August 29, 1979, the Qiqiao Festival.

"It seems that there are quite a lot of audiences." Chen Chong stood not far from the entrance of the Emerald Theater with a bottle of drinks, looking at the crowd in line, and said, "The box office tonight should be very impressive."

"That's right, that's right, it's different." Wang Jing praised, and the little eyes behind the lenses were flashing with excitement and pride. "It took only four days to collect more than 3.8 million, and Bruce Lee was not so prosperous back then."

He turned to Jiang Zhiqiang again, "Brother Qiang, do you think the box office can exceed 1 million today?"

"It should be possible." Jiang Zhiqiang said lightly: "There are many couples who will watch the movie tonight, and the tickets sold more, maybe they can exceed one million."

"It would be great if it could exceed one million." Wang Jing rubbed his hands excitedly, and said with a signature smirk, "I will sit on the title of a million director in one day. From now on, at Shaw Brothers, let's see how awesome Zhang Che!"

"The villain is successful." Zeng Lizhen held a cup of milk tea and mocked: "It's just that the box office is over 10 million. Do you dare to speak loudly in front of Zhang Che?"

Wang Jing was probably repaired too much by her, and she accumulated anger. She became angry when she heard this, and almost jumped and shouted, "Why don't I dare?"

"How dare?" Zeng Lizhen disdained and said contemptuously: "If you dare to say what you said loudly in Shaw Brothers Cinema, I will accept you."

Wang Jing blushed and opened her mouth, but eventually became timid.

When Zou Wenhuai was going to leave Shaw Brothers and set up his own business, Run Run Shaw immediately asked if Zhang Che to let him go. Later, the rebel general Li Hanxiang, who had suffered heavy losses, wanted to return to his old place. Run Run Shaw also asked Zhang Che whether he agreed or not, which shows his status in Boss Shao's heart.

Moreover, Zhang Che's eyes were like a stern, and he was very good at cultivating and promoting talents. He had many disciples and officials. There were top-notch kung fu stars such as Wang Yu, Di Long, Jiang David, and Fu Sheng in front of the stage. Behind the scenes were Tang Jia and Liu Jialiang, and all of them were devoted to him.

There are big bosses above and maids below respect them. At Shaw Brothers, how dare Wang Jing disrespect Zhang Che?

"Okay, stop making trouble." Chen Chong said, "Chasing Girls" sat on the box office rankings. Wang Xiaopang, you have become famous in one battle."

"It's all for Brother Chong." Wang Jing took advantage of the situation and looked at the crowd for a while and asked again: "Brother Chong, do you think the box office of "Chasing Girls" can exceed 10 million?"

"What, want to surpass "Crazy Calamity"?"

After a few laughs, Wang Jing said, "The box office of "Chasing Girls" is very popular now, and it can earn 800,000 or 900,000 a day, and Shaw Brothers promised to be released for three weeks in a row, so the box office..."

"You'll just give up." Chen Chong unscrewed the bottle cap of the drink, took a sip, and said, "The topic of "Chasing Girls" is not as good as "Crazy Journey". The Chinese Valentine's Day is not a big festival. It seems to be popular these days, but in fact it is overdrawing the box office behind it. After today, there will not be many people buying couple tickets, and the box office will plummet. I guess it will be about seven or eight million."

When Wang Jing heard this, she looked disappointed.

Chen Chong doesn't care. He doesn't value "Chasing Girls". Except for the innovative content, the rest is not good.

"By the way, Manager Jiang, how are the drinks sold these days?"

"It's pretty good, I have more than 10,000 yuan in net profit every day."

Shen Chong said, nodding gently.

A profit of 10,000 yuan, each of the 15 theaters can earn six or seven hundred yuan a day. This figure seems shabby compared to the box office of nearly one million yuan a day, but if it does this every day, it can earn more than 200,000 yuan a year.

Moreover, this number was obtained when many viewers bought drinks from vendors at the entrance of the theater before entering the venue. If it was a multi-hall theater embedded in the mall, the beverages and popcorn were sold together, the profit would be at least several times.

Now that the three money-making tools are running together, Chen Chong is not short of money, it is time to consider establishing his own theater. To do it, it is naturally necessary to be a multi-hall theater that conforms to the trend of the future.

The marketing of "Chasing Girls" is just a test of the waters.

To build a theater chain, real estate cooperation requires real estate cooperation. Although Hong Kong's future real estate industry is extremely booming and profitable, Chen Chong has no interest in such a land-based business. He is planning to cling to a real estate tycoon and take a ride-sharing ride.

This big tycoon doesn’t need to bother to find it at all. Any time traveler will choose Hutchison Whampoa.

Hutchison Whampoa was founded in 1860. It was originally a small foreign company of third and fourth-rate companies. However, it rose rapidly in the 1960s and successively acquired companies such as Huangpu Shipyard and Watsons. At its peak, it had as many as 360 affiliated and affiliated companies, with businesses covering real estate, finance, insurance, hotels, shipping, warehouses, automobiles, medicines, import and export trade and other fields, becoming the second largest commercial institution in Hong Kong after Jardine Whampoa.

However, due to the rapid expansion and tight capital chain, Hutchison Bank suffered heavy losses in the stock market crash in 1973 and the subsequent oil crisis. In 1975, a major project in Indonesia defaulted, with difficulty in capital turnover and on the verge of bankruptcy. Then HSBC took advantage of the situation and acquired 33.65% of its shares for HK$150 million, becoming the largest shareholder and took over the company.

After HSBC took over, it rectified Hutchison Foreign Company and improved its management. In 1977, it merged Hutchison's most important subsidiary Huangpu Shipyard and established Hutchison Huangpu.

According to the Hong Kong Company Law and Banking Law, banks cannot engage in non-financial businesses. Creditor banks can take over companies that are in financial crisis, but when companies get out of the crisis and operations are on track, they must be sold.

This gave Li Ka-shing the opportunity to become Superman - in history, at the end of September 1979, HSBC sold 90 million shares of Hutchison Whampoa at a price of HK$7.1 per share, and only had to pay a 20% down payment.

Hutchison Whampoa has a large amount of high-quality land resources. Li Ka-shing spent more than 600 million to purchase these shares. In just a few years, the net profit of just converting the Huangpu dock into a residential building exceeded 5 billion...

In addition to land reserves, Hutchison Whampoa also has nearly 1.69 million square feet of commercial buildings, which can make a lot of money just by renting each year.

This deal made Li Ka-shing soar into the sky and take the throne of the richest Chinese.

Before this transaction, Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Industrial Group had surpassed the old Land Group, with a building area of ​​more than 14 million feet, becoming a "Hong Kong landlord". This is his capital that he can buy Hutchison Whampoa from HSBC.

Chen Chong naturally did not have the capital to grab food from Li Ka-shing at this time. He just wanted to drink soup - the shares sold by HSBC to Li Ka-shing only accounted for 22.4% of Hutchison Whampoa's issued shares, and there were a large number of outstanding shares in the stock market, and these shares were only HK$5.5 per share.

Hutchison Whampoa's market value is only about 3 billion yuan now. Before Shen Chong traveled through time, Hutchison Whampoa's market value was as high as more than 400 billion yuan. If you don't buy it at this time, then when will you wait... (Note 1)

So from the beginning of making money from the Rubik's Cube, Chen Chong not only used the extra funds to buy it himself, but also encouraged Li Kaiyuan to buy it too. In the past few months, the Hutchison Huangpu shares he and Li Kaiyuan have already had more than 2 million shares. Although it is incomparable to the 90 million shares he owned by HSBC, if there is no pursuit, these shares will be enough to spend a lifetime of devotion.

Although Hutchison Whampoa's stock return on investment is amazing, it is still not as good as VisiCalc and Tetris. Buying these stocks is the same as investing in Microsoft. The main purpose is not money, but people.

Hutchison Whampoa is one of the four old British-funded foreign companies. The internal situation of the company is complicated. After Li Ka-shing takes over, he will continue to acquire shares and expand his power. At the same time, he will establish good relations with various small shareholders. At that time, the millions of shares that Shen Chong can control will come in handy.

Chen Chong is not short of money now, but lacks the way to enter the upper class. Li Ka-shing is already a major figure in Hong Kong at this time, and it is perfect for him to be a guide.

Moreover, if Changjiang Industrial and Hutchison Whampoa are engaged in real estate all over the world, Shen Chong will follow behind to build theaters, and they will also be smooth sailing and kill two birds with one stone.

...

A few days ago, when Chen Chong was still drinking in Taipei, Lily returned to the United States. School was about to start. If she didn't go back, her father would come here.

Lily left, but her friend Helena came to Hong Kong.

"This is Helena, a mathematician from UCLA." In the office of Oriental Charming Film Company, Chen Chong introduced to both parties: "This is Fei Xiaodie."

"Hello."

"Hello."

"Helena, I invited you to Hong Kong because I wanted to help design a mathematical model." After both sides sat down, Chen Chong said straight to the point: "Have you heard of NRG?"

Helena shook her head.

"NRG is the abbreviation of the National Survey Company, a market research company." Chen Chong picked up a piece of paper, wrote a few English letters, and signaled to the two of them. "They provide 'competitive positioning' reports to major film production companies in Hollywood every week, and I also want to set up a similar institution in Hong Kong."

Fei Xiaodie looked at the words on the paper and asked in confusion, "What is a competition positioning report?"

"Each movie has different attraction to different audience groups, just like drinks. Teenagers like coke, while thirty-somethings may prefer beer." Chen Chong explained: "The competition positioning report is to infer the competitiveness of several movies released in the same period through the results of telephone surveys before the movie was released."

"Mr. Chen, why do you do this?" Fei Xiaodie is the director of the magazine's box office data collection and sorting. She frowned and said, "Just look at the box office, which one is more competitive and which one is less competitive, isn't it clear at a glance?"

"Wouldn't it be very useful for the film company to predict in advance which audience group the movie is most popular before it is released?"

Fei Xiaodie is worthy of doing data sorting work, and immediately understood: "Mr. Chen means that he can infer targeted publicity based on the data?"

"Not only that, competition can also be avoided," Chen Chong said: "For example, two movies with similar competitiveness in the same audience group can be opened in the screening period to avoid both sides' losses."

"I may not watch it." Fei Xiaodie smiled and said, "If Shaw Brothers and Jiahe knew the data, they would definitely put the movie on the same day, fighting to the death."

"Everyone makes money when making movies, not fighting. I dare to bet with you that Shaw Brothers and Jiahe will definitely be staggered in the schedule." Chen Chong laughed and said, "And this investigation company has a lot to do and has a very important effect. Otherwise, I wouldn't have specially invited Helena from the United States."

Chen Chong picked up a document and said, "You used to be responsible for collecting and organizing box office data. You did a very good job. Now I want you to be responsible for this survey company. Are you interested?"

Fei Xiaodie smiled sly, took the document, and said, "Just give me money, I can do anything."

"As for the data algorithm of the survey results, I'll trouble Miss Helena."

Helena nodded and said concisely: "No problem."

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Chapter completed!