[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 330: Profits

Vaun had actually managed to sell the Blackbeak in the Ylvain Protectorate of all places!

"I thought those religious nutjobs always turned up their noses against foreign mechs."

Bordering on the far side of the Bright Republic's borders, the Ylvain Protectorate was a rather peculiar third-rate state. Similar to the Hexarchic Hegemony, the government instituted a strong religious regime, practically brainwashing its citizens from birth.

The Ylvainans grew up to be a closed and xenophobic bunch. This happened to make their state a favored recruiting ground for the CFA, who constantly needed new blood to crew their warships.

Compared to their passion for warships, the Ylvainans were less impressed with mechs. Even though they understood their necessity and oriented a significant part of their society to mechs, they only maintained a robust defence force and had never shown any signs of aggression.

This pretty much made them one of the best neighbors of the Bright Republic. The Ylvainans would never ally themselves with the Vesians and attack the Republic from two fronts.

"Vaun isn't satisfied with exporting the Blackbeaks to the Ylvainans alone. They're also starting to break grounds in other foreign markets."

Ves didn't know what to think about their ambitious actions. They basically pre-empted the LMC by expanding into the foreign markets first. Would the LMC still have room left to sell their own products once they finally got around to exporting their own products across the border?

The conflicts of interests that resulted in such a clash might upend their entire relationship. On the other hand, Vaun also did the heavy lifting in creating a demand for the product line outside the Republic.

"It feels weird for my company to be the freeloader this time."

In any case, the relatively high volume of production already netted the LMC a lot of money. Regardless if the mechs sold or not, Vaun had to pay the licensing fees upon producing a model.

This already netted the LMC around 700 million credits. Vaun already showed signs of ramping up their production even further, but even if it maintained the same level of production, they still had to pay over 8 billion credits to his company on an annual basis!

Compared to what Ves earned from his contributions on the Glowing Planet, the LMC generated at least five times as much money!

"They didn't even need to risk their lives." He muttered.

This was such a drastic rise in profits especially since the LMC didn't incur that much expenses. The LMC would have earned a multitude more money if it didn't have to rely on third-party manufacturers to compensate for its inadequate production capacity.

Considering the ridiculous amount of licensing fees that Vaun Industrial transferred to the LMC, Ves found it hard to stay angry at the board.

While it didn't appear that Ves was short on money, he knew that things might change once the war started in earnest. In addition, he also needed to accumulate a lot of money to take part in the introduction of the next generation of mechs less than nine years from now.

The first licenses always cost the most. Even a warchest of 100 billion credits wouldn't be sufficient to get ahold of a single nextgen component license.

License costs usually halved after a year or two, but by then the initial investors had gained a decisive first mover advantage in the rebooted mech market. Once these investors gained a lead, it was hard to knock them down from their pedestals.

Still, thanks to his earnings, the LMC was well on track to take part in the coming race.

"All of this is thanks to my Blackbeak design."