The "Mutual Non-Aggression Pact" between Lin Yi and Wang Xing is no more effective than toilet paper. Neither of them will let down their vigilance because of this.
However, the timely closure of each group was a big relief for investors, because a unnecessary money-burning competition was avoided.
They were very satisfied with Lin Yi's handling this time. They did not pay any price and relied on their own strength to keep the vicious dog away from each group.
Taking advantage of this enthusiasm, Lin Yi thought about completing one of the things in his plan.
“When Wanli Travel merged with Tudu Taxi, I promised to raise the valuation in the next round of financing.”
"Now half a year has passed since that time, and the relationship with investors is also good. I think it is time to fulfill this promise."
"In addition, there is another thing that we are clear about. If nothing else happens, this should be the last round of financing before Wanli Travel goes public."
If mergers are not considered, this should be Wanli Travel’s Series F financing, but the company’s current situation is often called a Pre-IPO round.
The reason why this round is special is that when a startup company considers listing at this stage, generally speaking, its business scale and market share have reached a certain level, which means the winner of the industry competition.
There is usually a price difference between the primary market and the secondary market, which means that it is generally expected that the market value will rise even higher after listing.
Therefore, the Pre-IPO round is an opportunity with less risk and greater certainty of returns.
This is a piece of cake. Lin Yi had this idea when he invested in King Ning's era before. Giving to whomever and not giving to whom is actually a matter of worldliness.
Of course, there are many hidden rules. Some very energetic people like to play tricks at this stage. If they don’t pay, they won’t be able to go to the market. This is commonly known as buying road money.
Lin Yi is not afraid of that. Although everyone now thinks he is talking about going public in the United States, in fact his goal is the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Choosing the United States may have an advantage in terms of valuation in the short term, and the listing conditions will be more relaxed, but there will be a lot of trouble in the future.
Of course Lin Yi would not step on other people's traps again.
"The company is actually not short of money. After the merger with Dudu, the subsidy expenditure was greatly reduced and was completely eliminated by the end of last year."
"Then the performance has entered a relatively stable and even-speed development stage. The main business has basically achieved break-even, and we are moving towards the goal of full-year profitability."
"You have cut off all the unprofitable businesses, and now the money spent is nothing more than investment in shared bicycles, as well as investment in car manufacturing and autonomous driving in cooperation with Xiong Factory."
"From the books, the company does not have much financing needs, at least not urgent."
Of course it was CFO Liu Jianni who discussed this matter with Lin Yi, but this did not mean that she disapproved of this financing, because she then asked:
“Besides valuation, what else are you planning to achieve with this round?”
Lin Yi said: "Although our new business has not yet reached the stage of large-scale investment, it does not hurt to hold a little more cash reserves. We cannot wait until we actually spend money to ask for money."
"The other thing is to balance the relationship between various shareholders and try to meet their requirements."
Wanli Travel’s shareholder meeting may be regarded as the most complex in the entire industry, bringing together the three mythical beasts of BAT and a large number of well-known venture capital institutions.
However, the situation in this round was a bit simpler than Lin Yi expected, because everyone was not enthusiastic about subscribing.
Liu Jianni reported two reasons.
"First, the valuation level we are seeking this time is relatively high, reaching US$50 billion before investment. This amount is already more competitive than Uber in the United States."
"External investors have expressed dissatisfaction and believe that we have been integrating the mainland market for about half a year but have not continued to make progress and cannot support this valuation."
"But investors in the previous rounds are satisfied, because the investment in the last round has increased by about 50%, and their income has been considerable."
"The second is that the company's financial situation is now good, and most investors expect us to be able to successfully achieve profitability this year. In this case, they will not be willing to follow the investment."
Lin Yi didn't feel any regrets. He set the conditions relatively high because he wanted to block some of them. In fact, he only had one intended investor.
"What did Son say?"
"SoftBank also feels that our valuation is relatively high and we are still talking about it, but I think the other party may recognize it because they want to make a big investment."
Lin Yi had previously promised Masayoshi Son to give him another opportunity to increase his holdings after the Vision Fund is completed, but of course it cannot be too cheap.
The final result did not disappoint him, and SoftBank finally agreed.
They invested $5 billion.
As a result, the amount of this round is already quite large, and other investors did not participate in the investment because it would easily be dwarfed by less investment, so they simply gave up this opportunity to SoftBank to play a one-man show.
Masayoshi Son is really optimistic about travel, and he is prepared to spend a lot of money on both Uber and its competitors.
Of course, Lin Yi has no obligation to remind him that the valuation of taxi-hailing software is now close to a historical high, and there is not much room for future growth.
However, there is one thing worth noting. After this round of financing, SoftBank’s shareholding ratio in Wanli Travel alone has exceeded 10%.
Considering that Factory A and SoftBank have always had a close relationship and often appear as actual concerted actors when making investments, they still have a great say in the company.
Correspondingly, after the huge sum of money was received, Lin Yi's shareholding ratio in the company also dropped to a new low.
Before the merger of Wanli Travel and Dudu Taxi, Lin's shareholding was less than 30%, and after the merger, it was only more than 14%.
After this round of financing, it will continue to drop to 13%.
Given the current situation of Wanli Travel, Lin Yi didn't worry about anyone trying to displace him from his position, but with Cheng Wei's bloody example in front of him, it was better to make preparations in advance.
Lin Yi is already planning to adopt an AB-share structure when it goes public next year to ensure that he can maintain his advantage in voting rights with a small amount of equity.
As soon as the news came out that Wanli Travel had raised US$5 billion in financing and its post-money valuation reached US$55 billion, there was the usual exclamation.
But in fact, there wasn't much public response, because the heat of the taxi-hailing war has passed by now, and no one knows what to do with it after raising so much money.
In contrast, another thing is more interesting to the melon-eaters.
Although many transaction details are not public, as a non-listed company with so many investors, Wanli Travel is already very transparent.
Therefore, well-informed media found out that after this round, Lin Yi’s personal net worth has exceeded US$7 billion, and he continues to maintain his status as the “self-made richest person born in the 1990s.”
For Lin Yi, the greatest significance of this matter is that Wanli Travel has completed the pre-IPO equity sorting and is not expected to change before the IPO.