Chapter 806

In San Francisco, scober's headquarters are not around the popular Stanford University, but Milpitas city on the other side of the Bay, bordering Northwest San Jose, which is already a suburb of Silicon Valley.

The location seems to suggest the embarrassment of the semiconductor company.

Scupper company was founded in 1988. Its self positioning is a semiconductor company. More accurately, it should be a semiconductor design company. It is obviously impossible for such a start-up enterprise to have independent new film production capacity. It can only be OEM by its early investor Texas Instruments.

In its early days, scupper's development direction was image decoding chip. It was not until 1991 that the first video decoding chip was launched.

However, although the technology is very novel, scopper has not been able to find an accurate application direction for its own products. In recent years, scopper has tried to apply its own chips to TV sets, game machines, printers and other fields without success.

Even the VCD launched by Wanyan two years ago didn't make scupper see a bright future. The sales volume of less than 20000 VCDs in China in the past year also proves this. In Silicon Valley with a broad vision, scupper's management can see that VCD is not competitive with DVD.

Last year's IPO was the last fight for scupper. In addition, several investors, such as Sequoia Capital, have spent so many years trying to cash back the capital by taking advantage of the tide of new technology. Otherwise, in the past year, several major shareholders would not have cashed out more than 10% of the shares quietly, and they would continue to sell when the shares suddenly rose, eventually leading to Chen Qing's team's short-term interest Up to 21% of the company's shares were accepted.

According to the board of directors and management of scupper, after the IPO funds are spent, if the company has not found its accurate positioning, then there is basically no future.

There are so many failures in Silicon Valley that it's not too disappointing.

All this, until some oriental girl's sudden showdown.

Just the capital background of westero system has made Sequoia Capital and other major shareholders make up their minds to cooperate. Chen Qing's team's plan to create a VCD industry in China and the threat of cooperating with other manufacturers with the funds and plans in hand once rejected have made them completely compromise.

After all, even if the high-speed growth of China's VCD shipments in the first quarter is exciting, there is still a big mountain ahead of DVD. No one can guarantee that once Sony and other manufacturers officially launch DVD players, VCDs will be eliminated in the twinkling of an eye.

Moreover, to make the final decision, the two major shareholders of scupper, Sequoia Capital and Texas Instruments, have their own considerations.

Sequoia Capital is a venture capital company. Although it doesn't mind holding a company's stock for a long time, according to the operation rules of venture capital, it's their first task to cash out in time to realize stable income for investors and develop the next batch of business. This is also why Sequoia Capital was an early investor of many technology giants such as apple and Oracle, but later it was not here The reason why some enterprises are big shareholders.

As a venture capital company, the most important thing is to control the risk, because their investment goal is not only apple and Oracle, but also a large number of failed investments. The reason why Sequoia Capital has been popular is that it has successfully cashed out before many investment enterprises went bankrupt.

This may make them miss some super black horses with a final return of hundreds of times and thousands of times, but it also avoids more losses.

As for Texas Instruments, affected by the rapid development of mobile communication industry and the wave of new technology, its revenue in the past fiscal year exceeded 13 billion US dollars, and its current market value is as high as more than 20 billion US dollars. Therefore, the real world-class semiconductor giant will not care too much about a small company with annual revenue just exceeding $20 million.

Moreover, Chen Qing's team also used other contacts of westero system to lobby the top management of Texas Instruments. In fact, it was a matter of telephone. You know, Ti is the main supplier of baseband chips for Nokia mobile phones. With Nokia becoming the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, the importance of this customer to Ti is self-evident.

It was finally settled.

Only by transferring half of the remaining 33% of the shares in hand, Sequoia Capital will recover all the previous investment in scupper and realize considerable profits. The remaining half of the shares is enough for Sequoia Capital to enjoy the huge dividends once Chen Qing's plan is successful.

At the same time, Texas Instruments also put forward their own requirements.

All future chip orders from scupper must be made exclusively by Ti semiconductor.

Since TSMC founded the wafer foundry mode and became more and more successful, many old semiconductor manufacturers have found business opportunities and opened up related businesses. With the rapid expansion of the wafer foundry market, they pay more and more attention to it.

Scupper's current order is dispensable to Ti.

However, if Chen Qing's team's plan is really successful, only scupper's chip OEM order will be a very considerable revenue.With the agreement of the two major shareholders and the 21% shares already held by Chen Qing's team, other shareholders and scupper's management have no room for resistance.

The final plan was approved by Simon. At nine o'clock in the morning, Chen Qing's team and all shareholders' representatives formally signed an equity transfer agreement and a new personnel appointment at the scober headquarters in Milpitas.

Chen Qing cleverly didn't take over the company in person. Instead, she let Emmanuel Brandt, a team member she just recruited some time ago, succeed don Valentine as the chairman of scupper. She clearly controlled the overall situation. At the same time, she didn't replace bill omera, CEO of scupper, who was responsible for the specific operation of the enterprise.

After the contract was finalized, all parties held a small press conference in the humble two-story office building of scober, and then the relevant press release appeared at the igritte portal for the first time.

Scopper's recent stock price surge has attracted many people's attention.

With the announcement of the news, the capital market reacted quickly, and another "westero concept stock" was born.

There is no lack of blindness in the capital market.

although the public release only disclosed little information about the follow up business plan, the core of the main rendering is also the gimmick of the "Weiss Trojan stock". Moreover, with the market capitalization of $200 million on Friday's close, the company's P / E ratio is close to 80 times the bubble level, but many investors can not help but start to subconsciously. buy in.

Today, April 24, Monday.

The release of the igritte portal was around 10 a.m. on the west coast, and 1 p.m. on the east coast, three hours before the close.

However, just in these three hours, as a new technology enterprise that has attracted market attention and has been disclosed as a new "westero concept stock", scopper's share price, which was originally relatively flat, went straight out of a steep upward curve. At 4 p.m., the North American stock market closed, and scopper's share price rose by 43% in a single day, compared with 206 million at the opening of the morning The market value of US $has reached 293 million.

It can be said that, basically just three hours before the closing, the book profit of shares held by shareholders of scupper is as high as $97 million.

Both the former shareholders and the management of SGB have nothing to say in the face of the crazy reaction of the market.

Not to mention the $20 million five-year loan from Citibank through the relationship of westero system, Chen Qing's team invested about $94 million before and after the loan, and obtained 53% shares of SGB. When the east coast stock market closed on Monday, the total book value of the shares also reached $156 million.

After three weeks of busyness, the book profit was $62 million.

We can see why the financial industry has become a pillar industry in the United States and why so many elites all over the world flock to Wall Street.

After completing a series of handover, Chen Qing was not immersed in the success she had just achieved.

The girl understood that it was just the beginning.

When the representatives of other shareholders left, Chen Qing immediately called the management of SGB and started a one-day meeting. The members of Chen Qing's team who did not attend the meeting were not idle and began to conduct further detailed audit on the company's financial files, technical data and employee resumes.

Even a pre planned recruitment information involving various technical positions was directly posted on igrit's 58list platform this morning.

Because the detailed plan has already been finalized.

Next, scupper will immediately stop all other non core businesses, and will not renew the contract after the completion of the original order. While continuing to increase the research and development of video decoding chips applied to VCD, scober will also start the development of a full set of VCD technical solutions. In fact, it is a repetition of what Wanyan did at the beginning, but it is also a further upgrade on the basis of Wanyan's formed technology.

Chen Qing's team insists on acquiring scupper, rather than cooperating with other manufacturers to develop another VCD video decoder chip at a lower cost. This is the key.

I'm still fighting for time.

If the product developed by Wanyan can be regarded as vcd-1.0, Chen Qing's team plans to use one year to develop a whole set of new vcd-2.0 standards based on vcd-1.0 technology.

This is also Simon's plan for Chen Qing's team according to the idea of super VCD in his memory.

The capacity of VCD is stuck, so it is impossible to surpass DVD.

However, compared with Wanyan's early products, VCD player itself has too much to improve.

Taking advantage of the year before the outbreak of China's VCD industry, scopper completely threw off other potential competitors through the accumulation of technology and patents in advance. At that time, even Sony and Philips, the old electronics giants with more profound technology, can only fall behind step by step.

There is no possibility of catching up in a short period of time due to the difference of product technology between generations.As for the longer term.

The golden age of VCD is only five years.

Simon is also very happy that Sony and other manufacturers have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to do this, which is doomed to be a vain pursuit.

In a word, scupper will use the next year to transform from a pure semiconductor design company at the present stage into a comprehensive product technology supplier providing VCD core components and complete solutions for downstream manufacturers, and it is bound to be a monopoly supplier with all-round advantages in technology and cost.

At that time, Chinese VCD enterprises only need to buy a full set of core components and solutions from scupper, and then they can easily assemble their products and put them on the market.

As far as scupper is concerned, as long as the product pricing is well controlled, but the downstream manufacturers are squeezed so that other competitors can take advantage of the situation, China's VCD market will be dominated by scupper to a large extent.

This is totally different from the fierce competition in the DVD field.

Because of the great success of the video industry, all the major electronic manufacturers in the East and the west can see the broad market prospect of DVD. Therefore, they have spared no effort in R & D over the years. Because there are too many manufacturers involved, the relevant technical standards are very confusing, and the patent distribution is also quite scattered. No one has a full set of technology, and no one is willing to ignore it It's easy to compromise. If it were not for these disputes, mature DVD players would be launched before 1995, rather than reaching a technical standard until now. It would take at least three to five years for them to really launch their products and even popularize them.

In comparison, VCD and DVD are actually equivalent to open source Linux and closed source windows.

Because Wanyan failed to apply for a complete patent of VCD technology, the current VCD is equivalent to a free open source software that many manufacturers can plug in. Although it is not as advanced as the closed source DVD, it is also much less constrained by patents. As long as it is willing to do so, relevant manufacturers can develop products and promote them at the lowest cost.

Moreover, open source does not mean that it cannot be monopolized.

As Simon remembers, Google's Android system is still owned by Google, although it is based on the free and open source Linux system. If other people want to use it, they must get Google's approval. Not only that, Google relying on Linux to develop more and more mature Android, other competitors want to make similar products, it becomes very difficult.

Because the technology gap is too far, and the market has been occupied by Android.

Now, that's what scober wants to achieve.

In Simon's view, this aspect is a bit similar to the 2G and 3G standards of mobile communication at this stage.

With the popularity of digital communication technology, at this stage, the world's major communication manufacturers are fiercely competing for 2G technology patents, but do not know that a company named Qualcomm has built an indestructible technical barrier on 3G standard.

Of course, the 3G of Qualcomm can not be bypassed.

However, by the time of industrial upgrading, there is already such a set of extremely mature technical standards, and relevant enterprises can only use the technology of Qualcomm in order to save costs or fight for time.

As a result, there are high taxes.

If some enterprises don't believe in evil, they have to develop a set of standards by themselves to bypass Qualcomm, not to mention whether they can succeed in the end. Even if they do succeed, they may not have been popularized. Other enterprises that have gained benefits in the 3G field have gone to the next generation of 4G. Those who want to find another way can only be eliminated.

Qualcomm is ahead of everyone else, building its own toll booths on the road that other enterprises have to go through, blocking the way to collect money. But Scomber, however, quietly fell behind the others, circled the veins that others could not have seen, and just dug. Of course, others can also go back to dig, and then find that relatively speaking, the most abundant ore vein has been occupied by people, so they can only get some leftovers.

Qualcomm licenses its 3G standards to everyone, and then collects taxes from Qualcomm.

We can also sell chips by the way.

Scupper will license its VCD solutions to VCD manufacturers in the future, and the fees collected may also be called scupper tax.

It can also sell core components.

The same is true.

In the business field, in the final analysis, there are several core routines. Even if there is innovation, it will never change. As long as you see through it, and work hard to implement it, and maybe add some luck, there will be an excellent businessman in the world.