Chapter 466: The Embryo of an Empire
Monday, January 21st.
With only a dozen days left until the Spring Festival, the festive atmosphere in China is becoming increasingly strong. Countless migrant workers are embarking on their journey home, carrying their year's harvest.
It was just an ordinary day, but due to the release of an announcement, it instantly touched the nerves of the entire Internet industry and even the business community.
At 9:00 a.m., Tengda Group officially released its 2012 annual financial report on the Weibo platform.
At this time in Hangzhou, at the headquarters of Alibaba Group, the warm winter sun quietly shines into the office.
Ma Jieke leaned back in his boss chair, squinting his eyes, looking serious, his gaze fixed on the computer screen.
Across from him, CFO Cai Zhongxin was also staring intently at his mobile phone screen - both of them were checking the newly released annual report of Tengda Group.
Report Summary: Tenda Technology Group achieved leapfrog growth in 2012, further consolidating its position as a leading global Internet technology company.
In the complex and volatile global economic environment, the Group's financial indicators have hit record highs thanks to the strong growth of its core business, the rapid rise of new businesses and excellent operational efficiency.
In terms of revenue, Tenda Technology Group has become the largest Internet technology company in Asia and the third largest in the world.
Core financial data: Total revenue in 2012 was RMB 238.8 billion, an increase of 81.2% year-on-year from RMB 131.8 billion in 2011;
Net profit was 81.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 63.4% from 50 billion yuan last year; net profit margin fell from 37.9% to 34.2%, a year-on-year decrease of 3.7 percentage points.
"This revenue growth and profit margin are really exaggerated." The moment he saw the financial data, Cai Chongxin couldn't help but exclaimed.
As the chief financial officer of a large group, he knows better than anyone what kind of behemoth stands behind these numbers.
Ma Jieke remained silent, but his expression darkened. He frowned and continued to scroll down.
The Business Highlights and Performance Review section mentioned: 1. Social and Communications (WeChat & Weibo)
WeChat: With over 1.8 billion users worldwide, it has become the world's most popular mobile app. Its innovative features, including voice messaging, Moments, and official accounts, have profoundly changed how users communicate and live around the world.
Overseas market expansion (especially the WeChat brand) has achieved remarkable results, with user stickiness and activity continuing to increase, building a strong user base and ecosystem entrance for the Group.
Weibo Platform: With 1 billion users worldwide, Weibo, as China's leading social media platform, continues to expand its influence, playing a core role in information dissemination, public discussion, and brand marketing. Its commercialization efforts, including in-feed advertising and the fan economy, have made positive progress.
2. Interactive Entertainment (TD Gaming Platform & Big Entertainment)
TD Gaming Platform: As the world's largest digital game distribution platform, it performed brilliantly in 2012, with annual revenue of approximately RMB 44 billion (approximately US$7.02 billion). It successfully surpassed Sony and Nintendo in revenue and became the world's largest game company.
The platform's powerful distribution capabilities, rich game library (including self-developed and third-party masterpieces) and mature micro-transaction system are the keys to its success.
The large entertainment sector - Tengda Culture: continues to invest in film and television production, variety shows, music copyrights and other fields, producing many phenomenal works, and the content ecosystem is becoming increasingly perfect.
Southern Cinema Line: Relying on the group's resources, it continues to expand its scale, optimize the movie-watching experience, and steadily increase box office revenue.
Toutiao Video: As an emerging long-form video and online video platform, its user base is rapidly expanding and its content formats are constantly innovating. It has become an important traffic portal and advertising platform.
. . .
7. Cloud Computing: Tenda Cloud achieved a milestone in 2012, surpassing Microsoft in market share for the first time and becoming the world's second-largest cloud service provider with a market share of approximately 28%, second only to Amazon.
This growth is due to the strong demand for digital transformation in China and the Asia-Pacific market, the technical support of the Group's own massive business, and continued investment in infrastructure construction and product innovation (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
Cloud services have become an important growth engine for the group and a core embodiment of its B-side service capabilities.
Seeing this, Majieke's pupils shrank slightly, his face filled with disbelief: "Tengda's cloud computing is so powerful, it's already surpassed Microsoft!"
I can't help but think of the IT Leaders Summit that year, when He Songci strongly supported cloud computing, forming a two-on-two confrontation with Li Yanhong and Ma Boli's opposition.
Now that Tenda's annual report has been released, it has undoubtedly given a resounding slap in the face to those who looked down on the cloud computing business back then.
Cai Zhongxin echoed, "Tengda started building a large-scale cloud computing center in Donghai as early as 2006. It's no surprise that they've achieved such success today."
Ma Jieke nodded, his heart becoming more resolute: the world's leading Internet companies are all vigorously developing cloud computing, and Alibaba's approach is not wrong!
While sighing, he continued to check the contents of the report one by one.
The industry status and outlook section mentioned:
With annual revenue of RMB 238.8 billion (approximately US$38.1 billion, estimated at the average exchange rate in 2012), Tenda Technology Group is the largest internet technology company in Asia and the third largest in the world (after Amazon and Google).
It holds a global leadership position in many key areas: it owns the world's largest social application (WeChat), the world's largest gaming company (TD platform), and the world's second largest cloud service provider.
. . .
Risks and Challenges:
Uncertainty exists in the global and regional economies; competition in the internet industry is becoming increasingly fierce (covering both domestic and international markets); and rapid technological iterations are creating pressure for innovation;
Regulatory requirements for data security and user privacy protection continue to increase; continued investment in new businesses (such as cloud computing and internationalization) brings short-term profit pressure; and changes in the content regulatory policy environment.
Conclusion: . . . Tenda Technology is committed to connecting everything, empowering industries, creating greater social and commercial value, and delivering long-term returns for shareholders and partners.
Ma Jie read this ten-thousand-word financial report very carefully, pondered it over and over again, and discussed it with Cai Chongxin from time to time. It took him a full hour to finish reading it.
"Tengda's annual report is really instructive." Ma Jieke sighed softly, his eyes slowly moving away from the screen.
"The summary of risks and challenges is particularly insightful. These are not only the challenges that Tenda will have to deal with in the future, but also the inevitable dilemmas that Alibaba will face in the future!"
Cai Zhongxin pushed up his glasses, his eyes deep, "Jack, we can't delay any longer. Tengda is growing stronger and stronger, and it seems to be swallowing up the entire Internet industry. Moreover, Song Ci has no internal constraints.
We must expedite the process and finalize the partnership system as soon as possible to ensure that management maintains firm control over the company."
After hearing this, Ma Jieke felt a surge of urgency and nodded heavily, "Give me some time to carefully consider it. I'll definitely finalize the list of partners and announce it to the public by the end of the month at the latest."
In order to resolve the control crisis faced by the management after Yahoo's investment, Alibaba Group began to implement the "Lakeside Partner" system in 2010.
Partners have the right to nominate a majority of the board members, and any amendment to this system requires approval by more than 95% of shareholders - this means that as long as management holds more than 5% of the shares, they can lock in the system.
As permanent partners, Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai are not subject to retirement restrictions. This system also greatly guarantees their control over Alibaba.
Cai Zhongxin said no more. Becoming a partner offers multiple benefits beyond those of equity. However, while institutions are easy to design, controlling people's hearts is difficult, so choosing partners requires extreme caution.
"Shigenobu, after reading this financial report, I've gained some insights." Ma Jieke said thoughtfully, his tone serious, "The group's current seven business groups are too bloated, and the efficiency of resource allocation is too low.
I think it would be better to split them into more than 20 business units and adopt a 'small but beautiful' management approach. This will fully unleash the potential of each business, increase valuation potential, and attract the capital market's attention to the potential of those segments."
Cai Chongxin thought for a moment and said, "You mean, let's expand the vertical fields and thin the platform, and learn from Tengda's path of co-building the ecosystem?"
"Right," Ma Jieke echoed. "We need to maintain a relaxed yet integrated approach. Each business unit needs to coordinate well with logistics and payment modules. We can't just focus on a single growth point anymore."
Cai Zhongxin looked troubled. "But if that's the case, we need a department that can provide support. Tenda has WeChat, which 'connects everything,' and it's the core. But our Taobao and Alipay don't have such capabilities."
"Socializing, it still depends on socializing!" Ma Jieke sighed.
The most ideal architecture in his mind has always been "social + e-commerce", but in the social field, there was QQ in the PC era, and in the mobile Internet era, there was the more powerful WeChat blocking the way.
"Then we can build independent data platforms, information platforms, and cloud operating systems, and implement unified data-based management for all other departments."
"This method is feasible." Cai Zhongxin thought for a moment and nodded in agreement, "This matter must be led by President Lu."
"That's exactly what I was thinking." Ma Jieke smiled slightly. Their ideas coincided with each other.
After finalizing the data platform's president, Ma Jieke continued, "Tenda has been quite successful in the large-scale entertainment sector. We at Alibaba must also accelerate our pace and systematically build a large-scale entertainment ecosystem. Fortunately, the entertainment industry prioritizes content, so latecomers also have the opportunity to overtake."
Since he has been leading the preparations for Alibaba's Greater Entertainment, Cai Zhongxin took the opportunity to report: "The preliminary preparations for each sub-business of the entertainment sector are basically ready.
In the music field, the group just completed the acquisition of Xiami Music in the middle of the month, and its next target is Tiantian Dongting.
In this way, after entering the digital music track, Alibaba Music can quickly supplement its user base on the mobile side.
In the field of film and television, we are negotiating with China Culture, but the other party’s asking price is too high and the situation is still in a stalemate.
In the literature sector, plans are underway to integrate Taobao Reading and Shuqi Novels to establish Ali Literature, providing IP sources for film, television, and gaming businesses.
As for the layout of the video platform, it still depends on you, Jack."
Ma Jieke pondered for a moment, thinking of the "one super and two strong" pattern in the domestic long video field, and shook his head helplessly: "There are indeed not many targets to choose from right now.
Sohu and Penguin are backed by giants. LeTV will obviously not accept our acquisition, and iQiyi has been noticed by Baidu.
The remaining video sites like Baofeng and Fengxing have shallow foundations and thin copyright libraries, so even an acquisition wouldn't make much sense. It seems the only option left is Youku Tudou.
Although the acquisition is not easy, once it is completed, Alibaba will have control of the second largest video platform in China, and the large entertainment sector will immediately be revitalized."
"Okay, I'll focus on connecting with Youku Tudou's shareholders," Cai Zhongxin agreed. He then discussed a few more words with Ma Jieke and was about to leave when Ma Jieke suddenly spoke up, "Zhongxin, do you think the gaming business has a future?"
Cai Zhongxin was stunned for a moment. He hadn't expected Ma Jieke to bring this up so suddenly—after all, Ma Jieke had publicly stated several times before that Alibaba would never get involved in gaming.
He quickly recovered and analyzed, "Taobao itself is a virtual item trading platform second only to the Tenda TD platform. With such a foundation, there is great potential for entering the gaming field.
I think we can start with mobile games. As we can see from Tenda's annual report, mobile games are incredibly profitable, on par with PC games, and they have a short development cycle and deliver quick returns."
"Then let's make mobile games!" Ma Jie took a deep breath and made the decision immediately.
Then, slightly embarrassed, he added, "We make games differently from Tengda. Our main goal isn't to make money. I want to change the gaming landscape in China."
Cai Zhongxin opened his mouth, but swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue. He thought to himself: It's just money, no need to shudder!
Donghai, Tangren Films.
Liu Shishi was sitting in front of the computer, reading netizens' comments about "Tengda's annual profit of 81.7 billion" with great interest.
"Just finished the math: Tenda's daily revenue is 224 million yuan, which is ≈ 2,580 yuan per second. The one second you spend scrolling through this Weibo post is enough for Boss Song to buy an iPhone!"
"TD platform revenue last year was 4.4 billion? "Xianxia Qingyuan" players, please raise your hands! I contributed three 648s, and now I want to buy it."
"Awesome! Their gaming business is even bigger than Sony and Nintendo!"
"It's terrifying! WeChat has 1.8 billion users, making it the world's most popular app. Tenda has truly become a social empire!"
"Knock, knock, knock." Jiang Yuanyuan knocked on the door and walked into the office. "Shishi, the studio has sent out the congratulatory poster for Lost in Thailand."
"Oh." Liu Shishi responded and immediately opened the studio's Weibo homepage, and sure enough, she saw a new update.
Liu Shishi Studio v: [Gift] After more than 300 days of guarding the throne, the crown of Chinese-language films will now be handed over to the brave who embark on a new journey.
Congratulations to @Tengda Culture @filmmaker Xu Zheng @official of the movie "Lost in Thailand" - 1 billion is just the starting point, Chinese filmmakers should work together to overcome difficulties.
The illustrations are very exquisite:
Two golden peaks stand proudly against a backdrop of crimson cloud patterns. The digital inscription "1.054 billion" on the left peak is digitized as a crystal crown, lifted by auspicious clouds and slowly carried to the higher peak on the right.
Small golden words appeared on the ridgeline: "Behind this crown, the stars will shine brightly."
——Congratulations from all colleagues of the movie "Charlotte's Troubles"
"Well done!" Liu Shishi praised.
The box office of "Lost in Thailand" has surpassed "Charlotte's Troubles" of 1.054 billion, becoming the new box office champion of Chinese-language films.
When attending the celebration banquet the day before yesterday, everyone came up with this "box office champion handover ceremony", which can be regarded as adding fuel to the popularity of "Lost in Thailand".
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
