Although Ma Huateng modestly said that Tencent is just an ordinary company, according to the data disclosed in the third quarter report of 2021, Tencent's account still lies 289.5 billion yuan in cash. For a company, such a huge amount of money on the books, how to spend money, formed another kind of anxiety. So in 2021, as far as the public data is concerned, Tencent can be said to be "sprinkling" everywhere with the money in its hands, with a total of 301 investments.
In the automotive industry, Tencent, as the leading investment company, raised 100 million US dollars for Luoke Automobile, the car-making project of Changjing, founder of Stone Technology, and it is said that Tencent invested more than 50 million US dollars in this financing. In fact, today's car-making industry has been full of enterprises or entrepreneurs from all walks of life, and Changjing's joining, perhaps special in that he was once a teammate of Xiaomi, and now he meets in the car-making track, which makes people lament the vagaries of commercial roles.
Hitched a ride on the Xiaomi Express, the listed market value exceeded 100 billion
This time to join the ranks of the car dream changjing, can be regarded as a high-talented student, graduated from South China University of Technology in computer science, after graduation naturally became a software engineer, perhaps the programmer's life is too boring, in 2011, Changjing changed careers in Tencent, as a product manager. Although there have been ventures since then, the more successful is the stone technology founded in 2014.
Stone Technology was established in July, and by September it had already received investment from Xiaomi, and since then it has naturally become a member of the Xiaomi ecological chain, at this time, the identity of Stone Technology is no different from Huami, which makes smart watches, and Yunmi, which does the whole house smart home, and its representative product is the Mijia sweeping robot, which even ranks first in sales of Jingdong and Tmall.
After the spread of millet groceries, millet has a certain brand influence in all walks of life, stone technology on the millet ship, but also to eat millet dividends, to 2020 smooth listing on the science and technology board, since then the market value was as high as 99.2 billion yuan. However, some people also question whether Stone Technology is worthy of this hundred billion market value, after all, it is also a xiaomi ecological chain enterprise, which is also a home, and the highest market value of Yunmi is only about 12 billion yuan.
From Xiaomi teammates to Xiaomi opponents, the market value has fallen sharply by nearly 40 billion
However, for whether stone technology is worthy of a market value of hundreds of billions, it is only questioned by the outside world, for Changjing, he not only wants to push stone technology to a higher peak, but also wants to remove the label of milletization. In fact, after the first Mijia sweeping robot, Stone Technology launched its own brand product Stone Sweeping Robot S5, which was also sold overseas, and then launched the T4 and T6 series, and the innovation of its own brand products was much faster than that of Mijia.
It was not until more than two years after the launch of the first Mijia product that Stone Technology launched two Mijia products in succession, and now that two years have passed, Stone Technology has not made any more efforts for Mijia. However, removing the xiaomian label, for Stone Technology, needs to go through a period of pain. In terms of its operating income growth, the growth rate in 2020 has fallen sharply, only 7.74%, and the net profit growth in the third quarter of 2021 is 12.98%, which is much less than 54.49% in the same period of 2020.
For a company that has just started, the slow growth of profits is not a good omen, and perhaps because of the de-millet labeling, and gradually become a millet rival, shortly after the lifting of the ban on stone technology stocks, the millet shareholders of stone technology began to reduce their holdings, corresponding to the total market value of 1.771 billion yuan, the rest of the shareholders also have a plan to reduce their holdings, the total amount of the reduction accounted for about 11% of the total share capital. It is precisely because of this that the market value of Stone Technology has fallen sharply, and now it is only 58.7 billion yuan.
Rushing into the car-making track, Tencent's investment and financing is just a drop in the bucket
Perhaps trapped by the growth of stone technology, Changjing chose to rush into the car-making track, but unlike Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, and even Li Yinan's Niuchuang Technology and other enterprises, Stone Technology has not formed too much brand effect in recent years, and the industry is only in the sub-category of sweeping robots, so Changjing's car starting point is actually the same as Xiaopeng, Ideal, Weilai, etc. in previous years, but as a latecomer, Changjing's Luoke car situation will be more difficult.
It is reported that the first model of Luoke Automobile will be a off-road model of the benchmark Mercedes-Benz G, and the technical positioning is the same as the ideal range increase, and it is also planned to increase the cruising range to 1000 kilometers through this technology. But this also makes people worry, will this be another "new energy vehicle" with a large fuel tank? Of course, with the ideal delivery volume of 90,491 units in 2021, even so, there is still no shortage of market for such models.
Of course, Luoke Automobile is not like Xiaomi, which has a cash reserve of 108 billion yuan, and plans to invest $10 billion in the future to smash the car-making track. If you want to succeed, the most important thing is to look at its financing ability. Judging from the current cash-burning situation of the new car-making forces, the 100 million US dollars led by Tencent this time is still only a drop in the bucket for Luoke Automobile, and it is too early to make a conclusion about its future at this time.