SoftBank Group, which posted its first loss in 15 years warned on Monday that 15 unicorns of its Vision Fund portfolio of 88 companies could go bankrupt due to the COVID-19 crisis.

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Masayoshi Son, Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank said several unicorns had fallen into the "valley of coronavirus". However, he did not name them.

Nevertheless, the company added that it expects 20 percent IRR on the unicorns with "wings" that can "still fly".

SoftBank reported an operating loss of $13 billion for FY20, while the SoftBank Vision Fund saw losses of $17.7 billion due to loss on valuation of investments, largely driven by Uber and WeWork.

The valuation of WeWork has dropped to $2.9 billion as of March 31, 2020, from $47 billion in January last year.

SoftBank Vision Fund had put in $75 billion in 88 investments, for which the fair value stood at $69.6 billion as of March 31, 2020.

Of the 88 investments, Son said 47 investments had been marked down in the fiscal year.

Son said going forward SoftBank would take a cautious approach to both future investments as well as current investments.

However, he said he did not want to be "too pessimistic". He added that more hotels could join the Oyo group, while also talking about ride-sharing recovering in China.

"Small hotels that are struggling can join Oyo Group and take advantage of their technology to acquire customers. That will be a new need for those businesses," Son said.

In ride-sharing, Son said Uber is still facing a difficult situation in the US. But Didi in China has seen they are seeing the recovery of the ride-sharing business.

"I hope this will be the case in other companies also," Son said.

First Published:May 18, 2020 4:44 PM IST