The news of the successful auction of Disney's animation division for a sky-high price of $2.5 billion has once again caused a lot of media coverage.

After the successful signing of the contract, Somer Ray Shidong announced the establishment of Paramount Animation while the iron was hot, and appointed Roger Elles, the director of "The Lion King", as the CEO of Paramount Animation. At the same time, Viacom also announced that it will rely on the huge channels of the Blockbuster chain and the content divisions of Paramount Animation, Paramount Pictures, MTV TV and other content to jointly enter the lucrative film and television peripheral industry.

The day after Roger Arrows got the CEO of Paramount Animation, he held another press conference, announcing that the sequel to "The Lion King", "Pocahonta" and "Mulan" brought from Disney were launched at the same time, which is quite aimed at the old club Disney.

The continuous positive news in a short period of time directly pushed Viacom's stock price up by 7.6%, and the high stock price made Viacom's shareholders, who were originally quite critical of Lei Shidong's aggressive expansion strategy, change their minds and praised Lei Shidong's wisdom and decisiveness.

Some people are happy and some people are disappointed, and the most unlucky one is undoubtedly losing to Time Warner CEO Terry Semel in the bidding for Disney's animation department.

Although companies such as Seagram and Twentieth Century Fox, which lost in the competition, were more or less discussed by the media, the tone of media comments on Time Warner's defeat in this competition was almost ridiculed, after all, Time Warner's overall strength was more than twice that of Viacom, and Time Warner's previous sluggish performance in the film business gave it every reason to grab Disney's animation division. Therefore. The impact of this failure on Time Warner was even greater than the mere failure itself. Many media outlets even wondered if Time Warner was in financial trouble.

Fireflies suddenly announced a means of extending the payment deadline on the day of the auction. Although Terry Semel is the leader of Time Warner, he has far less authority in Time Warner than Steve Ross, which also makes it impossible for him to flexibly change his strategy due to the sudden attack of Fireflies, which ultimately caused Time Warner to lose the auction.

Although the ultimate reason for this failure is the constraints of Time Warner's shareholders and board of directors on Terry Semel, it is clear that Time Warner's shareholders and directors will definitely not take the initiative to take responsibility, and this black pot is ultimately blamed on Terry Semel's head.

Time Warner's stock price has been falling for several months due to the dismal summer box office. With the failure of this auction, Time Warner's hopes of entering the field of animated films were dashed, and the negative impact of this incident caused Time Warner's stock price, which had stopped falling because of the summer season, to begin to decline again.

In the face of increasing pressure and busy work, Terry Semel himself even had some thoughts of quitting his job. Of course, this idea is only fleeting, not to mention the lucrative salary that comes with the position of CEO of Time Warner, and the power that comes with being at the helm of a large media group, no one will voluntarily give up. As a result, Terry Semel is left in pain and addicted to finding a solution to his current predicament.

Of course. As a seller, Firefly Group has received a huge cash of $2.5 billion because of this business. But there is not much congratulatory in the media's attitude towards the fireflies.

Most of the media generally believe that the auction price of $2.5 billion for Disney's animation division is still far below its actual value, and there is no need to pay attention to what the future holds, as evidenced by the still released "The Lion King", "The Lion King" is expected to have a net profit of $1 billion in three years, which means that it will bring more than $300 million in net income to Firefly on average every year, according to the general law that the company's market value is usually more than 10 times its annual profit, the media believes that the actual value of Disney's animation division should definitely exceed $3 billion.

Compared to Terry Semele, who was anxious to be interviewed by major media outlets in an attempt to reverse Time Warner's recent decline, Firefly only held a regular press conference when he signed with Paramount, and then did not respond to any media remarks. This also reflects the benefits of non-listed companies, which do not have to bear the pressure from the media and capital due to factors such as stock prices and earnings reports.

Moreover, although there are voices in the media that the Firefly Group abandoned the Disney animation division, there have been voices of decline in businesses such as Disneyland and Disney stores. But in fact, the pace of development within the Firefly Group is very clear.

Immediately after the spin-off of the hand-drawn animation division, Katzenberg began work on rebuilding Disney's animation division.

Although most of the best digital animators are concentrated in Pixar, in recent years, there have been many advertising design companies and special effects studios that use computer graphics technology, and from these companies a group of excellent professional and technical personnel with both computer and artistic skills are tapped for training, it can be said that it is easy to restart Disney's animation department in the short term, and Firefly Software and Pixar Studios can also provide a full set of mature animation technology and some management talents for the new Disney animation department.

Under the helm of Katzenberg, the man who had led the revival of Disney's animation division, if all went well, the new Disney animation division would be able to launch its first work in three years, so that there would only be a brief break in the pace of Disney's animated releases in 1996, and then it would be able to resume the best production of Pixar and Disney alternately.

The successive divestments of the sale of print media assets and the hand-drawn animation division caused the Firefly Group's cash reserves to skyrocket again, but Eric had no intention of expanding again.

Although the process of merging ABC was very smooth, there were no violent shocks. But at this time, the Firefly Group is like a huge media machine that has just been combined, this media machine has just achieved the most basic operation, and there is still a long way to go to achieve the highest operating efficiency, which is even more problematic to solve, if you completely ignore these. Can't wait for the next step of expansion. Then the end result is only two. One is that the group expands too quickly and becomes more and more bloated, and internal problems accumulate into a lot, which eventually causes the entire business to collapse and fall into operational and financial crisis, and the other is Time Warner, which is strong on the surface but full of internal contradictions, and finally it is still difficult to avoid decline.

Eric hopes that the major departments of the Firefly Group will be reorganized and coordinated, and finally reach a perfect state that can still run smoothly even if it encounters high-level iterations like Time Warner.

Therefore. While rebuilding Disney's animation division, in order to further connect the two major business segments of film and television, Firefly Group is also constantly adjusting the business of ABC TV Network, Disney Channel, ESPN, Marvel Entertainment and other departments.

Internal business adjustments often do not require much capital, and the operating cash flow within the Firefly Group is fully sufficient to cope with these adjustments.

With Firefly maintaining strong profitability across its businesses and just bringing in significant capital through a two-part divestiture, the group has seen a large cash surplus. Firefly temporarily chose to extend the payment period when auctioning off the Disney division, and there were also considerations for this reason, because there was too much money in a short period of time, and if it could not be put into operation, it would have to pay taxes!

If faced with this situation before, Eric's first reaction is often to choose to pay off the firefly's debts.

But after a few years of experience. Eric's originally somewhat conservative business philosophy began to gradually change, and he gradually accepted the state of corporate debt management. Although Firefly currently has a debt of $10 billion, the debt ratio is only about 30%, which is a very healthy debt ratio for most group companies, and it also helps to use debt interest to avoid taxes.

In addition, although paying off the debt in advance can save some interest expenses for the firefly, even if all the $10 billion debt is repaid in the short term, the interest on the debt that the firefly can save is only about $5 billion, but if the $10 billion is used for investment, within the ten-year long-term debt life, with Eric's reborn advantage, there is absolutely no problem in doubling the $10 billion, so how to choose before paying off the debt and making an investment is almost completely unnecessary.

Backed by abundant cash, and while the expansion within Firefly has been halted for the time being, Eric has accelerated its investment in the high-tech sectors he is familiar with. The second half of the 90s, when the high-tech industry is about to rise, is also the best opportunity to enter the game.

In order to support the technology research and development of the Yahoo Advertising Alliance and the Yahoo Technology Alliance, Eric has injected another $200 million in development funds into Yahoo.

The $200 million in debt financing promised to AOL was also paid to the other party's account in one go.

At the same time, according to the original angel fund plan to quickly promote the Yahoo advertising network, Eric began to accelerate the injection of funds into those websites with good development potential.

However, these investments still account for only a small part of the Firefly Group's capital reserves. Of course, Eric will not blindly increase his investment to make a big mistake, so leaving nearly $1 billion in cash after dividends from other shareholders has also become a matter of distress for Eric.

"What a blissful distress," said Eric, sitting in his office at Firefly Studios more than a week after the Disney animation auction, looking at the group's recent financial statements.

Kelly, who had just pushed open the office door and walked in, glared at Eric lightly, came to the opposite side of Eric, handed a schedule to Eric, and said quickly: "A Gulfstream business jet has been contacted, the Victoria's Secret team will be able to fly to New York tomorrow morning, and Miss Brighton has already arranged a press conference over there." In addition, the set of the Armory on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan has been laid out according to the drawings you gave, but the camera remote control slide you mentioned is still being customized, and it may take another week. There is also a ...... for headset recorders" Speaking of this, Kelly paused and said: "I really don't know that you have so many strange ideas, but Motorola has said that they are willing to customize it for free, but they need to print an eye-catching Motorola logo on the device." ”

Eric nodded, "That's fine, but they'll also have to hand over the equipment within a week." ”

"Of course, I've already told them," Kelly nodded, and added, "It's Victoria's Secret's business, besides, Mr. Katzenberg's assistant just called, and he'll be going to New York tomorrow." ”

Eric, who was looking through a document, looked up, "What is he going to do?"

Kelly didn't tease Eric this time, explaining: "Tomorrow is the 19th, Monday, "Survivor" premieres on Tuesday, Mr. Katzenberg should be hoping to see the first news of "Survivor" ratings, if ...... If something happens, it's easy to make adjustments as soon as possible. ”

Eric nodded abruptly, he just remembered that "ER" and "Friends" aired on September 28 and September 29, but ignored the fact that the premiere date of "Survivor" was brought forward by a week.

After the pilot broadcast, ABC doesn't have too many worries about the ratings of "ER" and "Friends", but for the reality show "Survivor", which is very novel in form, although this show was personally selected by Eric himself, many people still have doubts. And, because of the special format of the show, "Survivor" could not arrange a pilot episode, and it was not surprising that Katzenberg wanted to sit at the ABC headquarters in New York and make immediate adjustments to the possible consequences of the show.

Eric didn't worry too much about the show "Survivor", after all, the show had proven its popularity in his previous life, and even more than ten years after the show was launched, there were various similar types of reality shows. However, Eric had no intention of interfering with Katzenberg's decision.

Seeing that Eric didn't say anything, Kelly handed over a thick document: "This is the information you asked me to collect, the products developed by this radio communication technology company completely deviate from the mainstream GSM format, I don't see any need for investment, unless you are confident that their communication system can completely replace GSM, but I think this situation is unlikely." The first generation of analog signal transmission has been used for more than 20 years before being eliminated by GSM, even if this new communication format has more than GSM, but I don't think he can replace GSM in a short time, after all, now all the world's mainstream communication technology companies and mobile device manufacturers use GSM standard, and have invested a lot of research and development funds, these world-class electronic giants are unlikely to allow the technological achievements just obtained to be replaced by other technologies. (To be continued.) )