Tag: Softbank

SoftBank Group Corp. shares fell sharply on Thursday, tracking losses in Arm Holdings after the British chip designer—one of the Japanese conglomerate’s largest investments—reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the December quarter.

SoftBank was also swept up in a broader selloff in technology stocks, as growing uncertainty surrounding artificial intelligence and its implications for the software sector weighed on sentiment. Shares of the group dropped as much as 7% to 3,909 yen, making SoftBank one of the biggest drags on the Nikkei 225 index, which declined 1%.

The slide followed an 8% drop in Arm’s shares in after-hours U.S. trading. Arm posted disappointing licensing revenue for the December quarter. The company generates income by licensing its chip designs to major customers such as Nvidia and Apple, as well as collecting ongoing royalties on those technologies.

Pressure on Arm was compounded by a cautious outlook from Qualcomm, which warned that rising global memory prices—driven by AI-related demand—could weigh on smartphone sales in 2026. Such a trend would be negative for Arm, whose chip architectures are widely used across the smartphone industry.

SoftBank currently owns an 87.1% stake in Arm following the chip designer’s return to public markets in 2023. Arm remains one of SoftBank’s most significant holdings and a central pillar of the group’s long-term ambitions in artificial intelligence and semiconductor technology.

Sources: Ambar Warrick