On January 28, 2025, the SoftBank logo will be displayed at directly managed stores in Tokyo.
Kazunari Kato | Reuters
shares of Softbank Group Stocks plunged nearly 9% on Friday, falling for the third day in a row, after the Japanese giant announced it had sold its entire stake in U.S. semiconductor giant Nvidia for $5.83 billion.
The stock was down 6.57% as of 3 a.m. ET, marking the second straight week of declines and the worst weekly loss since March 2020, after the company wiped out about $50 billion in market capitalization last week.
“Today’s decline in SoftBank’s stock is driven by broader market sentiment towards semiconductor and tech stocks, rather than any idiosyncrasies in SoftBank’s stock,” said Rolf Balck, senior equity analyst at New Street Research.
“Given that context, and given that SoftBank’s holding discount is still very low compared to historical averages, I wouldn’t be surprised if SoftBank trades down 5-6% today.”
SoftBank revealed in its latest financial results that it sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October and reduced its T-Mobile stake for $9.17 billion.
While the sale of Nvidia surprised some investors, it’s not the first time SoftBank has exited the U.S. semiconductor giant. The company’s Vision Fund accumulated about $4 billion worth of Nvidia stock in 2017 before selling it completely in early 2019.
Still, SoftBank continues to have a business relationship with Nvidia. The Tokyo-based company is involved in a number of AI ventures using Nvidia’s technology, including the $500 billion Stargate project for U.S. data centers.
Several other tech stocks in the region also fell. Semiconductor testing equipment maker Advantest and chip manufacturing equipment maker Tokyo Electron fell more than 3% and 4%, respectively.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract semiconductor maker, fell 2.04%. South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix fell more than 5%, while Samsung Electronics fell 3.8%.
shares of tencent Although it decreased by 5.61%, JD.com It fell by 4.31%.
Overnight in the US, the big tech companies left beaten. Nvidia and Broadcom fell 3.6% and 4.3%, respectively, while Google’s parent company Alphabet stood out, dropping 2.8%.
