Simon did not ask for a low profile, so in the afternoon of the same day, the news that the Victoria's Secret Show was about to be closed quickly, and it was naturally regarded as fake news at first. Then, when some well-informed people received exact responses from everyone on the scene in the morning, the media immediately became furious.

First of all, major online portal platforms directly pushed the news to the headlines.

After all, there was no official announcement from the official website, and some press releases were deviated. They thought that the fifth Victoria's Secret Show this year, which had been constantly circulating, would be suspended. Even if it was clarified soon, too many people still found it unbelievable.

This is a super show with an average viewership of tens of millions and millions of people being known as the "Super Bowl in Fashion"!

Even if we don’t mention the high market gains brought to Victoria’s Secret brands in recent years, even the show itself has averaged over tens of millions of videotape sales in the past few years, which means hundreds of millions of dollars in actual benefits.

Isn't Simon Westeros crazy after suddenly stopping it?

Starting Saturday afternoon, not only all executives related to the Victoria's Secret brand and even LTD Group, but even Simon received a series of calls to inquire about the news and attended the Daenerys Entertainment East Coast Management Party in the evening. Robert Eiger and others also looked suspicious of doubting whether Simon was under too much pressure recently and had problems.

The next day, a wider range of traditional media began to join the discussion and the situation became more lively.

As the largest shareholder of LTD Group, Cersei Capital, the parent company of Victoria's Secret, is the first to be affected.

At the beginning, Apollo Management team acquired LTD Group for US$2.45 billion in all-cash. According to the usual operation methods of private equity, they basically relisted for about 5 years, cashed out and left the market. The LTD Group merger and acquisition case was completed in 1992, and next year it will be exactly five years.

Therefore, LTD Group is actually quietly planning to relist.

Simon suddenly announced that Victoria's Secret will be stopped after this year. Even if the so-called suspension will be held, it will inevitably have an impact on the re-listing of LTD Group next year. After all, this fashion show has driven the LTD Group too obvious.

In the face of the anxious inquiry by Leon Black, the head of Apollo Management, Simon also explained patiently.

The right time to stop the Victoria's Secret show was a thought that Simon had at the beginning of this show. He did not want Victoria's Secret to rely too much on this show, nor did he want the entire LTD Group to be completely covered up by the brilliance of the Victoria's Secret brand. In recent years, Express, a fast fashion brand under the LTD Group, has also developed rapidly, but it has lost its style set off by Victoria's Secret.

In short, Simon hopes that the company can calm down, rethink its product operations and advertising marketing strategies, and expand with a more rational mindset.

Mainly overseas expansion.

Before this, because the Victoria's Secret show was so eye-catching, everyone was almost immersed in the glory brought by the show, and ignored many of the problems that existed in the company itself. Just like the Victoria's Secret, when the show was closed and all the accumulated problems broke out, the entire company soon almost went to an end.

On the other hand, even without this big show, LTD's rapid growth in recent years and the hot state of the US stock market at this time, its market value is expected to reach the 10 billion US dollars in the next year.

From the original US$2.45 billion to US$10 billion, in five years, the average annual return rate exceeded 60%, which is very worthy of investors. As a successful project invested by Apollo Management, of course, it will not be fully cashed out at one time. There is still considerable room for growth in the future and can continue to bring returns.

At the same time, announcing the suspension of the operation this year, rather than announcing the suspension after the IPO next year, also avoiding many potential litigation.

After all, the influence of this show is indeed too great. If it is announced to be suspended after relisting next year, it will inevitably impact the stock price and even trigger a class action lawsuit against investors for malicious manipulation and suppression of LTD's stock price by the Westeros system. Now, LTD is still in a privatization state, so there is no such problem.

From his own standpoint, Leon Black could not agree with Simon's statement, but could not refute it.

Simon's idea is entirely to consider the long-term development of the LTD Group. As a private equity, it is often necessary to obtain more benefits in the shortest time possible, and there are obvious potential conflicts of interest.

However, Simon is the boss behind all this.

The boss has the final say.

Secondly, the model circle is simply in awe.

Just like the shocked reaction of the great fairies when they first heard this news, they lost the strongest exposure platform of the Victoria's Secret Show, how can you take shortcuts to become famous in one fell swoop?!

Unfortunately, as the bottom of the food chain in the big circle, this group of fairies, big and small, has no say.

Even if Simon is not the largest boss at the top of the pyramid of the entire Westeros system, but the senior Victoria's Secret who just made the decision on this matter, a group of fairies who are in their bones may have been in trouble. In the original time and space, the Victoria's Secret show has been in harmony for 20 years. The show has just been closed, and the fairies rebel immediately.

A joint letter.

Prosecuting harassment and sexual assault.

Expose and report all kinds of discrimination against Victoria's Secret.

Coupled with the sluggish performance of Victoria's Secret itself, the impact of public opinion further pushed this old company into the abyss.

Anyway, how do you say that sentence?

Um……

Anyway, they are all forced.

In any case, since the decision had been made and let others react, Simon had no idea of ​​changing his decision at all.

Spending the weekend in New York, Simon sets off for London on Sunday afternoon.

A trip to Europe that is expected to last for a week.

The main agenda here is to promote investment promotion of the Westeros system's continuous issuance of bonds in the second half of the year. Some activities, Goldman Sachs and other investment banks in charge of bond issuance hope that Simon can attend in person.

Simon arrived in London on Monday local time. On July 15, Igret officially released its financial report for the first half of 1996.

Egret's total revenue exceeded 10 billion US dollars, the performance growth rate of the Internet giant has been slowing down. After all, it is not realistic to double the growth rate as early as the beginning. In 1995, Egret's annual revenue increased by 78% year-on-year. This year, the industry generally believes that Egret's revenue growth will drop to about 50%.

Facts have proved that due to the madness of the new technology industry, the market is obviously underestimating the performance growth of Igret.

In the first half of 1996, Igret's total revenue in the first two quarters reached US$13.91 billion, a year-on-year increase of 61% compared with the first two quarters of last year, significantly exceeding the industry's expectations of about 50%.

Not only that, because the gross profit of many of Igret's businesses is really high, and the entire new technology industry is burning money in an almost uncontrollable manner. Even if more revenue is used to develop the business, Igret's net profit margin in the first half of the year still exceeded 10%, and finally reached 11.9%, with an astonishing net profit of US$1.655 billion.

Half a year revenue was US$13.91 billion and net profit was US$1.655 billion. Speaking of which, this is almost the revenue volume that many Internet giants could only reach after 10 years in Simon's memory. Not to mention that in 1996 in the original time and space, most Internet companies have not even formed a sustainable business model.

However, this performance is tangible.

The foundation of the US Internet industry was laid as early as the 1970s and 1980s. With his forward-looking vision, Simon not only advanced at least five years in advance with the power of the entire Westeros system, but also directly launched a series of mature business models as soon as he took action.

In addition, Igrit also has businesses such as Internet basic tools and software that have monopoly advantages, which is equivalent to the kind of charging bridge that Warren Buffett is interested in, which can be priced freely without competitors.

Therefore, software business, portal websites, search engines, social networks, e-commerce, software stores, game malls, cloud computing and other businesses are still in the relatively early stages of development, but at this time Igrit was almost an aggregate of major network giants later.

In short, compared to many new technology companies that are just burning money to tell stories at this time, Igret has left all potential competitors far behind.

To put it in a more clichéd sentence, Igret's current enemy is just itself.

According to Simon's potential plan, the company will inevitably move towards splitting in the future. Once split, it will be a super industry earthquake that is far more vigorous than the dismemberment of AT-T. After all, even the AT-T was a super industry giant, its market value during the split was less than 100 billion yuan.

Igrit is destined to be a super giant with a trillion-dollar market value.

In any case, on July 15, Egret's exceeding expectations of revenue and net profit data directly led to a sharp rise in the company's stock price again.

However, on Monday, the single-day increase of Igrit's stock price reached 3.6%, which is almost more than 3% of the increase seems a bit insignificant for other companies, but don't forget that this is Igrit, which has been close to US$400 billion.

With a 3.6% stock price increase, the emerging Internet giant's market value broke through the $400 billion mark in one fell swoop. At the closing of the afternoon of the same day, the market value of Igret had reached $410.3 billion.

In just one day, the total value of all the shares held by Igret shareholders increased by $14.7 billion due to the 3.6% increase.

Compared with Igrit's size of $400 billion, the market value growth of $14.7 billion seems to be insignificant, but this $14.7 billion is still more than the market value of more than 90% of the companies in the US stock market at this time. It can only be said that Igrit's market value is too high, so high that it makes people numb.

Just like later, FAANG, the five major technology giants in the US stock market, often 100 trillion trillion yuan, but in fact there are too many companies hovering in the range of tens of billions or even one billion dollars. They can only look up at the five major technology giants.

Under the leadership of Igrit, on Monday, the stock prices of Cisco, American Online, Microsoft, Intel, Tincobaier, Oracle and other companies all rose. In fact, it is also because recently, the period of intensive release of mid-year financial reports. Some analysts even believe that the Nasdaq index may reach 5,000 points after July.

5,000 points, this is the peak that Simon has reached around 2,000 in his memory.

If it really breaks through in July, it might be possible that the new technology bubble will be ineffective and then shattered before the US election in November.

In fact, this is not the case.

Igrit's performance has really exceeded expectations, and there is no doubt that there are people who are happy and others who are worried. Igrit's outstanding performance does not mean that the performance of other new technology companies is also outstanding.

In the same July, in addition to Cisco's growth continuing to increase significantly due to the continued increase in global demand for network equipment, the Westeros system, which followed closely behind, has also seen a significant slowdown in performance growth, as the Internet penetration rate across the United States continues to increase or even goes saturation, at least within the local area.

This also led to lower-year financial reports from AOL.

In addition, although the entire new technology industry is still crazy, the popularity of its own business areas is significantly higher than that of other operator areas. In fact, when the growth potential is lowered, AOL is still issuing bonds and expanding large-scale infrastructure, which seems to be a bit blind.

At this stage, the entire new technology industry is almost blind, but this does not mean that everyone cannot see the over-investment tendency of American Online.

This has also led to the recent fluctuations in the stock price of US Online.

In the view of investors, AOL urgently needs to develop new businesses and increase its overseas expansion.

In fact, the direction is very clear.

The Clinton administration's Telecommunications Act has lifted the business barriers between the telecommunications industry. American Online should take advantage of the trend to develop business such as fixed-line telephones, cable TVs, etc., and at the same time further break through its previous business areas, especially to develop overseas.

The overseas expansion of AOL is indeed very strong, but in terms of business diversification, although there are occasional rumors, AOL's actual actions in this regard seem to be a bit slow.

Therefore, it is inevitable that it is urged by the capital market.

The most direct reaction is the stock price.

The market value of the three major technology giants in the Westeros system has been at the bottom, and has been further expanded in recent months.

On July 15th, after Egret's market value of US$410.3 billion, Cisco's market value also rushed to US$375.6 billion, while the market value of US$269.7 billion has been widened by Egret and Cisco.

In addition to the three giants, Tinkobaier has come from behind in the same new technology field.

With the great success of the iRec series of digital camera products released this year, Tinkobaier already has three flagship products, namely iPlayer, iCam and iRec. The annual sales of the three products have exceeded 10 million levels, and due to the rapid growth of the Internet, it is still increasing.

Therefore, Tinkobaier, which exceeded 100 billion yuan when it was listed, had a market value of US$226.3 billion as of the close of July 15.

Another $200 billion enterprise giant.

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment Group, which is in the media and entertainment field, closed with a market value of US$353.7 billion on the same day.
Chapter completed!