TOKYO: Masayoshi Son has tapped his shareholdings in DoorDash Inc for the third time in just six months, selling US$2bil (RM8.2bil) worth of SoftBank Group Corp’s stake in the food-delivery giant.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund on Oct 27 unloaded 10 million shares at US$202.815 (RM839) apiece, according to a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Son sold US$1bil (RM4.14bil) worth of DoorDash stock in May and raised US$2.2bil (RM9bil) from a sale in August.
Son, known for his reluctance to cash in on investments, has shown a new appetite for exits to finance the accelerating pace of deal-making at his Vision Fund investment arm. SoftBank sold roughly US$14bil (RM58bil) worth of listed stocks in the June quarter, nearly triple the amount in the previous period.
Over the past six months, the selloff included significant portions of its stakes in some of Son’s biggest IPO hits like DoorDash, South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang Inc and Chinese online property platform KE Holdings Inc.The billionaire has also used his stakes to borrow billions of dollars. Vision Fund arranged two margin loans in September, regulatory filings show. One is backed by almost all of its US$15bil (RM62bil) stake in Coupang, and the other by an undisclosed number of DoorDash shares.
The loans will help fund distributions to investors, including sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, and Son’s Tokyo-based SoftBank Group, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The latest sale of DoorDash stock leaves SoftBank with 33.6 million shares, or about 11% of the food-deliver company – just over half of the stake it held at the time of the listing in December.
DoorDash shares plunged 8.9% in New York last week to close at US$194.80 (RM807.87). — Bloomberg
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