Chapter 364 (1/2)
The female assistant is the second person to know Simon's plan to buy Bell Atlantic, and the first is naturally Janet.
Simon plans to go to New York after his trip to San Francisco to formally discuss the feasibility of launching MCA acquisition and Bell Atlantic acquisition with the senior management of westero and cersei capital.
This trip to San Francisco is mainly about igritte and AOL.
Igrit's problem is simple. The company is out of money again.
After Carol Bartz and Jeff Bezos jointly take charge of igritte, Simon is quite satisfied with his recent work.
Through continuous R & D investment, igrit continues to consolidate the company's patent barriers in the field of World Wide Web technology. With Carol Bartz's years of working experience in the industry, igrit's software sales business has rapidly opened up. The number of portal website users has continued to increase. At the same time, igrit has successfully opened up the Internet advertising business, and so on.
However, all of these mean a lot of money consumption.
Simon knows very well what the hundreds of core patents of World Wide Web technology that igritte has mastered mean. Igritte has developed a complete set of application tools based on World Wide Web technology, such as graphical interface browser software, server software, web design software, etc., which are software products with very solid business prospects. Therefore, Simon plans to make further progress this time An additional investment of 50 million US dollars is needed to continue the development and promotion of the world wide web technology station.
At the beginning of its establishment, the company had a total share capital of 10 million shares, of which 9 million shares were held by Westeros with an investment of 10 million US dollars, and another 1 million shares were held by Tim Berners Lee. In the last $20 million capital injection, the total share capital of igritte doubled, and Tim Berners Lee's shareholding remained unchanged at 1 million shares, but the shareholding ratio decreased to 5%.
This time, Simon did not let the professional asset appraisal team intervene, and personally determined that the company's valuation was $50 million. For a start-up technology company that has not yet formed a stable revenue, this figure is a bit high, but Simon believes that igrit is worth it.
Simon, on the other hand, still has no intention of squeezing Tim Berners Lee's shareholding ratio. He has always been very interested in the founder of the world wide web. Therefore, as last time, it provided Li with a plan to maintain his shareholding ratio through loans.
However, Tim Berners Lee also did not accept this time. He was very satisfied with his shareholding and his current job.
Although Simon plans to give a part of igritte's equity to the company's executives and employees at the right time, he will not give the equity to someone in vain.
As a result, the total share capital of igreat company doubled again to 40 million shares. Westero's shareholding ratio of igreat company increased to 97.5%, and Tim Berners Lee's shareholding ratio decreased to 2.5%. The number of shares held by igreat company is still 1 million.
AOL, mainly Steve case that exclusive agreement negotiations.
Although Simon plans to buy a telecom company ahead of time, AOL's pace of development will not be adjusted in the near future. As long as we can sign exclusive agreements with Bell Atlantic, Nynex and bell Pacific, AOL will get twice the result with half the effort in the next few years.
Of course, the biggest problem in this matter is money.
AOL shareholders are not like Tim Berners Lee, who proposed that after the agreement is negotiated, they temporarily obtain funds through loans to pay the buyout funds of the three companies in the first year.
The three companies still insist on paying the exclusive fee according to the total number of users, but there is still a lot of room for negotiation on the specific amount. In the end, as the female assistant predicted at breakfast last time, the exclusive fee will be reduced to about $1 per household. By then, more than 20 million yuan will be completely within the credit line of AOL.
Simon also got a general understanding of the operation of AOL's 100 Internet cafes this time.
One month after opening, with the excellent promotion in the early stage and the public's curiosity about this new leisure and entertainment place, AOL's 1 million Internet cafes had a total revenue of US $2.06 million in the first month, and the average turnover of each Internet cafe exceeded US $20000.
Regardless of the initial investment, excluding store rent, employee compensation and power grid expenses, AOL's Internet bar chain generated a gross profit of US $530000 in just one month.
If this business situation continues, AOL will be able to recover its initial investment in about two years.
Because of the exemplary role of these 100 Internet cafes, some people have started to contact AOL, hoping to open franchise stores.
What's more, in the previous month, more than 2600 users got customized online coupons through AOL's Internet cafes, equivalent to 5% of AOL's Internet users in the same period, which is what Simon valued most.
Simon's original proposal to open Internet cafes is to guide people to get familiar with and access the Internet.
Just in the first month, more than 2600 new users were brought in, which is far more than the AOL team initially expected. It can be imagined that with the continuous improvement of Internet Explorer content and the further increase of service functions that igrit portal can provide, more and more people will definitely tend to access the Internet in their own homes.Now that this goal has been achieved and will continue, AOL does not intend to hold this ”Internet bar” subsidiary in its hands.
It's still a long time to go back to the capital in two years.
AOL headquarters in Palo Alto.
At the end of the discussion meeting on the progress of exclusive agreement negotiation among three telecom operators, Simon and Steve Case stayed alone in the conference room. Steve Case talked about Internet bar.
”We've been in touch with several Wall Street private equity funds, three of which are interested in Internet bar. With AOL holding 50% of the shares, the highest one offered us $10 million, and I think we should be able to talk about US $15 million in the end. If we cash out ahead of time, we will be able to solve more than half of the first year's cost of signing the exclusive agreement with the three Bell Atlantic companies. ”
Since he didn't intend to make money with these 100 Internet cafes at the beginning, Simon is not opposed to cash out.
However, just one month after the opening of the business, I was eager to sell. I must have suffered some losses.
Whether it's $10 million or $15 million, it's just a bid for 50% of the existing 100 Internet cafes. If we patiently operate Internet bar for one or two years and develop it into a larger chain operation system, the value of this company will certainly increase greatly.
Simon waited for Steve case to finish and asked, ”where's IBM?”
”IBM intends to continue to hold its own shares, but they have no objection to us selling our own shares. After our launch, the IBM team will be able to take over the management of Internet bar. ”
IBM, a giant with a recent market value of more than 50 billion US dollars, will not care about Internet bar, a small start-up company. To be exact, it was only IBM's venture capital department that participated in the investment last time. Every big Mac has a similar department.
Compared with AOL, which is in urgent need of funds, IBM's investment team understands that Internet bar still has a lot of room for appreciation, so it naturally does not need to be too eager to choose cash out.