SoftBank Group subsidiary SB Management has acquired a 10.1% stake in Swedish mobile consumer engagement firm Sinch for $700m.
SB Management, which is 100% owned by Japanese investment giant SoftBank, has purchased 1,200,000 shares from major shareholders.
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Sinch also issued 3,187,736 new shares at a subscription price of 1,050 Swedish krona per share, with SoftBank the sole buyer. This makes SoftBank a significant shareholder in Sinch, which this year has become the best-performing company on the Stoxx Europe 600 index.
Sinch said in a statement late on Monday that it would use the proceeds of the stock sale to fund future mergers and acquisitions. This year it has already acquired SAP Digital Interconnect for £198m, Wavy for £98m, Chatlayer for £4m and ACL mobile for £56m.
“We see clearly how our cloud-based platform helps businesses leverage mobile technology to reinvent their customer experience,” Sinch CEO Oscar Werner told TechCrunch.
“Whereas people throughout the world have embraced mobile messaging to interact with friends and family, most businesses have yet to seize this opportunity.”
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By GlobalDataSinch provides an omnichannel platform to enable businesses to send mobile messages, voice and videos in seconds. Its platform is used by 8 of the US’ ten largest tech companies and handles 25 billion API transactions per year.
Since it was founded in 2008 in Stockholm the firm has grown from a six-person team to a 500-strong company.
This year its share price has soared by 280% as the pandemic accelerated the shift to online shopping.
SoftBank has invested in a number of high-profile tech companies via its $100bn Vision Fund, such as Uber and ByteDance. In May SoftBank reported its first annual loss as the pandemic ravaged some of its investments. This then triggered an asset sell off by the Japanese firm, which has left it with plenty of cash for new investments.
Read more: CTO Talk: Q&A with Sinch’s Jonas Lindeborg
