Softbank Corp. said Wednesday its net loss was almost halved to 17.88 billion yen in its first quarter, thanks to a rapid increase in subscribers to its high-speed Internet connection service.

Revenue for the April-June period jumped 42 percent to 147.31 billion yen.

Its Yahoo! BB ADSL service had 4.28 million subscribers at the end of June, up from 2.68 million a year earlier.

Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has said the firm aims for 6 million users by the end of September next year.