Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 497 Today's "Dress Up Play" +1
In fact, people have been questioning Evergrande’s financial situation for a long time.

Especially since the beginning of 2020, when the real estate industry was temporarily suspended due to the flu, these doubts have become even more rampant.

Many netizens have exposed a series of Evergrande operations online, such as Evergrande's "National Partnership" promotion during the flu season, 712% off house sales, massive layoffs and salary cuts, and requiring employees to "12" (work seven days a week, hours a day)...

These operations ultimately point to the same thing: Evergrande’s cash flow is not healthy. In the absence of a way to “increase revenue,” it has to resort to these measures to “cut costs.”

Or to put it more bluntly, Evergrande has no money.

Having said that, most of the comments are just rumors and gossip. Evergrande's annual financial report rating is excellent, and even a half-in-house person like Hengten Network can't tell the real situation.

However, although it is difficult to explain, compared to the outside world, Heng Teng can finally sense some deeper changes.

What Zhou Cheng just said about "increasing the dividend ratio for shareholders" seems to be a normal operational proposal, but if you look into it more deeply, no matter which reason it is, it is actually quite far-fetched.

Although Meng Bai is not a business genius who can see the big picture from the small details, he is still an old player in the capital circle. More importantly, he has experienced the collapse of another giant up close and has experience with this kind of thing.

Today's Evergrande's performance in many aspects is exactly the same as that of Leshi.com back then.

Although it is hard to say whether this speculation is right or wrong, Meng Bai still feels that he should be prepared in advance.

"Fortunately, there are not too many specific business or financial involvements between us and Evergrande, otherwise we would not be able to sleep now." Chen Zhixi said with a smile.

Hengten Network's largest shareholder is Evergrande, but it is independently operated and the two are in a cooperative relationship. At the same time, due to the unique asset-light nature of the film and television industry, there is no such thing as arrears. At most, there is some residual box office settlement with Evergrande Cinema Line.

To be honest, since the merger and reorganization of the two parties, Hengten has basically been taking advantage of Evergrande to grow itself. This is mainly due to the fact that when the merger took place, Ruyi insisted on controlling the film and television business itself.

Of course, Evergrande is not stupid. Their main goal is to increase the stock price to boost the data of its entertainment sector, thereby enhancing the capital market's confidence in the investment value of the headquarters group.

Meng Bai tapped the table with his fingers. He had been in a hurry to find Chen Zhixi and had no time to think carefully. Now that he had calmed down, he gradually had some new ideas.

If Evergrande's financial situation really has problems, it may not be a bad thing for Hengten Network, or more accurately for these "original Confucian" shareholders.

As we all know, Tencent has always held the investment industry without interfering. So as long as Meng Bai and his team can take over a larger portion of the shares, they can complete the "emptying the cage and replacing the bird" and reversely control Hengten Network.

If you want to take over Evergrande's shares, you will definitely need money. Meng Bai has Qiming Venture Partners, so he doesn't need to worry about this.

The only question at the moment is whether Evergrande will collapse?
Meng Bai and Chen Zhixi had similar ideas on this point, and both felt that it would take some time.

However, it turned out that their expectations for Evergrande were too optimistic.

January 2021, 1, New Year's Day.

Just when everyone was welcoming the new year, a "cry for help" from Evergrande to the Guangdong Provincial Government suddenly broke out on the Internet.

This is a 13-page document titled "Report on Evergrande's Request for Support for Major Asset Sufficient Projects." It is sincere in its words and detailed in its data, but the theme is just one: it hopes that the Guangdong Provincial Government will support the reorganization of "Evergrande Real Estate and Shenzhen Real Estate A" to avoid a break in Evergrande's capital chain.

When many netizens saw this news, their first emotion was confusion.

Is Evergrande really out of money? Why did it ask Guangdong Province for help? What is "Shenfang A"?
This involves some historical events of Evergrande’s past.

As early as 2016, Evergrande took advantage of the competition between Baoneng and Vanke for control and absorbed a large number of Vanke shares through the secondary market. These shares were later transferred to the Metro Group under the name of Guangdong Sheng State-owned Assets at a low price.

This money was not lost in vain, and Boss Xu also had his own demands. Evergrande wanted to return to the A-share market from the Hong Kong stock market, so it reached a merger and reorganization agreement with Shenzhen Real Estate A, which was owned by the Guangdong Provincial State-owned Assets, and prepared to "go public through a backdoor listing."

At the same time, in order to optimize its structure and reduce debt, Evergrande also introduced 27 investment institutions in three rounds, with a total of 1300 billion yuan in strategic financing.

In return, the reorganized Evergrande needs to go public within four years. Otherwise, in addition to repurchasing shares, it will have to pay an additional 137 billion in dividend interest.

At the beginning, the cooperation was going smoothly. To show its sincerity, Evergrande even moved its headquarters from Guangzhou to Shenzhen. However, the restructuring plan was repeatedly postponed for various reasons. Until now, when the four-year deadline is approaching, there is still no news.

An even more fatal blow came last month, when the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the "three red lines" regarding debt to the real estate industry, which hit Evergrande precisely where it hurts.

Backdoor listing is nowhere in sight, the main business is declining year by year, the debt policy has triggered a minefield, and there is also a foreign debt of more than 140 billion...

Although Evergrande issued a rumor-refuting announcement the next day, stating that the so-called "letter for help" was completely false, basically no one believed it except Evergrande's retail investors.

The detailed data and contents in the letter all match the actual situation and cannot be fabricated by outsiders at all.

Real estate is different from the film and entertainment industries. It is really related to people's livelihood. Evergrande is the top real estate company in China, involving a large number of residential houses. Once it goes bankrupt, the impact will be huge.

Therefore, during this period, whether online or offline, the public's topic is almost inseparable from Evergrande. Especially those buyers who bought Evergrande pre-sale properties, they privately cursed "Belt Xu" and prayed every day that Boss Xu could hold on.

At the board meeting of Hengten Network, Ke Liming, as a representative of the former Ruyi faction, tactfully asked Zhou Cheng about the situation of Evergrande.

"Everyone, I am only in charge of Heng Teng now, and I don't know much about the situation of the group." Zhou Cheng said helplessly.

"Understand, we are just curious." Ke Liming laughed, then looked at Meng Bai obscurely, and exchanged glances. Zhou Cheng also looked at Meng Bai, not because he noticed the little movements of the two, but because he knew that although Ke Liming and Chen Zhixi seemed to be the original leaders of the Ruyi Department, it was actually this President Meng who controlled the overall situation behind the scenes.

He knew that Ke Liming's inquiry was definitely not as he said, it was purely out of curiosity, and he must want to test something. Although he had some vague ideas in his mind, he was still unsure of the specific situation.

He hoped to see something from Meng Bai's face, but to his disappointment, until the end of the board meeting, the other party always had that calm smile on his face, making it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Sure enough, those who can reach this position at such a young age are not simple characters. They are more patient than those who are only 10 or 20 years older than them.

If Meng Bai knew Zhou Cheng's thoughts, he would definitely say helplessly that he was not so patient, but was just well prepared, so he had a plan no matter how the situation developed later.

He had no doubts about the "cry for help" that was circulating on the Internet, because the content was almost exactly the same as he expected.

Therefore, a few days ago, he had asked Gu Fei to start reserving funds. As long as Evergrande was interested in selling Heng Teng's shares, he could take them at any time.

It may be difficult to take over all of them, but there is Tencent. Strictly speaking, they are actually the second largest shareholder of Hengten. If Evergrande can give up its share, they will also be interested.

Of course, this matter will definitely not be answered in three or five days. Since Evergrande is still issuing a rumor-refuting announcement, it means that they still want to struggle.

At present, the only turning point is whether the government will save Evergrande. This has nothing to do with the relationship between the two parties, but mainly depends on whether the consequences of Evergrande's collapse can be accepted.

Just as what was said in the "cry for help" letter, although the profits belong to Evergrande, the debts belong to all employees.

This involves more than 100 banking and financial institutions, more than 8,000 upstream and downstream enterprises, 140,000 Evergrande employees, more than 3 million jobs, and more than 600,000 commercial housing units that have not yet been completed.

Whether it is coercion or pleading, the authorities cannot but consider the series of financial risks and impacts on people's livelihood brought about by the collapse of Evergrande. Let's see whether they want to make drastic measures or whether they are really "too big to fail".
-
No one can predict how the situation at Evergrande will develop in a year or two, so everyone can only take it one step at a time.

After a few days of heated discussions online, emotions gradually calmed down and people began to prepare for the upcoming Spring Festival.

For the film and television industry, the most attention-grabbing event is naturally the upcoming Spring Festival.

Due to the flu, most of the crews stopped working last year, and no new projects started shooting for more than half a year. However, many films that were originally scheduled to be released last year were also postponed because of this. With the two sides offsetting each other, this year's Spring Festival is still quite lively.

In addition to the annual "Boonie Bears", this year's Spring Festival schedule also includes Zhang Yimou's "On the Cliff", Lu Yang's "Assassination of Novelist", Jia Ling's first directorial "Hello, Li Huanying", Rao Xiaozhi's remake of "Raging Fire" in between filming "The Interpreter", and "The Order of the Samurai" adapted from "Onmyoji", totaling eight movies.

Among them, "Hello, Li Huanying" is produced by Hengten, "Assassination of Novelist" is co-produced by ArcLight, and ArcLight also participated in the investment of "Raging Fire".

All in all, there are three movies related to Meng Bai during the entire Spring Festival, which seems like a case of fighting against itself.

But there is no way, many of the movies that were postponed last year have been squeezed into this year. There are only a few major schedules in a year, and Arclight has invested in so many projects that there will always be duplications.

In the subsequent summer and National Day seasons, there are many projects such as "The Accidental Murderer" and "Send You a Little Red Flower". Conflicts are inevitable, and we can only try to coordinate and avoid the same type of movies competing in the same field.

Meng Bai comforted himself about this, thinking that he would make all the money in the end no matter which movie became a box office hit, so it didn't matter whether it was "internecine fighting" or not.

Among these three movies, he is most concerned about "Assassination of Novelist", after all, the heroine is Li Qin. If the box office performance is good, her performance and status can be further improved.

He also went to attend the premiere of the movie. To his surprise, he saw Mr. Li with a completely different style from before.

The black outfit unexpectedly matches her cool face. Combined with the neat skills and cool style of the heroine "Tu Ling" in the trailer, she looks even more cool and elegant.

Meng Bai sat in the stands, supporting his chin with one hand as he looked at his cool girlfriend on the screen. He made up his mind that he must let this girl try more different styles of roles in the future.

Just like now, if it weren't for this movie, who would have thought that she was still suitable for this type of thing.

Today's "Dress Up Play" +1.

But then again, although attention is paid, if he were to make a prediction, the box office of this movie would not be low, but it probably would not be too high, probably around a few billion at most.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the film, it is simply because this kind of fantasy-themed work has a relatively low box office ceiling. Especially at a time like the Spring Festival, the most popular ones are definitely family-friendly comedies.

For example, "Hello, Li Huanying", which is Jia Ling's directorial debut.

There was a comedy skit before this movie, which was quite popular at the time. Jia Ling had a good reputation among the public and had a strong audience base. This time, she also used her connections to bring Shen Teng to play a supporting role with her, which maximized her appeal.

It can be said that as long as the quality of this movie is up to par, the final box office will definitely be there.

As a producer, Chen Zhixi is also very confident about this film. The production cost of the film is only 1.5 million, while the publicity and promotion cost exceeds million.

During the period before the Spring Festival, no matter which platform you use, you can basically see the promotion of "Hello, Li Huanying", as well as the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jia Ling herself and the movie.

This is how most movies work these days.

Why are there often some movies that seem to have no special effects or big scenes, but their production costs are higher than those visual effects blockbusters? It is because almost all the money is spent on marketing costs.

(End of this chapter)