SoftBank Group Corp. reported a net loss attributable to owners of the parent of ¥1,115,337 million for the three months ended September 30, 2026, compared with net income of ¥2,502,247 million a year earlier, according to the company’s official consolidated financial report dated November 10, 2026, in Tokyo. Quarterly net sales rose to ¥2,215,446 million from ¥1,916,502 million. Income before income tax swung to a loss of ¥1,027,855 million from a profit of ¥2,996,441 million. Using the company’s own second-quarter average yen-dollar rate of ¥160.12, the attributable loss is about $7.0 billion. The official accounts show that the swing was not a collapse in the telecom or chip businesses that SoftBank consolidates. It was a combination of a sharp drop in investment gains, a jump in finance costs, and large items recorded in other losses, including a ¥597.2 billion charge tied to revised procurement plans for power-generation equipment for U.S. artificial-intelligence data-center projects.
Key Takeaways
- Official Q2 net loss attributable to owners: ¥1,115,337 million, or ¥196.54 per share on a split-adjusted basic basis, versus a profit of ¥2,502,247 million, or ¥438.33, a year earlier.
- Q2 net sales were ¥2,215,446 million. For the six months ended September 30, net sales were ¥4,235,037 million, up 13.3 percent year on year.
- Q2 finance costs rose to ¥461,917 million from ¥174,709 million. Six-month finance costs were ¥790.7 billion, with SoftBank saying interest expenses of SBG and related financing vehicles were ¥676.4 billion.
- The company recognized a $3.7 billion, or ¥597.2 billion, loss after realigning procurement of power-generation equipment, including non-refundable advance payments and contract modifications, according to its investor presentation.
- SoftBank said it completed follow-on investments in OpenAI totaling $30.0 billion in October 2026, fulfilling a February commitment, after $10.0 billion follow-on investments in each of the first and second quarters. The company does not provide consolidated earnings forecasts.
The official quarterly profit and loss, without the folklore
SoftBank’s earnings are easy to mythologize because the group is both an operating company and a leveraged investment vehicle. The quarterly statement of profit or loss is the right place to start, because it is audited in the sense of being the company’s official condensed interim record, and because it separates lines that news headlines sometimes fuse.
Gross profit actually increased, to ¥1,143,423 million from ¥1,005,580 million. The damage was below that line. Total gain on investments turned to a loss of ¥133,586 million from a gain of ¥3,439,720 million a year earlier. The Investment Business of Holding Companies recorded an investment loss of ¥303,875 million, against a gain of ¥620,546 million. SoftBank Vision Funds still showed an investment gain, but it shrank to ¥245,556 million from ¥2,755,307 million. Other investment losses were ¥75,267 million. Selling, general and administrative expenses rose to ¥1,081,866 million from ¥858,658 million. Finance costs more than doubled, to ¥461,917 million from ¥174,709 million. Foreign exchange flipped from a ¥122,106 million loss to a ¥220,293 million gain, which was a partial offset, not a rescue. “Other gain (loss)” swung to a loss of ¥669,923 million from a gain of ¥111,918 million, and that is the bucket that houses much of the power-equipment charge discussed below.
Net income attributable to non-controlling interests was still a profit of ¥54,702 million, which is why the loss attributable to owners, ¥1,115,337 million, is larger than the group’s net loss of ¥1,060,635 million. Split-adjusted diluted earnings per share were a loss of ¥196.77, against a profit of ¥437.95 a year earlier. SoftBank conducted a four-for-one ordinary share split effective January 1, 2026, and it calculates per-share figures as if the split had occurred at the beginning of the year-ago quarter. Comparisons that ignore the split will be wrong by a factor of four.
| Q2 item (three months ended Sept. 30) | FY2025 Q2 (¥ million) | FY2026 Q2 (¥ million) |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales | 1,916,502 | 2,215,446 |
| Gross profit | 1,005,580 | 1,143,423 |
| Total gain (loss) on investments | 3,439,720 | (133,586) |
| of which: Investment Business of Holding Companies | 620,546 | (303,875) |
| of which: SoftBank Vision Funds | 2,755,307 | 245,556 |
| SG&A | (858,658) | (1,081,866) |
| Finance cost | (174,709) | (461,917) |
| Foreign exchange gain (loss) | (122,106) | 220,293 |
| Other gain (loss) | 111,918 | (669,923) |
| Income before income tax | 2,996,441 | (1,027,855) |
| Net income attributable to owners of the parent | 2,502,247 | (1,115,337) |
| Basic earnings per share (yen, split-adjusted) | 438.33 | (196.54) |
Note: Source: SoftBank Group Corp. condensed interim consolidated statement of profit or loss for the three-month period ended September 30, 2026. Amounts are official yen figures rounded to the nearest million in the report.
The six-month picture is milder, and that is not a contradiction
For the six months ended September 30, 2026, net sales were ¥4,235,037 million, up 13.3 percent from ¥3,736,843 million. Income before income tax was a loss of ¥438,705 million, against a profit of ¥3,686,382 million a year earlier. Net income attributable to owners was a loss of ¥768,007 million, against a profit of ¥2,924,066 million. Diluted earnings per share were a loss of ¥136.83. The first-half attributable loss is smaller than the second-quarter loss because the first quarter was profitable. The official first-half numbers are the ones that SoftBank highlights at the front of the financial report; the quarterly statement is in the appendix and is the better measure of what happened between July and September.
The presentation’s six-month walk-through helps explain the mix. Total investment gains for the first half were still ¥1,725.8 billion, down from ¥3,926.7 billion, so the group did not “lose all its investments.” SoftBank Vision Funds contributed ¥705.6 billion, including a ¥569.4 billion investment gain on ByteDance in the presentation’s annotation, with SVF1 at ¥381.1 billion and SVF2 at ¥372.9 billion. The Investment Business of Holding Companies recorded ¥1,078.3 billion, including a ¥1,062.8 billion investment gain on Intel. Those gains were then offset, in the same presentation, by a ¥321.9 billion derivative loss on Intel prepaid forward contracts, a ¥203.8 billion loss related to warrants granted by Energy Global to OpenAI, and the ¥597.2 billion power-equipment loss. Finance costs for the half were ¥790.7 billion, up ¥450.6 billion, with interest expenses of SBG, its wholly owned financing subsidiaries, SB Northstar and a loan agreement using OpenAI shares held by SVF2 totaling ¥676.4 billion, a ¥407.2 billion increase. SoftBank said the increase came mainly from higher borrowing and corporate-bond balances and from full recognition of unamortized financing costs when bridge loans were repaid early.
Readers should not net the Intel gain and the Intel derivative loss into a single “Intel was a disaster” sentence, or into a single “Intel saved the quarter” sentence, without showing both official lines. Fair-value gains on a shareholding and losses on prepaid forward contracts are different instruments. The presentation discloses both. This article follows that disclosure rather than picking the more dramatic half.
The $3.7 billion power-equipment revision is a real charge, with conditions attached
The most concrete operating-adjacent item in the package is the revision of procurement plans for power-generation equipment for AI data-center projects in the United States. SoftBank said a subsidiary identified as SB7 had entered into manufacturing-capacity reservation agreements, equipment-purchase contracts and other arrangements to secure equipment ahead of anticipated supply constraints. Cumulative payments from fiscal 2025 through the second quarter of fiscal 2026 were $9.5 billion, or ¥1.5 trillion. Procurement plans were then realigned to evolving project requirements, including the PORTS-Pike power-generation project in Ohio. Of the $9.5 billion, $6.6 billion was allocated to equipment purchases for PORTS-Pike and other remaining plans. The company recognized a $2.9 billion, or ¥457.0 billion, loss on non-refundable advance payments for equipment no longer in the revised plan, and a $0.9 billion, or ¥140.2 billion, loss related to contract modifications and settlements. The two items total a $3.7 billion, or ¥597.2 billion, profit-and-loss charge. Cash payments for the contract-modification portion are expected from the third quarter onward.
SoftBank also disclosed rights to receive rebates of up to $2.1 billion for future equipment purchases, subject to certain conditions. No asset was recognized for those rights because purchase timing and amounts are undetermined. That sentence is easy to skip and expensive to ignore. A rebate right that is not recognized as an asset is not cash in hand, and it may never be realized in full. Anyone who subtracts $2.1 billion from the $3.7 billion charge and calls the “true” loss $1.6 billion is doing informal arithmetic that the company itself did not present as an official revised loss.
The charge matters beyond SoftBank’s own accounts because it is a documented example of the AI buildout’s procurement risk. Firms have been reserving turbines, transformers and other scarce equipment with large advance payments. When project designs change, some of those payments stop being useful inventory and become a write-off. CoreWeave, which had not yet reported third-quarter results, and Nebius, which reports on November 12, are not SoftBank, and their accounting will differ. The SoftBank disclosure is still a useful official case study of how a revised power plan shows up in earnings, and it belongs in any serious discussion of AI-infrastructure credit and capex this week. The KCEX Blog’s earlier note on the November 5 AI-stock selloff and its AI capital-expenditure analysis are useful companions, but they are not this earnings release.
OpenAI, Arm and the new AI Computing segment
SoftBank opened the results overview with OpenAI. It said it had completed follow-on investments totaling $30.0 billion in October 2026, fulfilling a commitment made in February 2026, after follow-on investments of $10.0 billion each in the first and second quarters. The October completion sits after the September 30 balance-sheet date, which means part of the cash deployment is a subsequent event relative to the quarter just reported. The report also records, as a financing item, a loan agreement using OpenAI shares held by SVF2. Exact look-through ownership percentages and current fair values are discussed in the presentation’s OpenAI pages; this article does not transcribe every cap-table footnote. The official point that can be stated without overreach is that SoftBank has been putting very large additional sums into OpenAI, including after the quarter ended, while also using those holdings in financing arrangements.
The group established AI Computing as a new reportable segment, combining Arm, Graphcore and Ampere, after acquiring all equity interests in Ampere in November 2025. For the six-month period, the segment’s U.S.-dollar net sales were $2,330 million, up 23.7 percent, or ¥373,595 million, up 35.5 percent, “primarily driven by higher revenue at Arm,” according to the financial report. SoftBank is careful, in both the report and the presentation, to remind readers that share-price changes of consolidated subsidiaries, including Arm and SoftBank Corp. in Japan, do not flow through consolidated profit or loss in the same way that marks on investment securities do. A falling Arm share price can still matter for equity value, financing capacity and public perception without being the same thing as the quarterly investment-gain line.
The SoftBank domestic telecommunications segment remains the group’s large sales engine. For the six-month period, that segment’s net sales were ¥3,798,146 million, up 11.7 percent, with the company saying the enterprise business contributed to growth. A story that treats SoftBank Group as if it were only an AI hedge fund is incomplete. A story that treats the telecom profit as a reason to ignore investment-account and interest-cost volatility is also incomplete. Both businesses are in the same consolidated set of statements.
The balance sheet expanded, and the equity ratio fell
Total assets were ¥69,387,194 million as of September 30, 2026, up from ¥60,749,547 million as of March 31, 2026. Equity attributable to owners of the parent was ¥16,396,610 million, down from ¥17,621,823 million, and the ratio of that equity to total assets fell to 23.6 percent from 29.0 percent. The report attributes the decline in retained earnings in part to the attributable net loss. Newly consolidated entities included DigitalBridge Group, Inc. and its 307 subsidiaries, a significant change in the scope of consolidation during the period. Those additions can lift assets and complicate period-to-period comparisons, which is why percentage changes in total assets should not be read as if the balance-sheet boundary were unchanged.
The company declared an interim dividend of ¥5.50 per share for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027, and forecast a year-end dividend of ¥5.50, for a total of ¥11.00, with no revision to the latest dividend forecast. The prior-year interim dividend of ¥22.00 was presented as the amount before the four-for-one split. SoftBank again said it does not provide forecasts of consolidated results of operations because they are difficult to project due to numerous uncertainties. That is a long-standing SoftBank practice, not a new silence invented for a weak quarter. It does mean that there is no official company EPS or net-income guide against which to say the quarter “missed.” External estimates cited in news coverage, including CNBC’s report of a 1.12 trillion yen net loss and 2.22 trillion yen quarterly revenue, should be treated as journalist-compiled consensus, not as SoftBank’s own target. The official quarterly sales and attributable loss are the figures in the table above.
Some news reports also described a sharp rebound in SoftBank’s Tokyo-listed shares after the release. Share-price reactions are not part of the financial statements, they vary by the minute, and they can reflect short covering, relief that liquidity remains ample, or simply a bounce after a prior decline. This article does not treat a one-day stock move as a verdict on the ¥1.12 trillion attributable loss.
What the print means for the AI-infrastructure debate, and what it does not
SoftBank is one of the most visible public investors in the AI complex, through OpenAI, Arm, Ampere, data-center and power projects, and related financing. A quarter in which investment gains collapsed from the year-ago level, interest expense rose, and a multi-billion-dollar power-equipment plan had to be rewritten will be used as evidence by people who already believed the buildout was over-extended. That use should be disciplined. The official statements also show higher segment sales in AI Computing, continued Vision Fund gains on some holdings, and a still-large asset base. The honest reading is that SoftBank can generate operating growth in chip and telecom businesses while still posting a parent-attributable loss when marks, derivatives and project revisions move against it. Leverage makes those swings larger, which is exactly what a 23.6 percent equity ratio and a ¥461.9 billion quarterly finance-cost line are telling readers.
For crypto and risk-asset traders, SoftBank is not a bitcoin proxy. It is a high-beta flag for global appetite toward AI assets and for the cost of financing those assets when Treasury yields are rising. The same week brought a hotter U.S. CPI and a more hawkish tone from a Federal Reserve governor, which is a difficult backdrop for a company whose interest bill is already climbing. Correlation is not causation: the quarter ended September 30, and the October CPI was released in November. The financing environment after the CPI can still affect how investors discount SoftBank’s next two quarters, especially if more U.S. project costs have to be funded in a higher-yield market.
Upcoming AI-infrastructure earnings will provide cross-checks, not copies. Nebius reports on November 12 before the U.S. open. CoreWeave’s November 10 after-close call had not yet occurred and is not treated as a known result. Nvidia reports on November 17. Each firm has a different mix of contracted backlog, capex, and interest burden. SoftBank’s unique contribution in this particular release is the documented $3.7 billion procurement revision, the official OpenAI follow-on timetable, and a parent-level loss large enough that it cannot be dismissed as a rounding item in a $69 trillion-yen balance sheet — the asset figure is ¥69.4 trillion, which is already large enough without rhetorical inflation.
FAQ
Did SoftBank’s sales fall in the second quarter?
No. Official quarterly net sales rose to ¥2,215,446 million from ¥1,916,502 million. The attributable loss came from investment results, higher finance costs and other losses, not from a collapse in reported sales.
Is the ¥1.12 trillion figure a six-month or a quarterly loss?
It is the official net loss attributable to owners for the three months ended September 30, 2026: ¥1,115,337 million. The six-month attributable loss was smaller, at ¥768,007 million, because the first quarter was profitable.
What is the ¥597.2 billion charge?
SoftBank recognized a $3.7 billion, or ¥597.2 billion, loss after revising procurement plans for power-generation equipment for U.S. AI data-center projects. The total includes $2.9 billion of losses on non-refundable advance payments and $0.9 billion related to contract modifications and settlements.
Does SoftBank give a profit forecast?
No. The financial report repeats that the company does not provide forecasts of consolidated results of operations because they are difficult to project.
When were the OpenAI follow-on investments completed?
SoftBank said follow-on investments of $10.0 billion were made in each of the first and second quarters and that it completed follow-on investments totaling $30.0 billion in October 2026, after the September 30 quarter-end.
Sources and Methodology
All yen financial figures in this article are taken from SoftBank Group’s English-language consolidated financial report for the six-month period ended September 30, 2026, and from the accompanying investor presentation dated November 10, 2026. The dollar equivalent of the quarterly attributable loss uses the company’s disclosed Q2 average rate of ¥160.12 per dollar and is an illustrative conversion, not a figure SoftBank presents as official USD accounts. Segment and OpenAI statements are from the same official documents. News-organization consensus comparisons are identified as secondary. This is educational analysis of a published earnings report, not investment advice and not a forecast of SoftBank’s share price.
