SoftBank shares sink over 6% after Nvidia exit, tech overvaluation concerns

• Shares down around 15% in 3 days after SoftBank announced it sold all of its stake in Nvidia
• Concerns around overvaluation in tech stocks also sparked sell-off of global tech, AI giants

ISTANBUL

Japanese tech giant SoftBank's shares slumped 6.6% Friday driven by the firm's sale all of its stake in the US chip giant Nvidia for $5.83 billion announced on Tuesday, and an overall concern regarding the overvaluation in the tech stocks.

SoftBank's stock fell to 19,780 Japanese yen ($127.9) at Friday's close, declining for third straight day. The firm's stock dropped around 15% since its Nvidia stake sale announcement on Tuesday.

Last week, the company suffered its largest weekly drop since March 2020, losing about $50 billion in market capitalization.

In its most recent earnings report, SoftBank revealed that it reduced its ownership of T-Mobile and sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October, earning $9.17 billion.

Still, SoftBank and Nvidia are still business partners. The Tokyo-based firm is engaged in several AI projects that make use of Nvidia's technology, including as the $500 billion Stargate project for American data centers.

Additionally, there was a decrease in a number of other tech stocks in the region. Advantest, a manufacturer of semiconductor testing equipment, and Tokyo Electron, a manufacturer of chip fabrication equipment, both had declines of more than 3% and 4%, respectively.

The biggest contract chipmaker in the world, Taiwan's TSMC, saw a 2.04% decline. Samsung Electronics dropped 3.8%, while South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix had a decline of more than 5%.

Tencent's stock fell 5.61%, while JD.com's fell 4.31%.

Tech giants in the US were also severely damaged overnight. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, saw a 2.8% decrease, while Nvidia and Broadcom saw notable declines of 3.6% and 4.3%, respectively.