20 years of restarting life

Chapter 3687 Intended Investment of One Billion Dollars
Mina returned to her room and tidied up her slightly messy hair and wrinkled pencil skirt from eating. She also touched up her light makeup. Looking at her charming face and wine glass-like figure in the mirror, she lifted her full, round breasts with both hands and went to Zhao Chang'an's room.

The accommodations at this hotel were far worse than those at the one in Amsterdam. Even though the temperature was still around zero degrees Celsius at night, the gas heating system had already been turned off.

Because Zhao Chang'an and Su Bo were smoking, the windows were wide open, and the heat from the sun during the day couldn't balance the cooling effect of the air convection between the indoor and outdoor spaces.

Mina regrets that she can't take off her down jacket and show off her amazing figure like she did in the private room at the restaurant.

Even with Su Bo, an unfamiliar colleague, present, Mina didn't intend to hide anything. She sat down on the sofa next to Zhao Chang'an, took out a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table, and lit it.

Although Mina was wearing a thin, fitted down-filled long coat, her burgundy sequined bodycon skirt only reached her calves, and her slender legs were covered by black tights and black patent leather stilettos.

With her long, wavy, golden hair, fiery red lips, and black stilettos, Mina is tall and has a porcelain-white face with the typical V-shaped chin of a Germanic woman. A pure-blooded Germanic woman like Mina, who is young, beautiful, intelligent, highly educated, and has strong social skills, is the object of many psychologically twisted men's pursuit.

However, Subo had no interest whatsoever. His mind was focused on tomorrow's negotiations. Although he had deliberately made it sound easy at noon, saying that one party wanted money and the other was giving money, and that it shouldn't be difficult to reach an agreement, he still felt a heavy burden regarding OneNano's stake in ASML.

Zhao Chang'an glanced at Mina's calves peeking out from under her bodycon skirt, suppressed his desire to conquer her, and said, "Let's talk about tomorrow's negotiations."

"Aren't you going to call Nan Li and Wang Yu?"

Su Bo asked in surprise, only then glancing at the woman sitting next to Zhao Chang'an across from him, a woman he was still quite unfamiliar with.

Clearly, he didn't understand why Nan Li and Wang Yu weren't allowed to participate in the meeting to discuss tomorrow's negotiations. Even if it was just a conversation between Zhao Chang'an and him, the person in charge of the negotiations, there was no need to call this woman over.

"They have to act together, but their acting skills aren't great, so they just have to play to their natural selves. If they know too much, their expressions won't be vivid."

"Mr. Zhao, are you saying that Mr. Su and I are putting on an act?"

Mina smiled and tilted her head to ask Zhao Chang'an, "Even though the coffee table isn't made of transparent glass, my shoes are already lightly stepping on Zhao Chang'an's shoes with a queenly air."

"This is a compliment and affirmation of your professional abilities. The business world is inherently treacherous, and only the fittest survive."

Zhao Chang'an didn't shy away from Su Bo, gently patting Mina's thigh under her down jacket, and said to them, "Nanometer North America can contribute up to $10 billion in this investment, but this investment will be divided into two steps. As long as the contract is signed, $4 million will be received within seven working days, and the remaining $6 million will be received before the end of the year."

Xiao Yangming told Zhao Chang'an that Intel and its subsidiaries were only willing to invest $2 million in the prototype development phase. Although ASML complained, they couldn't win against Intel and eventually compromised.

In other words, although $2 million was not enough, they eventually completed the development of the TWINSCAN AT:1150i immersion DUV prototype next fall, achieving a process technology of 65nm.

However, Xiao Yangming, as one of the core R&D members of the original PAS5500 series, firmly believed that this amount of money was simply not enough, unless ASML could convince its upstream suppliers to operate independently in their respective areas without ASML's financial support. In reality, ASML preferred to form a cohesive community by having its upstream suppliers jointly invest in R&D and hold shares in each other.

Just like when Zeiss and ASML collaborated on the development of the PAS optical system, they almost went bankrupt. After the PAS5500 became a big seller, ASML immediately injected tens of millions of dollars into Zeiss, which saved the century-old company from ruining itself by developing the PAS optical system.

Zhao Chang'an estimated that in his previous life, after the $2 million arrived, either ASML would continue to ask for money, or there would be no other way but to use his own profits and funds to cover the R&D expenses.

"The problem now isn't that we're afraid they'll ask for money, but that they won't ask for it. However, no matter how much we invest, we should always have a roughly corresponding equity stake. We can accept losses, but we should try to keep those losses to no more than 20-30%. The approximate equity stake in the $2 million agreement between Intel and the other companies is 1%. If OneNano North America invests $10 billion, I don't expect to get the same level of equity as Intel and the other companies; I'd expect at least 3-4%."

Subo and Mina understood what Zhao Chang'an meant: he didn't expect to get 5% of the shares for $10 billion, but even if it was a 20% premium over companies like Intel, the $10 billion would still be for 4% of ASML's shares.

After all, North American companies like Intel, Motorola, IBM, and AMD can provide ASML with a large number of purchase orders and important technical support. Many of ASML's upstream suppliers also have close ties with these companies.

Currently, Intel is ASML's largest order customer this year. AMD was the first customer to purchase PAS5500 eleven years ago, and has been continuously purchasing various models of PAS5500 over the past eleven years. IBM is the second customer of PAS5500, and has also been purchasing it intermittently over the past eleven years. Motorola, as a member of the Sematech Alliance and the EUV-LLC Alliance, can provide ASML with a large number of patent licenses and technical support.

Even TSMC, which did not invest this time, and Samsung, which currently only uses Japanese lithography machines, represent a much larger market in ASML's eyes than the currently weak 1-nanometer system.

Su Bo frowned and said, "I doubt they will accept too much of our funding. The most likely limit is $2 million. With that, plus the $2 million provided by companies like Intel, it will be enough to cover the cost of the prototype. They won't even try to lower the price too much. They'll just wait until the prototype is developed, and then move on to large-scale manufacturing and further development of the model. They might not agree to let us continue to invest."

Subo's statement implies that he believes ASML will abandon him after using him, and may not be willing to exchange shares with OneNano North America through equity increases in the future.

Zhao Chang'an was pleased that he could see this.

Currently, Philips remains ASML's largest shareholder. ASML went public in 95, and Philips sold off its shares on two large scales in 97 and 00. Now it holds 28.6% of the shares and remains the largest shareholder.

Five financial investment institutions, including Capital Group and FMR, hold more than 5% of the shares.

The remaining 40% or so of shares are held in a more dispersed manner, and the shares are traded very frequently, mostly for short- to medium-term investments.

Before last year, companies like Intel were eyeing Nikon and Canon, trying to persuade these two Japanese companies to spin off their lithography machine divisions and join the EUV-LLC alliance.

Then, through various means such as financing and equity participation, these two lithography machine companies were transformed into American-owned enterprises.

So at that time, ASML was not even on the radar of these companies, and naturally none of them invested in or acquired shares.