Reaching the age of thirty, my income randomly doubled

When a company’s values are abandoned by the capital market,

its share price is destined to face a prolonged period of downturn. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Fortunately, Tengying Group has always insisted on not taking loans, let alone playing with leverage.

Even if the stock price dropped to just one yuan, all of its stores, including the company, would still be making money as they should.

The only impact would be the inability to smoothly cash out the stocks in hand.

As for everything else, there really is nothing else.

If the price drops to a level that even Chen Pingsheng can’t accept, he could simply use his own money to buy back all the floating shares and take the company private.

After all, he had already obtained a fortune that multiplied at random; earning profits slowly afterward was also quite nice.

The next focus for Tengying Group’s two core ventures was on the successful initial public offerings of Tenghui Department Store and Antler Coffee.

Especially for Antler Coffee, in which three billion yuan was invested, following the launch of the first new milk coffee product, another one was introduced.

Coconut Latte.

Mainly made by blending the finest coconuts from Hainan with coffee.

Upon its launch, it immediately caused a huge sensation in the market.

During Antler Coffee’s first nationwide franchisee recruitment event, Liu Yifei personally attended and explained the history of Antler Coffee’s startup,

as well as its future development prospects.

Additionally, detailed analysis data for individual stores were provided.

The investment for a single Antler Coffee shop has decreased to about eight hundred thousand yuan, including rent, shop transfer fees, equipment costs, and other expenses.

For site selection, three clear criteria were also given.

First, to open in CBD business districts.

Second, near office buildings.

Third, close to shopping malls.

These locations are the core sites for Antler Coffee shops.

Franchisees, apart from not having to pay franchise fees, must also have their site selections personally confirmed by staff sent from the headquarters.

Only then can they open a shop.

It might seem like a bit of trouble, as there might not always be enough people available to be dispatched in a timely manner.

Just think about Bobo Milk Tea, which along with its franchises, now has more than six thousand stores nationwide.

On that scale, staff can easily be deployed nearby to check the sites.

No matter how famous a coffee shop might be,

if you locate it in a typical resettlement community or near a factory, it’s pretty much doomed.

No matter how much the headquarters advertises daily, it’s like flowers seen in a mirror, unattainable and illusory.

There’s simply no precise target customer group.

So for physical stores, the right location accounts for half the success.

Even Antler Coffee is no exception.

It’s no exaggeration to say that to sell you a cup of coffee, they mobilize half of the entertainment industry’s resources to advertise daily.

Even in the realm of internet celebrities, there are hundreds who spontaneously advertise for Antler Coffee.

This is the unparalleled influence it has.

At the national franchise recruitment conference, the number of investors that confirmed on the spot reached over a thousand.

For most people with extra money, running a franchise is the best way to make their capital grow.

However, during this process, it’s important to choose a brand with a good reputation that can truly make money.

Many investors came from Bobo Milk Tea.

Having been involved in milk tea, they now wanted to sell coffee.

In the end, it’s still a matter of trust in Tengying Group’s reputation.

Bobo Milk Tea, since that incident with franchisees blocking the headquarters, has not seen another vicious cycle of franchisees cheating one another.

Antler Coffee does not require a franchise fee,

but it does require a two hundred thousand yuan security deposit.

Plainly put, it’s not that Chen Pingsheng needs to use this money, but he intends to weed out those franchisees who invest with borrowed funds.

Any physical store, if you don’t have enough cash reserves upfront, can be easily driven out of business.

At the end of the conference, a total of three hundred million yuan in security deposits was collected.

A full 1500 investors were formally confirmed.

This once again shocked the domestic coffee industry and even made international news, with headlines declaring Starbucks has met its strongest opponent in the Central China region.

After the conference, Tong Zelan also went overseas,

officially to prepare for Antler Coffee’s IPO.

With the company’s progress to this point, going public was just a matter of time.

And Antler Coffee chose to bypass the domestic stock market and aimed for the larger development space of Nasdaq.

While there’s good news from Antler Coffee, Tenghui Department Store is experiencing similar positivity.

After investing nearly ten billion yuan, it has firmly established itself in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

Since all the storefronts are self-owned, its level of stability far exceeds that of the average domestic department store.

Now it has teamed up with Xin Teng Live Streaming to create Xin Teng Preferred,

taking a leap from traditional department stores to online live-streaming sales.

This move puts it far ahead in the traditional department store sector.

Many investors wanted to take a stake in Tenghui Department Store, but Chen Pingsheng flatly refused them.

Apart from going public, he simply doesn’t need external development funds.

Then on March 25,

Chen Pingsheng officially represented Tenghui Department Store and signed a sixteen billion yuan investment agreement with Tong Zelan’s Honglan Capital.

Giving away 40％ of the shares.

Just considering the department store itself, separate from its property assets, a valuation of forty billion yuan was quite good.

This meant that Tenghui Department Store was starting to proceed with an IPO.

Sixteen billion yuan was nothing to him, not even covering the full investment cost of Tenghui Department Store, so naturally, he couldn’t activate the Golden Finger’s random multiplication.

He used the sixteen billion yuan, and his wife contributed another four billion yuan, to round it up to twenty billion yuan.

They immediately went to Guangzhou and secured the prime properties of eight department stores.

He planned to open eight more stores, completing the department store layout in the top four super-tier cities.

The money for purchasing the properties came out of his pocket, but as for the cost of opening the stores, he didn’t need to spend a dime, as Tenghui Department Store’s own cash flow was more than sufficient to easily open eight new stores.

When you only have one store in the business of large retail spaces, you have to listen to your suppliers for everything.

If you have a few dozen stores, and they’re all in ultra-first-tier cities, you can say you’ll settle payments every three months and they won’t utter a single complaint.

All they’ll say is, "As you please, whatever is convenient."

That’s how the department store business works; once it gets going, the cash flow is unimaginably large.

In just March.

He completed the most crucial franchise with Antler Coffee, as well as Tenghui Department Store’s strategic layout across the top four first-tier cities.

This thoroughly established the golden foundation for the takeoff of Tengying Group this year.

Late March.

The Bund’s Huangpu River shone even more brilliantly.

The myriad neon lights everywhere, paired with the passing boats on the river, composed a vivid portrait of prosperity.

A man sat inside a small house by The Bund, a three-bedroom apartment with only 180 living space—a small place for Chen Pingsheng indeed.

"Dong dong," two knocks.

Who could it be, knocking on his door so late?

He checked his watch; it was nearly nine at night.

The reason he lived in this small place was that his wife wasn’t here, and living alone in a big house was too much trouble to clean.

He went to open the door.

"Brother-in-law."

"Peiyao, why are you here so late?"

"I originally went to your bigger apartment. When I saw you weren’t there, I came here."

The two apartments were both at The Bund, not too far apart from each other.

Jiang Peiyao could get there in just over ten minutes with her long legs.

She also brought some late-night snacks she just bought, wanting to invite him to eat together.

"You should’ve called before coming to my place; serves you right for the wasted trip."

Chen Pingsheng touched her pink hair, such a refined girl she was.

Making herself look like a rebellious girl, that was really something else.

Jiang Peiyao giggled with her head lowered, seeming a bit embarrassed.

Chen Pingsheng asked her to move a stool, and the two of them enjoyed the view of The Bund from the large balcony while eating some authentic Magic City delicacies.

"Brother-in-law, is our group going through some difficulties now?"

"Why do you ask that?"

Jiang Peiyao said with some concern, "It’s just that it has spread among the trainees because of the incident during Qiuyan’s lecture at the university, our group’s entire range of brands have plummeted in the stock market, even Tengying Entertainment, which has always been very stable, has dropped to just twenty billion."

"Twenty billion is too little? Only this much left?"

Chen Pingsheng looked amusedly at the girl in front of him.

Jiang Peiyao quickly denied, "No, it’s not that. It’s just that it was close to forty billion before, and now it suddenly dropped to this, which is pretty worrying."

"What’s there to worry about?"

Chen Pingsheng said, "It’s a trivial matter. When it drops to ten billion, I might as well just take a few billion and buy back all the floating shares from the market. You’re not unaware, weren’t there similar situations with Bobo Milk Tea before?"

"Brother-in-law, do you mean the stock price will definitely rise again?"

"That’s inevitable."

Chen Pingsheng said, "Tengying Entertainment was going to release its first-quarter financial report to recover the stock price, but I stopped it. To be honest, our group hasn’t made any principled mistakes. Chu Qiuyan was just being nice, and she cried several times. It was me who comforted her."

"On our land, especially in the capital market, it’s like seeing snakes in shadows. They think I’m going to break certain established rules, which can easily trigger the hidden worries of some big shots. It’s merely their own conjecture and guess."

"Brother-in-law, exactly what rules could cause our group’s stock price to decline across the board?"

Jiang Peiyao had been thinking about this question for several nights without figuring it out.

Chen Pingsheng didn’t know if he should explain to her, but after thinking about it, he said:

"It’s nothing but the vested interest groups. You should know that the people Chu Qiuyan prevented from entering the group were precisely those with conditions and background at home, while those she recruited were mostly looked down upon in college. The reason why the disadvantaged are vulnerable lies in their lack of social networks."

"Once such a network is formed, it automatically generates its rules, where the people inside look out for one another, sharing those high-quality resources in society."

"In their eyes, Tengying Group is also a part of it. But now, it’s trying to break the rules within that network, allowing people who shouldn’t have the chance to enjoy those resources to enter this network. In the view of the capital market, this is an extremely dangerous act."

Jiang Peiyao listened, not quite understanding.

It seemed as though she understood a little, yet she also felt muddled.

Overt things aren’t frightening, but it’s the covert that are dangerous.

Chen Pingsheng still told her to eat in peace and not to worry about all that irrelevant stuff.

No matter what, Tengying is still the parent company of three listed entities.

It definitely wouldn’t be shaken by such things.

Compared to this, one of the BAT giants, Baidu, has a serious issue with its values.

To make money, it disregards everything.

Paid medical listings have resulted in the loss of lives.

The Wei Zexi incident sparked outcry across the entire network.

Such an incident is absurd. A college student, because he trusted Baidu, ended up searching for treatment online.

After the expensive medical fees drained his family’s savings, even as his parents went into debt to help him with the treatment, they still couldn’t save his life.

Birth, aging, sickness, and death are natural, but Wei Zexi’s death still stirred up a storm of public opinion.

Put simply, a technology search company, for the sake of advertising fees, completely ignored the true nature of the hospitals.

As long as you pay, it would promote you vigorously.

In the end, it led to the demise of a promising life.

Chen Pingsheng felt quite disheartened when he saw such news. How much social harm are those giant companies causing to the ordinary people when they have money as their only goal?

And this only came to light following an incident.

What about those who suffer in silence and have no recourse to justice?

Compared to that, what does it matter that Tengying Group simply doesn’t hire people with a background?

The damage that the Wei Zexi incident inflicted on the general public is beyond imagination.

It had an unprecedented effect on Baidu, completely triggering a backlash from ordinary people.

This is the outcome of lacking competitors and living too complacently.

As a result of the Wei Zexi incident, Baidu’s stock price is bound to drop by at least two hundred billion.

What once was the glorious BAT now only has Alibaba and Penguin left.

Baidu has successfully fallen behind.

Compared with them losing 200 billion at a stroke, what’s a few tens of billions for us?