Speaking of Li Zekai, many people will mention that he missold Tencent that year. In 1999, Li Zekai invested 5 million US dollars in Tencent and got 20% of Tencent's shares, and at that time, Tencent began to establish, and the company's business was not stable. Soon after, Tencent's business began to get on track, and Li Zekai also sold 20% of the stock for more than $40 million.
However, what Li Zekai did not expect was that later Tencent developed better and better, and successfully listed in Hong Kong, when Tencent was listed, the market value exceeded 10 billion, and the value of the shares sold by Li Zekai that year had risen to two or three billion.
Later, Tencent's market value became higher and higher, and at the highest time, Tencent's market value had exceeded 7 trillion Hong Kong dollars, that is to say, Li Zekai sold that part of the stock that year, and the market value was as high as 1.4 trillion. If Li Zekai hadn't sold those shares at that time, he could have become the world's richest man. In an interview, Li Zekai also said that this is the biggest lesson of his life.
Li Zekai made a big mistake in Ma Huateng. But now Ma Huateng has made a big mistake on Musk. Recently, Tesla's market value has soared, and it has now exceeded the $10,000 mark, becoming the eighth company in U.S. history to exceed $1 trillion in market capitalization.
In 2019, Tesla's market value was only tens of billions of DOLLARs, but now the market value is as high as more than 1 trillion US dollars, which is more than twenty times higher. Tesla has achieved a profit of $1.6 billion in the third quarter of this year, and from this point of view, it is very likely that Tesla's market value will continue to soar.
Since last year, because of the impact of the epidemic, the market value of many companies has soared. Tesla's market capitalization is also taking off all the way. This year, because of the global policy impact, the new energy vehicle sector has also received huge attention. Tesla's market value went all the way up to more than $700 billion, and then Tesla began to decline from a high level. However, people did not expect that after Tesla's decline, it actually soared from $500 billion to more than $1 trillion. Musk also surpassed Bezos again to become the world's richest man. According to the current trend of Tesla's market value, many people predict that Musk will become the world's first billionaire with a net worth of more than $300 billion.
However, Tesla's market value has soared, and it can be said that some people are happy and some people are sad. Ma Huateng made the mistake that Li Zekai made on Musk. In 2017, Ma Huateng spent $1.778 billion to take a 5% stake in Tesla. This investment is purely financial, not strategic.
At that time, according to the valuation of Ma Huateng's investment in Tesla, Tesla's market value was tens of billions of DOLLARs. In fact, at that time, Musk introduced Ma Huateng investment at a discount of about 16% compared to the market price.
However, what is strange is that in just two years or so, Ma Huateng has successively cashed out Tesla's shares and reduced his shareholding by 4.5%. It is reasonable to say that Tencent's performance has been very good, with an annual net profit of more than 100 billion, and the company's cash reserves are very sufficient.
Therefore, Ma Huateng sold tesla shares, which really makes people not understand, according to the stock trend at that time, Ma Huateng should also make about double the profit, and from a financial point of view, it is also a success. However, seeing the trend of Tesla today, Ma Huateng is indeed a wrong seller.
If Ma Huateng had not sold, the 5% of the stock is now worth more than $50 billion, equivalent to hundreds of billions of yuan. In other words, Ma Huateng is enough to earn hundreds of billions less. Of course, Ma Huateng's funds to reduce his holdings and cash out have also invested in other companies, and he has also obtained a certain return, but the overall return is certainly not as great as ma Huateng's investment in Tesla.
This shows that even entrepreneurs like Ma Huateng and Li Zekai will make mistakes in their judgment. Perhaps Ma Huateng also thought that Tesla's market value would one day skyrocket to trillions of dollars, but he never thought it would be so fast. Maybe he expected it to be five years or even longer, who knew that Tesla would break out in two or three years, after all, no one could have imagined that there would be a sudden epidemic in the world.
Therefore, when there is a better price investment target in the market, Ma Huateng cashed out Tesla to invest in other companies, in fact, this is normal in investment. No one can keep every success in investing, not even Buffett. In fact, Ma Huateng has been very successful in investment, and Tencent's equity investment can be called a textbook existence.
The total assets of the entire Tencent investment sector exceeded 280 billion US dollars, which can be said to have achieved great success, many companies have profited dozens of times, and the investments of Meituan, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Weilai Automobile have all achieved great success. At the same time, Ma Huateng's investment is still a very big strategy for Tencent. Many of Ma Huateng's investments are not only financial investments, but also strategic investments. For example, the investment of Meituan, JD.com, and Pinduoduo has greatly promoted the business development of Tencent's payment. Ma Huateng is definitely an undervalued investor.