Masayoshi Son ran away! SoftBank empties all shares, and Ali finally becomes a "Chinese enterprise"

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2024-05-15 10:52Published in Guangdong

After making hundreds of billions from Ali, Masayoshi Son ran away!

On May 14, SoftBank Group announced that it had sold almost all of its stake in Alibaba Group, bringing its stake to near zero.

This is equivalent to confirming the rumors in January this year, when it was reported that SoftBank held less than 0.5% of Alibaba's shares, and Jack Ma became Alibaba's largest shareholder with a stake of 4.5%.

SoftBank's investment in Ali can be said to be one of the most successful investments in history, and even Warren Buffett, the god of stocks, has to say that he admires it. SoftBank invested $80 million, or about 7.4 billion yen, that year, generating a return of 9.7 trillion yen, more than 1,300 times.

Many people say that SoftBank is Alibaba's "life-saving benefactor", and when the Internet bubble occurred, Ali was also in danger, unable to raise money again, and faced the risk of direct bankruptcy. Ma Yun looked for money everywhere, but no one was willing to invest, and in the end, it was Son who boldly gave $20 million to save Ali, and then invested another $60 million.

First of all, we admired Son's vision and courage, discovered Ali's potential stock, and helped it. But later, SoftBank made almost no contribution to Ali, and regarded Ali as an "ATM", or even a "falling stone".

Some people may say that it is all investment behavior, and it deserves to be earned, and there is nothing to say. It can only be said that the same person has the same fate, and it is also an investment behavior, when Li Ka-shing retreated, he was severely criticized.

A media outlet under a national news agency also wrote an article entitled "Don't Let Li Ka-shing Run", in which the official media took the lead in criticizing Li Ka-shing's withdrawal of Chinese assets as a "moral" act. So far, there are still many people who scold Li Ka-shing.

Compared with Li Ka-shing, Son cashed out more money from Alibaba. In 2016, in order to raise funds to acquire the British company ARM, it cashed out $10 billion. In 2019, another $13 billion was cashed out. After entering 2020, affected by the epidemic and other factors, SoftBank's overseas investments suffered huge losses, and in order to fill the hole, it could only continue to withdraw money from Alibaba. In that year, 1.1 trillion yen was cashed out from companies such as Alibaba.

In 2022, it cashed out more than 230 billion yuan, and at the beginning of 2023, it cashed out another 49.5 billion yuan, leaving 3.8% of the shares. Until now, Ali's shares have been almost emptied, which means that a lot of money has been cashed out later.

The money that SoftBank cashed out from Alibaba, like Li Ka-shing, also invested in the United Kingdom. Previously, Alibaba accounted for 48% of SoftBank's net asset value, and now the British company ARM accounts for 45% of SoftBank's portfolio.

Since the second half of 2020, Ali has encountered difficulties, and its stock price has fallen all the way. As the largest shareholder, SoftBank should have advanced and retreated with Alibaba. But unexpectedly, it chose to empty its shares. Isn't this just telling the capital market that even major shareholders are not optimistic about Alibaba's development? There is no doubt that SoftBank's wave of operations is "falling into the well".

Son's frenzied cash-out, divestment and runaway behavior has received little attention, let alone criticism in the official media, and even very little coverage.

However, SoftBank emptied its shares, Jack Ma became the largest shareholder, and Ali can be regarded as a "Chinese enterprise". In 1999, Mr. Ma and 17 other people raised 500,000 yuan to found Alibaba. After that, Ali continued to raise funds, and the shares of the founder's team were diluted.

By 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion and took 40 percent of the shares, plus SoftBank's 29.3 percent stake, bringing foreign ownership to nearly 70 percent.

Later, Alibaba bought back Yahoo's shares, and SoftBank gradually became the largest shareholder, holding nearly 35% of the shares at one point. In the early years, in the list of "Top 500 Chinese Enterprises" released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Alibaba, which has a revenue of hundreds of billions, was not shortlisted. The reason is likely to be that Alibaba's largest shareholder is a foreign capital, and it is not counted as a Chinese enterprise in the true sense.

It is only in recent years that Ali has frequently appeared on the list. For example, in the "2023 Top 500 Chinese Enterprises", Ali ranked 20th with a revenue of 864.5 billion yuan.

Of course, Ma Yun is still very shrewd, although Ali's largest shareholder has been foreign for a long time, he has always controlled Alibaba. Even though he retired in 2019, he is still the only permanent partner of Alibaba, and he still plays an influential role behind the scenes.

In the past year, Alibaba has experienced major personnel and business upheavals, replacing many senior executives, including the chairman of the board of directors and the CEO. Judging from the results released in the past two days, Alibaba's revenue in fiscal year 2024 has increased by 8%, which is still a good performance. CEO Wu Yongming said that Ali is back on the growth track and hopes to get out of the quagmire and regain its strength.

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