Multi-billionaire owns company with a $20 billion stake in T-Mobile
Japan's SoftBank owns T-Mobile shares valued at more than $20 billion.
Here's an interesting fact about T-Mobile that you might not know. Japanese investment holding company SoftBank, founded and run by Masayoshi Son (number 60 on the list of billionaires with $28.8 billion to his name) holds $20.4 billion worth of T-Mobile shares. As of this month, SoftBank owned 85.4 million T-Mobile shares or 7.64% of the carrier making it the second-largest stockholder of the company after the 51.54% owned by Deutsche Telekom.
How SoftBank ended up with its stake is an interesting story. In 2013, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen had a dream of owning a wireless provider and when SoftBank agreed to buy 70% of Sprint for $20.1 billion, Ergen saw an opportunity to buy a carrier. So he started a bidding war with SoftBank for Sprint eventually offering $25.5 billion for the company. But that bid was not enough to capture Sprint. In July 2013, SoftBank ended up buying 78% of Sprint for $21.5 billion.
After T-Mobile closed on its purchase of Sprint on April 1st, 2020, all of SoftBank's Sprint shares were converted into 24% of T-Mobile, or 277.2 million shares. SoftBank received an additional 48.8 million shares of T-Mobile when a condition related to T-Mobile's stock price was met in December 2023. The shares were to be given to SoftBank if T-Mobile's shares hit $150 or above for a sustained period of time before the end of 2025.
T-Mobile's shares stayed above $150 for a sustained period around December 2023 triggering the release of the additional 48.8 million shares to SoftBank. The Japanese holding company has since reduced its stake in T-Mobile over time.
As for Charlie Ergen, he finally got his wireless business. When T-Mobile bid $26 billion to acquire Sprint in 2018, it had to get regulatory approval from the FCC and the Justice Department. Both wanted another carrier to replace Sprint as the nation's fourth largest. A deal was made and T-Mobile sold all of Sprint's pre-paid assets including 9.3 million customers, Boost's retail network, employees, and plans to Dish Network. Dish also signed a seven-year MVNO deal with T-Mobile allowing its customers to use T-Mobile's 5G network while Dish built its own standalone 5G network.
At the end of 2023, EchoStar bought Dish giving that company control of Boost, which is still struggling to get traction as a major U.S. wireless provider. In a very competitive business, Boost has yet to generate excitement among consumers. Meanwhile, it seems likely that Deutsche Telekom will continue adding to its T-Mobile stake by buying more shares from SoftBank. In 2024, Deutsche exercised all of the call options on T-Mobile it had obtained from SoftBank and added 44.9 million shares to its holdings.
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