this man is not calm

Chapter 427: Farewell
As my business grew, the feeling of not having enough people became more and more serious.

Personal energy is limited, and the amount of work that can be done each day is limited. Even if Jin Shang is very capable and has the blessing of a "golden finger", there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and it is impossible to have even a minute or a second more.

Talented people who can stand on their own feet are hard to come by.

At present, Jinxi Culture has a good talent pool only in newspapers and magazines, online media, sports competitions, and publishing and audio-visual businesses. In other areas, there seems to be a lack of talent and the situation is not up to the mark.

To put it bluntly, the company is moving too fast and too hastily, and the training of its employees can't keep up.

Putting aside the question of whether it is feasible to poach people from outside with high salaries, the side effects of doing so are actually quite large. Jin Shang still hopes that the old subordinates who have followed him from the beginning can grow up as quickly as possible, rather than finding some so-called "airborne talents" who are not sure whether they are reliable or not to occupy key positions.

Especially at this time, we must control ourselves to prevent the relatively pure team from being tainted and causing the boss Jin Shang's control to decline.

Young Master Jin is not worrying too much. With such a huge fortune, it would be troublesome if he was not careful and was plotted against.

The old employees have strong cohesion and a sense of belonging. Under the long-term influence of the "Golden Broom", they will not easily be bribed by outsiders.

The original business had become stable, but the new business model, starting from scratch, was a bit tricky. As a last resort, Jin Shang had to turn to relatives and friends to introduce some elite talents who could build the framework for the company's operations.

After this year's new employee induction training and rotation internship are completed, there will be a series of personnel transfers.

It has been the second year since the university stopped the targeted allocation work. Jinxi Culture has spent a lot of effort and recruited more than 120 undergraduates and more than 500 qualified junior college students, which can be regarded as a great harvest.

What satisfied Jin Shang the most was that he had recruited more than a dozen computer science graduates who were proficient in mathematics and entrusted them to Yang Qi for training;
There is also a group of graduates with college degree or above in biology, materials, agriculture and electrical engineering, and they all need to be won over to prevent them from running away halfway.

The results of this year's social recruitment made Jin Shang realize that Jinxi Culture, which was still unknown last year, has become a large company with a certain degree of fame nationwide, especially in Gyeonggi Province, where many large and small companies are providing supporting services for themselves.

In the western Beijing area, it might be a bit of an exaggeration to say that the Jin family is a household name, but the father and son of the Jin family are indeed well-known.

The popularity of Yuanqilou and Uniqlo and the small-scale expansion of fresh food supermarkets have made Jintoki much busier.

Butler Lao Bian is old and has limited energy, so he can no longer be relied upon for many things. However, his old network of contacts is still there, so it should not be a problem for him to introduce some people with clear backgrounds to him. Therefore, Lao Jin and Xiao Jin also ask for his opinion when they need it.

What I have to do today is not complicated. These days, it is hard to find a three-legged frog, and there are people lacking proper jobs everywhere.

After it was over, Lao Bian was asked to take a rest, as Jin Shang still had some things to discuss with Hong Renquan.

As the chairman of a listed company whose market value once soared to nearly 10 billion this year but has now fallen back to less than 8 billion, Hong Renquan is undoubtedly very outstanding.

Such a high stock price has caused the price-earnings ratio of CSSC Electromechanical to exceed 1,000, which is a bit outrageous. Although it has a large number of orders, its production capacity and profit level are limited. The high-profit revenue is actually provided by side businesses and cannot be fully attributed to the ability of the listed company.

For example, game consoles, MP3 players, mobile phones and PHS are not wholly-owned subsidiaries. On the surface, they are controlling shareholders, but in reality they can only be regarded as participating shareholders. They have no influence on the operation of these subsidiaries at all. Decisions can only be made after consulting with Jin Shang, the actual controller. They are in a situation where they only follow orders and not announcements.

In recent days, the trading volume of stocks supported by the transfer and financing of a large number of shares held by Jin Shang has increased significantly, indicating that the short-selling power of CSSC Electromechanical has become stronger, which also means that Jin Shang's profits have increased.

Coupled with stock index futures and put options, Jin Shang's actual income in the secondary market has increased significantly. Compared with the stable, large-volume but low-profit bond market, speculation in warrant spreads can only be short-term arbitrage, unlike the bond market, which can provide long-term and stable profits.

This is enough.

Judging from the company's operation, CSSC's net profit this year is close to five million, which is insignificant compared with its market value. This is certainly the result of accounting, but there are also factors such as revenue growth and rising expenses.

In short, just continue not to distribute dividends. The profit growth of more than 60% will make the uninformed retail investors look at it with a higher eye, while the knowledgeable institutional investors will naturally look at data indicators such as cash flow, net assets, and capital reserves, and will definitely not be too bearish.

It is enough to reassure investors that the stock price will not fall sharply in this round of adjustments.

As for specific business development...

"If President Jin has decided to let Xingdao Haihua and Planet Intelligence go public separately, this is actually a good thing. Beichuan Electromechanical will focus on its main business, which will be conducive to future business expansion. In the past, it started side businesses because its main business was not doing well and it needed extra money to survive. Now it seems that there is no need to disperse its energy."

Hong Renquan fully supports Jin Shang's decision. For a large traditional heavy industry enterprise mainly engaged in industrial manufacturing, it is not a good thing to be indecisive.
"I'm not worried about shipbuilding. We have a lot of talented people. But the risks in the new materials, intelligent, and electronic departments and branches are a bit high. Take the new energy direction for example. We have some experience in batteries and silicon photovoltaic panels. We also have some foundation in electronic components and semiconductors. It's just that..."

Facing Hong Renquan's somewhat embarrassed expression, Jin Shang smiled leisurely and said:

“The investment is huge and the risk is uncontrollable?”

"Yes, this second-generation photovoltaic technology, polycrystalline silicon thin-film batteries, has been around for several years and is intended to be used on greenhouse curtain walls. In fact, it is polycrystalline silicon attached to glass, ceramics or plastics through chemical vapor deposition or physical vapor deposition on the substrate, and then through photolithography or etching technology, a battery structure difference layer is made to form a PN junction. Although it is low-cost and can be made into a highly transparent panel with decent efficiency, the structure is a great improvement over traditional silicon photovoltaics, but..."

After listening to the above introduction, do you suddenly feel that this thing is so similar to the process description of chip semiconductors?

In fact, the technical principles are the same thing. Silicon photovoltaics are also called wafer photovoltaics. The principle is the same as chip manufacturing, except that the material purity and process precision are completely at different levels.

Polycrystalline silicon thin-film photovoltaic cells are naturally similar and also require the use of photolithography and etching technology. The process, photoresist, etching glue, photolithography machines, etc. are somewhat similar.

To be frank, they are not much different from the laser engraved stone and wood crafts in the alleys, except that their precision is at the millimeter level, while the precision of photovoltaic panels is at the μm level, and the precision of chip semiconductors is at the nm level.

In theory, photovoltaic-level technology can already manufacture some low-end traditional chips that do not require high standards, such as chips used in game consoles. As long as you can spend 20 to 30 billion to build a large wafer factory, buy suitable lithography machines, manufacture high-purity wafers, explore a set of effective process flows, and control the yield rate, you can start mass production.

But this is meaningless. Even if Jin Shang succeeds by selling everything it has, the cost is much higher than that of the old predecessors and senior large manufacturers in the industry. It has no competitiveness at all. Eighty to ninety percent of the hard work invested in R&D and factory construction will be wasted. Then, huge sums of money will be invested in researching higher-precision equipment and processes. After a few years, it will succeed by chance, but will continue to be beaten. It can only watch its competitors take the lead step by step, without any way to stop it.

Only when Moore's Law reaches its actual physical limit, that is, 28 nanometers or even 14 nanometers, and begins to fail, will there be hope of catching up and overtaking others.

Unless he buys a ready-made practical-grade wafer fab, or focuses on mid- and low-end replacements and becomes self-sufficient, Jin Shang does not intend to mess around in the chip field at this time, which would be a thankless task.

In the past, ordinary people cursed someone with a conscience for wanting to mislead the country and the people, but in the context of that era, if one put all one's efforts into making high-end chips, one would only be dragged to death by foreigners who would gradually release their technological reserves. There was no way for survival through "technology, industry and trade" at all. In the key commercial transformation process from technology to industry to trade, the first-mover advantage had been cut off.

At the end of 1997 in this world, domestic conditions were slightly better than in the previous life, but Jin Shang still had no confidence in making chips and semiconductors. Even with the "golden finger", he could not find a way to commercialize it.

"The timing is wrong, and it is against the will of heaven. You will get half the result with twice the effort, and your life and death are unpredictable." The information brought by Hong Renquan made Jin Shang more determined. Just do business, don't get excited and talk about feelings. Only the integration power of the national level can climb up step by step in this field regardless of cost. It is a special product of the right time, place and people, which does not mean that it can be successful again.

It’s okay to make advance plans and build up technical reserves, but don’t bet everything on one bet.

After making a lot of money, I will go back and slowly make up for my shortcomings.

"As the focus of the second-generation photovoltaic technology, I agree with the direction of polycrystalline silicon thin-film batteries. The park is also using them in the pilot project. We will see the effect later. As for the third-generation products, why is it perovskite? Is it a unanimous opinion of domestic and foreign peers, or is it due to other considerations?"

"It's low cost and simple to manufacture. It's just an upgrade on the second-generation technology. It didn't come out of thin air."

Hong Renquan answered with certainty,

"I don't understand the specific technology, but I have a basic understanding of the development principles. Upgrading existing technology is the safest option."

"All right!"

In fact, Jin Shang doesn’t know much about it, but he seems to have some impression of the word “perovskite”. He should have heard of it in his previous life. It’s hard to say whether it is the correct technical route, but judging from the feedback from “Golden Broom”, it seems to be okay, not a big pit, that’s all, it’s worth investing.

"Let the coating chemical division provide some support. The Haihua Plant has so many by-products. How to develop and utilize them to improve the overall profitability is also very important. It is a good thing to communicate more with sister companies. Maybe we can inspire each other and have unexpected gains. I will not take charge of the specifics myself. I will ask the executive department to submit the information of the main management and scientific research personnel to me for review."

It is better to leave unfamiliar areas to professionals, and laymen should not interfere in specific matters.

"Speaking of which, the electromechanical equipment company has certain R&D and manufacturing capabilities in wind turbines, generators and photovoltaic solar panels, but they are all concentrated in the field of marine equipment. They are mainly durable, stable and reliable, but their efficiency and cost control are not good enough. In the R&D of electrification and civilian use, they have made a lot of achievements in the past two years, but there are still some shortcomings. Should we increase investment?"

"Well..."

After thinking about it, Hong Renquan shook his head.
"Let the market drive the situation. Our current R&D capabilities are indeed a bit weak. After all, this is a civilian market that we are not familiar with before. We just need to maintain the situation and improve it slowly. Putting too much pressure on it may not be a good thing."

What he said does make sense. The limit of our capabilities is there, and the initial success of the transformation is already very good. If we ask for more, I'm afraid we are unable to do so.

"The current task is to free up technical support and production capacity for the Bai Ze 98 system and laptops next year. What is the current cost budget?"

"The high-end version is about 12,000 yuan, and the standard version is just over 10,000 yuan. I suggest increasing the retail price by 1,000 yuan..."

"No, it's too expensive. The retail price of the regular version must be below 10,000..."

A five-digit price and a four-digit price are completely different concepts. This point must be insisted on, just like the Xiaolingtong phone must be retailed at 999 yuan even if the profit margin is lowered.

"That means we need to reduce the cost by another 1,000 yuan..."

Hong Renquan took a deep breath. Under the premise of ensuring quality, he has tried very hard to use domestic low-cost alternatives, but it is still difficult to reduce the cost to less than 10,000 yuan. To put it bluntly, if the new laptop computer plan does not use its own operating system, the cost will probably increase.

"Chips, graphics cards, motherboards, batteries, DVDs, USB serial buses, disk interfaces..."

"Wait, why is there a disk?"

"The mainstream mobile storage device now is the disk?"

Hong Renquan looked at Jin Shang strangely.
"How can we work without it?"

"U disk or mobile hard disk!"

"I know that USB flash drives and MP3 players based on their technology are selling well, but this thing is not mainstream yet. Everyone uses disks, but if we don't use them, the white-collar class won't buy it."

"All right!"

Jin Shang's attempt to delete the "backward modules" to reduce costs failed. Regardless of whether disks will be eliminated in a few years, at least for now, interfaces on mainstream computers are indispensable.

Even if it is expensive and not easy to use, it has to be added.

"But, do we have to sell at a loss to compete for the market?"

After taking a deep breath and erasing the idea from his mind, Jin Shang pondered for a while with a headache before he came up with a solution that was not a solution.

"Since the costs of all aspects have been reduced to the limit, let's do promotions by distributing vouchers and discount cards to try to sell more units."

The coupons can be used to recharge PHS, shop online, buy movie tickets, surf the Internet in Internet cafes, purchase memberships of Jinxi Video, Jinxi Music and Jinxi Games, or exchange for Jinxi Coins, etc.

"Just think of it as advertising?"

"There's nothing we can do. Let's just leave it at that! The promotion of operating systems and application software is urgent. Competition means all means must be used. What matters is comprehensive strength. We should attack with a combined fleet of aircraft carriers. As for making up for the losses, we can earn them back through after-sales services, parts replacement, and branded assembly of machines."

I guess not many people can afford a laptop that costs tens of thousands of dollars, so the loss won’t be much.

We can't count on it abroad, but there are countless high-end business elite customer groups in China who are eyeing it covetously. Jinxi Culture has taken the lead in launching a price war to grab the market share of laptop computers, and we don't know how many manufacturers will follow suit.

The price of low-end desktop computers is about to drop to 6,000 yuan, and it is an inevitable trend for the price of laptops to exceed 10,000 yuan, but it is also important who gets the first shot.

Especially for new brands, it is not easy to gain a foothold.

Hong Renquan, who was just waiting to retire, breathed a sigh of relief after this important matter was finalized.

The boss’s methods are too wild and their means are too drastic. The old man can hardly keep up. It is better to leave it to the newcomers to deal with it.

(End of this chapter)