Warren Buffett Reduces Shareholding Ratio in BYD to 16.62%
On November 11, documents on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) showed that Berkshire Hathaway, founded by Warren Buffett, reduced its holdings of more than 5.78 million BYD shares at HK $196.99 on November 8, and its shareholding ratio dropped to 16.62%.
This is not the first time Berkshire Hathaway has reduced its holdings of BYD. According to HKEx documents, the company sold 1.33 million, 1.716 million, and 3.297 million shares of BYD on August 24, September 1, and November 1 respectively. At that time, its shareholding ratio had dropped to 17.92%. BYD has indicated that the share reduction is normal, and the company is operating healthily.
Apart from Berkshire Hathaway, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management institution, has also reduced its holdings of 3.9 million shares in BYD in October, bringing its shareholding ratio from 6.21% to 5.85%.
Before the shareholding reduction, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unsatisfactory third quarterly report on November 5. The company’s quarterly revenue was $76.934 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9%, while the net loss attributable to shareholders was $2.688 billion, which was worse than the net profit of $10.344 billion in the same period last year, but far better than the net loss of $43.755 billion in the second quarter.
On the other hand, BYD has just handed over a very bright third-quarter report. In the period, its revenue was 117.081 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 115.59%, while the net profit was 5.716 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 350.26%. BYD sold a total of 217,500 new energy passenger cars in October, up 171.89% year-on-year, which is the second consecutive month that sales have exceeded 200,000 units.
According to media invitations obtained by several Chinese automobile bloggers, BYD’s three-millionth new energy vehicle will be rolled off the assembly line soon, and the company will hold a live-streaming at 10:30 am on November 16.
BYD founder Wang Chuanfu divided the transformation of the automobile industry into two parts. The first half is electrification and the second half is intelligence. BYD was in the first echelon with its self-developed battery, motor and electronic control, and seized market share with its cost performance. But in terms of intelligence, Tesla has taken the lead with its super chips, visual algorithms, and operating systems.
SEE ALSO: BYD Executive Believes L2 Intelligent Driving Gaining Traction in China
BYD has no advantage in automatic driving. According to the Top 100 patent list of autonomous driving published by Zero One Think Tank, BYD ranks 10th with 397 pieces, which is not only behind Internet technology companies represented by Baidu, Huawei and DJI, but also inferior to auto competitors such as XPeng and Chery.
