New Delhi, Aug 8 : Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of Japanese investment firm Softbank on Monday warned startups and unicorns to be prepared for a harsh and prolonged winter of funding as the company announced terrible results for its second consecutive quarter this year. In its earnings conference following the company reported a $23.4 billion in net losses in the quarter ended June, Son said that unicorn leaders “still believe in their valuations and don’t believe that they will need to have their valuations fall lower than they believe”.
The downturn for publicly traded companies is continuing however, a similar decline for startups could be “longer,” warned the 64-year-old CEO.
“Now seems like the ideal time to invest in stocks since the market is falling by a significant amount and I feel the desire to invest however, if I act in response, we may be hit with a blow that could be irreparable and is not acceptable,” Son emphasised.
The company claimed that the loss in the June quarter “was attributable to the monetisation of the investments in publicly traded companies”.
Son advised businesses to save money to withstand the economic downturn.
“The world is in immense chaos,” he said.
In the case of startup companies, Softbank invested more than $46 billion in startups in the last fiscal year.
SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund was launched in 2017 and is supported by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.
Son stated in May that, in comparison to the previous year “the quantity of new investment (in startup companies) will be half or as low as one quarter”.
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