Video Game Empire

Long Island is known as New York's back garden, and it's a completely different scene on weekdays and weekends. ※%※%ǎn※%小※% said that especially on summer weekends, there will be a lot of people pouring out of the Big Apple. With azure waters, soft sandy beaches, and beautiful bikinis, Long Island is New Yorkers' favorite leisure and holiday destination.

The National Golf Course, located in Southampton, on the eastern end of Long Island, is one of the top ten private golf clubs in the world. The undulating fairways, various bunkers, and ever-changing greens make the National Golf Course a paradise for countless golfers. It's just that the golf course is only open to club members and their invited guests, and ordinary people have no chance to swing here.

Li Xuan also played golf occasionally in Hong Kong, but his level has remained at the rookie stage, which is far worse than the other two who play with him today. But now everyone's attention is focused on Li Xuan, some cheering and some applauding, because he just hit a hole-in-one!

Does the rebirth aura also increase the luck attribute? Even Li Xuan felt that his luck was really good. Less than two years ago, he had already made a hole-in-one while playing in Hong Kong, and it was not until today that he had a second serve.

For most golfers, a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a hole-in-one is already very lucky. And Li Xuan has met twice in less than two years.

"Li, it looks like today is your lucky day!" A blond man in a cyan sweatshirt next to him congratulated him.

He is the current Citibank o Mr. John Reed, is also a member of the National Golf Club. Li Xuan only got the chance to play in one of the best courses in the United States because of his light today.

Don't look at Li Xuan is now the world's richest man. But there are some things money can't buy. If you want to become a member of a national dǐng private club like the National Golf Course, you must have enough status. There is also a long queue.

Especially people like Li Xuan who became rich in an instant, in the eyes of the traditional elite rich. In fact, it is no different from a country bumpkin. Li Xuan remembered that in another time and space, Bill Gates publicly stated many times that he wanted to become a member of the Augusta Golf Club, but was rejected by the other party for many years. Li Xuan is not particularly keen on golf, and he is too lazy to apply for membership in these private clubs with high self-esteem.

"My luck has always been very good. This is the second time in two years!" Li Xuan took out his checkbook, filled out a check for $10,000 and handed it to his caddie, indicating that the extra The tip was split between him and a few other caddies afterwards.

"I've played golf for more than 20 years. I've never encountered such a lucky opportunity!" The third person who played with him was Thornton Bradshaw, the chairman of RA Company. He shook his head with a wry smile.

"Sometimes you have to admit that luck is also a part of strength!" Reed set the ball, took the driver from the caddie, and prepared to tee off, "Now Lee has come from behind to become the leader. !"

The hole was a par 3, and Bradshaw was the first of the three to tee off, but his ball missed the green in one shot and fell into a nearby bunker. The second kick-off was Li Xuan. He was a blockbuster staged a hole-in-one show. Therefore, the person with the best level at his level suddenly became the one with the best grades among the three.

Reed was the only one left to tee off the hole, and he practiced a few times before writhing with all his might. The golf ball draws a perfect parabola. Landed firmly on the edge of the green 135 yards away. Although the ball landed a little far from the flagpole, it was at least much better than Bradshaw's previous ball that fell into the bunker.

Reed handed the club to the caddie behind him and took off his white gloves. Stroll down the fairway to the green with the other two. Golf is a relatively slow-paced sport, and everyone can communicate while playing. So play golf. High society is a very popular social sport in the United States.

"Thornton, I have been discussing with John these days. I am going to apply for a commercial loan from Citibank with Dongfang Game Company as collateral. You may as well ask him how much he can value Dongfang Game Company!" Li Xuan smiled at Bradshaw beside him.

Dongfang Group is not short of money, so Li Xuan's purpose of mortgaging the game company is obvious, Bradshaw immediately turned to look at Reed beside him.

Reed gave him a nod before saying, "Although we still need to conduct a more detailed assessment of Dongfang Games, in my personal opinion, if Li is willing to use Dongfang Games as collateral, we at Citibank can at least do so. Give $2 billion in credit!"

Bradshaw was a little surprised. He and Reed were no strangers, and he knew that the other party was not just a man who was open-mouthed, but rather conservative. He now dares to give a credit of 2 billion US dollars, and the Oriental Game Company pledged to Citibank, and the actual loan is likely to exceed 2 billion US dollars.

Is Dongfang Game Company so valuable? It should be known that banks accept equity pledge loans, and they will all be subject to a certain discount rate. Generally, it will not be higher than 75% of the actual valuation of the pledged assets. In other words, Citibank's valuation of Dongfang Games is likely to be around $3 billion.

"Thornton, do you know the net profit of Dongfang Games in the first six months of this year?" Li Xuan said confidently, "$520 million!"

Bradshaw was really stunned this time. He even forgot to take a step forward, attracting a few caddies who consciously fell far behind and distanced themselves, not listening to the client's conversation, all cast their curiosity. eyes.

Take the companies that just announced their first-half financial results yesterday. Their total sales from January to June were $13.1 billion, but their actual profits were only $740 million. You must know that the company ranked ninth in the "Fortune" magazine last year's top 500 companies in the United States.

The ra company has not announced the first half of the financial report, but Bradshaw naturally knows the actual situation of his company. Profit in the first half of the year was less than $250 million, or even less than half that of Oriental Games. What a shame for him!

Although the outside world can also guess that Dongfang Game Company is very profitable, but if Li Xuan hadn't taken the initiative to disclose the data. It is actually difficult for others to figure out the true profitability of Dongfang Game Company. In order to avoid tax and other considerations, the internal structure of Dongfang Game Company is actually very complicated. For example, the copyright of the most valuable games. In fact, it is not in the hands of Dongfang Games, but in the hands of other offshore companies opened in the Cayman Islands by Li Xuan.

In order to acquire ra company to raise funds, Li Xuan plans to package and pledge the company's entire game business to Citibank this time, so he needs to accept Citibank's meticulous financial evaluation, which allows the outside world to have a chance to see the true operating conditions of the Oriental Group's game business .

In fact, the total number of employees of Dongfang Game Company is actually less than 1,000, and most of them are game developers. The total number of employees of ra company is as many as tens of thousands, but the actual operating efficiency is far less than that of the Oriental game company, which is much smaller than itself.

Products such as TVs produced by ra have a profit margin of about 10%. But taking the "King of Fighters" arcade just released by Dongfang Games as an example, the manufacturing cost is around $800. But the ex-factory price is as high as $1,800, and the profit margin is an astonishing 125%.

And Dongfang Game Company's monthly sales of arcade machines can be maintained at more than 55,000 units, which alone can generate nearly 50 million US dollars in profits per month. In addition, the profitability of the two major businesses of game consoles and a game consoles is also very unbelievable, so Dongfang Games can make at least 100 million US dollars in profits every month.

This is why Li Xuan has the guts to spend huge sums of money to acquire ra company! Since the beginning of this year, Li Xuan has consciously started to shrink investment and return funds. The computer garden company, which used to be very profitable before, has shed its burden by going public. After several consecutive years of large-scale investment, the Oriental Research Institute has come to the time to slow down and digest it, and it has obtained a lot of income from the two architectures of r and ps. Enough to maintain the normal R&D investment of the company itself.

Li Xuan plans to put the acquisition at the beginning of next year, and he can raise at least about 1.5 billion US dollars in cash from the group. Mortgage Dongfang Game Company's equity to the bank, Li Xuan intends to obtain at least 2.5 billion US dollars in loans from the bank. After all, with Dongfang Game Company's current strong revenue capability, a loan of $2.5 billion is just a profit for two or three years.

This will allow Li Xuan to raise $4 billion in funding. It is almost the same as the actual market value of ra company now. But this is not enough. He will definitely need to buy at a premium at that time, so he also needs to pledge some of the shares of Computer Park and Aikang. Raise another $1 billion to $1.5 billion in funding.

Because these two companies are listed companies, major shareholders pledge more than 5% of the shares need to be approved by the board of directors. and make public announcements. This is a little inconvenient for Li Xuan, and it is easy to leak news and startle snakes. Therefore, he will put the equity pledge of the two companies after the start of the acquisition.

Bradshaw's heart was turbulent at the moment, and the two had met several times since Li Xuan came to New York. Bradshaw knew that the other party did not cancel the plan to acquire ra, but he did not care.

Because in Bradshaw's view, Li Xuan has not yet had the strength to annex RA Company, and he will naturally retreat after the other party tries. In the previous meetings between the two, the content of the discussion was not about the acquisition of ra by Dongfang Electronics, but about the future development of ra.

In just a few short years, Li Xuan was able to start from scratch, making efforts in many fields such as games, semiconductors, personal computers, etc., and established a huge eastern empire. Bradshaw naturally recognized the ability of this young man very much, and was also very interested in hearing the other party's suggestions for the next development of ra.

In Li Xuan's view, the problem with ra is that it is big but not strong! Now the two core businesses of ra are the TV division and the nb broadcasting company. Among them, in Li Xuan's view, the value of nb company accounts for at least more than half of the total market value of ra company of 4 billion US dollars.

In addition to these two main businesses, ra has many other complex businesses. For example, in addition to producing TV sets, there are also electronic products such as radios, record players, video recorders, and photographic equipment. In addition, ra also has a blanket production company, a small insurance company, a ra record company, as well as a semiconductor business unit, an aerospace business unit and so on.

Since the late 1960s, ra's main TV business has been losing ground under the challenges of Japanese companies, so the company's executives at that time began a diversified transformation. However, this transformation was obviously unsuccessful, and instead caused the company to be overstaffed and overstaffed.

Bradshaw, who took over as chairman of the ra's board in 1981, also made sweeping changes. As an independent subsidiary, nb broadcaster has been operating well. So his main task is to revive the company's glory in the TV business.

In order to reduce the production cost, after Bradshaw took office as chairman of the board of directors, he firmly closed ra's TV production line in the United States and transferred all production capacity to Mexico, where labor is cheaper. However, the effect of his actions is not obvious. Japanese TVs can still maintain the price advantage of ra's finished products~www.readwn.com~ and ra's internal analysis concluded that the Japanese did not consider profits at all, and have been in Dumping at low prices in the US market. Although Bradshaw was actively lobbying the US government to introduce tougher sanctions, the US TV industry was actually killed by Japan in the 1970s.

Unless Bradshaw can compress production costs lower than the Japanese, it will be difficult for RA to survive the siege of Japanese TV sets. In fact, even the capital market is not optimistic about the future of ra.

Beginning at the end of 1982, after the United States ended the economic recession, the stock market began to enter a new round of bull market cycle. However, the performance of ra's stock price in this round of bull market is very sluggish, and the rise is weak. In Bradshaw's view, ra's current $4 billion total market value is not a small underestimate.

In fact, after his trip to Hong Kong, Bradshaw had been considering Li Xuan's suggestion at the time to completely outsource the TV manufacturing business to an Asian factory. This practice is not without precedent within ra company. For example, most of the video recorders sold by ra company are OEM produced by Japan's Panasonic company. (To be continued..)

ps: Chapter 2 will be later