The moon sets in Wudi | article
Find a ray of light to light up the entire night and melt the cold wall.
domestic chip leader Unigroup Guowei (002049.SZ) recently disclosed its interim results for 2020.
In the first half of this year, Unigroup Guowei achieved revenue of 1.464 billion yuan and net profit attributable to shareholders of 402 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of up to 108%. After the performance was announced, Unigroup Guowei received buy rating recommendations from many investment institutions, and Guotai Junan gave a target price of 176.25 yuan.
In fact, the stock price of Unigroup Guowei has soared by more than 200% in just two months, and even once reached a market value of 100 billion yuan.
Previously, on June 3, Unigroup issued an announcement that it would introduce Liangjiang Industrial Group or its affiliates designated by the Management Committee of Chongqing Liangjiang New District as the new strategic investor of Unigroup.
Looking through the past and present of Unigroup Guowei , what we see is the way of survival and development of Chinese technology enterprises with the blessing of university research - whether they can achieve the true deep integration of "production, education and research" and achieve a technological breakthrough, the road seems to be still under their feet.
01
In May 1997, NetEase BBS was launched in Guangzhou, opening up the 1.0 era of Chinese Internet; in the spring of the following year, Zhang Chaoyang, who was still studying for a postdoctoral degree at MIT, led his team to complete the construction of the first Chinese search platform, which was later renamed Sohu;
In December 1998, Ma Huateng from Shenzhen and his classmate Zhang Zhidong founded Tencent, and three months later, he launched the Chinese version of ICQ, which is later QQ.
Wang Zhidong from Beijing merged Sitong Online with Huayuan Information, and Sina.com, which has Peking University Founder bloodline, was established.
The Internet portal era represented by the "Yahoo model" was formed this year. The inconspicuous Chinese input became one of the initial tickets in the Internet 1.0 era.
Li Guohua, who is a graduate student at Tsinghua University, has a topic of "Chinese information processing". With the help of several classmates, Li Guohua applied the Chinese character relationship model built on the principle of statistics to the Chinese input field, and took the lead in realizing the function of "intelligent sentence formation", and developed a set of input methods based on this, which Li Guohua named it "koala input method".
In order to find an Internet ticket, Tsinghua Unigroup Corporation, which has been reorganized, acquired the intellectual property rights of the koala input method and established the Unigroup Software Center.
In 1997, the turnover of Unigroup Corporation exceeded 1 billion, becoming the leader among school-run enterprises at that time. With the acquisition of intellectual property rights of the koala input method, the Software Division has an Internet product. Today, when Chinese input is extremely convenient, it is hard to imagine the cumbersomeness of Chinese input in the early days of the Internet. In the early days of the birth of smart pinyin input, there were also various input methods such as Wubi, Zhengma, Wangma, etc.
. Subsequently, the koala input method was renamed the Ziguang Pinyin input method, and a new version was launched at the end of 1999. The emergence of the Pinyin input method of
Unisex Light has caused the reorganized Tsinghua Unisex to catch the last ticket to the early Internet, and as a "technology enterprise", it has become a company with "Internet attributes".
However, just "Internet attributes" cannot become a real Internet company - when the real Internet era comes, these software companies are quickly forgotten and surpassed.
2006 has become a watershed for Chinese input method and a watershed for the development of Unigroup input method. At this time, the Unigroup input method is already the largest input software in Chinese. According to Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan's memory, the market share of Unigroup has reached 15%.
But what's so bad is that Unigroup welcomes new rivals - behind them are real Internet companies.
The first opponent is Sogou. In June 2006, the PC version of Sogou input method was launched. In September, the iOS version, Android version and Symbian version were launched. Sogou quickly became the installer king. In 2007, the Google input method was launched and the QQ input method was launched.
Then, iFlytek input method and Baidu input method were launched.
Unisex input method is no longer traced.Today, Sogou Input Method has become the king of this field with a market share of more than 70%. The former king of Ziguang Input Method was last updated in November 2017. The decline of the Unisex input method of
is not unrelated to the restructuring of Unisex. Today, Unispim, the official website of Unispim input method, also has the prefix of "uni", the Unispim is the English abbreviation of "uni", but the abbreviation of Tsinghua-THU and Unispim-UNI is retained in the abbreviation of "thunisoft" of the operating entity "Huayu Software", while its Chinese subject to the outside world is "Huayu Software".
The former Tsinghua Unigroup Software Center has long disappeared.
This may be the move by Unigroup to try to catch up with the Internet shuttle in the first round of changes, but its failure is also destined. Scientific research industrialization was in full swing in China in the early 20th century, but often due to insufficient market-oriented experience and inconsistent commercialization process with products, many of them ended in vain.
The complex system and share reform have also affected the Unigroup input method. Although all are classified under the name of Tsinghua University, Unigroup does not have truly clear property rights. When marketization and commercialization are needed, ownership ownership leads to a reduction in market sensitivity and loss. For a long time after 2000, the demand for software in the Internet was actually not as strong as it is now. The Chinese input method, as a tool for accessing the Internet in the Chinese context, is self-evident.
After losing the Unisex Pinyin input method, Unisex's Internet attempts basically lost their meaning.
02
Unigroup's Internet attempt is actually the same as its hardware attempt.
On June 27, 1997, according to the Document No. 317 of the Securities Regulatory Commission (1997) , Tsinghua Tongfang was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with code 600100. At this time, it has only been three days since Tsinghua Tongfang was established. Tsinghua Tongfang has also become the company with the shortest time from its establishment to listing in the history of Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Tsinghua Tongfang is a joint-stock company established by Tsinghua University with the discount of its operating assets of some of its affiliated companies and other promoters invest with monetary funds. After
, , Tsinghua Tongfang , Peking University Founder of Peking University and Lenovo Group of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were once the three representative companies of the academy IT industry. , Tsinghua Tongfang , Peking University Founder of Wang Xuan, and Lenovo Group of Liu Chuanzhi, became the most important leaders of the academy IT industry at that time,
, backing the big tree of Tsinghua, not only has the advantage of "good cool off", but most importantly, Tsinghua's golden signboard is also an important weight for its capital market to be at ease.
After the establishment of Tsinghua Tongfang , using computer computers in the fields of education and government and enterprises as a breakthrough point, quickly became a dark horse in the market, and in the same year it became one of the top 100 information electronic companies in China. Public data from
shows that from 1997 to 2001 when it was established and launched, Tsinghua Tongfang achieved 100% sales growth for four consecutive years. In 2004, under the background of the popularity of computers, Tsinghua Tongfang still became the fastest growing manufacturer in the domestic desktop computer market with a compound growth rate of 40%. Moreover, home computers jumped to the runner-up and took the express train of the "information highway", and Tsinghua Tongfang made rapid progress in the PC field.
In 2005, Tsinghua Tongfang ranked 23rd in the "Top 500 Electronic Information Enterprises in China". By 2007, Tsinghua Tongfang ranked among the top six PC sales in the Asia-Pacific region for the first time. This was the highlight of Tsinghua Tongfang .
2008 is a turning point in the development history of Tsinghua Tongfang . In this year, Tsinghua Tongfang had the opportunity to deeply participate in the Olympics for the first time, providing services to the Beijing Olympics in 73 events including information, security, transportation, communications, energy, lighting, artificial environment and water treatment. Moreover, Tsinghua Tongfang developed an "electronic ticket system" for the Beijing Olympics and donated it to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee for use in the form of donations. This batch of donations worth 55 million yuan has changed the history of paper tickets for the century-old Olympics.
In January 2008, a young man surnamed Hu was promoted from the position of president of Tongfang Weishi, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Tongfang , to the Party Secretary of Tsinghua Holdings, and he also kicked off the new round of stock reform of Tsinghua Holdings.
03
In July 1992, the third enlarged meeting of the former State Education Commission University Consulting Conference was held in Tianjin. The meeting passed the "Several Opinions on Deepening Reforms and Expanding School Autonomy in Universities Directly Undergraduate to the State Education Commission", and the reform of the internal management system of various universities began to advance.
In April 1993, with the approval of the former State Education Commission, the Tsinghua University Science and Technology Development Corporation established in July 1988 was reorganized into Tsinghua Unigroup (Group) Corporation. The group operation of Unigroup started here. In 1995, with the approval of the Ministry of Education and the State Economic and Trade Commission, the Beijing Tsinghua University Enterprise Group (Enterprise Group) was established. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tsinghua University and has also become the main business management entity of Tsinghua University during this period. Relying on Tsinghua University's scientific research strength and talent advantages, Tsinghua University's asset management, industrialization of scientific research results and investment operations began to emerge. After
, with the enterprise group as the investment entity, Tsinghua University established more than 25 wholly-owned subsidiaries and controlled and participated in more than 40 companies. Their business scope covers hardware, electrical and chemical industry, IT industry, electromechanical and mechanical machinery and materials, etc. The enterprise group, as the initiator, became the first listed company incubated by the Tsinghua Department. Zhao Weiguo, who later took charge of Tsinghua Unigroup, entered Tsinghua Tongfang as a graduate student at Tsinghua University in October 1997 and served as the general manager.
In August 1999, Tsinghua Unigroup (Group) Corporation, as the initiator, jointly established a joint-stock company with China Northern Industrial Company, China Electronics Devices Corporation, the Iron and Steel Research Institute of the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry and the Miyun County Industrial Development Corporation of Beijing. This company became the most famous operating entity in the entire Tsinghua Department. His name is Tsinghua Unigroup Co., Ltd. ( Unigroup ) . With the approval of the Securities Regulatory Commission [1999] No. 106, it was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on November 4, 1999, with the code 000938.
In November 2001, the General Office of the State Council forwarded the "Guiding Opinions on the Pilot Project of Peking University and Tsinghua University to Standardize the Management System of School-run Enterprises" by the Ministry of Education, the State Council's Sports Reform Office and other departments, requiring the two schools to actively promote the reform of school-enterprise, complete the reform of wholly-owned enterprises, and establish a modern enterprise system. The reform of school-run enterprises in colleges and universities officially kicked off.
In December 2003, Tsinghua Unigroup ushered in its first reorganization. Tsinghua Holdings Co., Ltd., which was formed by the integration, absorption, merger and restructuring of Tsinghua Unigroup (Group) Corporation, Beijing Tsinghua University Enterprise Group, Tsinghua Science and Technology Park Development Center and other enterprises, was established (Tsinghua Holdings). All shares of several major operating companies affiliated to Tsinghua University are transferred to Tsinghua Holdings.
However, when the property rights relationship of school-run enterprises is vague, on the one hand, relying on the identity of college enterprises, enterprises can obtain more financing and project opportunities more conveniently; on the other hand, behind the reform, there is also the evolution of privatization.
In June 2004, the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Education and Tsinghua University agreed to Tsinghua Holdings for restructuring and reorganization.
Then, Zhao Weiguo left the reorganized Tsinghua Tongfang and took 1 million to Xinjiang to develop, serving as the general manager of Xinjiang Gas Group. However, this title lasted less than a year in his life. A year later, Zhao Weiguo used his 1 million to bring back 4.5 billion, and used it as capital to start the road to joining the Unigroup Group.
On June 21, 2005, Beijing Jiankun Investment Group Co., Ltd. (Jiankun Group) was registered and established. The legal representative was Zhao Weiguo, who held 95% of the shares. Li Yi, then chairman of Ziguang Guhan, held 5% of the shares.
In 2005, Unisco Group ushered in another reorganization. With the approval of State Assets Rights [2005] No. 411 and Securities Regulatory Commission No. [2005] No. 65, Unisco Group transferred the 42% Unisco Group to Tsinghua Holdings for free, and completed the transfer registration procedures on March 3, 2006.Tsinghua Holdings has become the largest shareholder of Unigroup Co., Ltd. ; Unigroup holds 20.11% of Unigroup Co., Ltd., making it the second largest shareholder. Unigroup is a wholly owned state-owned enterprise of Tsinghua Holdings. Together with the 18.79% of the shares originally held by Tsinghua Holdings, Tsinghua Holdings holds a total of 580.9% of the shares of Unigroup Co., Ltd. Among the external investors introduced, CTO Group accounted for 18.2%, and Beijing Wanda.com Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Wanda.com) accounted for 0.9%.
At the same time, through this restructuring, Unigroup expects to clarify historical issues through operations in the next few years, mainly to terminate external guarantees and litigation cases involved.
In May and June 2009, Tsinghua Holdings implemented the will of its superior competent authority, "Tsinghua University Business Assets Management Committee", and prepared to introduce the private enterprise "Beijing Jiankun Investment Group Co., Ltd." as a new shareholder to reorganize the Unigroup.
This reorganization is also a major cleaning of the management of Unigroup Co., Ltd. .
On June 19, Unigroup convened a shareholders' meeting and board of directors to announce that Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Jiankun Group, will be the president of Unigroup. Jiankun Group is a potential strategic investor that Tsinghua Holdings, the major shareholder of Unigroup, wants to introduce. The legal representative of the small shareholder Wanda.com objected on the spot.
From July 8 to 13, Guo Yuanlin, chairman of Tsinghua Guhan, a listed company under Tsinghua Group, Liu Jian, vice president Li Qiuping, independent director Zou Dawei, independent director Zheng Guilan, and financial director Li Xiaohong resigned one after another. During this period, Li Yi, vice chairman of Kankun Group, served as the company's chairman and temporarily took up the duties of the company's president. Fang Jiwen, vice president of Kankun Group, served as the company's director.
On October 10, Unigroup held the 8th meeting of the second board of directors, with the topics including asset adjustments to the equity transfer of shareholder CTO Group (total holdings of 18.2%), resignation of deputy general manager Liu Yun, appointment of new deputy general managers Zhu Xuenong, Fang Jiwen, etc.
According to public information, the book value of the net assets of Unigroup in 2008 was 224 million yuan, and the net profit of that year was 24.7038 million yuan. With the stocks of its listed companies, Unigroup's total assets are more than 1 billion yuan. Excluding more than 400 million liabilities, its initial estimate of its net assets should be around 600 million yuan.
However, the "Asset Appraisal Report on the Project of Capital Increase and Share Expansion" passed by the Tsinghua Group on March 26, 2010 showed that the book value of Tsinghua Group's net assets on the appraisal base date (March 31, 2009) was 35.4179 million yuan and the net assets appraisal value was 281 million yuan.
In this report, intangible assets such as goodwill that Unigroup has accumulated for 21 years have not been included in the appraisal. In addition, houses and buildings invested and built by Unigroup such as Unigroup Building are included in the fixed asset scope.
In addition, based on the closing price of 9.02 yuan of Tsinghua Guhan on March 31, 2010, Tsinghua Group currently holds 36.5644 million shares worth approximately RMB 329.81 million; based on the closing price of 16.01 yuan of Tsinghua Group holding 11.5809 million shares worth approximately RMB 185.41 million. Based on the current stock price, the value of the two listed companies is 515 million yuan. However, it is strange that the valuation of these two holdings in the report is only 434 million yuan.
This is also one of the reasons why it was rejected by the small shareholder Wanda.com: the valuation is too low.
However, for Zhao Weiguo, the raw rice has been cooked, and the stock reform of the Unigroup Group has become a fact.
On April 15, 2010, Unigroup Co., Ltd. completed the industrial and commercial registration change, with the registered capital increased from RMB 220 million to RMB 340 million, an increase of 54.55%. At the same time, the legal representative was changed to Zhao Weiguo, and he also served as general manager and vice chairman.
Jiankun Group subscribed 120 million yuan of registered capital of Unigroup for 153 million yuan, and 33.33 million yuan was included in the capital reserve. After the transaction is completed, Tsinghua Holdings Company holds 52.35%, Jiankun Group holds 35.3%, and the shares of CTO Group and Wanda.com are diluted, and the two hold a total of 12.35%.
In November 2012, Unigroup completed a capital increase and share expansion, with Tsinghua Holdings investing 163.7 million yuan and Jiankun Group investing 166.3 million yuan, increasing the registered capital of Unigroup to RMB 670 million.
After half a year, Jiankun Group invested another 42 million yuan, capturing the shares of Unigroup held by Chuanghui Group and Wanda.com. The shareholding of Unigroup Group became 51% of Tsinghua Holdings and 49% of Jiankun Group.
With this as a sign, Unigroup Group completed mixed reform and became the enterprise with the most "clear" property rights in the school-enterprise reform. At the same time, the determination of this situation also kicked off the rushing journey of Unigroup on the road of mergers and acquisitions in the capital market.
04
Zhao Weiguo said:
"Transco has always been integrating while developing, and integration is not rigid integration. It mainly focuses on collaborative integration. The heavy technology fields such as chips are a marathon, but every 100 meters needs to run at a speed of 100 meters." One month after the completion of the reform of
, Unigroup launched a privatization acquisition offer for Spreadtrum listed in the US stock market. The merger and acquisition agreement signed on July 12, 2013. On December 24, Unigroup and Spreadtrum Communications jointly announced that the acquisition of Spreadtrum Communications by the Group has been completed, with the acquisition amount of US$1.78 billion (approximately RMB 10.9 billion). The merger was loaned by the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank. After the transaction was completed, Spreadtrum became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unigroup and was delisted on Nasdaq.
Through this acquisition, Unigroup has become the world's third largest mobile phone chip supplier. At that time, only Qualcomm and MediaTek, and Samsung's mid- and low-end mobile phones adopted Zhanrui's solutions. Coupled with the everywhere counterfeit phone market, Zhanrui's before the acquisition firmly occupied the third place in the world.
2013's "Double Eleven", Taobao completed a sales of 35 billion yuan, and "Cainiao" logistics began to appear on the stage of China's logistics history. On the same day, the US listed company Ruidike issued an announcement that it had reached a preliminary agreement with Tsinghua Unigroup, which will acquire Ruidike at a price of US$18.50 per share, with a total acquisition price of approximately US$910 million - this price is still US$18 per share in the cash acquisition offer initiated by Unigroup on October 25.
Six days before the announcement was released, another Pudong Ketou (Shanghai Pudong Technology Investment Co., Ltd.), who intends to marry Ruidike, received the National Development and Reform Commission’s approval for overseas acquisitions of domestic enterprises—the “Confirmation Letter for Overseas Acquisition or Bidding Project Report”—which is commonly called “Little Road Strip”, and its acquisition offer price for Ruidike is US$15.50 per share.
According to the merger and acquisition agreement initiated by Unigroup, Unigroup needs to obtain the "small road strip" of the National Development and Reform Commission within 45 days after the signing of the merger and acquisition agreement, otherwise Ruidike has the right to terminate the merger and acquisition.
Without "small road strips", Unigroup confirmed the acquisition contract with Ruidike. This move led to the National Development and Reform Commission sending a letter to Tsinghua University on November 22, 2013, characterizing Zhao Weiguo's behavior as "violation". This letter was also copied to the Ministry of Commerce, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the Shanghai Development and Reform Commission, the State Development and Reform Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, etc., directly pointing to the financing channels of Unigroup.
in the market believes that Pudong Science Investment has the advantage. If nothing unexpected happens, Pudong Science Investment, which has obtained the "small road" of the National Development and Reform Commission, will complete the acquisition of Ruidike.
Surprisingly, on December 2, 2013, the State Council issued the "Government-approved Investment Project Catalog (2013 This)", which provides catalog guidance. In the future, whether state-owned enterprises or private enterprises do not involve sensitive areas and regions, overseas investments of less than US$1 billion will no longer need to be submitted to departments at all levels of the Development and Reform Commission for approval, but only need to submit a form to file.
This means that this merger and acquisition by Unigroup does not need to be reviewed by the National Development and Reform Commission. Is this scene very familiar? Anbang's acquisition often has such a concomitant policy?
On December 17, Ruidike announced a series of personnel appointments and removals, among which Dai Baojia, the founder, chairman and CEO, was dismissed, and Deng Shunlin was appointed as the new chairman, Wei Shuran was the new CEO, and Zhang Liang was the president.
, the personnel appointment and removal behavior is considered a sign of Ruidike's investment in Unigroup, because its founder Dai Baojia is more willing to accept the Pudong Coin Investment plan. In that case, Ruidike can continue to develop independently and accept the acquisition of Unigroup, Ruidike will be merged by Spreadtrum Communications.
Ten days later, at the Ruidike Special Shareholders' Meeting, the shareholders at the meeting voted to pass the merger and acquisition offer of Unigroup of $910 million. On July 19, 2015, Unigroup issued an announcement that the merger and acquisition transaction with a total value of about $907 million for Ruidike has been completed. This acquisition became the largest transaction amount in the integrated circuit industry that year. When
was acquired, Ruidike was the only integrated circuit supplier in China that was able to successfully design and mass-produce a full range of digital and RF products including digital baseband, RF transceivers, power amplifiers, RF switches, Bluetooth/wireless/FM radio/GPS, etc.
Through this acquisition, Unigroup successfully obtained coverage of its corresponding product lines.
Spreadtrum is the core of mobile phone chips - the baseband main chip. Ruidi is good at peripheral chips of mobile phones. The advantages of the two complement each other, and the merger becomes a destiny that seems to be feasible after being acquired. The main body of the merger of
is Beijing Spreadtrum Hi-Tech Communication Technology Co., Ltd., established in March 2005 - this is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spreadtrum. Spreadtrum and Ruidiko ranked second and third in the domestic chip field respectively. After the packaging and merged Spreadtrum and Ruidiko, Unigroup became the leader in the domestic chip field in one fell swoop.
On January 19, 2018, Unigroup issued an announcement that Spreadtrum and Ruidiko officially completed the integration. After the merger, the two will be developed as independent legal entities. Spreadtrum will continue to focus on the independent research and development and design of 2G/3G/4G/5G mobile communication baseband chips; Ruidike will be committed to the research and development of core technologies in the field of the Internet of Things. On April 9, 2019, Unigroup announced the launch of the world's first Arm DynamIQ architecture.
On January 20, 2020, Beijing Spreadtrum High-Tech Communication Technology Co., Ltd. completed the industrial and commercial registration change and was renamed Beijing Uniscope Zhanrui Communication Technology Co., Ltd. Uniscope Zhanrui became the only operating entity after the merger. The acquisition of the two can be said to be a "perfect end". One month later, Uniscope Zhanrui officially released the Huben T7520, which is currently the world's first 5G chip solution based on 6nm process technology and is on the market.
05
On April 1, 2009, Qimengda, the only memory company in Europe, officially entered the bankruptcy liquidation process.
htmlOn August 12, Xi'an R&D Center, the world's second largest R&D center, was incorporated into Shandong Huaxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (Shandong Huaxin). The company was established and registered in Jinan High-tech Industrial Development Zone on May 29, 2008. Led by the Shandong Provincial Government, Inspur Group, Shandong High-tech Investment Co., Ltd. and Jinan Hi-tech Zone each invested 100 million yuan. Sun Pishu, then chairman and CEO of Inspur Group, was appointed as the legal representative. One of the purposes of the establishment was to acquire part of Qimengda's assets in China.Subsequently, Qimengda Xi'an R&D Center was renamed Xi'an Huaxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (Xi'an Huaxin), and the acquisition cost was RMB 30 million. This acquisition is considered to be the most successful bottom-buying behavior in China during the recession of the semiconductor industry caused by the financial crisis in 2008.
With the help of this merger and acquisition, Xi'an Huaxin has obtained the world's advanced high-end integrated circuit packaging manufacturing capabilities, and has initially established a complete memory integrated circuit industry chain including chip design, chip manufacturing and chip applications.
On December 16, 2012, Inspur Group conducted a second merger and acquisition of Qimengda's high-end integrated circuit memory packaging and testing production line in Europe for RMB 100 million. With the help of the technology and equipment obtained from this acquisition, Inspur Group built China's first high-end (FBGA) integrated circuit memory packaging and testing production line in Jinan. The production line adopts the world's advanced FBGA (fine pitch ball grid array) packaging process at that time, and is one of the world's leading integrated circuit packaging and testing technologies at that time.
On August 31, 2015, Tongfang Guoxin Electronics Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Unigroup Group, obtained 51% of the equity of Xi'an Huaxin through bidding, plus the 25% of the equity acquired by its subsidiary "Hong Kong Tongxin Investment Co., Ltd.", and holds a total of 76% of the equity of the company Xi'an Huaxin and becomes the controlling shareholder of Xi'an Huaxin. Later, Xi'an Huaxin was renamed Xi'an Guoxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd. On April 27, 2018, Unigroup Guoxin was renamed Zi'an Guoxin Microelectronics Co., Ltd. ( Zi'an Guowei ).
Through this acquisition, Unigroup reorganized, absorbed and split similar businesses around Unigroup Guowei , building a huge and complex chip industry cluster, and moving towards the goal of domestic chip giants.
However, Unigroup Zhanrui and Unigroup Guowei are only a corner of Unigroup's semiconductor ambitions, and its larger strategy is memory.
The acquisition of Xi'an Huaxin, Unigroup acquired some of the DRAM technology left by Qimengda. On June 30, 2019, Unigroup Development Announcement decided to establish the Unigroup DRAM business group, appoint Diao Shijing as the chairman of the Unigroup DRAM business group, and appoint Gao Qiquan as the CEO of the Unigroup DRAM business group.
This move is considered to be the determination of Unigroup to develop DRAM. You should know that Diao Shijing is an important person in my country's science and technology circles and Unigroup. Gao Qiquan is also the "godfather of Taiwan DRAM". As early as February 21, 2018, details of the DDR4 product appeared on the official website of Unigroup Guoxin, which means that this is the investment in DRAM that has once again increased.
After humans entered the information age, memory systems were classified as follows: generally the largest capacity is the drive, commonly known as hard disk (HDD, Hard Disk Drive); the second is the random access memory (DRAM, Dynamic Random Access Memory), which is called system memory. The memory has one feature that the data stored internally will disappear completely after the power is cut off; the other data memory is the USB disk and SD card we are familiar with, and the chip used is NOR Flash; NAND Flash is an upgraded version of NOR Flash, and its data access speed is faster than NOR Flash; and now almost all smartphone memory generally uses NAND Flash, as an evolutionary version of NAND Flash, 3D NAND Flash has the advantage of large storage volume and fast speed, and is a new generation of large-capacity flash memory technology.
is marked by the release of iPhone in 2007. The information age has entered the era of smart devices. Now, almost everyone has a smart terminal, indicating that this is an era of DRAM+3D NAND Flash memory combination.
The biggest ambition of Unigroup Memory is Yangtze Memory.
In 2003, Fujitsu Japan and AMD, the United States, jointly invested to integrate their respective flash memory businesses and set up a special NOR Flash production and R&D company, called Spansion. What
zip does is to develop the underlying basic technology of NOR Flash. In 2009, due to the impact of the financial crisis, Pizzao was on the verge of bankruptcy and was eventually acquired by Cypress, but it has maintained its own operation. In April 2004, Pixel developed the second generation technology based on "MirrorBit®" and launched a new flash memory chip architecture - ORNAND. This architecture is considered to be the most revolutionary technological change of NOR Flash. It was released together with the ORNAND architecture, and it also launched the Charge Trapping Stroage Technology, which later evolved into Charge-Trap Flash memory technology (CTF). CTF was the most advanced flash memory technology released by Pixel at that time, and it was also the core patented technology for the development of the most advanced 3D NAND Flash.
Pilot's roadmap
Pilot gave up its flash memory manufacturing business and became a patent authorization company. By authorizing Samsung CTF technology, it has gained a lot of profits. Based on CTF technology, Samsung has spent six years developing the "V-NAND" architecture. This architecture has allowed Samsung to mass-produce early two years ahead of SK Hynix, Toshiba/SanDisk, Micron/Intel and other manufacturers; 3D NAND Flash products have become an absolute leading company in this field, with a share of more than 40%.
The foundation of Yangtze River Storage is the Wuhan Xinxin established in 2006. In September 2008, Wuhan Xinxin began to produce NAND Flash flash memory based on 65nm process technology for Pixel. It was also at this time that Wuhan Xinxin imported the IP (Intellectual Property) core of Pixel flash memory chips - that is, the IP of the chip design company obtained by the foundry. After the financial crisis, Pixel's business declined sharply, resulting in the operation of Wuhan Xinxin's operation also worsening. With Pixel's acquisition, the exchange between the two parties was limited to patent authorization.
For Wuhan Xinxin, the turning point came from September 24, 2014. On this day, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund was established in Beijing, which is a special investment fund led by the national will.
It was also in this year that Wuhan Xinxin and Pilot cooperated to promote the process of NAND Flash from 55nm to 32nm. After being acquired by Cypres, Pilot continued to maintain its cooperation with Wuhan Xinxin. At the end of 2014, the two parties formed a R&D team to start the R&D of 3D NAND Flash.
On May 11, 2015, Wuhan Xinxin announced that 3D NAND Flash has made breakthrough progress in the research and development of 3D NAND Flash. The first storage test chip passed the electrical verification of memory functions, and signed a cooperation agreement and cross-licensing agreement with PIXEL to develop domestic 3D NAND Flash with patented technology license. Its goal is to mass-produce 3D NAND Flash products with 32-layer stacked 4x nm in 2017.
At this time, Wuhan Xinxin's NOR Flash production capacity is planned to be 10,000 pieces per month.
In March 2016, Wuhan Xinxin announced that it will invest US$24 billion to build a world-class semiconductor storage company in Wuhan, focusing on research and production of NANDFLASH and DRAM. In July, led by Da Fund and Wuhan City, all parties established Yangtze Storage on the basis of Wuhan Xinxin Company. The initiators include Unigroup, Da Fund, Hubei Guoxin Industry Investment Fund Partnership and Provincial Science and Technology Investment. Among them, Unigroup invested 19.7 billion yuan, accounting for 51.04%.
In November 2017, Zhao Weiguo appeared in the "Dialogue" program and showed a chip. This is a 32-layer 3D NAND Flash chip built by 1,800 engineers from Changjiang Storage, which took two years to build, with a R&D investment of more than US$1 billion. Changjiang Storage has thus become the fifth manufacturer in the world that can produce 3D NAND Flash chips.
On August 7, 2018, at the Flash Memory Summit held in Santa Clara, California, USA, Changjiang Storage released a pivot licensed architecture and patented technology, and designed and developed a new NAND Flash memory chip architecture - Xtacking™ technology. This breakthrough made Changjiang Storage the third company in the world to have an independent NAND Flash flash memory chip architecture. This breakthrough naturally also depends on the credit book of Unigroup.
On September 2, 2019, Changjiang Storage announced the official mass production of 64-layer 256Gb TLC 3D NAND flash memory chip based on Xtacking® architecture (the storage capacity of each bare chip is 256 gigabit word bits, and each storage unit is three-digit three-dimensional flash memory) to meet the mainstream market application needs such as solid-state drives and embedded storage.
The mass production of Yangtze Memory 3D NAND flash memory chips means that the gap between my country's storage technology and leading countries has narrowed another step. To a certain extent, the breakthrough in Yangtze Memory technology is one of the few successful examples of "market-for-tech" in China's semiconductor industry development history.
At the same time, the acquisition of Big Fund and Unigroup also proves that the national will and financial support are the basis for the development of the semiconductor industry. The Qimengda, which is from Changxin Technology in Hefei and the zipline from Changjiang Storage Technology in both have the technology and no capital to invest in the construction of new process processes, resulting in bankruptcy or acquisition.
After Hefei Changxin obtained Qimengda technology, it took one year to break through the 10x nm-level process technology. After Changjiang Storage obtained the authorization, it broke through the IP solidification and designed a new chip architecture. From the perspective of capital and talent, technological breakthroughs are always inseparable from these two factors.
is in line with chip design and production, in August 2018, Sun Moonlight Investment Control issued an announcement that its subsidiary J&R Holding Limited intends to sell 30% of the equity of Suzhou Sun Moonlight Semiconductor in mainland China to Unigroup, with a transaction amount of approximately US$95.3347 million, equivalent to approximately NT$2.918 billion (approximately RMB 650 million).Through this acquisition, Sun and Moonlight can further deploy the semiconductor packaging and testing business of various businesses under Unigroup Group. At the same time, Unigroup has obtained relevant technologies for packaging and testing in chip manufacturing processes, which has also become possible.
The attention of Unigroup Group is not only limited to the domestic market. In order to make up for its own shortcomings and expand new boundaries, the rounds of acquisitions are constantly being staged by Unigroup Group.
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On September 30, 2015, Tsinghua Holdings' Unigroup Co., Ltd. spent US$3.775 billion (about RMB 24 billion) to acquire 15% of Western Digital Corp's shares at US$92.50 per share.
On February 24, 2016, Unigroup Co., Ltd. issued an announcement stating that since the transaction investing in Western Digital needs to comply with the review procedures of the Commission on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), it is worried that it will not be passed. The company's board of directors decided to terminate the transaction and the acquisition of Western Digital failed, but the joint venture jointly invested by both parties will continue to advance.
On March 28, Unigroup Western Digital Company was established, headquartered in the Qinhuai High-tech Park in Nanjing, and its marketing and sales headquarters are located in Beijing. The total investment is US$300 million and the registered capital is US$158 million. Among them, Unigroup Co., Ltd. invested US$80.58 million, holding 51% of the shares, while Western Digital invested US$77.42 million, holding 49% of the shares. On September 8, Unisco West Digital Company was officially unveiled in the Qinhuai High-tech Park in Nanjing.
By the third quarter of 2017, Unigroup Western Data's market share in the object storage market reached 16.3%, becoming the second largest data storage manufacturer in the Chinese market. It took only one and a half years.
Between the merger and joint venture with Western Digital, it is rumored that Unigroup also participated in the Western Digital's US$19 billion acquisition of SanDisk, which was on October 21, 2015, and finally completed the acquisition on May 12 of the following year. The cooperation between
and Western Digital has successfully entered the object storage market, thus having the support of storage systems and flash memory technology. In addition, the global storage industry has been highly concentrated, and has completed the transformation and extension from basic hard disks and flash memory manufacturers to system solution suppliers.
and based on this, it has opened the "cloud" industry. However, to make up for the cloud industry, there is still one thing left - a server.
H3C entered the field of Unigroup's vision. HUAWEI-3COM, founded in 2003, is the product of the patent war between Huawei and Cisco's "Century Litigation" and is a joint venture between Huawei and Cisco's competitor 3COM in China. On April 11, 2010, 3COM, which could not escape during the financial crisis, was acquired by HP at a price of US$7.9 per share after filing for bankruptcy protection. The total acquisition amount was approximately US$2.7 billion. Afterwards, Huawei withdrew from H3C, and H3C became a wholly-owned subsidiary of HP. In 2014, HP made structural adjustments and established Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) based on H3C.
On May 6, 2016, Unigroup invested US$2.3 billion at a valuation of US$4.5 billion, and purchased 51% of the shares of H3D, which was initiated by HPE, and officially announced its entry into the enterprise-level server market. Through its holdings in H3C, Unigroup has obtained H3C's full series of network, server, storage, security, hyper-converged systems and IT management systems. Relying on these product portfolios, it can provide solutions such as big data, network security and cloud computing. It is natural to become the exclusive provider of HPE brand servers, storage products and technical services in China.
At this time, H3C has applied for more than 6,500 patents. In the past 2015, H3H3 sales revenue exceeded RMB 20 billion.
's acquisition of H3 New H3 is a milestone event in Unigroup's "cloud" layout strategy. With this as a symbol, the prototype of the new era semiconductor giant of chip-memory-cloud services has begun to emerge. Zhanrui's mobile phone chip combination, flash memory chips of Yangtze Storage, object storage hardware of Tsinghua Western Data, and enterprise-level network services of H3 New H3 New H3 have formed the closed-loop ecological layout of the semiconductor era of Tsinghua Group.
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Of course, if there is a successful merger and acquisition, there will be moments of failure.
In July 2015, Unigroup issued a US$23 billion acquisition offer to Micron, claiming to be the largest overseas merger case in history by a Chinese company, but it was finally left unresolved.
On October 30, 2015, Unigroup Co., Ltd. spent NT$19.4 billion to invest in the world's fifth largest packaging and testing service factory with NT$75 per share, with 25% of the equity of Taiwan Licheng Technology. In January 2017, Licheng announced the termination of the share subscription agreement.
On December 11, 2015, Unigroup wanted to acquire 24.9% of the equity of semiconductor packaging tester Silicon Precision for NT$56.8 billion (about HK$13.4 billion), but was terminated by Silicon Precision's board of directors.
At the same time, Unigroup intends to acquire 25% of the equity of Nanmao Technology, a memory and driver IC packaging and testing factory, for NT$11.9 billion (about HK$2.81 billion), and in November 2016, Nanmao Technology terminated the investment plan.
In other words, in addition to the Sun and Moonlight Suzhou packaging and testing factory, the plan of Unigroup to take over Taiwan's technology companies all ended in failure.
After many big investments, Unigroup has also launched multiple rounds of financing.
On November 5, 2015, he participated in the 80 billion yuan private placement plan of Tongfang Guoxin (later renamed Unigroup Guoxin), and the project was later suspended;
On September 5, 2018, Tsinghua Holdings, one of the shareholders of Unigroup Group, resold 30% of its shares to Suzhou High-speed Railway New City State-owned Assets Management Co., Ltd., and another 6% of its shares to Hainan United Asset Management Co., Ltd. After completion, the three together hold 51% of the shares of Unigroup Group, and Tsinghua Holdings' shares dropped to 15%.
On October 25, Shenzhen Investment Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, and Tsinghua Holdings jointly signed the "Cooperation Framework Agreement". Tsinghua Holdings terminated the transfer of 36% of the equity of Unigroup to Suzhou High-speed Railway New Town State-owned Assets Management Co., Ltd. and Hainan United Asset Management Co., Ltd., and transferred 36% of the equity of Unigroup to Shenzhen Investment Holdings Company;
On August 10, 2019, Tsinghua Holdings decided to terminate the transfer of its 36% of the equity of Unigroup to Shenzhen Investment Holdings Company. After the termination of the equity transfer, the original equity structure of Unigroup remained unchanged. Tsinghua Holdings still holds 51% of the equity of Unigroup and is still the controlling shareholder of Unigroup.
From 2018 to 2019, Unigroup has borrowed a large amount of debt, with a total bond financing of more than 10 billion yuan. Through Wind, it was found that there are currently 22 Tsinghua Group's existing bonds, with a cumulative balance still reaching 28.946 billion yuan, of which the maturity scale within one year is about 7.4 billion yuan.
On June 4, 2020, three listed companies under Unigroup Group issued an announcement stating that the controlling shareholder Unigroup will implement capital increase and share expansion, and will introduce Chongqing Liangjiang New District Industrial Development Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Liangjiang Industrial Group"). After the capital increase and share expansion is completed, Tsinghua Holdings, Jiankun Investment, Liangjiang Industrial Group and its affiliates will each hold one-third of the equity of Unigroup. This also means that Jiankun Investment controlled by Zhao Weiguo will drop from 49% of the shares to 33.33%.
As on June 8, Unigroup Guowei issued an announcement stating that the company's issuance of shares to purchase Unigroup Liansheng assets was not approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. This also means that the one-year acquisition case has come to an end. Unigroup Group attempts to complete the acquisition case of Linxens through left-hand exchange, which may be suspended.
The CSRC denied that the reason given by the acquisition plan was that the underlying assets of were defective and the amount of goodwill accounted for a large proportion. Public information of
shows that as of the end of 2019, the goodwill amount of Unigroup Liansheng was 14.371 billion yuan, accounting for 77.82% compared with the acquisition valuation of 18.468 billion yuan. Its core assets are Lilianxin, which was acquired for 2.2 billion euros, which means that nearly 80% of its acquisition amount is goodwill.
is acquired through the acquisition, and the goodwill cannot be small.
We cannot be sure whether the "carried back" children can be raised, whether they can be raised obediently, and whether they can still take care of their family after they are raised. However, one thing is that by buying, you can indeed buy business to a certain extent.
Starting from a school-run enterprise, Unigroup Group has undergone multiple rounds of reforms in 1993, 2003, 2008 and 2013. The public acquisition has exceeded 100 billion yuan (converted) since 2013. In addition to the acquisition, there are also failed, some joint ventures and stakes, which constitute the territory of Unigroup Group under the semiconductor trend.
Guo Taiming said that Zhao Weiguo is just an investor in stock trading. How could he ask TSMC Chairman Zhang Zhongmou, a world semiconductor godfather, how much does the company cost to sell?
(Zhao Weiguo may not know) "(Technology) is not something you (Zhao Weiguo) can buy with money today."
By the way, the last buyer who was so arrogant was named HNA, and another one was called Anbang.
