Winning the new financial era

Chapter 463 Clearance Sale

Huang Xiaofeng remembered one more thing, and asked Zhang Yida: "Mr. Zhang, should Green conduct another round of private equity financing, or sell the company?"

Zhang Yida smiled, with a playful look on his face: "What do you think?"

Huang Xiaofeng is not good at expressing opinions on this matter, so he can only objectively analyze Green's current situation.

"Although our business has expanded to three continents, dozens of countries, and hundreds of cities.

But the issue of profitability is always a difficult problem that needs to be faced realistically. "

Zhang Yida nodded emphatically, "That's right, none of the sharing economy companies in the world is profitable yet.

Whether it is Uber or Didi, they are all in a state of loss. "

Seeing that Zhang Yida did not refute, but rather agreed with his point of view, Huang Xiaofeng went on to say: "Sharing electric scooters is just a subdivision of shared travel, just like in China, with Uber, we have room for imagination." Very limited."

"Ok!"

Zhang Yida made a soft nasal sound, and his thoughts suddenly drifted far away.

Whether it is for myself, or for Huimin Travel and Green, it is too late to enter the shared travel time.

There are giants such as Didi and Uber on this track. No matter how hard you try, you can't reach their size.

With the continuous growth of Ruixiang and Zhonghe, he has learned to focus on the big and let go of the small, and concentrate most of his energy on these two companies.

Other companies are all transitional products.As long as the price is right, there is nothing that cannot be sold.

Huang Xiaofeng also said: "Also, most of the big cities in Europe and the United States are located in the northern hemisphere, with obvious cold and heat, and people seldom use scooters to travel in the cold season, so the actual operation of Green is only half a year, and the income will be greatly reduced.

In addition, we have to face the endless methods of competitors such as Lime and Bird.

Although the scale of these two companies is not as large as ours, they have also obtained financing continuously.

They launched electric scooters crazily regardless of the cost. When we expanded to Europe, they chased them to Europe, just like a dog skin plaster.

Although no price war broke out, it was quite disgusting. "

Zhang Yida sighed. Although he asked Howard to attach great importance to these two competitors, he still couldn't stop the rise of the other two.

It's just that compared to the previous life's market share, the two companies' market share is more than half lower in this life.

In terms of volume, the two companies combined are less than half of Green's.

"I heard the scooter was badly damaged?"

Huang Xiaofeng got angry when he mentioned this, and he waved his hand, "The quality of Europeans and Americans is just like that. You can often see it on social media videos. Some people will deliberately knock down rows of electric scooters, or put electric scooters Throw it out of the parking lot..."

Zhang Yida sneered, "It's normal, there are strange things everywhere."

He doesn't feel distressed, the company is an American company, the employees are also European and American, and the funds also come from Europe and the United States.

And he just provided a model or idea, and didn't pay a dime.

Although these bicycles are the property of the company, if they are destroyed, it will also harm the interests of the shareholder.

But this kind of thing can't be stopped. Foreigners are used to doing things their own way, and they won't change their bad habits after a few words of advice from you.

"Mr. Zhang, shall we conduct another round of financing, or sell the company?"

Zhang Yida glanced at him, looked into the distance, and said slowly: "Sell for a penny!"

……

"Sell Green?"

Howard, Green's CEO, hurried back to the company from South America, and immediately heard the explosive news from Zhang Yida.

Howard couldn't figure it out. The company was in the golden period of development, and several competitors were far behind. Why did they want to sell the company?

"Boss, our company is now valued at more than $25 billion, and I'm trying to raise a $5 million round of private equity financing.

If we develop for another two years, we will definitely be listed on Nasdaq with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. "

Zhang Yida waved his hand, "Howard, have you thought about the issue of profitability?

After going public, it is still losing money like it is now, how to maintain the stock price?

It is better to take advantage of the golden period of the market and exchange the equity for green dollars. "

Howard was silent. Profit is indeed a sentimental topic.

The shared travel market in the United States, whether it is Uber, which has the largest market share, or No.2 Lyft (Lyft), all rely on financing blood transfusion.

Uber was established the earliest, in 2009, and has not been profitable for nine years.

Laifuche was established in 2012 and has lost 6 million U.S. dollars for two consecutive years.

If Green continues to raise funds, the shares will be greatly diluted, and it may not be as cost-effective as a one-time sale now.

He holds a 1.2% stake in Green Scooter. If he can sell the company at a valuation of US$25 billion, this part of the option will bring him more than US$1500 million in return after deducting the exercise cost.

The part of the option that has not been exercised can only be given up, unless he joins the acquirer and continues to work.

Thinking of the green dollar and Zhang Yida's determined attitude to sell the company, Howard no longer objected.

After company management agreed, Green began notifying shareholders.

After Sun Zhengyi learned of the news, he quickly notified Uber's current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

A series of scandals broke out at Uber in recent years, including X harassment, sex discrimination, driver complaints, large-scale leakage of user data, and more.

The founder Kalanick was ousted, and Khosrowshahi was replaced by Khosrowshahi, a typical professional manager who once served as the CEO of Expedia, which is listed on the US stock market.

Khosrowshahi was born in an investment bank and also served as a CFO. During his work at Expedia, he managed a series of beautiful mergers and acquisitions.

Because of his outstanding work performance, the board of directors rewarded him with a total compensation of more than 2015 million in 9000, ranking among the highest executive compensation among all S&P 500 companies.

The Iranian-born CEO, who immigrated to the United States with his parents as "refugees" in the early years, was so excited that he almost jumped up when he heard the news of Green's imminent sale from the major shareholder Masayoshi Son.

He is the best at mergers and acquisitions.

It has only been a few months since he took over the position of CEO of Uber, and he has done several major things, such as reshaping the corporate culture, apologizing to the public, etc., and finally pulled Uber out of the quagmire of scandal.

But these are internal jobs.

He also needs to prove to the outside world and to shareholders that he has the ability to lead Uber to expand its territory.

He was thinking about how to break the situation, but the news of Green's sale came out. He was really sleepy and someone gave him a pillow!

This shared electric scooter company has developed rapidly in Europe and the United States in recent years. It is deeply loved by young people, and its various operating data are also rising steadily.

It is also in the shared travel track. After the acquisition of Green, it will not only strengthen Uber's market share in the field of large travel, but also use Uber's resources to completely establish its dominance in the segmented track of short-distance travel.

It is very beneficial to increase the company's valuation.

Khosrowshahi has always been a person who makes decisions before acting. Instead of acting abruptly, he called Didi's CEO Chen Wei and asked the latter about Zhang Yida and the details of Huimin Travel's merger and acquisition.

After finishing the call, Khosrowshahi almost figured out why Zhang Yida sold Green.

This is an entrepreneur with lofty ideals, and Green may not be worth mentioning in his heart.

Seeing that there was no chance of making it bigger, he sold it off.

Google and Lyft quickly learned of Green's imminent sale.

Different from Google randomly sending an M&A team to participate in the negotiations, Lyft CEO Logan Green attaches great importance to this M&A, and the M&A team he sent is of very high standard. Except for him, the company’s CFO and others are all dispatched.

Shared electric scooter companies such as Lime and Bird also came to inquire through intermediaries, and disappeared without a trace when they heard the quotation starting from 25 billion US dollars.

……

Silicon Valley.

Green shares electric scooter company.

Three companies, Google, Uber, and Lyft, were successfully shortlisted for the final negotiation list.

Howard, as CEO, acts as the moderator of this bidding auction.

He looked at the people of the three companies with a smile on his face, and said, "The starting price of this auction is 25 billion US dollars, and the auction object is the Green shared electric scooter company.

Only one offer will be accepted, please write your own offer in the envelope now. "

Zhang Yida watched this scene with a smile on the sidelines. He never thought that Green would be so attractive, attracting the first and second brothers who shared travel from North America.

In terms of Google, he guessed it should be a soy sauce, and the final candidate still had to be born between Uber and Lyft.

Howard added another sentence specifically: "Under the same price, cash is preferred."

Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, said badly. In terms of cash, they are no match for Uber, which has strong financial resources.

In desperation, he wrote "$10 billion in cash + $20 billion in equity" on the paper.

US$10 billion in cash is already the limit that Lyft can afford. If it is any more, it will have to start another round of equity financing, or use financial leverage to borrow money.

He felt that he had tried his best, and if he still couldn't get Green's scooter, it would be a miss.

He thinks he has a good relationship with Green scooter, because his name Green is the same as Green.

At first, there were a lot of jokes in Silicon Valley, thinking that Green Scooter was founded by him.

Google's representative remained expressionless and wrote "$25 billion in cash" on a piece of paper.

After thinking about it, he crossed out the number and changed it to "$26.2 billion in cash."

Khosrowshahi seemed very confident. He had just heard Howard's "priority to cash" and he understood that Zhang Yida was still the same Zhang Yida.

In M&A transactions, the young billionaire likes cash more than company equity.

Despite his confidence in the value of Uber's equity, he chose to fill in all cash just to be on the safe side.

Google has always been very interested in transportation and was one of Uber's early investment shareholders, holding more than 5% of Uber's shares.

But relations between Google and Uber soured a few months ago, when Google's self-driving car unit sued Uber's self-driving company for patent infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.

At the same time, Google also turned around and invested US$5 million in Lyft, Uber's deadly rival, and became an important shareholder of Lyft holding more than 5% of the shares.

To be sure, Khosrowshahi filled in "US$27 billion in cash + 1 million in equity".

The three letters were received and opened on the spot. Zhang Yida looked at them and could only lament that Uber is really fucking rich.

"Congratulations Uber, congratulations Mr Khosrowshahi."

When the final results were announced, the Google representative shrugged, turned and left.

Logan Green looked disappointed, and shook his head and walked away. It seems that this Green really has nothing to do with him.

Khosrowshahi smiled and shook hands with Zhang Yida, Howard, Huang Xiaofeng and others one by one.

Zhang Yida is also very satisfied with the price, mainly in cash, the figure is huge, and Uber is very sincere.

As for the 1 million US dollars in equity, ask Softbank whether to accept it or not, and if you want to accept it, sell all the part you have allocated to Softbank.

　Thank you Brother Tian Dashuai for your reward!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)