SoftBank purchases 22.87 Million Shares in Sprint

According to reports, from 10 to 12 August, Japanese telecom group SoftBank purchased 22.87 million shares of Sprint at an average price of USD 3.80. The shares are 0.58% of outstanding shares of Sprint common stock and they lifted SoftBank’s holding to 3.17 billion shares.

As per the reports, the acquisition was made through US subsidiary Galaxy Investment which is entirely owned by SoftBank. It wants to keep on purchasing Sprint shares, however will not increase its stake to 85% or more.

As per the company, it has been using significant resources in order to optimize Sprint's network strategy and is sustaining the growth of innovative lease financing structures.

SoftBank CEO and Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son told the Wall Street Journal in a different statement that he was quite thrilled regarding the turnaround plan at Sprint. In 2013, SoftBank bought Sprint and thought of combining it with T-Mobile US, however Son lost hope in Sprint for some time when regulators blocked the merger.

He thought that his plan was misjudged by the regulatory environment and he started looking for a buyer for Sprint. He said, “If nobody wants to buy it and we still have the customers, we still have employees, so I have to take care”.

Sprint’s cost-effective network plan came after a four-month consultation with experts at both companies. It wasn’t mentioned that what is involved in the plan. According to Sprint, it would be installing tens of thousands of small cells in order to increase capacity and data speeds.