SoftBank Group reported a 17.7% decline in first-quarter net profit to 347.3 billion yen for the April–June period, missing the prior year but still more than doubling analysts' expectations of 165.8 billion yen. The drop was driven by a 146 billion yen foreign-exchange loss linked to yen weakness, reversing a gain in the same quarter a year earlier.
Core investment gains nearly quadrupled to 1.86 trillion yen, largely fuelled by a 1.3 trillion yen return from its stake in Intel, where SoftBank has raised its holding to roughly 13%. Revenue rose 10.9% to 2.02 trillion yen. However, Vision Fund profits fell about 30% from a year earlier, and subsidiary Arm saw its AI-related losses widen as research spending climbed despite strong demand.
Executive Yoshimitsu Goto said the market for data-centre CPUs would continue to expand. Founder Masayoshi Son has previously dismissed suggestions that rising tech valuations represent a bubble, calling such characterisations a "blasphemy" against AI.