The Industrial Giant Reborn - Chapter 604

c596 Invest in Dell

“Yes, boss, if it weren’t for this, we wouldn’t have been able to obtain 4.99% of the shares. In addition to the secret acquisitions we made in the stock market during this period, you now own 10% of Intel shares.” Luo En said: “However, even if Intel declines now, it is still a high-tech company regulated by the US government. According to the law, any overseas group can only hold up to 5% of the shares. In this way, you can cross-shareholding through various overseas leather companies. The model can avoid supervision, but these shares do not have any voting rights and can only be regarded as pure economic investments without any legal significance.”

“I don’t want any legal implications, just treat it purely as an economic investment and continue the acquisition. How much do you estimate you can acquire?” Chen Zhiwen asked.

In a company like Intel Veritas, no matter how many shares it acquires, it doesn’t make any sense. Even if it holds 99% of the shares, even a single order from the U.S. government will have to be abolished. It is better to just treat it as an investment. Even 5% is too little. , so Chen Zhiwen used this method.

Some investments in Hong Kong, such as Hong Kong Electric, have a 34.99% limit, and because Hisense Bank is restricted by Hong Kong banking laws, it can only own 15.99% of the shares of various real estate giants. In fact, it can also do so. Obtaining more shares, but it is meaningless. These are good investments, but they are not rare hits. There are many such investment opportunities. If you go through such trouble for something with little profit, it is better to invest in other formal investments. Wouldn’t it be better to build large-scale infrastructure or purely commercial plazas, office buildings, hotels, etc. in China? The income will not be lower than buying shares of these companies in Changshi.

But Intel Weisoft and later Cisco are special cases. Their stocks can rise hundreds or thousands of times in the future, and are very easy to cash out. They are the highest quality financial assets. Therefore, Chen Zhiwen is willing to give it a try.

“Intel’s stock price has not been very good in the past few years. Many shareholders have transferred their shares and some have sold them directly. This has resulted in a lot of such stocks in the secondary stock market. I estimate that we can acquire about 10% more. If more, It might be noticed.” Ron analyzed.

“Okay, a total of 20% is already very good.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, it is enough to own 20% of the shares of such a potential company. This is because Intel has been added to the U.S. government’s high-tech entity list. , but it is still not as good as HP, Texas Instruments, IBM and other high-level players, and is even a little far behind. Therefore, not many people are paying attention to it. Only in this way can Chen Zhiwen have some opportunities. Even if Intel rises in the future, if it is too Many shares are not tradable, which may still cause doubts, etc. At that time, we can only decide what to do. If we really can’t sell some of them, we will make less money anyway, but compared to the current investment, the benefits may be at least hundreds of times. space.

“Boss, although Weisoft has not yet been labeled as a high-tech enterprise by the US government, based on its development speed, I estimate that it will soon. We currently own 16% of the shares, and we still need to find someone to make plans. When Weisoft When we go public next year, we will need to face this problem. It is better to resolve the matter early now than to be forced to sell by the US government in the future. By then, the sales target will definitely not be fraudulent.” Ron added.

“Okay, then let’s release the news that we are planning to sell some of the shares in Weiruan, and then find a large number of our own handbag companies to take over. However, it cannot be completely false. The appropriate ones must be true.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said : “We can make up for the losses here by taking the same approach as Intel now after Weisoft goes on the market next year.”

In the early days, it was considered that Weiruan’s success was achieved after it received support from IBM, and Midea was also very famous at the time. Although it was not on the same level as IBM, investing in Weiruan too early might affect its relationship with IBM. Cooperation, therefore, it was not until after 1981, when Weisoft became the official supplier of IBM’s computer operating system, that Chen Zhiwen sought to invest in Weisoft.

And because Weiruan had already begun to take shape at that time, it could not directly obtain more than 30% of the shares like it did when it initially invested in Apple.

At that time, Chen Zhiwen obtained 10% of the equity with funds and certain cooperation. However, there were more opportunities in the future. In 1983, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Weisoft, was diagnosed with cancer and was forced to leave the company. Needing to cash out funds for medical treatment, Chen Zhiwen bid the highest and won a lot of shares. For Paul Allen, it was also the best choice.

Weiruan subsequently developed smoothly. Although it continued to raise funds in preparation for listing, Chen Zhiwen, who held a huge share, still owned 16% of the shares after two small dilutions.

This ratio may be diluted to about 12% when listed, but it is still far beyond the 5% limit allowed by the U.S. government for foreign investors to hold U.S. technology companies. Therefore, preparations need to be made in advance, in a manner similar to Intel’s , cross-held through skin companies in various tax havens.

In fact, this model cannot withstand investigation. If the U.S. government really examines it carefully, it will definitely find problems. However, when these two companies are not considered giants, who would waste manpower and material resources with nothing to do! When these two companies become giants, it will be the right time to sell them.

“Okay, we still have almost a year, which is plenty.” Rogge replied.

“Okay, how about the investment matters of the other two companies?” Chen Zhiwen asked again.

“The founders of Cisco rejected our investment because they refused to absorb non-American capital. Dell could negotiate, but Michael Dell himself was only willing to sell 10% of his shares, and the asking price was not low, $300,000. “Roger said.

“Well, if Cisco doesn’t like foreign investment, there really isn’t much they can do in the short term. For Dell, price is not an issue, as long as we can invest.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.

1984 was a magical year. For the reformed mainland, it was the first year of entrepreneurship. Many future giant companies started their businesses or took shape in this year. For the United States, it was similar. Many future giant companies were also established in this year.

Cisco and Dell are the two most famous among them. The former is the world’s largest information network solution provider. At the peak of the Internet bubble, its market value even exceeded that of Weisoft. The latter is known to more people and will be one of the top five computer brands in the world in the future.

One of the main purposes of Chen Zhiwen’s visit to the United States this time is to understand the situation of these future giant companies so as to make accurate investments. These companies have only just been established, and it is no exaggeration to describe the investment value as ten thousand times. Global No investment anywhere can compare to this, not even real estate projects in Hong Kong, Japan or even mainland China.

“Okay, then I will communicate with Dell again. I think there won’t be any big problems. They are only a very small company at the moment.” Rogge said.

Although he doesn’t quite understand why, as his boss, he would pay attention to such a small company, he will still try his best to get things done.

“Dell didn’t offer to cooperate with me, such as selling their computers at Costco?” Chen Zhiwen thought for a while and asked.

Since traveling to this world, the retail industry has been his top investment priority. In addition to its huge profits and influence, an additional reason is that it can help many start-up companies directly obtain a large number of orders. It can even be extended to the entire electronic civil industry.

“No, Dell’s model is now direct sales. After they get the order, they send the computer directly to the customer without going through traditional retail channels. This is actually the reason why Dell is successful.” Rogge said: “I analyze Through their company, there is actually no special technical content, they just rely on extreme cost control to reduce prices.”

“Although it’s a bit cliche, it is indeed very successful. The price of the product is the most important.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, “Isn’t this the success of Wal-Mart and Costco?”

Among the global technology companies, Dell is relatively unique. Although it sells computers to the top in the world and even occasionally ranks first, in essence, it is not a pure technology company.

Dell’s greatest success is its success in management and operations. It uses fast turnover, almost zero inventory, and a direct sales model to minimize costs, and subsequently the price to customers is naturally lower.

In the 1980s, when computer standards were not completely unified, this advantage was not very big. It could only bring a lot of wealth to Dell. But in the early 1990s, when Weisoft and Intel joined forces to define the computer model , and the split design was also generally accepted, the standard was basically formed, and Dell, with its low-cost advantage, soared from then on.

After years of development and standardization of everyone’s products, or even after overperformance (most computers have excess performance when not playing games), each company’s products are about the same, and the ultimate competition is price. This is true in many industries. In the end, it has developed to this point, with the exception of cars.

Although it sounds simple, “saving costs” is something that every company needs to do, but it is too difficult to do it well. There are so many companies in the world, but only a few can achieve the ultimate goal. Everyone, who doesn’t know that Wal-Mart’s strongest point is cost-saving, but there is only one Wal-Mart in the world. The template is placed there, and other companies can dig it up. Other supermarkets cannot achieve the ultimate level of Wal-Mart. This is the greatest competitiveness.

Even less research and development is a cost advantage. In the 1990s, the general scientific research cost of global computer companies was between 5% and 8% of turnover. Dell’s was about 1.3%. It was a completely different business model. , but it is very successful, and other companies cannot learn from it even if they want to.

In fact, later domestic Lenovo imitated Dell to a certain extent. It is not exactly the same, but the strategy is relatively close, focusing on the market rather than technology. Although many people complained about this matter, Lenovo has become the largest computer brand in the country. It can only be said that consumers also vote with their wallets.

“Michael Dell’s operating model, if it can be controlled well, will indeed save a lot of money than other peers, and the larger the scale, the lower the expensive transportation costs.” Ron also said: “But Such an upper limit is always limited, and it is impossible to adopt this model forever. In the end, it will be possible to return to normal retail channels.”

“That will happen in the future. When that time comes, they will naturally change. Michael Dell is not a fool.” Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

Later Dell also discovered this problem in the 1990s. Although the cost of adopting the direct sales model is low, the premise is that they can find enough customers. In the early years, they only needed simple publicity to find many. People, but the further you go, the worse it becomes. The first is that people who easily know the Dell model or like the Dell model have already bought computers, while others just don’t know. The second is that Dell is getting bigger and bigger, and there is an urgent need for more There are many customers, and this direct sales model is not feasible in the era of non-Internet popularization.

As a result, there was the most famous merger case of Dell and Compaq in later generations. What is more funny is that Compaq was stronger. Compaq was originally supposed to obtain the highest management rights, but later it was overturned by Dell.

“Okay, in that case, I will invest directly with Dell in the simplest way of investing,” Rogge said. Generally speaking, this kind of investment is not common. With the size of the boss’s worth, there are many investments. Money is secondary, and help from various resources is even rarer. For example, a normal daily necessities company, if it can successfully enter a good company City Duo, it is simply taking off on the spot. This is useful even for Dell, which sells notebooks.

“Well, since they have no conditions, let’s just give them the money.” Chen Zhiwen nodded and said. It seems that the timing is good. This is the second year of Dell’s business. The company has achieved some results, but it is not very good. , if it were one or two years later, it might be like Cisco and not allowed to invest.

In recent years, the United States has become more and more strict in controlling the high-tech industry. It seems that this market has great potential and can even affect the destiny of the country. Large companies and entrepreneurs are also aware of this situation, although it cannot be said that they completely veto overseas Capital, but they are also trying to avoid it to avoid trouble in the future.

After all, there is no shortage of people willing to invest in the United States. Venture capital is a large-scale thing in the United States. Chen Zhiwen is special. He knows every target. Otherwise, if he casts a wide net to catch fish, no matter how strong his capital is, It may not be as good as those professional companies specializing in venture capital. (End of chapter)