[Chapter 936: Amazon IPO]
Just then, the twins walked in, one ahead of the other, with one holding a stack of newspapers and placing it on the dining table in the outside dining room. The other handed a cordless phone to Eric, saying, "Master, it's Mr. Hansen on the line."
Eric ignored Jennifer Aniston's strange expression after hearing what the twins called him. He pointed to the frying eggs in the pan, offered his seat to Natasha, and walked out of the kitchen with the phone held to his ear.
Chris had called Eric early in the morning. As it turned out, just yesterday, on November 20, after wreaking havoc across Southeast Asia, international funds finally turned their attention to the richest piece of meat in Southeast Asia outside of Japan: South Korea.
On the very first day, a wave of sell orders led to a 3.1% devaluation of the Korean won in major foreign exchange markets.
With South Korea being 17 hours ahead of the U.S. West Coast, it was now just after 8 a.m. in Los Angeles on the 21st, but in Korea, it was already 1 a.m. on the 22nd. When Chris called Eric, it had already been a day since Korea had faced the onslaught of international speculative attacks. Although the Korean central bank began organizing a counterattack, the won had already fallen 6.5% over the two days.
After the short-selling contracts targeting the Thai baht and Indonesian rupiah were settled, Eric hadn't let Chris focus on other currency targets in Southeast Asia. Instead, he had pushed all $300 million of their funds invested in that region entirely into the Korean won.
Despite the fact that the Southeast Asian financial crisis raised alarm bells across Asian countries, the $300 million principal and the short position that had built up still exceeded $1.1 billion. It could be said this was the last piece of juicy meat that Firefly could scoop up amid this East Asian financial crisis.
After chatting with Chris for a while, Eric returned to the dining room and sat down at the table, flipping through the papers for news related to the Korean won.
In these two days, the exchange rate of the won to the dollar had plummeted from an initial 957:1 down to 1019:1.
Eric remembered that in the original timeline, the lowest point for the won to the dollar exchange rate plummeted below 1700:1, with a devaluation of over 70%. This meant that what was happening now was merely the beginning.
If he could accurately time the delivery of his short contracts when the won hit its lowest devaluation point, the $1.1 billion of short contracts, minus the principal, borrowing interest, and other expenses, could still yield a profit of up to $400 million for Firefly. Of course, this was merely the best-case scenario; in the ever-changing foreign exchange market, maximizing profits was challenging. Eric would be quite satisfied if he could double the $300 million investment.
...
As breakfast was placed in front of him, Eric closed the newspaper he had been reading and intended to eat first. Looking up, he saw that Jennifer Aniston was curiously watching Natasha, who had just walked away from him.
He smiled and asked, "What's up?"
Aniston quickly averted her gaze, shaking her head, "Oh, it's nothing."
Drew, sitting opposite Aniston, glanced at the twins across the table and said with a grin, "They are also Eric's women, you know."
Aniston felt the insinuation in the girl's tone and immediately raised an eyebrow, firing back, "They're much prettier than you."
Eric shot a warning glance at the two girls, "Hey, what did I just say?"
"I didn't mean to start a fight! I just wanted to introduce Jennifer to Natasha and... Natasha," the girl quickly defended.
The little one immediately said, "I plan to not talk to you at all today. This is the last sentence."
At this point, Eric remembered that Aniston still didn't know the twins. He looked at the two identical girls across from him and was about to introduce them when he noticed that both twins were wearing silver necklaces, each with a pendant: one was the letter 'N' and the other was the letter 'Y.'
After examining the necklaces, Eric asked, "Those necklaces are beautiful. The pendants should be the initials of your names, right?"
Natasha, wearing the 'N' necklace, nodded and said, "Yes, Master. This is a birthday gift from Ms. Pacula. She said it would help people distinguish between us sisters."
"Oh, I didn't notice that, sorry. Remind me next time it's your birthday so I can get you a gift too. But it really does help. You're the older sister, Natasha, so she must be the younger sister, Yev... um, Yev genya?"
"Master, just call me Eve," the girl with the 'Y' pendant spoke up, her accent and tone noticeably different from her sister's. Eric realized that it seemed like he had often heard the older sister speaking before, making it hard for him to distinguish between them by voice.
Nodding with a smile, Eric pointed to Aniston and said, "This is Jennifer; you both must know her. Jen, this is Natasha and Eve."
Aniston had been discreetly following what was happening around Eric for the past few years, so she naturally recognized the twins who often appeared alongside Drew. Although she didn't get along with the girl, Aniston greeted the twins politely while still showing curiosity in her eyes.
...
By now, it was November 21. After breakfast, Eric discussed their plans for Thanksgiving a few days later with the two girls, and then he rushed off to work at Playa Vista.
Thanks to its amazing imagination and heartwarming theme, Monsters, Inc. received near-unanimous praise from critics upon its release.
Although some media outlets sourly remarked that Monsters, Inc. had completely lost the Disney animation style and was just another Pixar film, that hardly impeded the fact that the movie grossed $62.57 million in its first three-day weekend.
The box office results shattered the fantasies of many and delighted everyone at Firefly. The success of Monsters, Inc. indicated that the Firefly Group would have two studios capable of producing excellent 3D animated films, or, considering the nearly half stake in Blue Sky Studios, the number would actually be two and a half.
In the coming years, Firefly anticipated producing 3D animated films at a frequency of one per year on average, a feat every Hollywood film company dreamed of achieving.
Perhaps influenced by the success of Monsters, Inc., in the following days, Paramount Pictures CEO Sherry Lansing also announced in an interview that Paramount Animation would start testing the waters of 3D animated production.
The Hollywood animated film market was far from saturation, and Eric wasn't too worried about the threat from Paramount. Let's not even mention whether Paramount Animation could genuinely complete the transition to 3D animation under the resistance from hand-drawn animators trying to maintain their industry position. Even if they succeeded, Viacom would inevitably struggle to compete with the Firefly Group in terms of the development of derivatives and theme park interests.
..
In the subsequent days leading up to Thanksgiving, Eric spent time with Drew and Aniston, and on the 27th, the day of the fourth Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, he headed to New York.
He wasn't there specifically for the fashion show; rather, after several date adjustments, the IPO date for Amazon was finally confirmed for December 1.
Starting from the second quarter of this year, Amazon's sales results had skyrocketed due to the buzz generated from the Fireflyer player's marketing strategy, with quarterly revenues jumping from $87 million in the first quarter to $310 million in the third quarter. Wall Street anticipated that Amazon's revenue for the last quarter would surpass $400 million and that its total revenue for the year would approach $900 million.
Although Amazon's financial report for this year would inevitably show losses due to its continued high investment strategy, that did not hinder Wall Street's optimism about this rapidly rising e-commerce site.
After months of negotiations, Jeff Bezos and Morgan Stanley, responsible for Amazon's IPO, eventually decided to set Amazon's valuation at $4.5 billion, with a new stock issuance ratio of 10%, aiming to raise $450 million.
In reality, raising $450 million was something Firefly could easily accomplish. However, everyone understood that besides Bezos wanting to avoid losing control and not wanting to sell more shares to Firefly, it was also about making subsequent acquisitions and capital operations more convenient after the IPO.
As the most turbulent period of the Southeast Asian financial crisis gradually receded, a massive amount of hot money started to flow back from various Southeast Asian countries. The U.S. stock market, which had undergone fluctuations for months, began to rise again, showing no signs of downturn. Therefore, almost all media outlets were optimistic about Amazon's IPO, with some individuals even turning their attention to Yahoo, the most crucial internet company within the Firefly system.
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