Masayoshi Son dumped Ali's stock to protect ARM, did he bet right?
A company called ARM more than doubled its stock price in the three trading days from February 8 to February 12, from $77.01 to $164, and the majority shareholder of this company is SoftBank Group, which holds 90.6% of the shares, that is, the company controlled by Son.
Many people may not have heard of ARM, this company was only listed on the US stock market last year, and it is a newcomer to the US capital market, but it has absolute monopoly power in its own field. The CPU chips in smartphones, whether Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek or Huawei's Kirin chips, are all designed based on ARM architecture, which shows how good ARM is.
In 2016, SoftBank spent $32 billion to buy ARM, and in 2022, SoftBank suffered a cash flow crisis, and Son began to sell its assets on a large scale to recoup funds, the most famous is the "liquidation" reduction of Ali shares that made Son famous in one fell swoop.
Originally, Son had negotiated with the buyer, Nvidia, to sell it to the other party for $40 billion, but the deal was ultimately not approved by the antitrust authorities of various countries. To put it bluntly, the major technology giants don't want to see Nvidia, which is killing all sides in the field of AI, get the last piece of the puzzle of the smart chip empire.
According to media reports, SoftBank held only 0.5% of Alibaba's shares, relinquishing the throne of the largest shareholder to the founder Jack Ma, who must have been very unhappy at the time. But who would have thought that there was a intention to plant flowers that would not bloom, and unintentionally planting willows and willows into the shade.
Masayoshi Son, who couldn't sell ARM, changed his mind and decided to help the company go public, and on September 14, 2023, ARM officially landed on the NASDAQ, and the stock price rose 24.7% on the first day of listing. On February 7 this year, ARM released a financial report that far exceeded market expectations, which attracted capital speculation, and the stock price doubled in three trading days, and on February 13, although ARM pulled back 19.46%, its market value still reached $123.4 billion.
For SoftBank, which owns 90.6% of the shares, ARM's asset value has risen to $111.8 billion, three times that of the 2022 negotiations with Nvidia.
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