Wang
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"In fact, Wang seemed to run the company by whim, so that at least once a year he would reorganize it from top to bottom. The rumor was he did it every month. By himself. Just like that."
"Wang (pronounced “Wong”) had two major audiences in mind. One was the capital markets. Wang and her older brother founded the company in 2004 and hold at least 39 percent of its shares. Over the prior ten years, Luxshare had earned $782 million of net profit. Its owners stood to make far more in the stock market than from low margins on final assembly. By turning Cook’s visit into a media event, Wang delivered a message to investors: Luxshare was on the up-and-up, and its rise would come at the expense of Foxconn. On the day Cook visited, Luxshare was worth $12 billion—validating how successful it had become from supplying components to Apple for nearly a decade. Still, that was only one-fifth of Foxconn’s $57 billion valuation. Within two and a half years, Luxshare’s market value would soar to $38 billion, overtaking Foxconn’s own dented market value at a time when the Taiwanese group was bringing in thirteen times more revenue. Any financial analysis would struggle to reconcile how that could be. The two companies were in the same low-margin business, using the same techniques, and servicing similar clients. But Chinese investors know their own country’s politics well, and they saw the writing on the wall. Foxconn, too, understood the challenge, and in 2019 it set up a task force to study its Chinese rival to understand its technology, expansion plans, hiring strategy, and whether the company was supported by any Chinese government entity."
"The Apple CEO’s visit was a stroke of brilliance on the part of Wang, described in the puff piece as someone who knows “the various Apple products like the back of her hand.” What she understood is that profits from the deal hardly mattered relative to the public prestige of working with Apple. Cupertino has long been famously secretive about its supply chain operations; companies can face penalties for even mentioning that they make goods for the tech giant. But Cupertino’s desire to enhance its narrative in China presented an opportunity. Wang orchestrated an event that elevated the perception of Luxshare from “one of many suppliers” to a real partner. As the website article proclaimed: “Birds of a feather flock together.”"