You've been building up that investment
in the secondary market. MITCHELL And I just want to understand
how much of a weight you think US-China is on it.
Thanks, Caroline, for having me. And how much weight do I think it is?
So for us, we actually, in our base

case, assume that the USA, we have we
have assumed that the US business would actually not account for anything and we
thought it wouldn't be banned. What you see Trump saying is, looks like
if they had another way, you know, what

people say and do in Washington on both
sides are two very different things. Who knows?
You know, I think I can't imagine. The first thing Donald Trump wants to
do, though, is ban TikTok, especially when a lot of his big supporters, like
anyone else who I think is, you know,

probably at odds with Mark Zuckerberg,
who would be the one to benefit off of a, you know, a TikTok ban or like a
Joe Rogan, who's a huge supporter on TikTok.
Right. I think it's pretty positive for TikTok if Trump is in office.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, we
understand, has been dining with Trump over in Mar-a-Lago last week.
So maybe no music changes there. But I'm I'm interested more broadly on
just spell out TikTok and how integral it is to broader ByteDance
investment choices of yours.

Yes.
So the Chinese business, you know, the you know, it's been it's been rumored
and reported in the press that, you know, the North American version of TikTok
is a single digit percentage of the business.
It is not a very it's not a giant part

of the business.
I think it is a part of a business where a lot of investors or potential
investors in it see a huge amount of opportunity.
You know, I believe that TikTok is the biggest existential threat to a
business like Facebook or, you know, 

Instagram inside Facebook or Snapchat.
I mean, just go ask millennials in America what they use or if you know
your own kids or just look at their usage patterns in the data around like
daily active users and how much time is spent on all these different apps.
And TikTok is a real player, but I

can assure you Mark Zuckerberg would
love to have a brand that would be great for his business, you know?
But Mitchell, your expertise is so great on the show because you led or co-led
some significant investments like ByteDance, but also like Alibaba.
You're someone who understands the

consumer of China, where technology is
going there. How much harder has your life become to
access these sorts of deals on the secondary market, for example, to be long China
investments? It's not very popular at the moment.
We'll put it that way.

Although some of the greatest investors
I know say if you do, you know, if 99% of investors are, if you want to know
where public markets are going, do as the ten smartest hedge fund investors and
when all of them tell you, nine of them

tell you one thing and one tells you the
other, you know, do what the one does and, you know, find, make a lot of money.
It is sure not a consensus trade at the moment by China, but it is cheap.
I mean, we can buy ByteDance and we've

been buying ByteDance, you know, at some
five times earnings for a business, you know, growing, you know, much faster
than Facebook is. We think it's really cheap and that the
risk-adjusted reward is quite attractive.
In our base case model, we model the

business at zero.
Look, we might get we might get lucky. The chart may not ban it.
Yeah, you may. You know, the Chinese economy may start
to recover some. And on any stretch of the imagination,
looking at public Chinese comps today in

the Internet space, if you look at
Tencent or Alibaba or Ctrip, these things trade at, you know, substantially
higher multiples and five times earnings.
So not only are we potentially going to get earnings growth, we're also going to
get multiple expansion in when we exit.

But I can't tell you when the company's
going public, and I don't think nor can anybody else but, you know, tailwinds.
And whereas, the U.S. political environment six months ago
looked like it was going to be a huge

headwind, it might become a tailwind,
but, you know, time will tell.

Trump's TikTok Plans

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Bloomberg Technology

Impact of US-China relations on ByteDance investment

Analysis of the weight of US-China relations on ByteDance investment in the secondary market.

Base case assumption: US business not accounting for anything and not being banned.

Uncertainty regarding Trump's potential actions towards TikTok.

Potential positive impact of a Trump presidency on TikTok.

Discussion of Mark Zuckerberg's meetings with Trump and its potential implications.

TikTok's significance within ByteDance and its market position

North American TikTok's relatively small percentage within ByteDance's overall business.

TikTok viewed as a significant threat to competitors like Facebook and Snapchat.

Analysis of TikTok's popularity and usage patterns among millennials.

Challenges in accessing China investment deals

Discussion of the difficulty in accessing China deals in the secondary market.

Current unpopularity of long China investments.

Investment strategy suggestion: go against the consensus.

ByteDance valuation and investment strategy

ByteDance's acquisition at five times earnings, considered cheap compared to growth.

Base case model assuming zero value for the US business.

Potential for positive outcomes: no TikTok ban, Chinese economic recovery.

Comparison with Tencent, Alibaba, and Ctrip valuations, suggesting potential multiple expansion.

Future outlook and potential shifts in the political environment

Uncertainty regarding the timing of ByteDance's IPO.

Potential shift from headwind to tailwind in the US political environment.