For three whole days, each company made reports one after another. There were many highlights but also many problems.

For example, Royal Shipping successfully transported grain by sea, carried out maritime trade, and provided logistics support for domestic trade. The three major businesses envisioned by Mr. Zhao have all been carried out smoothly.

However, insufficient shipping capacity has become a serious constraint on the company's development. The fleet needs to expand rapidly for several years to basically meet the demand for shipping space in all aspects, and the premise is that the demand for shipping capacity does not grow too fast. But how is that possible?

Zhao Hao predicts that the demand for shipping capacity will increase at least tenfold in the next decade!

Therefore, for a long time to come, we will have to build ships at full capacity and train sailors with all our strength.

~~

The biggest highlight this time did not come from Royal Shipping, but from Jiangnan Textile Corporation.

In order to support the prefectures and counties in Jiangnan, Jiangnan Textiles had been open to purchasing silk and raw silk for a whole year. Now that the route to Japan has been opened, raw silk that cost seven cents a pound can be sold for eight taels, and all kinds of silk can generally increase in value tenfold.

The raw silk and silk materials currently in stock at Jiangnan Group are worth at least 40 million taels of silver!

Liu Zhengqi, who was giving the report, said with regret that if he had known that the young master could handle the sea trade so quickly, he would not have rushed to sell silk at a low price everywhere. But in the end, he worked hard and only earned one million taels after spending half of it. If it had been stored in the warehouse, it would be worth 80 million taels now...

The group would not blame him for this, after all, it was not a big deal to have so much money sitting there. Moreover, Jiangnan Textile had signed a guaranteed contract with each county, and it would continue to open up for purchases next year. If it kept all the money, Jiangnan Textile's debt would exceed 10 million taels, and the financial pressure would be too great.

Steady operations should never be criticized, so the three associations still gave Jiangnan Textile a very high evaluation.

In addition to the silk weaving industry, they have also completed the integration of Jiangnan's cotton textile industry. With all 40,000 spinners of the Xu family being transferred to the Jiangnan Cotton Textile Company, 70% of the cotton textile industry in Jiangnan is in the hands of the Jiangnan Group.

This is very important because the prospects and industry contributions of the cotton textile industry in the future will far exceed those of the silk textile industry!

There is nothing else to it, it’s just great in scope.

~~

Another highlight is Jiangnan Ceramics.

As the 02 Institute has basically mastered the key technologies of glass production, the Xishan Island Research Center invested in the technology and established the Jiangnan Glass Company in a joint venture with Jiangnan Ceramics, and set up a glass factory on Xishan Island. It has entered the trial production and trial sales stage, opened four glass kilns, blown 1,000 glasswares per day, and pressed 1,000 glass plates.

The main limitation is that there are too few skilled craftsmen. Both glass blowing and glass pressing require skills. Even if the masters are open to training apprentices, they still have to practice glass blowing for a year or so before they can take up the job.

However, even this small amount of production has brought considerable profits. Before, the glass and glassware on the market in the Ming Dynasty were all Western goods. Because glass is fragile and inconvenient to transport, it has always been sold as a luxury item, with prices ranging from dozens to hundreds of taels.

Now Jiangnan Group is able to produce glass. The quality is better than Western products, and the price is half the price. Once it was put on the market, it naturally attracted enthusiastic pursuit.

Even though the price was only half of that of the Portuguese, the high profits still shocked the senior executives who heard the report. After only one quarter of sales, sales of 3 million taels were achieved, with a profit of 2.9 million taels...

"Why are sales and net profits so close?" asked Lu Kuang, vice chairman of the Inspection and Supervision Commission, puzzled.

"This is top secret." Bai Liang, chairman of Jiangnan Ceramics, said with a little embarrassment.

They had an agreement with the research center that they could not reveal the details of glassware production, even to the group's top management. All workers were even forbidden to leave Xishan Island for life.

In fact, Bai Liang only knew that this was because the cost of producing glass was extremely low, but as to why it was so low, even he, the chairman, did not know.

At this time, Zhao Hao, who was sitting in the dim light of the evening, spoke up to help Bai Liang and said, "The glass technology must be kept secret for at least a hundred years, so don't make things difficult for him." Because a hundred years later, the secret of Italian glass making will be cracked by other European countries.

"Yes." Lu Kuang responded respectfully, and the others also shut up. At the group meeting last year, they were still quite skeptical about how big Mr. Zhao's business was. But after listening to the reports over the past few days, it has been proven time and again that Mr. Zhao is much smarter than them.

Moreover, the profit margin of Jiangnan Sugar Industry is almost as good as that of glass. Of course, this is also top secret and cannot be asked or told... Everyone can only regard it as the result of Master Zhao turning stone into gold again.

In addition, Jiangnan Dyeing also submitted a good answer to the group, contributing a full profit of two million taels.

The group was able to easily integrate the cotton textile industry in Jiangnan, largely because it completely mastered the cotton cloth sales network throughout the country after integrating the Wuhu Dyeing Association, and then forced the major companies in Jiangnan to surrender.

~~

After all the companies finished their reports, it was the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, the day for the group meeting.

The meeting was held in the conference hall of the headquarters. The group's board of directors passed a resolution to select those eligible to attend the group meeting, including the group's senior management, shareholders and board members of each subsidiary, shareholders and principal persons in charge of grandchildren companies, and employees at all levels who have won the group's Outstanding Contribution Award within five years.

Therefore, the first item of the conference was that Mr. Zhao and the board members presented medals and certificates to the 39 employees who won the first batch of group outstanding contribution awards. This award is very important. In addition to receiving a series of promotion rewards, the winners can also participate in five consecutive group conferences.

Therefore, compared with the first conference last year with only 49 participants, the number of participants this year has increased to 309, which also reflects the vigorous development of Jiangnan Group in the past year.

In Mr. Zhao's plan, the group meeting will gradually play the role of consultation and discussion in the future. When the group has important decisions, it will first seek opinions from the members of the meeting. The members of the meeting are also eligible to put forward opinions and suggestions on any matter of the group during the group discussion.

The future development of the group requires the collective wisdom of all parties, and the elites who operate the group also need such a channel to speak out. Although it is up to the board of directors to decide whether to listen or not, who dares to turn a deaf ear to the voices from the top groups of the group?

Then the meeting announced that Chen Huaixiu and Liu Zhengqi would be added to the group's board of directors. This was as it should be, because Royal Shipping and Jiangnan Textile played an important role in the group, and it was inappropriate for the heads of the two companies not to be in the highest authority.

Although Royal Shipping has the word "Royal" in its name, Jiangnan Group holds a 60% stake in it through itself and Jiangnan Shipping, so it is still a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jiangnan Group.

Then, Jiang Xueying, as the group president, gave the group’s annual report to the conference.

Currently, the group has 23 subsidiaries and 97 grandson companies, with a total of 32,200 regular employees and 61,000 agricultural workers and temporary workers.

After the consolidated financial statements, the group's main business income in the third year of Longqing was 27 million taels of silver, and the main business cost was 17 million taels. After deducting management and sales expenses, research and development expenses, financial expenses, and paying 5% industrial and commercial tax, the net profit was about 7 million taels.

Despite such huge expenses this year, Jiangnan Group actually made a profit!

This was actually somewhat beyond Jiang Xueying's expectations. She had thought that it would be good enough if she could break even this year, and even a slight loss would be acceptable.

But at the end of the year, Master Zhao led a team to Japan for a robbery and brought back 3.65 million taels of silver in one go. The group's financial statements immediately looked good.

After adding this windfall, the group's distributable profit reached 3 million taels. After deducting surplus reserves and distributing dividends to shareholders of the branch company, the remaining 1.5 million taels belonged to the group's shareholders.

So in the second year of the company's establishment, shareholders can finally see dividends.

Among them, Mr. Zhao holds 36% of the group's shares through himself and Singularity Investment, and can receive dividends of 540,000 taels.

The five Yangzhou salt merchants held 20% of the shares in the form of financial investment and were entitled to a dividend of 300,000 taels.

In addition, Wuji Company holds 20% of the group's shares and can also receive a dividend of 300,000 taels. Of course, Jiangnan Group holds 55% of Wuji's shares, so the 165,000 dividend has already been taken as the group's income. Jiang Xueying holds 80% of the remaining shares, and Zhao Liben holds 20%, so Jiang Xueying can distribute 108,000 taels. Zhao Liben also has an income of 27,000 taels.

In addition, Jiang Xueying personally holds 10% of the group's shares, which can receive a dividend of 150,000 taels. Oh, yes, because of historical reasons, she also holds 20% of Jiangnan Sugar's shares, which can receive a dividend of 300,000 taels... So she can receive a dividend of 558,000 taels this year!

Of course, Mr. Zhao also received a dividend of 300,000 taels from Jiangnan Sugar Industry, so he still received the highest dividend.

The Hua family holds 6% of the remaining shares, which means they can get 90,000 taels of dividends. The two Wang families in Taicang hold 8% of the remaining shares, which means they can get 120,000 taels of dividends.

The Hua and Wang families are wealthy and powerful, so this little dividend is nothing. However, Hua Cha, Wang Mengxiang and Wang Shimao were all very happy and felt that they were very lucky and wise.

Look at it, the Gu family, Lu family, Qian family, Xiang family, Xu family... although they all got shares, they were only at the level of subsidiaries or even grandchildren of the group. Moreover, the group is not listed, so they want to become shareholders of Jiangnan Group? No way.

Furthermore, no matter how large a share the salt merchants hold, it is purely a financial investment, and the voting rights have been permanently granted to the prince.

Therefore, apart from Mr. and Miss Jiang, there are only three of them who are shareholders of the group.

Jiangnan Group shareholders, how important are these six words? No need to say more, right? That is definitely ten or a hundred times stronger than the status of the nine great families at the beginning!

The identities of the nine families are not to be seen in public, but the shareholders of Jiangnan Group are upright and respected. It is the guarantee of their entire family's status in Jiangnan and even in Ming Dynasty. How much do you think it is worth?

Besides, with such a large expenditure this year, we can get so much money. In two years, when the group is completely on the right track and the young master's plan is effective, what will happen?

If nothing unexpected happens, their descendants can become among the richest people in Jiangnan and even the Ming Dynasty just by relying on dividends from the group.

The three of them made up their minds at the same time and established a family precept after returning, strictly forbidding their descendants to sell the group's shares!