Alibaba shares dropped nearly 3% in after-hours trading after regulatory files revealed that SoftBank has sold a majority of its stake in the company.
According to a Financial Times analysis of corporate filings published on Wednesday, SoftBank sold approximately $7.2 billion in shares in the Chinese ecommerce giant through prepaid forward contracts. Because of the sales, SoftBank will now own only 3.8% of Alibaba, which has a market capitalization of nearly $250 billion.
Only about three years ago, SoftBank held a nearly 25% stake in the tech behemoth valued at more than $100 billion. SoftBank’s most valuable investment at the time was Alibaba.
But, over the years, SoftBank and its Vision Fund have suffered massive quarterly losses as the tech sector has slowed, lowering valuations. The Vision Fund reported a pretax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen (approximately $5 billion) in February, marking the unit’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss.
SoftBank’s founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, stated at the time that the Japanese technology conglomerate and holding company would operate in a “defence” mode and be more “conservative.”
