Reborn Tycoon Rise

The group visited a liquor manufacturing plant located on the outskirts of Farmington.

American liquor, mainly whiskey, is obtained by distilling grain maltose. The concentration after distillation generally does not exceed 80%. It also needs to be diluted with water and stored in wooden barrels for at least two years. The longer the time, the better the taste. However, This method of preservation is not suitable for the factory. In order to quickly recover funds, the barrels will be sold after two years.

The alcohol concentration of American whiskey is not high. The best-selling strong whiskey in the United States has an alcohol content of about 43 degrees. Compared with Chinese platinum, which often has 50 or 60 degrees of alcohol!

Seeing Xu Zhi take a slight taste, Jack Marshall smiled and asked: "Mr. Xu, how do you feel?"

"It's not bad, although I don't like drinking very much." Xu Zhi nodded and praised. The taste of the wine was okay, but it was not spicy at all after entering the mouth, which was enough to prevent him from being disgusted.

"This is the most famous 'Smimov' brand whiskey of our Huberline Company. It has a degree of 34 degrees and is completely brewed from 100% wheat grains. No matter how much you drink, there will be no serious side effects." Jack Marshall boasted: "By the way, Mr. Xu, our company owns a 5,000-acre farm almost 20 miles north of here. The main grain in it is wheat, which is specially used to provide food for our brewing factory."

"5,000 acres?" Xu Zhi calculated in his mind that it was almost 20 square kilometers, which is a rectangular area of ​​4*5 kilometers. This area is not small.

Jack Marshall continued: “Yes, in addition to there, we have our own farms in Texas, Canada, Canada and even France, mainly to provide raw materials for our company’s various wines.

Of course, our company's brewing output is very large, and these self-owned lands alone are not enough. However, these lands are also extremely valuable assets, and I think Mr. Xu will definitely like them. "

"I am indeed interested in land such as farms, but after all, this is not the main business of Huberline Company. I heard that the company's business development has not been good in recent years." Xu Zhi immediately said suppressedly, although We haven't started price negotiations yet, but we must not go along with the other party.

"This is just the self-regulation of the domestic market. If Mr. Xu is interested, I can give you an official industry statistical document. At present, the entire American liquor market has begun to decline. Among these companies, Huberline's performance is absolutely Ranked high." Jack Marshall said confidently.

"If the company's performance is just poor, then there is still hope for a correction, but if the entire market is shrinking, there will be no hope." Xu Zhi shrugged and said with a smile.

"Mr. Xu is too worried. Liquor has existed in the United States for hundreds of years, and in Asia where Mr. Xu is located, many countries have a history of thousands of years. With Mr. Xu's influence in Asia, if Huberline is acquired, If we can open up business in Asia in the future, the company's performance will definitely increase significantly, and I believe that in a few years, the U.S. market will definitely recover." Jack Marshall's introduction obviously went through a detailed analysis.

"My resources in Asia are my assets and have nothing to do with Huberline's value today." Xu Zhi said calmly.

"Of course, I am just analyzing all your advantages, Mr. Xu." Jack Marshall smiled awkwardly: "The factory tour has been completed. Let's go to the office for a tour."

"Okay!" Xu Zhi smiled and nodded. Before coming here, he had already learned through Goldman Sachs that Huberline's various businesses have begun to decline sharply in recent years, especially the core liquor business, although the annual turnover is as high as 1 billion. US dollars, but it lost 40 million US dollars last year alone. The losses in its core business caused KFC's development to come to a sudden halt. After several consecutive years, the company's debts soared, and the board of directors obviously saw no hope, so they decided Take out the entire company.

But Huberline's liquor is actually not bad. The business has been troubled in recent years, which is actually caused by many external factors.

Many times, industry bosses are not worried that juniors in the same industry will take away their jobs, but they are very worried that other industries will impact them. This is very common in the Internet industry in later generations, and Huberline also encountered it. similar situation.

This also starts with a red wine crisis.

In the late 1970s, the global red wine and wine industry encountered an existential crisis. A group of industry tycoons gathered at a French winery to discuss a method that could save the entire industry.

After half a month of meeting and discussion, a group of people did not come up with any results. One of the geniuses was tired of the so-called meetings and ran to downtown Paris. While shopping, he suddenly noticed a phenomenon. , that is, there are not many fat people in France.

After some investigation, he found that the daily complementary foods of the French and Italians are nutritionally balanced, have very strict calorie control, and are rich in variety, but the quantity of each type is small, and the French do not like fried foods. Therefore, there are also fat people in France, but the proportion is much lower than that of Americans who love to eat burgers.

This matter has nothing to do with red wine or wine, but capital doesn't care. As long as the profit is enough, they can even trample the law, let alone just create a lie.

After returning to the winery, he told other red wine tycoons what he had discovered, and a group of people decided to combine red wine with obesity. After that, everyone joined forces to spread the following information:

Why are French people not fat? Just because they like to drink red wine!

Many people in the United States indeed attach great importance to the issue of obesity. Under the intensive bombardment by the media, the sales of red wine have rebounded significantly.

However, it soon returned to stability. The wine merchant conducted another analysis and finally concluded that most Americans still don't care about their fat body.

So, after some discussion, they decided to link red wine with one of the most terrifying diseases - diabetes.

In the 21st century, diabetic patients are all over the world, but except for some truly terminally ill patients, most people have no life-threatening problems and only need regular injections of insulin.

But in this era, insulin is very rare. Although Canadian doctors have extracted insulin from the pancreas of dogs and cows as early as 1920, this is only a laboratory method. In industrial production, cows and pigs must be It is extremely expensive to take out the animal pancreas, dry it and then extract it. If you want to produce the insulin needed to maintain a type 2 diabetic patient for one year, you need to produce the pancreas extracted from 50,000 pigs.

Judging from the quantity alone, even common animals such as cattle, pigs, dogs, and sheep combined are not enough for 10,000 patients, not to mention that this unprecedented demand will cause the market to collapse and the price of pancreas to rise sharply.

The low production of insulin has led to extremely high prices. It is impossible for non-super rich people to afford it. Moreover, these insulins come from animals such as pigs and cows, and the amino acid sequence of insulin is quite different from that of human insulin. There is no problem if you use less, but once you use too much, the human body will have a severe rejection reaction, which is life-threatening. Even if you reluctantly use anti-rejection drugs, the process will be painful and life-threatening at any time.

In the face of this disease, the super rich are inevitable. In fact, the existence of diabetes suppresses the market for high-calorie foods and beverages to a certain extent.

It was not until the late 1980s that the Danish company Novo Nordisk used genetic recombination technology to imitate artificial human insulin after more than ten years of hard work, and the fear of diabetes was alleviated.

Before this, in developed countries like the United States, the number of patients dying from diabetes was second only to cancer, and a larger number of patients did not dare to touch any high-calorie food in order to survive, making their lives miserable.

It can be said that people in this era are more afraid of diabetes than they are of AIDS in the 21st century.

The wine merchants obtained official data from the French Ministry of Health, which confirmed that the number of diabetics in France is far lower than that in the United States. In their new round of publicity, red wine and wine play a central role.

After a lot of publicity, "drinking red wine to lower blood sugar" has gradually become a consensus in American society. Out of the fear of diabetes, the sales of red wine and wine in American society have grown explosively, and these red wine tycoons have not forgotten it. It stepped on competing industries and secretly promoted liquor as a highly caloric product.

Therefore, under the publicity of this saucy operation, the market share of liquor in the United States dropped rapidly and the industry declined. Although Huberline also has a red wine industry, its scale is not large, and its performance will naturally be affected inevitably.

However, the bad luck of the liquor industry did not stop, because PepsiCo entered the market!

Speaking of PepsiCo, everyone in the United States knows it. It is the world's second largest beverage production company. In the 1970s, PepsiCo worked hard to catch up, forcing Coca-Cola, the leader in the beverage industry, to almost collapse.

The beverage and wine industries are involved to a certain extent, and it is not unusual for giant beverage companies to enter the brewing field, but if this were the case, the American liquor industry would not be greatly affected.

PepsiCo is not planning to make wine, but is selling vodka on a large scale in the US market, which has impacted the entire industry.

It turned out that under the competition from Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola knew that it would be difficult to challenge the other party's dominance in a mature market, so it set its sights on polar bears.

Beginning in the 1960s, after nearly a decade of negotiations, PepsiCo finally convinced Polar Bear's executives and obtained the right to sell Pepsi-Cola throughout Polar Bear's territory.

However, there was a problem with the final payment method. The polar bears were also short of foreign exchange and of course refused to pay US dollars. The value of the ruble was extremely unstable, so PepsiCo naturally did not accept it. In the end, the two parties reached an agreement, exchanging Pepsi-Cola for vodka!

With this condition, Pepsi-Cola monopolized the entire polar bear market and became the only capitalist company to enter polar bears at that time, causing a sensation.

Pepsi-Cola was very popular in Polar Bear, and sales were increasing day by day. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, they doubled several times in a few years, but this also brought up a problem, what to do with so much vodka?

In the end, Pepsi chose the simplest method and sold in large quantities. As a result, the price of liquor plummeted. The cost of American wineries far exceeded that of polar bears. PepsiCo still made a huge profit even if it sold at a low price, but other liquor companies were unlucky.

Huberline's board of directors also saw this situation and believed that the liquor industry had reached the end of the world and there was no chance of turning around, so they sought to take action.

Huberline Company is a typical factory company. Its headquarters building was not located in some big cities, or even in the town of Farmington. It only built two 20-story office buildings one kilometer away from the factory.

After visiting several departments, Xu Zhi entered the president's office with Jack Marshall.

Jack Marshall took down some documents from behind the desk, handed them to Xu Zhi, and said, "These are some sales data and internal business introductions of our company in the first half of this year. Mr. Xu can take a look first."

"Thank you." Xu Zhi took it and looked through it carefully. As expected, these documents are only financial reports that listed companies must publish every year, and are not considered internal secrets.

From January to June in the first half of this year, the company's alcohol business suffered serious losses, reaching US$27 million. The main loss was the main liquor business. Although the profit margins of other businesses such as beer, red wine and wine increased, their market share was small, with a total of The profit of only 2 million US dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to the losses of liquor.

The packaged food business is developing smoothly, but there is no obvious room for growth. The product range is very diverse, ranging from ordinary packaged food to mustard and various sauces used in the kitchen. Fortunately, the company's senior management has certain With his vision, the American factories have long been closed and moved to Asia. The head office only purchases and sells to some supermarket dealers in the United States. Moreover, these factories are responsible for their own profits and losses, are separated from the parent company in operations, and do not show performance in financial statements.

The third main business is the KFC restaurant chain. Currently, more than 90% of KFC restaurants in the world are licensed. Although they cannot enjoy higher profits, the risks are well controlled. The head office is responsible for collecting franchise fees and selling sauces. Taking into account all chickens, the only large-scale investment is in the east and west of the United States, with a total of 7 large-scale farms invested. As long as bird flu does not occur, it is difficult for KFC to suffer losses. In the first half of this year, KFC's profit was US$33 million.

Diversified operations allowed Huberline to earn a total profit of US$6 million in the first half of the financial report even though its main business was sluggish.

However, as long as a caring person makes a little analysis, he will know that the main business is losing money and the side business has diverted funds on a large scale, which has affected the normal development of KFC. For example, last year, KFC invested only 50 million US dollars in expansion. Competitor McDonald's is $400 million.

If this continues, KFC's performance will inevitably decline severely, and by then, the entire Huberline company will be completely in trouble.

After reading, Xu Zhi closed the documents, looked directly at Jack Marshall, and said, "Mr. Marshall, everyone knows my purpose. I want to ask first, if I just want to buy KFC, is that okay?"