(Bloomberg) — SoftBank Group Corp. rose its most since June after snagging roughly $7.6 billion worth of stock in T-Mobile US Inc., as part of an agreement struck when the wireless carrier merged with rival Sprint Corp. in 2020.
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The investment firm rose as much as 7% in Tokyo. SoftBank on Tuesday said it will get 48,751,557 shares of T-Mobile US for no additional cost, after the stock met conditions specified during the landmark deal with SoftBank-owned Sprint.
Under their agreement, the Japanese investment firm gets T-Mobile shares if their trailing 45-day VWAP — a measure of a stock’s valuation — was equal to or greater than $150 at any time from the second anniversary of the deal to the end of 2025.
The infusion of stock is likely to improve SoftBank’s balance sheet, while potentially presenting a pool of new capital to tap.
The merger of Sprint with T-Mobile was one of the industry’s largest-ever deals, worth around $37 billion. SoftBank has this year gradually raised capital and revved up its pace of investment, anticipating better market conditions in 2024. Masayoshi Son is seeking out bets on AI and autonomous driving, seeking to burnish the firm’s reputation after a series of high-profile mis-steps in past years.
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