SoftBank’s Split-Screen Story: Retail Bond Demand Pops as Institutional AI Loans Wilt
13.06.2026 - 17:25:37 | boerse-global.de
SoftBank shares ended the week at €38.10, up 2.46% on Friday, but the calm surface masks a furious undercurrent. The stock’s annualised 30-day volatility has surged to nearly 114% — a level that typically signals either a melt-up or a breakdown. For now, the relative strength index sits neutral at 52.5, leaving traders guessing which way the next lurch will come.
The contradictory forces buffeting the Japanese tech investor come into sharpest focus in two very different credit markets. On one side, SoftBank has fully repaid its 2026 dollar-denominated bonds ahead of schedule and is now tapping retail investors at home with a 35-year hybrid bond offering a fixed 5.12% coupon for the first five years. The subscription period runs until 18 June, with issuance due the following day, and rating agencies are classifying half the notes as equity — a deliberate move to polish the capital structure after the refinancing of older dollar debt.
On the other side, institutions are showing far less enthusiasm for SoftBank’s AI collateral. The group originally sought a US$10 billion margin loan secured against its OpenAI stake. Credit providers subscribed barely half that sum, forcing the facility to shrink to US$5 billion. The message is clear: banks are growing wary of lending against sky-high valuations in the artificial intelligence space, even when the borrower is Masayoshi Son’s empire.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SoftBank?
That wariness is well-founded, given the speed at which the competitive landscape for large language models is shifting. Anthropic’s annualised revenue has rocketed from US$9 billion at the end of 2025 to US$47 billion by May 2026, overtaking OpenAI’s valuation for the first time. OpenAI’s own first-quarter 2026 operating margin plunged to minus 122%, while ChatGPT’s share of web traffic tumbled from 77.6% a year ago to 53.7% in April. The arrival of DeepSeek V4, which delivers comparable performance at a fraction of the cost, is only intensifying the price war on API services.
The pressure extends beyond financials to infrastructure. OpenAI chief Sam Altman abruptly cancelled a planned trip to Abu Dhabi, citing escalating regional tensions, which has stalled negotiations on the Stargate project — a US$40–50 billion plan to build AI data centres that SoftBank had counted on as a strategic linchpin. Key sovereign investors such as Mubadala and MGX were due to meet Altman during the visit. The delay, combined with US semiconductor export restrictions and rising competition from Elon Musk’s xAI, puts the timeline for the entire rollout at risk.
Against this backdrop of institutional scepticism and competitive upheaval, one major analyst house is bucking the trend. Nomura has lifted its price target on SoftBank to 9,590 yen, and the stock ranks second in the brokerage’s latest survey of Japanese retail investor favourites, trailing only Toyota. The hybrid bond’s 5.12% coupon clearly appeals to yield-hungry domestic savers, even as the group’s confidential S-1 filing for a potential OpenAI initial public offering remains a latent catalyst.
For now, the neutral RSI offers no technical edge, and the annualised volatility of nearly 114% leaves the share price acutely sensitive to each fresh headline from the AI sector. SoftBank is playing two completely different games at once — winning over retail bondholders while struggling to convince institutional lenders — and the outcome of that tension will define its next leg.
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SoftBank Stock: New Analysis - 13 June
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