2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 248 The Entry Point to the Internet

"What are you looking at? It's all so colorful."

On Sunday, after playing with Tan Jinyue in the living room for a while, Gu Qingqing followed the direction the little guy was walking and came to the study, where she saw Tan Jincheng staring blankly at the colorful screen on the computer.

Tan Jinyue, who is not afraid of people and is not shy, has become more and more familiar with Gu Qingqing in the past two days and has already started calling her "sister".

"Looking at stocks," Tan Jincheng replied, snapping out of his reverie.

"You also bought stocks? How much did you buy?" Gu Qingqing asked, somewhat shocked.

Buying stocks these days is not a good thing. In fact, even buying stocks more than ten years later is not a good thing. There is a saying that goes, "No matter what sins you committed in your past life, you will pay them off by investing in stocks in this life."

Therefore, no one else knows about the stocks that Tan Jincheng bought, not even Zhang Xupeng, with whom he shares everything.

Seeing Gu Qingqing's expression, Tan Jincheng also smiled: "Don't be afraid, I just want to buy a little to learn about it. FlashTech will definitely go public in the future, and I can't be completely ignorant about this stuff, that would definitely not work."

Gu Qingqing then realized that with Tan Jincheng's current wealth, losing money on stocks wasn't a big deal. So she curiously stepped forward and asked, "What did you buy? Did you lose money or make a profit?"

"I lost money for a year, but now I've somehow made a 38% profit," Tan Jincheng said, pointing to the computer screen.

"How much is that?" Gu Qingqing didn't know either, but 38% was already quite a lot.

"I bought 5 shares of Moutai and have been stuck with them for a year. Now there's some good news, and I'm making 12.5 yuan per share, which means I've made 87.5 yuan."

"You made so much money?" Gu Qingqing was somewhat shocked.

"Haha, yes, it's really amazing." Tan Jincheng also laughed heartily.

Although the amount of money wasn't much, I was still very happy, even though I was like a retail investor who gets taken advantage of. I also made money on QQ stocks, but it didn't make as much of a difference as the A-shares market, which is closer to me.

Damn it, after trading stocks for two lifetimes, I've finally made money! After being beaten up by retail investors for years, I've finally turned the tables thanks to some cheat code!

I just read the announcement about the reason for Moutai's recent surge. The announcement was, of course, the same as the one I saw in my previous life, released after trading was suspended, meaning someone knew the news in advance.

The reason for the price increase is also quite bizarre: a high stock dividend. Moutai will implement a stock dividend along with this round of dividends, and the amount is quite large, 10 for 10! Compared with this, the initial dividend of 3 yuan per 10 shares is negligible.

However, after the ex-rights date, that is, after the share distribution, Moutai will distribute dividends again, and this time the amount will be even greater, at 5.91 yuan per 10 shares, which is quite interesting.

Unexpectedly, Moutai made such a generous transfer, which was beyond Tan Jincheng's memory, and he was lucky enough to catch it.

So after the stock split, I'll have 10 shares? Damn, isn't this free? What incredible luck!

Not only did I earn over 80 yuan, but I also gained 5 more shares. I can also receive 7.41 yuan in dividends from the two distributions. And I don't have to pay taxes if I hold the shares for more than a year. That's pretty good.

It's unclear whether the price will rise after trading resumes, but the dividend payment date, which is also the ex-rights date, has been set for May 19th, with the second dividend payment on May 24th.

After May 24th, just use the dividend money to buy more shares. This time, Tan Jincheng wants to buy more, at least another 100,000 shares. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

As for the funds needed to buy 10 shares, Tan Jincheng is not short of them at present. With a profit margin of 38% on Moutai shares, it is easy to raise a few million yuan through pledging, financing, or other means.

Once you have hundreds of millions of yuan in assets and plenty of cash flow, you're really not short of money. Investment projects worth a few million yuan are just a drop in the ocean for you.

"You should play less of this. Just learn about it and don't put too much effort into it." Seeing Tan Jincheng so happy, Gu Qingqing couldn't help but laugh and scold him.

"What's wrong? Are you already acting like a housekeeper?"

"Who will manage the household? My dad said that people who speculate in stocks make little money and lose a lot. Who would want to go public and give away shares to others when the company is making money?"

"Haha, what Dad said isn't entirely unreasonable, but we can't generalize. Finance has its advantages, it depends on how you use it. Take Flash Technology, for example, it will definitely go public in the future. I can use the money raised from the IPO to develop new projects, such as investing in research and development to create better products. That's called finance supporting industry."

"Finance supporting the real economy?"

"Yes, the money raised in the financial market can be invested in local construction or scientific research. For example, our company now has the qualifications to produce automobiles. If we want to manufacture automobiles in the future or expand into new businesses, then the money raised by Flash Technology in its IPO can be used for these purposes, which will benefit the company's development."

When will FlashDrive Technology be able to go public?

"It's still a long way from going public. If we go through the normal procedures to go public, we need to operate normally for at least three years and meet certain profit standards. Under normal circumstances, the earliest FlashTech can go public is 2009."

This is the fastest possible prediction, but there's no benefit to going public in the next two years. The stock market will reach a historic high in 2007, but it will be very sluggish in 2008 due to the global financial crisis. Therefore, going public in 2009 or later is actually the best choice. Let's make the most of the years with the highest profits in electric vehicles and accumulate some capital. The 2008 financial crisis had a significant impact on the world, but not so much on our country.

The 4 trillion yuan stimulus plan brought great development opportunities to the domestic economy during this period, with all industries developing rapidly. This was also a major opportunity for FlashTech. Before the 4 trillion yuan stimulus plan was introduced, it was best to focus on real industry investments and avoid the financial sector.

"Is this all you think about when you look at stocks? I feel like you're lying to me. The way you seemed excited about making money just now didn't seem like it at all."

"Really? You're overthinking it. Of course I'm happy when I make money."

This girl is too smart! She figured it out. Looks like I should look at stocks less in the future. But you really can't look at this stuff too much. The more you look, the more annoyed you get. You might sell it any day. Buying and then just pretending not to see it is the best strategy.

"Let's not talk about that anymore, let's talk about something serious," Tan Jincheng quickly changed the subject.

"What's the matter?"

"Orange Technology, you're interested in that, aren't you?"

"You've got a starting point?" Once this topic came up, Gu Qingqing stopped thinking about stocks and was successfully drawn in.

New energy vehicles are different from traditional fuel vehicles. In the future, car manufacturing will be inseparable from the Internet. Technologies such as intelligent driving assistance, autonomous driving, and remote control are all inseparable from the Internet.

Electrification and intelligentization are the future trends of automobiles, a fact that Tan Jincheng is aware of. Therefore, no matter how they manufacture cars, they cannot avoid the Internet, which is why he founded Orange Technology.

Orange Technology is nothing at the moment; the key is how to enter the market.

"Okay, I've got it. What do you think of the game?" Tan Jincheng asked with a smile.

In the Web 2.0 era, it was still a few years before the Android system and smartphones were launched. At that time, most people still mainly used PCs to access the internet, and making games was one of the best ways to make money.

The sudden turn of events for QQ's future actually lies here.

"Games? Like Legend of Mir and Fantasy Westward Journey?"

Zhang Xupeng was addicted to Fantasy Westward Journey for a while, and would occasionally reminisce about his experience of playing Legend of Mir with Tan Jincheng after class at gatherings. Therefore, Gu Qingqing was not unfamiliar with online games.

"The two types you mentioned, one is agency and the other is self-developed, neither of which are suitable for us. If it's agency, people may not be willing to give good games to a small, unknown company like us. Even if we do get the agency, we can't afford the agency fee."

As for developing it independently, that's even more difficult. Developing a large-scale game independently would definitely take several years, by which time it would be too late.

It seems that Legend initially acquired the agency rights for a huge amount of money. Later, it appears that the two parties parted ways on bad terms because they couldn't agree on the agency fee. So, Mr. Chen simply set up an identical operation himself, which resulted in a lawsuit that lasted for many years.

Coupled with various factors such as cheating, the game ultimately collapsed due to internal conflicts and external factors.

In Tan Jincheng's view, the agency model is not a particularly good one. Before its rebirth, NetEase had a falling out with Blizzard over agency issues, and both sides, including game fans, suffered losses.

When it comes to making games, it's more suitable to develop them yourself. Even if you just take someone else's game and "modify" it like QQ does, at least there will be fewer disputes in the subsequent operation.

"Then what should we do? How can we break through?"

"There are still ways. We don't need to make these big games. We can make some small games, like the Dou Dizhu game on Lianzhong, or other games. The investment cost is not high, and even if they don't become popular, we won't lose much money."

"Oh, so you're thinking of taking a small risk for a big return, and you're not planning to invest too much money in oranges?" Gu Qingqing said suddenly.

"Yes, it's about using small resources to achieve big results; that's the foundation of our survival."

The development difficulty and cycle of mini-games should not be that long, and the talent required is not that exaggerated. Programmers, artists and some other technical talents can basically handle it.

Although Tan Jincheng doesn't understand technology, he has foresight.

In 2006, there was no Happy Farm, no Plants vs. Zombies, and certainly no Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, Temple Run, or Talking Tom for smartphones.

The development of these small games alone has enabled Orange Technology to establish itself on the internet, earn substantial cash flow, and gain a reputation.

The first mini-game that Tan Jincheng is currently preparing to develop is Happy Farm. As for QQ borrowing it later, it's okay. We can just sell it to them at a high price, since it's a money-making scheme after all.

(End of this chapter)