A large-scale merger and acquisition involving an amount of US$4 billion is far from something that Elizabeth can decide. Even Murdoch needs to consider it carefully. Although News Corporation has always been firmly in the hands of the Murdoch family, it is also The main reason is that Murdoch's excellent management ability has continuously brought profits to shareholders. If Murdoch insists on going his own way, shareholders will definitely turn to his opposite.
Hearing Eric’s idea of acquiring Hasbro from Elizabeth’s mouth, Murdoch flew from New York to Los Angeles and spent a whole day discussing the matter with Eric, but the result of the negotiation was not as good. Satisfactorily, News Corporation has been focusing on the media industry and has not set foot in other fields for decades, but Hasbro is a toy company that has little relationship with the media.
Although Eric's prospect is very attractive, after all, Murdoch is not a traveler like Eric who has seen the box office miracle of "Transformers". He chose to refuse very carefully. The final result of the negotiation was that Fox bought the copyright of "Transformers" first. In the next few years, Firefly could initiate the acquisition of Hasbro on its own, and then the two parties would jointly develop a big movie.
In the evening, Eric and Murdoch walked out of the Angle Manor Villa side by side, followed by Katzenberg, Elizabeth and Kelly. Murdoch will fly back to New York by plane later. Elizabeth made a phone call gesture to Eric on the other side of Murdoch's luxury car, and then got in. As a filial daughter, of course she had to send him Father goes to the airport.
Watching Murdoch's car leave, Katzenberg, who was standing beside him, said to Eric: "If Fox alone can make "Transformers" play the kind of profit prospects you describe, I guess Murdoch K would definitely buy Hasbro without hesitation or even partner with us, it's just a pity he doesn't have that confidence. Eric, I don't think there's any need to go through that, we can just buy it separately now Hasbro has sufficient funds in the Firefly account."
"Jeffrey, let's get rid of this idea for now. I have already told you what I think in recent years," Eric shook his head with a smile, and said again: "Besides, Firefly is now far ahead of other people in Hollywood. The giant of the media conglomerate. We should slow down."
Katzenberg seemed to just say that, and he didn't mean to argue with Eric. He also knew in his heart that it was time for Firefly to slow down.
In recent days, the statistics of Firefly's 1994 annual financial report have been released. Firefly's film, TV, peripherals, parks and other business segments have achieved a total of 18.7 billion US dollars in operating income. Although it is a pity that it failed to break through 20 billion US dollars, it has already made many people dumbfounded. At the same time, the group achieved a net profit of 1.67 billion for the year Compared with 1993, the two sets of data rose by 62% and 40% respectively, mainly due to the acquisition of ABC TV station last year, which increased the operating income of Firefly by 7.5 billion US dollars.
After the acquisition of ABC, after nearly a year of business integration and redundancies, Firefly expects that its revenue and net profit in 1995 will break through the US$20 billion and US$2 billion mark respectively. Such strong revenue and profitability have left other Hollywood rivals far behind. The most obvious comparison is Time Warner, which has been steadily suppressing Firefly in the past few years. Although Time Warner has not publicly announced the financial information in 1994, Eric has seen the relevant information for the first time. data of.
In the whole year of 1994, Time Warner's film business brought only 3.3 billion US dollars in revenue to the group, a full decrease of 40% compared to 1993. The box office of 105 million US dollars is far lower than that of "The Lion King", which has a box office of 310 million US dollars in North America under Firefly, and its global box office share is far from being comparable to that of Firefly.
The entire Time Warner Group was dragged down by the sluggish film business. In 1994, the annual revenue was only 8.3 billion U.S. dollars, which was far away from the distance of 10.4 billion U.S. dollars by Firefly. Moreover, compared with the good time when Steve Ross maintained stable profits when he was alive. Last year, Time Warner suffered its first loss in these years. Although the loss amount was only US$91 million, which is not worth mentioning compared to the revenue data of US$8.3 billion, it is already a very dangerous signal. Lost Steve? Ross Time Warner has begun to decline.
Except for Time Warner, Viacom, the parent company of Paramount, News Corporation, the parent company of Fox, and MCA, the parent company of Universal, are far from being able to compare with Firefly. Columbia's parent company, Sony, is much stronger than Firefly, but after Columbia's $2.1 billion asset write-down at the end of last year, the market value of Columbia Pictures has fallen below $3 billion, which is even less than one-tenth of the valuation of Firefly by the media. One, as for MGM, there is no sense of presence.
It can be said that Firefly is completely unrivaled in Hollywood at this time.
Recalling the exciting data in his mind, Katzenberg couldn't help but look at Eric beside him. Everything that Firefly did today stems from this young man with a keen eye for film and television media. Although Eric Ke let go of the management of the Firefly Group more and more, but everyone in the Firefly Group knew that Eric was the soul of the Firefly. Without him, the miraculous rise of the Firefly would never have happened today.
Although he served as the CEO of Firefly Group, Katzenberg has always been very clear that he is better at micro-management, and his judgment and control over the general direction of the group's development are definitely not as good as Eric's. The acquisition was the acquisition of ABC last year. During this period, Eric’s crazy acquisitions were met with a series of doubts. Many people speculated that Firefly, which has a shallow foundation, may collapse because of this overly violent expansion. But in the end, Firefly Not only swallowed these two industry giants, but also successfully integrated these two companies into the Firefly system.
At this time, Eric's decision to suspend expansion was not just because he had absorbed a large sum of money from Firefly Group for his investment in high-tech industries such as the Internet. Although he successfully completed two major mergers and acquisitions and initially digested them, However, the two large-scale mergers still caused some problems within Firefly that took several years to solve. The reason why these problems did not break out was entirely because Firefly's strong profitability temporarily offset various contradictions.
After Murdoch left, Katzenberg did not leave in a hurry. He returned to the villa with Eric and talked about a recent headache in ABC.
"After the prime time of 8:00 to 11:30, both NBC and CBS are nightly talk shows. NBC's "Jay Leno Tonight Show" can bring in $150 million a year in profits, and CBS's "David Wright" The Late Show with Mann also makes $50 million a year, but ABC's 11 o'clock news show "Nightline" makes an average of $10 million a year. In the past, we didn't have any good options, but recently, David Letterman and The CBS contract is about to expire, and Robert suggested that he should be recruited to ABC. David Letterman is also very excited about this suggestion. Our prime-time program ratings are very strong, which can be very good for his talk show. It was a leading role. But as soon as Robert made this suggestion, David Westin, the president of the news department, broke into his office and quarreled with him, and the two even almost fought." (To be continued.)