(CNN Business) — SoftBank CEO Masa Son’s big bets on Uber and other tech companies are poised to make the Japanese company a lot of money. SoftBank (SFBTF) reported Thursday that the value of its investment in the ride hailing company has increased 418 billion yen ($3.8 billion). It invested more than $7 billion in Uber in 2017 through its Vision Fund. Operating profit for the fiscal year ended in March soared 81% from a year earlier to 2.4 trillion yen ($21.4 billion), SoftBank said in an earnings statement. More than half of that was driven by the Vision Fund and an affiliated fund, which together pulled in 1.26 trillion yen ($11.4 billion). Son has shaken up the tech industry with the $100 billion Vision Fund, buying hefty stakes in high profile startups like Uber, WeWork and Slack. Saudi Arabia committed $45 billion to the fund. This week will be a big test for Son’s deal making prowess, when Uber holds its highly anticipated initial public offering on Friday. The SoftBank Vision Fund is Uber’s largest shareholder with a 16.3% stake.<doc-sep>Uber has confirmed it will spin out its self-driving car business after the unit closed $1 billion in funding from Toyota, auto-parts maker Denso and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The development has been speculated for some time — as far back as October — and it serves to both remove a deeply unprofitable unit from the main Uber business, helping Uber scale back some of its losses, while giving Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (known as Uber ATG) more freedom to focus on the tough challenge of bringing autonomous vehicles to market. The deal values Uber ATG at $7.25 billion, the companies announced. In terms of the exact mechanics of the investment, Toyota and Denso are providing $667 million, with the Vision Fund throwing in the remaining $333 million. The deal is expected to close in Q3, and it gives investors a new take on Uber’s imminent IPO, which comes with Uber ATG. The company posted a $1.85 billion loss for 2018, but R&D efforts on “moonshots” like autonomous cars and flying vehicles dragged the numbers down by accounting for more than $450 million in spending. Moving those particularly capital-intensive R&D plays into a new entity will help bring the core Uber numbers down to earth, but clearly there’s still a lot of work to reach break-even or profitability. Still, those crazy numbers haven’t dampened the mood. Uber is still seen as a once-in-a-generation company, and it is tipped to raise around $10 billion from the IPO, giving it a reported valuation of $90 billion-$100 billion. Like the spin-out itself, the identity of the investors is not a surprise. The Vision Fund (and parent SoftBank) have backed Uber since a January 2018 investment deal closed, while Toyota put $500 million into the ride-hailing firm last August. Toyota and Uber are working to bring autonomous Sienna vehicles to Uber’s service by 2021 while, in further proof of their collaborative relationship, SoftBank and Toyota are jointly developing services in their native Japan, which will be powered by self-driving vehicles. The duo also backed Grab — the Southeast Asian ride-hailing company in which Uber owns around 23 percent — perhaps more aggressively. SoftBank has been an investor since 2014, and last year Toyota invested $1 billion into Grab, which it said was the highest investment it has made in ride hailing. “Leveraging the strengths of Uber ATG’s autonomous vehicle technology and service network and the Toyota Group’s vehicle control system technology, mass-production capability, and advanced safety support systems, such as Toyota Guardian, will enable us to commercialize safer, lower cost automated ridesharing vehicles and services,” said Shigeki Tomoyama, the executive VP who leads Toyota’s “connected company” division, said in a statement. Here’s Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s shorter take on Twitter:<doc-sep>TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's SoftBank Group Corp announced a stock split while keeping the per-share dividend unchanged for the year, effectively doubling its shareholder payout, as it also reported a $3.8 billion valuation gain on its stake in Uber. The news comes at a time when SoftBank and its almost $100 billion Vision Fund stand at a possible inflection point with some of its big tech bets like Uber Technologies headed toward public listings, in what investors and industry experts see as a test of SoftBank's investment strategy. The group is also considering listing the Saudi-backed Vision Fund, which has invested roughly $80 billion in around 80 tech firms, a source told Reuters last week. A second Vision Fund will be announced soon, SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son said at a news conference on Thursday, adding it would be similar in size to the first fund with SoftBank likely to be the only investor initially. The value of Vision Fund's investments in 69 companies had risen to $72.3 billion by end-March, from their $60.1 billion acquisition cost, driven by gains at companies like Uber and Indian hotels startup OYO, SoftBank said on Thursday. The fund's stake in Uber, which is set to make its market debut on Friday, grew 418 billion yen ($3.8 billion) in value, while its share in OYO added 154 billion yen in value. Overall, the fair value rose for 29 firms and fell for 12 over the period, SoftBank said, with the rest unchanged. The value of its stake in Guardant Health, a Vision Fund portfolio company listed last year, grew 203 billion yen. Aided by the soaring valuations of its tech investments, the Japanese conglomerate's operating profit for the year ended March jumped 80.5 percent to 2.4 trillion yen ($22 billion). That was above a 2.1 trillion yen SmartEstimate that gives a greater weighting to top-rated analysts, Refinitiv data shows. SHAREHOLDER PAYOUT The tech and telecoms group said its common stock will be split at a two-for-one ratio on June 27, while its dividend will remain unchanged at 44 yen per share. "We are finally in a phase where we can meet shareholders' expectations," Son said. SoftBank's transition away from telecoms towards tech investments accelerated with the 2.35 trillion yen listing of a third of its domestic telco SoftBank Corp in December in what is Japan's largest-ever initial public offering. That provided the funds for a share buyback that has helped drive up SoftBank Group's stock by nearly 60 percent this year. The shares closed up 0.7 percent ahead of the earnings. On Wednesday, the group said it would sell down its share in Yahoo Japan as SoftBank Corp hiked its stake in the internet firm to 45 percent. The deal will function as a transfer of funds from the telco to its parent. Part of the proceeds will be used to fund the second Vision Fund, Son said on Thursday. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP The market welcomed the news, with SoftBank Corp's shares up 7 percent on Thursday and Yahoo Japan's shares up 9.4 percent. SoftBank Group did not provide a forecast for the current financial year, citing uncertain business factors. ($1 = 109.9100 yen) (Reporting by Sam Nussey; Additional reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Himani Sarkar)<doc-sep>
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced this evening a $1 billion investment from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s Vision Fund, car maker Toyota, and automative component supplier Denso. The news confirms an article from The Wall Street Journal published earlier this week reporting that Uber was close to securing funding for its autonomous division, called Uber Advanced Technologies Group, or UberATG. Khosrowshahi announced the investment with a tweet, which included a photo of the chief executive alongside executives from SoftBank, Toyota, and Denso. According to the accompanying press release, the capital injection values Uber’s self-driving unit at $7.25 billion, ahead of the company’s official initial public offering likely later this year. Uber’s IPO, which does not yet have a set date, is expected to raise around $10 billion for the ride-hailing company and would value the company at as much as $100 billion, the WSJ reports. The investment values Uber’s self-driving unit at $7.25 billion The terms of the investment indicate Toyota and Denso are contributing $667 million collectively, while SoftBank’s Vision Fund is contributing $333 million. The deal should come as no surprise to those closely watching Uber’s finances; the company received a $500 million investment from Toyota back in August 2018 specifically to help accelerate its self-driving efforts, including putting a retrofitted fleet of Toyota Sienna’s on the road to test Uber’s autonomous technology and eventually deploy it commercially as soon as 2021. “This investment and our strong partnership with the Toyota Group are a testament to the incredible work of our ATG team to date, and the exciting future ahead for this important project, alongside great partners,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “The development of automated driving technology will transform transportation as we know it, making our streets safer and our cities more livable. Today’s announcement, along with our ongoing OEM and supplier relationships, will help maintain Uber’s position at the forefront of that transformation.” Excited to announce Toyota, Denso and the SoftBank Vision Fund are making a $1B investment in @UberATG, as we work together towards the future of mobility. pic.twitter.com/JdqhLkV7uU — dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) April 19, 2019 The funding is a sign of confidence in UberATG from the Japanese financial and automotive industries after a few years of bumpy stateside research and development. Just last month, the company avoided criminal charges in the first-ever death at the hands of an autonomous car, which took place in March of last year and claimed the life of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. The fatal accident ended Uber’s test program in Tempe, Arizona, but the company has since resumed testing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where UberATG is headquartered. In addition to the crash, UberATG was embroiled in a contentious trade secrets lawsuit with competing self-driving company Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, a legal dispute that reached a surprise settlement last February after just a week of courtroom dealings. Due in part to the lawsuit, Uber shuttered its self-driving truck unit, although the company has kept the division’s engineers working on an in-house lidar project, and it continues to develop a software logistics platform for delivery companies called Uber Freight.