Are you ready to go home with $3.4 billion? Jia Yueting is the cleverest person?

I thought 2020 was amazing enough, but I still shook my pants at the beginning of 202 1.

Especially when I know that Jia Yueting's Faraday will be listed on NASDAQ in the future, with a valuation of $3.4 billion, and will also establish a joint venture headquarters and production line with Geely Automobile in China and China's first tier cities.

This may mean that boss Jia, who has been away from the motherland for almost four years, will finally return to China in this east wind.

There should be "Cloud of Hometown" BGM here.

On the other hand, before the Spring Festival, all major platforms were giving out red envelopes, and the money was more than anyone else. Only LeTV added a line "owed122 billion" to the logo of its own App.

This operation is very coquettish. It seems that before Boss Jia came back, he once again stripped off his shorts to remind everyone that "this man is a liar!" 」

Conscience enterprise is nothing more than LeTV.

At that time, the share price of domestic electric vehicle Sany soared, and the market value of Evergrande, which does not build cars, soared to HK$ 350 billion.

YT Jia, who is now witnessing the bankruptcy of credit, will make a comeback in this wave. It can only be said that the capital market talks about electric cars, and we mortals can't catch up with its logic anyway.

So in this program, I want to talk about Jia Yueting's capital logic and why he is still scampering.

0 1

It is an old habit to jump to conclusions first.

Letv Ecology is indeed a Ponzi scheme, but it is more like its variant. It is not completely without practical business. On the contrary, Jia Yueting's vision is still very advanced in some aspects, and many business logics can indeed be established in some cases.

Because of this, it was not until 202 1 that there was running water to wash the land in Jia Yueting and some suckers were willing to keep throwing money at Jia Yueting.

But in fact, whether it was praised by investors in 20 14, or became a clown shouted by everyone in 20 16, or now it is back to the game. Jia Yueting is here all the time. He has never changed. He has been playing his ecological concept and capital game.

What changes is nothing more than whether things have been done or not, and whether there is wind in the tuyere.

The story begins with LeTV's landing in A shares.

Everyone knows that A-share listing is profitable. Without sustained profitability, there is no listing qualification, and after listing, it cannot maintain profitability, so it is ST.

Long video websites have always been considered as a business with low profitability. Ai Youteng's three companies are still trapped in high copyright, server and bandwidth costs, making it difficult to make a profit. Including the soaring market value in the past year, it is far from profitable.

Therefore, the profitability of listed companies is a dead line for LeTV. We'll talk about this later.

Letv was originally a video website. Where did the initial profit come from?

Needless to say, advertising is the basic commercial disk of any video website, and it is also the most important.

The other is the copyright business of 2B. In the early years, LeTV bought a lot of copyrights at a price close to the price of cabbage.

How cheap are these copyrights?

According to the prospectus of LeTV, the average price of movies and TV series purchased in 2007 was 1.74 million yuan/unit, and in 2008 it was 26,800 yuan/unit. In 2009, the purchase volume was seven times that of the previous two years, and the average price was only 1.47 million yuan/set.

Compared with the current tens of millions of copyright purchase costs, this is about equal to no money.

From 2007 to 2009, the total cost of copyright purchase in these three years was only 58.5 million yuan. It's hard to buy top blockbusters now. But LeTV got the copyright of 2,324 movies and 43 1 10,000 TV series.

It is such a cheap price to buy copyright. At that time, some venture capital institutions commented on LeTV and thought they were stupid. How do video websites spend money to buy genuine ones? After all, peers such as Youku, Tudou, PPTV and Ku 6 are pirated TV dramas.

Then I slapped my face and came.

After 2009, the video website industry ushered in a wave of copyright wars, the copyright of film and television dramas soared, and the price of popular film and television dramas began to skyrocket to more than10 million yuan each.

This is the way out for video copyright and the most important way out for Jia Yueting.

The foresight of copyright has enabled LeTV to successfully gain the growth point of 2B business.

By 20 1 1, the revenue from copyright distribution has accounted for more than 50% of the revenue. In addition, LeTV started the membership mode early, allowing paying users to watch copyrighted HD videos first, and trained the first batch of video users with payment habits.

It can be said that it is a troika of users paying+advertising+copyright, which brings the second-line video website LeTV into A shares and becomes the first video website.

So, to some extent, I think Jia Yueting does have a taste of traveling back.

02

However, after the listing, LeTV has more restrictions.

Video websites are not a profitable industry. With the beginning of the copyright war, the price of copyright has gone up.

Letv, a second-hand copyright dealer, is facing a sharp rise in the price of raw materials, and reselling old copyrights is bound to become increasingly unprofitable. At this time, there is only one choice, that is, follow-up.

During the four years from 20 13 to 20 16, the cost of copyright content was 128 billion,14.6 billion, 2.39 billion and 319 billion respectively.

Until 20 18, letv never saved money on copyright fees.

Since you don't save money, then profit becomes a problem. As mentioned earlier, A-shares have high requirements for profitability.

However, Jia Yueting obviously doesn't want to be delisted after listing, because A shares are the gold mine in Jia Yueting and the most important cash cow for LeTV's ecological future.

We'll talk about this later. Now letv's first problem is how to get the money and stay in a shares.

At this time, Jia Yueting thought of what he was best at as an accountant: bookkeeping.

A company will be marked with some characteristics of its founder.

The founder is a programmer, which will be a bit of a geek; The founder is a teacher, and the company always wants to preach; The founder is a salesman, so the company will be very strong in hard work and promotion.

Jia Yueting was born as an accountant, so accounting is the core competitiveness of LeTV.

For the cost of copyright, LeTV has adopted a set of financial methods called "straight-line amortization".

Under normal circumstances, assuming that the purchase cost of a brand-new film and television drama is 300 million yuan, this money will not be recorded at one time, but will be amortized in various periods during the copyright period and included in the cost.

However, it is worth mentioning that the benefits that film and television dramas can bring to video websites often account for 90% in the first two years, and only 10% remains after the third year. Big profits in the first two years.

Therefore, when amortizing, it depends on accounting skills.

For example, Youku and Sohu Video adopted a sincere "accelerated amortization method", which accounted for a large part of the cost in the first year and then decreased year by year.

Letv adopts "straight-line amortization", that is, the expenses are shared equally every year. The cost is 300 million, spread equally for 6 years, and 50 million per year. It is not illegal to do accounts like this, and even this practice is common in other industries.

The biggest advantage of doing this is to maximize the income and minimize the cost in the first two years, so the financial statements in these two years will be very beautiful and profitable on the books.

But the problem is that although the financial reports of the previous two years were good-looking, the cost actually dragged on to the later stage. Even if the film and television drama has passed away and has no value, the annual expenditure is still endless. This is equivalent to making ends meet, which reduces the ability to resist risks in the later period.

Another advantage is that the copyright purchased at a high price will be counted as intangible assets in the financial report and become a part of the company's market value. Of course, these assets are actually overpriced and completely illiquid, but in the financial report, no one will pursue these.

Relying on this set of bookkeeping technology, LeTV not only successfully stayed in A shares, but also successfully pushed up the stock price.

03

So far, everything is under control, and business logic seems to be established.

But just doing copyright and video website business can't satisfy Jia Yueting's dream of wealth, and can't afford a company with a market value of nearly 654.38+070 billion.

Besides, as an A-share listed company, guarding a video website is simply begging for a golden rice bowl for such an awesome accountant as Jia Yueting.

Therefore, in Jia Yueting's hands, an "ecological response" appeared when the accounting ability was integrated with the so-called "LeTV Ecology".

What is ecological opposition? Ecology+accounting = wealth alchemy = chemical reaction, which is ecological opposition.

From 20 1 1, Jia Yueting began to describe his ecological empire. But in 20 14, after Jia Yueting returned to China, his ecological dream began to grow bigger and bigger.

Count Letv's ecological empire.

20 1 1, letv was established and entered the upstream of the content industry.

In 20 12, letv sports channel was established and became letv sports independently.

In the same year, LeTV hired Lenovo technician Liang Jun to enter the field of TV hardware.

At the beginning of 20 14, letv cloud computing was established.

At the end of 20 14, Weibo and Jia Yueting announced that they would build cars. At the beginning of the following year, LeTV was established. There was no car at the press conference, only the news that "we really want to build a car" was released.

At the beginning of 20 15, letv announced its entry into the mobile phone industry. Similarly, there was no mobile phone at the press conference, only the message "We want to make mobile phones" was released.

In the same year, LeTV Finance was established.

At this point, LeTV's three major systems and seven major ecosystems have officially taken shape. You can look at this photo:

04

So how does this ecology give blood transfusion to LeTV?

From LeTV, we can see some clues, that is, LeTV is innovative.

Internet TV can be said to be the best business of LeTV and the most fierce business of blood transfusion.

In 20 13, letv's first "super tv" went on the market. By 20 14, the sales volume has reached 6.5438+0.5 million, which is five times that of Xiaomi TV in the same period.

In 20 15, the sales volume doubled to 3 million units. This sales volume is definitely not a small player in the domestic TV industry.

However, in the past three years, the new losses of LeTV were 47 million, 386 million and 736.5438+0 billion respectively.

In the logic of LeTV, the business of smart TV does not rely on hardware to make money. On the contrary, it is the logic of internet TV to make the hardware price low and then make money by service.

So, who will bear the loss of hardware?

Remember what I said earlier, A-share listed companies can't lose money casually. Then, people who are in charge of heaven must be hungry first, and the burden of loss will be handed over to the subsidiary LeTV Zhixin!

You should know that LeEco Zhixin is not a wholly-owned subsidiary. Letv only holds more than 50% of the shares, but all the TVs produced are sold to Letv.

It is equivalent to Letv's own loss of 100%, but more than 40%, and minority shareholders can pay the bill.

This sickle is cut on the investment partner.

That doesn't count.

Originally, the price of smart TV was not high, and everyone was selling at a low profit or even at a loss, but LeTV had to dig a piece from the sales of hardware as a "service fee".

Everyone knows that LeTV buys TV to send video members, and a TV comes with a two-year membership period. Suppose a TV set costs more than 2,000 yuan, and a two-year membership is worth nearly 1,000 yuan. Therefore, in LeTV's account book, the income of TV hardware is more than 1000, and the remaining 900 is the membership fee, which is the service fee.

In Letv's business story, TV does not make money or lose money. However, each TV is bound to a user, and the user's future lease renewal will bring stable income.

To be honest, I have seen some apps for promotion, and the cost of a user should be above 100. However, LeTV spent 1000 yuan to get a user, and I still can't think of it.

Besides, the membership expires in two years, and it is still unknown whether you have LeTV or not. It's not Jia Yueting's style to send members away with such fanfare.

But in the eyes of accountants, accounts can have another algorithm.

Algorithm 1:

Financially, the two-year membership attached to LeTV TV requires users to use it to calculate income. The service fee income of the current year can only be written into the financial report after the membership expires for one year. Otherwise, it can only exist as "prepayment".

However, with a stroke of a pen, LeTV directly counted all the service fees for selling TV bundles in that year as income and wrote them into the financial report. Well, revenue and profits have become extremely beautiful. As soon as such a financial report came out, the stock price went up immediately.

But what is this? Taking a long stream of water as a hammer to buy and sell, over time, membership fees are getting less and less, and life is getting more and more sad.

Algorithm 2:

Letv has an online video service and needs to buy copyright. The TV membership service fee is purely an incremental market, and the marginal cost is almost zero. Why not give it away for free? What's more, I received money, but the money was reflected in the price of TV.

This is another sophistry. The service fee of TV members itself needs copyright support. Without billions of copyright fees, members are worthless.

Therefore, even if the service fee is reflected in the TV price, it is used to fill the copyright expenditure, rather than simply being an incremental market and confusing people.

Algorithm 3:

Television has been born for nearly a hundred years, and selling TV sets has long been a sexy story that investors are interested in.

However, when LeTV is packaged as "Internet TV", "service+hardware mode" and "platform+content+terminal+application ecology", the capital market will feel that this is a business with great imagination, which will naturally raise the new valuation of LeTV. At the same time, the stock of the listed parent company LeTV has also risen.

Accounting is not terrible. The terrible thing is that the accountant can talk. What is even more frightening is that the accountant can talk and do PPT. This is Jia Yueting.

Earlier, we mentioned various accounting methods of LeTV, and summed up the routine in one sentence: make the recent income high and spread the cost to the future.

In the final analysis, there is only one purpose: to look at the financial report of the listed company LeTV and push up the company's share price.

Jia Yueting is well aware that the rising stock price is the lifeblood of LeTV and the driving force behind its financial cycle. As long as the power does not stop, the story of ecological opposition can continue, and LeTV Finance can maintain its power.

The pattern of this cycle is basically like this:

The first step: realize by pledging shares, issuing additional shares and cashing in shares.

Step 2: invest money in listed companies and ecological subsidiaries to keep running.

Step 3: In the course of operation, amortize the cost to the future through financial means, or let the subsidiary bear the losses, and the listed company will make profits to boost the stock price.

Go back to the first step: the stock price rises, continue to pledge shares, and issue additional shares in exchange for more cash.

In addition, subsidiaries can independently raise funds or make profits to transfuse blood for this financial cycle.

It can be seen that only when the stock price keeps rising, the company's profitability is greatly improved, and its subsidiaries continue to receive financing and blood transfusion, can this Qian Shengqian internal circulation game continue to play.

As it happens, the right time, the right place and the right people are on Jia Yueting's side.

When LeTV 20 14 started to play with ecological concepts, A shares had just experienced a big bull market, and the overall mood was very positive and optimistic, and they were unprepared for companies that created concepts and told stories. Coupled with the concept of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" put forward by 20 14, internet companies are becoming more and more popular.

A-shares have high requirements for listed companies, especially profit requirements, which prevent countless unprofitable Internet companies from going public. As a result, it has become a common practice for Internet companies to list in US and Hong Kong stocks.

As a result, Letv's share price rose again and again, and 20 15 reached nearly17 billion.

At this point, you should understand what music is like to hold a press conference, even if there is no product launch. Why does Jia Yueting like to create such an extremely grand concept as "ecological opposition" and "seven major ecosystems"?

At the level of listed companies, after all, science and technology innovation board is looking at the market dream rate. As long as the dream is big enough, the market will think that you have room for imagination and the stock price will soar.

At the subsidiary level, you can understand them as startups.

At that time, there were many valuation bubbles in China's venture capital circle. The worst atmosphere is that everyone can draw big cakes and talk to each other. As long as there is a good story, the valuation can go up all the time, investors can accept your long-term losses, you can also accept blood transfusion for the parent company, and you can accept rounds of burning money.

Just as Jia Yueting claimed that it would take five minutes to persuade Guo Taiming to do TV together, Zhang Zhao, the former chairman and CEO of LeTV, who died last week, was also conquered by Jia Yueting's enthusiasm and hit it off together to create "China Disneyland".

This story is no better than Bo Biography?

05

Finally, back to the original topic, why is Jia Yueting still jumping and why is his FF still on the market? Who else can pay the bill?

If you put today's new energy vehicle business into the logic of LeTV, you will find that everything is alive.

We say that LeTV Ecology is a variant of Ponzi scheme. In fact, it is because the initial Ponzi scheme has no self-hematopoietic function at all, and it is simply to let later investors pay for the newcomers. In the end, fools are not enough, and it is thunderous.

But letv is different, and letv is not completely without real guys.

In the seven ecosystems, at least video websites and TV hardware have qualified products and business models, and LeTV has become the only stable and profitable business in the seven ecosystems. If these businesses can stabilize their profits and cover the burning state of other businesses, then LeTV's games can be played all the time.

Jia Yueting is betting on the stock price decline or the subsidiary's profit, which will happen later.

It's a pity that he finally spread out too much, and he didn't have tens of billions of RMB to set foot in the sports industry and the automobile industry.

No matter how much money the film team and the hardware team earn, they can't help but squander the black sheep everywhere.

With the benefit of the primary and secondary markets, LeTV's cycle finally collapsed. Countless investors' money turned into bubbles, from ordinary A-share investors to Sun Hongbin and no one lives.

He lost the game.

But interestingly, in the magical year of 2020, new energy vehicles blew for a while, the stock prices of the three major trams in China soared, and big car companies entered the market one after another, which made the industry suddenly enter the spring of capital.

In this respect, Jia Yueting still has some car-making heritages accumulated during the LeTV period.

Thirty years in Hedong, thirty years in Hexi. Riding on this east wind, the prices of all concepts related to building cars began to soar. The price of FF has finally reached the point where the market re-examines Jia Yueting.

Moreover, making cars is a pillar industry of the national economy, and the imagination space is much larger than that of video websites, so Jia Yueting has a turning point.

But what about Jia Yueting himself? Did he do anything? No, he's still the Jia Yueting who won't come back to China. He hasn't changed, but the direction of the times has changed.

Capital is ruthless, and abandoning a person is not slow.

But capital is fickle, it will be disappointed at the trough and will come again at the peak.

Capital is even more forgetful. No matter how unreliable Jia Yueting used to be, in the face of opportunities to make money, capital will forget the past.

As I said in the past, capital always has the next game.