After a period of negotiations between SoftBank and its investment fund Vision Fund, the group has bought the 25% of ARM that it did not have in its possession and that Vision Fund controlled. The details of the operation, which places the valuation of ARM between 60,000 and 70,000 million dollars (some sources specify it at 64,000 million), are still unknown to most, although it will not take long to find out.
According to Reuters, they will be known in the next few hours, since SoftBank plans to announce this Monday the upcoming IPO of ARM, and the details of the operation and the purchase that it has just made. Several sources suggest that the company’s debut on the stock markets will take place next September, but the exact date is unknown.
Given this step, SoftBank is expected to sell fewer ARM shares in its IPO than expected. It is likely that he will keep up to 90% of the company’s shares. The amount that its managers seek to achieve with this decision will ultimately be between 8,000 and 10,000 million dollars.
SoftBank had sold 25% of ARM to Vision Find 1, which it bought in 2016 for $32 billion and turned it into a private company. Those responsible for the fund then paid 8,000 million dollars for said package of shares. And with its buyback, SoftBank gets rid of a potential problem for ARM after its IPO, because Those responsible for Vision Find 1 had profitability plans for their shares, also putting them on the market after SoftBank took a percentage of the ARM shares it held off the exchanges. The company, unlike the fund, intends to remain a long-term strategic investor of ARM.
The deal is also a big win for VF1’s biggest investors. These include the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Fund. Both, along with other investors, had experienced losses after SoftBank’s bets on companies like WeWork and ride-sharing company Didi Global did not go over well.
