SoftBank Nears Another Win as Tokopedia Weighs Sale to Billionaires’ SPAC. An IPO Is Also Being Mulled.
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Fresh off a huge win with the DoorDash initial public offering, the SoftBank Vision Fund has another big potential payout brewing, with a possible exit in the works for Tokopedia, an Indonesia-based e-commerce company.
The SoftBank Group (ticker: SFTBY) venture arm has been invested in Tokopedia since 2013, and remains one of the largest investors in the company, which according to Crunchbase has raised a total of $2.8 billion. (The original investment predated creation of the fund, but was later transferred to the fund’s control. The exact size of SoftBank’s investment has not been disclosed.)
SoftBank and Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) co-led a $1.1 billion round in 2018 at a valuation reported at $7.1 billion. The Google unit of Alphabet (GOOGL) and the Singaporean government-owned fund Temasek invested $350 million more in a November 2020 round.
Both Bloomberg and Reuters reported Tuesday that Tokopedia was in talks about potentially going public via a merger with a SPAC called Bridgetown Holdings (BTWN), which was created by the billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook (FB) board member Peter Thiel and Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li.
Tokopedia is also considering coming public via an initial public offering, a person close to the situation told Barron’s.
Bloomberg reported that a deal for Tokopedia could value the company in the range of $8 billion to $10 billion.
The SoftBank Vision Fund is the largest single investor in DoorDash, with about a 22% stake. The fund’s $2 billion investment in the food delivery company was recently worth more than $10 billion.
Tokopedia didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.
Bridgetown shares rallied 22.6% on Tuesday to $13.58, and gained another 5.6% to $14.34 in after-hours trading. SoftBank shares slipped 0.5%, to $38.69.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com