"Brother-in-law, how much money did we actually make last year?" Leng Zhimeng blinked her eyes, asking our Boss Huang.
"We didn't make any; we lost tens of billions!" Boss Huang said dryly. This wasn't a lie, as they had borrowed sixty billion in one go last year, and indeed, they hadn't made any money.
"Oh come on, brother-in-law, just tell me a concrete number. How much did we truly earn!" Leng Zhimeng said coquettishly.
"Why are you asking this out of the blue? Has brother-in-law shorted your food and clothing?" Huang He glanced at Leng Zhimeng. He was a little worried, thinking if someone was planning to probe their financial situation through Leng Zhimeng.
Very few people within the entire Jiangnan Group knew the company's annual net profit. In fact, even the finance department of the parent company was unaware, as Boss Huang had several subsidiary companies that were not under the parent company's umbrella but generated their own profits independently. This way, they didn't have to record the parent company's financial data.
Therefore, only Boss Huang, who held all the company's financial data, knew how much his industries earned in a year.
Besides Boss Huang, only one other person knew this data: Leng Zhiruo. As Boss Huang's wife, she naturally had to be fully aware of the family's financial situation.
In fact, all financial data was reported directly to Leng Zhiruo, who then informed Boss Huang. Boss Huang wasn't good with math, and these financial figures made his head spin.
Actually, Leng Zhiwen also knew. Boss Huang, on the principle of fairness and justice, believed that since he had two wives, he should be transparent with both. However, at that time, Leng Zhiwen was passionately engaged with Boss Huang, so he wasn't sure if she remembered the figures.
If one absolutely had to ask if there was a fourth person, it would probably be Hu Jing. Although Boss Huang didn't proactively give her the exact numbers, as she followed Boss Huang in managing the company's business, Hu Jing could deduce a figure that was approximately correct with a little attention.
Beyond these, it was unlikely that any fifth person in the world could know the specific profit figures of Jiangnan Group.
"Brother-in-law, tell me!" Leng Zhimeng was still coquettishly pleading. "Alright, it's about the Fortune Global 500. The 2003 Fortune magazine's Global 500 list has been released. The 500th company is Kawasaki Heavy Industries from Fusang, with an annual revenue of 10.173 billion US dollars."
"But our Jiangnan Group didn't even make it to the Global 500. I know that because our company isn't listed, our external sales data isn't public. Fortune magazine can only guess our sales based on some indirect information, so the data isn't accurate."
"So I want to know how much we actually earned last year, and if we can make it onto the Global 500 list. That way, I can tell people when I go out that our Jiangnan Group is also a Fortune Global 500 company!" Leng Zhimeng pouted.
"I see!" Huang He became a little interested. This was the Fortune Global 500! In his past life, if any Chinese company made it to the Fortune Global 500, they would definitely promote it vigorously.
Around 2003, the Chinese people were most fixated on things like the Fortune Global 500 and Nobel Prizes. So, it was natural for Leng Zhimeng to want to know if their company had made it onto the list. In fact, Boss Huang himself was very interested in this question.
Thus, Boss Huang began to recall the financial reports he had received for the previous year.
Boss Huang had many industries, some belonging to Jiangnan Group and some not.
The companies belonging to Jiangnan Group included Jiangnan Leather Factory, oo Network, Jiangnan Commerce, Jiangnan Servers, Tangren Film and Television, Jiangnan Game Studio, Jiangnan Mall, Jiangnan Optoelectronics, Jiangnan Technology, and Jiangnan Railway Transportation Technology Company.
Companies independent of Jiangnan Group under Boss Huang's name included: Tianxing Mobile, Jiangnan Council, Liushang Qu Shui Cai Wei Shi, as well as the Italian production base overseas, the French Tuileries Palace Management Company, Marvel Studios, Netflix, Blizzard, Western Mustang Fund, Priority Group USA, the controlling stake in Android, and some shares in Google and Qualcomm.
Looking at it this way, Boss Huang indeed had quite a few companies under his wing.
So, let's first calculate the companies belonging to Jiangnan Group.
Among them, Jiangnan Leather Factory, the company that started Jiangnan Group. How to put it, this company, which reached an annual output value of 1 billion RMB at its peak, later became a company with 350 million RMB in debt.
With the rapid development of Jiangnan Group, the traditional market has been completely abandoned, and the annual sales have significantly decreased, even lower than when it was on the verge of collapse. This is because Jiangnan Leather Goods has essentially withdrawn from normal market sales. At the very least, you cannot buy Jiangnan brand leather goods in major department stores anymore.
However, Jiangnan Leather Factory is still producing, but all products are provided to Jiangnan Blind Boxes. The quantity is not large, with an annual shipment of about 15 million leather goods, a far cry from the peak annual sales of 100 million leather goods of various types.
And if these 15 million leather goods are calculated at 10 RMB per blind box, the actual sales are only 150 million RMB.
If calculated at the cost of 4 RMB per piece provided to Jiangnan Commerce, then the annual sales are only 60 million RMB, which has completely become a relic of the past.
But the problem is that in the eyes of others, Jiangnan Leather Factory is in a thriving phase, even becoming the number one leather goods brand in China. This is because Jiangnan leather shoes are now the most expensive on the market.
Of course, the prices of ordinary Jiangnan leather shoes are still relatively cheap. The truly expensive ones are the Italian Master Custom editions under Jiangnan Leather Shoes. The cheapest pair of Italian custom Jiangnan leather shoes now costs as high as 7,000 RMB per pair.
And these were recently drawn from blind boxes. If they were Master Custom Jiangnan leather shoes drawn in 2001 to 2002, the cheapest would be around 50,000 RMB per pair.
At the same time, they are in a state of being available in the market but not for sale. Countless collectors are desperately searching, but they cannot find a pair of Italian Master edition Jiangnan leather shoes to buy.
The reason for this situation is that after the party last year, to avoid further flaws, Jiangnan Leather Factory successively announced that two of the original eight masters had passed away, and two had terminated their cooperation with Jiangnan Group.
The remaining four are fully dedicated to researching more advanced shoemaking techniques, so their output of leather shoes has greatly decreased, with only about less than 10 pairs produced annually.
However, Jiangnan Group has introduced eight new masters, and their Italian Master Custom Jiangnan leather shoes will appear in new blind boxes. As for the original four masters, their leather shoes will be collected by Jiangnan Leather Factory for the time being, and whether they will be sold to the public will be decided later.
Following the announcement of this news, and the new eight masters not yet gaining further market recognition, the price of these Italian Master Custom leather shoes has dropped to 7,000 RMB per pair, while the leather shoes customized by the original eight masters have entered a completely booming phase.
The only pair with a traceable price is the white leather shoe, which has now risen to 680,000 RMB per pair. This pair of shoes was originally obtained for less than 100 RMB, achieving an astonishing 6800-fold appreciation.
It is also rumored that in another 10 years, this pair of shoes will rise to 6.8 million RMB, which is simply mind-boggling.
Some people might wonder, since the original eight masters' leather shoes are already so expensive, why should these eight masters leave the Jiangnan Leather Factory's blind boxes?
If these masters' products were reintroduced into blind boxes, their sales would likely increase more than tenfold.
Well, on the one hand, it is to continue marketing the scarcity of the masters. On the other hand, there is the saying that one cannot always walk by the river without getting their shoes wet. The backgrounds of these masters are simply not verifiable, so it's better to be low-key.
As for the other eight newly emerging masters, each and every one of them is a genuine master registered with the Italian Shoemakers Association, masters who are not afraid of verification.
Therefore, although Jiangnan Leather Factory's annual marketing is only 60 million RMB, in the eyes of outsiders, Jiangnan Leather Factory's valuation is at least 2 billion RMB and above.
However, regardless of the valuation, the annual marketing is calculated at 60 million RMB.
After Jiangnan Leather Factory comes oo Network. This is the second company established under Jiangnan Group and also the online company most valued by Boss Huang. Its sales may not be the highest, but it is the most profitable and astonishingly profitable company under Jiangnan Group.
Throughout 2003, oo Network's annual sales were around 7 billion RMB.
oo Network is also divided into different products. Among them, oo Game Center has the highest annual sales, with pure sales reaching an astonishing 8 billion RMB.
The profit from single-player games is negligible. However, the sales of game-related blind box products reached 1.8 billion RMB. Of this, 1.3 billion RMB in sales came from Warcraft III.
In addition, there were advertising fees, which were previously mentioned to be around 800 million RMB.
The highest sales data comes from online games. The related direct game sales reached 5.4 billion RMB (the data in the previous chapter was revenue, not sales), making a total of 8 billion RMB in gross operating revenue.
And this is just the revenue from oo Game Center. oo Network's other two important revenue streams are the two online software, oo and Facebook.
The revenue from these two software is basically concentrated in advertising income. Among them, oo's advertising revenue is 1.2 billion RMB, and Facebook's advertising revenue is 900 million RMB, totaling 2.1 billion RMB.
Therefore, oo Network's total annual operating revenue is 10.1 billion RMB.