What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 588 Hope (4k)

Yu Xing's trip to Beijing was clearly very fruitful.

The act of Yang Kai, who dared to identify himself, is a hymn to the courage of counterfeiters.

Huishan Dairy is a Hong Kong-listed company with clearly problematic practices.

Yu Xing's impression of it became vivid after General Manager Yang appeared. What impressed him most was not how much impact its counterfeiting had, but the pronunciation of the feed name in the core of the counterfeiting.

Alfalfa is a common feed in animal husbandry. He once thought the character for alfalfa was pronounced "su" until the news of Huishan Dairy's fraud was published and the pronunciation was corrected.

It is said that Huishan Dairy's methods of falsifying data were largely related to alfalfa.

After the event's dinner, Yu Xing looked at Huishan Dairy's financial report with great interest in his hotel room. When he saw the claim that the company produced 100% self-produced alfalfa, he guessed where the problem lay.

There is bound to be a significant cost difference between self-production and external procurement, and this is likely a key factor that sets Huishan Dairy apart from its competitors.

Following this line of thought, Yu Xing conducted a simple verification by finding financial data from several other similar companies in China. He discovered that the industry average gross profit margin was around 30%, while his company had pushed that figure up to 60%, which strongly supported its own stock price.

Huishan Dairy claims that its self-produced alfalfa costs $92 per ton, while purchasing it from outside costs $200-$300. Based on the 14 tons disclosed in its financial report last year, this would save $1500 million to $2900 million in costs, averaging $2200 million, or 1.34 million RMB.

However, Huishan Dairy's net profit in its financial report last year was RMB 12.4 billion, of which 10.8% was inflated through falsifying feed.

Yu Xing only made a rough estimate based on publicly available information, and the purchase price of the alfalfa hay he received was not accurate. Once such fraud is confirmed, companies often commit systematic fraud and do not manipulate numbers in just one stage.

Do those ranches mentioned in the financial statements actually exist? What are the actual construction expenditures? What problems exist in the related-party transactions? Are there any additional risks associated with financial leverage?

Yu Xing applied the cases that Guo Shanfeng had worked on to Huishan Dairy, and several directions quickly came to mind, but in the end, he still focused on the most basic feed such as alfalfa.

If you want to verify the true situation, on the one hand, you can find mainland institutions to investigate the planting situation of alfalfa in China, and even specifically in the area of ​​Huishan Dairy. On the other hand, you can verify whether those alfalfa suppliers actually supplied this company. At least the demand of 10 tons is not so easy to hide.

You could even hire a drone to fly it in the actual area.

Before going to bed, Yu Xing glanced at Huishan Dairy's latest market capitalization and sighed for the HK$297 billion listed company.

The following morning, as scheduled, he participated in the exchange activity of "China Enterprises". He searched for the richest man in Liaoning Province who had become rich through Huishan Dairy, hoping to have more exchanges with him, but he never saw him.

Yu Xing pretended not to care and asked someone nearby, but didn't get an answer. A moment later, he learned that Jia Yueting of LeEco had also attended the dinner last night.

He was quite surprised by this; he hadn't expected to miss out on meeting President Jia last night.

Lingang's dual-carbon silicon is thriving in its respective field, so Yu Xing's presence made him a key guest at the salon exchange, and he was indeed asked some surprisingly insightful questions.

"Mr. Yu, I've noticed that companies like Google, Tesla, and Apple abroad, as well as Baidu in China, are all researching autonomous driving technology. I've heard that Silicon Carbon Group is also interested in this area. What are your thoughts on the development and future implementation of this technology?"

A young man in the audience asked a very cutting-edge question after receiving the microphone.

Yu Xing glanced at the questioner several times, somewhat puzzled: "This is a good question, but not everyone usually asks me this. Which company or university are you from?"

The young man replied, "Mr. Yu, I am Hong Wenyue, a researcher at the Tsinghua Intelligent Connected Vehicle and Transportation Joint Research Center. I am very curious about the Silicon Carbon Group's moves and views in this area."

Yu Xing was not surprised and said with a smile, "Baidu in China has undoubtedly invested the most in this field. We are just starting out in Lingang. I am not responsible for technical research and development, but we can talk about the consensus we have reached through internal and external exchanges, which we can call the current stage."

“Last year, the US SA classified autonomous driving into levels: L1 and L2 are driver assistance, L3 is conditional autonomous driving, and L4 is fully autonomous driving. This sparked a lot of discussion in the industry at the time, but we believe that it will still take a long time to develop to the L3 stage.”

"There are different opinions in the industry about LiDAR, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras, but all of these hardware devices need to rely on algorithms to ultimately achieve L3 and L4. Is there any hope of achieving such an algorithm now?"

Yu Xing posed a question, and seeing no one respond, he directly asked Hong Wenyue, who had asked the question: "Do you think you can see any hope?"

Hong Wenyue hesitated before replying, "I feel that the industry doesn't seem to see much hope for it to be truly realized; the current research results aren't very good."

In the past two years, Tsinghua University has carried out many related projects and collaborations with companies of all sizes, including Changan, BAIC, Didi, and Zhixingzhe Technology, and naturally knows the most authentic research situation.

Yu Xing expressed the consensus reached during the previous discussion in Lingang: "We believe that there is already hope at this stage. It's not just hype; it's a real hope that will be realized in the future. Of course, the process of realizing this will be quite difficult."

He continued, "I don't know if you've noticed the paper published last year by Joshua Bengio's team about 'attention mechanisms,' which we believe will play a key role in future autonomous driving."

Hong Wenyue was naturally aware of the research paper that had sparked heated discussion, but he really didn't understand why it had received such high praise in Lingang.

“LiDAR is expensive, but it will probably become much cheaper in the future. Its integration with millimeter-wave radar and cameras will be an important direction for achieving L3, while relying solely on cameras is also an important direction,” Yu Xing said. “But no matter which direction it takes, it seems that it is all about converging into a control framework centered on the ‘attention mechanism’.”

"The significance of this mechanism lies in its potential to process chaotic information, grasp the key points, make connections, and transform disparate information into a regular logical chain, ultimately outputting useful results."

"Therefore, the potential of this mechanism is very similar to the logic of driving, which requires us to be aware of our surroundings and listen to our surroundings, and to combine this with experience to predict unexpected situations."

“We currently believe that research and verification in this area have the potential to gradually develop to L3 and L4. However, Silicon Carbon will be very cautious in this regard and hopes to gather more like-minded friends to work together to realize the driving scenes that everyone has seen in science fiction movies before.”

Yu Xing gave a very complete explanation.

Hong Wenyue, who specialized in this field, naturally understood the logic behind it. He was inwardly grateful for President Yu's answer, but felt quite disappointed by the indifferent expressions of the others in the room.

Hong Wenyue had only come to join in the fun, and when he happened to see the head of the Silicon Carbon Group up there, he tried to ask a question. He never expected that the other party would give such a reasonable and well-founded answer.

"Mr. Yu, you previously criticized the Highlander for price gouging, but now we hear that the Highlander is no longer being sold at a premium. Many car owners are thanking you, saying that it was because of you that they were able to buy a Highlander at a more affordable price. What do you think about this?"

There were serious questions from the audience, and naturally, there were also jokes.

Although Silicon Carbon Group has been established for several years and its sales this year are astonishing, it is naturally a relatively young company compared to car companies that have been around for decades or even centuries. It is impossible for it to change most people's perceptions in a short period of time.

Kyushu is great, but I want to buy a Highlander.

This sentiment has been echoing in many automotive forums and public discourse recently, and the more frequently Silicon Carbon Group releases its monthly or weekly sales rankings, the stronger this backlash becomes.

"Everyone is paying for their own cars, so of course it's their decision. Whether they buy our Kyushu or a Toyota Highlander, it's all fine," Yu Xing answered easily in response to the question. "However, today is an exchange meeting for 'Chinese enterprises.' From a business perspective, if I could have earned 10 yuan before, why would I choose not to earn that 10 yuan now and only earn 5 yuan? Why is that?"

"Of course it's because I can only earn 5 now, and I don't have the ability to earn 10."

"The Highlander is not being sold at a higher price because it believes that it is more competitive now than it is now, and it may need to offer discounts in the future to continue selling it."

"You don't need to thank me, just thank the manufacturers who believe that doing this is the only way to be competitive."

Yu Xing smiled broadly and returned a good shot that everyone present thought was quite good.

"Mr. Yu, I'm a fan of yours. I have Douyin on my phone and just switched to Kyushu last month. I found that the advantages of Kyushu that you introduced before were not comprehensive. I think the 'Xiaozhou' voice recognition rate is quite high."

The salon guest next to him was Ding Liguo from Delong Steel. He waited until the applause for General Manager Yu's answer ended before sharing his experience using the product.

Yu Xing got excited and laughed, "Our voice function is actually quite valuable. It was originally an internal research project, but later we got feedback from a group of scientists and changed it to the latest acoustic model, the 'attention mechanism' that I just talked about with Hong Wenyue. It may be added to our acoustic model in the future."

"We also have a voice team in our company. They are currently working on a voice-based face-shaping feature. They say that you can record your own voice and then create a face that matches your real features. They are thinking of combining this model with the game, and they may try it this year."

Yu Xing found the matter quite interesting, but the reaction at the scene was clearly lukewarm.

He smiled, knowing that the people present probably preferred him to talk about how to run a business and how to make it more profitable.

Yu Xing put himself in the other person's shoes and decided to change the topic. Instead of limiting the conversation to cars, he talked about the added value that mobile internet might bring, which made the atmosphere much more lively.

However, Hong Wenyue, who had raised the question earlier, felt it was a pity.

He waited until the morning salon ended, and waited until Mr. Yu finished his interview before going up to him to express his regret: "Mr. Yu, the autonomous driving mechanism you talked about earlier was very good, but unfortunately people didn't like to listen to it."

“This isn’t something I researched; it’s a consensus reached by a group of people who sat down to discuss it. I think it’s quite correct, but first and foremost, it has to be logically convincing to me,” Yu Xing explained. “I’m not really responsible for this aspect. If you’re interested, you can go to Lingang and take a look; their research enthusiasm is quite high right now.”

Hong Wenyue was still a little excited: "President Yu, even Steve Jobs was asked if he could write code. It would be best if you could build a research platform in Lingang. People in the industry are saying that the domestic autonomous driving industry is all about Baidu and Silicon Carbon. I used to think this was true, but today I think it is really true."

Yu Xing was taken aback: "That's too kind of you. We're not even close to being there yet; we're just getting started."

His gaze suddenly fell upon Yang Kai, whom he had met yesterday, and he smiled at Hong Wenyue, saying, "The development of autonomous driving will not be a perfect story; we still need to work together to make it happen."

Hearing these words, Hong Wenyue felt a kind of realistic romance. Perfect stories are prone to becoming bubble-like, while imperfect development is the path for technology to gradually come to fruition.

Yu Xing shook hands with Hong Wenyue and exchanged business cards. Before he could even think about meeting Yang Kai of Huishan Dairy, the other party strode over.

"Mr. Yu, I really regret not being able to hear your sharing this morning." Yang Kai smiled and extended his right hand this time, his attitude completely different from yesterday. "I hope Mr. Yu will do me the honor of joining me tonight."

Yu Xing was quite surprised and did not reach out: "I have a strong grip on Mr. Yang's hands. I am very impressed. I didn't talk about anything useful today. I do have plans for tonight. I'm sorry."

Yang Kai laughed and said, "Mr. Yu, I'm a cattle farmer. I've done a lot of rough work, so I've developed a lot of strength. I also drank quite a bit yesterday, and I couldn't even get out of bed this morning. Please forgive me, Mr. Yu."

Yu Xing didn't know why Yang Kai had changed his attitude so drastically, but after Yang Kai showed some attitude last night, he felt inexplicably uneasy. The more he thought about it, the more something seemed off. Brother Jia's way of doing things and his style were well-known.

Even Brother Jia fled at the first sign of trouble, so why should I bother to confront him and put on a show of displeasure?

Yang Kai believed it was his drunken outburst and wanted to make amends today, at least to clear things up, since they might run into each other again sometime in the world. Although it was impossible for President Yu to come and raise cattle…

Not necessarily. If everyone at NetEase can raise pigs, then Mr. Yu might also be able to raise cattle.

In short, he regretted stepping forward last night.

Yu Xing smiled slightly. At this moment, he even wanted to tease President Yang with alfalfa, but reason prevailed over impulse. He shook hands with him, but compared to the enthusiasm last night, his hand was unusually light today.

However, he seemed to hear Xiao Ying's voice in his ear: "Kill all the fake ones."

(End of this chapter)