Figure Source 丨 Figure worm
Remember? On July 20 last year, "the dream finally suffocated", listed for 10 years, once a market value of hundreds of billions of LeTV was officially delisted.
When everyone thought that the LeEco brand would just disappear from the crowd and then disappear on the Internet. On December 21, LeTV Video, Letv, and LeTV Intelligent Ecological Weibo accounts simultaneously released posters for salary increases, and claimed to be benchmarking Internet manufacturers, which also attracted a lot of attention for a while.
At the same time, a letter to all employees issued by LeEco's human resources department circulated online. It claims to be a benchmark Internet manufacturer, which officially resumed after the Spring Festival last year due to the reduction of wages and the cancellation of subsidies due to the epidemic.
The letter said that since the outbreak of the company's capital crisis to the epidemic last year, in order to reduce costs, the company had to take several layoff measures, and at the beginning of the epidemic in early 2020, the company had to cut salaries and stop issuing various subsidies, with a salary reduction of nearly 10%. Now, it is very pleased to inform you that after the Spring Festival next year, we will resume the salary cuts and subsidies of all employees during the epidemic last year.
According to the enterprise investigation APP, the affiliated enterprise of LeTV TV is Lerongzhi New Electronic Technology (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., which was established in February 2012, and LeTV Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. holds 25.11% of the shares, making it the second largest shareholder of the company. At present, the company still has judgment debtors, untrustworthy information, and restricted high consumption information, and the total amount of execution is 12.9585 million yuan.
According to the enterprise investigation, the associated enterprise of LeTV Video is LeTV New Generation (Beijing) Culture Media Co., Ltd., which was established in 2015 and wholly owned by Holgus LeTV New Generation Culture Media Co., Ltd. and indirectly held by LeTV Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
LeEco hardware is back in the public eye
The above-mentioned internal letter also mentioned that LeTV has achieved a positive change in profits and cash flow this year, mainly for two reasons: one is hardware, LeTV intelligent ecology has returned to the public eye, new categories, new products have been listed, sales should be good; second, content, in November 2021, TV terminal operations, mobile terminal operations, advertising commercialization and other businesses have reached the annual business targets ahead of schedule.
On the hardware side, LeTV mobile phones have also "quietly" re-listed.
On September 28 this year, LeEco released its first nationally produced mobile phone S1.
However, the current market is no longer the original market, and the domestic smartphone market has long been a red sea.
LeTV this model is mainly aimed at long endurance, large capacity, the face of the customer base should be takeaway brother, online car drivers, parents a generation, the pricing is also a low-end price of thousands of yuan machine.
It can be seen that LeTV's current strategy is not as imaginative as in the past, but it is more stable.
It is worth mentioning that in the internal letter, LeEco put forward a reflection on the company's business philosophy: whether the scale exchanged for continuous burning money and huge losses is sustainable and whether it is truly responsible for users is debatable. According to an internal letter, LeEco has been working towards another goal in recent years: to become a company with positive cash flow, breakeven and sustainable development. Only in this way can we go steady and far, can we gain the trust of users, truly serve users, and become good friends with users. It can be seen that today's LeTV has bid farewell to the Internet burning money expansion model, and instead pursues positive cash flow and profits, and does a good job in business.
It is worth noting that the main companies of this salary increase include LeTV and LeRongzhixin, and do not include Jia Yueting's private company LeEco Holdings. The above two main companies are now managed by the professional managers of the original company, and Jia Yueting is not involved. LeTV's current core business is LeTV video, and Le Rongzhi's core business is LeTV's intelligent ecosystem, including television.
In the wave of the Internet, there is no eternal winner, only the upstart on the outlet. One is the forerunner of film and television drama copyright and online dramas, one is the pioneer of Internet television, LeTV and LeRongzhixin once stood in the wind outlet, after 5 years of war finally ushered in the dawn, whether it can usher in the next 5 years of popularity, it is worth looking forward to.
Jia Yueting has accumulated a loss of 2.8 billion US dollars
Mention leTV, will inevitably think of its founder Jia Yueting. He still continues to "dream of building cars" in the United States.
At 5:00 a.m. Beijing time on December 8, Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc., a new car manufacturer founded by Jia Yueting. (Faraday Future, hereinafter referred to as "FF", NASDAQ transaction code: FFIE) held a business update communication meeting online and disclosed the company's financial position after the IPO for the first time.
According to its Chief Financial Officer Chuck McBride, FF expects total assets of approximately $1.1 billion, including approximately $667 million in cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2021. As of December 31, 2020, FF's total assets were approximately $316 million, an increase attributable to the completion of the business merger with PSAC and the completion of proceeds from related PIPE financings.
FF expects total liabilities of approximately $354 million as of September 30, 2021, compared to approximately $896 million as of December 31, 2020, representing a decrease of $542 million.
"The decrease in total liabilities was due to the completion of the settlement of supplier trusts, certain notes payable and notes payable by related parties through the issuance of shares and the payment of cash." Chuck McBride said.
In addition, FF said that from its establishment in 2014 to September 30, 2021, FF's cumulative loss was about $2.8 billion, and it is expected to continue to generate serious operating losses in the foreseeable future. At least $1.5 billion more is needed to advance the FF81 and FF71 projects, up from a previous estimate of $1.4 billion.
However, FF global CEO Carsten Breitfeld said that the first truly high-end global luxury electric vehicle manufacturer is not Maybach, not Rolls-Royce or Porsche, Maserati, but Faraday Future, FF currently has sufficient funds to support the mass production of its first model FF91.
"The Hanford plant is going well and we have ample cash support to complete production by July FF 91. It is believed that when it is put into production in July 2022, the FF 91 will be the first leader to enter the luxury electric vehicle market. Bifukang said its first flagship store will be located in Beverly Hills, California.
It is worth noting that since its establishment 7 years ago, Jia Yueting and FF's road ahead has not been smooth.
Since May 2014, after FF registered for business in California, jia Yueting carried the banner of China's new car-making forces and marched all the way; however, with the outbreak of the LeTV capital chain crisis at the end of 2016, Jia Yueting went to the United States, and FF traveled to the brink of life and death several times.
Despite the successful backdoor listing in July this year, FF has been questioned several times in the past five months.
On October 7 this year, J Capital Research, a SHORT-selling agency in the United States, released a 28-page report on FF, expressing doubts about FF from multiple angles such as production capacity, capital operation performance, and R&D investment, and believed that "FF cannot sell even one car."
"It's nothing more than a barrel of money raised from American investors and then pouring the money into a debt black hole created by its founder, Jia Yueting, China's best-known securities fraudster." Short-selling agency J Capital Research said in FF's short selling report that after on-site visits, analysis of the company's financial data and various capabilities, and combined with a series of capital operations after the listing, they believe that FF cannot sell even one car.
The short-selling report pointed out that after three visits to FF's Hanford plant in California between August and September, no progress was found, and the relevant person in charge of the company also said that there were still engineering problems to be solved.
But earlier, FF promised to restart the plant within 7 months and mass-produce electric vehicles.
In response, Jia Yueting responded: "Cold rice is hot and fried, which is nonsense. ”
However, the impact of the short selling report on FF has not been eliminated.
A month later, FF received a delisting warning letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and because FF did not file a third-quarter financial report within the specified time limit, it was alleged that the company did not comply with the NASDAQ listing rules, and required the company to file a third-quarter financial report within 60 days, otherwise it may be required to delist.
In response, FF said that the company has filed a document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on November 15 to explain the reasons for the delay in releasing the third-quarter earnings report. FF said in the filing that the company is investigating allegations of inaccurate disclosures from short-selling agencies, so it postponed the filing of the third quarter earnings report. Earnings reports will not be submitted until the end of the investigation, but when the investigation will be concluded, Faraday Future said it is not yet certain.
In the explanatory documents, FF disclosed its third-quarter loss of $280 million (about 1.788 billion yuan) and emphasized its goal of delivering the first FF91 in July 2022.
However, due to the impact of short selling reports and "delisting" risks, FF's market value has been cut. As of December 8, FF's share price was only $5.56, and its market value fell to $1.83 billion, which is nearly 60% lower than the total market value of $1.398 per share and about $4.5 billion at the july listing price.
21 Caiwenhui Synthesized from: 21st Century Business Herald (reporter Du Qiaomei), Beijing Youth Daily (reporter Zhang Xin)
Editor of this issue is Feng Zhanpeng