpasses human intelligence will be the biggest paradigm shift in human history." Again, AI is finally come, especially Generative AI. There are a lot of developments going on around AI, and what's the trend? For example, to reach 100 million user numbers, Facebook, Twitter, they spent five, six years. ChatGPT, only two months, within two months that they have reached 100 million user base.
Of course, compared to those the time of launch of Facebook, processing speed has been faster, payment speed faster, volume of the transaction became larger, and the information volume has increased. That's also the factor. At the same time, this is something that we have to accept or embrace as an reality. Variety of the development can be considered. As you see here, just in the one example, translation, customer data analysis, those by only entering into ChatGPT, that you may have some answers from them. Drawing or creating sentences or writing books that we don't want to lose against AI, but AI have their own way to actually generate and produce such products.
Timeline-wise, speed of gathering information to create the products, actually that is the most effective in terms of way of working or way of living, and something that we may be able to take an advantage of. While we use, we do also need to find. What are the issues? Improving productivity, addressing social issues, and those are something that we expect and why we use such technology and also need to learn and know the technology itself. At the dawn, I think it's about the same as at the time of dawn of Internet. That half of 1990 when we start launch of Internet, and now that everyone actually have your smartphone on your hand, and same as when the iPhone launched. When we look back, Internet was something people were skeptical.
Some people think that we should not use such a technology. Something like that, things was also said by some people too. There are many opinions about that. Year 2000, actually, I joined SoftBank Group from the previous job. Big banks, actually, that the email address has not been there on their business card. That was very surprising to me because the banks, some banks, kind of prohibited the employees to have their own email address. That's something that I experienced back then. Now we see variety of the Generative AI, including ChatGPT. I think that we should try and use the technology. As an company, Masa himself or SoftBank KK, CEO Mr.
Miyakawa, also announced yesterday at his earnings that, why don't we try, why don't we use, so that we'll be able to tell what's good and what's bad. That's something that we should share amongst our employees, amongst our people, so that we want to be the kind of a first mover to use such technology. We believe we will be able to become the company who can lead such technology eras. That's something that we are actually communicating to our employees. We will have a summit, G7 will be held next week, and there are many leaders, international leaders, have their own opinions. At the same time, we believe we need to kind of address such a revolution of technology so that we'll be able to contribute to people's well-being.
That's the kind of a company's philosophy, companies we are here for. Along with such learnings, we would like to grow the business. Having more good understanding of new info technological inform revolution, we also need to think about how we should be addressing the coming months and years. In the coming year, that we don't know how the volatility is gonna change. Volatility probably remains still high, but at the same time, we should be having a resilience against market volatility. We have to make ourself in safe position. As long as we can take a good balance with such resilience, we should not miss any opportunities to invest in good revolutions. SoftBank Group, led by Masa, as an business model, not all the investments are successful.
We should not miss the investment opportunities. We have to have a good and solid financial policy so that we can make sure that we're not gonna miss any investment opportunities. That's why we believe our financial policy is important. Therefore, we have a financial strategy for fiscal 2023, so we have no change at our financial policy which we've been having. At the same time, we would like to have a financial management adaptable to both defense and offense. Financial policy, I have no change in any words here. Same policy as I've been communicating to you in the past few years, are maintaining LTV below 25% in normal times, maintain at least 2 years' worth of bond redemption in cash. Actually, we have about 6 year equivalence of bond redemption in cash with us.
At the same time, secure recurring distributions and dividend income from Vision Fund and other subsidiaries that we have to keep good communication with our Vision Fund and also our subsidiaries to make sure that. We have a very important base, which is our financial policy, and based on that, we will also like to make a good balance with the offense. Resilience is going to be very important. As long as we can keep our financial policy, then I think that we can go for the next step, which is to invest in information revolution while maintaining financial stability. As a result, when it comes to capital allocation, which is always the very serious discussion in Board of Directors meeting. We would like to see how the market change, how the environment change.
The financial policy-wise, that those two major stakeholder, which are the shareholders and the bondholders, and also there are other stakeholders as well. First, those two major stakeholders are the one that we have to make them happy. While we keeping our safety net of our balance sheet, we would like to make a good balance in between new investments activities and shareholders return. For the shareholders return, whilst IBM, we've been making a quite a good numbers return to shareholders. In the past five years, about JPY 4.5 trillion buyback has been done. I don't think there are many companies like us who has been bought back such an level. That's something that I hope you appreciate, and we will continue for the discussion.
At the same time, we need a safety net in balance sheet. We need a good. You need to see the good importance and focus on the ratings as well. While we're keeping the safety net of balance sheet, that we would like to think about the return to stakeholders as well as the new investment activities. Finally, that I would like to give you a summary. Solid defense is in place, has been in place, and also at the same time getting ready to go on the offensive with the AI revolution on the horizon, and the financial management that drives both defense and offense. In the current business is mainly from two engines. One is Vision Fund, and the other is Arm.
Arm is making a very good step toward relisting by confidentiality submitting draft for F-1. The Vision Fund, of course, had a challenging years, but now that continuously focusing on increasing value of portfolio companies. Arm relisting is also going to be the good contribution to the Vision Fund performance as well. Vision Fund. We shouldn't be looking at only one year, one fiscal year. It's the activities go on to next year and on. I want you to see a kind of a long horizon. Japan, for example, has a very good company. For example, PayPay is making a very good progress as well. I hope that you can expect on us for the future. That is all from me.
Thank you very much, and we will be happy to take any questions from you.
We'd like to move on to Q&A session. First, we'd like to take questions from the floor. Please wait for microphone and 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. Please also refrain from connecting to other live stream to avoid any echoing. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press Lower Hand button. If you access to Zoom in Japanese, you can ask questions in Japanese as well. We'd 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. If you have any questions, please raise your hand.
Thank you. Lee from Bloomberg. I have two questions. First, about ChatGPT. I think that you are very positive about ChatGPT, and yesterday, Miyakawa-san, SBKK, mentioned that they established-.
generative AI company in March. As a SoftBank Group, do you have any strategy about AI, generative AI and ChatGPT? That's the first question.
For Navneet or Goto-san, especially since it seems like you're teasing out a potential shift into offense mode a little bit, would that mean a bounce back in investments starting this quarter since we're kind of into May already? Should we be expecting a bounce back in investments this quarter? Or if not, around when? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. The first question about ChatGPT and our approach to generative AI. Yes, you are right. Miyakawa-san talked a lot about ChatGPT, generative AI, and we were worried because he might talk too much. Son-san had stopped making presentation at financial result announcement for the last 6 month or so. What he has been doing instead is, of course, studying Arm and Arm's business model. As you know, Arm chip is essential to AI, so working on AI should lead to taking leadership position in AI, excuse me. In the last few months, there have been a lot of services and products launched in the market. From our perspective, what kind of businesses that we can create from those opportunities, those are the things that we are currently working on.
Not only things that are available now with the Generative AI, but we have a broader vision. Like I said earlier, when Vision Fund was launched, our vision has been such that AI will redefine every industry. Against that background, how and what kind of companies that we should work with, and how we can implement strategies as a SoftBank Group, that's important. Yes, Miyakawa-san mentioned that he created a company, just created a company, so it's not a big deal yet. But as approach to AI, that indicates something to you. As a parent company of SoftBank KK, which is an operating company, Mr. Song looks at this big theme and how we approach, how we are going to work on, at a general shareholders meeting. I hope that Mr. Song will share his view as much as possible.
Nothing is confirmed or finalized yet, but we'll see how it goes. Navneet, second question, please.
In terms of investment activity, as Goto-san said, during the defense mode over the last 12 months, we have been making investments, but we are very selective and deliberate about those. As we find new investing opportunities that are attractive, we will continue to make investments.
I guess not really not much clarity on how big, I guess, the investments could be.
It really depends on the opportunity. If it's a very attractive opportunity, we can invest considerably. It really depends on the opportunity. Is the investment opportunity leveraging artificial intelligence? Is this a good tech stack? Do they have positive unit economics? Is this a company that can scale? Depending on the investing opportunity, we would be looking to invest.
Thank you.
If I may add, for example, three years ago, we invested JPY 5 trillion over to 12 months or so. Back then, what we did was to make an investment as much as possible to cover broadly. Now we are facing against wind, and we have to ensure financial soundness and financial strength. We have to be very selective in terms of investment. We can't charge ahead right away. We will be selective continuously.
Thank you. We would like to take next question. Next gentleman to the current person who made a question.
I am Wada from Nikkei newspaper. I have two questions, please. The first one is about Alibaba. Recent, how much % of the holdings do you have in Alibaba? Of which, how much are used for the forward contract? With the settlement with such forward contract, can we say that effectively you have used up all the shares? Effectively, all the shares are being used for the such forward contract and some others. There are some details there which is gonna be a bit complicated, but overall, I would say from the financing point of view, all the share has been utilized. With us right now, we have shares which will be decided whether to sold or settle in shares at the time the maturity comes. Thank you.
Regarding Credit Suisse that I would like to ask you. This Greensill, which was a investee of the Vision Fund, there are a legal lawsuit where the claim is made by Credit Suisse, I would like to ask you how you position about. This is very unfortunate. Credit Suisse, we've been very close with them. This time, Greensill, which was also a investee of Vision Fund, from the Credit Suisse point of view, they the Greensill was a counterpart for the financial transactions, I believe they had a good relationship as well. At this time, the legal lawsuit, they are the kind of a lender in the lending business, they are saying that the money they lent is not repaid.
Asking other person to pay that back for them, that's something that they are doing. Because Greensill has been our investee, and they were at the time facing a challenging environments. While we supporting them and was, had a hope that they can turn around and made a growth, and there are time where that we have provided additional resource in return that they have provided the convertible shares. That resource was to use for the repayments, and they should have been using such resource for the repayments. However, that has not been actually used for the repayment, which was not our decisions, and we have no such responsibilities for their decisions. We provided, took the risk and provided support for them to turn around.
Because that money did not come back to Credit Suisse, so that Credit Suisse is make upset about us. About three years ago, or that our legal team made a very thorough investigation and a very thorough reports on that. I don't know how long it's gonna take, but I have no doubt that we're gonna lose the case on this matter. I am very sad that this case has been raised because Credit Suisse is one of the very close financial institutions. I cannot understand why this kind of claim has been raised. We had about 20 years of relationship with the Asia Pacific region of the Credit Suisse.
Because of the management of the Credit Suisse, they may have some reasons, which we have no idea, but has to make such claim. This is baseless claim that they are making. I don't want to lose our reputation because of such a baseless claim. That, if there is any speculations or any speculated articles, then I will be sure to clarify our positions and our understandings. There are some ways that, or tactics that, you may be able to use by providing or not providing information, but, I don't want to lose such an gain. That's something that I would like to position us about. Next question.
Goto from Mainichi Shimbun. In 2023. You're going to be defensive as well as offensive. When you turn to offense, what kind of things would trigger for you to turn to offense?
It's not like when the traffic signal turns from red to green and put. It's not like that. If there are companies that we should collaborate with, and if there are companies that we want to consider operating those companies, when that kind of timing will come, it's more like how we cross the crossroad without a traffic light. There's no pipeline in sight, when the opportunity comes, we want to be positive. Last year, unless something unusual happens, we would rather pass the opportunity. This year, if we are comfortable by checking every aspect, then we want to take steps one by one.
It's not like right away we start investing, but it's more like taking opportunities. Any other questions?
Gentleman, the third row from the front, please.
Nagai from Nikkei Quick News. I have two questions, please. Simple question. OpenAI, why you haven't invested in this company? Was there any discussion you turned down, or you are not looking into this company, or what was your position about OpenAI?
I hesitate to make any comments. We knew this company, but we haven't or we don't, we didn't make any investment in this company. There are many reasons why, but I don't want to discuss that further. Do you have any comments, Navneet?
No, I agree with you, Goto-san. No comment.
In the process of the decision-making for investments, I believe, that's something that I cannot discuss.
My second question is about to confirm with you some facts. Silicon Valley Bank. Year 2000, you were acquire some bank and Shinsei Bank and Silicon Valley Bank was also involved. Were there any capital relationship with your with SoftBank Group and Silicon Valley Bank?
There is no such relationship with Silicon Valley Bank. This time, I recall this. I hear this bank's name and that recalls me some of the bad old days. The first job that I after I joined the SoftBank Group, that it was a demerger of this Nippon Credit Bank, so that was something similar, a familiar name for me. The next question.
Yamaguchi from Mainichi Shimbun. About WeWork. You recorded about $600 billion or so. How do you view? Currently, as a group, how much stake you have in WeWork?
Our view to investment in WeWork, you asked. We expected huge growth since investment. Eventually, the last support that we provided to WeWork, hoping WeWork would turn around. COVID-19 took place, and property market tanked. They have been struggling and still struggling in terms of their performance, but we still expect them to turn around the business. Navneet, any comment?
As you know, WeWork is a public company, and we are insiders, so there's limited information that we can provide. Also, WeWork's earnings took place on May ninth. I think I would defer on the performance of WeWork to their earnings that just happened.
About percentage of stake, economic stake, they have been going through a restructuring, but about 70%. Yeah, they're still affiliate. Any reason why they are still affiliate, if not subsidiary? Kimio-dosa, anything? Well, yes, definitely affiliate as far as classification is concerned. Any more question?
Thank you. Any other questions, please? Before that, let me add a little bit. As Kimio-dosa said, that's correct. Voting rights base is less than 50%. Please continue.
My name is Uno from The Yomiuri Shimbun. What kind of AI areas are you going to invest in? That's my question.
As an investment company, of course, performance is important for you. There are may be many expectation on AI, but at the same time, there are many challenges as well. At the cabinet meeting, democracy is important, human rights is important, there are many discussion regarding the basic rights and the basic concepts. As SoftBank Group, other than performance, is there any criteria that you would like to set when it comes to investment in AI? If you have any, please share with us.
That's my first question. My second question, being offensive and also, or you mentioned about generative AI, but the restart of investment, does that gonna start with generative AI? Are you going to invest in other than generative AI as well as you turning into offense mode?
Let me answer from your second question. It's not that we only invest in generative AI, but still AIs are the kind of a main focus. Anything AI related, and we would like to consider, so it may not be too speedy. We need to be good in selections. After then, what kind of things will be target for our investments, that's probably too early to tell at this moment. Once we have more use in generative AI, what kind of jobs or tasks may have a dramatical change?
Actually, SoftBank Group is also known as a lifestyle company, that's something that we are very keen to focus. How can we change people's lifestyle? That's same as when we started our business, there were no any wholesale software wholesale business around the market, we wanted to kind of create it so that the people are living easier. Then we saw internet, broadbands, iPhones, smartphones. Those are kind of the keywords, how we going to target to is something that you can imagine. Once the time, right time comes, then that even my boss will be telling you.
Thank you very much. Any other questions from the floor? Miyajima fro FACTA.
Mr. Son has an insight in technology and wait until opportunity comes and wins eventually. How excited Mr. Son is at the moment about AI? Goto-san, in your presentation, you mentioned a lot of things about AI, but if Mr. Son was here, what would he say about AI? I'm sure there are still risks. You mentioned that Mr. Son might share his view at AGM, but excitement that Mr. Son has, can you share with us?
Well, if I talk too much, Masa might give me hard time. Excitement, I think is tremendous excitement he has. In the last six months alone, six months ago, Generative AI, I don't think many people heard about Generative AI or knew Generative AI. Still, he had too many things to start around AI. He was like, he was excited as much as when he launched the company. Sometimes I'm worried if he has time to sleep, because a rapid growth and development of Generative AI and AI itself. I think I can't explain clearly how excited he is. I spend time with him every day, and I try not to be overwhelmed by him too much.
Next question. Pink shirt gentleman, please.
from Mainichi Shimbun. Regarding WeWork, I have one question, also one question about Alibaba. Start with WeWork. In the financial report in the page seven, JPY 600 billion additional loss has been recorded. I believe there are some loss in the past. Cumulatively, how much loss has been made? That's one question. After April, I believe that the convertible bonds exchange has been made. After April, there are new kind of development there. How that is impacting to the first quarter for your consolidated results? As for investments, I would say about JPY 11 billion, of which remaining is JPY 400 million. Other than that, some loss on guarantee, majority of them are under Q4 of fiscal 2022, and that's been already recorded in fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. Total loss, cumulative loss, how much was that?
JPY 1 point some trillion is investment and some bad debts. Maybe I should get the correct informations and come back to you. In April, with your restructuring, is there any impact to your consolidated base? That's after April. Depends on after April. For investments, depending on the share price after then. On page 7 of financial report, for April 23rd, you have done something, and is that going to impact? That's after fiscal 2023. That's the reflected to the numbers after fiscal 2023. Do you have any ideas on what kind of impact? It depends on market. It depends on the share price then? Yes. Also depending on the credit situation, credit status. I have questions about Alibaba to Goto-san.
In the past 20 some years, Alibaba shares has been very important for you. Now you've been monetizing all of them. You mentioned earlier, in over 20 years. Because of Alibaba shares that you've been able to convert your business to the investment company, can you give us a summary of the past 20 years? These numbers are the performance of the investments, which I think this historical number that we rarely see, and they brought us a tremendous contribution. They were a great friend of ours. Jack has been serving as our board director for quite a long time as well, and a great friend for Masa as well.
At the same time, while there are some challenges in Chinese market, they became a good bridge for us so that we were able to learn and experience a lot in Chinese market too. Alibaba Group themselves, in the very beginning of the business, they were just exploring what kind of business model they should be establishing. Actually, we were walking along with them. Because in a great and huge market in China, what happen if we do this and do that? They set up the hypothesis and then executed by Jack Ma. That's why I believe they became such a great success, became a huge Alibaba Group. We were able to spend the same time with them, which was a tremendous experience for us.
I have been there at the headquarter of Alibaba for over 20 times or so, and we have so much appreciation for them. This is not the end of the story of our relationship. Actually, Jack, Alibaba Group, we believe that we would like to be in a good relationship with them too.
In the interest of time, this will be the last question from the floor. Now we'd like to take questions from Zoom participants. Please refrain from connecting to other live stream to avoid any echoing. First,
Inagaki-san from Financial Times. Thank you for taking my questions. To Goto-san, in the presentation, you mentioned a lot about geopolitical risks. You stressed geopolitical risks, you also mentioned that there's no solution. That's why you are very concerned about geopolitical risks. Without solution against those risks, how are you going to address them? Of course, your graphical diversification is what you are doing, as risks can get bigger, how are you going to address the risks, and where, from your perspective, those risks might be presented? Thank you.
Global supply chains have been disrupted by Russia's invasion into Ukraine. Business person like us were surprised because we have built the supply chains based upon the belief that people are born good, not born evil. Although we believe that the humankind can find a solution to address such risks. We have done a lot of sensitive studies on our assets. What if our assets went down by 50%? Which by the way, we are still safe even though assets value went down by 50%. What we are doing is to make sure that we are ready for any risks that could happen. We quantify risks and use that information as judgment, is very important. Of course, China is something that we are concerned about from a geopolitical perspective, but Russo-Ukrainian issue is the biggest.
Thank you. Next question is Mr. Nagoshi from NHK. Please unmute and start your question.
Yes, this is Nagoshi speaking. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions. There are some speculations or articles regarding Fortress sales. What is your approach on your Fortress? Another question is about yesterday's Miyakawa-san's presentation. Also that you would like to create a GPT new company, the SoftBank Group is also involved in this discussion. What is the process for your creations of a Japanese version of the GPT?
Fortress, I have no comments on that. I don't think we can make any comments about that. For yesterday's Miyakawa's presentation, there are many comments and remarks. I hope that you kind of understand from what he said.
This is just a couple of months, movements, creating companies or either in Japan or there are lot of discussion going on, many movements done. That's not only by SoftBank Corp. KK itself, but also Masa himself is involved in the discussion too. The discussion just begins. Coming back to WeWork cumulative loss amount. $11.5 billion and a $0.9 billion provision. $12.4 billion in total. That is all. Thank you.
What is your ultimate goal? Do you have any specific ideas, or views for the goal?
I want you to have a good expectation on us and, let us work on that. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. For the interest of time, this will be the last question. Thank you very much. This concludes the SoftBank Group Corp earnings results briefings for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023. 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 fiscal year ended March 31, 2023.