Thank you very much for waiting, everyone. Now, we would like to start SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results announcement for the six-month period ended September 30, 2023. First, I would like to introduce today's participants. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO. Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President, and Head of Accounting Unit. Navneet Govil, CFO, SB Investment Advisers and SB Global Advisers. And Jason Child, Executive Vice President and CFO, Arm. Jason is attending through Zoom. Today's announcement is live broadcast over internet. Now, I would like to invite Yoshimitsu Goto to present you the earnings results and business overview.
Thank you very much for joining today. Good afternoon, everyone. As usual, we have Ms. Kimiwada, Head of Accounting, Navneet, the CFO of Vision Fund, and also in addition, we have Mr. Jason Child, from Arm, CFO Arm.
But actually, that Arm just announced earnings at the this morning, Japan time. Of course, that we wanted to have him in person, but because of that reason that we have him on Zoom today. So for this quarter, as an event for this three months six months period, IPO Arm was the biggest event for our group. It was the one of the biggest IPO in the market for this year, in the September 14, 2023, Arm went public. This is a summary of the Arm IPO. $52 billion for the market cap upon listing, of which the 10% was offered to the market. So it was about close to a 600-700 billion JPY equivalents, and also the market cap about 7.5 trillion JPY level.
After that, share price actually it's been moving robust, in robust way. As of yesterday, it has also exceeded the price upon the listing. So I believe that they made a good launch as a public company. And this is the investment return on Arm. Of course, it's just a few months after the IPO, but also I'd like to share with you the MOIC. This is the metric used to describe the value or performance of investment relative to its initial cost, and 3.2 times. Back then was an acquisition, it was JPY 3.3 trillion. This was quite a large amount, of course, for SoftBank Group, and as a CFO, I was a bit nervous for this amount when it comes to the acquisition.
But still, we did have a very strong belief in this company as an dominant player in this market. Therefore, that all the senior management actually was in sync in terms of making and progress in the acquisition process in the short-term period. In the past, we had a we made a large, relatively large, acquisitions, which is Alibaba and Sprint. And even compare with those, actually, the Arm IPO also gave us a good investment return as of today already. Alibaba, cost was very small, and as an investment project, it was a great investment. And the growth-wise, actually, that Arm has already grown to JPY 8.5 trillion level, so it is making great progress.
Of course, IPO is just a one of the milestone, of the company's history and company's future, so we would like to keep a good expectation on Arm. Especially, Arm is the core of the core of the SoftBank Group, and one of the most important strategic company for us. So that we believe AI can be the good leading position or the core position of the group, which, we are driving this AI revolutions and also the AI-related services. So very much expecting Arm, and also supporting, and also utilizing Arm's, capability as well. In the past 10 years, actually, there are IPO ranking, which you may not be very familiar... in the past 10 years, this is the top 15 IPO market cap, of which six of them are SBG involved, as a matter of fact.
So these are the good track record which we would like to share with you. And because Masa, our CEO, has a great eyes to see through the future of the company, which is one of the advantage and also strength of the company. So we would like to take an advantage of such a good eyes that we have in the company. And here on is the consolidated results. So as for net income, -JPY 1.4 trillion. So since the last, the same time last year, we have negative figures here. And at the same time, actually, we have...
In terms of the transaction of Arm shares, that's actually some of them are reflected to consolidate the P&L, and some of them are not, vice versa, sorry, that reflected to P&L, but not reflected to balance sheet. So here that I can share the accounting treatment of acquisition of shares from Vision Fund 1. 25% equivalent shares were acquired from Vision Fund 1 in August, and along with this acquisition, realized gain was recorded at Vision Fund. But this was intra-group transaction, therefore it has been eliminated in consolidation, so that's not shown on P&L. But actually, in the other hands, increase in third-party interest is shown on P&L as an increase in costs. From the balance sheet point of view, the same amount, third-party interest, this is also shown in increase in liabilities.
Therefore, this transaction from the consolidated point of view, P&L has the, in the balance sheet, that both has an recording cost and liabilities. At the time of IPO, however, as you can see, about JPY 745 billion of the offering was made, and we received a gain from there. But that's again, after the offering, Arm remains as our subsidiary, so no impact on P&L point of view. And you may ask that where that goes to, and this goes to cash on balance sheet as a positive JPY 745 billion. And, that goes to also the capital surplus and the non-controlling interest. So the cash itself, of course, has been recognized as a enhancement of the balance sheet, which is in this, accounting segments.
Also, to see the enterprise value of ours, you see the KPI in the following pages, which is net asset value. So there, we believe that we are reflecting this increase in our value. The biggest KPI for the metrics for the company is something that we believe is in the net asset value. Therefore, that together with net asset value and other KPIs, I want you to refer to those to see and measure our company's value and also our safetiness of the company. Here on is the gain and loss on investments. If you only see the amount year-over-year, last year half year first half seems about the same, but the content itself has been changed a lot. As you can see, blue portion, this is Vision Fund comparison.
So this term, this quarter, this first half, minus a negative JPY 583 billion, but the last, first half was a negative JPY 4.3 trillion. So Vision Fund improvement has also been seen in this, first half of fiscal 2023. Last year, about the same timing, we also recorded the gain related to settlement of Alibaba prepaid forward contracts, which was a relatively large number. So that was net, net to the, the last year's number. But this year we didn't have a similar type of one-off gain. And, ended with negative JPY 963 billion. And but also, so that I like to highlight that the reduction in losses at Vision Fund. And here is the income before income tax.
... you see the number is quite different compared to the last first half. So last half, first half was JPY 292 billion, and this first half is the -907. So it looks like JPY 1.2 trillion yen equivalent of deterioration that you may ask, "Where that coming from?" So number-wise, under the consolidated accounting, there are many factors there, but the majority, main part is from a movement of the third-party interest in Vision Fund. So last year, there was about JPY 1 trillion yen level of the positive impact to the third-party interest in Vision Fund, but this year, as mentioned earlier for the Arm size, JPY 226 billion negative impact. So this was the actually the biggest impact to this term income before income tax.
So this quarter has a bit different factor from the other quarters for the results. In KPIs, there are three important KPIs: Net Asset Value, and second of all, Loan-to-Value from the credit point of view. So net debt and the assets ratio. And the last but not least is cash position. Compared to end of June, Net Asset Value has increased by JPY 1 trillion. Loan-to-Value also remained in safety level. Cash position ended with JPY 5.1 trillion. So from the safetiness of KPI, we believe that these are all in very healthy positions. And this shows the change in Net Asset Value by breaking down. So this time, close to JPY 1 trillion increase for September end, and we have about share price increase of JPY 0.5 trillion.
Also, Forex was positive for this time, net asset value point of view, and some others that comes to JPY 16.4 trillion in net asset value. This slide shows NAV per share and share price. What we'd like you to look at is what they say, SoftBank discount. So actual stock price goes how close to the value? And, with the Arm IPO, which was successful, the gap widened accordingly. As of end of September, net asset value per share was JPY 11,196, whereas share price was JPY 6,335. So going forward, we have to figure out how we can narrow the gap from technical perspective and from a fundamental perspectives, and, we will continue our dialogue with, investors.
If you go deeper into equity value of holdings, as you can see, since Q4 last year, you can see the upward trend. If you look further, you will realize that Alibaba, that equity value holding was almost sold out by us. But then Arm is now the new driver of the value of holdings. Of course, SoftBank KK is contributing a lot, thankfully, to their stock price. Distribution of portfolio is shown here. As you can see, Alibaba obviously is a Chinese stock. From a geopolitical risk perspective, we have to be very careful about the Chinese market. We have been managing portfolio for the last few years, and now from geopolitical risk management perspective, we are now in better position. Talking about net asset value again, since three quarters earlier, you can see upward trend.
Of course, market will move, and we cannot be complacent, but, as far as our asset is concerned, you can see the positive trend recently. And loan-to-value. 25% is our policy from safe operation perspective, and currently, we are at the level of 10%. As an investment company, maybe some people may say, "You have to be more aggressive, you have to be more active." And the cash position, which is higher than JPY 5 trillion. This is another promise related to another promise, which is make sure that we have a two-year worth redemption of the money. From that perspective, it's five-year equivalent as opposed to two-year for a debt redemption. And impact of Forex. How is it reflected on our finances? And from a consolidated perspective, consolidated net income or net loss was JPY 0.6 trillion.
But as an investment company, we want to have you look at the net asset value to measure our value. Weaker yen is a positive for net asset value, which is plus JPY 1.9 trillion. Almost similar, JPY 1.8 trillion equity is posted for the accounting. Now, let me talk about Arm. We are ready to talk more about Arm. For the last year, we kept saying that, "Sorry, we couldn't say a lot about Arm because Arm was in preparation for IPO." But now we are happy to talk about Arm openly. Arm-based chip shipment is shown here. Actually, this curve is exactly what we expected when we acquired Arm in 2016. Since then, I believe that the number of shipment has been growing exponentially.
Actually, that was what we expected, and illustrative image was, I believe, shown to you. And this is actual result, and I'm sure that our expectation and actual result is really overlapped. So as the society move from IT to AI, everybody will need a Arm chip, and I'm sure that Arm will meet people and society's expectation. And cumulative number of shipment to June 2023 was 270 billion. There are four major markets where Arm can grow further. As for mobile, they already have 99% share. And for cloud and automotive, IoT embedded, for those areas, for cloud, for example, market share was 7% in 2020, and likewise in 2020, they had a 33% of automotive market.
The share has been growing to, for example, 10% for cloud compute, 41% for automotive, and 65% for IoT and embedded. 65% is almost close to a dominant position. TAM is really big, actually, for each sector. As you can see, there are a lot of opportunities out there. As you can see on the far right, for cloud and automotive, over 10% of the potential growth is expected, and that's really attractive. Talking about Arm's target markets. In terms of mobile or for client, mobile devices for consumers, like smartphones and tablets, and also other electronics. When it comes to automotive, an incredible amount of chips are used in this market and in the infrastructure, obviously, and IoT, like manufacturing and services, chips are a necessary component.
An unimaginable number of Arm chips are used in those sectors.
... in the past, AI machine learning were running in computers, but AI and machine learning are getting closer and closer to you, to the edge, and AI will advance even further. As you can see, a lot of industrial leaders announced to adopt Arm's design and Arm's chip. For example, Google's latest smartphone, Pixel 8, was based on Arm's latest generation of CPUs, Armv9 . Also, NVIDIA announced a second generation of Arm-based GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip . Renesas Electronics announced adoption of Arm technology for next generation of chips for autonomous driving. So like you see, Arm is enjoying great business growth. And in terms of numbers, which was already announced by Arm, for quarterly revenue, the record revenue for the first quarter as a listed company. And multiple high-value licenses contributed to this great performance.
As for the revenue, by the way, it's partially different from what we disclosed before, because of the reflection of the latest number to the numbers used for F-1 filing for IPO. Non-GAAP operating profit, 92% year-on-year. They are growing strongly. And annual revenue is providing guidance for the future annual revenue. 2023, according to the guidance, it providing the range of $2.96 trillion-$3.08 trillion. As you know, the semiconductor industry is relatively being weak. However, including the second half, it is expecting very robust growth there. And guidance for the revenue, not only revenue, but also provided the guidance on non-GAAP operating expense, as well as non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share.
Analysts forecast that the semiconductor industry will continue to recover, although trajectory is unclear, so we agree with such expectations. Here on SoftBank Vision Fund status that I would like to share with you, including status. Here is the gain and loss on investments for the second quarter, fiscal 2023, JPY 232 million combined. So as a positive, after the last quarter, that also includes the gain on sales of Arm. Vision Fund 1, it's a large contribution to the total, mainly because of Arm. And this is the gain and loss on investments quarterly basis from the past. Well, environment is still tough, but still, if you see, the quarterly is recording positive numbers from the previous term.
So we believe that we have hit the bottom and also making a good move towards the positive figures. Also, this is the cumulative gain/loss on investments. Again, starting from the third quarter before, it is making a robust recovery. Going on, we are expecting that these numbers also turn positive and make a further growth, and that's something that we also need to see. This is the cumulative investment return on Vision Fund 1. In summary, the left-hand side is investment cost, so it's about $90 billion dollars invested, and so far, $104 billion made as a return. Exited, orange portion, has making a good contribution to investment return. That also includes Arm share transfer. Big... The Vision Fund is private equity fund, however...
Now that the private companies portion becomes about one fourth of the total, of course, and this includes that aiming for the IPO, which we expect. And at the same time, when you see the public companies, the growth is something that we would like to expect further in the future. So we would like to bring numbers here to outperform further in the future from here. Vision Fund 2, on the other hand, $52 billion of the investment cost, and as of September thirtieth cumulative investment return was about 31.55 billion dollars, so that it's not yet a good performance.
As I mentioned before, it is only about a few years, couple of years since the launch of the Vision Fund 2, so we would like to take a little bit more time to see how that goes. Compared to Vision Fund 1, number of portfolio companies are larger, and we hope that each individual portfolio companies in Vision Fund 2 can find a good growth driver, so that we will be able to see the good growth in their value by supporting them in various ways. And the results so far from the Vision Fund, I believe that easy to understand is the number of IPO. And actually, since the inception, it has achieved already 50 listings.
So even if you have IPO, well, because IPO is only the one milestone of the growth trajectory, but the company that can make an IPO means that the company itself has recognized well by the market and investors, so that we can also expect the good future. But at the same time, looking at the market status, environments, may not always the same movement as we expect. And in the past few years that we've been having a difficult environment, so that even they have an IPO, but still the value has not been fully recognized in the market. So there are some portfolio company that not being able to show the good results yet.
So out of these 50 companies, there are quite many that that's not been able to fully recognized by the market yet. And also, on your right-hand side, this is the robust late stage portfolio companies. As we can select portfolio companies here on this slides, and also there are companies that we cannot show on this slides as well. There are quite many, and we are preparing that they will be able to see on this slide sometime near future. So the value total fair value of late stage portfolio accounts for $29 billion or above, and that we hope we will be able to see the good growth on the way to IPO or upon IPO. And this is the portfolio company driving AI revolution. We are shifting to the investing mode.
As a result, what are we aiming for? What is the objectives? So before we go into that, let me explain to you what kind of portfolio company are there who can drive our AI revolution. So I give you two examples. First, ByteDance. I believe you are quite familiar with this company, that they are the provider of TikTok, deploying AI algorithm to power the delivery of personalized content. And I believe they have a very good strategy, and because too well, so that that's why many of you are enjoying TikTok service. So this AI algorithm, providing the fresh and also something like content is provided to the customers. As you see on the below, share of social media users using TikTok actually increasing almost double the numbers in the past few years.
I don't believe that we can find many of such content in the world right now. On your right-hand side, this is the portfolio from India, company called Swiggy. So this is the providing the online grocery shop ordering experience in Indian market. And they provide a kind of intuitive food and grocery ordering, so that the AI is utilized to for the recommendation for the users, and I believe that's a good way of using AI to build their business strategy. So AI investment for the second quarter... So there are a combined of the investments from SoftBank balance sheet and Vision Fund. In total, $1.5 billion. So last quarter was $1.8 billion of the investment of combining Vision Fund 1, Vision Fund 2, LatAm Fund and SBGs.
Further, if you compare with the previous previous quarter, it is growing, the number is growing almost double or triple. So about two years ago, three years ago, we actually investing like JPY 1 trillion per quarter. So compared to that, this looks quite modest. However, compared to last year, we are increasing a number of the invested amount, so we are becoming more active. And you may see some increase in the investment by SBG. From the strategic point of view, it is important from which entity that we are investing. So basically, in principle, our investment activity is done by Vision Fund. That's our basic understanding, basic principle. But invested by Vision Fund also requires the good financial return. How can you receive a financial return? But before then, we may want to think more harder or deeper to certain companies.
If that's a company, probably rather not from the Vision Fund, but from our SoftBank Group balance sheet, and see how the company grows. So we're having a lot of discussions whether where the entity to invest in these companies. So, we are investing in AI, and that's the main strategy for our company. And for Vision Fund, it has a term. Also, basically, it's a minority investment, so there are some difference in between the investment by SBG.
But the investment by SBG, actually, as Masa, about a year, almost more than a year ago, that he's not showing up on this stage for the earnings, but he's been very much devoting himself and involved in the discussion, how and what is going to be the changes in lifetime, life cycles or life, people's life, from the AI revolution. And we would like to be the first runner for such changes or the revolution. For the first quarter, second quarter, from that sense, we have a little bit more investment from the V, SBG compared to from Vision Fund. And what are those investments? So I pick up two, three examples for you. First is the Stack AV.
So they have a very high-quality autonomous driving technology, and so that can optimize supply chain, delivery route, and energy efficiency. By having this developed, because truck industry does carry quite a huge issues, problems for a long time. But because this industry is also essential for the market and people, so that hasn't been able to fully resolve the situation. So, for example, driver shortage, efficiency of uptime, and if you have a longer time of working, risk increase. That leads to safety issues, safety concerns, and also that leads to the CO2 emission, the transportation cost. So this company, this business may be able to find a dramatic solution for such an issues. And second is a company called Balyo. This is the company convert pallet handling to autonomy with driverless forklift.
So how efficient can you handle the pallet is important. So pallet itself is controlled autonomously from AI and robotics solution, utilizing a driverless forklift and not human driver, so that it can change the speed in an efficient way, and also can move even wider. Has already gone public back in 2017, but this October, through the takeover bid, we have acquired 71.14% of shares so far. So, this has already been utilized in many use cases on a global basis. And also, we are very much excited for this company of the future.
Next, Mapbox. I think Mapbox is getting attention gradually on the media. They provide customer navigation and a map application for flexible use by leveraging AI, location information, and navigation information. They provide such information, and currently, over 700 million users are using Mapbox maps. And obviously, car manufacturing companies like Toyota, GM, BMW, and NVIDIA adopted this map service. And not only providing maps, but also they maximize delivery efficiency by optimizing delivery routes and by real-time visibility of fleet operation. So transportation management company is what you may want to call them in a way. So let me show you a short video clip here.
When you check the weather before leaving the house, track a package you're expecting, or make a complex business decision based on data, you realize that the online world and the physical world are not two separate places. They are linked in infinite, essential ways. Mapbox makes that link work. We are the technology behind hundreds of your favorite apps, powering many of the experiences that have come to define modern life. Our maps and location services help the world's most transformative companies drive innovation across logistics, automotive, autonomous transportation, business intelligence, and augmented reality, inventing the experiences that'll shape our future. Today, our network of customers includes over 2.7 million registered developers, more than 200 members from the Fortune 500, and some of the world's largest, fastest-growing companies such as Amazon, Strava, and BMW.
With hundreds of millions of connected vehicles shipping in the next four years and the massive growth in at-home delivery, the need for live location services is only growing. These massive new markets are changing the way we do business and improving the quality of life for everyone. This is just the beginning. Wherever you are, wherever you're headed, Mapbox can help you get further, faster.
Now, of course, Masayoshi Son is leading those investment activities. The other day, we had a function called the SoftBank World, and Mr. Son showed himself for the first time in a while to make a keynote speech. If I may summarize what he said, SoftBank Group, I believe as far back as 2016 at general shareholders meeting, it was the first time when he touched upon singularity. And he said that singularity will arrive within 10 years. And the term singularity back then was something that we've never heard of before, and it's been 7, 8 years since. And now AI, especially Gen AI, is exponentially transforming the world, and... So he committed himself again to leading such world. GPT-4 can pass the medical exam, as they claim.
Anyway, within 10 years, 10 times more intelligence of the total human being shall be delivered, it's said. So that's AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. Well, Intel CEO says something similar, according to a Nikkei article this morning. And then next comes ASI, which is Artificial Super Intelligence, and we assume that within 20 years, 10,000 more intelligent artificial intelligence will be delivered, 10 times more than the total sum of the people's intelligence. So ASI shall come in 20 years, we think. So first, within 10 years, AGI will come, and within 20 years, ASI should come. So we have to come backwards and think what kind of solutions we can deliver? And when you think about that, you have to first identify challenges and issues to be solved.
And big data, private data, and based upon the training on those data, AGI will do inference, and then the AGI will start thinking what's happening in the world. And all industries can be completely revolutionized by this engine. So AGI gets trained real-time, AGI makes inference real-time, and they repeat the cycle, and as they learn more, they get smarter. Seven, eight years ago, we started saying that AI will redefine all industries, and that was AI. When it comes to AGI, revolutionize. AGI will revolutionize all industries. What specifically AGI can do, well, in 360-degree world, like all industries, maybe if I may pick up some industries or services that you feel are relevant: mobility, healthcare, services, finance, logistics, manufacturing. In those areas, there are things that you wish to have in the future. For example, in terms of mobility, accident-free autonomous driving.
Driverless driving can be dangerous, people say. Of course, they may cause accident, but far less than what a human makes accident. And for logistics, data-driven supply matching can be delivered and just in time by the second. AGI will make them possible. So list goes on and on. With AGI, industries will be completely revolutionized. That's why, as a SoftBank Group, we want to make us the most AI-empowered company in the world. And by doing so, we can generate a lot of services and products, and also we can help a lot of businesses get connected each other. So we want you to associate AI with us. Now, last but not the least, let me talk about financial strategy. It's been six months since the fiscal year starts, and we remain the same in terms of financial strategy.
Adhering to financial policy, financial management, to address both offensive and defensive. For the financial policy, again, stay the same. We want to share with you what those numbers mean to us. LTV 25%, even though it exceeds, we are not gonna be in trouble. What we mean is, if we have LTV 25%, we are operating in a very safe way. So it's not like, close to 25% or far away from 25%. And, for bond redemption in cash, we have a 5-year worth now, and you may say it's inefficient way of, spending money. But if you want to compete in a very competitive market, you have to learn from textbook, and also you have to put your activities in practice, your policy in practice. And, this financial operation is organically connected to the financial policy.
Of course, we will invest while we are protecting ourselves. In order to grow a net asset value, existing in portfolio is not enough. Monetizing existing portfolio, and then the gain we get should be redistributed to new investment. And of course, we have to think about capital allocation, shareholders' return, and financial stability. For example, in terms of return, share buyback and more dividend, those can be returned to shareholders. So for the credit investors, that's keeping credit safetiness is the return to credit investors. So we need to make sure that we have a good balance in investing new investment for company's growth. We have JPY 5 trillion in cash, and why don't you start buying your shares, and why don't you increase dividend? You may say. Yes, I understand your opinion, but we always think about that.
But, when and how, we will keep watching how the market grows, how our business grows, and figure out the best timing and best way for returning to investors. We want to run our business so that our investors will appreciate our performance and return. No company has done JPY 4.5 trillion worth of share buyback in the last few years. And again, we remain serious and figure out when is the best timing to return to you. To summarize, Arm IPO successfully completed, and they reached one of their milestones, and they are ready for next round of the growth. Next, net asset value, which is one of the most important key indicator, increased from JPY 15.5 trillion to JPY 16.4 trillion. Third, we carefully resumed investment.
Last, but not least, Vision Fund looks to increase mid to long-term value. SoftBank Group and SoftBank Vision Fund will keep working to maximize the value of the portfolio. Thank you very much.
Now, we would like to take questions. First, we would like to take questions from the floor. Please wait for the microphone and start with your name and affiliation. For those who are on Zoom, please access to the Zoom as we informed you in advance, and please, refrain from connecting to other live stream to avoid any echoing. You can start pressing Raise Hand button if you wish to make any question. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press Lower Hand button. We would like to ask, for those who are on Japanese Zoom, please make your question in Japanese. We would like to take up to two questions per person, so that we can take questions from as many people as possible. Now, we would like to take questions from the floor. Please raise your hand if you have any.
The person with the gray jacket in the front row, please.
Thank you. My name is Goto from Mainichi Newspaper. WeWork had filed a bankruptcy, and how do you... What is your impression, and also any impact to SoftBank Group business itself?
So, Chapter 11 filing has happened. First of all, I'm very sorry to hear that. As a company, we need to accept this reality, and also need to learn the lesson from this for our future investment activity. And what was wrong, what went wrong, from our investment decision, and that needs to be improved going forward. So that became a very big homework for us. At the same time, from the accounting perspective, because value has been decreasing, and that being recognized every quarter basis in the past, and we've been valuing, evaluating in very conservative way, so that as of now, that, there is no any big surprise or anything for the accounting perspective as of today.
Kimiwada-san, do you have any comment? No. Then that, well, I have another question. How do you see the management responsibility of So- Masa?
As CEO, he is taking responsibility for everything. Of course, that's the one idea. As for WeWork, he was of course involved in the decision-making, but I believe this is something that we need to accept as an enterprise, as a company. So we all need to learn lesson from here, so that we can make a full effort for the success of the Vision Fund. And right now, that Masa is involved and devoting himself for the new chapter or the new projects for the SoftBank Group. And I believe that it's even more important for us, him to make such a good involvement in the business planning for the SoftBank Group.
Any other question from the floor?
The person in a black jacket, please.
Thank you for taking my question. MJ from Bloomberg. I have a question. The pace of investment, if you could elaborate on that. $1.8 million for the first quarter, and for the second quarter, $1.2 million. So I don't feel it's very speedy investment, I, if I may. So how fast or how slow you are going to invest going forward? And an investment by group, investment by Vision Fund, what's the ratio, that you have in your mind? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. As you can see on the slide, last year's Q2, Q3, Q4, that was $0.5 million, $0.5 million, $0.5 million. Now, this year, $1.8 million and $1.5 million for Q1 and Q2 respectively, so it's tripled amount.
Some people say, "Wow, that's big!" And from SoftBank perspective, it's too small. So it depends on whom you ask. And we are not just making money. When new investment opportunity comes up, maybe a ticket size may be bigger, so the absolute amount investment may be bigger for the rest of the year. But again, we are very selective when it comes to investment opportunities, so the pace might be slowing down, so it depends. So investment, it depends on investment opportunities, but as you know, we have plenty of cash position, so we are ready for whatever big investment opportunities you think, we think it's good. And talking about investment by fund, investment by SoftBank Group, the ratio or percentage, we don't have any rule or anything like that.
Rather than thinking about whether we can get a good economical performance soon or not, I think we want to think together with SoftBank Vision Fund. Or like I mentioned earlier, if there are investment opportunities which we think we should work with them and help them, then SoftBank Group may invest in those businesses. And in other cases, if SoftBank Vision Fund we think it's better for them to invest, then let them invest. So there is no specific rule, but it depends on what expect, what expectation we have from those investment opportunities.
Thank you. Any other questions? Person in the front row.
My name is Yamaguchi from Mainichi Newspaper. So, as for the WeWork bankruptcy, so Masa's eyes or the judgment, some investor may have a doubt on his eyes or his judgment. Maybe he had intuitively fell in love with the CEO or the founder, but would you change or improve the way of judging the investment port target?
After the WeWork investments, there was a time that we had to commit the investments for follow-on following investments for the WeWork. But at the same time, we also mentioned and committed to the market that we are not going to do the rescue investments for the portfolio companies. And after then, we've clarified our disciplines and also changed and updated the investment criteria, so that not only from the one angle decisions or one angle criteria for the decisions for the investment, but we are brushing up those criteria every quarter basis. Navneet, do you have additional comment?
Thank you, Goto-san. I agree with what you said. Our focus right now is to preserve our preferred capital in WeWork. As Goto-san said, there are no incremental investments. Also, as Goto-san mentioned, most of the exposure has already been written down, so there's no residual exposure, only the equity exposure based on the stock price that was trading at September thirtieth.
Well, I have another question. 25% of Arm share that you bought back from Vision Fund, and I believe that you had bought in quite a high price. What was the reason? Is it because Saudi PIF is in the Vision Fund and there were laws? I think there must be some reason that you bought with that price. First of all-
We, SoftBank Group, is very much expecting the great future of Arm. Vision Fund, of course, like you said, we have outside LP, so this is an independent fund. Of course, we invest in this fund, but we are about 50%, and remaining 50% are the external LP. And based on a good discussion and agreed upon the price, and both are convinced, and the fund side is satisfied with the price. We, SoftBank Group, also are happy and agreed with the price, considering the future. I don't discuss any detail or agreements or the detailed discussion we had, that's a private discussion. But how that going to be looked from outside, from analysts or others, well, how they look at the Arm share after this transaction?
How do these recent analysts see the price for Arm? Even with the estimates of those pricing or the analysts, I think that they have quite convinced. My last question on WeWork once again. So what was your final investment ratio to WeWork? Equity, debt, inc combined, about $14 billion. Ratio, please. Ratio. What was the investment ratio in WeWork? How much percent ownership? Economically, 70%, yes. And cumulative loss, $14.3 billion, as disclosed. Please look at the disclosure. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question on the venue.
Shikata from Nihon Keizai Shimbun or Nikkei newspaper. For 2 questions. First, AI strategy. I don't think that you're gonna make AGI, but from manufacturing and financing and manufacturing, and AGI will have an impact. So services and products, SoftBank Group may want to develop them?
Thank you for your question. We are not ready to share with you the progress of our discussion internally, and it may take time before talking to you about what we want to do. Anything is possible at the moment, to be honest. Obvious ones, of course, and businesses, industry that we don't have as our parts, if you will, in our portfolio. And if there are partners, potential partners that we can work with to drive AI, of course, we will think about that, whether it's service or product.
Sometimes we may take a lead in developing those, services and products, but we are still struggling and figuring out, and give us some more time before talk openly about our specific AI strategy.
Thank you. The next question, different color. SoftBank and Mizuho, which is one of your friendly partners, and Rakuten, that is kind of your competitor. Mizuho Financial Group and Mizuho Securities announced to make additional investment to get closer to Rakuten. And SoftBank LINE Yahoo and PayPay Shoken also Mizuho are working with. So Mizuho, from capital perspective and from business perspective, they are getting closer to mobile operators like Rakuten and SoftBank, and other mobile-related service companies. What do you think?
Well, to us, Mizuho Group is a main bank group, and we have very strong relationship, and we have 100% trust each other. In the meantime, Mizuho, of course, is one of the prominent financial institutions in Japan, and they have a lot of customers, a lot of businesses, so it's up to them to make their best decision. And the relationship between Mizuho and us, after their announcement of additional investment in Rakuten, I don't think it will change anything about our relationship.
Thank you. Any other questions, please? The very front row, person, please.
Morita from Toyo Keizai. Thank you. I have two questions. First, EPS and also the gap discount for the NAV. So you mentioned and it doesn't really narrow down. So you, earlier you said, impression-wise, you don't really answer for the narrowing the gap of the discounts. So for this SoftBank discount, do you have a good understanding on the factors or reason for these discounts, and you are preparing for the solutions, or you have done any of the solutions methods or the anything, but hasn't been able to narrow down?
I believe there are issues in two ways. One is a real issue, and the other is technical issue.
So the, for example, short-term period buyback can be one technical solution, but many of the company who has done the buyback and looking at their trajectory of share price, it is just a one time, and I can understand that's why. So important thing is the real solution. So we need to have a good understanding by the market on our strategy. And strategy from the investor's point of view may not be enough. That's one angle. For that, we do need to, improve our strategy itself. And second angle is that we have admitted to long-term vision and try to do that in advance. And maybe we are too early or too fast, so that it may not be fully clearly understood by the market, the investors. So I think there are two things. Oh, and maybe both angles, exist there.
To solve the two issues, I believe we need a kind of the disclosure approach, from the management point of view, and also even more important is to show you the results as soon as possible. So Arm IPO, this is one good milestone, and even after the IPO, we've been seeing a robust move, and now that we're seeing a further development in business. And then I believe that you're seeing the results, so that we'll be able to narrow the discount. So we need to show you the results, that's one thing. And also, me, as a leading investor relations, probably we need to have a deeper communication with investors, so that investor can understand our strategy, and we need to take more time on that. That's another solutions and issue that we have to think about.
So how we solve this discount, I think that the these are, the thing that I have said earlier is something that we need to do in total. I have second question. Masa's view on the group management, how they prioritize or how they position? So because recently, Masa is actually making a message, the company which does or provide the generative AI. Then it's not really the investment business anymore, but rather like to do, because you have a contest in the companies for the generative AI and the Yahoo AI. So that he is rather focusing more on the operating business rather than investment business. That's how I feel. But at the same time, you have a investment business as well. So what is his mind? What is his focus? Has his focus been changed or the weight has changed?
I don't believe he has changed his focus. Being an investment company here, but as a business person, Masa is, one business person. And company also, we are creating the business. As you can see from this slide, the first, our company has to utilize AI. Are we really using AI? That's the kind of a question back to the companies, back to the employees. That's why that we have an internal contest or competitions amongst employees to come up with the ideas for the AI use case. So for this agenda, request structure systems, probably that that can be penetrated in our company, and that can be a good power, to compete against our competitors. That's the kind of a first step. That's the one that we, first need to focus, and that's the, agenda that we are investing in.
And the group companies are growing along with the utilizing of AI. So I think that everybody leads up to, this, his, comments here, and that's how he sees the AI right now.
Thank you.
Any more questions?
Watanabe from Asahi Newspaper. In your presentation, you mentioned geopolitical risk, so I have a question around that. I think you are increasing investment in Israel, backed by investment by Saudi Arabia in partially. So at the moment, how do you position yourself in this current geopolitical environment?
Now, Navneet, would you like to comment on that?
Sorry, could you repeat the question?
Yes, about investment through a Vision Fund. Investment in Israel, I think you are increasing investment in Israel. And, looking at the current situation, geopolitical risk is growing. So I wonder if SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio will be impacted, or would you like to reconsider strategy, or would you expect some short-term impact from geopolitical risks in the Middle East? Thank you.
So actually, it turns out in the September quarter, we made an investment in an Israeli company called Cato Networks in cybersecurity. And as Goto-san said, we continue to look for AI disruptors all over the globe, regardless of where the location is. Of course, some of these geopolitical developments are... You know, there's a lot of human tragedy there. Our view is that our portfolio companies are, we have a long-term investment horizon, three to five years. And companies that are disruptive, that are scaling, will do well no matter where they are. So whether it's Israel or other areas, we continue to look at those.
Thank you very much. So, let me see if I understood correctly. So you don't have any rule in terms of the place or location, in terms of investment. So whoever or wherever it is, if it's disruptor, AI disruptor, you will continue investing. So at this moment, you don't have any intention to change your strategy?
If I may add some colors. Let's say China. We are not actively investing in China, but there are a lot of great portfolio companies that may have country risks. Sometimes if you think that one day it's okay, next day the business is bad, you cannot invest in such companies. So you have to control yourself, manage yourself in terms of where to invest in. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions? If not, then that's all for the questions from the floor, and we would like to move on to the question from online participants. Please refrain from connecting to other live stream to avoid any echoing. And once again, if you are on Japanese Zoom, please make your question in Japanese.
Thank you. So first, Mr. Nakagawa from NewsPicks , please unmute and ask such your question. Can you hear me okay?
This is Nakagawa speaking. Yes. I have two questions. First, SBG investments. So you mentioned a bit, so world is moving to AI, and you would like to invest from SBG for on those that can be an important part of the AI revolution. So important part, can you elaborate a little bit? How do you decide when it comes to the investment from SBG itself?
Good question, and also difficult question as well. It's... We haven't been clearly defined that yet. But after the discussion, those company that we are investing from SBG falls under such criteria. So that's may not be clearly answering to you, but I believe that more close to the reality, I believe.
So I said, how the world is gonna change, and there are two to six segments that, I had a page, which gonna be changing. And each segment, we believe AI is going to be providing and leading the service and business. For example, one, just one example, autonomous driving. It's, we're having a clear view in the parts that the needs to that change is something easier to understand. For example, Mapbox is also the same. So from that sense, we, we are checking one by one and, which, entity we should be using for the investment as an investor. So, we don't have a clear line, between those two, but at the same time, we need to make an answer. So we are, thinking hard and discussing.
So since last time that you start investing from balance sheet of SBG, and also I bring this up, but mainly logistics, the one that you are looking at. So then that I have a question that, are you go into the logistics business? So you saw the video, sorry, that slides on SB, that we are investing from SBG. And also it's easy to understand sector compared to the others. So relatively easy to address, agenda is easy to address, but that's not everything. Actually, we are trying to see bigger change or bigger shift in other sector too. And the last question from me, so investment from SBG, Project R has been covered by media. Is this the same thing with the investment by SBG?
And also, Sam Altman, CEO, and Masa, we heard that they are trying to start invest business together. I have nothing that I can answer to that question. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. In the interest of time, we will take the one last person to give us a question before closing. From Bloomberg, Grace Sun, please. Thank you very much. Grace Sun from Bloomberg. I have just one question, if I may. You mentioned that you wanna be ready for both defensive and offensive. From that perspective, priorities for SVF and SBG, or relationship between SVF and SBG, I want to know more. Because for investors in SVF, in the future, if there are cases where bigger return can be expected from SBG's investment rather than SVF's investment. So again, for your stakeholder, for your investors, could you elaborate on the relationship between SVF and SBG, and priorities? Vision Fund, obviously, we have One and Two, and there are other third-party investors, like, for Vision Fund 1, for example.
For Vision Fund 1, no new investment at all. So only new investment is made by Vision Fund 2, as far as fund is concerned. So third party and Masayoshi is are one of the investors. At the moment, there is no issue of conflict from SBG's perspective. So which party should invest in who? We will have a better discussion to address potential conflict. So going forward, Vision Fund 2, eventually, you may shrink investment by Vision Fund 2 going forward, depending on environment, depending on the market. At the moment, there are no third-party LPs, but eventually, maybe there might be LPs coming in to Vision Fund 2. So going forward, investment by the group, investment by the fund, we will run concurrently going forward, for the time being, at least.
Thank you very much. That was our last question. This concludes SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results announcement for six-month period, ended September 30, 2023. Thank you very much once again. The video footage of this meeting will be distributed on demand from our corporate website. Thank you very much once again for joining the SoftBank Group Corp. earnings result announcement for six-month period ended September 30, 2023.