Chapter 436 The taxi war is about to begin, and Weizhong Group is born!
After the CEO joint meeting ended, Zhang Shuo called Lu Kai to the office alone and asked with a smile: "Sprouting Financial Holdings, how much registered capital do you plan to increase this time?"
"Three billion, maybe. If you increase the registered capital to six billion, you can double the loan scale. It should be enough."
At the meeting just now, although Lu Kai had a big appetite, when it came to the specific decision-making level, he was still very stable and did not really make a big move. With the current financial strength of the Sprout Group, three billion is indeed not too much.
"Do we need to reach 10 billion in registered capital in one step?" Zhang Shuo laughed.
"Of course this is best."
Lu Kai was no longer humble now, "By increasing the registered capital, we can also allocate part of the funds to apply for or obtain financial licenses for funds, securities, insurance, commercial claims, etc. through acquisitions, and further improve the business of Bu Ya Financial Holdings."
Zhang Shuo is also very wealthy, "But one thing, I suggest that the name of Sprout Financial Holdings be changed and the word Sprout be removed, so that it can operate more independently."
Before Sprout Financial Holdings, except for the banned Sprout Real Estate, there was no independently operated subsidiary under the Sprout Group bearing the name of " Sprout ".
This also facilitates the independent operation of subsidiaries and their spin-off and listing.
Moreover, it will not affect the brand value of "Sprout" and will be more conducive to the gradual transformation of the Sprout Group into an asset management holding group in the future.
Changing the name of Sprout Financial Holdings is equivalent to setting up a firewall.
"How about we simply change the name of Sprout Financial Holdings to Weizhong Group? Weizhong Bank itself is the largest offline platform of Sprout Financial Holdings, and the brand fits it very well."
Lu Kai was even more determined. Not only did he want to remove the word "bud", he also changed the name directly, even removing the word "finance", and then emphasized the group attributes of Weizhong Group.
This wave of operations is very similar to the black ants in the original time and space.
"Can!"
Zhang Shuo also thinks that Lu Kai’s suggestion is very good.
That's how things settled.
After discussing Weizhong Group's issues, Lu Kai took the initiative to bring up another matter, "Chairman, I have some thoughts on the investment return issue you just pointed out."
"You have an idea so quickly?" Zhang Shuo smiled half-heartedly.
"It's not just a temporary idea. I've actually been thinking about the issue of investment returns. The general principle is to set up an investment exit mechanism."
"Go on."
Zhang Shuo was indeed interested.
"To be specific, we first classify the investment targets, and set different investment years and exit conditions for different types of investment targets."
There are many ways for investment institutions to exit an invested company.
The best way to exit, which is also the most profitable, is of course to promote the IPO of the invested company, wait until the company is listed, and then obtain high profits by selling the stocks you hold.
Therefore, IPO exit is the favorite exit method for investors.
In addition to IPO, there are other listings on the New Third Board, backdoor listings, etc.
The principles are almost the same.
In addition to listing, if the invested company is favored by other companies for merger and acquisition, then the investment institution can also take advantage of the opportunity of merger and acquisition to exit.
You can also earn considerable profits.
In addition to listing and mergers and acquisitions, if investment institutions want to exit, they can only hope that the management of the invested company will buy back or transfer the equity they hold to other investment institutions.
It’s just that it’s very troublesome to operate, and the returns aren’t as high as listed.
But anyway.
As long as the invested company develops better than before accepting the investment, it will have the opportunity to exit.
On the contrary, if the invested company performs worse than before accepting the investment, it is almost equivalent to declaring that the investment has failed, and the only option is to exit through liquidation and stop losses as much as possible.
Although liquidation and exit are the most unwilling to be accepted by investment institutions, it is also the most common exit method in the investment circle, so investment is said to be a bet.
If you invest in a hundred companies and only three or five of them succeed, you are considered to have a good vision.
If you are lucky enough to bet on a super unicorn like Ali, Tengda, Character Jump, or Wujiang Technology among thousands of investment targets, you will have found a treasure.
You can win it all in one go.
The most typical examples are Soft Money’s investment in Ali and Minade’s investment in Tenda.
They can all be called the chosen ones.
"For example, for investment in the smartphone industry chain, you can set a three-year investment period. After reaching or approaching the investment period, once the conditions are mature, you can decisively choose to exit."
Based on this time limit, investments in the smartphone industry chain can be withdrawn one after another next year.
"If it is a core supplier, or a supplier with a strong technical foundation and a large scale, you can also consider extending the investment period appropriately, for example to five years."
"On the contrary, for those investment targets that are not developing well, operating poorly, or have been misjudged, they are not restricted by the investment period. They need to decisively exit through liquidation to recover as much residual value as possible."
This is actually a minority among the targets of budding investment.
First, whether it is in the smartphone industry, semiconductor, or new energy automobile industry, the companies under Sprout are playing the role of industry leaders.
No matter how bad the suppliers that can be selected by Sprout Investment are, they won't be that bad.
Secondly, during the investment process, there is also the big boss Zhang Shuo who is supervising the overall process. He combines the memory of the original time and space to avoid lightning and pitfalls as much as possible. The probability of success is naturally much higher than that of ordinary investment institutions.
Not to mention talking about it.
Previous investments in Wujiang Technology and Linde New Energy can be called "the chosen ones."
"Similar operations are also applicable to the semiconductor industry and the new energy automobile industry."
"Even the software industry."
"For companies that focus on the future, such as artificial intelligence and other research and development, they can set a longer investment period, such as ten years, or even longer."
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Lu Kai's thinking is obviously very mature and not a temporary idea.
"sure."
After Zhang Shuo heard this, he glanced at Lu Kaigao again, "Your idea is very good, and I also support it."
Even if the business is as big as budding investment, it is impossible to say that if it is just endless investment without an exit mechanism, the squeeze on funds will be very terrifying.
and.
Strictly speaking, only a successful exit is considered a round of investment.
Only by investing in new companies and withdrawing from successfully invested companies, thereby forming a virtuous cycle, can investment be continued continuously.
It is also a role that capital should play.
………
As December comes to an end, time has also entered 14 years in a blink of an eye.
This year, the development of mobile Internet will also enter a new period. Both 4G networks and smartphones will become more and more popular and begin to enter thousands of households.
According to incomplete statistics, China’s smartphone sales in 2013 were 345 million units.
Sales volume in 2014 is expected to exceed 390 million units.
This means that China’s smartphone holdings are expected to exceed 900 million units.
What a huge market this is?
As a result, Sprout's games, social networking, online advertising, e-commerce, local life, mobile phones, semiconductors and other businesses will benefit from this wave of growth.
Even if it just maintains the "status quo", revenue is expected to double through natural growth.
It is not difficult to understand why, in the 13-18 years of the original time and space, in just five or six years, the two giants Ali and Tengda experienced a wave of rapid growth in terms of revenue, net profit, and even stock price.
.
It’s because I have reaped the dividends of the times.
In this life, there is no doubt that the Germinal Group will be the biggest beneficiary.
This is why Zhang Shuo will put more emphasis on fulfilling corporate social responsibilities at the previous joint CEO meeting, because half of Bubu's success is due to his own efforts, and the other half is achieved by the times.
Naturally, we want to give back to society.
In addition to the sharp increase in the number of smartphones, the performance parameters of smartphones have also been rising, which has promoted the new development of short videos, live broadcasts and other formats.
It has created another brand new outlet for the mobile Internet.
Before the storm came, sprouts had already completed the layout of Moyin Technology, ensuring that sprouts' Internet business could always be at the forefront of the Chinese and even global markets.
From a follower to a leader.
And after 14 years of time, there is another big event on the Internet that is about to happen, that is, after the group buying war, the food delivery war, and the shared bike war, the most hated and most fierce taxi war will burn money.
Compared to the original time and space.
In the taxi-hailing field in this generation, there is an additional behemoth like Qingcheng Group. It has been in the taxi-hailing field for more than half a year and has gained a certain market share by virtue of its natural platform advantages.
Qingcheng Taxi is enough to rank among the top three.
Note, it's just the top three, not the unbeatable champion.
Because long before Qingcheng Group launched its taxi-hailing business, a large number of players such as Dida, Kuaidi, and Yidao had already fallen out of business, and the battle in this field was life-and-death.
How dirty are these taxi-hailing companies in order to compete with each other and snatch users?
Take the most gangster among them, Tick Tock, as an example.
In the past year, Dida has done everything possible to promote its taxi-hailing software.
For example, one time Shake chose to advertise on the radio, inviting drivers to the hotel to participate in offline activities and install the software on site. After the founder of Dida knew about it, he directly arranged for someone to rob Hu in the hotel parking lot and added "
Enter your phone number and install the tick-tock software for the driver.
The driver didn't understand so much, so he installed all the ticking machines in a daze.
Tick Tock used this trick of borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha more than once.
Later, Dida competed with Baimi Taxi. In order to solve the problem of drivers not having smartphones, Baimi Taxi installed customized tablets for drivers, coupled with Baimi Taxi's software.
Tiktok sent engineers to flash the driver’s tablet in the name of “repair”, installed the Tiktok taxi-hailing software, and took advantage of it.
The competition with enterprises is still a small matter, and Dida has also achieved "policies from above and countermeasures from below."
At that time, the government required that illegal taxis be banned from entering the country. Drivers must have a service supervision card before they can register for online ride-hailing services. Dida tried to find a way to obtain the card number from the taxi company and provide it to registered drivers.
As for the identity of the driver, Tiktok doesn't care.
Official requirements prohibit the introduction of the fare-increasing taxi-hailing function. Didak pretended not to notice and secretly used the fare-increasing function, but it was renamed "dispatch fee."
These unscrupulous practices made colleagues itch with hatred and cursed Didot as a hooligan.
It now seems that it was Tick's hooligan temperament along the way that paved the way for him to be slapped down later. He was exactly what he said - "If you go out to fool around, you will have to pay back sooner or later!"
In addition to the gangster temperament, Didak has lacked awe and respect for technology since its birth.
The initial software was even built by an outsourcing team. The other party offered a price of 150,000, but was reduced to 90,000 by Tick. As a result, they turned around and outsourced the work to technical secondary school teachers.
It can be seen that the middlemen earn the price difference, which is not ambiguous at all.
Fortunately, this technical secondary school teacher is still a paid officer, and he led a few students to learn and do it at the same time. Although there are many bugs, it still works. Calling a taxi 10 times will ring 6 or 7 times.
It's really ridiculous.
But it is such a company that has started to make a name for itself in the Internet field in the past year. With its rogue-style marketing and local promotion, it has carved its way into the taxi-hailing market.
I don't know whether I should be happy or sad.
The most absurd thing is that the script of the story has only just begun. Around May and June of 2013, the two giants Ali and Tenda also began to pay attention to the taxi field.
After that.
Ahri invested in Kuaidi, and Tengda invested in Dida, and unknowingly they turned against each other again.
On the contrary, the previous Ali Dianping and Nomi Dianping were busy with the food delivery subsidy war and the shared bicycle war, and they could not take care of the taxi business at all, but did nothing.
By the time the two companies were integrated into the Arnold Group, the taxi-hailing field had no opportunities for the Arnold Group.
But Ah Li and Tengda didn't seem to care.
The reason is also very simple. After the integration, the Ali Group is jointly controlled by the three giants, while the two taxi-hailing companies, Dida and Kuaidi, are controlled separately by them.
If you do well, you might even be able to dominate the world.
This also laid the biggest foreshadowing for the upcoming taxi-hailing money-burning war.
No.
In a sense, the taxi-hailing war has actually begun.
Just this past December, Zhifubao announced its cooperation with Kuaidi Taxi. Passengers who use Zhifubao to take a taxi will have the opportunity to receive a single free ride of up to 200 yuan, or a cash rebate of 5 yuan.
The New Year's Day holiday has just begun, and Kuaidi announced that new users in Jingshi who use Kuaidi taxis for the first time will receive a 30-yuan credit rebate.
The event lasts for one month and the total investment is expected to exceed 100 million.
You must know that Jingshi is where Dida started, and it is also one of the markets that Dida focuses on. Kuaidi's subsidized promotion in Jingshi is undoubtedly pointing its sword directly at Dida.
With Tengda's support behind him, it would be strange if he could hold back and not fight back.
Although the rivals Tenda and Ahri have reached an agreement to cooperate on the merger of Arnold Group, it does not mean that the two companies can really put an end to their past feud.
There are still many places where we can compete in the future.
………
Of course, Zhang Shuo chose to sit back and watch the taxi war that was about to break out.
Just watch the excitement.
On New Year's Day, Zhang Shuo came to play chess with Mr. Tang again, and his second uncle was also there.
"I heard that this time Germination Group subscribed for 10% of the equity of China Microelectronics in one fell swoop, and solved a big problem for China Microelectronics' B-round financing?" While chatting, the second uncle Tang Yi talked again.
It's business and probably a professional habit.
There is no real leisure time.
"It's not really a rescue. It's because Su Ya is optimistic about the future of Huaxia Microelectronics." Zhang Shuo also told the truth.
"oh?"
Tang Yi was even more surprised, "Do you really think that China Microelectronics is worth 250 billion? I have heard that many investment institutions have chosen to withdraw from China Microelectronics because its valuation is too high."
"That only proves that these investment institutions have poor vision." Zhang Shuo was a little arrogant and said with a smile: "Second uncle, think about it, according to common sense, Huaxia Microelectronics should not be short of money after the last round of financing.
"
"Even if we are short of money, we don't want to raise 45 billion in one go."
"If you dare to spend such a large amount of money, either China Microelectronics is preparing to steal investors' money, or it has made a key breakthrough in technology research and development and continues to use funds to monetize related technologies."
"Compared to the former, I certainly believe in the latter."
Although Zhang Shuo already knew the answer, this set of rhetoric was quite self-explanatory.
"The truth is such a truth, but the problem is, such a simple truth, it is impossible to say that other investment institutions cannot figure it out, right?" Tang Yi was not easy to fool.
Zhang Shuo said with a smile: "Of course they can figure it out, but they don't have the courage to take a gamble."
There was so much pride in his words.
"That's true!"
Tang Yi was also relieved, "Not everyone has such strong financial strength as Germination."
That being said.
But Tang Yi actually has another level of speculation, that is, the Germination Group, Zhang Shuo to be precise, dares to bet on the future of Huaxia Microelectronics like this. It is said to be a big bet, and it probably also means a bit of funding.
Just like the last time we won the technology license from China Aerospace for a sky-high price of 60 billion.
Why doesn’t China Microelectronics think so?
It is precisely because of this conjecture that China Microelectronics simply agreed to Germinal Group's subscription for 10% of its shares, becoming one of the major shareholders of China Microelectronics.
Under normal circumstances, this matter needs to be done with caution.
You may even "bear the pain" and refuse.
This shows how good the official image of the Sprout Group is now.
He looks like his own son.
"You kid, you can always do things that ordinary people can't do."
Tang Yi also sincerely admires Zhang Shuo. Although the two of them are "uncle and nephew" in name, they actually feel a sense of confidant.
Every time I chat with Zhang Shuo, I feel particularly happy.
And Zhang Shuo seems to be born with a unique temperament that ordinary people don't have. Coupled with an overly keen sense of smell, he really looks like a trend-setter of the times.
A born genius!
………
Thursday, January 2nd.
Just after the New Year's Day holiday, Zhang Shuo returned to the company and was reviewing and approving the funding application for the first quarter of 2014. Because the funding is quarterly, the funding amount has soared again, mainly including -
Allocate 3.5 billion R&D funding to the Fertile Soil Research Institute;
Allocate 7.2 billion operating funds to Mango Group, including 3 billion R&D funds;
Allocate 1 billion operating funds to Nebula Technology, including 500 million R&D funds;
Allocate 500 million operating funds to Jiaoyang Holdings;
Allocate an additional 1 billion in public welfare funds to the Chunmiao Fund;
Allocate 500 million operating funds to the headquarters of the Sprout Group, including the operating expenses of the property management department.
A total of 13.7 billion funds.
Appropriations for Mango Group, Jiaoyang Holdings, Germination Group headquarters, etc. also include year-end bonus expenditures.
In addition to fixed allocations.
In the past December, Sprout Group also spent 25 billion to participate in the B-round financing of China Microelectronics, and at the same time injected 7 billion into the renamed Weizhong Group.
During this period, a corporate bond worth RMB 1 billion is due and needs to be paid off.
The combination of various factors resulted in the monthly expenditure of the Sprout Group reaching 46.7 billion, setting a new record. It must have a strong foundation for losses, otherwise it would not be able to sustain such a result.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! In terms of profit.
In December, Jade Bird Interactive Entertainment turned over a profit of 5.8 billion, Maili Group turned over a profit of 6.1 billion, Qinghe Technology turned over a profit of 650 million, and Germinal Financial Holdings turned over a profit of 750 million.
[Associated companies]: Linde New Energy (35%), Haode Map (20%), Jingdong (25%), Huaxia Microelectronics (10%)
[Note: The equity of Haode Map and Huaxia Microelectronics held by Sprout Investment on behalf of the company does not include the equity of Haode Map held by Qingcheng Group, a subsidiary of the group, and the equity of Huaxia Microelectronics held by Daosui Group.]
Because of last month's "exceeding standard" expenditures, especially the large investment in China Microelectronics, the funds on the account of Sprout Group dropped sharply again, from more than 40 billion to a mere 7.8 billion in one fell swoop.
It fell below the 10 billion mark again.
If Zhang Shuo had not been "far-sighted" and accepted the long-term loan of tens of billions offered by the bank, the capital chain of the Sprout Group would have faced a new challenge.
I really can't be proud.
It’s no wonder that in the original space, even giants like Huawei and Tenda issue corporate bonds or overseas financing from time to time to supplement the company’s cash flow.
It is necessary to plan ahead, otherwise once there is any big move, the funds may not be able to keep up.