Chapter 516 Skype goes public

The motorcade drove into Leith Flower Manor. When Barron entered the room, he saw Fan Bingbing standing at the door waiting for him.

"How are you feeling lately, honey."

Holding her hand and leading her to sit on the sofa, Barron asked softly.

"It's good. Fortunately, the children are not too 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 seemed larger than that of ordinary mothers at this stage of pregnancy, so After going to the hospital for examination, I knew the result.

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 got up and walked over and saw a book about business management.

"Have you been watching this lately? Don't be too hard, baby."

"I just want to know more about it. I'm bored most of the time now. I can just use it as a way to kill time..."

Speaking of which, Fan Bingbing is really hard-working and very smart. After coming to Los Angeles, she was not only able to communicate with others fluently in English very quickly, but she also spent most of her time in Reading to recharge.

It can be said that no one’s success comes for free.

That night, Barron slept very quietly next to 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 began trading.

In this IPO, Skype will issue to the public 30 million American depositary receipts (Nasdaq stocks) 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.

Among 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, Skype's stock opened at $28.5, a direct increase of 18.75% from 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 $30.16, Skype's market value at this time exceeds $6 billion, and the 122.5 million Skype shares held by DS Holdings are worth nearly $3.7 billion!

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 Woaw Technology's North American headquarters.

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 estimated 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 subprime loan-related securities and stocks, and instead began to aggressively purchase subprime loan credit default swap products, also known as CDS (Credit Default). Swap) and 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 turn into a prairie fire, and then receive the most generous rewards.

If we look back at the events after the subprime mortgage crisis broke out, 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 broke out, it would only destroy this industry. The result would be a drop in housing prices, and real estate developers and some people who invest in real estate would suffer losses, but at least it would not happen again. The credit crisis is so destructive that 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. operation, packaging these subprime mortgages into bonds, rating them prime, and then selling 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.

Investors in these bonds naturally span 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 pay a part of the money (insurance premium) to the insurance company. If the home buyer cannot repay normally, losses will occur. , 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, eventually forming a huge balloon that enveloped the entire world.