Chapter 250 Weixin 5.0, whose bread has been stolen and who is worried?!
The next day.
Jiang Yue also returned to Binhai City. As the rotating president, she could not spend all her time in the capital.
Regarding the acquisition of a Grade A office building in Jingshi, she has already done a round of screening and left the remaining negotiations to the Jingshi Company of the Germination Group.
Jiang Yue conducts remotely in Binhai City.
Another important reason why Jiang Yue rushed back to Binhai City was that the July regular meeting of the Development and Strategy Committee of the Germination Group was about to be held.
This is also the first monthly meeting held since the establishment of the Strategy Committee.
There is no reason for Jiang Yue to be absent.
As early as a week ago, the President's Office, which was responsible for the preparation of the meeting, had already submitted the meeting theme - artificial intelligence and particle fund investment - to the members of the Development and Strategy Committee.
The former is considered a concentrated study session.
Professor Tan Yunsong, chief scientist of the Fertile Land Research Institute, taught the class to popularize the basic concepts of artificial intelligence, its development status and future application scenarios to members of the strategy committee.
Professor Tan's lecture was profound and simple, winning rounds of applause.
After the study is over, the real topic of this meeting is to discuss the investment of Particle Fund in the upstream and downstream industry chain of smartphones.
To be more precise.
The topic of this discussion focuses on the field of glass panels.
Gu Mingzhang, vice president of Sprout Group and general manager of Maili Technology, gave a brief introduction: "There are two domestic manufacturers of glass panels that are the best, Born Optical in Xiangjiang and Lens Technology in southern Hunan."
And before the meeting starts.
The information of the two companies has been sorted out and distributed to every participant.
The two companies have a close relationship. They are both family businesses. They are very different in terms of scale, product structure, and even revenue and profits. Their largest customer is also Apple.
The difference is.
Bourne Optics was established earlier and is more low-key than Lens Technology.
"Let's all share our opinions."
Since the discussion is focused, Zhang Shuo will naturally not express his opinions in advance.
It is even said that if a consensus is reached during the discussion stage, then Zhang Shuo will directly accept the results of the discussion without even expressing his own opinion.
This is also the significance of establishing a Development and Strategy Committee.
Brainstorm ideas!
"I tend to invest in Born Optical, and the reason is very simple. The production bases of Born Optical are in Binhai City and Echeng, both in the information industry development zone." Cao Yanhua was the first to speak.
Just very positive.
"I am more inclined to invest in Lens Technology. After all, Born Optics is a Hong Kong company and may not be willing to accept strategic investment from the Particle Fund." Pei Weiping expressed a different opinion.
"This is true."
Jiang Yue also agreed, "Born Optics only has two shareholders, and they are a husband and wife. They have never raised funds before. Will they accept the particle fund?"
"I can go and get in touch." Lu Kai volunteered.
"That's it, if you can invest in Born Optics, give priority to investing in Born Optics. If Born Optics doesn't agree, then invest in Lens Technology." Zhang Shuo rarely made peace with him.
certainly.
It is also possible that both companies rejected Particle Fund’s strategic investment.
That would be embarrassing.
In fact, trying to keep up with downstream companies through strategic investment is a relatively clumsy method, and Apple's method is relatively more clever.
That is--
Don't put your eggs in one basket.
Born Optics and Lens Technology are both providing glass panels for Apple, and due to Apple’s huge shipments, it is also the largest customer of both companies.
This gives Apple the greatest confidence.
Even if it is said that Apple has not made strategic investment, if any company dares to make a counterattack, then Apple can kill half of the company's life by simply taking away the order.
Who dares to rebel?
Not only that, Apple even directly intervened in the raw material procurement of the two companies, bringing great uncertainty to the production costs of the two companies.
Even so, the two companies still dare not speak out.
In contrast, Maili Technology, as a start-up company, has not even produced its first product. It is difficult to say whether it has the capital to negotiate with Born Optics and Lens Technology.
No trump card!
What Sprout can offer is the funds from the Particle Fund and the order commitment from Maili Technology.
When it comes to funds, Boen Optical and Lens Technology have not yet been listed and have not raised financing. They are obviously not short of money, so they may not be worthy of investment from the particle fund.
to the end.
The only thing that Sprout can rely on is the "blank check" of the order.
It’s so embarrassing!
It is precisely because of this that Particle Fund has more reason to make a strategic investment in one of them to ensure that glass panel companies can give priority to supply to Maili Technology.
So this is a paradox.
It is under this circumstance that Particle Fund also faces interference from Scarlet Capital.
It’s really difficult!
But no matter how difficult it is, things still have to be done. The result of the discussion at the meeting was that Lu Kai, the vice president of the group, would temporarily lead the investment and M&A department of the group to try to win over Born Optics.
"It all depends on people!"
Lu Kai himself is very confident. Since Zhang Shuo proposed the rotating president system, he seems to be resurrected with full blood and high morale. He even looks forward to competing with Scarlet Capital.
Scarlet Capital is very powerful in the country.
But in front of Lu Kai's old club, the Pirates of Saint Group, Scarlet Capital was actually not enough.
………
The next week will be uneventful.
The only good thing is that in July, Jade Bird Interactive Entertainment turned in a record profit of 640 million. This achievement was mainly due to the two mobile card games "My Name is MT" and "Drunken Man".
Card games are really profitable.
According to this trend, it is very easy for Jade Bird Interactive Entertainment's profit to exceed the 700 million mark in August.
………
Tuesday, August 2nd.
As soon as Zhang Shuo went to work, the group's finance department reported new payment applications for the month, including——
Pay 50 million progress payment to the owners of Germinal Building;
Pay 640 million progress payment to Nokia;
Allocate 400 million R&D funding to Maili Technology;
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Allocate 100 million R&D funds to the Fertile Soil Research Institute;
Allocate 500 million project funds to Germinal Real Estate...
All added together, it is another huge expenditure of 1.69 billion. Although it is not as exaggerated as 2.34 billion last month, it is indeed a huge expenditure.
If you switch to any Internet company, you will have to break your muscles and bones.
The above does not include the employee wages, benefits, administrative expenses, operating expenses and other daily operating expenses of the Sprout Group and its subsidiaries.
Otherwise it will be even more exaggerated.
After signing all the grant applications, Zhang Shuo opened his personal panel.
--slightly--
[Level]: Level 9 (1.01 million/8 million)
[Support Fund]: 10 million/day
【Cash】: 4.2 billion
[Loan]: 6.4 billion (bank loan) 200 million (corporate bond)
--slightly--
In the past July, despite the cumulative profit of 1.84 billion contributed by Jade Bird Interactive Entertainment, the working capital on the books of Sprout Group has shrunk by 500 million, and at the same time, a new mortgage loan of 450 million has been added.
One in and one out.
This means that in the month of July alone, the Germination Group has flowed out a total of one billion in funds.
This is very scary.
If things continue like this, the 4.2 billion in cash on the books now really won't last for a few months.
Among the expected expenditures for August, 700-800 million yuan should be prepared for buying office buildings in the capital, and 500 million yuan should be prepared for Hao De map to make a complete plan.
This is an expenditure of more than one billion.
"It's very sad. No matter how much money Jade Bird Interactive Entertainment makes, the money is never enough."
Zhang Shuo is also greedy and swallows the elephant like a snake.
………
As time enters August, the group buying industry has also reached an inflection point.
On August 3, news came out internally that Wowo Group, one of the largest group buying websites, had begun large-scale layoffs in the name of "optimization" and "elimination of the last place."
Laishou.com subsequently followed suit, thus kicking off a massive layoff in the group buying industry.
It shows that group buying websites are beginning to be unable to succeed.
The fact is that group buying is not a business model that can last for a long time. It is just a gimmick after all. It was only with the support of a large amount of capital that it appeared to be hot and shiny before.
When the capital ebbs, everything will take shape.
On the contrary, Moutuan and Dacong Dianping, who were the first to imitate Qingcheng Group and launch takeout services, relied on Ahri and Tengda respectively to stand out in this battle of thousands of groups.
Became the final winner.
Others, such as Wowo Tuan, Laishou.com, etc., in the end, there is only a piece of chicken feathers left.
Even Qingcheng Group, because it did not participate in the food delivery subsidy war, has had a dim reputation recently, and has been overtaken by latecomers such as Mold Group and Dacong Dianping.
It's really sad.
Fortunately, Qingcheng Group has one last fig leaf, and that is Qingcheng Xiaozhu, which ranks first in sales.
But it doesn't stop there.
Of course, Sprout Group is already a group operation, and the temporary setback in the takeout business will not affect the vigorous development of other businesses, such as social networking.
Friday, August 5th.
Weixin, which has been dormant for several months, has finally been updated to version 5.0.
In this version, Scan has been completely upgraded. Not only can you scan product information and add friends through QR codes, but you can also scan street views, scan barcodes, scan word translations, scan covers, etc.
It also supports searching, saving and migrating chat records.
In addition, version 5.0 also adds emoticon store, collection functions, email binding and other functions, which can be said to be a major upgrade to Weixin.
It greatly enriches the usage scenarios of Weixin.
I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but on the same day, China Unicom also released an instant messaging tool called “Woyou”. If nothing else, it will definitely be a hit.
In the field of instant messaging, Weixin and ICQ are the real giants.
Of course, there is an inherent logic behind what China Connect does, that is, the emergence of mobile social software like Weixin has made text messages useless.
You know, the SMS service brings a lot of considerable profits to communication providers.
In addition to text messages, Weixin's language chat and video chat functions have directly shaken the foundation of communication companies, and their operating income has dropped sharply.
It is not difficult to understand the anxiety of communication providers.