Dreaming or gambling?
In China's laser industry, there is an unavoidable name: Han's Laser . The founder behind , Gao Yunfeng , started from scratch from a three-foot platform to build a laser leading empire. His experience can be described as legendary.
Today, Han’s CNC, a subsidiary of Han’s Laser, was spun off and listed on the GEM. The stock issue price was 76.56 yuan per share, with a market value of 27.3 billion yuan.
From a handicraft workshop in an apartment in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen in 1996, to one of the first eight listed companies on the small and medium-sized board in 2004, and now a leader in the laser industry with a market value of over 50 billion yuan and favored by northbound funds; from The story of a university teacher who set out to start a business with a customer deposit of 400,000 Hong Kong dollars, became a billionaire at the age of 37 when the company was listed, and then became one of the leaders in the innovative development of Shenzhen's equipment industry - Han's Laser and its founder Gao Yunfeng. Wonderful.
01
A button made a billionaire
In 1992, Gao Yunfeng, who had just turned 30, was still working as a teacher at Nanjing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. However, he did not know that a trip south made him far away from the three-foot podium.
At that time, Gao Yunfeng was a machine fanatic and an intellectual keen on talking about philosophy. A machine bought abroad in a friend's factory broke down, but because Europe and the United States did not pay much attention to the Asian market at that time, repairs needed to be made two months in advance. Back and forth, while chatting with friends about Laozhuang, Gao Yunfeng repaired the machine and made some extra money.
Later, a friend said that the purchase process of this kind of machine is also very cumbersome: you need to pay 400,000 first, wait for 3 months, and then pay 400,000 before it can be shipped back. "We talk about Laozi and Zhuangzi together every day, and we have a sense of trust." Immediately, Gao Yunfeng agreed and said, "I can also make this machine for you." After getting the first pot of gold from a friend to start a business, Gao Yunfeng took on a whole set of tasks from machine manufacturing to maintenance on his own.
In fact, he was not sure whether the machine could be built at that time, and he did not dare to tell the truth to his friends. Gao Yunfeng, who knew little about software engineering , bought a book similar to C language in a bookstore, and went back to learn and do it. I purchased machine parts during the day and built the machine at night. I didn't sleep for four days and four nights, and the machine was successfully debugged on the afternoon of the fifth day.
A friend immediately transferred another 400,000 yuan, and then Gao Yunfeng rented a house of more than 100 square meters in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, and founded Han’s Laser, with a five-star mark on it, indicating that it was a Chinese laser.
However, the situation took a turn for the worse in the next six months. Without orders, employees could not be paid, and it was about to go bankrupt. The ignorant and fearless Gao Yunfeng discovered that the market capacity at that time was very small. Only 10 units of the laser marking machine were sold nationwide a year, and it was monopolized by state-owned assets, so there was no place for the rich to gain a foothold. It is understood that in 1996, the domestic market capacity of laser equipment was estimated to be only 3 million yuan, which was not an "industry" at all.
At this time, Gao Yunfeng thought of a classmate who was a leader at FAW . The automotive industry should be the largest market for laser equipment. Thinking of this, Gao Yunfeng immediately packed up his bags and flew to the Northeast. As a result, I haven’t seen it for a long time. "One day I found that there were so many people waiting in line to treat him to dinner. I understood that this road was blocked. I left directly and left a letter to this classmate, saying that the scale of the company was relatively small and would be bigger in a few years. Let’s talk about it later.”
Re-examining himself, Gao Yunfeng realized that as a start-up private enterprise, “we must find private enterprises and enterprises in industries similar to ours.”
He set his sights on Wenzhou, Zhejiang and Shishi, Fujian. In the past, button factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang sold buttons by the pound. If you use a laser marking machine to put patterns and corporate trademarks on the buttons, you can sell the buttons one by one, and they can also be sold more expensively, which is very useful. imagination.
Holding two stacks of flyers, Gao Yunfeng started selling his products door to door. Months passed with no feedback. Just when the company was about to close down, a phone call changed his fate. The owner of a button factory expressed his willingness to pay 300,000 to buy one.
Button manufacturers who tried the button laser machine produced by Han's soon tasted the benefits. "He bought it back and made a net profit of 350,000 yuan in two months. Later, a relative of his also bought it, and then his neighbor also bought it, and then it was sold out." From this, Gao Yunfeng successfully opened up the market, and in Wenzhou has been selling button laser machines for more than two years and has achieved sales of 300 million. After making stable profits, Gao Yunfeng began to pursue the leapfrog development of the company. At this time, Gao Yunfeng realized that the laser industry had no technical threshold and must rely on capital to promote rapid expansion of territory.
could not find investors in the early stage. Gao Yunfeng sent letters through the Yellow Pages and sent more than 200 letters, only to wait for a reply from two companies. One of them was Shenzhen High-tech Investment , which later became the first major shareholder of Han's Laser. In order to allow him to invest, Gao Yunfeng also gave up his controlling stake, and the intangible assets were not priced. In addition, at that time, there were 50 million orders and a net profit of 10 million, but there was no price. In this way, Shenzhen High-tech invested 4.38 million, accounting for 51%.
However, Gao Yunfeng did not feel that he was at a disadvantage. After the investment came in, the company increased six times in 1999, with revenue reaching hundreds of millions. The company was standardized and the road to listing was smooth.
In 2001, Gao Yunfeng had a conflict with the management stationed by Shenzhen High-tech Investment. In order to regain control of the company, Gao Yunfeng did not hesitate to seek loan sharks and borrowed 8.8 million yuan at 30% interest. He paid half of the full price of the repurchased shares and signed a repurchase agreement. purchase agreement . It also involved the transfer of state-owned assets to , which required public bidding and auction, and the auction required a deposit of 5 million yuan. Gao Yunfeng borrowed another 5 million yuan from a loan shark at 30% interest. In the end, 46% of the shares were bought back at an auction of 24.6 million yuan.
As capital enters the market, Gao Yunfeng's "gambler" characteristics of being willing to take risks begin to become more and more prominent. With the repeated asset mortgages, the boundaries of Gao Yunfeng's ambitions are also extending step by step.
In 2004, Han's Laser became one of the first listed companies to be listed on the small and medium-sized board, raising 230 million yuan. The increase that day exceeded 400%, which surprised even Gao Yunfeng. In the following ten years, despite inevitable ups and downs, Han's Laser has maintained a compound growth rate of 30% in sales revenue and net profit, and its market value has grown from about 1 billion yuan to over 50 billion today.
probably also witnessed the magic of the capital market, allowing Gao Yunfeng to learn to rely on the listing platform to constantly seek ways to refinance and develop. During this period, Gao Yunfeng, who had obtained money in the capital market, began to dig deep into Han's "moat". On the one hand, he consolidated his technological and market advantages. On the other hand, he began a large-scale layout - acquiring upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry chain.
Gao Yunfeng’s M&A skills are quite exciting. The global financial crisis in 2008 put many companies in danger, but it was a good opportunity for Gao Yunfeng. He has made mergers and acquisitions again and again, while rescuing midstream and downstream customers in the crisis vortex, he has also built a laser aircraft carrier that runs through the upstream and downstream industry chains. Including Dongguan Yueming Laser, which has a certain status in the world, finally "married" into the big family at this time point.
In the following years, the economy continued to encounter crises, and Gao Yunfeng's pace of mergers and acquisitions also increased. He had wanted to acquire some foreign companies before, but was unable to hold a controlling stake because the prices were too high. By 2012, the economic crisis finally created opportunities for him, and he successively acquired a number of established foreign companies, becoming a cross-border laser empire.
During this period, the continuous expansion of Gao Yunfeng's career has also brought countless highlight moments to Gao Yunfeng, including "No. 252 on the Hurun Report", "Shenzhen's 30 Outstanding Figures in 30 Years" and "Shenzhen Municipal Government Special Allowance Expert". With the blessing of identity, there was a time when the scenery was endless. However, his risk-taking "gambler" trait changed the trajectory of his life time and time again, and he eventually ended up here, and therefore "stumbled". The trigger for the
incident originated in July 2019. An investor asked about the "European R&D Operations Center" on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's Interactive Exchange. The company responded: The company began preparing for the construction of the European Operations Center in August 2012. In 2016, it opened The construction project has begun formal construction and is expected to be put into use in 2020.
In fact, the above-mentioned "European R&D Operation Center" project was proposed in 2011. The initial budget was 50 million yuan. During the period, the budget was increased many times and the completion schedule was changed. The budget increased to 1.05 billion yuan in 8 years of construction. At the same time, Han's Laser, a project that accounted for more than 10% of its net assets, failed to complete information disclosure as required, and was questioned for not fulfilling its due disclosure responsibilities.
Subsequently, a reporter reported after an on-site visit that Han’s Laser used the guise of building an R&D operation center in Europe to build a luxury hotel. The initial budget of 50 million yuan skyrocketed to 1.05 billion yuan, and the construction cost per square meter was as high as 36,000 yuan. The high construction cost per square meter has been questioned, fearing that it would be necessary to build a palace.
In response to the question, Gao Yunfeng received a phone interview from a reporter from CCTV Financial Channel's " Trading Time " and gave an unobtrusive response, "What role are you? What qualifications do you have to question me? This is our own funds. "Of course I have the right to make any business decisions, why do you care so much about me?" It immediately caused a wave of waves on the Internet.
After several hours of fermentation, Han’s Laser finally issued an apology announcement and stated that it was required by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, but the market did not seem to buy it. Han's Laser's stock price opened sharply lower that day at 25.85 yuan, almost hitting the limit of and , and then rebounded weakly, finally closing at 26.08 yuan, a single-day drop of 8.81%.
03
chain split and listed
attracted Hillhouse , Ning Wang entered the game
It was probably from this time on, this figure who was famous in the shopping mall gradually began to hide behind the scenes and rarely appeared in the public media. However, despite his low-key style, Gao Yunfeng's operations in the capital market are still "aggressive".
In December 2019, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the "Several Provisions on the Pilot Domestic Listing of Listed Companies' Spin-offs of Their Subsidiaries", which provided policy support for the spin-off and listing of A shares . Spin-offs and listings have become increasingly popular, even in the local market, which has experienced ups and downs for nearly 30 years. Big Mac BYD has also joined the army of spin-off listings.
Under the surging capital market, in November 2020, Han's Laser issued an announcement stating that the company planned to spin off its subsidiary Shenzhen Han's CNC Technology Co., Ltd. ("Han's CNC") to be listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange GEM. After the spin-off is completed, the company's equity structure will not change, and it will still have controlling interest in Han's CNC.
Han's CNC was first established in 2002. Its main business is the research and development, production and sales of printed circuit board (PCB) special equipment. This time, it is seeking to be listed on the GEM of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It plans to publicly issue no more than 42 million new shares and raise approximately 1.707 billion yuan, which will be used for PCB special equipment production reconstruction and expansion projects and PCB special equipment technology research and development center construction projects.
The prospectus disclosed that from 2018 to 2020, Han’s CNC operating income was 1.723 billion yuan, 1.323 billion yuan, and 2.210 billion yuan respectively, and the net profits attributable to the parent company were 373 million yuan, 228 million yuan, and 304 million yuan respectively.The company's customers have covered 89 companies in the "Top 100 Global PCB Companies in 2019" and 95 companies in the "Top 100 Comprehensive PCB Companies in China", including Zhiding Technology , Xinxing Electronics , and Dongshan Precision (002384.SZ), Shennan Circuit (002916.SZ), Kingboard Group (0148.HK), Shanghai Electric Co., Ltd. (002463.SZ) and other well-known PCB manufacturers in the domestic and foreign industries.
After confirming the spin-off and listing of its PCB business Han's CNC, Han's Laser immediately planned the listing of its semiconductor packaging equipment business.
On the evening of February 22, Han’s Laser issued an announcement stating that the Han’s Laser Employee Stock Ownership Platform and its holding subsidiary Han’s Optoelectronics Employee Stock Ownership Platform planned to increase capital in Han’s Optoelectronics, with a total investment of no more than 141 million yuan. At the same time, Han's Optoelectronics plans to introduce five strategic investors, namely Hillhouse Yurun, Hi-Tech Ventures, Hi-Tech Zhiyuan, Xiaohe Ventures, and China Securities Investment, through capital increase and share expansion, with the total investment not exceeding 141 million yuan. The purchase price is approximately 9.86 yuan per share, and the total capital increase does not exceed 282 million yuan. According to the capital increase agreement, Han's Optoelectronics plans to achieve qualified listing by December 31, 2026.
It is worth mentioning that Beijing Hillhouse Yurun Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), which invested 64 million yuan this time and will eventually hold 5% of Han’s Optoelectronics, is an investment fund under CATL , and is held by CATL 21.3% of its shares.
Previously, Han’s Laser and CATL had a long history of cooperation. As early as August 20 and August 27, 2018, Han's Laser announced its bid for CATL's order. The winning bid amount totaled 546 million yuan. The winning projects mainly include laser die-cutting equipment, welding equipment, forming equipment, etc., and the above The equipment is mainly used for the production and processing of new energy batteries.
chain operation, one has to admire Gao Yunfeng's skill in capital operation. However, whether the market will continue to buy it, in fact, there have been doubts in the market for a long time.
Take Han’s CNC, which was split and listed this time, as an example. First of all, revenue fluctuates violently, and major customers change every year. Except for Shennan Circuit Group, the top five customers of Han's CNC change almost every year. The company explained that once a customer's PCB production line is built, it will take a long time to update its equipment. This also means that Han's CNC customer structure lacks stability and needs to continuously expand new customers every year.
Some professionals pointed out that Han's CNC has a number of operating risks, including large inventory balances, high receivables, and tight cash flow . In addition, Han's Laser's net operating cash flow in 2020 was -50.97 million yuan, and operating income cannot cover operating expenses, indicating that the company has great financial pressure. The company stated that if funds cannot be withdrawn in time or financing cannot be obtained in time, it may lead to insufficient business operating funds, which will have an adverse impact on the company's financial status and production operations. While cash flow is tight, Han's CNC's liabilities have soared. In 2020, Han's CNC's total liabilities reached 1.163 billion yuan, directly doubled from 567 million yuan in 2019. Among them, current liabilities reached 1.129 billion yuan, accounting for 97% of the total liabilities.
It can be seen that the split and listing of this split will help Han’s CNC to continue to deepen its efforts in the field of laser equipment due to the surge in demand for PCBs in industries such as new energy vehicles, or will it just help Han’s CNC develop better? Raising money for listing? It remains to be observed in depth later.
