2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 652 Impressive Investment Data

"Holy crap, is this how prices are going to rise?"

On the last trading day of August, Mr. Tan and his family returned to Ningbo after a week-long trip to Sanya.

Thanks to Gu Qingqing's help, Tan Jincheng's work was much easier during the summer vacation, and he finally had time to take his family on a trip. This time, it was a real vacation to relax and unwind.

It's funny, even though Tan Jinyue, who is almost five years old, has always lived in a coastal city, her concept of the sea was established during this trip.

The whole family, including Gu Qingqing's parents, stayed at a seaside hotel for a week and had a very relaxing time.

Little Tan Jinyue was having a blast.

However, the good days are coming to an end. Tomorrow is the first day of school for her, and so is Gu Qingqing. Without his wife as a good assistant, Boss Tan will be busier than usual, as expected.

Sure enough, as soon as he got back, he received a notice from the district that he was to go to Shanchi, Leichi, and Wei to inspect the factory.

In addition, ByteDance's advertising platform also reported on the returns of some stocks invested in recent months. While it was called a work report, it seemed more like it was flattering the boss.

The stocks selected by Boss Tan saw astonishing gains as the stock market rebounded and industries recovered.

The worst performer was Moutai, which wasn't in the spotlight. However, even so, Moutai's stock price rose from a low of 84 yuan to around 150 yuan, nearly doubling.

The best performer was the unassuming local company Shenzhou Group. Its stock price remained around one yuan from 2008 to 2009, but by the end of August, it had soared to over seven yuan, a sevenfold increase.

"You've made quite a bit of money. I didn't expect Shenzhou to rise so much. It's quite a surprise."

In the study at home, Gu Qingqing and Tan Jincheng were looking at reports together. There was also a little one in the study organizing her things. The little one, who would be entering the middle class in the second half of the year, insisted on bringing her things to the study to organize them.

"It should be related to the start of production at the Wangjiang factory, and also because its gross profit margin is really high."

The Shenzhou Wangjiang factory started construction last October, and the construction speed was quite fast. It officially opened in February this year, and in that month, it recruited 3500 people in Wangjiang and officially hired 2800 workers.

Tan Jincheng didn't know how Shenzhou invested in Wangjiang in his previous life, but he was the one who facilitated the investment in Wangjiang in this life. Expanding production capacity naturally boosted the stock price.

Furthermore, although it is an OEM company, its vertically integrated competitive advantage allows Shenzhou to maintain a gross profit margin of over 30%, which is virtually unbeatable for an OEM company.

An investment of less than HK$9000 million and a 4.94% stake had grown to HK$5.32 million by the end of August, earning a profit of HK$4.43 million.

However, the biggest winner is Tencent, whose stock price has nearly tripled. Tencent is currently the largest holding in the portfolio, with an investment of HK$3.47 million and a current market value of HK$9.82 million.

In addition, the market value of BYD holdings is as high as HK$6.07 million.

Xiangjiang Investment Company initially invested a total of HK$5.57 million, and now its total market value has reached HK$24.212 billion.

Starting preparations in October last year and ending in late August this year, in less than a year, Xiangjiang Investment Company has earned as much as HK$18.64 billion from these three companies alone.

Xiangjiang Investment Company's net profit reached as high as HK$27.35 billion.

The actual value of the stocks, futures, foreign exchange and other derivatives held, as well as cash, totaled HKD 35.77 billion, which is approximately RMB 31.53 billion.

With the exchange rate in 2009, 30 billion could do a lot overseas. This amount of money was considered the personal asset of the Tan Jincheng family and had little to do with the company as a whole.

Tan Jincheng didn't intend to take the money back; he couldn't put all his eggs in one basket. Besides, he planned to invest in some US stocks later.

BYD's stock price has risen too sharply, and this surge is unsustainable. It's more of a speculative frenzy. Tan Jincheng remembers that BYD's stock price remained below HK$20 for a long time to come.

There's no way around it, Buffett is too famous. What the domestic media loves to hype up most is his long-term investment philosophy. Every now and then, when someone needs to take over their investment, they bring it up again to hype it up, using the so-called value investing philosophy to fool retail investors into taking over their investments.

Judging from BYD's stock price trend this year, it seems that Mr. Wang will be the richest man in 2009. The entire automotive industry did not experience explosive growth in 09, but rather slow growth.

New car sales in January were only 73.55 units, far lower than the 86.94 units sold in the same period of 2008. Sales rose to 82.76 units in February, but everything changed starting in March.

The sales volume of 110 million vehicles in March made us the world's largest automobile producer and seller. Since then, we have maintained a monthly sales volume of over one million vehicles. In the first half of the year, there were quite a few single passenger car companies with monthly sales exceeding 5 vehicles.

However, although sales continued to grow in the first half of the year, most of them were small-displacement vehicles. The problem of increased production but not increased revenue has always plagued major car companies. This is also the reason why BYD shares, although they rose quite well in the first half of the year, have not made a breakthrough.

Selling a lot of cars is useless if you can't make money. Car companies need profits to survive. In fact, many people jokingly say that if they can't make money in the second half of the year, then who knows how many car companies will have to close down.

While this statement may sound somewhat sour, it does illustrate the current predicament faced by our domestic brands. Despite their apparent success, we remain at the lowest end of the industrial chain. Some models even earn less than the parts suppliers within that chain.

However, all of this changed in the second half of the year. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday, the profits of vehicle manufacturers doubled year-on-year in the third quarter (June to August). BYD also surged 8% today, with its share price rising to HK$48.60.

“We’ve really made a lot of money. In less than a year, we’ve made over 30 billion. Flash Group struggled to survive last year and didn’t even make as much as these few investments.”

"This is why so many people are unwilling to engage in manufacturing. Our company is considered a high-profit company, but after a year of hard work, I don't even get a share of the profits."

Take FlashTech as an example. Last year, FlashTech's profit was over 6 million yuan, which is considered a top company in the manufacturing industry. However, after deducting the company's operations, if we only consider dividends, not much actually ends up in Tan Jincheng's hands.

With a company this large, profit sharing isn't something the boss can just decide to do; it requires strict calculation.

Since the stock resumed trading last year, it has risen to between 18 and 19 yuan, and Tan Jincheng's holdings alone have a market value of over 45 billion yuan.

There's no need for any unlocking, reduction, or cashing out of this 45 billion. With a little manipulation, such as pledging or other means, Tan Jincheng could easily get 10 billion out.

If you follow Accountant Jia's shamelessness and repeatedly pledge your shares, you could easily cash out the entire amount without any problem. But if these are just dividends, they would take decades to pay out.

Mr. Wang is the same. His listed companies alone include three major sectors: batteries, IT manufacturing, and automobiles. If he catches a trend, the increase in market value alone is enough for him to earn for a lifetime.

With the stock market recovery, the fastest-growing group of people in terms of wealth this year are the owners of listed companies, regardless of the industry. This is especially true for major shareholders like Tan Jincheng, who hold a large number of shares. If the stock price doubles or triples, their wealth will skyrocket.

"If this is done, there will be fewer people doing physical business in the future."

Gu Qingqing sighed, "Selling a million cars is not as profitable as stocks rising for two days. People in Wencheng are even more amazing. Husbands work hard day and night in the factory, but they don't earn as much as their wives by speculating on two houses in Shanghai."

"The trend of industrial development is inevitable, but things are a bit better in Ningbo, where industries are mainly based on the real economy."

Ningbo's financial industry peers are impressive, but fundamentally, it's still the real economy. In addition, Ningbo's leaders are quite clear-headed. Take Beicang as an example, for a long time, the housing prices in the entire district were kept at a level much lower than those in comparable cities.

Take Luzhou as an example. Before 2016, Luzhou was a legendary city. In 2016, housing prices soared, ranking among the top in the country in terms of price increase. Since then, the city has become unsuitable for workers or entrepreneurs.

With a salary of a few thousand yuan, and looking at houses that cost tens of thousands of yuan per square meter, who wouldn't feel desperate?

Tan Jincheng doesn't want to get involved in real estate, partly due to his own reasons, and partly because there's not much to speculate on in Beicang's houses. They're currently around 8,000 or 9,000 yuan per square meter, or even 10,000 yuan per square meter. By 2023, most places will only be around 15,000 or 16,000 yuan per square meter. At most, they'll double in value. Why not do something else?
"What should we do with this money? Should we continue to invest it?"

"Well, let's not bring it back. Let's continue investing outside. When necessary, we'll sell some of BYD and buy a few US-listed tech companies. We also need to raise some money for Huang Ming."

Tan Jincheng plans to invest in lithium resources through ByteDance's overseas investment channels, but he can also use his own funds to support the investment if necessary.

Tuesday, May 9th.

On the first day of school, Tan Jincheng and Gu Qingqing sent their little girl, Tan Jinyue, to kindergarten. Now in the middle class, little Tan Jinyue no longer resists going to school.

Two red S7 sports cars parked in front of the kindergarten certainly attracted the attention of passersby.

In Beicang District, almost everyone knows that only the Flash Group owns three of these extravagantly styled sports cars. And when two of them appear together at the kindergarten gate, it undoubtedly belongs to the excessively young CEO of the Flash Group and his wife.

Speaking of Tan Jincheng, he's quite the showman. Ever since the Guangzhou Auto Show last year announced that he now owns Sailing, Tan Jincheng has always driven that red S7 whenever he goes out, and so has Gu Qingqing.

Zhang Xupeng didn't like driving. Firstly, he often needed to travel for work, and secondly, when he did, people would always mistake him for Tan Jincheng or Gu Qingqing, which felt very awkward.

"Remember to listen to your teachers at school and eat well, okay? Your brother will pick you up tonight."

Tan Jincheng patted Jin Yue's head. The little girl, carrying her little schoolbag, was already eager to see her friends.

"Okay, brother, hurry up and take sister to school."

The child's clear, crisp voice uttered words that elicited strange expressions from the teachers and parents waiting at the kindergarten gate.

Tan and Gu remained calm and composed. They patted her head, chatted with the teacher for a few minutes, and then got into their respective cars, slowly driving towards the city.

After the couple's car drove away, one of the parents couldn't help but whisper, "Hey, the wife of this billionaire CEO is still a student. I wouldn't have remembered if you didn't tell me."

What a dreamlike scene! After dropping his sister off at school, he then dropped his wife off at school.

(End of this chapter)