Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. has reported a 98 percent drop in its April-June profit on losses stemming from investments in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. SoftBank said Monday its quarterly net profit was 5.5 billion yen ($50 million), down from 254 billion yen the previous year. Quarterly sales added 3 percent to 2.19 trillion yen ($20 billion). The Tokyo-based company's operating profit, which highlights core operations, logged a 50 percent increase year-on-year as its U.S. mobile carrier Sprint boosted profitability. Softbank, which sells the Pepper robot, did not give an annual forecast, which is not unusual for the company.

Honda Motor Co.'s go-it-alone strategy looks increasingly risky as an alliance-happy auto industry scales up to cope with the soaring investment needed for self-driving vehicles, electrified power trains, connected-car technologies and artificial intelligence. In the latest industry tieup, Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. on Friday announced plans to jointly invest in a $1.6 billion assembly plant in the U.S. with the capacity to produce 300,000 Toyota Corollas and a new Mazda crossover model starting 2021. Toyota will acquire about 5 percent in Mazda, which will hold a 0.25 percent in the bigger automaker. The duo will also combine engineering efforts on electric vehicle development and car-networking know-how. Honda President and CEO Takahiro Hachigo, like his predecessors, isn't a fan of big alliances that involve equity stakes.

The growing challenges confronting asset management were confirmed by the industry's global performance in 2016. For the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, the revenue pool of traditional managers fell worldwide, along with their profits. Margins contracted as fee pressures continued to increase. Assets under management (AuM) returned to growth, largely thanks to rising asset values on financial markets. Net new flows, the industry's wellspring of growth, remains tepid and little changed from recent years.

Hayden Capital letter for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. Get the entire 4-part series on good management in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues. In the second quarter of 2017, Hayden Capital gained 12.6% (net of fees). This brings our performance to 13.7% year-to-date. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and MSCI World were up 3.1% and 4.7% over the same period, respectively. The largest contributor to this outperformance was our recent investment in Zooplus, which I describe in more detail below. Since inception, we have returned 11.0% annually, versus 9.1% for the S&P 500 and 6.3% for the MSCI World, while keeping 25% of the portfolio in cash. It's a pretty simple formula, although one that's largely ignored by most investors.

Improved sales and cost cuts helped automaker Honda Motor Co. shrug off lingering troubles from the Takata air bag recalls to log a nearly 19 percent improvement in its fiscal first-quarter profit. Tokyo-based Honda, which makes the Fit subcompact, Accord sedan and Asimo robot, on Tuesday reported a ¥207.3 billion profit for the April-June period, up from ¥174.6 billion the same period last year. Quarterly sales rose 7 percent to just over ¥3.7 trillion. Honda expects to sell 5.08 million vehicles for the fiscal year through March 2018, up from the nearly 5.03 million vehicles it sold during the last fiscal year. Honda raised its annual profit forecast to ¥545 billion from April's forecast of ¥530 billion. Its made a profit of ¥616.5 billion in the previous year.

Facebook has acquired Ozlo, a Palo Alto-based artificial intelligence startup, to help Messenger build out a more elaborate virtual assistant for users. Ozlo specializes in understanding text-based conversations, and claims it can understand and provide answers to questions that don't necessarily have simple yes or no answers -- what Ozlo calls "probabilistic assertions of truth." On the company's website, for example, a short demo shows its AI assistant answering a question about whether or not a restaurant is "group friendly" based on pulling and understanding multiple reviews. Ozlo's website claims it has 30 employees, and a Facebook spokesperson says the "majority of the team" will be joining Messenger in Facebook's offices in either Menlo Park, Calif., or Seattle, Wash. Facebook is buying the company's technology and workforce, and it sounds as though Ozlo's technology will fold into Messenger's existing AI efforts, though it's unclear if that includes Messenger's existing virtual assistant, M. "They're just going to be working with [Messenger] to continue their work with artificial intelligence and machine learning," a spokesperson said.

Here is the tech news you need to know this Friday. The firm's rapidly rising expenses brought its operating income down 51% from the same period last year to $628 million (£480 million). The company refreshed its iPod lineup on Thursday, and cut out the only two models that don't run on the iOS operating system. His personal net worth is now estimated to be around $90 billion (£68 billion). The company managed to beat Wall Street's expectations in terms of revenue, however, with $574 million (£438 million) versus an expected $537 million (£410 million).

Intel Corp. more than doubled its second-quarter profit as sales of its personal computer chips strengthened and the company made further inroads in promising new areas of technology. The world's largest chipmaker also brightened its outlook for the remainder of the year. The report released Thursday drew a lukewarm reaction from investors as Intel's stock edged up 13 cents to $35.10 in extended trading. Intel earned $2.81 billion, or 58 cents per share during the three-month period ended July 1. That compared to net income of $1.33 billion, or 27 cents per share, at the same time last year.

Ford's automotive revenue of $37 billion was in line with Wall Street's expectations. Total revenue rose 1 percent to $39.85 billion. The elevated performance in the second quarter was due mostly to a lowering of the company's corporate tax rate, from 30 percent down to 10 percent, Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks acknowledged. Ford has put some overseas losses back on its books in anticipation of changes in the U.S. corporate tax code, Shanks said. The company expects to have a 15 percent rate this year, but that will return to 30 percent next year.

Google-parent Alphabet, which has enjoyed revenue growth rate of over 20 percent for the past five quarters, said on Monday that TAC, or traffic acquisition costs, jumped 28 percent to $5.09 billion in the second quarter. MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) – France's Vivendi has tightened its grip on Telecom Italia by removing its CEO Flavio Cattaneo and paving the way for a joint venture between its own pay-TV Canal and the Italian group, in a boost to the French firm's ambitions to become a southern European media powerhouse. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Silicon Valley baron Elon Musk insulted rival billionaire Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, escalating a tech wizard war of words over whether robots will become smart enough to kill their human creators. SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter Inc heads toward its quarterly earnings report on Thursday with a stock that has risen more than 40 percent since April when much of Wall Street was ready to write off the tech company.