According to a filing, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has completely sold its stake in Chinese automaker BYD, capping a 17 year investment that saw its value increase by more than 20 times.
The energy unit of Berkshire said that the value of their BYD investment was zero as of the end of March, compared to $415 million at the end of 2024.In 2008, Buffett's business made its first investment in Shenzhen based BYD, paying $230 million for roughly 225 million shares, or 10% of the company at the time.
In 2022, after BYD's share price had more than doubled, it started selling those shares.
A request for comment from Berkshire on Monday was not immediately answered. On Sunday, CNBC was the first to announce that Berkshire was selling its stock.
In a statement on his official Weibo account, Li Yunfei, the general manager of branding and public relations at BYD, expressed gratitude to Berkshire for its "investment, help and companionship over the past 17 years."
The stake sale, according to him, was a "normal" stock investing transaction. A request for additional comment from BYD was not immediately answered.
As a result of a government push against price wars, the largest competitor of Tesla suffered a decline in quarterly profits for the first time in three and a half years.
In August, BYD's domestic sales which account for about 80% of its international shipments dropped for the fourth consecutive month.
According to Reuters, it has lowered the yearly sales goal by up to 16% to 4.6 million cars.
