This time, Huang Guangyu may really be coming back.

First of all, in January this year, Gome's legal person was changed from Huang Guangyu's mother Zeng Yizhen to Liu Lihuan. Zeng Yizhen no longer served as executive director and manager, and the company's supervisor was also changed from Zhang Ye to Cao Liliang. at the same time, Gome set up a CPC party committee within Gome. Rumors are laying the groundwork for Huang Guangyu's return to the helm of Gome.

Secondly, it has been rumored recently that Huang Guangyu may get a third commutation of his sentence, and he may be released early this year when his sentence expires in February 2021.

A series of changes seem to indicate that the former home appliance retailer is "making a comeback".

Similar to the rumors of the previous two commutation, Gome stocks moved by the wind last week.Gome Retail (0493.HK, hereinafter referred to as "Gome") rose 18%Gome Communications (600898.SH)Up 25%Zhongguancun (000931.SZ)Up 15%, the market seems to have begun to warmly welcome Huang Guangyu's return.

However, with the return of the boss, the rivers and lakes are far away, and I am afraid it will be difficult for Huang Guangyu to be brave again.

First, how invincible was Huang Guangyu at that time?

Chaoshan people are born business wizards, Li Ka-shing in Xiangjiang and Huang Guangyu in the capital.

In 1986, 17-year-old Huang Guangyu and his brother went to Beijing from Chaoshan to make a living. at first, they sold clothes, but they didn't realize that the road ahead was bleak. at that time, the home appliance business began to heat up, and the two brothers rented a facade on Zhushikou East Street and started the home appliance business.

In 1987, Gome officially opened its doors to welcome guests. The two brothers fully demonstrated their commercial courage, and it took only seven years for Gome to become a home appliance aircraft carrier proud of Beijing.

What makes Gome strong is the invincible strategy of low price and high quality.To hit competitors and seize market share, Gome has opened stores all over the country from Beijing, and no one has broken the record of opening an average of one store a day.

In June 2004, Gome listed in Hong Kong and won the second place in the rich list and brand influence of that year. Huang Guangyu topped the Hurun rich list for the first time with a fortune of 10.5 billion in the same year, and defended his title with 14 billion the following year. At that time, Ma Yuncai had just launched Taobao, and Liu Qiangdong was still drinking with people day and night to impact 1 billion sales. Zhang Jindong of SUNING could only sigh like Zhou Yu: both Shengyu, he Shengliang!

In 2006 and 2007, Gome successively acquired Yongle and Dazhong, which are both home appliance retailers, collecting economies of scale advantages and killing all directions. Huang Guangyu topped the Forbes China Rich list with 18 billion in 2006 and Hurun with 43 billion in 2008.

In the first half of 2008, Gome became a proper constituent of the Hang Seng Index with a market capitalization of more than 60 billion. Although 60 billion is not very high right now.But compared with Tencent (0700.HK), the market capitalization is only about 110 billion, Ma Huateng is still outside the top 30 on the Hurun rich list.

In addition to home appliances, Huang Guangyu set up Pengrun Real Estate and wantonly entered real estate. From 2004 to 2008, Huang Guangyu wantonly hoarded land, surpassing real estate giants such as Country Garden Holdings, Evergrande and Wanda. I'm afraid we can only understand what kind of painting style this will be from the following picture.

In the second half of 2008, Huang Guangyu planned to swallow SUNING and recruit the biggest competitor. Huang Guangyu said at that time: it is only a matter of time before Gome and SUNING merge, and Gome will continue to lead its opponents in scale until they seek peace.

But fate played a big joke on this boss. In November of that year, Huang Guangyu was arrested on suspicion of economic crimes and jailed two years later.

See him from Zhu Lou, see him feast guests, watch his building collapse.

Second, the doom after invincibility

Gome, which lost Huang Guangyu, is leaderless, like a leaf boat, tossed in rough seas.

The first thing that appeared was infighting. After Huang Guangyu was jailed, Chen Xiao, who was trusted by Huang Guangyu and was in power, began. "De-Huang Guangyu」：

The ambition of seizing Gome is clear by incorporating Huang Guangyu's old department, overturning Gome executives, introducing Bain Capital, and diluting Huang Guangyu's shares from more than 90% to 32%.

Huang Guangyu, who has a strong desire for control, how can he tolerate the enterprise he founded fall into the hands of outsiders?

In May 2010, the "war" between the two sides officially broke out. Despite being in prison, Huang Guangyu still remotely controlled Gome through his wife and other family members to wage a life-and-death struggle with Chen Xiao. In the end, Huang Guangyu offered his help, Zhang Dazhong, the founder of Dazhong, to get money from the latter to buy back shares in the secondary market, while his wife, du Juan, personally lobbied Bain Capital to give up Chen Xiao.

In March 2011, the "war" ended with Chen Xiao's resignation, and Huang Guangyu managed to keep Gome's surname "Huang". However, the struggle with such a big move, coupled with the revelation of a large number of inside stories of Gome after Chen Xiao, triggered concerns from the outside world, especially business partners, about the development of Gome. Gome's brand and credibility were greatly affected, and the stock price fluctuated constantly during this period.

However, although Gome is in troubled times, but the foundation is still there, coupled with the home appliance chain store channel model is still popular, the impact on Gome itself is limited.. As a result, Gome shares resumed their rally shortly after the end of the "war". By August 2011, the share price peaked at HK $3.84, more than double its low during the war and returning to a market capitalization of 60 billion.

In this way, Huang Guangyu successfully stopped Chen Xiao's "seizure of power" and resolved the first major crisis in the history of Gome's development. However, it was not long before Huang Guangyu could no longer stop the surging e-commerce boom.

After 2010, e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com began to make efforts, and online shopping gradually became a trend. By mid-2011, it has gradually formed an unstoppable upsurge, which has the potential to replace the traditional home appliance stores with low cost and high efficiency.

Although Gome is also aware of this trend, it actively laid out e-commerce in 2011, launched Gome online mall, and acquired Kuba, a home appliance e-commerce platform, from offline to online in 2012. But in the end, due to strategic wavering and unclear positioning, e-commerce business has always been unable to develop, so we can only watch our competitors grow up.

By 2014, JD.com 's transaction volume was 260.2 billion yuan, accounting for 30 percent of the national home appliance retail market and 60 percent in first-tier cities, while Gome's total revenue was only 60.3 billion and its share in the national online market was only 1.7 percent, almost negligible.

If you miss the e-commerce boom, you will miss an era.Since then, Gome stumbled, although revenue can still grow in some years, but trapped by rising offline operating costs, squeezed by online competitors, net profit growth continues to decline, many times negative growth. In 2017, revenue also showed negative growth, and net profit recorded a loss. According to the latest financial report, revenue in the first three quarters of 2018 was 52.6 billion yuan, down 10% from the same period last year, while net profit was 446 million yuan, down 302% from the same period last year.

Since its peak in August 2011, share prices have gone all the way down and have been doomed ever since.

Now, Gome has been reduced to "fairy shares" (less than 1 yuan). The latest closing price is 0.79 Hong Kong dollars, with a market capitalization of 17 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is 3/4 less than the peak in 2008. Huang Guangyu has already talked about the major rich lists, and the glory of that year has become a thing of the past.

In addition, Pengrun property, which was once pinned on high hopes by Huang Guangyu, has plummeted because of Huang's imprisonment, because the crazy acquisition of land led by Huang Guangyu has made Gome's capital allocation very passive, and even Gome's retail business has been affected. After Huang was jailed, the pressure on the capital chain appeared frequently because the real estate project could not be realized in time.

Especially after 2010, the most stringent regulation of the property market hit, housing sales in many places across the country were blocked. Gome's real estate business was in crisis because of large stalls, low profits and slow withdrawal of funds, and there was even news that Gome would withdraw from the real estate business.

Since then, Gome gradually spun off its real estate business, broken arms to survive, although not completely out of real estate, but Gome in the sale of few projects, land storage almost stopped.

Such a situation is like besieged on all sides. Even if Huang Guangyu comes out, what else can he do?

Can Huang Guangyu still prop up Gome?

It has been a thousand years in the world for one day in the mountains.

In the eight years since Huang Guangyu was jailed, new and old competitors have been encroaching on the market share of home appliance retail.

Let's take a look at the home appliance retail industry.SUNING, an old rival who was almost swallowed by Gome in the past, accelerated its expansion within 8 years, blossomed online and offline, and achieved a counterattack. As of 2017, SUNING had 3867 offline stores and 1604 Gome; online, SUNING had 126.6 billion GMV and Gome 48 billion. SUNING far surpassed Gome in terms of revenue and net profit.

Judging from the revenue and net profit data of the past three years, SUNING has a strong growth momentum, and the gap ahead of Gome is widening.

Today, SUNING has comprehensively surpassed Gome to become the new "number one" in offline home appliance retail, with a market capitalization of 106.9 billion yuan, seven times that of Gome. Recently, SUNING swallowed the huge Wanda department store, which has become a behemoth of "all-round retail". No wonder Zhang Jindong of SUNING was angry when he heard that he was compared with Huang Guangyu. It can be seen from this that Zhang has disdained to regard Huang Guangyu as a competitor.

As for the online home appliance retail market, it has long been full of giants, and its market share has been harvested. According to the 2017 Home Appliances online Shopping Analysis report released by Saadi Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, JD.com, Tmall and SUNING were among the top three in the home appliance online shopping market in 2017, carving up 85 per cent of the market, while JD.com alone had more than 60 per cent.

With the destruction of the Internet and the winner-take-all nature of urine, such a situation, really do not see what opportunity Gome, want to take teeth from Liu Qiangdong, Jack Ma, Zhang Jindong, the probability of success is slim.To make matters worse, e-commerce channels such as JD.com and Tmall, with their natural low cost, high efficiency, and more comprehensive categories and more scientific means of analysis, wantonly marched offline, burning the "flames of war" into Gome's backyard.

Take JD.com as an example. In August 2017, it released an open platform strategy aimed at "recreating a JD.com home appliance", including high-quality brick-and-mortar stores from many provinces, forming a network of physical stores from large and medium-sized cities, to small counties, to townships and rural areas.

On the other hand, Gome has done nothing online and has been constantly eroded by its opponents offline, so it can be said that it has been completely defeated and is besieged on all sides, or that it is committed to the Internet giant, which is the way out. I just don't know whether Huang Guangyu will be reconciled with his strong personality.

If you look at real estate, Huang Guangyu's loneliness is even more obvious.The present real estate world is dominated by Yang Guoqiang, Xu Jiayin and Sun Hongbin. The mention of Huang Guangyu and Pengrun Real Estate seems like a lifetime ago. Now, Pengrun real estate can not even enter the top 200 in revenue, and has long been lost in the public.

Over the years, the world has changed greatly, and the honesty is quite old. can we still make a living?

IV. Conclusion

As a native of Chaozhou and Shantou, Huang Guangyu was full of courage and ruggedness, full of courage and courage, like a foolhardy hero. At that time, some media pointed out that the culture of Gome was actually gang culture, and Huang Guangyu was the godfather of the gang, leading a kind of brother, the brave son, to fight together and find a way out.

Or, Huang Guangyu's success lies in this momentum, bold enough, ruthless, fearless, coupled with the shrewdness of the Chaoshan people, easily walk between politics and business, grasp the bearing in place, and achieve a generation of all-powerful leaders.

However, in the time when the boss was trapped, the pattern of rivers and lakes has long been changed, and now the world has been decided. Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong and Zhang Jindong, who were younger brothers at that time, now shake off Huang Guangyu's nine streets. Even if it is the reappearance of a foolhardy hero, it is not easy to make waves.

However, only the mountains and rivers remain in the broken state of Chang'an, not to mention that Gome is still a retail chain with revenues of more than 10 billion yuan, a large number of store assets and the land bought that year are still there, and what Huang Guangyu has thought about in prison these years? the outside world still does not know what arrangements have been made to return to Gome in the future, which may be the reason for the hype that speculators are keen on.In order to get out of prison and revive Gome as the speculation point, every rumor that Huang Guangyu commutes his sentence and gets out of prison early is a great opportunity to hype Gome stocks.

Or, for speculators, the important thing is not that Huang Guangyu comes out to revive Gome, but that he does not come out, so that the speculation can go on all the time. If he comes out, all the speculation will stop.

For ordinary investors, it is still a clich é, Gome has risks, hype needs to be cautious.