Berkshire Hathaway trims stake in China's BYD

FILE PHOTO: A person walks next to BYD Seal car in a BYD Auto company and Autotorino store in Milan, Italy, March 20, 2024. REUTERS/Claudia Greco/File Photo

BEIJING/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has trimmed its stake in China's BYD, which surpassed Tesla last year as the world's largest seller of electric vehicles.

Berkshire recently sold 1.3 million Hong Kong-listed BYD shares for HK$310.5 million ($39.8 million), according to a filing on Monday with the Hong Kong stock exchange. That reduced its stake in BYD's issued H-shares to 6.90% from 7.02%.

Buffett's company began investing in Shenzhen-based BYD in 2008, when it paid $230 million for about 225 million shares, then equal to a 10% stake.

It began selling shares in 2022, after BYD's share price had risen more than 20-fold.

The share price has fallen about 30% since peaking in June 2022. Tesla dethroned BYD and reclaimed its status as the largest electric vehicle seller in April.

Berkshire's investment in BYD the brainchild of Charlie Munger, Berkshire's late vice chairman.

Munger said at the 2023 annual meeting of publishing and software company Daily Journal that he had "never helped do anything at Berkshire that was as good as BYD."

Berkshire invests mainly in the United States.

Buffett said at the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate's annual meeting last month that it will keep doing so, but that BYD was a rewarding exception.

"Charlie twice has pounded the table with me and just said, you know, 'Buy, buy, buy,'" Buffett told shareholders. "BYD was one of them, and Costco was the other.... He was right, big time, in both companies."

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Ella Cao, Ethan Wang, Donny Kwok and Niket Nishant; Editing by David Goodman, Krishna Chandra Eluri, Susan Fenton and Shinjini Ganguli)