How did LeTV, which owes more than 20 billion yuan, become a “fairy company” with a 4.5-day working system?
"There are still more than 400 people left in LeTV, and many of them are old employees with more than five years. Why do they stay? Happiness is the reason for many old LeTV people to stay. There is no internal involvement, 996, and no default The wages of employees have not stopped social security.”
In July 2022, Weibo big V @Fenng posted a Weibo about LeEco.
LeEco then responded that "the situation is basically true," and added: "Don't be surprised if one day we legally take the lead in implementing a four-and-a-half-day, 36-hour workweek."
The company is still heavily in debt. The founder Jia Yueting has always been in the state of "returning to China next week", but LeTV's four-and-a-half-day working system will really come in 2023.
The 4.5-day work system is coming, work is for a better life
On January 3, @乐视视频 issued an announcement stating that from January 1, 2023, LeTV will implement a four-and-a-half-day working week.
Specifically, LeTV employees will work flexibly for half a day every Wednesday, and the attendance time will be adjusted to 5 consecutive hours, such as 10:00 am to 15:00 pm and 11:00 am to 16:00 pm are in compliance with the regulations.
At the same time, wages remained unchanged.
LeTV said that judging from the experience of the closure in 2022, "some work does not necessarily have to be completed in the company", so it chose to "put the previously planned four-and-a-half-day work week ahead of schedule."
Working four and a half days a week, LeTV believes that there are the following benefits:
Facilitate timely medical treatment for employees and their families;
Helps relieve "Monday Work Anxiety";
Conducive to staff learning and improving professional skills;
Conducive to improving family happiness;
I have to say that this announcement is also very well written. The sentence "Life is definitely not for better work, but work must be for better life" has touched the hearts of many workers.
Similarly, in February 2022, Ctrip announced that starting from March 1, it will implement a 3+2 working model: every Wednesday and Friday, the company's business departments and functional departments can implement or gradually implement 1- 2 days of mixed work.
Ctrip's 2021 hybrid office test data show that there is no significant impact on performance, 60% of employees strongly support it, and the turnover rate has dropped by one-third.
The more radical 4-day working system is also in full swing abroad , with trials in Iceland, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Spain, Belgium and other countries.
On June 6, 2022, the world's largest "four-day work system" trial kicked off in the UK for a period of six months, with more than 70 companies and more than 3,300 employees participating.
▲ Some pilot companies. Picture from: Quartz
The experiment adopts the "100:80:100" model: employees get 100% wages, working hours are 80% of the original, and output remains 100% before. The good news is that wages haven't changed, the bad news is that workloads haven't changed, productivity is the key.
The results turned out to be a success , with interim results showing that 35 of the 41 companies that participated in the survey said it was "likely" or "very likely" to continue shortening their weekly working hours after the pilot ended.
Most importantly, 88% of the respondents said that at the current stage of the trial, the four-day work system has allowed their business to operate "good", which means that the four-day work system has not affected the daily work and business progress.
The four-day working system is welcome, and the four-and-a-half-day working system is a good start. The future of non-involvement and anti-996 has dawned, but why is LeEco, which makes people wonder, "it hasn't closed down yet"?
LeTV officials have responded that it is too absolute for LeTV employees to have no introspection. After all, where there are people, there are rivers and lakes. It’s just that in LeTV, the degree of introversion is relatively low, because there are only more than 400 employees, and many positions are “one carrot and one pit”. If you want to get involved, you don’t know who to get involved with, but if there are one or two more people, you may get involved.
Why did the glorious LeTV fall into the situation of "one radish and one pit"?
More than 400 employees are not 996, Zhen Huan Chuan kept the glory and wealth?
In November 2004, Jia Yueting established LeTV, which was the only video website listed in China and the first video website to declare profit. In 2015, the market value of LeTV once reached 150 billion yuan.
However, after the crazy expansion, the huge debt overwhelmed LeEco. In 2016, LeTV’s business expanded to automotive boards, and the unlisted system from automobiles to mobile phones fell into a financial crisis as a whole, and LeTV was also involved in the whirlpool.
At the end of 2016, LeTV admitted to the outside world that there were problems with its capital chain and financing ability. Suppliers and employees broke out a large-scale debt collection boom. In July 2017, Jia Yueting escaped from the United States to continue his dream of making cars, leaving LeTV with huge debts and a lot of fluff. , and the joke of "returning to China next week". In 2019, an investigation by the China Securities Regulatory Commission pointed out that LeEco had committed 10 years of financial fraud .
There is a saying on the Internet that the reason why LeTV can survive until now is the copyright income and rent of "The Legend of Zhen Huan".
However, at the autumn communication meeting in 2022, Xia Xiaoyan, the head of the LeTV brand, responded that "The Legend of Zhen Huan" brought less than 5% of LeTV's revenue, and Le Rongzhixin (LeTV) accounted for less than 2%. The annual rent brings only 6% of LeTV's income.
It is worth mentioning that Le Rong Building was successfully auctioned in November 2021, and the delivery will be completed in the first half of 2022. From July 2022, LeTV will no longer collect rent and will pay rent to the new owner.
Therefore, it is impossible to survive only on Zhen Huan's biography and rent, so how does LeTV make money now?
At present, LeTV mainly has two main companies, LeTV and Lerongzhixin. The business of the former includes LeTV video and cloud computing, while the latter includes smart hardware and content operations.
In July 2022, China Business News reported that Le Rong Zhi Xin CEO Zhang Wei said that both Le TV Video and Le TV TV have their own membership and advertising revenue. This is a traditional income that has lasted for many years. Cooperative MCN, Mini Programs, etc. income, LeTV TV has income from smart hardware, etc.
Simply put, it depends on software on the one hand and hardware on the other.
In terms of software, LeTV Video is the main business, and "The Legend of Zhen Huan", which was included in the package, has indeed contributed a lot. At the end of 2011, "The Legend of Zhen Huan" premiered on a local channel, after which LeTV Video obtained the exclusive right to broadcast "The Legend of Zhen Huan" on the Internet, and the producer of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" Huaer Film and Television was also acquired by LeTV for 900 million yuan in 2013 .
However, after encountering a capital chain crisis, the copyright of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" was distributed to Youku Video by Huaer Film and Television. As a result, the original complete video of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" can currently be watched on LeTV Video and Youku Video.
The legend of Zhen Huan has been unabated for more than ten years, bringing an average of more than 10 million yuan in revenue to Huaer Film and Television every year. @乐视视频 also pointed out in April 2022: "Let's put it this way, if the copyright in 2018 is not sold by Hua'er, LeTV will return more blood now, and LeTV Video can retire with peace of mind."
In addition to "The Legend of Zhen Huan", LeTV Video also has dramas such as "The Legend of Miyue ", "White Deer Plain" and "Red Sorghum". for cooperative mode .
In the first half of 2022, LeEco will launch 29 new follow-up dramas, 207 film library dramas, 144 movies, and 62 animations. Compared with the head video platform, LeEco has also found its own position—classic Good show.
On the hardware side, LeEco's TV and mobile phone businesses continue.
LeTV Super TV is selling well on JD.com, and the price ranges from 600 yuan to 3,500 yuan. Some netizens commented that the LeTV s55 bought in 2013 is still available, and the open-screen advertisements and built-in columns of the system are constantly being updated.
2023 coincides with the 10th anniversary of LeEco Super TV. In July last year, LeTV even boasted:
The configuration of LeEco Super TV back then was indeed invincible. Even the products of 2014, 15 and 2016 were equipped with Mstar series 918/928/938 and other flagship chips at that time, and they still run at a fast speed, which is not inferior to the current mainstream of other brands. Configured with Internet TV, the daily life of LeTV Super TV is inseparable from the strategy of full-level performance configuration.
LeTV entered the mobile phone field in 2015, and it once stagnated due to funding problems. In 2021, LeTV announced the official return of the mobile phone business, and launched a new phone S1 in September of the same year; on the eve of June 18, 2022, the entry-level flagship phone Y1 Pro was launched; even in 2022 When it was called the "Fairy Company" in July 2019, LeTV did not forget to promote the new Y2 Pro with a topic.
The price of these models is basically between 500-1000 yuan, focusing on cost performance. Among them, the Y1 Pro is called a "replacement for the elderly machine" by some review bloggers.
In addition, LeTV also has earphones, charging treasures, smart door locks, multi-functional pots, smart watches, electric toothbrushes and other small appliances.
In 2020, Le Rong Zhi Xin's TV sales will be between 400,000 and 500,000 units, with 10 million super TV members, and LeTV Video also has millions of members. There are content copyrights, video platforms, and TV terminals. Operations and advertising are making money. It seems that LeTV can still make do with it.
A declining Internet company, one of the most topical companies
Under the superficial prosperity, LeTV is still in deep trouble. Although it has not owed a penny to suppliers and employees since 2018, the debt problem left over from history is still there .
As of the end of 2021, LeTV's total assets were 2.580 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 34.59%; total liabilities were 22.065 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.25%.
"There are still 400 employees" does not seem to be a lot, but it is not enough to compare with the prosperous years of the past. LeTV's 2016 annual report shows that the total number of employees on the job reached 5,389. At the end of 2019, LeTV laid off 50% of its employees at one time; in early 2020, when the epidemic was at its worst, LeTV cut its salary by about 10%.
In February 2021, Beijing Business Daily reported that what LeEco has been doing for the past few years is to reduce costs. The cost and salary are about 1/3 of the previous years, including CDN costs, personnel costs, other operating costs, and marketing costs. cost. However, in March 2022, with the improvement of the company's operating conditions, LeTV resumed the salary that was reduced two years ago.
Regarding the future of LeEco, Major General Ding, an industry observer, believes that LeEco still has opportunities, but the overall situation is very limited:
Relatively speaking, the development space of LeTV TV is larger, but it is difficult to rank among the first-line. It can find opportunities for survival and development in some vertical markets and sinking markets. In addition, based on LeTV TV, some IoT (Internet of Things) can also be expanded. ) hardware business; LeTV Video has no room for development. The long-term video industry is extremely expensive. Without the support of large capital, it is difficult to rely on the old content copyrights that have been hoarded before.
Despite the crisis and being delisted from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in July 2020, LeEco has not been low-key in recent years.
For example, during the Spring Festival in February 2021, all major apps have updated their icons. Today’s Toutiao has 1 billion points, Douyin has 2 billion points, Kuaishou has 2.1 billion points, Baidu has 2.2 billion points, Pinduoduo has 2.8 billion points, and LeTV’s 122 million points. The number of 100 million is the largest, but it is negative, and it was sent to the hot search by netizens who are not too big to watch the excitement.
LeTV later responded that 12.2 billion was not the exact amount owed, but was only for the sake of maximizing the promotion effect.
Since debt is not a secret, there is nothing wrong with laughing at yourself, and it can also show LeEco's image of facing up to debt and working hard. The effect is indeed very significant, and the download volume of the LeTV video app has increased by nearly 20%.
In addition, LeTV also opened a live broadcast room to sell its own products, and wanted to become the second selection of the East, but "LeTV 30-day live broadcast 14 games with 20,000 yuan in goods" once rushed to the Weibo hot search, LeTV remained self-deprecating optimism .
LeTV may not be considered a fairy company, but it is a magical company. The debt problem has not been resolved but it is still alive. It does not hide the crisis and guarantees the basic rights and interests of employees. From a debt of 12.2 billion, no 996 to a four and a half day working system, LeTV, which is usually silent, seems to be slowly coming to life after frequent hot searches on the ground.
Lerongzhixin CEO Zhang Wei once expressed his gratitude to the creditors , "I have a better understanding of the company's situation and did not put more pressure on the company." The so-called lice don’t itch, and debts don’t worry. LeEco, a declining Internet company, is trying to survive, but it seems more calm among the big Internet companies.
#Welcome to pay attention to Aifaner's official WeChat public account: Aifaner (WeChat ID: ifanr), more exciting content will be presented to you as soon as possible.