SoftBank Group has raised around $4.8 billion through a sale of T-Mobile U.S. shares, a move that helps fund the Japanese company¡¯s grandiose plans for artificial intelligence.
The Japanese technology giant sold 21.5 million T-Mobile shares for $224 each ¡ª pricing the stock at the bottom of an indicated range of $224 to $228 ¡ª in an unregistered overnight block sale, according to the final terms of the deal. The offering represents a discount of 3% to T-Mobile¡¯s Monday closing price of $230.99 per share.
SoftBank is ramping up investments aimed at making AI reasoning superior to that of humans. It plans to put down as much as $30 billion in OpenAI and is also working with the ChatGPT creator to ferry hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and related infrastructure in the U.S. and around the world. Its original plans for debt financing had snagged on uncertainties around U.S. tariffs.
T-Mobile shares fell 3.9% in extended trading. They have climbed 4.7% so far this year through Monday¡¯s close. SoftBank¡¯s shares climbed as much as 2.3% in early trading in Tokyo on Tuesday.
The deal is the biggest U.S. share sale since Toronto-Dominion Bank sold a $13.1 billion stake in brokerage firm Charles Schwab in February. Sales of new and existing shares in U.S.-listed companies reached $91.4 billion in the year to date, up from $75.9 billion in the same period a year ago.
The T-Mobile stake sale would be the latest example of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son tapping past investment successes ¡ª such as an early bet on Alibaba Group Holding that¡¯s yielded thousands-fold returns ¡ª to fund new ventures.
SoftBank received T-Mobile shares with the completion of the U.S. telecom company¡¯s $26.5 billion acquisition of Sprint in April 2020. Later that year, SoftBank substantially reduced its stake in T-Mobile via a $21 billion deal that helped pay for a record buyback of SoftBank¡¯s shares.
The stake offered represented about 1.9% of T-Mobile¡¯s outstanding shares. SoftBank owned 85.4 million shares or 7.5% of T-Mobile as of March 31, according to its annual report.
Deutsche Telekom is T-Mobile¡¯s largest shareholder with a 59% stake, according to a June 12 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bank of America was sole bookrunner for the deal, the terms show.
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