SoftBank's $3.2 Billion Problem Child: SB Energy's Losses Cast a Shadow Over the Conglomerate's AI Ambitions
Published on 09/11/2026 at 05:51 | Editorial boerse-global.de
SoftBank's infrastructure arm SB Energy has filed for a US listing, and the numbers tucked inside its prospectus make for uncomfortable reading. Revenue of $138.7 million in the first half of 2026 is dwarfed by a net loss of $3.21 billion. Yes, top-line growth of 66.4% sounds impressive — until you set it beside a loss of that magnitude.
The filing, submitted roughly two weeks ago, has drawn scrutiny not just for the red ink but for the corporate architecture surrounding it. As Reuters Breakingviews put it, SoftBank is simultaneously SB Energy's parent, controller, customer and guarantor. That four-way overlap raises pointed questions about conflicts of interest. When a conglomerate seeds a subsidiary, funds it, funnels contracts its way and then backstops its debt, the line between genuine value creation and circular bookkeeping becomes difficult to trace.
The question investors ought to be asking is straightforward: can SoftBank's AI infrastructure business stand on its own, or is the parent effectively financing itself?
A Conglomerate Borrowing Heavily to Fund Tomorrow
That question cannot be divorced from the group's broader balance sheet. SoftBank had drawn a $30 billion bridge loan to fund its stake in OpenAI and has said it will repay the remaining $25.9 billion early — on September 15, to be precise. The full repayment lands this Monday.
At the same time, the company is laying the groundwork for a dollar-denominated junk bond. From September 14 to 17, CFO Yoshimitsu Goto and other executives are in New York, meeting investors at Citigroup's offices to gauge demand. A volume of $10 billion to $20 billion is under discussion, with a euro tranche also on the table.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SoftBank Group?
The sequence tells its own story. On September 4, SoftBank had already placed a trillion-yen retail bond — roughly $6.3 billion — with a 4.75% coupon on the seven-year notes, the top end of an initially indicated 4.3% to 4.9% range. That pricing suggests investors demanded a meaningful risk premium. Debt repayment, bond roadshow, record coupon: each step is unremarkable in isolation, but together they sketch a conglomerate leaning hard on borrowed money to bankroll its AI ambitions.
Short Sellers Are Circling
Not everyone is buying the growth narrative. Short interest as a percentage of free float climbed to 2.27% on Wednesday — the highest since July 2025. In absolute terms, that amounts to $3.9 billion in short positions, the largest figure since at least early 2015. For a company that has lately made headlines mostly through acquisitions and billion-dollar loans, it is a striking counterpoint.
The equity itself closed Thursday at EUR 36.61, down 2.6% on the day. Even so, the stock has enjoyed a powerful run: gains of roughly 20% over seven trading days and 19% over 30. The RSI sits at 68.6, signalling that buying momentum is already well advanced, while annualised 30-day volatility of 64% underscores just how jittery this name trades.
Curiously, the market initially shrugged off the SB Energy disclosures. Some investors apparently read the subsidiary's strong revenue growth and hefty order backlog as pure growth potential rather than loss risk. The divergence between SB Energy's fundamental losses and the parent's resilient share price is the heart of the matter. As long as the AI story holds, the market rewards growth more than it punishes red ink.
Valuation Support Meets Growing Skepticism
Bulls point to SoftBank's net asset value, which the company put at JPY 74 trillion as of June 23 — equivalent to JPY 13,000 per share — as evidence the stock remains undervalued. The group also continues its investment offensive, including the roughly $4 billion acquisition of DigitalBridge agreed in December.
Yet the combination of rising short positions and ongoing debt issuance raises the question of how durable investor confidence really is. The related-party structure flagged by Reuters Breakingviews remains a quiet risk in the background — one that would only become visible if sentiment around AI infrastructure were to turn. For now, SoftBank remains a conglomerate financing its future bets with fresh borrowed capital, wagering that the market will not scrutinise the bill too closely.
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