Alibaba shares tumble following SoftBank deals with its stake

April 17, 2023: -Alibaba shares decreased nearly 3% in after-hours trading after regulatory files revealed that SoftBank had sold most of its stake in the company.

SoftBank has sold roughly $7.2 billion shares in the Chinese e-commerce giant via prepaid forward contracts, an analysis of the corporate noted by The Financial Times stated on Wednesday. Because of the sales, the report stated that SoftBank would maintain a 3.8% stake in Alibaba, which has a market cap of almost $250 billion.

Only about three years ago, SoftBank maintained a nearly 25% stake in the giant tech worth more than $100 billion. Similarly, Alibaba was SoftBank’s most valuable investment.

But for more than years, SoftBank and its Vision Fund have posted huge quarterly losses during a slowdown in the tech sector valuations. The Vision Fund stated a pretax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen, which marks the unit’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss.

Similarly, Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of the Japanese technology conglomerate and holding firm, said SoftBank would operate in a “defence” mode and be more “conservative.”

Son invested $20 million in 2000 in Alibaba, which helped the e-commerce startup become one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

In March, Alibaba stated that it would split into six business committees, with each unit able to get its funding and potentially go public. The move was “created to unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness,” Alibaba stated.

In the year 2020, Son stepped down from Alibaba’s board shortly following Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s resignation from SoftBank’s board.