Musk returned to the richest man in the world, and ＂Reske＂ ushered in a good start
Hot spots of the week
In the past week, 52-year-old elon musk staged "Xi Fei’s Return to the Palace".
At the beginning of 2024, due to the decline of Tesla shares, Musk showed a decrease in wealth on several rich list, which was surpassed by Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Group, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
On March 25th, Hurun Research Institute released the 2024 Hurun Global Rich List, and Musk regained the throne of the richest man with a wealth of 1.67 trillion yuan.
Musk returned to the throne of the richest man, thanks to Tesla’s record delivery, which made its share price soar. At the same time, Musk’s space exploration technology company Space X has reached a new height with the successful launch of satellite Internet projects and the support of lucrative government contracts.
While Musk returned to the world’s richest man, Reske, which entered the field of smart electric vehicles from the smart phone industry, got off to a good start.
On March 28th, Xiaomi Auto Conference was held, and the pricing that attracted much attention was finally announced: the standard version of Xiaomi SU7 was priced at 215,900 yuan, the pro version of Xiaomi was priced at 245,900 yuan, and the max version of Xiaomi was priced at 299,900 yuan.
Only 27 minutes after listing, the scheduled number of Xiaomi cars exceeded 50,000 units. "Entrepreneur of China" learned that the down payment for 5,000 sets of Xiaomi SU7 is 20,000 yuan, and the down payment for other configurations is 5,000 yuan. This means that Xiaomi Automobile only accounted for more than 300 million yuan in less than half an hour after the press conference.
Three years ago, Lei Jun emphasized that Xiaomi Automobile would be his last venture. Before announcing the construction of the car, Lei Jun once said: "The goal of Xiaomi Automobile is to compete with Porsche and Tesla to create a new era of dream cars in the automobile industry."
At the press conference, Lei Jun mentioned that he is both a Tesla owner and a Porsche owner. He believes that these two brands, one representing the tram and the other representing the sports car, are the benchmarks of the times in the history of the automobile industry. "When Xiaomi decides to build a car, it must be compared with the best car factory in the world. If you don’t even dare to compare, you will definitely not be able to do it well."
Lei Jun gave high praise to Musk and Tesla, and the two versions of Xiaomi SU7 were almost aimed at Tesla Model 3 for pricing.
When the Xiaomi car client was smashed and the founding version was sold out, Wall Street institutions relentlessly lowered Tesla’s target share price, and Tesla’s share price fell by 2.25% that day. It seems that while "Reebs" turned into "Reske", it also posed a threat to Musk.
Mengniu Dairy also welcomed the fifth new president last week.
On March 26th, Mengniu Dairy released its performance report for 2023, together with a notice of high-level change: according to the strategic arrangement of the Group, Mr. Min Lu Fang was promoted to vice chairman, retired as president of the Company and continued to serve as executive director. Mr. Gao Fei, former senior vice president and head of Normal Temperature Division, took over as president of the company and served as executive director.
Mengniu said that the management adjustment is an important decision of the board of directors of Mengniu Group based on medium-and long-term strategic considerations.
Lu Minfang was 47 when he became the president of Mengniu, and now Gao Fei, who succeeded him, is also 47 years old. This time, Mengniu no longer chose an external professional manager, but used a veteran who had been trained by himself and worked in the company for nearly 25 years.
Since 2016, Gao Fei has served as the vice president of Mengniu Group and the head of the Normal Temperature Division. He is also the fifth helm of Mengniu since its establishment. "Rebuilding a Mengniu" is a difficult problem left by Lu Minfang to Gao Fei. I wonder if this new president can lead Mengniu to achieve the goal of "double hundred billion".
Person of the week
Musk
On March 25th, Hurun Research Institute released the 2024 Hurun Global Rich List, and the deadline for wealth calculation was January 15th, 2024. According to the list, 52-year-old elon musk regained the position of the richest man with a wealth of 1.67 trillion yuan.
Previously, Musk lost his position as the richest man and was overtaken by Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Group, mainly due to the decline of Tesla’s stock. As one of Musk’s biggest assets, Tesla was challenged from inside and outside the company. In contrast, Amazon, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and LVMH, led by Bernard Arnault, performed better in the stock market.
Now that Musk has returned to the position of the richest man, it marks that the power in the global business field has changed hands again.
It is worth mentioning that mark zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has the largest wealth growth this year, with an increase of 650 billion yuan, up 12 places, ranking fourth with 1.14 trillion yuan. Thanks to the growth of Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s cloud business, Larry Ellision, the founder of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, increased his wealth by 320 billion yuan to 1.04 trillion yuan, rising three places to fifth place.
Hu Run, chairman and chief research officer of Hurun Report, said: "AI deeply influenced our global rich list for the first time this year, and more than half of the new wealth came from AI. The wealth of entrepreneurs related to cloud computing, such as Meta, Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Microsoft, has increased substantially. For the first time, the wealth of Huang Renxun in NVIDIA increased significantly, entering the top 30 in the world. "
Zhong Shanshan, Huang Zheng, Ma Huateng, Zhang Yiming and Ding Lei are among the top five in China’s wealth list.
70-year-old Zhong Shanshan’s wealth has shrunk by 9% compared with last year, making him the richest man in China for the fourth time in a row with 450 billion yuan. The 44-year-old Huang Zheng’s wealth increased by 71% compared with last year, or 160 billion yuan. He is the entrepreneur with the largest wealth growth in China this year, and he was promoted to the second place in China for the first time with 385 billion yuan, up 3 places. The 53-year-old Ma Huateng’s wealth dropped by 10% compared with last year, ranking third in China with 250 billion yuan.
Person of the week
Lei jun
At 7: 00 pm on March 28, 2024, the Xiaomi Automobile Conference was held as scheduled.
Three years ago, Lei Jun said at the Xiaomi conference that Xiaomi Automobile would be his last venture, and he was willing to fight for Xiaomi Automobile with his lifetime reputation. At that time, he decided to spend $10 billion on the cash reserve for building cars in the next 10 years. In the past three years, Xiaomi’s public investment in building cars has reached 9.8 billion yuan. As Lei Jun said, Xiaomi’s first car cost nearly 10 billion yuan.
Since the announcement of the car, Xiaomi Automobile has been receiving much attention and has also attracted public interest. In December last year, Xiaomi exposed the appearance of the car and a number of configurations, but it was always silent about the price. Lei Jun even called it: "It won’t be too cheap."
At the press conference, Lei Jun officially announced the price: a total of three models, Xiaomi SU7 standard version, priced at 215,900 yuan; Xiaomi SU7 Pro version, priced at 245,900 yuan; Xiaomi SU7 Max version, priced at 299,900 yuan. For this pricing, Lei Jun said that it was sold at a loss: "240,000 is also a loss, and 210,000 is also a loss, thanks to nothing more."
In terms of sales volume, only 27 minutes after the listing, the scheduled volume of Xiaomi Automobile has exceeded 50,000 units.
In the interview after the conference, Lei Jun told China Entrepreneur: "This conference is the most tiring one. Today, I am holding the belief of winning the conference. Like taking the college entrance examination, I am both excited and nervous, and my psychological pressure is particularly great. Because pure trams make money, except Tesla, I don’t know who else. Everyone loses 30,000, 50,000 or even 100,000 on a car. Everyone has high expectations for us and hopes that we can sell it very cheaply. This is nothing more than how much you are willing to lose. "
Regarding pricing, Lei Jun told China Entrepreneur: "We still found a very important point, that is, consumers think that we are sincere, and then we can bear the loss, so the whole Xiaomi SU7 is defined and designed according to the high-end luxury car."
Before announcing the construction of the car, Lei Jun once said: "The goal of Xiaomi Automobile is to compete with Porsche and Tesla to create a new era of dream cars in the automobile industry."
Lei Jun is both a Tesla owner and a Porsche owner. He believes that these two brands, one for trams and the other for sports cars, are the benchmarks of the times in the history of the automobile industry. "When Xiaomi decides to build a car, it must be compared with the best car factory in the world. If you don’t even dare to compare, you will definitely not be able to do it well."
Xiaomi SU7 is aimed at the top 3 of pure electric luxury cars. The long-term goal of Xiaomi Automobile will become the top 5 in the world in 15 to 20 years.
Person of the week
Gaofei
On March 26th, Mengniu Dairy announced that Mr. Gao Fei, the former senior vice president and head of Normal Temperature Division, took over as the president of the company and served as the executive director.
Mengniu said that the management adjustment is an important decision of the board of directors of Mengniu Group based on medium-and long-term strategic considerations, releasing the signal and confidence of making Mengniu bigger and stronger.
At the same time, Lu Minfang’s last report card was also released. The financial report shows that in 2023, Mengniu’s revenue was 98.624 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%. Operating profit increased by 13.8% year-on-year to 6.1706 billion yuan, and operating profit rate increased by 0.4 percentage points year-on-year to 6.3%.
On March 27th, at the performance meeting held in Hong Kong, Gao Fei, a tall man, made his official appearance in a dark suit and blue tie. In front of the camera, he and Lu Minfang smiled and shook hands to show the smooth completion of the old and new succession.
Since Lu Minfang took office, he has carried out a series of drastic reforms within Mengniu-adjusting the organizational structure and personally taking the lead in promoting the digital strategic transformation of the whole group. This series of measures reversed the loss situation of Mengniu and laid a solid foundation for its development.
However, as early as 2017, Lu Minfang, the new CEO of Mengniu, put forward the development goal of "double hundred billion", that is, to achieve market value and revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan in 2020. However, the goal of "double hundred billion" has been delayed and has not yet been realized.
Gao Fei, who took over, joined the company since Mengniu was founded in 1999. He has been deeply involved in the dairy industry for many years, leading the development and development of Mengniu’s sales system and contributing to the development of the enterprise. Mengniu’s internal evaluation of Gao Fei is that it has rich experience in enterprise management, brand building, personnel training, cultural inheritance, innovation and development.
Since 2016, Gao Fei has taken the lead in proposing a "champion strategy" in the Normal Temperature Division, achieving an annual increase in normal temperature performance, and liquid milk has achieved double-digit growth for five consecutive years. Among them, the high-end brand "Telunsu" created by the team led by Gao Fei has opened up the high-end dairy market in China. At present, Telunsu has become the world’s largest dairy product with annual sales of more than 30 billion yuan.
As the fifth president of Mengniu, Gao Fei said at the performance conference that no matter who is in the position of president today, Mengniu’s strategy will remain unchanged at first. At present, the industry has encountered some challenges, and Mengniu will actively respond.
"We still have a lot of room to further promote consumption iteration, including digital transformation, continuously creating more value for consumers and shareholders, and achieving high-quality development. Mengniu management will pay more attention to the improvement of cash flow and the return to shareholders. " Gao Fei said.
Text | "China Entrepreneur" reporter Deng Shuanglin