The Confusion of Konka's Transformation: Blind Diversification | Billion-Year Revenue or Threshold

The 38-year-old Konka Group wants to transform itself. The company plans to erase the labels in the consumer electronics field and turn it into a technology-driven innovation investment-control platform company.

Not only that, Konka also thought that it would realize revenue of 60 billion yuan by 2020, nurture three new industries with more than 10 billion revenues, create 1-3 new domestic and foreign listed companies, and complete revenue of 100 billion yuan in 2022.

In order to achieve these ambitious plans, Konka will invest 43 billion yuan in its newly signed five major technology industrial parks. At the same time, the company will enter the environmental protection and semiconductor industries. The future will focus on the layout of energy-saving and environmental protection, semiconductors, new materials and other fields, and will also enter in due course. Great health, new energy vehicles, 5G and other fields.

As every plan involves a large-scale investment behind, Konka's financial pressure is showing up. It should be noted that Konka has suffered a series of losses since the first quarter of 2011 to 2018.

For this leapfrog expansion of the layout, an industry insider who did not wish to be named bluntly said that it was “very dangerous and the pace was a bit big.” Many analysts also believe that Konka’s investment ability and financing ability do not support its implementation. Non-related and diversified development.

However, according to Zhou Bin, president of Konka, it is still too early to specify what Konka is running on. It will be possible to have three or four out of five or six tracks. At that time, everyone will know what company Konka is. Zhou Bin Say.

Long-span strategic transformation planning

' Konka has developed a new development strategy plan for the purpose of leapfrogging and expansion. ' Zhou Bin said.

The Konka Group with a strong color of state-owned enterprises must first break the institutional bondage, that is, implement a mixed-ownership reform in an all-round way. Mixed reform methods include adopting a corporate system reform, introducing strategic investors, employee ownership, redistribution of assets and operations, and mobilizing assets again. Combinations and other ways.

Konka's existing 'Sanliu Liuxin' business and 'Sanjiu' business are color TV, Baidian and mobile phone business respectively. At present, the mixed reform of color TV business is in progress, clearly defining the direction for the introduction of strategic investors, Konka’s multimedia business “Shenzhen "Konka Electronic Technology Co., Ltd." is officially awarded the licence; the white power business will formulate a management shareholding plan, incentivize management to fully enhance the level of operation and management, and connect with investment banks, seek strategic investors, and focus on industrial capital investors. The mobile phone business has completed a mixed reform, with Konka accounting for 51% and the management team accounting for 49%. At the same time, it will implement a second mixed reform and actively introduce new strategic investors. Zhou Bin did not reveal the intended strategic investors.

As for the “6 new” business such as environmental protection business and internet business, it was established in the form of mixed ownership at the beginning of its establishment. In Konka’s plan, 'six new' has also become a focus.

The key to the transformation of Konka is the diversification of business. Compared with other home appliance companies, Konka Group's vision of diversification extends outwardly and more widely. This is exactly what the industry has criticized.

Zhou Bin said that Konka Group will focus on strategic emerging industries, and provide new industries with high industrial appeal, Konka's attributes and synergy with other business sectors.

The new industry includes four major business groups, namely 'Technology Park Business Group', 'Industrial Products Business Group', 'Platform Services Business Group', and 'Investment Financial Business Group'.

The idea of ​​the development of business parks in science and technology parks has become clearer. Konka has signed cooperation agreements with the governments of Zhangzhou, Suining, Nanjing, Yibin and Haimen to further develop the technology industrial park business. The total investment of the five regional projects will reach 43 billion yuan.

In respect of the industrial product business group, Konka announced the establishment of the Environmental Protection Technology Division, and the Semiconductor Technology Division. The future will focus on the layout of energy saving and environmental protection, semiconductors, and new materials.

Among them, the upstream business semiconductor with high degree of association with Konka deserves attention.

As we all know, semiconductor is also a 'burning money' industry. For the outside world to question how to break the high-tech threshold and high financial threshold of the semiconductor industry, Konka claims that it will use a 'smarter way' to do semiconductor business.

'Konka's semiconductor is not groundless,' said Li Hongyin, vice president of Konka Group, which is in charge of the semiconductor business. 'This year, Konka has released an 8K chip at CES, and this chip has won the CES Innovation Award. We have been storing these reserves before. There is no civilianization, but we have advantages.'

Konka itself also has a lot of semiconductor demand. Konka purchases about 1 billion US dollars in semiconductors in 2017, 'close to 10 billion yuan (RMB) next year, and will exceed 30% annual growth in the next 5 years. This is a huge volume, meaning that Our company has the ability to digest semiconductors. 'Hongjun Li also said that semiconductor itself also has a large market.

According to reports, Konka will comprehensively lay out semiconductor design, semiconductor manufacturing, semiconductor equipment, semiconductor materials and other industrial chains. The key products are memory chips, IoT devices, and optoelectronic devices. Li Hongyi also disclosed that it will release a biometric identification this year. Related internet of things chips.

Zhou Bin said that Konka will use 5-10 years to join the ranks of the world's leading semiconductor companies, and is committed to becoming the top 10 semiconductor companies in China with annual revenue of over 10 billion yuan.

If it is reasonable to say that Konka is entering the semiconductor industry, then the scope for entering the environmental protection industry will be larger. What are the reasons for choosing? How to solve the bottleneck of technology, capital, resources, talents, etc. How does environmental protection have synergistic effects with other Konka businesses? All Konka need to answer questions.

The environmental protection technology division of Konka has targeted business areas such as 'water pollution prevention', 'air pollution prevention', 'solid waste treatment and recycling, reprocessing and utilization', 'soil pollution treatment and repair' and other hot areas.

Konka has high hopes for its environmental protection business. Its goal is to achieve annual revenues of 8 billion to 12 billion yuan within one to two years. Zhou Bin also hopes to use 3-5 years to build a domestic first-class environmental protection operation and maintenance high-end brand to achieve annual revenue. 18 billion - 26 billion yuan of strategic goals.

According to Zhou Bin, entering the environmental protection industry, Konka has a natural advantage. These advantages include the support of the central SOEs, adequate fund preparation and good industry synergy.

However, some industry sources believe that these reasons are not sufficient. First, the background of the central SOEs is not enough to become a basis for the environmental protection industry; second, financial aspects, Konka is also unspeakable. As for industrial synergy, it now appears that the environmental protection industry is also not highly relevant. of.

Perhaps chasing hot spots, with the vote is the real reason for Konka to lay out the environmental protection business. 'Most of the central enterprises have already laid out environmental protection business.' Zhou Bin said in an interview.

In addition, there are many types of environmental protection industries and the industrial chain is complex and diverse. Environmentally-listed companies often choose one or two items to enter, such as water, gas, soil, solid waste, monitoring, and governance. Such enterprises like Konka have taken 'taken all' companies. Rare.

It is also worth noting that the scale of the enterprises in the environmental protection industry that have been developing for many years is very limited. Among the SWS industry classifications, there are only three listed companies in the listed water utility, environmental protection engineering and service sub-sectors. In 2017, the company realized operating revenue of over ten billion yuan, namely Sanju Environmental Protection (300072.SZ), Clear Water Resources (300070.SZ), and Xinao (600803.SH). Konka is an introductory environmental protection 'recruitment', hopefully. The environmental protection business will contribute 10 billion yuan in revenue within two years, and its difficulty is very small.

Konka's 'ambition' is more than that.

Zhou Bin even revealed that Konka will promptly 'focus on big health, new energy vehicles, big data, Internet of things, 5G and other fields'. Konka proposes its core position is to 'become a platform-driven company driven by technological innovations. '.

Zhou Bin told the news on the interface that he would enter the new industry in the early stage and would choose to take the form of mergers and acquisitions, followed by the formation of joint ventures. “The innovation of the mechanism system has brought us huge dividends. Konka is a platform, welcome to each. All kinds of partners have come to cooperate with Konka. '

At present, it is true that Konka's investment industry is 'highly attractive to the industry'. This has indeed been achieved. Each industry is a popular hotspot industry, but some businesses are in line with Konka's attributes and have a synergistic effect with other business sectors. This is worth it. Merchants.

A careful comparison of Konka's various revenue targets will reveal that there are some difficulties.

Konka plans to achieve revenue of 60 billion yuan by 2020 and nurture three new industries with revenues of more than 10 billion. According to the Shenzhen Konka A annual report, the company's total operating revenue in 2017 will be 31.2 billion yuan. This means that Konka's owners will be in the next three years. The industry maintains a scale of about 30 billion yuan each year, plus three new industries with more than 10 billion revenues can easily achieve the goal.

How is the distribution of these three revenue-generating industries worth 10 billion? The environmental protection industry is one of them. Zhou Bin has clearly achieved annual revenues of RMB 8-120 billion within one to two years. The semiconductor industry does not seem to be listed because Zhou Bin’s goal is In 5-10 years, the annual revenue of the semiconductor business is over 10 billion yuan. Then, where are the remaining 2 industries?

'The investment director has looked at more than 500 projects.' Zhou Bin said. Perhaps the answer is also one of them.

'One hundred billion revenues may be a threshold, and we have a hard time. Let's give it a go. After that, Konka is still Konka; failing to go, Konka may become history. 'A person from a state-owned enterprise expressed to the news on the interface. The current state-owned enterprise reform process is accelerating. It is a general trend to merge and restructure and reduce quality. In actual operation, the difficulty of judging the quality of assets is much greater than the judgment of the scale of assets. Therefore, the scale of operations becomes an important indicator.

However, not all companies that can give it a shot have succeeded. It is understood that several years ago, some central SOEs had proposed to achieve a revenue target of tens of billions of dollars to reach 200 billion yuan in revenue in three years, but after the radical expansion, they have formed a number of Ten billion bad debts were eventually reorganized.

A lesson from the past

In this strategic transformation, Konka Group has begun to mark Zhou Bin's brand.

This president who was appointed through competition last year was born in 1979. He is only one year older than Konka. Before that, he was the assistant to the director of the operation management center of Konka Group, deputy director, director, assistant to the chairman of the board of directors and director of the operation management center. .

When interviewed by the media, Zhou Bin repeatedly compared himself with other companies and he did not care about his own advantages. As for the transformation results, no one knows.

Over the past ten years, Konka's declining trend in the home appliance industry has become quite obvious. If not, the status of the industry declines, and the scale and profitability of the company are declining.

Liang Zhenpeng, an observer of the household appliance industry, believes that the biggest problem for Konka is that it has not been done well in the areas it has entered. Konka's business lines are already quite a few, black power, white power, mobile phones, small household appliances, but air conditioners, refrigerators , Washing machines, no one can do the industry's top three, even the top ten in the industry are difficult to enter. Even Konka's leading product - color TV can not enter the top three market.

Taking the mobile phone business as an example, Konka is an earlier company in the mobile phone industry of the intruser. However, after operating for 18 years, Konka’s mobile phone business revenue still does not exceed 1 billion yuan.

In the Konka official store, Konka mobile phone prices range from 179 yuan to 1999 yuan, a number of old man machines, more than a thousand dollars of mobile phones only 4 models.

In terms of performance, Midea, Gree and Haier’s operating revenue in 2017 all exceeded RMB 150 billion. Konka is looking forward to it and it is difficult to fill it out. Instead of the big three in the home appliance industry, Konka has not gained the upper hand compared with TV companies.

TCL Group's (000100.SZ) revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan since 4 years ago. Sichuan Changhong (600839.SH), despite its declining trend, had revenue of 77.632 billion yuan last year. Most worth mentioning is Hisense Electric. (600060.SH), Hisense Electric had a net profit of over RMB 700 million in 2017 after it had reached the RMB 30 billion echelon with Konka. This is the reason why Hisense’s panel costs have risen sharply in the color TV industry last year. Data after nearly 60% drop. In the meantime, Konka lost nearly RMB 100 million after deducting non-performance in 2017.

In the first quarter of 2011, from 2018 to 2018, Konka experienced a loss after deduction from another quarter, which also indicates that its main business has been losing money for many years.

For Konka, the transformation is actually an inevitable choice. But for the transformation plan of Konka, people in the industry are looking more coldly. The core reasons for not favoring are nothing less than two points. One span is too big and where the second money comes from.

Liang Zhenpeng thinks Konka's 'tracks' are very dangerous, 'this is blind diversification'.

According to Liang Zhenpeng, most of the transformation of household appliance enterprises is related to diversified development. Occasionally, there will also be unrelated diversified development, such as Gree's mobile phone business. In this transformation of Konka, most of the businesses involved are non-related diversification. Said that the risk is greater, the unknown is higher.

In the household appliance enterprises, Haier and Midea have a clear thinking on diversification. For example, most of Haier's layouts are in the field of home appliance IT. Computers, mobile phones and other dozens of products are highly related to Haier's main business. The United States goes to industrial robots. The field, for its own sake, also has to turn to smart manufacturing to purchase industrial robots.

In Liang Zhenpeng's opinion, it is not now possible to enter a market by saving money. Without technical patents, it will certainly encounter a patented blockade from competitors.

It's hard to get through acquisitions. 'Real good technology, really competitive companies, others will not sell to you.' Liang Zhenpeng said.

Another industry watcher, Liu Buchen, also holds similar views. 'The more tracks you prepare, the more dispersed the energy, the greater the demand for funds, and to some extent the management's uncertainty about the future. This is not a Good news, because each track requires talent, energy and money. 'The chairman of the US group Fang Hongbo has also proposed 'runway', but only the second runway, prepare an industry outside the home appliance, that is, the robot industry.

'I have a less positive view of Konka's aggressive strategy. Konka moves from inaction to suddenness. In my opinion, the transformation step has gone a bit too much.' Liu Buchen said, 'Transformation is a technology for investment control.' Industry groups, and the industries that they are trying to enter, from the current point of view Konka can hardly do it.

With respect to Konka’s 20 billion revenue target for 2022, Liu Buyou bluntly stated that '5 years of revenue more than doubled, and Konka must be unable to do it. 'There is no risk-benefit assessment, there is no definitive and secure source of funds, and only one idea is needed. The results of the data predictions made are meaningless.

Based on concerns about the restructuring of Konka, the two industry observers have invariably referred to another former home appliance giant, Chunlan (600854.SH).

In the 1990s, Chunlan air-conditioning was at the forefront of the industry. Almost every air conditioner sold was Chunlan air-conditioning, which was higher than Gree's air-conditioner market. After Chunlan began to engage in motorcycles, medium trucks, and energy technologies. , Ice washing, TV, IT, financial investment, automotive chassis and compressors, etc., Want to create 'Chunlan Empire'.

After experiencing a vigorous and diversified road, Chunlan Group, which has not stuck to its main business, is now on the verge of withdrawing from the market. In 2017, its revenue was only 819 million yuan, and the latest market value was less than 2.5 billion yuan.

In addition to the Chunlan Group, apart from the Chunlan Group, many home appliance companies such as Aucma, Little Swan Group, and Kelon Electronics, which were once glorious, are diversified. The new main industry is not competitive, and the original main industry advantage is lost, and it is reduced to being acquired.

'This is a lesson. These companies are all unrealistic, beyond their ability, the pursuit of ultra-high-speed development of irrelevant diversification. This risk is very great. ' Liang Zhenpeng said that the music in the past two years is also A very prominent example. 'A lot of important reasons for business restructuring are overly anxious diversification. So Konka should still be cautious.'

Funding problems

Another important reason why the industry is not optimistic about Konka is how to solve funding problems.

Konka's investment in the Science and Technology Industrial Park alone has a definite value of 43 billion yuan. If three new industries can reach 10 billion yuan in revenue within two years, they will need to support heavy funds in the early stages.

Liang Zhenpeng mentioned that Konka plans to invest a lot of money, but this investment plan far exceeds its annual net profit. Loan investment is easily insolvent, and annual net profit is also difficult to pay interest.

From the perspective of Konka's own performance, it is difficult to make a difference. Although Konka’s net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies exceeded RMB 5 billion last year, profit was caused by non-recurring gains and losses. In 2017, Konka was transferring Shenzhen Kangqiao Jiacheng. 7. 70% equity of Real Estate Investment Co., Ltd. received a huge one-time gain.

Over the years, the company's asset-liability ratio has been high. The asset-liability ratio has been around 75% between 2010 and 2015, reaching a peak of 80.75% in 2016. This figure is at a high level among peers, and Konka 2015 and 2016 The asset-liability ratio is the highest among home appliance companies. This is not a good figure. After profiting in 2017, the company’s asset-liability ratio fell back to 65.20%. However, this is no longer an option.

“For a long time in the past, Konka was a company with poor profitability. Others were profitable. He was losing money. Others were profitable. He was a small profit. Konka itself does not have so much money, can live, but also the support of the parent company OCT.” Liu Buchen said Therefore, Konka can only use external funds.

'Since relying on its own inherent endogenous accumulation, it is not enough.' Li Chunlei, financial controller of Konka Group, also realized this problem.

However, Konka thinks that he is ready.

First of all, it is the support of OCT, a major shareholder. 'Konka is a listed company and has strong support from major shareholders. Therefore, Konka is not short of funds and the capital is in good condition.' Li Chunlei said that OCT Group started to offer Konka nearly 100 years ago in 2015. The billion-dollar credit grant can bring relatively low-cost funds through super-short financing.

Secondly, we have continued to expand our own financing channels. 'At present, we have to go through the shareholders' meeting to provide funds for asset securitization business, including loans for industrial mergers and acquisitions, funds for the development of science and technology parks, and some industries in the former science and technology parks. We have considered 'recruiting' and 'retreating' at the time of voting. '

'In addition, financial institutions are also full of confidence in us.' Li Chunlei said.

In this regard, Liu Buchen analyzed that the support of Konka's parent company Overseas Chinese Town will not be great. First, investments in semiconductors and environmental protection industries are very large; Second, OCT itself is not one of the top two companies in the real estate industry; Third, OCT’s The shareholding ratio is only 21.75%, and its help will be very limited.

Konka is expanding its financing channels in various ways and it is implemented fairly quickly.

On May 22nd, Shenzhen Konka A (000016.SZ) announced that the company plans to issue non-public issuance of corporate bonds of no more than RMB 5 billion. It plans to repay debts bearing interest-bearing debts and replenish liquidity.

On the same day, Konka Group stated that it plans to carry out the business of asset securitization of accounts receivable, and the planned issuance size will not exceed 1 billion yuan. This will reduce the occupation of company funds by accounts receivable and increase the liquidity of the company's assets.

"The 50 billion yuan of corporate bonds can be issued, or afterwards." Liu Buchen said that traditional home appliance companies have always lacked financing capacity, the United States and Gree have strong profitability, and the price-to-earnings ratio given by the capital market is still low, not to mention Konka. 'Konka The profitability of the past is too bad. It is difficult to get a smooth financing.

The recent debt default occurred frequently and the company issued a debt. The Oriental Garden (002310.SZ) wants to issue a bond of 1 billion yuan, raising only 50 million yuan, and the secondary market's listed value has shrunk by 10 billion yuan.

One analyst believes that the investment in the environmental protection industry in the semiconductor industry is relatively large. Even a successful financing of 5 billion yuan will not solve the problem. 'The funds will still have a big gap', he said.

In the secondary market, investors also gave their own attitude towards the transformation of Konka Group. In the past week, Shenzhen Konka A5 closed higher on May 21, and then fell back. As the trading volume shrank daily, it fell for five consecutive trading days. The cumulative decline of 7.05%, underperformed the market index.

On May 25th, Shenzhen Konka A also traded in a large block trade with 3 million shares traded at 5.37 yuan, a discount of 7.89% from the closing price of the previous day and a discount of 10.05% from the previous closing price.

It can be seen that in the face of the 'heavy weight' of the company's release, the attitude of the capital market is also hesitant, and there is even some concern about the prospects.

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