Everyone knows about the Cambrian recently, but in fact, it is still the same old way.
According to "Cambrian shareholders have cashed out 6.6 billion yuan, the stock price has been cut from the high, which funds are hurt? Observing historical data, before 2023, Cambrian was not a heavy product of public funds.
In 2023, the AI concept was detonated by ChatGPT, and Cambrian became a sweet potato. As of the end of the second quarter of 2023, public fund companies held a total of 84.922 million shares, and the shareholding ratio soared to 34.78%; Among them, there are 19 fund companies with more than 1 million shares.
Combined with that, on September 22, Cambrian announced that one of the founding shareholders of the company, SDIC (Shanghai) Science and Technology Achievements Transformation Venture Capital Fund Enterprise (Limited Partnership), reduced its holdings by 7.3987 million shares, a reduction ratio of 1.78%. After the reduction, SDIC Venture Fund only held 1,176 shares of Cambrian, accounting for less than 0.01% of the total share capital, basically completing the "liquidation".
It feels like they cooperate with each other, now you have a hot spot, then I will increase my position, it is logical, the public fund has come in, the stock price has also pushed up, then venture capital shareholders can not only reduce their holdings at a high level, but also a large number of suitable "takeover men"; Of course, for whether the public fund took over and let go of the venture capital shareholders, this is only my personal speculation, they will definitely not admit it, but from the operational point of view, very similar ah, very similar!
In fact, Cambrian may have been a good company from the beginning, Duan said, qualitative is more important than quantitative analysis, and the most important thing is the business model. The business model filters out most companies, and the importance of quantitative analysis suddenly drops a lot. So the most important thing that I have figured out over the years is the business model. Once this is done, investing becomes really interesting.
So Duan Yongping said, I am not surprised that Buffett will sell TSMC. Although TSMC is very remarkable, the business model is a little tired, it is too heavy.
If you apply this logic, Cambrian is indeed the beginning of the advantage, on Huawei's "thigh", responsible for providing Huawei HiSilicon terminal intelligent processor IP, from Huawei mate10 to Huawei mate20, Cambrian has been cooperating with Huawei.
In addition, Huawei and Cambrian have carried out in-depth cooperation in the design process of the Kirin 970 chip, and the two teams have jointly developed and optimized AI computing processing.
From the perspective of future prospects, if you run through the track of smart chips, achieve technical barriers, and rely on the business model of eating patent fees, you can make money lying down.
It's just that it's running out of time.
NVIDIA was founded in 1993, when the Internet industry had just begun to develop, the market was blue, and there were not many competitions; But Cambrian only began to develop at this time, facing the world giants, the track is not right, naturally it is difficult to stand top.
Duan Yongping said that the definition of differentiation is: something that users need but others can't satisfy. "Differentiation" is not simply differentiation, but "something that users need but peers have not yet satisfied", and the underlying premise is at least "what peers have already met the needs of users".
Cambrian is also looking for differentiated products, for example, betting on in-vehicle smart chips, which is a project established by Cambrian in 2021, which has received strategic investments of hundreds of millions of yuan such as CATL, NIO, SAIC's Shangqi Capital and Jinmao Capital; However, in 2023, the termination of the fuel vehicle tax reduction policy and the withdrawal of new energy vehicle subsidies, coupled with a series of external problems such as consumption downgrading and pressure on macroeconomic development, Cambrian's goods cannot be sold.
Cambrian's differentiated products, which the market does not recognize, are reflected in the financial report:
From 2017 to 2022, Cambrian's operating income will be 0.8 billion yuan, 117 million yuan, 444 million yuan, 459 million yuan, 721 million yuan, and 729 million yuan, with steady growth visible to the naked eye. However, in the same period, the net profit attributable to the parent was -381 million yuan, -41 million yuan, -1.179 billion yuan, -435 million yuan, -825 million yuan, -1.257 billion yuan, and the cumulative loss in 6 years exceeded 4.1 billion yuan. Can I understand that I lost money and drank.
In the first half of this year, Cambrian was still weak, with operating income falling by 33.37% year-on-year, about 114 million yuan, and a net loss of 545 million yuan.
External factors cannot be changed, only oneself can change, Cambrian's only remaining hope is to increase investment in research and development, create a blockbuster, you can make up for all the losses before, and you can still make money.
But venture capital shareholders can't wait, and they all think that someone will take over, then cash out at a high level and reduce their holdings, which further increases Cambrian's cash pressure and public opinion pressure.
If you want to survive, you have to lay off employees, lay off all people, and who else will develop it for you?
So Cambrian has entered a vicious circle: research and development for many years, the product market does not recognize, there is no big explosion - shareholders reduce holdings to cash out - cash flow deteriorates - layoffs - no one to carry out technology research and development - slowly wait for death without funds and no one.
But innovation still has to continue, you can't choke because of a Cambrian, and you won't invest in innovative enterprises in the future, but when studying innovative enterprises, we must not only pay attention to what Duan Yongping said, study business models, but also pay attention to whether there are enough funds to support such business models.
Just like I heard an investor say before, we do investment, for the enterprise is a baton, stick after baton, to make this enterprise better and stronger, many times some enterprises are a pity, did not wait for the next wave of funds, helpless bankruptcy liquidation.
In my opinion, fire also needs life, some innovative companies bet on the wrong future technology outlet, failed to occupy the market, if the funds are enough, you can also hibernate up, waiting for the next opportunity, but the reality is cruel, the funding side will not give a second chance (in case the second time is not done), choose to withdraw, at this time, innovative enterprises also have to accept the fate of bankruptcy.
For Cambrian, it can not keep up with the capital now, the polished technology and products have not made waves in the market, and the probability of turning over is already very small, so from the shareholders of these liquidation reductions, they are also right, this company has no possibility of explosion, there is no need to continue to bet; It's just that now the behavior of reducing holdings and cashing out and public funds taking over, trapping retail investors in, will make people hate to gnash their teeth.
So the core of supporting innovation is whether the cash flow is abundant, so who is suitable to support innovation?
Li Ka-shing, Buffett, these people.
Li Ka-shing has a series of strong cash flow industries such as ports, electric power, and Watsons, which is also the strength for him to dare to invest, it doesn't matter if he fails, there are these industries to support the bottom; Although everyone sees every day how many projects Li Ka-shing has invested in successfully, in fact, he has failed more, but it has little impact on him.
As for Buffett, Berkshire's cash reserves are as high as $147.4 billion, enough for many Cambrian burns, but Buffett often says that he doesn't like to buy technology stocks, and in his view, those fast-growing technology companies have great risks, which are not something they can predict and control. Even if it's Apple, Buffett sees Apple as a high-quality consumer company with long-term holding value. He sees Apple as a "consumer products company in a common stock investment," not a tech company.
This is the difference between the big guy and ordinary people, the big guy feels that as long as I have cash flow, the profit is less, and the slow is fast; But for ordinary people, betting on innovative companies, high valuations, maybe you can achieve overnight riches, of course, also take more risks.
Final conclusion: I often hear some people say, I want to start a business and I want to innovate, but for ordinary people, the core of innovation lies in the abundance of cash flow (the business model is actually secondary), how much money can you personally take out to make your innovation project last? Before innovation, the first thing is to find a project that can generate stable cash flow, and when there is this kind of cash cow project, it is the icing on the cake to do innovative projects, otherwise it is not a solid foundation to engage in innovation, that is, dig a hole and bury yourself.