Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway further sold its stake in BYD, reducing its holdings to below 5%. This disclosure may be Berkshire’s final one.
According to Reuters, documents submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday (July 22) showed that on July 16, Berkshire reduced its stake in BYD H-shares from 5.06% to 4.94%. At an average price of HK$246.96 per share, they sold 1,395,500 shares of BYD, earning HK$344 million (US$44 million).
As of June 11, Berkshire’s stake in BYD was 7.02%.
Under the rules of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, major shareholders need to disclose sales when their holdings fall below an integer percentage. However, when a company or institution’s stake in a Hong Kong-listed company drops below 5%, they do not need to disclose their holdings anymore. This latest disclosure likely marks Berkshire’s final disclosure of its BYD holdings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Berkshire began investing in BYD in 2008, spending $230 million to buy approximately 225 million shares, equivalent to a 10% stake. After BYD’s share price rose sharply, on August 24, 2022, Berkshire sold 1.33 million shares of BYD traded in Hong Kong, reducing its stake from 20.04% to 19.92%, marking Buffett’s first divestment since buying BYD shares.
In May 2023, documents submitted by Berkshire to the Hong Kong Exchange showed that the company sold 1.96 million shares of BYD; and on October 25 of the same year, the company sold 820,500 shares of BYD’s Hong Kong-listed stock.
Since the first reduction in its BYD holdings in August 2022, by the end of 2023, Berkshire had divested its shares in this Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, heavily subsidized by the Chinese Communist Party, at least 13 times.
On June 11 this year, Berkshire sold 1.3 million shares of BYD listed in Hong Kong for HK$310.5 million (US$39.8 million). On June 19, Berkshire further reduced its BYD holdings by 2.0175 million shares, selling at an average price of HK$234.57 per share, totaling HK$473 million in proceeds.