1902, five Americans co-founded Minnesota Mining Manufacturing Company (3M for short). Their original intention was to go to Tuhabos, Minnesota to mine mineral deposits and look for corundum (an abrasive for grinding wheels).
However, it backfired. The founder went to mine and found that the deposit he bought was worthless and nothing could be dug up. There were five people who had problems eating.
Finally, some investors suggested that 3M bid farewell to the mining industry and switch to other businesses to make a living. Since gold could not be found, the company switched to selling water. The troubled 3M company began to make sandpaper for mining. 19 14, 3M launched its first exclusive product sandpaper. Subsequently, waterproof sandpaper was invented and widely welcomed by the market.
In the following 100 years, 3M company continuously expanded its market, and its product line expanded from frosted paper to perfluorooctanoic acid, tape recorders, masks, helmets, newspaper stickers, glass tapes, double-sided tapes, adhesives and other industries.
Up to now, 3M owns M5 products, with a revenue of RMB 220 billion in 20 19 and a profit of RMB 31800 million. The gross profit margin is as high as 49%, and the net interest rate reaches 14.26%.
At present, the company has no controlling shareholder, and Blackstone, a private equity fund of financial crocodile, holds 6.78%. CR Vanguard, a fund company, holds 8.66% and State Street Bank holds 7.42%.
3M Company adopted a very interesting strategy, instead of focusing on the big market with high ceiling, it focused on the niche market (a market with relatively small scale and no giants) and made itself bigger and stronger by overlapping niche markets. After the scale becomes larger, the R&D expenses can be shared in different markets (for example, the research results of glue can be used in sub-sectors such as double-sided adhesive and post-it notes), and the management expenses are similar to the advertising expenses. In every market, the size of giants is an overwhelming advantage for small companies.
In this business model, the moat of the whole company is wide and deep, because 3M is hard to be challenged in every niche market. Without strong competition from competitors, it is not surprising that the gross profit is as high as 49%. Think about it. Besides 3M, how many brands can you think of in the field of masks? What kind of masks will consumers buy when there is real demand? The answer is self-evident.
What's even more amazing is that once it is found that there are really several powerful competitors entering a niche market, it will set off a price war. 3M will retreat from the market where it can't dominate the price, and let the entrants compete with each other to ensure its gross profit margin.
Cross-market expansion is actually a very difficult thing. Many Japanese companies can only produce one or two products in their lifetime. Once the market changes (for example, China companies enter this industry), there is no resistance at all. It is often not that these enterprises don't want to make progress, but that the research and development cost of new products is very high, which is beyond the ability of small companies.
Random expansion and random diversification of mergers and acquisitions with financial leverage, once the integration is not good, will easily lead to the loss of competitiveness of the company's main business.
In view of these two problems, 3M Company has taken an internal platform-based R&D and external financial investment to expand Zhang Zhilu.
The left hand of 3M Company's expansion is a technical platform built with a large amount of money.
What is a technology platform? Simply put, you can think of it as the mother technology. After the research and development of the parent technology is completed, the parent technology has produced a large number of products and services.
The most famous technical platform of 3M Company is its "adhesive". Starting with adhesives, 3M engineers have developed different products, such as post-it notes, transparent tapes, double-sided tapes and medical band-AIDS. All these products have one thing in common: they need stickiness. By solving the problem of adhesives, 3M products can naturally gain core competitiveness in these sub-sectors.
Therefore, unlike many companies' "I want to make the best post-it notes" and "I want to make the best adhesive tape", the idea of 3M Company is to develop the parent technology (adhesive) first, and then knock on different nails such as post-it notes, adhesive tapes and double-sided tapes with half the effort.
And if it is only limited to making the best post-it notes, then in addition to studying adhesives, we must also study paper, dyes and so on. Used to make post-it notes, distracting our attention and not making the best products.
Even better, the company can produce new products by arranging and combining various technology platforms/parent technologies.
For example, glue+film+nanotechnology+light tube, four platforms form a new product: high-performance window film, which can be used in automobile, construction, security and other industries.
With such a powerful parent technology, 3M Company has 47 * *.
At present, domestic products such as masks, diapers and medical gloves belong to the mother technology of medical safety.
Of course, it costs money to build a platform. 3M spends about 6% of its revenue on research and development every year, which is at the same level as Facebook and BMW.
This ratio is incomparable with Huawei's 15% and Samsung's 14% R&D revenue. However, it should be noted that 3M is only a traditional manufacturing company, not an electronics company, and it is quite commendable to invest 6% of its revenue in research and development.
Of course, the other side of 3M Company is to make use of its abundant financial capital for foreign investment and acquisition. By throwing money, we will take the bully in the niche market into our pocket. After being repurchased by the invested company, it is integrated into the production and sales system of 3M Company, and the invested company enjoys 3M's R&D platform, sales channels and supply chain resources, and its profits are improved. The profit and market value of the parent company 3M also increased. At the same time, with the increase of industries involved, the moat of 3M Company is further deepened.
In 2008, 3M invested in and acquired Micron, an automobile beauty company.
20 10 In August, 3M invested 943 million dollars to acquire Cogent Systems.
20 10 10, 3M invested and acquired medical company Arizant and adhesive tape company winterthur Science and Technology Group.
....
In 20 19, 3M announced that it had signed a final agreement with Apax Partners, Canadian Pension Plan Investment Committee (CPPIB) and Public Pension Investments Committee (PSP Investments) to acquire Acelity, a leading postoperative care company in the world, and its subsidiary KCL for about 6.7 billion US dollars.
In short, with abundant financial resources, billions of dollars are spent and bought by the industry.
However, by the way, readers should be wise not to think that 3M is opportunism and anyone can do it when they see financial and investment mergers and acquisitions.
In fact, from my own work experience,
It is easy to spend money on mergers and acquisitions, but it is difficult to follow-up integration.
A-share listed companies have a thunderous reputation, telling everyone how difficult it is to merge.
If you buy it, you can't tame the original company with your own management ability and advanced technology. That's not an investment, it's an ancestor at home.
The ancestors lost their temper, the company suddenly lost money, and its goodwill was damaged, all of which were finished together.
As a century-old enterprise, 3M Company is currently facing the problem of stagnant revenue growth and profit growth. In order to speed up the enterprise transformation, the company announced that it would lay off about 65,438+0,500 people, covering all businesses, functions and regions. It is predicted that layoffs in 2020 will save 40 million to 50 million pre-tax expenses.
However, 3M layoffs are commonplace. In the past few years, rumors of layoffs of 6,500 have occurred frequently. It seems that there is no need to do too much interpretation.
By the way, the benchmark of 3M in China is Kangdexin, an A-share listed company. ...
China's technological development is really a long way to go, so we should continue to work together.