Name: Innovation Forum 2024: Global Expansion Strategies
Uploaded: 2024-03-27
Duration: 17 min 52 s
Description: Dongsheng Li , Chairman And Chief Executive Officer, Tcl In Conservation With Maiwen Zhang, Executive Editor, Fortune China

Dongsheng Li , Chairman And Chief Executive Officer, Tcl In Conservation With Maiwen Zhang, Executive Editor, Fortune China

Innovation Forum 2024: Global Expansion Strategies

Conferences

Uh Thank you, Mr Lee for uh coming here joining us today. And TCL is actually a company with great stories and you've been through a lot of legends, you've been through good times and bad times. So today, let's look back to the history of TCL. Let's go back to the early nineties of the last century. Um You may still remember some of the details of your company at that time. So my question is my first question is uh when the first time when uh when you first attended the Consumer Electronics Show or Fair, what did you feel? And what do you feel nowadays when you attend that Consumer Electronics Fair again in Las Vegas? I still remember uh I went to uh the show the fair in Las Vegas back in 19 nineties. And at that time TCL was a part of the HK trade development uh HKT DC pavilion. And we only had a nine square meter square meter booth showing our telephone. And this year in the fair, we have uh large booth covering 1700 square square meters and we are adjacent to Samsung. Uh We have similar size of booth. Uh So now the area is 200 times um to compare with the site of the booth for the first uh w when you attended that fair for the, the event for the first time. Yes. So it means that we have already become a leader or a, from a follower. We have grown out. Uh We have grown into a leader from a follower. So I still remember that in 19 nineties, one of your uh Trump product is the color TV. So can you give us a brief introduction about the changes of the sales of display products? So let's talk about the evolution of the product technology first after the invention of television. Um in 2000, it was still the picture two television, uh the black and, and at that time, the black and white televisions were still dominating the Chinese market. But after 2000, we started to use a panel display uh evolving from PDP to L CD to Mini Led and O Led today. Um If we look at the players in the industry at the very beginning when we had, with the uh at the very beginning when we had TV S in China. At that time, the Chinese market was dominated by Japanese brands. At that time. If you can, if you could buy a Japanese TV, it would be really amazing. And later on Chinese companies were developing really fast and now the global market of TV. Color TV were mainly dominated by Korean and Chinese brands. And last year, the sales of TC LTV uh reached 25 million units ranking second globally. And we have other competitors, Chinese competitors like Haen and Xiaomi, they have pretty uh the same sales as we do. So from these statistics, you can see that the global TV quality market is dominated, is mainly dominated by Chinese brands and the brands from ROK. So for TCL, it is uh you have already been expanded for 25 years globally. So if we ask people, do you know TCL, many people will answer that TCL is a television company. Uh But we, but we, we know that TCL is more than selling com uh selling TV S. Can you give us more um insights about that? Actually TCL is still a company selling smart terminals. And for TV S, uh our sales is could reach 25 million and we also have Ooem TV O ems for those international brands, about 10 million units. We also do other uh consumption electronics and home appliances. And last year, our revenue could reach 100 and 20 billion RMB. And we also do semiconductor display. And last year our subsidiary uh doing led has got a revenue of 70 billion RMB. And we also enter into PV industry. We are already the largest PV, MOOC crystalline factory in the world. Uh So for the semiconductor semi uh semiconductor display and the TV why do you choose these two areas? Well, the reason why we enter into the area of semiconductor display is because that we want to support our color TV business. And after we enter into the new era of uh panel display, the Korean brands have surpassed the Japanese brands, led by LG and Samsung. They have the they, they have advanced display panel display products, but Japanese brands did not have the capability to produce those advanced products yet. So that is why we also wanted to um grab a share of this cake. We invested 2025 billion RMB to build a OEM factory. So 2 25 billion is really a large number for us at that time because at that time, we did our net, the net worth of the entire company didn't reach 25 billion. So that's a bold move for us. We were also struggling when we were making the decision. But now when we look back, I'd say that it's a right correct decision. This decision has paid a way for us to develop our competitiveness in color TV. And now let's look at uh another topic which is really a buzzword nowadays. Now we are having a de globalization. So de globalization actually inhibits innovation. So what should we do to counter to counteract that? Well, deg global organization doesn't only inhibit innovation, it will inhibit the global economic growth, you know, as a whole. So for globalization, there are three important factors driving it. One is the free uh free trade, the trade liberalization, we need to relieve the trade barrier. And the second driving force is the sharing of industrial resources and technological resources. That is actually the global flow of capital. And the third driving force of globalization is a set of uniform standards, trade rules. So that is why WTO has set up a forfeit of uh standards for global trade. So now in terms of legalization, we would see many trade barriers going on being established in the world. And WTO has been there already for 30 or 40 years and uh China has been a part of WTO for 30 years. So we would see that globalization has boosted economic growth during the past decades. According to a lot of economists, they believe that globalization could contribute 1% to 2% growth to the global economic development. However, we would admit we should also admit that the globalization, the benefits of globalization is not allocated in a fair way among all the countries for those countries which uh is equipped with strong ca capital, capability or strong technological capability. They will definitely benefit more from globalization. And that is why a lot of people are countering uh are actually um opposing globalization. And now when we are talking about uh when we are talking about de globalization, we mainly talk about the de globalization of technologies represented by the United States. They are restricting the technological development of China. Um Actually, as I recall about eight years ago, we have heard of these terms frequently. Actually, I remember that as you mentioned in the Davos Forum this year, in order to meet up with this kind of challenges, China needs to shift from uh product output to capacity contribution. So for TCL, is it a demand by the environment towards the company or is it because of you develop to a certain stage and then you want to look after these parts? Just um for me, I think that's because of that's driven by the strategy of the enterprise. Because in the past, for many Chinese enterprises, they the internalization process are driven by exports, right? So we export our products with competitiveness to the global market. However, this process as China's industry has developed has established competitiveness in many different types. We found out that if we continue to export this products, the Chinese economy will not be balanced anymore. So we need to shift from that. So for us, we established the global industrial chain in different positions around the globe. Yeah, I noticed that you use a very relaxing tone when you are elaborating these stories. However, as we all know that this is a this is a cutting throat process for for a company like 20 years ago when we are promoting the international mergers and acquisitions, we encounter a lot of setbacks. Then I think uh in the past 20 years, what have you learned or what lessons you think are meaningful for other enterprises to learn from? Um I believe what you have mentioned is that 20 years ago, we our about our merger and acquisition of Thompson's color TV business and the Alcatel's mobile phone business. Back then, we made this decision because we wanted to quickly expand our business into color TV businesses and mobile phone business to the global market. Because back then in China, we are the best in terms of color TV, S and mobile phones. However, in international markets, we don't have any uh presence. So we threw to enter this global market through measures and acquisitions. However, during this process, we did suffer a big setback and the cost was very high. So today, if I were to share the experience and lessons learned with you today, I think you can pay attention to three points. First of all, cross border mergers and acquisitions are very challenging thing. So you must be fully prepared. For example, you should be prepared with the M MA ability and the capital and second for international M MA, ok. We should definitely support the business development of the company because back then we make a harsh decision to conduct an international M MA because before the M MA PC R was basically a Chinese company, but suddenly we became a global company. I have to take care of a lot of Americans, Europeans employees because I don't, I'm not, I'm not capable back then to take care of those European enter employees and American employees. So actually the international MN A post high requirements in terms of organizational capa capabilities. Oh and on the other hand, the timing for M MA is very important because back then the M MA for color TV is quite difficult for us. Uh I have made a decision, I think that for color TV, they can still stand on the market for like five more years. However, it turns out that people turn to uh tabloids, tabloid computers. So it has huge impact on the color TV market. So I think the timing is very important. So what about the timing for the PV business? You have? Um actually we joined the PV, we entered the PV, uh the photovoltaic sector in 2020 because uh PV is a high growth market. We see the global green transition and the energy conservation and carbon reduction is a big trend. So in the past five years or so, the industry develops in a very fast speed. And we believe that in the future 5 to 10 years, the average annual growth should be at 15% even though the competition in the PV market is very fierce. However, China is dominating the market and the market will continue to grow. So the excessive capaci uh capacity will not be digest in a short period of time. I think for the next 10 years, the global market will be even more greater. So the PV industry in China should definitely expand their pre uh presence around the globe and established higher efficiency and higher level of competitiveness. So what you are saying is that even though China has seen over capacities, but in the future, the since the market is growing, so the over capacity can be not just in China. Yes, I think it can achieve a balance date in the fast time uh in a short period. OK. So last few couple of questions, you have mentioned that um c the the world, it's at the beginning of a diversification process. And I remember that in the CEO of General Electric at the time has wrote us a signed article, he has mentioned that true international companies will not worried about protectionism. So do you still think this logic is valid today when a Chinese company is expanding globally? I think it is here theoretically true. If you produce every bit of your product in the America, then the protectionism protection measures from the America will not be effective, right? But in fact, enterprises don't need to go uh be so extreme. We just need a reasonable global layout, we just need to lay our business around the globe. So as to achieve the competitiveness, we can localize the industrial supply chain. If we can develop well developed the whole industrial train, we can better uh better meet the challenge of trade protectionism. So that's the balance between capacity and timing, right? Thank you again, Mr Lee. So before we end this session, I want to quote a sentence mentioned by robot noise, the founder of Intel at the time, he mentioned that history, it's about what people do. They try everything to be not bonded by history so that they can make their way and do something. Great. Thank you again for Mr Lee.