Founded in 1930, Fortune Economic Weekly is a magazine that publishes research articles on economic issues. Since the launch of the Global 500 list in 1954, it has always become the focus of attention in the economic circles and has a huge impact.

Although in the mainland in later generations, the Forbes list seems to be more famous, but all along, in terms of economic authority, Fortune magazine is obviously superior, let's say this list, in the 80s, Forbes only counted listed companies, and "Fortune" also added non-listed companies.

Listed companies have financial reports announced every year, which is extremely simple to count, but non-listed companies are different, and specific investigations require extremely high costs and time, but also because Fortune is more specific and authoritative in this era.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Xu Zhicai notified the assistant in a hurry, and then the assistant contacted colleagues in the United States, and by the time the weekly magazine arrived at Xu Zhi's hands, it was already the fifth day of the Lunar New Year.

In fact, Midea's expansion into the U.S. gaming industry has attracted the attention of many authoritative economic magazines, and coupled with Xu Zhi's successive acquisitions of Hutchison Whampoa and HK Electric Group in '79, the company's secretariat has received enough interview letters from all over the world to fill a small bookshelf.

However, Xu Zhi was lazy to be interviewed, even with the fame of "Fortune" magazine, and Linda, who was in charge of the investigation, was helpless about it, but she did not give up, and stayed in Xiangjiang with the whole team for two months, specifically counting Xu Zhi's main industries.

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, Xu Zhinian came to the company's headquarters for the first time.

Sitting next to the floor-to-ceiling window of his office on the top floor of the Hutchison Building, Xu Zhi was basking in the sun comfortably, the winter sun was very soft, and the indoor temperature was not very low.

I have to say that the magazine "Fortune" is indeed very professional, and Xu Zhi's assets are counted very clearly:

Heung Kong's traditional company, Xu Zhi, holds a total of 49% of the shares of Hutchison Whampoa, and the current market capitalisation of Hutchison is HK$5.3 billion.

Cheung Kong has a 28% stake in Cheung Kong, with a current market value of HK$3.2 billion

It holds a 36.8% stake in Power Assets, which currently has a market value of HK$3.1 billion.

It holds a 36% stake in TVB, but TVB is an unlisted company with a valuation of HK$1 billion.

Holds two buildings, federal and international!

At the same time, it wholly owns all the land of the former HK Electric Group.

Holds a 100% interest in the Mong Kok Centre project.

On the surface, Xu Zhi owns properties in Heung Kong, with a total value of more than HK$10 billion, but Fortune magazine also indicates that these assets must be financed by high leverage, and Fortune calculates that the amount of debt should be between HK$6 billion and HK$8 billion based on Heungjiang's large business model.

Xu Zhi smiled after reading it, and had to admire these professional magazines, in fact, this data is similar, when he acquired Hutchison, because he and Li Jiacheng cut a wave of leeks in the stock market, the acquisition of Hutchison and the shares of the Yangtze River cost their own money, and did not borrow foreign debts.

However, from the beginning of HK Electric, it desperately began to use bank funds, borrowing 2 billion Hong Kong dollars to acquire HK Electric, privatizing HK Electric's real estate business spent 3.1 billion Hong Kong dollars, buying the Commonwealth and International Building borrowing 1.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the entire project of Mong Kok Centre also borrowed almost 500 million Hong Kong dollars, and the total debt is almost 7 billion Hong Kong dollars.

As for some other property projects, there are also loans, but they are all mortgaged by their own projects and set up separate funds for operation, which actually add up to a lot of borrowed funds, but basically the loans can be paid off when the project is completed, and they are not included in the total liabilities.

However, what Fortune does not know is that over the past year, land prices have almost doubled, and Evergrande began to sell off a large number of assets in non-core areas after privatizing HK Electric's land and properties, and developed its land properties with a large number of Chinese-funded enterprises, and has recovered more than 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars, and in 81 years, it is the peak of land prices, and it can earn more than 2 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is enough to repay privatization loans. In this way, it is equivalent to Evergrande earning several core properties and land under HK Electric for nothing, which can be worth at least HK$3 billion if the land price is based on 81 years.

As for Xu Zhi's other core industry: Midea Electronics Company, because it is a non-listed company, all kinds of data are extremely difficult for Fortune to obtain:

The first is the arcade machine, over the years, although the number of arcade machines launched by Midea is not much, but each one is extremely popular, from the very beginning of the snake, Xiangjiang cube, tank battle, Pac-Man to the back of Contra, Super Mario, Donkey Kong, etc., each of these has dominated the entire American market.

The King of Fighters, launched at the end of last year, detonated the entire arcade industry, bringing arcades into the realm of two-player confrontation, people go to the game hall to play arcades, no longer to kill time, but to engage in "armed confrontation" with friends, and there are many teenagers who are addicted to it.

In 1978, Japan's Taito Company made more than $100 million with a "Space Invaders", and Fortune magazine concluded that Midea's annual net profit would never be less than $200 million, or even more, just like arcade machines!

And Midea's other product Gameboy has formed a strong monopoly in the field of handhelds, although Sony also launched the same gamewatch, but the latter's global sales are only 1/10 of the former, with its own several classic games, Gameboy has formed a monopoly in the field of hardware with software quality.

However, "Fortune" also conducted an in-depth investigation, although the annual sales of Gameboy exceeded 10 million units, but the United States company in order to monopolize the market share, take the low-price route, according to the "Fortune" estimate, a Gameboy's net profit is about 1-2 US dollars, the total profit of 10 million sales is up to 20 million US dollars, and then taking into account various advertising cost factors, the handheld is not the core profit product of the Midea Group.

Midea's third product is a home game console, which has now entered into a battle with the global hegemon Atari in the United States, and has begun to erode Atari's monopoly in market share, which is said to have sold more than 3 million units in the United States last year alone.

That's nothing compared to the Atari 2600, which has already sold 25 million units, but data from a Fortune survey shows that countless families who have bought Midea consoles have begun to look down on the games carried on the Atari 2600 console.

However, the good thing is that Midea has not opened up global third-party licensing like Atari did, and it is far from the latter in terms of the variety of games, which does not threaten its hegemony for the time being. In order to deal with this threat, Atari began to make a large number of games, with the intention of winning by volume.

"Fortune" magazine conducted surveys in many places in the United States, and analyzed that the United States game consoles follow the strategy of low-cost consoles and high-priced game cartridges, but the price of Super Mario and Contra is as high as $80 a game, compared with Atari's normal game board is only $25.

But Midea's strategy was so successful that after a long period of investigation, Fortune found that customers who bought a large number of Midea's consoles would buy a few more chucks for other games, even if those games were expensive. Even the investigative reporter Dou bought a set of console + game disc with private money, and then gave a very high evaluation!

Fortune magazine finally judged that the net profit of Midea's game console business in a year should not be less than that of arcade machines, at least $200 million.

As for the other personal computer business, Midea has just begun, and the business is not large, and Fortune only mentioned it slightly in the analysis of the article, and did not describe it too much.

However, "Fortune" also stated in the article that it is very optimistic about the RCA TV business acquired last year, and the analysis pointed out that RCA's own business has been difficult, coupled with the pollution incident that broke out last year, not only caused serious losses to the company's brand, but also caused problems in the supply of goods for a period of time, which also affected the entire sales system.

In this case, an Asian company actually acquired the business, spending nearly $500 million and taking on a lot of debt, the acquisition was not favored by Fortune, and the tens of thousands of RCA employees in the United States were also recognized by Fortune as a burden to the Midea company.

As a result, Fortune values Midea at $1.5 billion.

"Knock knock knock...... The sound of knocking on the door sounded, and the secretary Zhou Xiqian walked in and said, "Xu Sheng, Mr. He Guoyuan is here." ”