Chapter 902: Various investment results

Entering December, all acquisition tasks entered a critical period. In order to complete the acquisitions within the set time, all acquisition teams accelerated their work, thus affecting the overall working atmosphere at Polaris Capital and improving the efficiency of various tasks to a certain extent.

On December 3, an investment result made Xia Yu very happy.

Relational Software Corporation, the predecessor of Oracle Corporation, had closed another round of financing.

This time, Polaris Capital took up all the 15% of equity released by the founding team.

Not only that, but Polaris Capital also acquired the equity of the two original shareholders while ensuring that its original 10% equity was not diluted.

Polaris Capital now holds 33% of the equity of Relational Software Corporation.

In the high-tech sector, in addition to Relational Software, Polaris Capital now also holds stakes in IBM, EMC, AMD and Intel.

Polaris Capital originally held a 3.01% stake in IBM, which cost it $1,109 million.

Later, under Xia Yu's orders, Peter Lynch spent an additional 748 million US dollars to acquire a 2% stake, increasing his shareholding to 5.01% and making him the fifth largest shareholder.

The reason for the huge spending on increasing the stake was that, on the one hand, Xia Yu had a lot of money and no place to spend it; on the other hand, he wanted to use IBM to expand the influence of Polaris Capital; and third, naturally, because Xia Yu knew that IBM's personal computers would be released next year, and the stock price would rise at that time, so he could make a profit.

As for EMC, Polaris Capital invested one million US dollars in the angel round and obtained 40% of the equity.

However, so much time has passed, and with EMC's rapid expansion, the one million US dollars has long been used up.

In the Series A round, Polaris Capital once again led the investment, and while ensuring that its original equity was not diluted, it also acquired an additional 8% of the equity released by the founding team, increasing its shareholding to 48%.

As for the stakes of AMD and Intel, Xia Yu had previously entrusted Tiger Fund to acquire a portion of them on his behalf, and then after Polaris Capital set up a branch on Wall Street, Polaris Capital personally acquired the stocks.

Among them, 18.2% of Intel's shares were acquired at a cost of 377 million US dollars.

AMD is much smaller than Intel, and Polaris Capital only spent 103 million US dollars to acquire 21.6% of its shares from the secondary market and major institutions.

In addition to these companies on Xia Yu's radar in the high-tech sector, Polaris Capital has also invested in many companies, but they are all still in the angel and A round stages. Most of the investments have increased in value, but Xia Yu simply stopped paying attention after a brief look.

Among other investment sectors, there is one investment that both pleased and saddened Xia Yu, and that is the increase in equity holdings in Wal-Mart.

Although Wal-Mart went public in 1972, the Walton family's control over Wal-Mart was too strong.

Even in later generations, the Walton family still held more than 65% of Wal-Mart's shares.

Now it's even more, with the Walton family members holding a combined 69%. They only sold 25% of their shares when Wal-Mart went public in 1972, and have since cashed out a cumulative 6%.

After failing to acquire shares directly from the Walton family, Polaris Capital had to focus on acquiring shares from retail and institutional investors.

Fortunately, Walmart has not yet exploded. In the eight years since its IPO in 1972, the stock price has only doubled, and the market is only worth a little over 300 million US dollars.

Moreover, Walmart's stock price often fluctuates greatly, and it is considered a risky stock in the ratings of major Wall Street institutions.

Therefore, when Polaris Capital offered a slight premium, it quickly acquired a lot of shares.

So far, Polaris Capital has acquired a total of 28.2% of Wal-Mart's shares, at a total cost of just over 1.1 billion US dollars.

It can be said that the acquisition team of Polaris Capital has done its best to acquire more than 90% of the shares in circulation other than those of the Walton family.

Of course, this acquisition process is naturally longer, mainly to reduce costs and not arouse the vigilance of the Walton family.

In order to make a profit in the future and not arouse jealousy, under Xia Yu's instructions, these shares were disposed of several times. On the surface, Polaris Capital only held 8.5% of the shares, and obtained a seat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart, and stationed personnel to enter the board of directors and supervisory board of Wal-Mart.

As for the remaining 19.7% of the shares, they were all distributed under the offshore registered companies of Polaris Capital.

After a few busy days, Xia Yu found some time to meet with Ronald Reagan and help Rhodes Saxson.

Ronald Reagan gave Xia Yu a positive response, saying that Rhodes Saxson would at least be one of the 20-odd presidential assistants and that his position would be carefully considered.

On 12 December, Apple officially went public.

Despite the intense scrutiny of the Wall Street giants, Polaris Capital was unable to join the ranks of Apple's underwriters.

Since they could not get it, Xia Yu simply asked the company to temporarily give up investing in Apple.

But not following through doesn't mean Xia Yu isn't paying attention.

On this day, Apple issued 4.6 million shares at an issue price of 22 US dollars per share. At the close of the first day, the share price was set at 29 US dollars per share, a sharp rise of 31.8%, and Apple's market value stood at 1.778 billion US dollars.

On this day, Apple's senior management produced four billionaires and 43 millionaires.

Three more busy days passed, and it was December 15th.

The electoral college of each state went to the state capital to vote in the presidential election. The result was exactly the same as the result calculated on November 4th. No one was stupid enough to mess with the incoming president under these circumstances.

After the votes were counted, it meant that Ronald Reagan's inauguration was a foregone conclusion, and no one could reverse it.

With just over a month until the presidential inauguration on January 20, Ronald Reagan began the real meaning of cake-sharing. On the one hand, he confirmed the staffing arrangements at the White House, and on the other, he found Republican Party leader Benjamin Carr and began discussing the candidates for each department of the cabinet.

The next month or so was destined to be a time when Ronald Reagan would be kept busy.

Fortunately, Xia Yu had already supported Rhodes Saxon a few days in advance, so there were no major problems.

On this same day, after two months and twenty days, Peter Lynch finally brought the fruitful results to Xia Yu.