SoftBank seen likely to log first quarterly profit in over a year

Japan's SoftBank Group is expected to post a net profit for the first time in five quarters when the tech investment giant reports earnings on Thursday, benefiting from strong gains in the value of its listed assets. The company has worked hard to shore up its financial position and investors will be looking for any clues as to what it might do with the ample capital it now has at its disposal to deploy – in particular whether it will embark on share buybacks. The opaque nature of many of SoftBank's investments makes forecasting difficult but three of four analyst estimates collated by LSEG and Reuters call for a third-quarter profit of between 282 billion yen to 460 billion yen ($1.9 billion to $3.1 billion).