Chapter 806 Scooby Tax
Remember-remember\[end-ben-shen-station\] input-input-address-address: w-w-w.w-a-n-b-e-n-t-x-t.c-o-m
In San Francisco, Scoop's headquarters is not near the popular Stanford University, but the city of Milpitas on the other side of the bay, bordering northwest San Jose, which is already a Silicon Valley suburb.
Geographical location seems to hint at the semiconductor company's awkward situation.
Scoop was established in 1988 and positioned itself as a semiconductor company, or more accurately, a semiconductor design company. Obviously, such a start-up company cannot have independent new film production capacity, and can only be used by its early investors Texas Instruments. OEM products.
At the beginning of its founding, Scooby's development direction was the picture decoding chip, and it was not until 1991 that the first video decoding chip was launched.
However, although the technology is very novel, Scooby has not been able to find an accurate application direction for its own products. Over the years, Scooby has tried to apply its own chips to TVs, game consoles, printers, etc. success.
Even the vcd launched by Wan Yan two years ago did not let Skober see too bright dawn. The sales of vcd in China in the past year of less than 20,000 units also proved this. Goldberg management can see that vcd is really not competitive compared to dvd.
Last year's IPO was considered a last-ditch effort for Skober. In addition, several investors such as Sequoia Capital spent so many years trying to cash in on the tide of new technology. The major shareholders will not quietly cash out more than 10% of the stock, and continue to sell when the stock suddenly rises recently, which eventually led to Chen Qing's team to absorb up to 21% of the company's stock in the short term.
According to the thinking of the board of directors and management of Skullberg, after the funds raised by the IPO are spent, if the company has not found its precise position, then basically there is nothing left.
There are so many failures like Silicon Valley, and it's not too disappointing.
All of this, until a sudden showdown by some oriental girl.
Just the capital background of the Westeros system has already made Sequoia Capital and other major shareholders make up most of their determination to cooperate. Chen Qing's team's plan to create a vcd industry in China, and if it is rejected The threat of funding and programs to cooperate with other manufacturers, allowing them to completely compromise.
After all, even though the rapid growth of China's vcd shipments in the first quarter is exciting, after all, there is a big mountain of dvd ahead, and no one can guarantee that once Sony and other manufacturers officially launch dvd players, vcd will not be in the blink of an eye. was eliminated.
And, in making the final decision, Skopos' two major shareholders, Sequoia Capital and Texas Instruments, have their own considerations.
Sequoia Capital is a venture capital company. Although they don’t mind holding shares of a company for a long time, according to the operating rules of venture capital, it is their top priority to cash out in a timely manner to achieve stable returns for investors and develop the next batch of businesses. This is also the reason why Sequoia Capital was an early investor in many technology giants such as Apple and Oracle, but was not a major shareholder of these companies later.
As a venture capital company, the most important thing is to control risks, because their investment targets are not only successful cases such as Apple and Oracle, but also a large number of failed investments that eventually went to waste. The reason why Sequoia Capital has always been popular , the key is that it has successfully cashed out and exited before many investment companies went bankrupt.
Doing so may make them miss some super dark horses that will eventually pay hundreds of times and thousands of times, but it also avoids more loss of money.
As for Texas Instruments, affected by the rapid development of the mobile communication industry and the wave of new technologies, Texas Instruments' revenue in the past fiscal year exceeded 13 billion US dollars, and its current market value is as high as more than 20 billion US dollars. Therefore, this truly world-class semiconductor giant will not care too much about a small company like Skober, whose annual revenue has just exceeded 20 million US dollars.
Moreover, Chen Qing's team also used other connections in the Westeros system to lobby the top executives of Texas Instruments. In fact, it was a matter of phone calls. You must know that Texas Instruments is the main supplier of baseband chips for Nokia's mobile phones. As Nokia has become the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, the importance of this customer to Texas Instruments is self-evident.
Things were finally settled.
Just by transferring half of the remaining 33% of the shares, Sequoia Capital has recovered all its previous investment in Skober and realized considerable profits. The remaining half of the shares are enough for Sequoia Capital to enjoy the plan of Chen Qing's team once it is successful. huge dividends later.
While cashing in profits, Texas Instruments also made its own demands.
All future chip orders from Scoop must be sourced exclusively from Texas Instruments' semiconductor facilities.
Since TSMC established the foundry model and became more and more successful, many established semiconductor manufacturers have found business opportunities and opened up related businesses, and with the rapid expansion of the foundry market, they have paid more and more attention.
Skobo's current order is dispensable for Texas Instruments.
However, if the plan of Chen Qing's team is really successful, only the chip foundry orders of Skober will be a very considerable income.
The two major shareholders agreed, and together with the 21% of the shares already held by Chen Qing's team, other shareholders and the management of Skober have no room for resistance.
The final plan was approved by Simon. At nine o'clock in the morning, Chen Qing's team and the shareholders' representatives formally signed an equity transfer agreement at the Skober headquarters in Milpitas, and,
Brand new appointments.
Chen Qing wisely did not take over the company personally, but let a team member who was recruited just a while ago, Emmanuel Brandt, succeed Don Valentine as the chairman of Skober, and control it on the spot. The overall situation, and at the same time, did not replace the CEO Bill O'Meara, who was in charge of the specific operations of the company.
After the contract was finalized, the parties held a small press conference together in the inconspicuous two-story office building of Skober. Then, the relevant press release appeared on the Igret portal for the first time.
The recent surge in Skullberg's share price has attracted a lot of attention.
With the announcement of the news, the capital market quickly reacted, and another "Westeros concept stock" was born.
The capital market has never lacked the blind side.
Although the public press release only revealed little information about the follow-up business plan of Skober The market value of the company has exceeded 200 million US dollars, and the company's price-earnings ratio is close to the bubble level of 80 times, but many investors can't help but start subconsciously buying.
Today, April 24th, Monday.
The release of the Igreit Portal is around 10:00 a.m. West Coast time, and 1:00 p.m. East Coast time, three hours before the close.
However, in just these three hours, as a new technology company that had previously attracted market attention and was disclosed as a new 'Westeros concept stock', Skober's originally flat stock price went straight out of a rather steep rise. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when the North American stock market closed, Scooby's share price rose by 43% in a single day. Compared with the market value of 206 million US dollars at the opening in the morning, the closing market value has reached 293 million US dollars.
It can be said that in basically just three hours before the close, the paper profit of Skullberg shareholders holding the stock is as high as 97 million US dollars.
Neither the original shareholders nor the management of Scooby had anything to say in the face of the crazy reaction of the market.
Not counting the $20 million 5-year loan from Citibank that was actually obtained through the Westeros system, Chen Qing’s team invested a total of about $94 million before and after, and obtained 53% of Scooby’s shares. By the time the East Coast market closed on Monday, the shares had a combined book value of $156 million.
Three busy weeks with a paper profit of $62 million.
It can be seen why the financial industry has become a pillar industry in the United States, and why so many elites around the world are flocking to Wall Street.
After completing a series of handovers, Chen Qing was not immersed in the success she had just achieved.
The girl understands that everything has just begun.
After the representatives of several other shareholders left, Chen Qing called Scooby's management immediately and started a one-day meeting. The members of Chen Qing's team who did not participate in the meeting were not idle, and began to review the company's financial files, technical Data and employee resumes for further detailed review.
Even a recruitment information that has been drawn up in advance involving various technical positions was directly posted on the 58list platform under Igret this morning.
Because the detailed plan has already been finalized.
Next, Skobo will immediately stop all other non-core businesses, and will not renew the original order after it is completed. While continuing to increase the research and development of video decoding chips applied to vcd, Scooby will also start the development of a complete set of vcd technical solutions. In fact, it is repeating what Wan Yan did at the beginning. further upgrades on the basis of technology.
This is the key to Chen Qing's team insisting on acquiring Scober rather than cooperating with other manufacturers to develop another vcd video decoder chip at a lower cost.
Still buying time.
If the product developed by Wan Yan is considered to be vcd-1.0, Chen Qing's team intends to use one year to develop a whole new set of vcd-2.0 standards based on vcd-1.0 technology.
This is also the plan that Simon gave to Chen Qing's team based on the idea of super vcd in memory.
The capacity of the vcd disc has been stuck, and it is destined to be impossible to surpass the dvd.
However, compared with Wanyan's first-generation products, the vcd player itself still has much room for improvement.
Taking advantage of the year before the outbreak of China's vcd industry, Scooby completely threw off other possible competitors through the accumulation of technologies and patents laid out in advance. At that time, even the old electronic giants such as Sony and Philips with deeper technical background will only be able to fall behind step by step.
There is no possibility of catching up in the short term due to product technology differences that are separated by a generation.
As for the longer term.
The golden age of vcd is only about 5 years.
Simon is also very happy that Sony and other manufacturers have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to do this. The result is destined to be a futile catch-up.
All in all, Scooby will use the next year to transform from a pure semiconductor design company at this stage to a comprehensive product technology supplier that provides vcd core components and complete solutions for downstream manufacturers, and will inevitably It is a monopoly supplier with all-round advantages in technology and cost.
At that time, Chinese vcd companies only need to buy a complete set of core components and solutions from Scober, and then they can easily assemble their products and put them on the market.
For Scober, as long as product pricing is well controlled, and downstream manufacturers are not squeezed too much, other competitors will take advantage of the situation, then China's v
The cd market will be largely dominated by the Skober family.
This is completely different from the fierce competition in the DVD field.
Because of the great success of the videotape industry, all major electronic manufacturers in the East and the West have seen the broad market prospects contained in DVDs. Therefore, they have spared no effort to invest in research and development over the years. Due to the large number of manufacturers involved, the relevant technical standards are very confusing, and the distribution of patents is also chaotic. Quite scattered, no one has the full technical strength, and no one is willing to make compromises easily. If it weren't for these disputes, a mature DVD player would have been launched before 1995, rather than barely reaching the technical standards until now, and it would take at least three to five years for the product to be launched and even popularized.
In comparison, vcd and dvd are actually equivalent to open source linux and closed source indos.
Because Wanyan failed to apply for a complete vcd technology patent, the current vcd is equivalent to a free open source software that many manufacturers can intervene. Although it is not as advanced as closed-source DVDs, it is much less bound by patents. As long as they are willing to do it, relevant manufacturers can develop and promote products at the lowest cost.
Moreover, open source does not mean that there is no monopoly.
Just like Google's Android system in Simon's memory, although it is developed based on the free and open-source Linux system, it is still owned by Google. If others want to use it, they must obtain Google's consent. Not only that, after Google developed more and more mature Android based on Linux, it became very difficult for other competitors to make similar products.
Because the technology gap is too far, and the market has been occupied by Android.
Now, that's what Skullberg wants to achieve.
In Simon's view, this aspect is somewhat similar to the current 2g and 3g standards for mobile communications.
With the popularization of digital communication technology, major communication manufacturers around the world are fiercely competing for various patents of 2g technology at this stage, but they don't know that there is a company called Qualcomm that has built an indestructible technology on the 3g standard barrier.
Qualcomm's 3g is certainly not impossible to bypass.
However, when the industry is upgraded, there is already such a set of extremely mature technical standards. Whether it is to save costs or gain time, relevant companies can only use Qualcomm's technology.
So, there is the high pass tax.
If there is a company that does not believe in evil, it must develop a set of standards by itself to bypass Qualcomm, not to mention whether it can be successful in the end, even if it is successful, it may not be popularized yet, and other companies that have already gained benefits in the 3g field have already Running for the next generation of 4g. If you want to find another way, you can only be eliminated.
Qualcomm is ahead of everyone, building its own toll booths on the way other companies must pass, blocking the way to collect money. As for Skober, he quietly fell behind other people and circled the ore veins that others could not see, and just dug. Of course, others can go back and dig, and then find that the ore vein with the most abundant reserves has been occupied, and they can only get a little scrap.
Qualcomm licenses its own 3G standard to everyone and then collects the Qualcomm tax.
Chips can also be sold by the way.
In the future, Scooby will license its own vcd solutions to vcd manufacturers, and what they will charge may also be called Scooby Tax.
It can also sell core components.
Same thing, same way.
In the business field, in the final analysis, there are actually just a few core routines. Even if there is innovation, it remains the same. As long as you see it through and implement it hard, maybe with some luck, there will be an excellent businessman in this world.
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