On September 4th, it was reported that Cheetah Mobile was in contact with the buyer's consortium and sought to privatize it at a price of 14 to 16 US dollars per share. The dominant party is the Xiaomi Group, which is also the Lei Jun department, and the latter will directly acquire and integrate privately. The cheetah moves, causing synergy between the two sides.
Subsequently, on the night of the 4th, Cheetah Mobile issued a public statement saying that the company realized the rumors about privatization and rumored it. Cheetah Mobile stressed that the entire company's board of directors and management team were not interested in the transaction. The company will continue in the future. Committed to safeguarding shareholders' equity and continuing to operate as a listed company.
According to public information, Cheetah Mobile was formed by the merger of Jinshan Security and Co., Ltd. in October 2010. At the time of the New York Stock Exchange on May 8, 2014, the transaction code CMCM, IPO price was 14 US dollars per share, and the total share capital was 1.38 billion American Depositary Shares (ADS), IPO market value reached 1.932 billion US dollars. Today, Cheetah Mobile released a denial of privatization statement, affected by this, as of press time, Cheetah Mobile shares fell 1.6% to 9.84 US dollars.
In terms of shareholding structure, the largest shareholder is 47.5% of Jinshan Software, Tencent holds 16.6%, Fusheng holds 7.2%, and has 45.4% of voting rights. Cheetah Mobile President Xu Ming holds 3.1% of the shares. And 3.3% of voting rights.
It should be noted that Jinshan Software's largest shareholder is Color Link Management Limited, which holds 13.31% of the shares, which is wholly-owned by Lei Jun. At the same time, Lei Jun personally holds 10.87% of Jinshan Software, which together account for 24.18%. Because of the Cheetah share price structure Inside, Lei Jun's shareholding is a negligible existence, and the reason why the public often associates the movement of cheetah with Lei Jun.
In March 2018, former Cheetah Mobile Chairman Lei Jun submitted his resignation to the Cheetah Mobile Board of Directors, no longer serving as chairman and director. The market speculated that Lei Jun’s move was to prepare for the listing of Xiaomi, reducing the trouble of related transactions between Xiaomi and the management company. Sheng took over as Lei Jun as chairman of the board, while Cheetah Mobile Board appointed Zhang Ning, Zhao Tianyi and Dr. Ma Yi as independent directors.
On August 20, Cheetah released its second quarter earnings report as of June 30, 2018. The financial report showed that Cheetah Mobile's total revenue in the second quarter was 1.103 billion yuan, exceeding the company's performance guidelines. Q2 net profit increased 180% year-on-year to 197 million yuan. Non-GAAP operating profit increased by 58% year-on-year to RMB 143 million. In addition, the company's diluted earnings per ADS was RMB 1.29, up from RMB 0.47 in the same period last year.
At the earnings call, responding to the question of the cooperation between Macquarie Securities analyst Wendy Huang about cheetah and Xiaomi and the headline, Cheetah CFO Jiang Zhenyu said that the main cooperation between the two parties is mainly concentrated on two aspects - First, headlines and millet are two very effective channels for cheetahs to find new users. Secondly, Cheetah has obtained advertising space from these two platforms, increasing the supply of advertising. But he stressed that from the perspective of income, the contribution of Xiaomi and headlines is actually Very small. You can get more users in this way, which is actually the biggest contribution to income.