Recruitment in Yu Rou

At the end of last year, Yu Rou Science and Technology, a unicorn company once valued at more than $50 billion, was exposed to financial constraints and wage arrears. Today, Yu Rou's science and technology is still in the predicament of "lack of money".

On March 29th, Luo Chen, an employee of Yu Rou Science and Technology Company, reported to the Red Star Capital Bureau that he had received five unsent emails in six months since last September, and the contents were basically the same: "The company is advancing, the funds will be paid soon, and the salary will be reissued immediately". According to Luo Chen's calculation, Yu Rou Science and Technology has owed him nearly 65.438 billion yuan in salary.

Before February, 20021year, Yu Rou science and technology was highly sought after by capital, including many well-known investment institutions such as CITIC Capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Hangzhou Cornerstone and Poly (Hengqin) Capital. But now, Yu Rou Science and Technology is caught in the whirlpool of "unpaid wages" and has been seeking financing help. The Red Star Capital Bureau notes that Yu Rou has not seen any new investment since it withdrew its listing application.

What the hell happened to this unicorn?

Science and technology are in deep trouble of "lack of money" "img _ height ="1080 "img _ width ="1620 "data-src ="//imgq8.q578.com/ef/0331/6cb56. Yu Rou science and technology employees:

Send an email if you owe money. You have owed nearly 65,438+10,000 yuan.

Luo Chen, who has worked in Yu Rou Science and Technology for nearly two years, can't figure out why this unicorn, once valued at more than 50 billion, came to this step.

"The company has been actively promoting financing and has made significant progress recently. Due to the lack of funds in time, the salary of March 10 will be paid at the end of the month. Please understand. " "Another unpaid email," Luo Chen thought. This is the fifth unpaid email in the past six months. Yu Rou Science and Technology has owed him nearly 654.38+10,000 yuan in salary.

Before February, 20021year, Yu Rou science and technology was a unicorn enterprise with "halo plus body". This flexible organic light-emitting diode screen manufacturer, founded on 20 12, is highly sought after by capital. Financing has reached the F round, and the door of the science and technology innovation board is slowly opening to it.

However, on February 9th, 20021,Yu Rou Science and Technology withdrew its listing application document, and then disappeared from public view. When it reappeared, it was because of the news of large-scale arrears of employees' wages.

Luo Chen recalled that, in fact, since last September, Yu Rou Science and Technology has shown signs of financial shortage. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the company didn't even hand out boxes of moon cakes. Followed by 10, 10, which is the payday of Yu Rou Science and Technology, but Luo Chen received an unsent email telling him that he could only pay 40% of his salary in September.

At that time, Luo Chen still had a glimmer of hope for the company, thinking that things would get better. However, what he was waiting for was the news of "10 wage default" and "10 wage default".

In the case of wage arrears, the mentality of employees has also changed. Luo Chen remembers that when he first joined the company, the employees in his team were full of energy and worked overtime three days a week. However, judging from the company's inability to pay salaries, Luo Chen's projects are stagnant, no one in the company is willing to work, and colleagues around him have been leaving their jobs one after another.

Perhaps due to external pressure, Yu Rou Science and Technology reissued the employee's salary 1 1 on February 3, but the part owed before is still unknown. Subsequently, it was publicly reported that the problem of funds for science and technology in Yu Rou eased, part of employees' wages were paid, and the arrears of wages in Yu Rou Science and Technology gradually subsided.

After the storm subsided, Yu Rou's wage arrears continued. From the beginning of 2022, 1, the salary in February and March was also replaced by an unsent email. During this period, the number of OA systems in Yu Rou has been decreasing. Luo Chen noticed that the number of employees had dropped from 1800 to 700.

Science and technology are in deep trouble of "lack of money" "img _ height =" 888 "img _ width ="1568 "data-src ="//imgq8.q578.com/ef/03314ace71. "The picture was provided by the interviewee.

Now, in the face of "financing is advancing, funds will arrive immediately, and wages will be reissued immediately", Luo Chen's heart has long been numb. He quickly closed his mailbox and opened the recruitment website.

From a valuation of $6 billion to inability to pay wages.

What happened to Yu Rou Technology?

Luo Chen joined Yu Rou Science and Technology in 2020. At that time, Yu Rou Science and Technology had just completed the $300 million Series F financing, and even the news that it was going to the US IPO came out. This star startup was no different for a while.

In fact, since the establishment of Yu Rou Science and Technology, it has always been "halo plus body". Its founder, Bill Liu, is called a "gifted boy". 17 years old, was admitted to Tsinghua University with the top score of Fuzhou Science College Entrance Examination. After graduating from the Department of Electronic Engineering in Tsinghua University with a master's degree, Bill Liu received his doctorate from the Department of Electronic Engineering in Stanford University. He is a "schoolmaster" and a distinguished expert of overseas high-level talents.

20 12 In May, Bill Liu returned from the United States to start a business, and together with his other two Tsinghua and Stanford alumni Wei Peng and Fan Junchao, he invested 654.38+10,000 yuan to establish Yu Rou Science and Technology. 20 14 In August, Yu Rou Science and Technology released the thinnest color flexible display screen in the world, with a thickness of only 0.0 1mm and a curl radius of 1mm, which was a subversive technical level at that time.

Therefore, Yu Rou Science and Technology is highly sought after by capital. From August 20 17 to June 20 19, Yu Rou Science and Technology has obtained seven rounds of financing, with investors including CITIC Capital, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Hangzhou Jishi and Poly (Hengqin) Capital. In 2020, Yu Rou Science and Technology also ranked among the top 12 unicorns in China's top 200 new economy in 2020 with a valuation of $6 billion, and became the top of China Entrepreneur's list of China's top 100 science and technology enterprises in 2020.

Xu Xiaoping, a famous angel investor and founder of Zhenge Fund, once lamented for missing Yu Rou Science and Technology: "Every time I see its good news, my heart hurts, and my pride as an angel investor is crushed to pieces."

However, Yu Rou science and technology seems to be caught in a strange circle, constantly financing, but always "short of money".

It is widely believed that giving up listing in science and technology innovation board has put Yu Rou in financial trouble. But in fact, before the listing, Yu Rou's financial situation had problems.

In 2020, Yu Rou Science and Technology shelved its IPO plan in the United States, and switched to A-share science and technology innovation board on the last day. It is planned to raise 654.38+04.4 billion yuan, of which 7.2 billion yuan will be used to supplement working capital. However, once the prospectus was disclosed, the current situation of Yu Rou's tight science and technology capital chain was exposed to the public. According to the revenue data, from 20 17 to 20 19 and from June to June 2020, the company's operating income was 64.7267 million yuan, 109 million yuan, 227 million yuan and1160,000 yuan respectively.

In addition, Yu Rou Science and Technology has been at a loss. In the above timeline, the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was-359 million yuan,-802 million yuan,-65.438+73 million yuan and-96.65438+0 billion yuan respectively. In other words, the company only achieved revenue of 5170,000 yuan in three and a half years, but the loss was as high as 3.2 billion yuan, and the scope of the loss continued to expand.

While the annual losses are expanding, the cash flow of Yu Rou Science and Technology is not optimistic. The company's operating cash flows were 358 million yuan, 66.5438+0.2 billion yuan, 86.5438+0./kloc-0.80 billion yuan and 386 million yuan respectively in the above time line, and the liquidity pressure was increasing day by day.

Just in the second half of 20 19, four senior executives, including Bill Liu and Fan Junchao, also borrowed money from Yu Rou Science and Technology, showing that the company was short of money. After the withdrawal of the listing application in February, 20021,the dilemma of "lack of money" for Yu Rou Science and Technology became more and more obvious. Until half a year later, even the employees' wages could not be paid.

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Most of the production capacity is idle

Former employees said that the production line only takes three days a month.

Looking closely at the problem of "lack of money" in Yu Rou's science and technology, apart from financing and losses, the most important reason is Yu Rou's own lack of "hematopoietic" ability.

The Red Star Capital Bureau found that Yu Rou Science and Technology was being questioned from beginning to end. At first, some people questioned that the product could not be developed. Later, it was thought that the product could not be mass-produced. After mass production, it was accused of low yield and insufficient production capacity, and then it was questioned that there was a lack of application scenarios and the products could not be sold.

As early as the beginning of 2020, at the critical moment of Yu Rou technology IPO, Volkswagen found that Yu Rou-related products were rare in the world.

In fact, it's not that there is no product in Yu Rou, but "it can't be sold". Facing the B-end, Yu Rou launched a fully flexible screen with "low cost and high income". So far, it has not been widely used in the products of any mainstream mobile phone manufacturer. Cooperation customers of other application scenarios promoted by Yu Rou, such as ZTE, Airbus and China Mobile. There is almost no trace of their cooperative products in the mass market.

Facing C-end products, take FlexPai, a foldable flexible screen smartphone in Yu Rou, as an example. According to 2 1 Century Business Review, the annual sales of its mobile phone business is only about 7 1 12. Even if all consumers' income comes from the mobile phone business, the sales volume in the first half of 2020 is only 1.47 million units. Compared with Huawei, Xiaomi and Samsung, which also have folding screen phones, the sales volume of this data is pitiful.

Science and technology are in the dilemma of "lack of money" "img _ height =" 516 "img _ width =" 943 "data-src ="//imgq8.q578.com/ef/0331/237327/kloc-0 " The reasons for the low sales volume, besides the high pricing in Yu Rou, have no advantages, and quality problems have been repeatedly exposed. Consumer Wang Qi told the Red Star Capital Bureau that he spent about 5,000 yuan on a FlexPai mobile phone, but it was repaired four times in 10 month. Once the screen is broken, the maintenance cost will be more than 900 yuan, and you can buy another mobile phone after several repairs. "Wang Qi is very disappointed with the quality of Yu Rou's mobile phone.

Science and technology are in deep trouble of "lack of money" "img _ height =" 745 "img _ width =" 399 "data-src ="//imgq8.q578.com/ef/0331016D638D5E7FD/kl. Consumers frequently report the quality problems of mobile phones in Yu Rou to Red Star Finance Bureau.

In addition to mobile phones, Yu Rou has also introduced real wireless headphones, fashionable clothes and hats, selfie sticks and smart notebooks. The market response was flat.

Red Star Capital Bureau found that due to the lack of long-term market orders for Yu Rou Science and Technology, the company's capacity utilization rate was too low. The data disclosed in the prospectus can also confirm this point. In 20 18, 20 19 and the first half of 2020, Yu Rou's capacity utilization rates were 15. 1%, 3 1.2% and 5.3% respectively, which also meant that the company's capacity was idle for most of the time.

In terms of production and sales rate, the sales volume is also far lower than the actual output. In 20 19, the actual output of fully flexible display screen was 314,000, but the sales volume was only 52,700. In the first half of 2020, affected by the epidemic situation, the actual output dropped to 48,600 tablets, but the sales volume was only 22 1 1,000 tablets. In other words, the products produced by the company cannot be converted into sales revenue in time.

Liu Chang, a former employee of Yu Rou Science and Technology, was deeply impressed. On March 29th, Chang Lu told Red Star Capital Bureau, "From the second half of 20 19, the quantity of goods on the production line in Yu Rou became less and less. Until the end of 2020, I run for two or three days at most once a month, and the rest of the time is vacant. I only ran for about a week before leaving my job in September, 2002/KLOC-0. "

It can be seen from the e-mail of Yu Rou Science and Technology that the company has been seeking financing help, but the Red Star Capital Bureau found that there has been no new investment in Yu Rou since May 2020.

At the end of last year, when Yu Rou Science and Technology was exposed to wage arrears, founder Bill Liu quoted the article "Musk recalls the brink of bankruptcy: waking up every day in a dream and crying all night" on personal social media, and said: "In fact, it is not easy for everyone. In the darkest moment of life, don't expect to send charcoal in the snow. The only thing you can do is to stick to it and never give up. "

Now, it seems that the dark moment of science and technology in Bill Liu and Yu Rou is still not over.

Editor Yang Cheng

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