SoftBank profits shatter analyst forecasts

Home delivery is helping to deliver the profits for Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group.

Bets on firms like Doordash saw the firm smash analyst forecasts.

Third quarter net profit jumped more than 20 times to just over 11 billion dollars.

That's more than six times the figure predicted by analysts.

The numbers will come as a relief to SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son.

He was battered by a string of high profile misses, such as the flopped IPO for office sharing firm WeWork.

The problems forced him to sell assets, and led some to ask if he'd lost his touch for investments.

Now the gains follow a sea change at SoftBank's mammoth Vision Fund investment unit.

It alone booked a profit of 8 billion dollars.

The fund has been helped by a buoyant global equities market, which has driven tech stocks higher.

That saw its 82 investments valued at about 90 billion dollars, compared with a purchase price of just over 76 billion.

The latest period also saw public listings for SoftBank-backed firms including Doordash and home selling platform Opendoor.