Softbank to sell $41B in assets

Softbank will be selling up to $41 billion in assets to help its debt and weather the coronavirus. Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita breaks down the details with the On The Move panel.

Video Transcript

- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. There was startling news out of Tokyo overnight, where SoftBank announced it plans to sell up to $41 billion of its assets in order to buy back shares and close off some of its debt. Akiko Fujita has covered SoftBank. And do we have a sense of what it is they're going to sell?

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, that's the big question, right? I think a lot of people are looking at their big stake in Alibaba to say, well, maybe that is going to be a significant part of it. We should point out that SoftBank has been under pressure from Elliott Management. They had initially asked for, roughly, $20 billion in buyback. Now we're looking at double that. So [? wouldn't ?] say the 41 billion is-- was expected, per se. But they have been under pressure on that front.

The next question is going to be, as you point out, which assets are going to sell off. And I think Alibaba, as well as [? the ?] parent of Yahoo Japan, which they have a significant stake in-- those are the two assets we want to be looking for, moving forward.

- When they talk about this buyback and the selling of these assets, is there any concern that the other end is not going to be there, that they would have a liquidity problem finding buyers for the assets? I mean, Alibaba would be a pretty secure asset for someone on the other end.

AKIKO FUJITA: You know, I'm not sure if we're there yet. But, you know, let's pull back a bit to talk about what we have seen from SoftBank. Obviously, they've gotten a lot of attention for the big stakes that they've taken in companies like WeWork, in companies like Uber, which, obviously, have not performed as well.

You know, I've been watching closely to see where that second [? Vision ?] Fund is going to go. And they have not been able to get a lot of investors to line up on that front. You know, I wonder if this is something that's a little different, because, if you look at an asset like Alibaba, it's actually held up fairly well, even in the face of this global sell-off that we have seen. And so, you know, I think it's to be determined. But I'm not so sure that we're at that point where there's concerns that there will be no buyers for those assets yet.

- All right. As we head to break, just want to let you know the Dow is now off 874 points. S&P has fallen 104 points. The NASDAQ is down 206 points.