The news that Disney's animation department successfully auctioned for a sky-high price of $2.5 billion has once again caused a lot of media reports.

After the two parties successfully signed the contract, Summer Redstone announced the establishment of Paramount Animation while it was hot, and appointed Roger Elles, the director of "The Lion King", as the EO of Paramount Animation Department. At the same time, Viacom also announced that it would rely on the huge channels of the Blockbuster chain store and Paramount Animation, Paramount Film, MTV TV and other content departments to jointly enter the lucrative film and television peripheral industries.

The day after Roger Elles received the Paramount Animation EO employment contract, he held another press conference and announced that the three 2D animation projects, "The Lion King" sequels, "Poems of the Wind" and "Magnolia" brought from Disney were launched at the same time, which was quite meaningful to target his old boss Disney.

The continuous positive news in a short period of time directly pushed Viacom's stock price by 7.6%. The rising stock price caused Viacom shareholders, who had complained about Redstone's radical expansion strategy to change their mindsets and praised Redstone's wise and decisiveness.

Some people are happy and some are frustrated. The most unlucky one is undoubtedly Time Warner EO Terry Semer who lost to Redstone in the process of bidding for Disney's animation department.

Although companies such as Seagram, Twentieth Century Fox, which failed in the competition, have been more or less discussed by the media, the media's comments about Time Warner's defeat in this competition are almost ridiculed. After all, Time Warner Group's overall strength is more than twice that of Viacom, and Time Warner's previous downturn in the film business has given it a good reason to grab the Disney animation department. Therefore, the impact of this failure on Time Warner even exceeds that of a simple failure itself. Many media even doubt whether Time Warner has a financial crisis.

Firefly suddenly announced the means to extend the payment period on the day of the auction. All the bidding strategies within Time Warner after repeated consideration were disrupted. Although Terry Semer is the leader of Time Warner, the authority at Time Warner Group is far lower than that of the previous generation leader Steve Ross, which also made it impossible for him to flexibly change his strategy due to the sudden attack of Firefly, which ultimately caused Time Warner to fail in this auction.

Although the ultimate reason for this failure is the constraints of Time Warner shareholders and board of directors on Terry Semer, it is obvious that Time Warner shareholders and directors will definitely not take the initiative to take responsibility, and the blame is ultimately on Terry Semer.

Time Warner's stock price has been falling for several months due to the dismal summer season. With the failure of this auction, Time Warner's hope of entering the animated film field has been shattered. The negative impact of this incident has caused Time Warner's stock price, which had stopped falling because the summer season has passed, began to fall again.

Faced with increasing pressure and busy work, Terry Semer himself even had some thoughts of resigning. Of course, this idea just flashed. Not to mention the generous salary brought by Time Warner eo's position, he tasted the power brought by the helm of a large media group, and no one would give up on it. Therefore, Terry Semer could only feel pain and addiction to find a solution to the current dilemma.

Of course. As a seller, although Firefly Group has earned a huge amount of US$2.5 billion in cash due to this business, there is not much congratulations in the media's attitude towards Firefly.

Most media generally believe that the auction price of Disney's animation department of $2.5 billion is still far lower than its actual value. There is no need to pay attention to what the future will be. The still-released "The Lion King" can prove this. The net profit of "The Lion King" expects $1 billion in three years, which means that the average annual net income will be more than $300 million to Fireflies. According to the general rule that the company's market value is usually more than 10 times its annual profit, the media believes that the actual value of Disney's animation department should definitely exceed $3 billion.

Compared with Terry Semer, who was worried about being in person to accept interviews from major media in order to reverse Time Warner's recent decline, Firefly only held a regular press conference when signing with Paramount, and then did not respond to media remarks. This also reflects the benefits of non-listed companies, and does not have to bear pressure from the media and capital due to factors such as stock prices and financial reports.

Moreover, although the media has voiced disgrace to Disneyland, Disney Store and other businesses because Firefly Group abandoned its Disney animation department, and then showed a sense of disgrace to Disneyland, Disney Store and other businesses. But in fact, the development rhythm within Firefly Group is very clear.

After stripping the hand-drawn animation department, Katzenberg immediately started the reconstruction of Disney animation department.

Although most of the best digital animators are concentrated in Pixar, there are many advertising design companies and special effects studios that use computer graphics technology in recent years. From these companies, a group of outstanding professional and technical personnel with both computer and artistic skills are explored for training. Restarting the Disney animation department in the short term is easy. Firefly Software Company and Pixar Studio can also provide a full set of mature animation technology and some management talents for the new Disney animation department.

Under the control of Katzenberg, the helmman who once led the revival of Disney's animation department, if everything goes well, the new Disney animation department will be able to release its first work within three years. Therefore, the rhythm of Disney's action cartoons will only have a brief break in 1996, and then it will be able to restore the best production status of Pixar and Disney's alternating work.

The continuous divestment and sale of paper media assets and the hand-painted animation department has caused Firefly Group's cash reserves to soar again, but Eric has no intention of rushing to expand again.

Although the merger of A was very smooth and there was no violent fluctuation. At this time, Firefly Group was like a huge media machine that had just been combined. This media machine had just achieved the most basic operation and was still a long way from reaching the highest operating efficiency. There were many problems that needed to be solved. If these were completely ignored, we couldn't wait to move forward with the next step of expansion. Then there were only two final results. One was that the group expanded too quickly and became more and more bloated, and internal problems accumulated in large quantities, which eventually led to the collapse of the entire business and fell into operational and financial crisis. The other was Time Warner, which was powerful on the surface but had many internal contradictions, was still inevitable to decline.

Eric hopes that all major departments of Firefly Group will eventually achieve a perfect state of smooth operation even if they encounter high-level iterations like Time Warner.

Therefore, while rebuilding the Disney animation department, in order to further connect the two major business segments of film and television, Firefly Group is also constantly making business adjustments to ATV, Disney Channel, espn, Marvel Entertainment and other departments.

Internal business adjustments often do not require much capital consumption, and the internal operating cash flow of Firefly Group is completely sufficient to cope with these adjustments.

While Firefly's businesses still maintain strong profitability and have just brought huge funds through the divestiture of two parts of assets, a huge cash surplus has emerged within the group. Firefly temporarily chose to extend the payment period when auctioning the Disney department. There are also considerations for this reason, because there are too many accounts in a short period of time, and if they cannot be put into operation, they have to pay taxes!

If this was the case before, Eric's first reaction was often to choose to pay off the Firefly's debt.

But after several years of experience, Eric's original conservative business philosophy has gradually changed, and he has gradually accepted the status of corporate debt management. Although Firefly's current debt reaches US$10 billion, the debt ratio is only about 30%. For most group companies, this debt ratio is very healthy and also helps to use debt interest to avoid taxes.

In addition, although repaying debts in advance can save Firefly part of its interest expenses, even if all US$10 billion in debt is paid in the short term, Firefly can save only US$5 billion in debt. However, if you use this US$10 billion for investment, there is absolutely no problem with Eric's rebirth advantage to double the US$10 billion several times within the ten-year long-term debt period. Therefore, it is almost unnecessary to consider how to choose before repaying debts and investing.

With the support of abundant cash, although Firefly's internal expansion has temporarily stopped, Eric has accelerated his investment in the high-tech field that he is familiar with. He is about to enter the second half of the 1990s when the high-tech industry rises, and this is also the best opportunity to enter.

In order to support the technology research and development of the Yahoo Advertising Alliance and the Yahoo Technology Alliance, Eric once again injected $200 million in development funds into Yahoo.

The $200 million debt financing promised to AOL was also transferred to the other party's account at one time.

At the same time, according to the Angel Fund plan originally planned to quickly promote the Yahoo Advertising Alliance, Eric began to speed up investment in websites with good development potential.

However, these investments still only account for a small part of Firefly Group's financial reserves. Of course, Eric will not blindly increase investment and become a sucker. Therefore, leaving behind nearly $1 billion in cash after dividends from other shareholders has become a matter that Eric is more troubled.

"What a happy distress," said Eric, sitting in the office of Firefly Cinema, looking at the recent group financial statements for more than a week after the Disney animation department auctioned.

Kelly, who had just pushed open the office door and walked in, glared at Eric, came across to Eric, handed a schedule to Eric, and quickly said: "A Gulfstream business plane has been contacted. The Victoria's Secret team will be able to fly to New York tomorrow morning. Miss Brighton has arranged a press conference there. In addition, the setting of the Lesington Avenue Arsenal in Manhattan has been arranged according to the drawings you gave, but the remote control slide rails you said are still being customized, which may take another week. There are also headset recorders..." Speaking of this, Kelly paused and said: "I really don't know you have so many strange ideas. However, Motorola expressed its willingness to customize for free, but they need to print the eye-catching Motorola trademark on the device."

Eric nodded: "This is OK, but they will also have to hand over the equipment and come back within a week."

"Of course, I've told them," Kelly nodded, and said, "This is Victoria's Secret. In addition, Mr. Carsonberg's assistant just called and he will go to New York tomorrow."

Eric, who was looking through a document, looked up and said, "What are he doing with you?"

Kelly did not tease Eric this time and explained: "Tomorrow is the 19th, Monday, "Survivor" will premiere on Tuesday. Mr. Carsonberg should hope to see the ratings news of "Survivor" as soon as possible. If... some situations occur, it will be convenient to make adjustments as soon as possible."

Eric nodded suddenly. He just remembered that "The Story of the Emergency Room" and "Friends" were broadcast on September 28 and September 29, but ignored the premiere date of "Survivor" a week ahead of schedule.

After the pilot, Ab has no longer had much concern about the ratings of "The Story of the Emergency Room" and "Friends", but for the very novel reality show of "Survivor", although this show was personally selected by Eric himself, many people still have doubts. Moreover, because of the special program format, "Survivor" cannot arrange a pilot episode, and Carsonberg wants to personally sit in Ab's headquarters in New York, so it is not surprising that it makes immediate adjustments to the possible consequences of this program.

Eric was not too worried about the program "Survivor". After all, this program in his previous life had proved its popularity. Even more than ten years after the program was released, various similar trendy reality shows appeared. However, Eric did not intend to interfere with Carsonberg's decision.
Chapter completed!