SBI Teases Explosive Ripple Valuation Ahead Of Potential IPO

SBI Holdings has told shareholders that the conglomerate’s long-standing stake in Ripple Labs will remain off its balance sheet until the US fintech either lists its shares or undergoes a comparable third-party appraisal, leaving what management calls “an enormous amount of unrealized profit” unrecognised for now.

The disclosure appears in the group’s fiscal-year 2024 results deck (FY ended 31 March 2025), presented on 9 May. Consolidated revenue reached ¥1.443 trillion ($9.39 billion), up 19.3% year-on-year, while profit before tax almost doubled to ¥282.3 billion ($1.83 billion), driven by outsized contributions from private-equity revaluations and a buoyant crypto-asset arm.

Ripple’s True Value Remains Locked: SBI

Within the private-equity segment, a slide devoted to unlisted holdings spells out the accounting treatment for Ripple: “About the shares of Ripple Lab Inc. in the US held by the SBI Group as unlisted shares, the value of XRP held in escrow by Ripple Lab Inc. will not be included in the corporate value until a clear valuation is determined through an IPO or other means.”

That valuation reserve matters. During the same presentation, executives reminded investors that SBI first backed Ripple more than a decade ago and “now [has] a little less than 10 percent of the equity stake of Ripple.” Citing Ripple’s current escrow and circulating supply, management estimated the notional market capitalization of XRP at “about ¥20 trillion ($130 billion)”, before adding that the balance of tokens under escrow “is still under lock-up.”

In an extended Q&A captured and transcribed by commentator Crypto Eri, SBI’s leadership elaborated on why those gains remain off the books: “The value of XRP held in escrow by Ripple Lab will not be included in the corporate value until a clear valuation is determined through an IPO or other means. If it is included, the profit will surge and will be an extraordinary amount.”

“Ever since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the US has been putting a lot of emphasis on the crypto asset market, which we are grateful for… If listed, the unrealized profits are going to be unlocked, and I’m sure that it will easily exceed one trillion yen ($6.5 billion).”

The timing of any liquidity event for Ripple has been a perennial question in Tokyo. For years SBI’s chief executive, Yoshitaka Kitao, has said he expects Ripple to go public once its legal overhang with the US Securities and Exchange Commission is resolved.

That overhang receded only last week: on May 8 the SEC announced a settlement agreement that paves the way to conclude its 2020 enforcement action against Ripple and two executives, subject to court approval. Although the deal stops short of providing a formal valuation, it removes a regulatory obstacle that had complicated IPO planning.

SBI’s Crypto-asset Business recorded revenue of ¥80.8 billion ($526 million) and profit before tax of ¥21.2 billion ($138 million), a jump of 151.8% from the prior year, buoyed by market-maker B2C2 and a larger retail customer base at SBI VC Trade. Management framed those results as early evidence of “explosive growth potential” once Ripple’s equity re-rating is realised.

SBI’s total assets under management have already crossed the ¥10 trillion ($65 billion) threshold; the group reiterated a goal of doubling that figure to ¥20 trillion ($130 billion) by the end of FY 2027. A Ripple listing could help finance that expansion while transforming the private-equity portfolio’s risk profile, the presentation suggested.

For now, the conglomerate is content to wait. “There aren’t as many people who understand our operations,” an executive conceded in the shareholder session, adding that even internally “employees do not understand our entire business.” Once Ripple’s valuation ceases to be “hidden in plain sight,” SBI believes, the resulting windfall will speak for itself.

At press time, XRP traded at $2.45.