Rebirth Tokyo 1986

Chapter 320: Earned Money
After lunch, Masato Takeshita returned to the office.

There are still many things to do tomorrow, and he plans to complete the basic understanding of the company's full-year revenue and profit today.

"Let me see which company this thicker piece of information belongs to."

The young man glanced leisurely at the cover and found that it was Xinghai Entertainment instead of Xinghai Capital.

But soon, he understood why.

"That's right. This year, Xinghai Investment has made some moves in Hong Kong and South Korea. It's reasonable that the relevant information is not as much as Xinghai Entertainment."

After muttering to himself, he began to carefully look at the company financial report sent by Xinghai Entertainment.

First of all, its most important subsidiary, Xinghai Games, achieved record revenues thanks to the outstanding performance of games such as Street Fighter 2 and Soviet Cube.

Sales revenue exceeded 15 billion US dollars, and net profit reached 7.6 million.

Such is the tyranny of the gaming industry, net profit easily reaches half the level.

"Street Fighter 2 is a really good game. The arcade version alone has made $6.7 million this year. If you include the console version, the sales revenue has exceeded $10 billion."

"It's a pity that the console version costs too much and the profit is not as good as the arcade version."

Over time, the sales price of Street Fighter 2 has dropped to $4000 per unit, but the production cost has dropped even more, to less than $1000, and the gross profit per machine is over $3000.

The factory price of Star Ocean Games' Super Nintendo cartridges is about US$80, but after deducting miscellaneous costs, the gross profit is only US$35.

But soon, Takeshita Masato regained his spirits and muttered, "Well, it's OK, it's pretty good, the other companies are even lower."

Star Ocean Games can produce game cartridges on its own and also has the distribution rights in its hands, so its gross profit margin from games is second only to Nintendo.

If it were Square, cartridge production and distribution would be in the hands of Nintendo, and the gross profit per cartridge would be difficult to exceed $20.

Of course, if you take the honorable route of high price and low volume, gross profit can even exceed $100.

It’s just that the sales volume is too low, and it’s only suitable for a glorious company with a fixed number of loyal fans.

Star Ocean Games made huge profits, and Star Ocean Music also began to rise.

“Being is really strong this year, with 20 singles in the top 10.”

Being Records, in which it partially owns a stake, has been invincible this year, with its singers taking 50 of the top 32 spots on the Japanese singles chart.

In terms of sales, they are also far ahead, occupying an incredible 5 out of the top 4, with only the 3rd place being a singer from another company.

"As expected of you, Sister Quanshui, you easily won the annual championship."

This year can be regarded as the year when Zard completely took off.

Not only did it achieve the first place in record sales in a single year, but it also won the annual championship in single album sales.

Although the inspirational song "Don't Give Up" was not the best-selling single of the year, it was still ranked in the top five. With its excellent lyrics and singing voice, it has become an eternal classic of Japanese songs.

B`Z, which ranks second in sales, has been a bit unlucky this year.

Its sales volume is lower than Zard, ranking second. Its single sales volume is also lower than Chage and Aska, ranking second.

The key point is that the two elders’ singles were overshadowed by Chage and Aska the year before last, and the same is true this year.

But even with the interference of Chage and Byrd, it did not affect the dominance of Being. Later generations of the record industry simply called this year the Year of Being.

As for Xinghai Music itself, it also has good results.

Although the company did not have any singles that sold over a million copies, there were three or four that sold over 700,000 or 800,000 copies.

What’s more important is the future of Xinghai Music, and Tetsuya Komuro, who will have a huge impact on the Japanese music industry.

As a music producer, he launched a new singer with a style that is very different from the mainstream Japanese music circle this year, and achieved a good result of over 40 sales of his debut single.

"Very good. I guess the Komuro whirlwind will soon sweep across the archipelago, and Xinghai Music will become number one in Japan."

Xinghai Music follows the same path as Avex in its previous life, but it started a little earlier.

In his previous life, Masato Matsuura was able to develop Avex into the number one in Japan with the help of Tetsuya Komuro and firmly suppress the world's record giant Sony.

With better conditions in this life, we can definitely do better.

Despite the good news, Xinghai Music's revenue is not that impressive. Sales of just over 80 billion yen are barely enough to break even.

As for Being Company, its popularity is indeed very high, but its ability to make money is very average.

Sales of 450 billion yen only account for 7% of the Japanese record industry, which is a waste of such high popularity.

The newly formed Xinghai Animation is currently in the investment stage.

However, the animation industry is composed of small companies with low employee costs. Xinghai Animation acquired seven or eight companies at a cost of less than 20 billion yen.

The acquisition cost very little, but the transformation cost a lot.

Xinghai Animation is actively recruiting talents for various animation positions, and the basic monthly salary has been directly raised to 25 yen.

The situation in the past where new animators earned less than 10 yuan a month, or even less than 5 yuan, would never happen in Xinghai Animation.

In addition to raising employees' salaries, the office location also changed. People no longer lived in small, shabby rooms, but moved to a spacious office building.

Of course, the most important animation production was also arranged in a timely manner.

However, even with such spending, Star Ocean Animation's annual expenditure was barely close to US$2 million.

There will be no need to buy computers, cars and other equipment next year, and the expenses will be even further reduced.

As for the profit, it mainly depends on the popularity of the animation.

Currently, Xinghai Animation has a total of 11 TV animations in production. As long as one of them becomes a hit, it can easily make a profit.

This industry is a bit like venture capital. The profits generated by a successful animation are enough to cover the losses of dozens of animations.

But the Japanese animation production industry is very unlucky, and employees can only earn meager salaries.

Many animators who have just entered the industry work hard every day, working more than 15 hours a day, but their salaries are shockingly low, perhaps only tens of thousands of yen.

While animation companies are struggling to move forward, capitalists are making huge profits.

Taking the most award-winning TV animation "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" as an example, the value it created was at least 10 billion US dollars, but the animation production company only made a few hundred million yen.

All I can say is that the Japanese capitalists in the past were really cruel and unwilling to give up any of their own interests.

If it were not for the mobile Internet era and the intervention of foreign capital such as Netflix, Japanese animators would still be living in dire straits.

However, in this life, with Masato Takeshita's strong reforms in the animation industry, Japanese animators will no longer be representatives of low-paid slaves.

In addition to Xinghai Animation, Xinghai Entertainment also acquired Mainichi Shimbun, TBS TV, and Square Enix this year.

Among them, the Daily News and TBS TV station only reached the controlling stake requirement, but even so it cost billions of dollars.

Despite such huge expenses, the amount of money that can be distributed as dividends to Xinghai Group this year is less than 1 million US dollars.

If you just want to make money, this business will be a huge loss.

Square Enix holds a slightly larger stake, reaching 70%, and Xinghai Group spent another $4 million on this.

This business was also acquired at a premium, but this year's dividends are still pretty good, reaching US$5000 million.

"It's okay. Although Xinghai Entertainment suffered huge losses this year, it is mainly due to its controlling stakes in the Mainichi Shimbun and TBS. Next year's financial report will still be as impressive as last year." Excluding its controlling stakes in the Mainichi Shimbun, TBS TV station, and Square Enix, Xinghai Entertainment's annual revenue was US$16 billion and its net profit was US$6.4 million, which is a pretty good result.

Once the three companies are counted,
Xinghai Entertainment’s revenue reached US$62 billion, but its net profit was -US$25.4 billion.

This is due to the huge cost of acquiring the three companies, as well as the impact of high revenue and low profits of the Daily News and TBS.

The two media outlets had revenues of more than 4000 billion yen, but profits of only to billion yen.

"Well, it's a good thing that we haven't completed the acquisition of Tokuma Shoten. If we add the cost of acquiring Tokuma Shoten, the financial statements will be even uglier."

The acquisition of Tokuma Shoten would not cost too much, but the company was suffering heavy losses and Xinghai Group would need to pay off its debts in a timely manner.

After briefly understanding the revenue situation of Xinghai Entertainment, Masato Takeshita started muttering again.

"No wonder Rogers has been in a bad mood recently. It turns out it's because of his company's ugly financial report."

"But it doesn't matter. It's the price the company has to pay for its progress."

Masato Takeshita does not care about the huge losses caused by the company's development because he has Xinghai Capital as a guarantee.

This top company, which has a strong presence in the financial sector, has only tried its hand in Hong Kong Island and South Korea this year.

However, the fund has not yet reached the final liquidation moment, and the money earned from the sale of stocks has been reinvested in US stocks, so no net profit has been generated in this regard.

But the failure to make money from stock gains does not mean that Xinghai Investment has not made a profit this year.

Private hedge fund management fee income alone is $18.5 billion this year.

If the management fees of public funds and Galaxy Capital are included, Xinghai Capital's revenue this year will reach US$22.3 billion.

As for wages and other costs, the annual total is less than US$3 million.

Xinghai Investment has made a profit of US$19.5 billion this year just from management fees.

This is after receiving a bonus after completing the Hong Kong stock operation. Without this bonus, the annual profit would easily exceed US$20 billion.

This is the power of large financial companies. Even if the stocks are not profitable, they can still live very comfortably just by relying on management fees.

Of course, for Xinghai Fund, management fees are just a small amount of money.

When the fund opens on the day, the company will receive even more exaggerated revenue.

After Xinghai Capital is Xinghai Communications, which is still in its infancy.

The most basic telecommunications business has an annual revenue of almost zero, but the investment is as high as $3 million. However, thanks to the huge profits from Xinghai Internet Cafes, Xinghai Telecom has only suffered a loss of tens of millions of dollars this year.

The Internet cafe was only 5 months old and has been investing and expanding ever since.

If Internet cafes had appeared at the beginning of the year, even if they had been expanding, Xinghai Telecom would have had a net profit of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It can only be said that Internet cafes are indeed one of the most profitable legal businesses at the moment. And the threshold is relatively low. You can build a small Internet cafe with just tens of thousands of dollars.

"Unfortunately, it is estimated that the profits of a single Internet cafe will drop significantly next year, and more Internet cafes will need to be opened to maintain profits."

A business with a low threshold will always attract more people. When faced with fierce market competition, Xinghai Internet Cafe will have no choice but to lower its hourly rate.

Of course, even if the price of time charges plummets, Xinghai Internet Cafe will be the one least likely to suffer losses.

Because Xinghai Internet Cafe is a joint venture subsidiary of Xinghai Group and the local telecommunications company, it does not need to pay Internet fees and its operating costs are much lower than similar Internet cafes.

“Should we sell off the Internet cafe industry in developed countries in Europe and America in the next few years?”

Internet cafes are a temporary product. When the number of home computers reaches a certain scale, they will enter a decline phase.

Later China is a typical example, with the number of Internet cafes decreasing massively every year.

"Well, forget it. Internet cafes can also be used as software promotion platforms."

We are about to enter the Internet era, and Xinghai Internet Café will be extremely important.

As long as Xinghai Group wants to promote a website, it can make it appear in front of hundreds of thousands of people in an instant.

This sufficient exposure is far more important than making money by selling Internet cafes.

In addition, owning a large number of Internet cafes is also conducive to the development of Xinghai Investment's venture capital department.

Which entrepreneur doesn’t want his or her website to immediately have hundreds of thousands of traffic?

Following closely behind is Xinghai Lithography, which also made a small profit this year.

It was mainly because Xinghai Wafer gave a small helping hand and bought a lot of parts and equipment from Xinghai Lithography.

Of course, it is mainly due to the efforts of Xinghai Lithography itself.

At present, the manufacturing capacity of lithography machines has reached the world's first-class level, second only to the two giants Nikon and Canon.

As for ASML, which later monopolized the global lithography machine market, it is still just a younger brother at the moment.

"Not bad, not bad, it's actually profitable."

Masato Takeshita had very low requirements for Xinghai Lithography, and before the 21st century, the annual losses were kept within US$3 million.

Yes, losses don’t matter as long as they don’t exceed the limit.

But it would be better if we could make some profit, so that we can give an explanation to the Chinese side.

After all, this is a subsidiary jointly established by Xinghai Group and Shencheng Hi-Tech, which was established in China a few years ago.

Soon, Masato Takeshita turned to another major profitable segment of the company - Xinghai Software.

Xinghai Software had annual revenue of US$35.6 billion and net profit of US$7.3 million last year.

The bulk of the profits come from the Xinghai operating system and the associated Xinghai office software.

Very important but less noticeable in society are the industrial software parts including EDA and databases.

In order to compete for market share, Xinghai Software is currently in a state of small losses.

“I thought we might lose money this year, but we ended up making a profit of $22 billion.”

The profit level of 22 billion US dollars is already a super company figure.

You have to know that Motorola only made a profit of 19 billion US dollars for the whole year.

Of course, although Motorola is an old company, it has only risen in recent years.

The real big money makers are still the oil giants, whose fortunes are basically in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

"Forget it, let's just leave it at that for this year, save some money and stop avoiding taxes."

Xinghai Group will also issue half-year bonuses, which is expected to cost US$12 billion.

That means only $10 billion will be taxed this year.

The number is not that large, so there is no need to upset government departments.

He is not as shameless as Amazon CEO Bezos, who doesn't care about tax evasion and being criticized by everyone.

(End of this chapter)