Hello, this is Kenji, presenting this edition of #techAsia from Tokyo after our short Golden Week holiday break.
Corporate earnings season is hitting its peak this week, as most companies in Japan close their financial years at the end of March, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange demands that listed enterprises disclose their results within 45 days. This means thousands of them will be announcing their earnings up to the deadline on Friday.
SoftBank Group surprised a lot of us — including myself, who used to cover the company over a decade ago — on Wednesday when it reported a full-year net profit of ¥5tn yen ($31.6bn), quadrupling from a year earlier. The surge is mainly on paper, driven by gains from its tech-focused Vision Funds, which booked an annual investment profit of ¥6.99tn, 16 times higher than the year before. But this result reflects the higher valuations of tech companies in general, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI, on which SoftBank is betting heavily.