SoftBank Corp.

SoftBank reported first-quarter FY2026 revenue of JPY 1,814.7 billion, up 9% year on year, operating income of JPY 302.3 billion, up 4%, and net income of JPY 150.1 billion, up 3%. Enterprise revenue was JPY 260.4 billion, up 11%, with operating income of JPY 62.2 billion, up 28%; Consumer revenue was JPY 749.7 billion, up 4%, with operating income of JPY 152.9 billion, down 1%; Media & EC revenue was JPY 446.8 billion, up 10%, with operating income of JPY 66.7 billion; Financial revenue was JPY 115.9 billion, up 27%, with operating income of JPY 31.8 billion, up 76%. Adjusted free cash flow was negative JPY 128.5 billion, mainly due to investment in SB Energy. Management said the second quarter will face a difficult comparison because last year included a remeasurement gain of more than JPY 40 billion, but also said it expects a gain on the SB Energy stake sale in Q2 and will consider whether to raise full-year earnings guidance. For the cloud/AI business, management reiterated an annual growth rate of about 30% through FY2027 and said first-quarter ARPU had already increased by about JPY 60, with a roughly JPY 200 increase expected from the second quarter onward.

Junichi Miyakawa framed the quarter as evidence that SoftBank is evolving from a telecom operator into a provider of next-generation social infrastructure. He emphasized that the company is entering the monetization phase of years of AI and infrastructure investment, pointing to strong cloud/AI momentum, a new PaaS offering, the Seven & i alliance, and the SB Neo U.S. neocloud initiative. His tone was confident and long-term oriented, with repeated references to disciplined capital recycling and “once-in-a-generation” opportunities in AI.

The transcript does not include a separate, detailed CFO prepared script, but management discussed financial discipline and capital allocation throughout the call. Akiyama was cited as comfortable with the FY2030 cloud AI revenue target, and Miyakawa said the company is keeping a disciplined investment framework while recycling capital through asset sales where appropriate. The quarter also featured negative adjusted free cash flow of JPY 128.5 billion, mainly from SB Energy investment, alongside an expected gain from selling the SB Energy stake for about $1.5 billion after quarter-end.

Analysts focused on the Seven & i investment, SP.LINKS synergies, PaaS commercialization, consumer subscriber trends, handset pricing, GPU sourcing for AI data centers, and how SoftBank plans to fund and deploy its AI infrastructure. Management said the Seven & i alliance had been under discussion for more than a year, that SoftBank’s role is to support convenience-store transformation rather than run stores, and that annual synergies from SP.LINKS could reach about JPY 10 billion. On PaaS, management said inquiries were in the hundreds, more than 100 contracts were already completed, charging began on August 1, and revenue contribution is expected in the second half of this fiscal year. On AI infrastructure, management said it expects to secure GPUs from NVIDIA and others, but financing depends on contracts with offtakers and nonrecourse structures; on subscribers, management said the Q1 decline of 180,000 should not repeat in Q2 and that net additions should turn positive.