Chapter 371: Joe Gang

In Cupertino, California, in the southern area of ​​the San Francisco Bay, a large number of high-tech companies have gathered, including the famous Apple Computer.
Apple Computer Company has had poor performance since the mid-1990s. A few years after returning to Steve Jobs, it can be regarded as halting the downward trend. However, it has suffered from stock market crisis and social and economic turbulence, and its development has not been very ideal, even if Since October last year, the Washington authorities have strongly intervened in the market economy, and Apple has also launched a new generation of music players, but the stock has only slowly recovered.
Seeing that investment is not profitable, some investors can only choose to exit under the pressure of time cost and interest cost.
Pietro Wolfe is such a person. Investing in Apple has not seen any gains. On the contrary, under the stimulation of various favorable policies by the authorities, the real estate market that he had done before is about to become hot. He has no patience to wait. Time waits for no one. The stock price that Apple rises every day is not enough for interest.
Abandoning Apple and switching to the real estate market is his decision.
But when you transfer shares in your hands, buyers are not so easy to find, and the investment market is not particularly confident in Apple.
Fortunately, he heard a piece of news that a Los Angeles foundation intended to buy Apple stock. Under the middleman matchmaking, he quickly negotiated the transaction with the head of the foundation, Scott Swift.
Today, the two parties signed a formal contract in the conference room of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco.
"Mr. Anderson." Pietro Wolf shook hands with the opposite young billionaire from Hollywood: "Our transaction is complete."
Ronan smiled and said, "This is a pleasant cooperation."
Pietro Wolf had long wanted to get rid of Apple and put himself in the arms of the real estate industry, echoing: "It is true."
If you don't invest in the film industry, but you want to take a trip to Apple, this young man really can't think of it.
Attorney Dinah Ampton walked over at this moment and whispered in Ronan's ear, "No problem."
Ronan nodded slightly: "The follow-up matters are left to you."
The signing of the agreement is only part of it, and there is still a lot of work to be done, and Apple has to say hello and re-file.
"Relax." Dinah Ampton said in a low voice, "I need three days."
Ronan shook hands with Pietro Wolfe again and said, "Mr. Wolfe, when all the procedures are completed, I will pay the remaining money in one go."
This transaction has Bank of America as an account guarantee. Pietro Wolfe is not worried that Ronan will default on the transaction payment. He smiled and said: "Mr. Anderson is young and promising. I hope we still have the opportunity to cooperate."
Ronan said very politely: "There will be."
Pietro Wolf didn't wait much, and he soon left. Ronan gave Scott Swift a few more words and asked him to coordinate with Dinah's lawyer to deal with the following matters.
In this transaction, Ronan, in addition to his personal funds, also legally transferred 30 million US dollars from Relativity Entertainment as a dividend, and easily raised enough funds.
In accordance with the need to avoid risks, Ronan’s personal foundation holds shares of other companies that will not directly overlap with Relativity Entertainment.
To put it bluntly, this is Ronan's backstop and retreat.
Even if there are serious accidents in the development of Relativity Entertainment, Ronan can guarantee that he will not die.
After several rounds of investment and acquisitions, plus this share transaction, Ronan already holds 1.3% of Apple's shares.
The rest will be handed over to time.
There is also Amazon. The foundation's current acquisition of Amazon shares is close to 1.5%, and Ronan is also investing in it.
This is almost in step with the development of relativity entertainment.
After signing this agreement, Ronan took advantage of coming to San Francisco and stopped by Netflix to take a look.
After receiving the capital and stock expansion of Relativity Entertainment and the support of the entire platform, Netflix has developed rapidly in the past few months. In order to adapt to the development, the entire small building of a previous bank branch was rented. Staff expansion is one aspect. DVDs that require more space to accommodate up to 20,000 movies are another aspect.
With an average of up to 30 DVD discs per film, a huge warehouse space is needed to accommodate these 60 DVDs alone.
And the capacity of the DVD library is constantly expanding.
Ultra-low-cost DVD discs from across the Pacific Ocean are constantly being shipped to San Francisco.
Correspondingly, in addition to continuing to expand online leasing business, Netflix is ​​also expanding the scale of online sales.
Disc sales are similar to the same business that Amazon does, but Netflix has more rental business as a support. If customers want to keep the leased DVD discs, they only need to pay an extra $6.
Thanks to the low cost of discs, the increase in the number of customers and the continuous exploration and improvement of warehousing and freight mode processes, Netflix's costs have dropped rapidly.
The average unit shipment cost has been reduced to $2.2, and weekly shipments have increased from less than 20,000 pieces to more than 200,000 pieces.
This directly brings a benefit. Through analysis of Netflix’s freight data, FedEx has concluded that Netflix’s business volume will increase significantly every month. It has specifically opened a freight channel for Netflix, which previously troubled Netflix The problem of sorting goods is also solved.
FedEx and Netflix have reached a long-term cooperation agreement. When Netflix's weekly shipment volume reaches 300,000 pieces, the cost will inevitably be reduced to less than US$2.
The various propaganda methods promoted by Relativity Entertainment for Netflix have allowed Netflix to appear in front of more audiences. The most direct effect is the surge in the number of registered users. Although not every registered user can evolve into a paying user, Netflix’s rental The sales model can undoubtedly cater to the needs of a group of people.
Moreover, the bloated Blockbuster and conservative Hollywood video have left customers with a poor impression.
Netflix even shouted the slogan in the advertisement: "Everyone doesn't like leasing late fees. Netflix never charges leasing late fees."
Ronan also obtained another very powerful data for Netflix: the number of households with DVD players in the United States soared to 25 million in April 2002!
At the same time, the selling price of DVD players fell below $200.
The price is much lower than that of video tape players, so that DVD players are becoming popular at an incredible speed.
Nowadays, when optical drives are not standard on computers, Netflix cannot expect users to use computers to watch movies. DVD players are the foundation of Netflix’s business growth.
Felipe McNealy, a senior analyst from Gonard Consulting, focused on Netflix in the latest industry analysis report, believing that Netflix is ​​a rapidly developing niche company.
Netflix is ​​being recognized by the outside world.
In view of the good development situation, Netflix also quietly adjusted its 2002 goal, changing the already completed development of 1 million registered users to 1 million paying users.
Including Ronan and Mark Randolph, everyone is confident that Netflix will accomplish this goal.
The Internet is far from the extreme it can bear and show.
No one knows better than Ronan how crazy the Internet will develop in the future.
Netflix is ​​only the first step to enter the Internet, and it is also the basis for subsequent plans.
Ronan also needs Netflix to turn losses into profits and get rid of the disadvantage of relying on blood transfusions from the head office.
Mark Randolph made a certain future outlook based on the current various data. He believes that as long as Relativity Entertainment can develop at the current speed, it will provide Netflix with a certain group platform support. Calculated by the development of the Internet industry and the DVD industry, By 2005, Netflix could achieve an annual profit of 50 million US dollars.
This is of course only a prospect. In the development process of a company, it is impossible to always develop according to the plan, and it may encounter unexpected situations of this kind.
However, the promotion of Relativity Entertainment's movie platform has benefited Netflix a lot.
Other aspects of promotion are the same as general advertising. It is good if the efficiency can be more than ten percent. However, Relativity Entertainment is based on the promotion of movies, and the recipients are fans from all over North America. These people are online movies. Under the largest consumer group, the effective promotion rate is extremely high.
The DVD of "Resident Evil" is already on the market, and the Netflix advertisement embedded in the DVD package has attracted many fans to become registered users of Netflix.
Although most people don't pay to rent a movie, if you take the first step, you may take the second step.
Movies suitable for placement of advertisements such as "Reaper Is Coming 2" and "The Bourne Shadow" released in the summer file will directly show Netflix placement ads.
As for the Internet navy’s dissemination of various news about Netflix on major film and television forums, it has never stopped since January.
In addition, Netflix continues to optimize the website and shipping process so that customers can enjoy the highest quality treatment.
In the words of Reed Hastings and Mark Randolph, they had the idea of ​​creating Netflix because they could not stand the poor service of Blockbuster, and they must not make the same mistake of Blockbuster again~www.mtlnovel .com~ By the way, Blockbuster is also a stepmother in Viacom, and Summer Redstone acquired Blockbuster in the past because of its stable cash flow.
Viacom doesn't care much about Blockbuster's business and transformation.
After staying at Netflix for a few days, the lawyer Dinah Ampton informed Ronan that he had completed various procedures, but Ronan had to go to Apple in person to complete some of the internal equity changes procedures of Apple.
Ronan chose a Monday and came to Cupertino in the South of the San Francisco Bay Area. At this time, Apple's spacecraft headquarters and the Jobs Theater were all invisible.
At Apple's old office building, Ronan went through all the formalities, and when he was about to leave, someone suddenly came to him.
"Excuse me, are you Mr. Anderson?" A woman in her thirties came over: "Mr. Jobs wants to talk to you."
Ronan was a little surprised. He planned to wait for Disney's complete civil strife before starting to attack Joe's Gang. He didn't expect that Joe's Gang would take the initiative to find him.