Fortune Economic Weekly was born in 1930. It is a magazine that mainly publishes research articles on economic issues. Since the launch of the Global 500 list in 1954, it has always been the focus of attention in the economic community and has a huge influence.

Although the Forbes ranking seems to be more famous in mainland China in later generations, Fortune magazine has always been clearly superior in terms of economic authority. As for this ranking, in the 1980s, Forbes only counted listed companies.

, and "Fortune" also added unlisted companies.

Listed companies publish financial reports every year, and statistics are extremely simple, but unlisted companies are different. Specific investigations require extremely high costs and time, but this is why Fortune is more specific and authoritative in this era.

Although he wanted to see Fortune magazine's evaluation and introduction to him, he was not too anxious during the Chinese New Year. On the second day of the new year, Xu Zhicai calmly informed his assistant, who then contacted his colleagues in the United States.

, by the time the weekly magazine arrived in Xu Zhi’s hands, it was already the fifth day of the Lunar New Year.

In fact, Midea's conquest of the U.S. gaming industry has attracted the attention of many authoritative economic magazines. Coupled with Xu Zhi's consecutive acquisitions of Hutchison Whampoa and Hong Kong Electric Group in 1979, the company secretariat has received numerous requests from all over the world.

There are enough interview letters to fill a small bookshelf.

However, Xu Zhilan's interview was not acceptable even with his reputation in Fortune magazine. Linda, who was in charge of the investigation, was helpless. However, she did not give up. She stayed in Xiangjiang with the entire team for two months to make statistics.

Xu Zhi’s main industries.

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, Xu Zhin came to the company headquarters for the first time in a new year.

Sitting next to the floor-to-ceiling window of his office on the top floor of Hutchison Building, Xu Zhi was basking in the sun. The winter sun was very soft and the indoor temperature was not very low. He was looking at the "Fortune" magazine he had just received and drinking.

Cappuccino, if you raise your eyes for a moment, you can see countless ant-sized pedestrians downstairs, hurriedly going about their lives.

It has to be said that magazines like Fortune are indeed very professional, and Xu Zhi’s assets have been calculated very clearly.

Xu Zhi, a traditional enterprise in Hong Kong, holds a total of 49 shares of Hutchison Whampoa. Hutchison Whampoa's current market value is HK$5.3 billion.

28 shares of Cheung Kong Holdings, current market value of Cheung Kong is HK$3.2 billion

It holds shares in Electric Energy Industry 368, which currently has a market value of HK$3.1 billion.

It holds 36 shares of TVB, but TVB is an unlisted company with a valuation of HK$1 billion.

Owns two buildings, Federal and International!

At the same time, it wholly holds all the land under the former Hong Kong Electric Group.

Holds 100% interest in the Mong Kok Center project.

These are properties that Xu Zhi apparently owns in Hong Kong. The total value of these properties exceeds 10 billion Hong Kong dollars. However, Fortune magazine also stated that these assets must have used highly leveraged financing methods. As for the amount of debt, Fortune magazine based

Hong Kong’s large number of business models are estimated to be between HK$608 billion.

Xu Zhi smiled after reading it and had to admire these professional magazines. In fact, the data was similar. The original acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa was because he and Li Jiacheng cut a wave of leeks in the stock market. The acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa and Yangtze River shares cost

It was all my own money and I did not borrow any foreign debt.

But starting from Hong Kong Electric, they desperately began to use bank funds. They borrowed HK$2 billion to acquire Hong Kong Electric, spent HK$3.1 billion to privatize Hong Kong Electric's real estate business, borrowed HK$1.4 billion to purchase the Federal and International Building, and borrowed HK$1.4 billion to acquire Mong Kok Center.

The entire project also borrowed almost HK$500 million, and the total liabilities totaled almost HK$7 billion.

As for some other real estate projects, there are also loans, but they use their own projects as collateral and set up separate fund operations. In fact, these loans add up to a lot of funds, but basically the loans can be paid off when the project is completed and are not included in the calculation.

total liabilities.

However, what Fortune does not know is that land prices have almost doubled in more than a year. After Evergrande privatized Hong Kong Electric's land and properties, it began to sell off a large number of assets in non-core locations, along with a large number of Chinese capital.

The company has recovered more than HK$1.5 billion from developing its land properties.

And in 1981, land prices were at their peak. It was possible to earn more than 2 billion Hong Kong dollars, which was enough to repay the privatization loan. In this way, it was equivalent to Evergrande making a profit from several core properties and land owned by Hong Kong Electric. These lands

If the land price in 1981 was used, it would be worth at least HK$3 billion.

As for Xu Zhi’s other core industry: Midea Electronics, because it is an unlisted company, various data are extremely difficult for Fortune to obtain.

The first is arcade machines. Over the years, although Midea has launched a small number of arcade machines, each one is extremely popular, from Snake, Xiangjiang Cube, Tank Battle, Pac-Man to Soul Fighting at the beginning.

Luo, Super Mario, Donkey Kong, etc., each of these once dominated the entire American market.

The King of Fighters launched at the end of last year detonated the entire arcade industry, bringing arcades into the realm of two-person confrontation. People go to arcades to play arcades not to kill time anymore, but to engage in "forced confrontation" with friends and indulge in it.

I don’t know how many teenagers there are.

In 1978, Japan's Taito Company earned more than 100 million U.S. dollars with its "Space Invaders" game. Fortune magazine concluded that Midea's annual net profit would never be less than 200 million U.S. dollars, or even more, just from its arcade machines.

!

The net profit of another Midea product, gaaaaaboy, is about US$12, and the total profit from sales of tens of millions is up to US$20 million. Taking into account various advertising cost factors, the handheld console is not the core profit product of Midea Group.

Midea's third product is a home game console. This product has now competed with the global hegemon Atari in the United States, and has begun to erode Atari's monopoly in terms of market share. It is said that last year

Sales in the United States alone exceeded 3 million units.

This number is nothing compared to the Atari 2600, which has sold 25 million units, but data surveyed by Fortune magazine shows that countless families who buy Midea game consoles have begun to look down on the games carried on the Atari 2600 console.

Fortunately, Midea has not opened up global third-party licensing like Atari, and it is far from the latter in terms of game types. This has not threatened its dominance for the time being. In order to deal with this threat, Atari

, began to produce games in large quantities again, with the intention of winning through quantity.

"Fortune" magazine conducted investigations in many places in the United States and analyzed that Midea's game console strategy is to use low-priced consoles and high-priced game cartridges. The price of Super Mario and Contra alone is as high as 80 US dollars per game.

In comparison, Atari's normal game board only costs $25.

But Midea's strategy is very successful. After a long investigation, Fortune found that customers who bought a large number of Midea game consoles would buy several additional cartridges for other games, even if these games were expensive. Even the reporter who investigated was struggling to use private money.

I bought a set of console game disks and gave them very high evaluations!

"Fortune" magazine finally judged that the annual net profit of Midea's game console business was no less than that of arcade machines, at least US$200 million.

As for the other personal computer business, Midea has just started and its business is not big. Fortune only mentioned it slightly in the article analysis and did not describe it in detail.

However, "Fortune" also stated in the article that it was very unfavorable about the rca TV business it acquired last year. The analysis pointed out that rca's own business was already in many difficulties. Coupled with the pollution incident that broke out last year, it not only caused serious losses to the company's brand, but also caused serious losses to the company's brand.

Problems with the supply of goods for a period of time also have an impact on the entire sales system.

Under such circumstances, an Asian company actually acquired the business, spending nearly US$500 million and taking on a lot of liabilities. This acquisition was not favored by Fortune, and tens of thousands of RCA's employees in the United States were also criticized.

Fortune identified it as becoming a liability for Midea's company.

Therefore, "Fortune" values ​​Midea at US$1.5 billion.
Chapter completed!