In the blink of an eye, the balance of 2021 has been less than 10 days, the cold wave everywhere is menacing, and the wave of layoffs from Various Internet companies is also particularly cold.
But in this downturn, an unexpected company actually stood up against the wind - on December 21, LeEco's internal information flowed out, saying that LeEco's operations were in good shape this year, reaching a number of annual operating targets ahead of schedule, and said: "Without considering the impact of historical debt, the latest revenue data has achieved a double balance of operating profit and cash flow, which is the first time in the past few years, which is of great significance." ”
Subsequently, @LeTV Video and @Letv posted weibo separately, announcing their salary increases with the same big red poster.
Brushing a wave of presence is not enough, today (22nd) LeTV released a poster again, announcing that it will not lay off employees.
In a series of black histories such as financial fraud and delisting, and a bunch of debts, LeTV's sudden "small luck" has blinded everyone.
01 LeEco is turning losses into profits?
When the epidemic came in 2020, in order to reduce operating costs, LeEco carried out a round of salary cuts for employees with a monthly salary of more than 30,000 yuan, and although there was no salary reduction for employees with a monthly salary of less than 30,000 yuan, all kinds of subsidies for all employees were cancelled.
Although the "salary increase" is loud and loud, but carefully observing the LeTV announcement, in fact, it is just to make up for the part of the salary reduction that was cancelled, whether it can really be regarded as a "salary increase", but also marked with a big question mark.
When it comes to LeTV, many people's first reaction is the "12.2 billion huge debt" incident in early 2020.
At that time, the Internet company was still in full swing, sparing no effort to pull the new, and the major companies had played "XX billion" advertisements to stimulate the growth of new users; but LeEco went against the trend and wrote "12.2 billion" on the logo of its own App, becoming a maverick "different fireworks".
Nearly two years later, the new crown pneumonia is still raging around the world, the Internet giants are also a big wave, but leTV, which has been hidden for a long time, suddenly publicized its "salary increase" and "no layoffs", which is nothing more than to convey a message to the outside world: "We really made money this year." ”
You can think that LeEco is poor and rich, you can also think of this as a wave of hype, but there is a saying that LeEco has not had a good time in recent years - even in this year's semi-annual report, they still lost 186 million.
Through internal letters, we found that LeEco's loss situation seems to have really improved in the second half of the year.
The above LeTV internal letter text is relatively large, the list sister overall look down, feel that LeTV has indeed created a clear atmosphere of Internet companies, do not engage in 996, promote nine to six, encourage employees to take care of the family, support everyone "two children" and "three children", is very in line with the general policy. In addition, LeEco does not change its optimism spirit, full of humor, especially mentioned that "it is not strange to be ridiculed by friends about the founder of the company." I don't know how Jia Yueting, who is far away in the United States, reacted to this sudden beingqueled.
According to the internal letter, in November 2021, LeTV's TV terminal operation, mobile terminal operation, advertising commercialization and other businesses have reached their annual operating targets ahead of schedule, and this year has achieved a positive change in profit and cash flow, and the reason why it can turn around losses and recover profits is mainly due to two aspects, one is hardware, the other is content.
The letter stressed that a series of crashes caused by the breakage of the capital chain made LeTV choose to bid farewell to the Internet's money-burning expansion model and pursue down-to-earth business instead - this is a big truth, but also a helpless move, after all, with LeEco's current situation, it is not realistic to want to go to the money-burning model.
On the hardware side, LeTV's intelligent ecology is making a comeback. Taking the LeTV mobile phone that has fought again as an example, the main focus is long endurance and large capacity, rather than the high intelligence of the mainstream of the market, which is to avoid the high-end smart machine market that has long become the Red Sea.
On the content side, under the fierce competition between long video and short video, LeTV Video, the core business of LeTV, has abandoned the costly buyout model, but has chosen to cooperate with the copyright owner to ensure the new and iterative video at the lowest cost. At the same time, short videos are also included to further absorb users.
Overall, there are rich ways to live, there is a lack of money and a lack of money, and LeTV is also an excellent representative of spending a small amount of money to live a life.
At its peak, LeTV had nearly 27,000 people and a market value of 100 billion, which was one of the big Internet manufacturers. With the subsequent exposure of financial fraud, the break of the capital chain, the loss of delisting and other unbearable past, the current company's personnel have plummeted to less than 1,000 people, and the scale has shrunk to the size of a start-up company.
02 LeTV's ups and downs
When it comes to LeEco, we have to mention its founder Jia Yueting.
In 2004, Jia Yueting registered and founded LeTV in Beijing, after nearly 6 years of development, in 2010, LeTV was listed on the A-share market, becoming the first video company in China's A-share market, with a market value of 150 billion. Jia Yueting took LeTV all the way to a drastic expansion, extending its tentacles to major areas of the Internet.
However, the good times are not long, and the "LeTV ecosystem" is overwhelmed by the rapid pace of development, misestimating the return cycle, relying too much on burning money to pursue scale, and the flow of funds is too dispersed, resulting in the overall overwhelm.
In 2016, the LeTV capital chain crisis broke out, LeTV failed to save itself, Jia Yueting left the United States to catch up with the dream of building a car, leaving LeTV in deep losses.
At the end of 2018 and 2019, LeTV's net assets, net profits, and deducted non-net profits were all negative, and in the case of a qualified opinion issued in the annual report, on May 14, 2020, LeTV shares were terminated by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
In April 2021, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) made public the results of the investigation into LeEco's financial fraud, which had been investigated for two years, involving five illegal facts:
1. LeTV's financial fraud from 2007 to 2016, and the relevant documents submitted and disclosed by LeTV for initial public offering of shares and listing (hereinafter referred to as IPO) and the annual report from 2010 to 2016 have false records;
2. LeTV failed to disclose related party transactions in accordance with regulations;
3. LeTV has not disclosed the guarantee provided for LeTV Holdings and other companies;
4. LeTV did not truthfully disclose the performance of loan commitments by Jia Moufang and Jia Yueting to the listed company;
5. LeTV's non-public issuance of shares in 2016 constitutes a fraudulent issuance.
Among them, nearly 10 years of financial fraud from 2007 to 2016 were rare in the entire history of A-shares, and the huge fines totaling 480 million yuan also set a record for the highest fines for A-shares at that time.
In addition to Jia Yueting's punishment, 13 other leTV executives at the time were given warnings and fines, including the financial director, vice chairman, supervisor, secretary of the board, vice president, independent director of LeTV at that time.
At the end of November, the LeEco building finally fell to the hammer after being terminated by several auctions, but it remained insolvent. Under the operation of "PPT dreamer" Boss Jia, LeEco can be called a creditor, and the bond relationship is in a mess.
The domestic LeTV debt has not been paid off, and Boss Jia's car-making business abroad has also been frustrated. Chuck McBride, CFO of FF, said that as of September 30, 2021, FF (Faraday Future) had accumulated losses of about $2.8 billion, and the company expects to continue to generate significant operating losses in the future.
Jia Yueting, who has always been rumored to "return to China next week", has not yet returned.
03 Conclusion
It is worth mentioning that the two main companies that announced salary increases and no layoffs are LeTV and Lerong new electronic technology, and do not include Jia Yueting's private company LeTV Holdings. At present, LeTV and Lerong have sent letters to two professional managers who manage the two original companies, and they have nothing to do with Jia Yueting himself.
In lerong zhixin (@Letv) salary increase Weibo, it was boldly said that this time it would benchmark the Internet manufacturer.
But even this year, when the double balance of revenue and profit and cash flow was announced, LeEco still has a large amount of arrears to repay. Enterprise investigations show that among the affiliated enterprises of LeTV TV, there are still many judgment debtors, untrustworthy information, and restricted high consumption information.
LeEco still has a long way to go if it wants to get through the winter completely.