HONG KONG â€" Yahoo Japan said Thursday that it would acquire eAccess, a mobile Internet service provider, from the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank for 324 billion yen, or $3.2 billion.
The deal represents a reshuffling of assets within the SoftBank corporate family. The company, controlled by the billionaire Masayoshi Son, owns 42 percent of Yahoo Japan. Yahoo Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., owns about 35 percent of Yahoo Japan.
Yahoo Japan, the nation’s biggest Internet portal, said it expected the purchase of eAccess to give a boost to its online advertising, e-commerce and digital content businesses as its users increasingly access the Internet on mobile devices.
The deal is contingent on eAccess’s successfully completing a merger with Willcom, which is also owned by SoftBank and sells flat-rate wireless access and voice calls. That merger is expected to be completed on June 1.
Between them, eAccess and Willcom had a combined profit of 10.1 billion yen in the fiscal year that ended in March of last year, meaning Yahoo Japan is paying about 32 times historical earnings for the acquisition. Yahoo Japan’s shares trade in Tokyo at about 25 times its earnings for the most recently disclosed 12-month period.
SoftBank said in a separate statement Thursday that it expected to book a gain of 55.7 billion yen on the sale of eAccess.
Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley and Daiwa Securities advised Yahoo Japan on the deal.
