BEIJING, August 30  (TMTPOST)— Legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffett first cut stakes in Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD Co, since his company started to build and hold the position more than a decade ago.

Source: Visual China

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold 1.33 million Hong Kong-listed BYD shares at an the average price of HK$277.1016 (US$35.30) apiece on August 24, and the sales brought the company’s holding of BYD total H shares down from 20.49% to 19.92%, according to a filing with the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX) Tuesday.

Through the sales, Buffett cashed in HK$369 million and achieved more than 3300% return since Berkshire first acquired 225 million BYD shares for HK$8.00 each in September, 2008, and maintained its position in the following 14 years.

The transaction came ahead of BYD’s mid-year financial results. BYD unveiled Monday that both sales and profit set new high in a half-of-year period in history. Its revenue in the first half of 2022 rose 65.71% year-over-year (YoY) to RMB15.06 billion, and the net income jumped 206.35% to RMB3.595 billion. The EV maker seems right at inflection point following negative growth in net income for four quarters in a row last year.

Berkshire’s trimming stakes confirms the market speculation last month. Exchange data showed 99.93% of BYD stakes entered in the Central Clearing And Settlement System (CCASS) as of July 11 , increasing 20.94 percent points from the proportion on July 8, and the 20.94% stake was exactly the same with the BYD position that Berkshire reported in last December. The development spurred the speculation that Berkshire would liquidate BYD shares it held for more than a decade since shares have to enter CCASS before sales transaction settled. BYD soon denied any major share sales. It said on July 12 that all the major shareholders should disclose sales and no disclosure about sales had been found on the system of the Hong Kong stock exchange yet.