Reborn since 1993

Chapter 1410 Could it be that it was sold too cheaply?

The entire suite fell silent for a moment. Even seasoned veterans like Wei Jiaxuan and Cornell were stunned.

Everyone present knew that Ruyan e-cigarettes' valuation was likely to be high, but no one expected that Mr. Li would immediately set the bar so high.

Yes, the concept of e-cigarettes has a lot of room for hype and is indeed a powerful tool for profiting from consumers, but we can't scare away all the consumers!
"Even if we are willing to accept a valuation like that of Ruyan e-cigarettes, will others be willing to agree?"

Cornell coughed and spoke first.

He felt that Li Dashanren (Li Dashanren) wanted to fleece them, a group of Wall Street institutions, before Ruyan e-cigarettes were launched.

With such a high valuation, Wall Street institutions investing in Ruyan e-cigarettes will likely suffer huge losses!
Li Dongling chuckled, looking at the worried expressions on Zhang Xiaocheng's and the others' faces, "Who dares to say that Ruyan e-cigarettes' market value after its future listing cannot surpass that of Japan Tobacco, British Tobacco, or even Morris Tobacco Company?"

Looking at Cornell in front of him, Li Dashan felt that he was still too timid. In his previous life, his younger colleagues on Wall Street were much bolder than him, his senior.

The creation of a few golden flowers on Nasdaq is a desperate attempt to blow bubbles, waging propaganda wars all over the world to find retail investors to take over their investments. They won't stop until they've blown the bubble to outer space.

Cornell's "older generation" still adheres to valuation logic and is very cautious, while their successors don't care about such things at all.

Besides, did Tesla's revenue surpass that of established automakers like Toyota, Honda, GM, and Volkswagen in its previous life?

As a result, Tesla's market value reached eleven times that of Toyota, even though its revenue was only one-fifth of Toyota's. Wasn't that still considered "quite reasonable" by Wall Street institutions?

As for why Tesla's market value is so high, what Wall Street institutions are speculating about is not how many cars Tesla has sold at all.

If we're talking about sales figures, can we still keep boasting? If we're going to boast, we should boast about things that traditional, established car companies don't have, like humanoid robots, autonomous driving, cars automatically picking up passengers and making money for their owners, energy storage charging stations, and so on.

Tesla can boast about itself, so why can't e-cigarettes?!

Ruyan e-cigarettes are "healthy" products designed for smoking cessation, serving as a tobacco alternative for users while helping them quit.

How big is the global tobacco market? How many smokers are there in the world? If e-cigarettes can replace even one-tenth of the tobacco products, that would still generate eight or nine hundred billion US dollars in revenue every year!

What? You doubt that Ruyan e-cigarettes can do it?

Why assume that e-cigarettes can't do what hasn't happened? What if they could? Don't you see that the American Tobacco Association and other traditional tobacco companies lost their lawsuits? The tobacco industry paid a total of $2060 billion in compensation to the states of America. This compensation continued for two or three decades, and the tobacco companies are still paying it. It can be called the tobacco industry's "original sin" in America.

With traditional tobacco companies suffering heavy losses, isn't this an opportunity for e-cigarettes?
"The tobacco industry, including Morris and Reynolds, has been severely impacted. Not only in America, but globally, traditional tobacco companies are facing trouble and a constant stream of lawsuits."

Who dares to say that traditional tobacco companies won't enter the e-cigarette industry?

Li Dongling's words were like a thunderbolt, exploding in the minds of Cornell and the others.

Cornell looked at Li Dashan with horror. Even Cornell and his colleagues had subconsciously regarded traditional tobacco giants as rivals of Ruyan e-cigarettes.

Indeed, this is the case. In America, tobacco giants like Morrison view Ruyan e-cigarettes as a dangerous threat and target them as competitors, constantly creating negative publicity and spreading negative news about Ruyan e-cigarettes.

They also want to push the FDA to investigate Ruyan e-cigarettes and, on the grounds of safety, ban their sale in America.

For tobacco giants like Morris, who have just been fined $200 billion, how can they be willing to accept the emergence of e-cigarettes like Ruyan that are aggressively taking away their market share?
As for other methods, such as getting gift shops, convenience stores, nightclubs, and gas stations that cooperate with tobacco companies to stop promoting Ruyan e-cigarettes, those can only be considered the most "ordinary" competitive tactics.

However, if traditional tobacco giants also enter the e-cigarette market, then the entire concept of e-cigarettes will completely change!

It's not a pipe dream, but an inevitable trend. Don't we see traditional tobacco giants starting to transform into e-cigarette manufacturers? Isn't that proof enough?
"To be honest, once Ruyan e-cigarette completes its financing today, Ruyan e-cigarette will seek to reach a strategic cooperation with a traditional tobacco giant!"
If a traditional tobacco company were to partner with Ruyan to jointly develop and sell e-cigarettes, would Ruyan be worth a valuation of tens of billions of dollars?

Li Dashan is not afraid of tobacco giants not yielding. This is not because Ruyan e-cigarettes are so powerful. Compared with traditional tobacco giants, Ruyan e-cigarettes are still a small fry.

However, circumstances are beyond human control. American Traditional Tobacco Company is currently in the most difficult period of transformation, and some tobacco giants are struggling to survive under heavy penalties.

More importantly, the stock price is sluggish. After all, if it gets fined this time, will it be fined again in the future?
To boost its stock price, tobacco companies must make changes and demonstrate their commitment to those changes.

At this point, Ruyan e-cigarettes, representing the "future" of the tobacco industry, extended an olive branch, leaving the question to the traditional tobacco giants: will they accept it?
In addition, Ruyan Company holds the core patents for e-cigarettes, such as atomizing cores, vapor formulas, appearance design, and structure. If other small e-cigarette companies infringe on Ruyan's patents, Ruyan will generally turn a blind eye to minor infringements.

Because there are simply too many of these small workshops, and e-cigarettes are currently in a period of extremely high profits, a large number of small e-cigarette workshops are springing up every month. There are even workshops in China now specializing in making e-cigarettes for overseas markets. However, as long as these small workshops don't go too far, Ruyan e-cigarettes doesn't really care, because lawsuits are endless. But once they reach a certain scale and want to raise funds or go public, then all past grievances will be settled. Without a satisfactory answer, Ruyan e-cigarettes can forget about going public and raising money.

If it's a tobacco giant like Morris or Reynolds infringing on Ruyan e-cigarettes, it's even simpler; there are plenty of vulture lawyers willing to take on such sure-win cases.

Upon hearing these words, Zhang Xiaocheng, Wu Yaoguo, Lin Xianhui, and others clearly saw that Cao Zongyan, Wei Jiaxuan, Cornell, and others changed their expressions.

Li Dashanren pointed out a concept that has never appeared in the e-cigarette industry before: a makeshift operation recruiting a regular team!

If someone had dared to say they wanted to acquire a traditional tobacco company that was making a fortune every day, they probably would have been laughed at.

But if tobacco companies actively join the e-cigarette industry, that would be a completely different story. It would be like the tobacco industry changing course and entering a new world overnight!

After saying that, Li the Philanthropist glanced at Ed Frys without making a sound, and the latter nodded slightly, as if to be sensible.

Previously, the philanthropist Li had Microsoft invest $50 million in Ruyan e-cigarettes, acquiring a 10% stake.

Now, the value of this stake in Ruyan e-cigarettes is about to soar to one billion US dollars. Shouldn't Microsoft show some appreciation? Do you think it's so easy to take what belongs to Li Dashan?

Microsoft has chosen to continue investing, and is willing to invest an additional one billion US dollars in Ruyan e-cigarettes!

Ed Frye said that Microsoft is really not short of money now. A billion dollars investment in Ruyan e-cigarettes and taking away 10% of the equity is nothing to Microsoft.

Furthermore, by spending one billion US dollars, Microsoft became one of the major shareholders of Ruyan e-cigarettes, thus riding the coattails of the e-cigarette concept stock. With Microsoft's current market value of over 450 billion US dollars, this concept could increase Microsoft's market value by even one percentage point, which would amount to billions of US dollars!

Would Microsoft trade one billion dollars for a market capitalization increase of tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars?
Cao Zongyan sighed again. Whether it was the Qatar Foundation or Microsoft, they were both incredibly wealthy and powerful entities.

Faced with such a ruthless and greedy tycoon who only knows how to throw money around, even the silver syndicate was helpless. They didn't invest, but the tycoon really did!

"The Gangcheng Future Industry Foundation is also willing to subscribe for shares in Ruyan e-cigarettes at the same valuation!"

Lin Xianhui also spoke up, saying, "If even a big dog like Microsoft has started a group buy, how can Cyberport, being one of our own, not join in?"

Whether others who acquired shares in Ruyan e-cigarettes will ultimately make a profit is unknown, but Cyberport will definitely not lose money. Lin Xianhui is well aware of this and feels no pressure whatsoever.

"This time, Ruyan Electronic Cigarette Company has sold a total of 25% of its shares!"

As the nominal head of Ruyan e-cigarettes, Zhang Xiaocheng also spoke up at this time, saying that this was a one-time financing of 2.5 billion US dollars for Ruyan e-cigarettes as a bargaining chip for the next transformation of Torch Group!
Currently, the largest shareholder of Ruyan e-cigarettes is Dongling High-Tech, holding 33.2% of the shares. Hanxi State-owned Investment and Pingyang City Investment each hold 24.9% of the shares, Microsoft holds 10%, and Hanxi Tobacco Company holds 3% of the shares.

Upon hearing that Ruyan e-cigarettes was only offering 25% of its equity, Ed Frye, Lin Xianhui, Cao Zongyan, Wei Jiaxuan, and Cornell exchanged glances.

This means that the five parties are now vying for this 25% stake. The people who just thought that Mr. Li had overvalued Ruyan e-cigarettes now feel that there isn't enough meat to go around!

Microsoft is willing to acquire a 20% stake in Ruyan e-cigarettes!

Before Ed could even open his mouth, Wei Jiaxuan retorted, "Microsoft might as well just take all 25% of the shares!"

"If you are not willing to invest, then Microsoft is willing to fully subscribe to this equity!"

Ed diligently fulfilled his role, aggressively vying for shares in Ruyan e-cigarettes.

"impossible!"

"Did Bill Gates agree to you taking so many shares of Ruyan e-cigarettes?" Cornell also joined the fray.

"Then there's no need for you to trouble yourself!"

Watching the scene unfold before them, where people were arguing fiercely over the Ruyan e-cigarette, resembling a bustling market with the same intensity as elderly people fighting over cabbages, Zhang Xiaocheng and Wu Yaoguo exchanged a glance, and an idea began to form in their minds.

Could it be that Ruyan e-cigarettes are valued at a low price?

(End of this chapter)