Liu Yonghao is a good father

Author: Zhao Yichuan

来源：商业人物（ID：biz-leaders）

In 2002, a person with the pseudonym Li Tianmei entered New Hope and became an ordinary employee.

She wasn't very interested in the company, she was still young and had her own dreams. Her dream is to be a singer or a socialite and mix in the high-end fashion circle. Later, this dream of hers was extinguished by her father, whose name was Liu Yonghao.

Li Tianmei's real name is Liu Chang, and if she can't be a singer, she will go back to work in her own company.

Liu Yonghao is the richest man in China, and he has been the richest man in Sichuan for many years. He is the de facto helmsman of New Hope, and although he is in his seventies, he has not yet fully receded into the background.

At present, Liu's father and daughter are in big trouble, due to this round of downward pig cycle, New Hope's pig business has been seriously damaged, dragging down the company's huge losses year after year. From 2021 to the third quarter of last year, New Hope has lost nearly 15 billion, and there is no end in sight.

In fact, several pig giants in A-shares are not having a good time, but recently they have publicly shouted that they will not lie flat, only Liu Yonghao. In addition to the miserable real estate tycoon, another person at the level of the richest man may also have a bad year.

Although Li Tianmei is low-key, she naturally got the script of the big heroine. Ten years after entering the company, the position has been rising step by step, and "capital beyond ability" should play an important role. By 2013, 62-year-old Liu Yonghao decided to give up some power to his daughter, at which time Liu Chang was no longer a pseudonym, and she became the co-chairman of New Hope Liuhe (referred to as New Hope, the most important listing platform of New Hope Group).

This is a normal second-generation succession story, a father who is getting old, and a young master. Liu Yonghao decided to help him get on the horse and give him a ride, and he matched his daughter with a partner, the famous management scientist Chen Chunhua, so that Chen could "assist" Liu Chang to adapt to the new position as soon as possible.

When Liu Chang took over New Hope, the company's revenue pillar was the feed business, and Liu Yonghao's brothers started from this in their early years. Chen Chunhua was very admired by Liu Yonghao, she retired after three years of partnering with Liu Chang, and the young master began to take sole power.

In order to keep his daughter from being constrained, Liu Yonghao not only took the lead in retreating, but also persuaded a group of entrepreneurial veterans to take a back seat. Young people have young people's play, and under the leadership of Liu Chang, the young Zhuang faction of New Hope gradually came to power, and for a while, young middle and senior managers appeared one after another.

At least before this round of pig cycle, Liu Yonghao recognized his daughter's performance after taking over. He said in public several times that Liu Chang did a very good job and he was very satisfied. New Hope started raising pigs in 2016, when the feed business was high but the profits were thin. So Liu Chang (or still Liu Yonghao) wanted to get involved in the pig business and find a new growth curve for the company.

Pig farming is a very cyclical business, about every 3-4 years. In 2018, due to multiple factors such as African swine fever, domestic pork prices rose sharply, and pig enterprises made a lot of money. New Hope decided to go big and fast, putting forward the goal of slaughtering 8 million pigs in 2020 and 25 million pigs in 2022. Due to the optimism about the situation, it later raised the slaughter target for 2022 to an exaggerated 40 million heads.

It is said that retail investors are irrational, chasing up and down, and large companies are unambiguous.

With such a high slaughter index, it is natural to expand production capacity aggressively. To this end, Liu Chang transferred executives who are familiar with the real estate business to serve as the president of New Hope, and increased the weight to build a factory for pigs. Until 2020, New Hope enjoyed dividends in this wave of market, and the company's share price also reached a peak of 42 yuan, with a total market value of nearly 200 billion.

Liu Yonghao's public praise of this successor occurred during this period. One of his criteria was the soaring market capitalization, and perhaps at that time he confirmed that "young people are better equipped to handle the task of the new economic transformation", and that it was perfectly fine to hand over power to his daughter.

However, New Hope's good days came to an abrupt end in 2021. And since this year, New Hope has begun to lose money year after year, and an important reason is that the pig cycle has turned.

The consequences of the big dry and fast soon appeared, the oversupply of the whole industry led to a sharp drop in pork prices, coupled with the so-called environmental factors, pig enterprises are in trouble so far. In addition to continuous losses, New Hope's share price has also rushed down, currently hovering around 9 yuan, with a total market value of about 40 billion. In terms of liabilities, as of the third quarter of last year, New Hope's liabilities were close to 100 billion.

In June last year, at New Hope's results conference, an investor asked a sharp question: If you can travel back to 2020, will New Hope expand aggressively in pig farming?

The president, who is good at real estate, honestly replied that it would be more stable if he could really go back to the past. Liu Chang also admitted that after the rapid expansion of the pig business, the management ability did not keep up in time, which affected the production efficiency and profitability. As a result, New Hope suffered its first loss in many years since it went public.

The president and chairman of the front desk both admitted to the mistake, so who is to blame? Because judging from the situation at that time, it was not only the young executives who were carried away by the temporary prosperity, even Liu Yonghao said that the pig strategy was the No. 1 project of the entire group, which was unanimously recognized by the top and bottom. Without Liu Yonghao's acquiescence, New Hope is unlikely to have put such a satellite on the pig business.

Although Liu Yonghao said that New Hope has been in business for 40 years, and he has seen a lot of winds and waves, to a certain extent, it is now the darkest moment for this agricultural and animal husbandry giant. In the past two years, the outside world has seen too many real estate tycoons selling and selling, and Liu Yonghao seems to be doing the same - in recent times, New Hope has also taken out tricks such as private placement fundraising, equity transfer, and asset sales. The general strategy is to shrink the front and quickly recover.

Not long ago, Liu Yonghao accepted an interview with "Chinese Entrepreneur", in which he admitted that he was reflecting on the fact that the company cannot be blindly expanded, but must be focused. Perhaps to send a signal to the outside world, he also said that New Hope's foundation is relatively thick, he has no mortgage on his personal equity and that of major companies, nor has he guaranteed anyone else, and at the same time, the company has not issued much foreign debt, and the trust of financial institutions is still there. According to the latest statement of New Hope, the company currently has 11 billion cash on its books, and the pig business will not lose cash, and there is no problem in supporting it for two years.

After so many years in business, the former richest man may not have emphasized his "credit" so publicly.

At this time, although the chairman has been in the position of chairman for ten years, the 43-year-old Liu Chang may still have to rely on his father. The second generation of enterprises may have to retain a sense that they Xi are not only accustomed to the great protection of their parents, but also adapt to the huge shadow of their parents. Liu Yonghao once joked that the biggest difference between him and his daughter is that his daughter has a rich father, while he doesn't. For Liu Chang now, having a rich father is really precious.

Fortunately, Liu Chang's situation is not too bad. Just when his father frequently appeared on the platform and relied on his appeal to "renew his life" for New Hope, Hu Jiajia, who is also the second-generation successor of Metersbonwe, has just resigned as chairman. And it was his father Zhou Chengjian who came out to clean up the mess for his daughter. The first time the father and daughter handed over power was in 2016. Zhou Chengjian lived a leisurely life for seven years and had to go out of the mountain again.

Liu Yonghao doesn't really want such a comeback opportunity.

*Title image | Visual China