Japan's SoftBank Group trims investment losses but remains in red for fiscal year

abcnews.go.com:

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group says it trimmed its losses for the fiscal year through March to about a quarter of the red ink it racked up a year earlier, as investment losses declined

TOKYO — SoftBank Group trimmed its losses for the fiscal year through March to about a quarter of the red ink it racked up a year earlier, as its investment losses declined, the Japanese technology company said Monday.

Annual sales at Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. rose 2.8% to 6.76 trillion yen ($43 billion). Losses for the fiscal year sank to 227.6 billion yen ($1.5 billion) from a 970 billion yen loss in the previous year.

By quarter, SoftBank Group, which invests in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous driving and other technology, recorded its second straight quarterly profit, at 231 billion yen ($1.5 billion) for January-March, a turnaround from a 57.6 billion yen loss a year earlier.

Its two latest quarters in the black followed four straight quarters of losses.

Investment losses for the fiscal year included Alibaba, a Chinese technology company with e-commerce, cloud computing and digital media operations, which offset gains from its holdings in T- Mobile.

The value of British semiconductor and software design company Arm, a SoftBank subsidiary, has surged in recent months, but that wasn't reflected in the earnings results. Arm listed on the Nasdaq last year.

In its SoftBank Vision Fund of investments, some shares lost value. Among them was WeWork, a provider of shared work spaces, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year. Such minuses were offset by gains from other holdings, like ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the popular video-sharing app TikTok.

SoftBank, led and founded by