"No one asks questions in the poor and downtown areas, and the rich have distant relatives in the mountains," Zhou Qunfei blurted out a sentence when confronted with questions.
From being born in a cold door, the father was blown up into a disability, the mother was overwhelmed to commit suicide, and then to the accumulation of 20,000 yuan by part-time work, step by step, leaning on mobile phone giants such as Motorola, Nokia and Apple, until becoming the richest woman in China with a net worth of 50 billion, perhaps no one can understand the meaning of this sentence better than Zhou Qunfei, the founder of Lens Technology.
However, "success is also fruit chain, defeat is also fruit chain". As of the close of trading on April 22, Lansi Technology, which is mainly engaged in the production and sales of high-end touch protective glass panels, the stock price fell by 4.85% to 10.8 yuan / share, with a total market value of only 53.7 billion yuan, which has plunged 53% this year alone, achieving "waist chopping", and the market value has evaporated by 60.5 billion yuan, which also makes Zhou Qunfei, as the actual controller, lose tens of billions of net worth.
01, net profit waist cut
"Look at people's faces and eat" is not easy to do, and want to transform and fight bayonets with "friend businessmen"
"Success is also fruit chain, defeat is also fruit chain", this may be the price that Lens Technology, which is an important member of the "fruit chain", should pay.
From 2017 to 2020, Apple's revenue contribution to Lens Technology exceeded 40%, and it is its largest customer. It is precisely because of this that the net profit of Lens Technology has increased from 600 million yuan in 2018 to 4.95 billion yuan in 2020, and the stock price has also risen from 5.74 yuan / share in early 2019 to a high point of 40.86 yuan / share in early 2021, enjoying the dividends brought by it.
However, in recent times, with the weak sales of mobile phones including Apple, and the impact of a series of factors such as the production of iPhone 13 in India, where labor is cheaper, the performance and stock prices of many "fruit chain" constituent stocks, including Lens Technology, Ling Yizhi Manufacturing, Goertek shares, Luxun Precision, etc., have suffered different degrees of corrections.
According to the 2021 performance report, Lens Technology achieved revenue of 45.286 billion yuan, although it increased by 22.6% year-on-year, but the net profit was only 2.088 billion yuan, down 57.36% year-on-year, also exceeding the "waist slash line". In this regard, Lens Technology gave many reasons, including rising labor costs, increased research and development projects, new park operations, supply chain fluctuations, epidemics, power rationing and other comprehensive factors.
Liu Yuan, chief analyst of Ictime, once said, "Because of the lack of core and materials, Apple considers the cost problem and lowers the price of some suppliers with strong substitution." For comparison, Apple's net profit in 2021 was 591.7 billion yuan, compared with 358.8 billion yuan in the same period last year, up 65% year-on-year. The gross profit margin of Goertek in 2021 was only 14.13%, which once again refreshed the new low since the listing.
In fact, this kind of "looking at people's faces and eating" is not easy to do, and if you are not careful, you may be smashed by the "owner".
Just in January this year, OFILM also released a 2021 performance forecast, with an estimated loss of 1.9 billion to 2.7 billion yuan, mainly due to the impact of the termination of the procurement relationship by specific overseas customers, and the shipment of related products fell sharply year-on-year. As early as March last year, OFILM was exposed to encountering "overseas specific customers" to run orders, and then confirmed that it was excluded from the supply chain by Apple.
This rather passive situation made Zhou Qunfei once again have a strong sense of crisis. After the fruit chain business was affected, Lens Technology began to actively transform, trying to diversify its layout to seek new profit growth points, and said that it made progress in the metal business, new energy vehicle business, intelligent terminal assembly business, and photovoltaic new energy business.
On April 7, Lens Technology also revealed that it intends to increase the total investment of the "Changsha (II) Park Smart Wearable and Touch Function Panel Construction Project" from 1.515 billion yuan to 5.406 billion yuan, further adding to the layout of the VR/AR smart wearable field, and is regarded by the industry as a move to "bet" on the meta-universe.
In fact, it is not Lens Technology that is eyeing this "fragrant food". Goertek began to lay out VR as early as 2012, and Luxshare Precision also entered the field of wearable devices in 2014, and announced in February this year that 3.5 billion yuan of the proposed increase of no more than 13.5 billion yuan was invested in smart wearable device production projects.
If when working for Apple, the above companies are mainly divided into labor, and it is likely that they will belong to the competitive state of "fighting bayonets" in the future. It seems that even on the road of transformation, Zhou Qunfei still has to face a lot of pressure, but for this "migrant girl" who came from a poor background and has come to today's step by step, what is more difficult.
02, cold door migrant girl
He lost his mother at an early age, his father had a disability, and he worked to save 20,000 yuan to start a business
In 1970, Zhou Qunfei was born in a small mountain village in Xiangxiang Township, Hunan Province, and was born in a proper cold door.
Before Zhou Qunfei was born, his father had an accident due to homemade explosives, was blown off two fingers, and his eyes were almost blind. Since then, the heavy responsibility of life has begun to tilt towards the mother, until Zhou Qunfei was 5 years old, and the mother under the pressure could no longer bear all this, so she chose to commit suicide. But life still has to go on, but the burden will fall on whose shoulders.
In order to share the pressure, but also to educate the children, the father made a promise that whoever raised a pig would be rewarded with 10 yuan. To this end, the young Zhou Qunfei wakes up early every day, will first cut a basket of pig grass to feed the pigs, and then rush after school to feed the pigs. Of course, my father was not idle, even if he dragged his disabled body, he also visited 8 masters to learn different crafts to subsidize the family.
Life taught Zhou Qunfei to chew on suffering, and spent that unforgettable childhood in the process of toiling and running.
Even with such hard work, the family's life did not improve until the 1980s, when Zhou Qun, who was forced to drop out of school, flew south to Guangdong to make a living. However, she did not give up the opportunity to study, and chose her first job at the Aoya Optical Factory, because it was close to Shenzhen University, she could work during the day and study in the adult night school class at night.
In just four years, Zhou Qunfei not only became a factory supervisor, obtaining a series of documents such as accounting certificates and customs declaration certificates, but also typing 150 words a minute. With the gradual growth, Zhou Qunfei, who has a certain experience, gradually began to tire of this boring job, "a piece of ordinary glass raw materials, and then cut, shaped, polished, you can ship", which for her, can no longer learn anything useful, ready to leave.
At this moment, the boss left Zhou Qunfei on the grounds of promotion, making her the head of the screen printing department, a new department that was in preparation. This is not only a new beginning, but also a new challenge, and all the pressure falls on Zhou Qunfei's shoulders. Books are the ladder of human progress, this sentence is verified from Zhou Qunfei, every time she encounters a problem, she will look for it in the book called "Screen Printing", and solve the dilemma of craftsmanship with a few words.
Since then, special glass processing has gradually become Zhou Qunfei's "iron rice bowl", which is still the revenue pillar of Lens Technology.
In the 1990s, with the blessing of the reform dividend, Shenzhen began to pour in a large number of outsiders, and Zhou Qunfei also became a member of the army of thousands of dreams. With her relatives and friends, she rented a three-bedroom and one-room apartment in Bao'an District, Shenzhen, and relied on 20,000 yuan of start-up funds to start screen printing. "Women live in large rooms, men sleep in small rooms, living rooms become workshops, and kitchens become canteens," Zhou Qunfei recalled many years later.
Subsequently, Zhou Qunfei also went door-to-door to pull customers, accumulating funds and experience while exploring, and the capital snowball also rolled bigger and bigger. Until the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis, some customers in arrears used old equipment to pay off their debts, and Zhou Qunfei formed these old equipment into a glass processing production line and cut into the whole chain of glass processing.
03. The richest woman in China was born
After going public with Apple, he was married to a male leader in his teens
Relying on her parents at home and relying on her friends when she goes out, although her parents only gave Zhou Qunfei suffering, her friends gave her real help.
"Hunan Daily" reported that in the early 21st century, when a friend of Zhou Qunfei received an order for the TCL flip phone panel, due to insufficient production capacity, he distributed it at a dinner, and Zhou Qunfei also got a part of it. With his grasp of glass processing performance and craftsmanship, Zhou Qunfei transplanted familiar watch glass to his mobile phone and succeeded.
After this battle, Zhou Qunfei accumulated fame in the mobile phone cover processing industry.
In 2003, Motorola prepared to launch a V3 mobile phone, requiring the glass screen to fall at a certain height and not to break, and it could not hurt people when it was broken during use. Zhou Qunfei, who got the news, fought for several days and nights in a row, and finally developed a new process and became the exclusive supplier of Motorola Windows lenses. After landing on Motorola, Zhou Qunfei's business was greatly expanded in an instant, and Lens Technology was born.
Speaking of which, Lens is actually a transliteration of Lens English Lens, "This name is taken so that foreign merchants can jump out of Lens's name when searching for Lens on the Internet," Zhou Qunfei explained. With the sales of hundreds of millions of V3 units, it not only makes the glass cover become the mainstream of mobile phone configuration, but also lays the industry status of Zhou Qunfei. Subsequently, mainstream international brands such as Nokia and Samsung have also become customers of Lens.
As for how to get on Apple, the smartphone giant, it is actually from a chance.
In 2007, when Apple launched the first generation of smart phones, it also put forward more stringent requirements for glass touch screen technology, and many foundries could not produce products required by Apple. At that time, the business of Lens Technology has formed a certain scale, Apple looked for Zhou Qunfei to try it, and she really met the requirements, Apple has signed a contract with Lens Technology since then, and more and more orders.
In March 2015, Lens Technology successfully landed on the A-share GEM, and it was also this year that Zhou Qunfei topped the Hurun Female Rich List with a net worth of 50 billion yuan, becoming the new richest woman in China.
Zhou Qunfei, who has been successful in his career, has also gained love. After falling on the apple, Zhou Qunfei married Zheng Junlong, who was 2 years younger than himself. Zheng Junlong is also a Hunan native, since 1994 and Zhou Qunfei to start a business, Zhou Qunfei obviously did not treat him badly, Zheng Junlong is not only the vice chairman of Lens Technology, with an annual salary of 3 million, but also holds part of the shares of Lens Technology.
In fact, this is not the first time that Zhou Qunfei has entered the palace of marriage. As early as 1994, the first year of Zhou Qunfei's business, she married Yang, the boss of Aoya Optics. Not only are the two teenagers apart, but the man has also been divorced. A person familiar with Zhou Qunfei revealed, "When she worked in the factory, she was favored because of her diligence, and the two finally fell in love."
Diligence is one of the key factors for Zhou Qunfei to get to where he is today. Some people say, "A migrant girl without academic qualifications can do this step, and she has already suffered all her luck and the dividends of the times." In today's information-transparent society, Zhou Qunfei's brilliance has become a thing of the past, and whether or not he can tell the story of transformation is the topic that investors are most concerned about.
(Author 丨Shijie Feng Chenchen Editor 丨Liao Ying)