Chapter 516 Skype is launched
The motorcade drove into Leith Flower Manor. When Barron entered the room, he saw Fan Bingbing already standing at the door waiting for him.
"How are you feeling lately, baby."
Holding her hand and leading her to sit on the sofa, Barron asked softly.
"It's good. Fortunately, the children are not very noisy..."
Speaking of which, Fan Bingbing has been pregnant for more than seven months, and her due date is still more than two months away. Now her belly has grown in size.
As early as a few months ago, they already knew that this time she was pregnant with twins - when Fan Bingbing was more than three months pregnant, her belly looked smaller than normal during this period of pregnancy. The pregnant women were older, so they knew the result after going to the hospital for examination.
It can be said that compared to other mothers, this process will be more difficult for Fan Bingbing, which also means that in more than two months, Barron will have one more son and one more daughter.
Barron's eyes stopped on the coffee table in front of the floor-to-ceiling window and saw a book placed there, with a corner of the bookmark exposed in the middle.
I stood up and walked over and saw a book about business management.
"Are you watching this recently? Don't work too hard, honey."
"I just want to know more about it. I'm bored most of the time now, so I can use it as a way to kill time..."
< br>Speaking of which, Fan Bingbing is really hard-working and very smart. After coming to Los Angeles, not only did she quickly become able to communicate with others in English fluently, but she also speaks English most of the time. They are all reading books to recharge their batteries.
It can be said that no one’s success comes for nothing.
That night, Barron slept very quietly beside Fan Bingbing.
In fact, he and Ivanta had learned a lot of knowledge the night before, so he came to Fan Bingbing, who was pregnant, just in time to rest for a day.
……
Monday, January 15th.
On this day, Skype officially landed on Nasdaq and started trading.
With this IPO, Skype will issue 30 million American Depositary Receipts (NASDAQ stocks) to the public, equivalent to Skype’s Class B ordinary shares.
It is also worth mentioning that, like many Internet technology companies, Skype’s stock listing this time is also in the form of AB shares, that is, the same shares have different rights.
Of the total 200 million shares after listing, there will be 20 million Class A shares with higher voting weights, whose voting power is 10 times that of Class B ordinary shares.
Among them, DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund) owns 16 million Class A shares, and the founding team of Skype and O2 Telecom each own 2 million Class A shares.
Due to the enthusiastic atmosphere of investor subscription, the issuance price of Skype shares was finally $24, which was higher than the previous pricing range of $21-23.
On the day of listing, the opening price of Skype stock was $28.5, a direct increase of 18.75% compared to the issue price...
It can be seen that the Nasdaq stock market was indeed a bit crazy at this time. In the morning, Skype's stock price rose by more than 30 US dollars. In the afternoon, it reached the highest price on the first day of 32.43 US dollars. Finally, Skype's stock price closed at 30.16 US dollars. The dollar price closed.
Compared with the issue price, its closing price increased by 25.67%! This performance is already very satisfactory.
If calculated based on the day's closing price of US$30.16, Skype's market value at this time exceeds US$6 billion, and the 122.5 million Skype shares held by DS Holdings are worth nearly US$37 Billion dollars!
At this time, DS Holdings holds 61.25% of Skype shares and 70.13% of its voting rights.
And in this listing, of the 30 million shares that Skype sold publicly, accounting for 15%, 20 million of them were newly issued shares, and Skype received US$480 million in financing.
The other 10 million shares came from the stocks sold by DS Holdings and the founding team of Skype, who each received US$120 million in cash.
After going public, Skype plans to set up a North American branch in Silicon Valley and build a data center here to provide higher quality services to users in this region.
Skype's North American branch is located near the North American headquarters of Woaw Technology.
In fact, the good performance of Skype's stock price this time when it went public was also due to the rapid increase in users in North America in the past six months, and its proportion of paying users is slightly higher than their users in other regions.
And their revenue growth curve is also very good. In 2005, Skype's annual revenue was only about 60 million US dollars, most of which came from the second half of 2005.
But last year, in 2006, Skype's full-year revenue exceeded the original forecast of $200 million, reaching $220 million, which also greatly increased Skype's valuation.
This year, it is conservatively expected that Skype’s annual revenue will exceed US$300 million!
But at this time, Barron’s focus has shifted from Skype’s listing to the Black Swan Fund.
Since October last year, Black Swan Funds have gradually stopped making long investments in securities and stocks related to subprime loans, and instead began to aggressively purchase credit default swap products for subprime loans. That is, CDS (CreditDefaultSwap) began to prepare for the coming of the subprime mortgage crisis.
In fact, at the end of last year, signs of the subprime mortgage crisis had already begun to appear, but all of this was covered up by the carnival in the financial market.
What Barron and the others are waiting for is for the current spark to gradually transform into a prairie fire, and then receive the most generous rewards.
If we look back at this event after the outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis, then there will be traces of the outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis.
In fact, even if the real estate industry was overheated and thunderstorms eventually occurred, it was only this industry that was damaged. The result was that housing prices fell, and real estate developers and some people who invested in real estate suffered losses. But at least it won't be as destructive as the subprime mortgage crisis, and it can even affect the global economy.
The reason for such great destructive power can only be attributed to the fact that America’s “financial innovation” capability is too strong and capital is too greedy.
Not only did they package the loans into various bonds (CDOs) and sell them to investors, but they also lowered the loan conditions and provided housing mortgage loans (subprime loans) to some people who were not able to repay. Operations that package these subprime mortgages into bonds, rate them as prime, and then sell them.
It can be said that almost all banks and investment banks in the United States are involved in this kind of thing, and even many European and Asian banks are taking over these businesses from American financial institutions.
The investors in these bonds are naturally spread all over the world.
Real Estate-Bank-Investor...
Not only that, insurance companies are also involved, that is CDS, which is equivalent to the insurance purchased by investment institutions for these subprime loan bonds-they provide The insurance company pays a portion of the money (insurance premium). If the home buyer is unable to repay the loan normally and causes losses, the insurance company will pay compensation.
Because housing prices continue to rise, even if someone cannot repay their loan, the bank will not lose money if they sell the mortgaged property. Therefore, insurance companies see this "extremely low risk" way to earn insurance money, They also actively joined.
In this way, the amount of funds involved in real estate mortgage loans was amplified hundreds of times through the amplifier of financial instruments, and finally formed a huge balloon that enveloped the whole world.
(End of this chapter)