The mobile unit of Japan’s SoftBank is set to win listing approval from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on November 12 with December 19 as the listing date. The listing, which will most likely be Japan’s biggest ever, makes SoftBank and its more than $93 billion Vision Fund one of the world’s largest technology investors.
The listing could make room for investments in areas such as solar energy and ridesharing. According to reports, the possible initial public offering (IPO) joint global coordinators include Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Nomura Holdings, Goldman Sachs and SMBC Nikko Securities, which is a unit of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.
The Japanese giant quintupled profit in its latest half-year results, with the mobile division performing well ahead of a planned market debut. Crystallizing the division's value in an initial public offering should give a lift to SoftBank, which perennially trades at a chunky discount to the sum of its varied parts.
Operating profit rose to 706 billion yen ($6.2 billion) in the three months ended September, the Japanese telecommunications provider and technology investor said in a statement. That far exceeded the 373 billion yen average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
