SoftBank’s damage From Uber, WeWork could exceed $5 billion

Masayoshi Son’s startups have had a rough few months, from a botched initial public offering by WeWork to a sharp decline in shares of Uber Technologies Inc. Now analysts are beginning to calculate that the damage for Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. will likely reach into the billions of dollars.

Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. cut its profit estimate for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, its main investment vehicle, by 580 billion yen ($5.4 billion) to an operating loss of 367.6 billion yen for the September quarter, citing declines in the stock prices of Uber and Slack Technologies Inc. and the withdrawn WeWork IPO. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. estimates that Vision Fund’s writedown alone could be as much as $5.93 billion, with another $1.24 billion drop for the portion of WeWork owned by SoftBank Group.