To be fair, it has been a tough market for everyone after the post-pandemic tech rally crashed amid higher interest rates and shrinking valuations. It was an unconventional choice given that the offering was 12 times oversubscribed, signaling robust demand.īut Son needed a win after a horrible run of IPO flops such as SoftBank’s domestic telecom business, which lost more than 14% on its first day of trading in 2018. Dialed into a conference call, he signaled that he didn’t want to ask for too high a price even if it meant leaving a bit of money on the table. Son, SoftBank’s billionaire founder and CEO, got involved in the pricing negotiations Wednesday afternoon, Bloomberg News reported. It didn’t appoint a lead underwriter, and let Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas and Chief Financial Officer Jason Child, both experienced operators, do a lot of the talking with investors on its roadshow, according to people familiar with the matter. SoftBank took an unusual approach to marketing the sale. Offsetting that bypassed opportunity, SoftBank’s stake in Arm was worth about $12 billion more by the end of the day thanks to the share price gain.

At the extreme, the tally would have been more than $1 billion bigger if the shares had been sold at where they settled the first day.

The company left a lot on the table: Pricing the IPO just $1 more a share - a notion Son rejected - would have raised about $100 million more. Arm continued to gain Friday, jumping 11% in pre-market trading.īut for all the back slapping and congratulations the listing produced from Midtown Manhattan to Tokyo, it also showed the downside of playing it safe. After bringing companies to market in recent years only to see the shares tumble 50%, 60% or 70% in the following months, this was a victory. The shares gained 25% in their debut Thursday after the company raised $4.87 billion to make it the largest US IPO in almost two years. They didn’t want any last-minute hiccups with buyers pulling out, they dreaded pushback on the valuation, and, most of all, they wanted to set a price that would almost guarantee the shares would pop on their first day of trading.īy that measure, the initial public offering was a smashing success. So as he and other top executives met with bankers to plot this week’s initial public offering for Arm Holdings Plc, the focus was making sure the sale would go off without a hitch. His record on tech investing had taken a drubbing after SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund lost $32 billion in a year on flameouts like WeWork and DoorDash Inc. (Bloomberg) - Masayoshi Son was determined to turn the tide.

Softbank mass production less years