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BEIJING, September 2 (TMTPOST)— BYD Co. is consolidating its position as the largest electric vehicle (EV) maker in China even though one of its long-standing major shareholders began to offload shares.
Source: Visual China
BYD sold 174,915 new energy vehicles (NEVs) in August, about 2.85 times more than its sales a year ago, according to a statement Friday. The latest monthly data suggest a new sales record for six months in a row, bringing the cumulative sales in the first eight months of the year to 978,795 vehicles with a year-over-year increase of 267.31%. As of August, BYD sales topped the 10,000 –unit milestone for the sixth consecutive month, and maintained triple-digit monthly growth since entering into 2022.
The achievement highlights BYD’s robust growth in green energy as the automaker has ceased the production of cars powered only by internal combustion engines since March, completely shifting to production of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
Coincidently, the same day that BYD unveiled its sales record saw legendary investor Warren Buffett trimmed his stakes in the company for the second time in the past nine working days. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway cut its stake from 19.92% to 18.87% by selling 1.716 million Hong Kong-listed BYD shares at an the average price of HK$262.7243 (US$33.47) each, according to a filing with the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX).
The transaction made Berkshire cash in over HK$450 million ($57.33 million) following its sales 1.33 million shares on August 24, which was the investor’s first position change since he built the position through acquiring 225 million BYD shares in September, 2008.
BYD has learned from HKEX about Buffett’s sales and any stake reduction is shareholders’ own decision on investment, staff at the company told Chinese media outlet The Paper late Friday. BYD has repeatedly refreshed its sales record and operates as healthy as normal currently, the people added.
While BYD tried to play down Buffett’s move, the investor’s offloading more shares spurred bets on more sales. Daisy Li, a fund manager at EFG Asset Management HK Ltd., expected Berkshire could continue to sell more shares. According to Cole Smead, president of investment firm Smead Capital Management, Buffett now is telling us he wants to “take money off the table to go elsewhere”.
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