Baofeng Pharmaceutical was located in Bingxing Town, Guangle County, Nanan City, Dongguang Province. It was established on July 19, 2003, with Luo Baofeng as its legal representative.
Registered capital: 37.65 million yuan. Business scope: proprietary Chinese medicines; Chinese medicinal herbs; prepared Chinese herbal slices; chemical drug preparations; antibiotics; biochemical medicines; biological products excluding vaccines; Class II psychotropic drugs; medical devices; daily cosmetics; small household appliances...
It covered an area of 36,400 square meters, with a building area of 18,900 square meters, 54 automated production lines for various medicines, more than 450 employees, and over 60 technical specialists.
It was a pharmaceutical enterprise integrating research, production, and sales. Its main products included Taiweilaping Tablets, Entecavir Tablets, Olanzapine Capsules, Sonosi Capsules...
"What are these drugs? Why have I never heard of them?" Zhou Qi stared at the list in confusion and hurriedly searched online.
Oh, Taiweilaping was used to treat HIV and could reduce the chance of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1.
I know HIV, but what the hell is HIV-1?
Oh, so it was Type 1 HIV, the main type spreading domestically.
Learned something.
But the One Piece World probably didn't need this stuff, did it?
Zhou Qi flipped through the business catalog again, then messaged Yan Yun.
"This Baofeng Pharmaceutical doesn't say it can produce Amoxicillin either?"
Sales staff were online for nine hours a day, so Yan Yun quickly replied, "Amoxicillin has a relatively simple production process, so its costs are transparent and profits are low. Pharmaceutical companies of the scale you need generally won't treat Amoxicillin as a main product. However, as long as you need it, they can adjust their production lines at any time."
"Uh..." So Amoxicillin was already considered a low-end drug? Any pharmaceutical factory could make it?
Come to think of it, he had once considered opening a home workshop to produce it. A legitimate pharmaceutical company naturally could do it even more easily.
"Why is this pharmaceutical company being sold?" Zhou Qi asked.
"Have you been following the stock market lately?" Yan Yun asked in return.
"No, I never trade stocks!" Zhou Qi said.
"Good habit!" Yan Yun sent a thumbs-up sticker.
Zhou Qi was embarrassed. It wasn't that he chose not to trade stocks—he just had no money to do so...
"Baofeng Pharmaceutical is actually a contract factory under Donghai Tiantai Group. But Tiantai Pharmaceutical's old patriarch has fallen seriously ill and entered the ICU. Now Tiantai's heirs and shareholders are busy splitting up the family assets. Tiantai's stock has been falling for nearly a month straight..."
"Uh..." That old man sure could hang on. He'd been in the ICU for a month?
"Tiantai's business is extremely unstable right now, and something has happened in Luo Baofeng's family as well. He urgently needs a large sum of money to deal with it!" Yan Yun said. "Bingxing Town isn't far from Nanhai City. If you're interested, I can take you there for an inspection today..."
"Why not take out a loan if they have no money?" Zhou Qi asked. "A profitable company like that shouldn't lack access to loans..."
"Um..." Yan Yun froze for a moment, then called him.
Zhou Qi answered in confusion and heard a somewhat rough female voice from the other end.
She sounded a little like Brother Van Qiang without forcing a cutesy voice.
"Well, this involves client privacy, so it wouldn't be convenient to type it out. I'll just tell you directly..." Yan Yun said. "Luo Baofeng's son committed a crime and has been flagged by the government. They're nothing but a pile of shit now. No one dares touch them, much less lend them money."
"What happened?" Zhou Qi was curious. "They didn't offend someone important, did they? If I take over this factory, I won't end up in trouble, right?"
"If you want to say who they offended, they offended the people..." Yan Yun said. "Luo Baofeng can't even pay wages now. If you take over, not only will no one trouble you, the local government will probably thank you!"
Zhou Qi naturally didn't believe her one-sided account, but when he switched to his browser, he had already found information about Luo Baofeng's son.
Guangle BMW Drunk Driving Case: driver Luo had been detained.
"Is this the Guangle Butcher who drove drunk, ran a red light, killed four pedestrians, seriously injured seven others, and fled?" Zhou Qi was startled. He had seen that video before and had even cursed the driver in the comments. He never expected to become connected to that driver one day...
The world really was strange.
He read the follow-up reports. Eleven victims from seven families had demanded nearly thirty million yuan in compensation.
Luo Baofeng had naturally made far more than thirty million over the years, but part of his money was tied up in the stock market, while the rest had gone into buying homes, cars, and investments. He really couldn't come up with the cash.
Unfortunately, Tiantai above them had run into trouble, and now even their orders had been cut off.
Were they pitiful?
Not at all. They drove BMWs, while you didn't even own an electric bike. Zhou Qi wasn't about to sympathize with people like that.
"How much is this factory selling for?" Zhou Qi asked.
"460 million!" Yan Yun said.
Zhou Qi was shocked. "Are you kidding me? Didn't they only have thirty million in registered capital?"
"..." Yan Yun was speechless. She had actually sensed it long ago—this client seemed to be a complete layman.
But he was a wealthy client. Even if he was a layman, she couldn't say so just because she knew it.
"Registered capital doesn't equal a company's market value. What determines a company's value is more often its land, production lines, patents, revenue, and things like that."
"Baofeng Pharmaceutical Factory had sales of 260 million last year, with a net profit of 3.64 million..."
"That's not much either!"
"That's just how manufacturing is. Baofeng is already one of the stronger ones," Yan Yun said. "Once you take over, if you manage it well, earning ten million a year won't be a problem."
"But you said it yourself—Tiantai has problems now, Baofeng can't get orders, and without orders, it can't make that much money. So using last year's profits to judge Baofeng's current value is just plain bullshit!" Zhou Qi said. "And I just looked into it. Baofeng's researchers are just coasting by. The factory has been around for nineteen years, yet it doesn't have a single drug with its own patent. The drugs it produces are all old drugs whose patents have expired. Just like the Amoxicillin you mentioned earlier, their costs are transparent and their profits are low..."
"From that perspective, your profits and patent value can practically be considered zero!"
Yan Yun froze. This...
This client was indeed a complete layman when it came to pharmaceuticals, but he didn't seem easy to fool!
"As for new drugs, it's not just Baofeng that's like this. Pharmaceutical companies across the country are the same. I don't know if you watched Dying to Survive a few years ago, but if you did, you should know how difficult it is to develop a new drug. Even pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Pfizer invest billions of US Dollars every year without seeing results, let alone a small factory like Baofeng!"
"Not to mention Baofeng, it would be hard to find even one patented drug at a pharmaceutical company ten times larger than Baofeng. A factory with patents is a hen that lays golden eggs. There's no way it would be sold. Do you think Yunnan Baiyao would be sold?"
"Cut the crap!" Zhou Qi replied. "I'm not some sucker. Forget whether it can earn ten million a year—even if it really can, spending 450 million to buy a pharmaceutical factory that earns ten million a year means it would take forty years just to recoup the cost. I might as well buy property. I could make my money back next year!"
"Ah..." Yan Yun was speechless. What he said actually made so much sense that I had nothing to say.
"But a pharmaceutical factory is part of the real economy. That's just how the real economy works..." Yan Yun was helpless and could only answer this way. "Actually, if you have that much capital, we wouldn't recommend investing in pharmaceuticals. Mobile games or animation might be more profitable, or the currently popular Metaverse. Our company has channels for it, and you could invest along with us..."
"Isn't the Metaverse just a scam for idiots? Do you think I'd believe that?" Zhou Qi chuckled. Besides, I had a real One Piece World to play in. Why would I care about some virtual one?
"Ahem..." Even though it was basically a game of passing the parcel, saying it so bluntly...
"But the real economy..." Zhou Qi actually understood it quite well. The real economy truly didn't make much money.
Wasn't Phoenix Bicycle's annual profit of 89,500 yuan still trending on Bihu?
He had previously worked at several manufacturing factories, such as Jiancheng Machinery, where Old Wang worked.
The boss worked his ass off all year and only made 110,000 yuan, not even as much as Old Wang's salary.
Where did all the money go?
The traders made money. There was a foreign trade merchant that worked with Jiancheng Machinery. They bought goods from Jiancheng Machinery at nearly cost price, then marked them up by 60 to 70 percent and sold them abroad.
The entire company had no workshop and no production line, only salespeople sitting in front of computers and packers in the warehouse. Its annual profit was somehow as high as twelve million!
But this was bargaining, not the time to sympathize with the real economy.
"Give me a realistic price. Stop throwing out such inflated numbers. If it works, I'll buy it!!" Zhou Qi said. "You know those ways to make money, and so do I. But why don't I choose them? Because I know only the real economy can strengthen the nation!"
"But even if I have dreams, I don't want to be taken for a sucker..."
"..." Yan Yun sighed. "250 million!"
"Goodbye!"
"Please, listen to my explanation!" Yan Yun hurriedly said. "You can check the land prices in Bingxing Town. They're currently 685 yuan per square meter. The land alone is worth twenty-five million yuan. There's also a P3 Laboratory in the factory. That P3 Laboratory alone is worth one hundred million..."
"A small town has a P3 Laboratory? Are you kidding me?"
"Even so, it's true!" Yan Yun said. "Look at the map. Bingxing Town isn't some remote wilderness. It belongs to Nanan City and is only forty-two kilometers from the city center. When the pandemic first broke out two years ago, Dongguang Province and Nanhe Province jointly promoted the construction of biology laboratories, planning for every city to have a P3 Biology Laboratory. Nanan City's biology laboratory was established at Baofeng Pharmaceutical Factory..."
"And that can be bought?"
"It can. After all, it belongs to a private enterprise. As long as you continue undertaking the research assignments issued by the state, it's fine!" Yan Yun said. "The assignments aren't demanding either. Nanan City doesn't have much of a research foundation. Oh, and the more than sixty technicians you saw earlier basically all work in that laboratory..."
Zhou Qi did the math. Those two alone added up to 130 million. Add in the buildings and production lines, and 250 million didn't seem expensive?
"Let me ask something. If they switch to producing Amoxicillin, how much can they make in a day?" Zhou Qi asked.
"Uh, please wait a moment!" Yan Yun had no idea why Zhou Qi was so obsessed with Amoxicillin, so she could only call and ask.
Very soon, she got an answer.
"Working twenty-four hours a day, they can produce 600,000 bottles of capsules and 2.6 million bottles of tablets every day!"
"How many capsules are in a bottle? How many tablets are in a bottle?"
"Twenty-four capsules per bottle, and thirty-six tablets per bottle!"
Zhou Qi counted on his fingers. That was ten thousand pills a day.
Rounding it off, he calculated it as 100 million.
He charged 500 Beli per pill over there, meaning he could earn fifty billion Beli every day!
Fifty billion Beli was five billion yuan!
"No wonder countries that discovered new continents could fight wars for so many years and still be so rich. Was this the profit from developing the New World?"
This wasn't even picking up money anymore. This was outright robbery!
And this was only Amoxicillin. Sildenafil was even more expensive and could earn even more!
"I'll buy it!" Zhou Qi said immediately. "Wait for me. We'll go sign the contract today!"
"Huh? That fast?" Yan Yun was dumbfounded. "Aren't you going to inspect it first?"
"Oh, of course I need to inspect it!" Zhou Qi said. "By the way, installment payments are fine, right?"
"Of course. For such a large transaction, it's naturally impossible to pay it all at once. I'll report it to the company right now and arrange for financial staff to coordinate with them!"
"Alright!" Zhou Qi nodded. "I'll meet you downstairs at your company later, and we'll head over together!"
"Okay, okay!"
After hanging up, Yan Yun clenched her fist. "Yes!"
Then she quickly stood up, hugged a stack of documents, hurried down the hall, and kicked open her supervisor's office door.
"Yan Yun, what are you doing?"
"Director, we've got a huge order!"
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