Penmanship/Knife Cutting Face &nagging sister
Sakamoto Ryoma, a well-known samurai during the Late Restoration.
He came from humble origins, but played an important role in the Meiji Restoration movement that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and modernized Japan.
He created Japan's first trading company, helped Japan become a naval power, and was the first to come up with the concept of "Japan Nation."
He is the hero of SoftBank Chairman Sun Zhengyi.
In Son's office, there is a life-size photo of Sakamoto Ryoma.
At the exhibition commemorating the 150th anniversary of Sakamoto's death, the "Sakamoto Ryoma and other figures" from Son Zhengyi's office are also on display.
"Every morning, when I walked into the office, he reminded me that I had to make a decision worthy of him."
I don't know if "suspending investment in China" is a decision that Son Zhengyi believes is worthy of Ryoma.
I want to say goodbye
The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago that SoftBank said it would "suspend new investments in China."
SoftBank pointed the reason to the so-called "rectification", saying that it would also "observe how China's rectification of the domestic technology industry develops at the same time."
Later in the day, SoftBank China stated on its WeChat public account that it would, as always, invest in China's high-tech and high-growth enterprises.
And that's not all.
SoftBank China's statement was suddenly deleted again.
Some media contacted SoftBank for this purpose, and the reply obtained was that the current softbank's external unified caliber is not to comment.
This is confusing.
What kind of "trick" is Sun Zhengyi doing by wearing such a veiled and wanting to say goodbye?
Not to mention any rectification, SoftBank's recent life has not been very good.
SoftBank's just-released fiscal 2021 first-quarter financial report shows that its net profit was 761.5 billion yen, compared with 1.2557 trillion yen in the same period last year, down 39% year-on-year.
The decline in net profit first came from the shrinking valuation of star stocks.
In SoftBank's Vision Fund portfolio, such as South Korean e-commerce company Coupang Inc. Both (CPNG) and Auto1 Group (ATOGF), a German online used car dealer, have seen significantly lower equity valuations.
Vision Fund and Fund 2 earned about $2.6 billion in investment in the latest fiscal quarter, compared to $58 billion in the previous fiscal quarter.
SoftBank's stock price has also weakened this year.
SoftBank shares have fallen 13 percent since July, outperforming Japan's Nikkei and U.S. NASDAQ. If you look at it from the beginning of the year, SoftBank's stock price fell nearly 40%, and Son Zhengyi also gave up the position of Japan's richest man.
According to the Forbes Real-Time Rich List, as of August 11, 2021, Son Zhengyi ranked third with $30.8 billion.
Frozen three feet, not a day's cold.
Consecutive defeats
"Significant debuffs", "problems"...
Son Zhengyi stood on the stage, no expression. These big words on the huge screen behind him flashed a cold light.
In November 2019, SoftBank released its third-quarter closing report for the year, and the Vision Fund lost $8.9 billion in investments. Among them, the market valuation of the co-working platform WeWork has shrunk significantly.
Encountering a huge loss for the "first time since starting a business", Son Zhengyi also admitted, "It is really a mess ... I also have some problems, and there is a relatively large deviation in the judgment of investment. ”
At one point, Son saw WeWork as the next "Alibaba."
In 2010, the U.S. economy was still mired in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with small and medium-sized companies closing down and a large number of office buildings idle. WeWork founder Neumann saw an opportunity to take over vacant rooms in a building at a low price, dividing them into small and medium-sized offices and renting them out to startups.
In 2017, after a 28-minute conversation with Neumann, Son decided to invest in WeWork, along with a message: "In combat, it's better to be crazy than smart, weWork isn't crazy enough right now, let's make it crazier." ”
I saw the beginning, but I didn't guess the ending.
What Son Zhengyi did not expect was that the madness actually made Neumann rush to launch a listing plan in order to raise funds, but because the prospectus exposed the essence of the second landlord, what about the high-tech company that said good? WeWork's valuation suffered a rollercoaster decline, and the listing plan was forced to be suspended.
WeWork has also gone from being a bullish super unicorn to a Silicon Valley joke.
For science and technology companies, time is a friend, and patient capital is easier to get candy.
It's just that Son Zhengyi and SoftBank have never looked up to this friend of time.
As many observers familiar with him have pointed out, Son has always been a speculator who chases real profits and seeks rapid realization, rather than an "angel" who pays attention to the comprehensive benefits of investment and does not seek specific returns.
The main yardstick for his investment in Japan and overseas is to make money, make money, and make quick money!
Keen on fast money
Over the past two decades, Son and SoftBank have been the brightest names in the tech venture capital industry because of their bets on Alibaba's success, and have even been hailed by some Chinese as "angels of angels", enjoying praise that has never been seen in their country of citizenship, Japan, or south Korea, their ancestral country.
However, although SoftBank has carefully forged its own "high-tech industry investor" for decades, such a persona contains the pursuit of venture capital, the preference for leverage and betting.
The investment orientation of Son Zhengyi and SoftBank always tends to be fast money and hot money, and it is better to liquidate or stop loss as soon as possible, rather than to be expected to be a long-term major shareholder of potential holding objects for a long time.
Whether it is the bubble economy or the "twenty years after the bursting", the high-tech sector was one of the few high-growth, high-return, and of course high-risk economic areas in Japan at that time.
This makes Son's "high-tech investor" personality more worthy of the name.
However, in China, his so-called "angel investment" does not actually invest much in the so-called high-tech industry.
Whether it is a well-known online shopping platform, or a social APP, a commuter APP, a self-media operation number... Almost without exception, they are more or less advertised as "new economy" and "new formats" of internet celebrity enterprises, once developed rapidly, popularity soared, but not really high-tech research and development or manufacturing enterprises.
In fact, outside of China, Son's investment in the circle is not so "angelic".
The most critical criticism of him is also that he is too keen on fast money and despises long-term returns and the real economy. To be polite is to be opportunistic, to be rude is to be a bit of a chicken thief.
This investment style is in line with China's enthusiasm for the "virtual economy" and "network economy" a few years ago, advocating the atmosphere of "post-real economy", so the two are happy and complement each other.
SoftBank's biggest beneficiary, a chinese entrepreneur with a strange appearance, has become the biggest and best advertisement for "Sun Zhengyi's investment miracle in China", which can be described as mutual achievements and envy.
The Chinese market
How much does SoftBank make in the Chinese market?
Alibaba must have a name here.
There is a story in the market about "meet for 6 minutes and invest $20 million".
In 2000, less than a year after Ali's establishment, Son Zhengyi met Ma Yun for the first time, because he "felt his vision and passion", he spent $20 million to "help him achieve his ambitions".
Four years later, after Alibaba launched the Taobao platform, SoftBank invested an additional $60 million, and the two investments totaled about 30% of Alibaba's shares.
In 2014, Alibaba was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, setting a record for the largest IPO in history.
Alibaba's largest shareholder at the time was SoftBank, with a 34.3% stake and a stake valuation of about $58 billion. That is to say, in 4 years, the value of Ali shares held by SoftBank has increased by about a thousand times.
As of the end of June, SoftBank had invested in 301 companies worldwide, including nearly 100 in China. Alibaba remains SoftBank's largest investment in market capitalization, accounting for about 39 percent.
In 2000, the same year that SoftBank injected capital into Alibaba, SoftBank China Capital was established.
Its official website shows that at present, SoftBank China Capital mainly lays out information technology and medical health and other fields.
Specifically, there are 27 information technology companies, including Alibaba, Taobao, Focus Media, PPTV Juli, Oriental CJ, International Data, Lianchuang Technology, Yicheng Information, Haowu China, Tengyun Tianxia, Gollum Movement, Zhiyang Technology, Weiyan Technology, Octopus, TianpaiChe, Kuaicang Technology, Licai.com, Malong Technology, Yiersan, Fun Live, Shadow Spectrum Technology, Bus365, Middle East Headlines, Sanweijia, Zhongcheng Wisdom, Missed Bank and Tezan.
There are 26 companies in the field of medical and health care, including Dean Diagnostics, Libang Instruments, Pailt, Jiaotong University Jingyi, BGI Gene, Quyi.com, Shanghai Medicine, 360 Health, Dingdang Fast Medicine, Mommy Know, Anhan Medical, Anno Youda, Quick And Easy Inspection, Hypros, Nuohui Health, Taimei Medical Technology, Pumen Technology, Jingyu Medical, Stainsai, Cooper Technology, Shihe Gene, Golden Spoon Medicine, Lianxin, Lu Daopei Medical, Biot & Zhihui and New Geyuan Biology.
Other investment enterprises include Pulisheng, Goodbaby, Loncin General, Jiahua Enterprise, Sunshine Printing Network, Huineng Technology, Huating Power, Best Logistics, Changsheng Technology, Ben'an Energy, Lanshen Technology, Gelubo Technology, Kuwa Robot, Zhonggu Logistics, Anmaisheng, and Future Black Technology.
In addition, Vision Fund No. 1 and No. 2 also invested in Ele.me, Shell, ByteDance, Guazi, JD Logistics, Keep, Zhangmen Education, ZhongAn Insurance, Ease, Homework Gang, etc.
Most of the tech venture capital companies we are familiar with are on the list.
A Citi report estimates that investment in Chinese tech start-ups accounted for about 44 percent of SoftBank's total investment as of the end of March.
However, if you look at the regional distribution, the United States is still the largest investment area for SoftBank, accounting for 34%, followed by China, accounting for 23%. Asia, with the exception of China, accounts for about 25 percent, the European Union 13 percent, and Latin America and other regions for 5 percent.
As mentioned earlier, Alibaba's stake accounts for about 39% of SoftBank's total outbound investment. Since the beginning of this year, Alibaba's stock price has continued to be sluggish, which naturally has greatly dragged down SoftBank's overall investment income.
But Son himself admits that the value of investing in China is generally higher than the cost price. He believes that in the long run, the stock prices of China's high-tech companies will rise back.
However, the intention to make quick money made Son Zhengyi lose the mood of waiting.
Cheng is also crazy
Judging from the name, the three words "Son Zhengyi" can easily make people mistakenly think that he is a Chinese.
Sun Zhengyi himself has openly admitted that his ancestors are authentic Chinese.
If you go back to the Period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties more than 1500 years ago, it may be said that Sun Zhengyi's ancestors migrated from Putian in Fujian Province to the Korean Peninsula at that time. Son's grandfather later moved his family to Japan.
Son was born in Japan in August 1957 and is a third-generation Korean-Born Japanese. But it wasn't until 1991 that Son masayoshi officially became Japanese and took the Japanese name "Ayamoto Masayoshi".
From the bottom of the society, the Koreans have become the top of the Japanese rich list, in a sense, it is crazy to achieve Son Zhengyi. This is evident in three fragments of his life.
In 1974, at the age of 17, Son dropped out of a middle school in Japan and went straight to the United States to study. At that time, he had no English background, and his father was hospitalized due to illness, but he wanted to break through the world with his own efforts like Sakamoto Ryoma.
In the words of Son Zhengyi, "I was almost desperately studying in a state that exceeded the limits of my physiology." It is hard to imagine that under the language barrier and life difficulties, Son Zhengyi only spent less than three weeks to complete the three-year high school course.
Such madness was often seen in Son Zhengyi afterwards.
At the age of 24, after returning to China, Son Zhengyi founded SoftBank, which initially had only two employees besides himself.
That was in 1981, when IBM had just launched its first personal computer, and almost no one in the private sector owned a computer, let alone a software business.
That's what Son did, he also laid out a 50-year plan and gave an impassioned speech to two employees, claiming that "in 5 years, our sales will reach $75 million."
Both employees were so frightened that they all left.
In 1994, SoftBank went public, and the 37-year-old Son Zhengyi was worth more than $1 billion.
There is also the story of Son Zhengyi and Yahoo.
The year after SoftBank went public, Son discovered Yahoo, a student entrepreneurship project, on the Stanford campus.
Through simple communication with founder Jerry Yang, Son Zhengyi invested $2 million in Yahoo at that time. Four months later, an additional $100 million was added.
Many young people probably don't know About Yahoo anymore. Although Yahoo is no longer in the limelight, as the first Internet company in the history of the Internet, its market value was as high as $125 billion.
It can be said that Yahoo has changed the entrepreneurial landscape of Silicon Valley.
For Son, Yahoo's significance is even more extraordinary.
It is Son's first venture capital project, and it also makes SoftBank officially transform into a strategic investment enterprise before the arrival of a new round of technological revolution, specializing in internet companies.
Time is also trendy
This time, another time.
Back to the "suspension of investment in China."
In recent years, China's economy is facing a new round of transformation. The salient feature of this latest transformation is to reduce speculation, strengthen the position of the real economy, and pay more attention to "real" high-tech research and development, manufacturing, and the transformation of scientific research results than before.
Although the "net red enterprises" with the shell of "high-tech enterprises" cannot be said to have deteriorated their living conditions, they no longer conform to the established investment style and yardstick of Sun Zhengyi's "making fast and hot money".
The investment environment and style orientation have changed, but SoftBank is still "old-fashioned".
How is it good to carve a boat and ask for a sword?
Not only that, in the changed environment, some of Sun Zhengyi's "signature investment objects" that Sun Zhengyi once held or still held shares have been "thunderstorms" one after another, and their own aura has faded, and thousands of fans have "turned black", but also made SoftBank's "aura" suffer heavy setbacks.
Since the "painting style" of SoftBank is still the same, if you don't quickly take off your shoes and run away at this moment, and then step on yesterday's "Little Sweetie" and today's "Cow Lady" by the way, Sun Zhengyi will not be Sun Zhengyi.
However, Sun Zhengyi, who is accustomed to the operation of "white gloves", may not really want to give up the "fat meat" of the past, and his "retreat" may not be "real retreat".
Announcing and deleting, flashing its words, "two-end blocking" style of blowing, but also left themselves with the measure of "changing moves".
However, the "way of the world" has changed, and if the "way" of investors remains unchanged, the future days will not be easy.
In 2000, CCTV's "Dialogue" program once asked Son Zhengyi: "The Internet used to be a leader in various industries, but in less than a year, many investors' attitudes towards it have changed." What do you think? ”
Son Zhengyi said: "The story always has to have ups and downs, and these big ups and downs are not extraordinary things for the stock market. ”
Yes, there are ups and downs in the story, and so do the companies.
I only hope that when the ups and downs come, I will face it calmly and no longer play any tricks.
(Pictures are from the Internet)