Buffett-Backed Berkshire Sells $45 Million Shares in BYD

BYD has been slowing output since the start of the year when industry-wide sales began to fall. Photo: BYD

Warren Buffett-backed Berkshire Hathaway sold 1.55 million Hong Kong-listed shares of electric vehicle maker BYD for HK$351.81 million ($44.85 million), a stock exchange filing showed.

The sale lowered Berkshire’s holdings in the Chinese EV-maker’s issued H-shares to 12.9% on January 27. That was down from 13.04%, the filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed on Thursday.

Berkshire has gradually reduced its holding in the rapidly expanding company by more than a third.

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The investment company started selling the automaker’s shares in late August. That was the first time Buffett’s company trimmed its stake in 14 years.

Buffett’s company acquired 225 million BYD shares in 2008, giving it a 7.73% stake, equal to the 20.49% stake in H shares, according to BYD’s annual report.

BYD was the world’s largest plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles maker in 2022, with a total of 1.86 million cars sold, growing faster than Tesla.

Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena

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Vishakha Saxena

Vishakha Saxena is the Multimedia and Social Media Editor at Asia Financial. She has been working as a digital journalist since 2013, and is an experienced writer and multimedia producer. As an eager stock market trader and investor, she is keenly interested in economy, emerging markets and the intersections of finance and society. You can tweet to her @saxenavishakha