SoftBank profit jumps 19% on Alibaba sale

Japan's SoftBank said Thursday net profit jumped 19 percent in its fiscal first quarter owing to gains from selling some of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, offsetting losses at US mobile unit Sprint.

The company, which also pointed to upbeat results in its domestic business, reported a 254.16 billion yen ($2.4 billion) net profit in April-June.

The profit largely came from booking some of its partial sale of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba. Softbank is looking to cut its stake in Alibaba from 32.2 percent to about 28 percent, which it expects to rake in about $10 billion.

Alibaba -- often described as China's equivalent to eBay -- dominates online commerce in the country.

SoftBank, which said its revenue in the quarter rose three percent to 2.13 trillion yen, surprised markets this month when it announced the whopping $32 billion purchase of British iPhone chip designer ARM Holdings.

But its stock took a hammering as the huge deal aggravated concerns about SoftBank's balance sheet after a string of earlier acquisitions -- including the $21.6 billion purchase of still-unprofitable Sprint several years ago.

"The ARM acquisition will have a major balance sheet impact in the short term and there has yet to be a satisfactory explanation of how and when it will become a core business for SoftBank," Tomohisa Nonomura, an analyst at Toyo Securities, told Bloomberg News.

SoftBank has been selling off some assets, including a stake in Finnish game-maker Supercell, creator of "Clash of Clans", to China's Tencent, as it looks to pay down more than $100 billion in debt.