Softbank Group Corp

Welcome to the SoftBank Group Corp Earnings Results Announcement for the nine-month period ended December 31st, 2025. Now we would like to start and also like to introduce today's participants. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO. Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President and CAO. Navneet Govel, Executive Partner and CFO, SB Investor Advisors and SB Global Advisors. Jason Child, Executive Vice President and CFO, Today's announcement is live broadcast over the internet. Now I would like to invite Yoshimitsu Goto to present you the earnings results and business overview. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for your time today. This is Goto speaking. This January, I had knee surgery, and currently I have a bit difficulty keep standing. But for the next turning, I believe that I can recover well so that I'll be able to explain to you and present while I'm standing. I had a bit bad knees. and made me difficult to walk straight and try to fix that whenever younger. So that's why that I come to this. So I appreciate my parents who born me in healthy manner, but this was my first ever surgery and being admitted in a hospital in my life. And when I am on the wheelchair, I will realize many things which I never experienced, which I never imagined over six years in my life. So it's quite a lesson that I've been learning. And I've been admitted in the hospital for two weeks and alcohol-free for two weeks. That was also another first time in life. And I lost eight kilograms in weight, which is good news also. But that's it. That's only for my things. But I would like to come into the earnings results announcements, and I will present while I remain seated. Very much sorry about that, and I hope you understand. So this time, agenda for the earnings to be the number one ASI platform provider. So what is platformer? I believe it's always a question for you and for us, too. At the general shareholders' new meetings last year, Masa presented that we would like to be a platform provider. And Masa was also asked, and he answered, we could say a core pillar of the industry that platform is. This can be also a base for the many things And we can build those bases so that many things which we do not have can be on top of that so that we'll be able to grow together. That's something that we have as a mission for SoftBank Group. When the company founded the business, it started with a wholesale of software. And recently, I was talking to Masa. He said that he never thought that his original business is a wholesaler business. Back then, software was very new. and just wanted to create a system to distribute such software to people. And he started such a system, which was the wholesale. And then people will be able to recognize what is the software, and they will be able to learn more. So that Masa started publishing business, also started the broad media. And many things were put onto the platform since then. So that's a similar thing that we are doing. After year 2000, internet era dawned and idea platformer or platform provider became more important, even more important. And now we are entering into AI and headed towards ASI. Platform provider is the one that we would like to be. And we are steadily laying the groundwork right now. I don't play a game of Go, but we are laying the ground. In the past three months, this quarter, we made quite a large amount of investments in OpenAI and completed 22.5 billion follow-on investment back in December. As a result, 34.6 billion, which is about 5.4 trillion yen, invested in total for about 11 percent ownership. And to advance Stargate, We have also a strategic partnership formed. Other than OpenAI, we do have several progress in robotics. ABB, which is well known around the world, we announced the acquisition with $5.4 billion for chip. We completed the acquisition of $6.5 billion completed. These are the events that happened in the third quarter. And Digital Bridge, which is the digital infrastructure investment company, and we announced this company's acquisition with $3.1 billion in December. So each respective events are our And I believe this make us progress in the big picture for the framework. And when you look at our portfolio, this has also been changing, and this is something that we should also highlight. About three years ago, if you see by business segment, portfolio for ASI was about limited to pretty much ARM and some robots in portfolio companies. So about 18% out of the total net asset value was our ASI investments. But now ARM is growing even further. On top of that, we have decided investments in others, including open AI robots and so on. So now that the more than 60% Assets are ASI-oriented investments amongst our net asset value. And highlights for third quarter 2025. First was the completed follow-on investment in OpenAI, increasing ownership to about 11%. And net income, first quarter to third quarter, 3.17 trillion yen, which was increased by 2.54 trillion yen over year, so which was a very good number. Third, net asset value. So gross less net interest-bearing debt. was 30.9 trillion yen at the end of December. So if you only look at this compared to September end, which was even a quarter before, this is minus 2.4 trillion yen. But the latest figure is recovering, and as of today, 33 trillion yen as of today. So it's about the same level as September and large investments made with financial policy maintained. So open AI for loan investment were also made, and that actually giving us about 6 trillion yen level of the investment so far. but at the same time, while we make a decision on investment, we also very much focus on the financial policy of loan-to-value. And so with those investments, loan-to-value at 20.6%, cash position 3.8 trillion yen. Loan-to-value, as of today, this morning, less than 20%, it's about 19-ish percent. Thank you.

Now, let me walk you through the consolidated results. First, you can see net sales gained on investment, income before income tax, all increased. FY25 is a good year in terms of performance. By the quarter, in terms of gross loss on investment and net income, in the third quarter, about 300 billion yen of gain on investment. You may think it goes up and down, but if you look at the last four quarter, we posted gain even in the range of seven quarters, we posted a loss only the first quarter. one quarter, but remaining six quarter, we posted a gain. So all in all, we are seeing growing gain. So our investment strategy is bearing fruit and represented in this way. So if you go deeper into gain or loss on investment, In the third quarter and the second quarter, both the huge increase of open air's fair value contributed a lot. That means our decision on investment was successful. Looking at the second quarter, for example, fair value of OpenAI is represented in the lighter blue, which is big, but also other investment posted about 1.3 trillion yen of gain. In the third quarter, however, we lost other investment by 346 billion or so, but It included temporary loss of listed companies, but all in all, we recorded a positive number. And like I said, huge contribution to our bottom line is open AI. If you look at the valuation for the last 12 months or so, When we started investment, valuation was about $150 billion. In March 2025, or this fiscal year, we decided to invest as much as $30 billion. Back then, the valuation was $260 billion. On that valuation, we made investment at $30 billion. And as of October, or just three months ago, the valuation increased to 500 billion. It's not only we are seeing this is open as valuation, but from the third evaluator's perspective, also open as valuation is around 500 billion. And OpenAI's leadership in AI sector and offering a lot of service offerings are showing this kind of a high valuation. And talking about investment gain on OpenAI, the green bar is investment cost. at the end of the second quarter of 2025, cumulative investment gain was 19.8 billion. And in the third quarter, we added 23 billion from the prospect of investment. So as of December end, the black portion is investment cost, which is about 34.6 billion. And on top of that, the gain in FY2024 and recorded in second quarter and the third in 2025. Total, we are looking at investment gain of 54 billion. So since inception or since the start of investment, the investment gain for FY2025 is 4.2 billion. Now, key indicators. Net asset value, or NAV, which is the most important indicator as an investment company, as of December 31st, NAV was about 31 billion. But recently, it went up to 33 billion. Loan-to-value? As of December end, 20%, but now, or recently, 19%-ish. In cash position, back then, 3.8 trillion, and now we have a little bit more than 3.8 trillion recently. We keep this level of... indicators while maintaining discipline in making investment. And if you look back the history of NAV, as you can see, our asset value is and has been stable and a loan-to value is shown on this slide, recently less than 20%. So as you can see, for the last four or five years, we have been maintaining the safe LTV level, which means even though we have made a huge investment in the last nine months or so, Yet, we maintained financial policy in a very disciplined manner. That's the core message I want to deliver to you. Cash position. Our policy is to make sure that we have cash position well over the worth limit. a bond redemption for two years. Again, as you can see, we have been maintaining about 3 trillion to 4 trillion yen level.

So vision fund. So when you look at the vision fund gain or loss on investments, roughly speaking, SoftBank overall gain and loss investments movement is about in line with this movement. And when you look at the breakdown of the gain or loss, Vision Fund 1 for this quarter, we had the negative numbers here, mainly from the public portfolio companies. So it's about $3,800 million primarily due to Coupa. Azumay also aware that due to the data leakage, the share price has gone down. But at the same time, for this company, Coupang, we are convinced with their business fundamentals, also doing pretty well in their operations. So very much expect their further recovery of their business and the share price. On your right-hand side, Bijon Fund 2 and LATAM and others, we have a large positive number here. Big contribution from OpenAI. and other new investments in a couple of years before that their mark has already been growing as well. So now you see the Vision Fund 2 valuation has been growing quarter by quarter. On total, we maintain our positive numbers So I said that seven wins over one lose, I mentioned earlier, and actually the cumulative gain has been increasing. So we've been having a little bit of a difficult time. But at the same time, now that we've been able to show the good recovery in total, and after this, we are looking at the very exciting late-stage portfolio companies. And that is something that we believe is going to be another good contributor for our gain on investments. And these are those exciting late-stage portfolio companies that I mentioned earlier. So, on your left-hand side, we do have a public listing track record. So, in total, 60 listings since inception. And in this third quarter, Lenskart, Misho, those two made newly listed listings. On your right-hand side are the exciting late-stage portfolio of companies. And so December 8th and last year, total fair value was at $90 billion. And you can see the logos below. There are companies which already made the filings for IPO, which includes PayPay in Japan. Also, Klook has already made the filing for IPO. On your right-hand side, there are other late-stage companies which we can expect the good exit or the good IPOs. So, that includes OpenAI, ByteDance, Fanatics, Revolut, Oyo, Yanolja. So, those are the exciting other late-stage portfolio companies. So, we are closely looking at those and monitoring those companies so that we'll be able to improve our investment performance of Vision Fund. As I mentioned earlier, there are two listings in the third quarter, which include lens card. So eyewear, glasses. So from the design to manufacturing and sales is done by this company. And the performance is doing pretty well. MOIC 4.8 times in gross and also share price since its IPO is making a good increase. Another one was Misho. This is an e-commerce marketplace in India to democratize commerce by connecting consumers with small and micro sellers. There are some ups down in share price, but in total, they are showing a good increase in share price since the IPO and investment return. Two of them, coincidentally, are both Indian company, and they are doing pretty good progress. And I'd also like to touch on Pepe a little bit. They are making quite a smooth and a great progress, so far exceeding 72 million users already. And I would say PayPay is used by more than one in two people in Japan, and two out of three smartphone users in Japan. So as a payment platformer that the PayPay is playing in Japan, KPIs are also showing pretty good. GMB on your left-hand side, in nine months period, 14 trillion yen. So if you annualize, I believe that the number can be expected close to 20 and also 24% year-on-year increase. And EBITDA, 83% increase year-on-year. So financials are also showing a great progress so far. So sometime in the future that we believe we'll be able to show you the good valuations when they go public.

arms showing steady growth. Revenue, they recorded the historic high up 26% year-on-year. License and other revenue and loyalty revenue both has grown steadily. Non-GAAP operating income on quarterly basis is shown here. If you compare to the last quarter and Sorry, in the same quarter last year and the year before, they have been posting increase. RM requires R&D investment, that's for sure. While they are investing in R&D, still deliver this kind of operating income, which is great. arms technology is penetrating in various areas. For example, in those three sectors, HAI, physical AI, and cloud AI, starting from the left, for smartphones and IoT devices, This is HAI area, and Samsung announced Exynos 2600, and this is the chip for mobile, V9, and CSS-based one. In the area of physical AI, Vivian in the U.S., Their chip for autonomous driving is ARMv9 based. And cloud AI space, AWS, announced they would use Graviton5, which is also ARMv9-based chip. So again, as you can see, ARMv9 chips is penetrating in different areas. And ARMv9's royalty unit price is twice as much as V8. And CSS-based chips' royalty is even higher, so as they go into deeper in different sectors, that would further push ARM's royalty revenue. And ARM announced guidance of solid growth outlook. And those numbers, I believe, are well over analyst consensus. Revenue, $1.4 billion, or 18% year-on-year. That's the outlook for the fourth quarter. Of course, the range is... upper than $50 million, but $1.4 billion is the median number. And the non-GAAP operating expense, $745 million. Non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share, $0.58. And I believe that ARM will definitely deliver those numbers as forecasted.

Now, I would like to put a little bit more color on OpenAI. So here, our investment in OpenAI historically. Cumulatively, we have invested $34.6 billion so far. Latest, at the third quarter, We made $22.5 billion for the investment completed in December last year. As a result, ownership in OpenAI Group PBC became 11%. There are other major investors, like OpenAI Foundation, which is a non-profit organization, Microsoft, and others. And their service is steadily very well performing. So it's about three years since the product launch, but the weekly active user is now exceeding 800 million and keep growing. And your recurring revenue in December 2025, it exceeded $20 billion. Actually, this is 10 times in two years. So I believe this is quite obvious that they are making a great progress here. And app downloads. Global and also cumulative since the service launch. About 1.52 billion downloads are made so far, far bigger than their competitors. And the total number of charged GPT for work has already exceeded 7 million accounts. And they are expanding enterprise business as well. They are also releasing new products one after another. For example, charge a pity for health care. or PRISM. This is the specialized for scientific writing and collaboration. Codex, this is the agent coding model optimized for real-world software development. On your far right, Frontier. This is an enterprise AI platform that enables organizations to build, deploy, operate, and improve AI agents. And we are working on Crystal Intelligence together with OpenAI. And this position as a foundational platform to deploy to enterprises in Japan. So with these launches, we believe that they will be able to accelerate their business growth even further. They also started advertising in chat GPT. So small letters here, so you may need to pay attention. On your left-hand side, this is smartphone. and asking about the dinner, Mexican dish for party, and asking that question to Chair GPT. And Chair GPT answers you with several examples of good party dishes for Mexican. So one is the steak dish, and the other one is chicken. Then, in the same screen, in the very bottom of the chat GPT answer, you will see the advertisement to offer you the good source for which matches to these dishes. So if you try to cook a bit, if you prefer a bit hotter dish, it may be good use of such an advertisement. So this is just one example, but they will be able to show several advertisements. So whenever you ask something to ChatGPT, ChatGPT will give you an answer, but at the same time give an offer which matches to the answers. So in e-commerce area, I believe this can be good to use and very attractive for many of the users. So we believe advertisement model itself can be a good also growth for the revenue. So this week, they are starting this testing advertising in a limited and experimental manner for free and low price subscription plan in the United States. Also like to touch on the Stargate. OpenAI, SoftBank Group, and SB Energy, which is our group companies, signed a strategic partnership to advance Stargate back in January 9th this year. So OpenAI, SoftBank, each providing investment into SB Energy so that this can accelerate the progress of SB Energy business. The data center in Milan County, Texas, is something that we've been working on. 1.2 gigawatt data center and SP Energy actually selected to build and operate. And also, 15-year data center lease agreement signed with OpenAI. As you can see the photos, which is the actual local site, So they are working on the civil works right now. And once the lands are ready, there will be a building in start operations. Next, digital bridge.

On December 29th, while you are probably on New Year holiday period, we announced acquisition. And that was agreement to acquire all outstanding common shares for $3.1 billion. And closing is expected in the second half of 2026. Digital Bridge has been making investment in digital infrastructure, specifically the AUM is 100 eight billion dollars or 17 trillion yen, and the portfolio companies are around 45 and well over 100 digital infrastructure investment professionals. And it will be a welcome to get this kind of company in our group. Key portfolio companies include those on shown screen. Vantage, for example, is deploying data centers across countries, and the switch also is very well-known EPC company to deploy data centers. And JTower, that's a Japanese company. And I believe almost 100% is owned by a digital bridge. Last but not least, let me remind you our financial strategy. First, financial policy remains unchanged. We maintain low-to-value below 25%, and we maintain at least two years' worth of bond redemption in cash. As I said earlier, we are and will be making a lot of investments actively, but this investment should be supported by strong financial policy. Looking at investment amounts, in the last nine months, we have made a huge investment In the first quarter, 8.3 billion. Second quarter, 3.2 billion. In the third quarter, 32.3 billion. Over 40 billion dollars of investment we have made in the last nine months alone, which is around 6 trillion yen. Still, however, we have 3.8 trillion yen of cash position. Our financial activities are done always with financial policy in mind. And the question is, how do we finance? How do we raise capital? We are an investment company, and we relatively use our own balance sheet And also, we are listed company. I think in that sense, we are in a very unique position globally. What we do is first utilize assets held, obviously. We have about 40 trillion yen of equity valuable holdings. With that, we raise capital, for example, We do margin loan, we use color transaction, and it's important to recapitalize portfolio. In that sense, sometimes we sell some assets, and in fact, Listed shares, 51% of total holdings are sold, and also even unlisted shares we use as source of capital raise. At the same time, by leveraging appropriately We can communicate well with equity investors as well as accredited investors. And domestic and foreign bonds and loans, we use those markets and also retail bond, corporate bond for institutional investors and and also we learn from Japanese and overseas banks. And hybrid bonds, and loans are also utilized for our capital raise because we can maintain 50% as equity capital. Cash position, through those financial activities, we have at this moment 3.8 trillion yen. Utilizing debt market, what does it mean for investment company like us? Investment company in terms of general financial activities, we recoup investment and make new investment. That cycle is being run. But recoupment of investment and making investment, there is a time lag. To support that gap, leverage should be used. to make sure that we won't miss investment timing and we won't miss recoupment of the investment. So the leverage means a lot in terms of filling the gap between recouping previous investment and making new investment. So again, while leveraging, we can maintain safe investment and even expand investment. In terms of utilizing assets held more in detail, What we have done is, on the left-hand side, you can see we sold T-Mobile shares, Deutsche Telekom shares, and Nvidia shares. And that equipment is used for a new investment. So we sold $21.3 billion in total. And also, we did asset-backed finance of $159. 15.9 billion in total using shares, using SoftBank shares. We did asset-backed finance, and also we utilized the SoftBank Vision Fund value to be able to raise $1.9 billion. We are discussing to figure out the best possible option we should take. In terms of utilizing that in the last nine months, that, of course, has to be returned. Just to remind you, otherwise, you will end up being borrowing forever. You have to return the debt. Sometimes we utilize a bridge loan. Last year, for example, for the first investment in OpenAI or investment in Pear, we structured a huge bridge loan. We repaid a little bit. And we... return the loan and while keep investing. And we issued a senior bonds amount about 1.7 trillion yen. Of that, 800 billion yen would be redeemed. In one year, about 800 billion to 1 trillion yen is redeemed. And at the time of redemption for investors, we would say, thank you very much for supporting us for the last five years. And we have plenty of cash to get back to them. And investors know we have enough cash position to be redeemed, to be used for redemption. And at the time of redemption, we prepare issuing new bonds and offer new bonds to investors. At that time, not only investors were going to see the redemption timing pretty soon, but also offer opportunity to new investors. Hybrid bonds, Compared to senior or corporate bonds, the volume was small, but still we issued 0.6 trillion yen of hybrid bonds. So that... raising capital and redemption and repayment. So in terms of debt market, we communicate well with investors to be able to keep investing and returning back to shareholders. By utilizing debts well, share price should go up, then that would satisfy or that would make equity shareholders, equity investors very happy. To summarize, this is executive summary of Q3 of FI 2025, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. That's all for the third quarter result from myself. Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Now we would like to take questions. First, we would like to take questions from the floor. Please wait for the microphone and start with your name and affiliation. For those participating online, please access Zoom using the instructions provided in the email sent to you in advance. To avoid audio feedback or looping, we kindly ask that anyone asking a question refrain from connecting to any live streams other than the Zoom webinar. If you have a question, please click the raise hand button and wait until you are called on. If you wish to withdraw your question, please click the lower hand button. If you are joining the Japanese Zoom, please ask your questions in Japanese. We would like to take up to two questions per person so that we can take questions from as many people as possible. Now we would like to take questions from the floor. The very front person. Thank you. MJ from Bloomberg. I have two questions, please. First, is Vision Fund 2, the shares has been transferred to Vision Fund 2. Why it was that? And follow-on investment has been speculated. And what is your stance as of today? Thank you. You said shares. Are you talking about referring to OpenAI shares? Yes, yes. Yes, we have transferred OpenAI share to Vision Fund 2, as Vision Fund 2 are the investment vehicle in OpenAI. About two years ago, we started these investment activities. in whether to use Vision Fund as an investment vehicle, or should we invest from our own balance sheet? There are several discussion points internally. And if this company has a roadmap for investment return, for example, IPO possibly or any exit or divestment in the future. So do we have a clear view on the return? That's one of the discussion points. And another one, is it majority investment or minority investment? That's another discussion point as well. From that sense, open AI. There are several other investors. So as a way of the return, making a return that I believe one of the option can be IPO. And also, although the amount is large, but our ownership ratio is just 11%, so this is through the minority investment. As a result, we have decided Vision Fund 2 as an investment vehicle in OpenAI. And for your second question, follow-on investment. I understand there are financial financing plan by open air and so on on newspapers, but there is nothing has been decided, no fact that been decided. One more thing about market I would like to ask you. So investment size, not only open AI, but the size or the ticket size becoming larger and larger. And 100 billion vision fund size is becoming more and more relevant to this ticket size, I believe. But as an AI investor, what is the investment pace that you like to see going forward? For example, 30 billion or 50 billion every year, or are you going to plan such investments? I believe our financial policy manage that or rule that. So how much the loan to value will be. So we do have a financial policy of 25% managing less than 25%. And the cash position also needs to be maintained to cover two year equivalent of the bond redemption. So can we keep that or not? So financial policy, It's not the covenants, so it doesn't mean that we cannot exceed one cent or anything like that. But as a large investment project, can we maintain our healthiness and soundness? But even we step a little bit above, but still, are we able to return back to a normal case relatively soon? So those kind of preparation is necessary. If you only think about financing, there are many options for the finance, so I believe If you only look at the financing point of view, you'll be able to invest. But it doesn't mean that you can invest anything because you can finance or raise money. I believe that we do need to focus. Can we maintain our soundness of our financials as a company? That's the kind of important consideration we need to have, which will rule our amount of the investment.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other question?

Yagi from Nippon Keizai newspaper first. OpenAI's weekly active user exceeds 8 trillion, you said, but in 2025, OpenAI expected over 1 billion active users, and OpenAI issued code red because of the threat from competitors, we heard. For SBG as an investment company, what you find it attractive, and what are they talking about to you as their attractiveness and request for more investment, for example? Well, as an investor, investment in OpenAI, which is a private entity, Of course, we need to hear from them what they are doing based on which we will make a decision. That kind of information includes confidential one between OpenAI and us. The numbers that we present today are all public information and confirmed OpenAI that it can be disclosed. You mentioned Code Red. Yeah, we have seen on media, maybe because of a competitor's move, and they maybe sent message internally, taking into account of a competitive landscape. I think that's a matter of course. It's fair thing to do. And our financial results. And announcement of our financial results. the data set that we can share with you as information based on which we make an investment. That's a part of information based on which we make an investment. OpenAI's technical capability, OpenAI's vision, that's something which is communicated between the senior management And that kind of information or communication is not shown in the numbers like we presented to you. In fact, that kind of confidential data or information or communication might be playing a more important role for us to make an investment, but at this moment, I just appreciate if you could keep watching how OpenAI grows going forward. Thank you. One more question about the Stargate. In 2026, how much cash out is expected as a Stargate? Well, cash out as a Sopeng Group? Well, if that's the case, Of course, it's likely to change, so I cannot tell you exact number. But as we keep saying, Stargate project is including something that SoftBank Group works on and Oracle works on. What I mean by saying work on is we do equity investment, but project itself for that is financed as project finance. So in terms of project finance, our size is limited. So the amount of investment should not be too huge. That's how much I can say.

Any other questions? The second row from the front in the middle, please. Suzuki from TV Tokyo. As you announced, the business is doing quite well, but last year, November, share price is declined about 30% or 40%. How do you analyze the current situation of share price? That's my first question. Second is about the investment in open air and the concentration of open air investment may be concerned by the people. How do you look at that? First of all, the share price itself, actually, I am thinking this is increasing trend. When you look at each respective portfolio, it may affect a little bit, but the equity market itself and the environment itself is very steadily growing. So over one year, Japanese equity market as well as U.S. equity market does not have any immediate concern, which may ruin the current situations, which is my personal view. If there is any recession in the United States, and if that possibility becomes more clear, then there may be some revisiting. At this moment, I don't see any such negative events happening soon. And because we invest in wide variety, and unless we have any market crash, otherwise, we believe it doesn't mean that we see all of the portfolio companies goes down. So we do have a kind of a many wide range of the investments. So we don't concern too much about that. And for your second question regarding concentration in open AI, which may be repeating myself, but there are Still, as a private company, many numbers, many trends are not disclosed or discussed publicly at this moment, which, as an investor, we do have a dialogue and also have some information. And there are many communications between the top management and also their directions or their stories for the future. and also their role and missions alongside with the AI technology evolvements. something similar to other many hyperscalers. We assume OpenAI will be able to lead this industry in this era, and we are quite convinced so that we are making an investment in this company. Thank you.

Any other question?

Asamura from Nikkei Business. about open AI, private entity. Because of that, there is an information that is not disclosed yet. But from people like us, we could be concerned that you depend too much on open AI. But you still have kind of a hidden critical information that makes you very confident, while hidden or not, in a private equity world, whether big or small, you need to make an investment with confidence, even though there is undisclosed information. The question is, what do you want to look at when you make a decision on the investment? Venture capitals, what are they looking at when they make an investment? Let's say, when SoftBank made investment in Alibaba, what did we see? I asked Masa, and Masa said he decided in five minutes after seeing Jack Ma's eyes. and there are a lot of private companies that still have a founders and a founders leadership and founders capability could be the important source of information based on which venture capitals would make an investment. Through our long-term experience of investment, we made a decision to make an investment in OpenAI and we want to provide them a full support. Thank you. A question about financing. The equity is going up globally. And you raise capital in the debt market as well. So since the stock price is so high, I don't know if there are enough investors who intend to buy your bonds. Well, looking at groups of investors, some equity investors explore ups and downs, and other investors may want to have confidence of return, fixed return. These kind of investments are in the credit market. I think, in a sense, they are on the different end of the spectrum, and they're both there. They're always... credit investors, and there are always equity investors. From a sub-bank's perspective, if we do equity finance, for example, of course, there are equity investors who want to buy our shares, but when you look at investment cost, That could be a huge. Sorry, financing costs would be very high. So that's why we want to utilize both markets. And also we want to raise capital based on our balance sheet as well.

Any other questions? Second row from the front. Shimada from TB Asahi. So Akasawa, Minister of Finance, Mr. Akasawa is visiting United States and talking about the first project. And there are discussion that the SoftBank Group also regarded as a candidate for the first project from the gas turbine power generation plant construction. Doesn't have to be first project. Second project is also good. But what is the size? What is the progress of the project? How do you look at it? Is there anything that you'll be able to comment? I understand Minister Akasawa is visiting the United States, but this is the discussion between two governments, between Japan and the United States. So there is nothing I can make as a comment from my position, but this will be the project of the collaboration between Japan and the United States. we can be picked up as one of the projects, we will be very honored. So we would like to patiently looking at the situation.

Thank you. Any other question from the floor?

A data center in the U.S. Switch is an operator of data center in the U.S. and there is a media report that you consider acquiring Switch. But later you announced the acquisition of this bridge. So about potential acquisition of a switch, do you have any comment on that? And also, looking at data center business in the U.S., what kind of growth potential you see and any other possibility that you make more investment in U.S. data center sector? Thank you. About the switch, the speculation of acquisition of a switch, that kind of report I saw here and there, but the fact is There's nothing that we can make an announcement about switch. And about the digital bridge, through the fund, this bridge owns 50% of switch. And switch we know is a great company and On business side, we think that we have an opportunity to communicate with the switch about data center business in the US. There is media coverage or discussion like data center business is bubble or part of AI bubble. Of course, data centers are built here and there. And whether it's overheated or not, the question is, who will be users of those data centers? Hyperscalers are in great need of data centers. that can report, you can often see in the media. In order for AI to grow further, computing power is needed. And the data center capacity at the moment is not enough to support growing. AI's computing and that kind of computing is needed immediately. So from myself, from SoftBank's perspective, data center business is not a part of AI bubble narrative because shortage of supply is real. So as business sector, investing in such a sector is valued and fair. From risk perspective, I don't know risk is the right word or not, but technical innovation can be a risk. By that, what I mean is what kind of impact that technical evolution could have on data centers. Maybe some technology may come to provide a capacity without using data centers and also electricity with some new technology coming up. Maybe drastic paradigm shift may happen. So investment in physical assets has such kind of risk posed by further technical evolution.

Any other question from the floor?

So that concludes two and eight sessions. Thank you very much. This concludes the SoftBank Group COP earnings results announcement for the nine-month period ended December 31, 2025.