SoftBank recognises $1.4 bn losses from India investments

New Delhi, May 10 (IANS): Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp (SBG) on Wednesday recognised losses of $1.4 billion in 2016-17 from its India investments — Snapdeal and Ola.
“SBG recorded loss from financial instruments of 160,419 million Japanese Yen ($1.4 billion) in its consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended March 2017. This mainly resulted from recording a loss as the amount of changes in the fair value of the financial instruments from March 31, 2016, to March 31, 2017,” the company said in a statement.
“Financial instruments included preferred shares of Jasper Infotech Private Limited, which runs Snapdeal, an e-commerce site in India, and ANI Technologies Private Limited, which runs Ola, a taxi booking platform also in India,” the statement said. The loss represents impairments of SBG’s investments in subsidiaries and associates, including Starfish I Pte Ltd, it added.Starfish I Pte Ltd is an intermediate holding company, which owns preferred shares in Jasper Infotech Private Limited.
“Highly competitive e-commerce market in India has made a trend of the company’s business performance lower than initially anticipated. This situation caused a material decrease in net asset value of Starfish I Pte Ltd as of March 31, 2017, and therefore SBG impaired the carrying amount of its shares in the company, to the amount equivalent to its net asset value,” the company noted. However, SoftBank said that there was no impact of the loss on the company’s consolidated financial results in 2016-17. “In SBG’s consolidated financial statements, the changes in the fair value of Jasper Infotech have been recorded on quarterly basis as gain or loss on financial instruments at financial instruments classified as financial assets or financial liabilities at fair value through profit or loss on the statements of income,” it said.