Chapter 24 Once listed, become famous all over the world

The second financing brought about a soaring number of users and a doubling of profits.For the founder of Tencent, there is another thing that is quietly planned.That is listing. One afternoon in August 2001, Chen Yidan called the founders of Tencent for a meeting.Chen Yidan held a stack of white envelopes and handed them out to everyone one by one. Inside the envelope was a piece of paper filled with a bunch of English and numbers.Chen Yidan made some remarks, which cleared up everyone's doubts about this letter, "Our Tencent will go public one day in the future. This is everyone's option. Everyone has to pay one yuan, which must be one Hong Kong dollar."At that time, listing and options were unfamiliar and new to the founders sitting in the Tencent office.After three years of profitability, Tencent's dream of going public seems no longer far away.

In June 2003, Liu Chiping was meditating at the desk in the Asian Investment Banking Department of Goldman Sachs.His identity at the time was the chief operating officer of the telecom, media and technology industry in Goldman Sachs Asia Investment Banking Division.A bunch of materials were placed in front of him, about a company he was very unfamiliar with—Tencent.Liu Chiping is a bit unfamiliar with the Internet industry. What kind of company is this company marked by penguins? Liu Chiping plans to use his own way to understand this company.He took people around Internet cafes, big and small, and was shocked by what he saw. Almost every computer in every Internet cafe had a chubby penguin blinking non-stop.Immediately, he set his sights on China Mobile, Tencent's largest partner. The other party gave a very good evaluation, and the answer given to Liu Chiping by Tencent's competitors was no less than the partner's evaluation of Tencent. In the autumn of 2003, Liu Chiping said to his colleagues, "Tencent is a company worthy of cooperation, and we must take Tencent's listed projects down."

Liu Chiping won the listing project of Tencent. In April 2004, Tencent submitted an application for listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The price announced by Tencent was between HK$2.77 and HK$3.70 per share.Among them, most of the shares offered will be used for international placement, and about 10% of the purchase rights are given to the public in Hong Kong.Goldman Sachs (Asia) is the global coordinator, bookrunner, lead manager and sponsor of this transaction. They are promoting Tencent shares at a price of HK$2.77 to HK$3.70. On June 7, 2004, Tencent Holdings Co., Ltd. (700HK), as the largest instant messaging product QQ service provider in mainland China, officially launched a public offering on the Growth Enterprise Market of Hong Kong, China, and officially sold 4.2 billion shares to overseas investors.

As for why he didn’t follow the crowd to list on Nasdaq, Ma Huateng had his own choice: “Among the underwriting consultants, six suggested listing in Hong Kong, four suggested listing on Nasdaq, and three suggested listing on both sides at the same time, which made me dizzy. The average price-earnings ratio of listed companies in Hong Kong is lower than that of the United States, but what if I am the leading stock in Hong Kong?" The unique charm of Penguin has been demonstrated again. The upper limit of the price range: HK$3.7 per share, raising a total of HK$1.438 billion. June 16 is a day worth remembering for Tencent.Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan, Zeng Liqing, and Zeng Zhenguo stood in the center of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, staring intently at the screen above their heads—"Congratulations to Tencent Holdings Limited on its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange."After the official listing, Tencent's stock price has been performing well.It rose to HK$4.375 at the opening of the market, an increase of 18.24% from the IPO price of HK$3.7, and the increase continued to expand.It was only in the afternoon that the profit-taking orders surged. The stock price reached HK$4.075 at the lowest and closed at HK$4.15, an increase of HK$0.45, or 12.16%, with a total turnover of HK$1.947 billion.However, China Shipping Container Lines, which went public on the same day, fell below the IPO price, with the closing price down 11.8% compared to the IPO price.Tencent's attractiveness in the capital market can be seen from this.For more than 10 days since its listing, Tencent's stock price has also remained at a high level of HK$4.30. Compared with the listing price of TOM Online, which is also an SP, and almost fell below the issue price, Tencent can be described as infinitely bright.

Some people in the media made such a comment, and the myth of making money online appeared again.This time, it is the turn of Tencent, the owner of QQ.Wang Juntao, an old Internet hero, said that it only took 6 years to achieve the overwhelming market share and the Chinese online community with the most active users.This is the glory of Tencent and the glory of Chinese Internet users. In this listing, Tencent created 5 billionaires and 7 multi-millionaires.According to the shareholding ratio, because Ma Huateng holds 14.43% of the shares, the book wealth is 898 million Hong Kong dollars; Zhang Zhidong owns 6.43% of the shares, and the book wealth is 400 million Hong Kong dollars; % of the equity, the wealth contract is 614 million Hong Kong dollars.In addition, the other 7 senior executives of Tencent own another 6.77% of the shares, with a total wealth of 422 million Hong Kong dollars.Compared with the other 10 natural person shareholders who cannot use the uncirculated Tencent shares, Ma Huateng, the main founder of Tencent QQ, and Zhang Zhidong, the other founder and the current chief technology officer of Tencent, can get back their shares from public shareholders on June 16. money.Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong directly cashed out about 1.8 billion and 80 million Hong Kong dollars respectively after their respective overseas companies were listed on Tencent, thus jumping into the ranks of China's IT upstarts in one fell swoop.

Tencent's largest shareholder MIH Group (Millard International Holdings Group) is even more profitable. MIH bought 20% of Tencent shares from Yingke and also bought 13% of Tencent shares from IDG.But obviously, once the growth potential of Tencent is clearly seen, MIH is not willing to just become a shareholding investment role.After that, in June 2004, other main founders of Tencent sold 13.5% of their shares to MIH, and Tencent’s shareholding structure became 46.3% for entrepreneurs, 46.5% for MIH, and 7.2% for IDG. However, regarding the definition of the shareholding ratio and the company's management, MIH and Tencent's entrepreneurial team obviously went through a good negotiation. The two non-executive directors of the company are not responsible for Tencent's specific affairs.It was not until August 2003 that Tencent’s entrepreneurial team repurchased all the remaining equity held by IDG and repurchased a small amount of equity from MIH. After readjusting the equity structure, it finally completed the pre-listing MIH and entrepreneurial team holding 50% of the shares. ownership structure.

However, judging from the list of independent directors of Tencent Holdings, it is quite interesting. Li Dongsheng, chairman of the board of directors of TCL Group, who became a billionaire through listing, became an independent director and member of the remuneration committee of Tencent.Tencent, which is listed on the main board of Hong Kong, will own 100% of the shares of four companies registered in Shenzhen. These four companies are Tencent Technology, Tencent Computer, Times Chaoyang and Shiji Kaixuan. 2004 was obviously a fruitful year for Ma Huateng.This year, Ma Huateng was selected as the most influential business person in the world in 2004 recently selected by the famous American financial media "Time" and Cable News Network (CNN). There are only two Chinese in the selection this time, and the other is TCL. At the same time, Mr. Li is also an independent non-executive director of Tencent Holdings Limited.Other selected entrepreneurs include General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Citigroup CEO Charles Prince, and Royal Dutch Shell Chairman Van der Weil, among others.The requirement for this selection is that entrepreneurs have created some new high-efficiency standards in their professional fields, including management models, ethics, marketing, and reform and innovation.Ma Huateng, President and CEO of Tencent, became one of the 25 global candidates for his innovative Internet services and mobile value-added services and the rapid growth of the company.

At the same time, Ma Huateng also won the 4th Bauhinia Cup Outstanding Entrepreneur Award issued by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.When comparing Tencent before and after listing, Ma Huateng also said that although the company still faces some management and structural coordination problems after listing, the company's operations have become more formalized, and at the same time, it has stronger control over the scale of the company and business development. with transparency.If it is not listed, the subsequent development of the enterprise may lack motivation and lack stamina.