BYD Creator and CEO Wang Chuanfu, Charlie Munger, and Warren Buffett Observe at a car launch.
REUTERS/Jason Lee
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has even now also scored a 30-fold gain on its BYD investment.It spent $232 million in 2008 for a stake worth $7.4 billion today.Here’s the narrative of Berkshire’s bet on the Chinese electric-vehicle business. Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more tales .
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has made over $7 billion on its BYD investment to date, representing a roughly 30-fold gain.
The famous investor’s conglomerate spent $232 million to buy 225 million shares in the Chinese electric-vehicle firm in 2008, paying about $1 per share.
BYD’s stock price has skyrocketed over 3,000% on the equivalent of $33 since then, increasing over five-fold within the past year alone. Its market capitalization has generated less than $3 billion to over $95 billion as a outcome.
The automaker’s remarkable stock performance underlines the incredible hype about electric vehicles and producers such as Tesla and Nio. BYD capitalized on investors’ enthusiasm just this week, raising $3.9 billion by selling 133 million new shares.
Here’s a closer look at one of Berkshire’s most unusual investments.
A visionary founder
Berkshire’s vice-chairman, Charlie Munger, first brought BYD and its founder Wang Chuanfu to Buffett’s attention.
“Charlie called me one day and says,’We’ve got to buy BYD, this guy that runs it is better than Thomas Edison,’” Buffett told CNBC in 2018.
Munger made the same comparison in a Fortune cover story in 2009.
“This guy is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch – some thing such as Edison in solving technical problems, and some thing like Welch in getting done everything he needs to do,” he said. “I have never seen anything like it”
Adequately impressed, Buffett and his team struck up talks with BYD and initially offered to buy 25% of the business. Wang wanted the American billionaire’s backing, as he knew it would supercharge the automaker’s public profile and help it make inroads into the US market. However, he turned Buffett down because he didn’t want to part with more than 10% of BYD’s stock.
“This is a guy who didn’t need to market his own company,” Buffett told Fortune. “That has been a great sign.”
Berkshire eventually settled for a 9.9% stake, purchased by its MidAmerican Energy subsidiary. The holding represented about 25% of BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares, and 8.25% of its total outstanding shares.
‘A damn miracle’
Munger defended the unusual bet on a Chinese technology startup at Berkshire’s annual meeting in 2009.
“BYD isn’t some early-stage venture capital company,” he said. Munger pointed out that Wang had already taken the business from a standing start to becoming a leading global manufacturer of rechargeable lithium batteries and cell-phone components.
Wang was”not satisfied with having worked a couple of miracles,” Munger said, so the entrepreneur then set his sights on the automotive industry. BYD, despite having limited capital and facing fierce competition, quickly made the bestselling car model in China.
“This isn’t a unproven, highly speculative activity,” he continued. “What it is, is still a damn miracle”
Munger also emphasized the importance of BYD’s advances in clean-energy technology, given its critical role in combating climate change.
“It could possibly be a little company, but its aspirations are large,” he said. “I will be amazed if good things do not happen here”
“I have never in my life felt more privileged to be connected with a person than I believe about BYD,” he added.
Only the beginning
Munger returned to the subject at Berkshire’s 2010 meeting, arguing the wager showed he and Buffett were capable of adapting their investment approach.
“Berkshire would not have caused an investment BYD if the opportunity had arrived along five or 10 years earlier,” he said. “And it shows that the old men are continuing to learn, and that is absolutely crucial.”
Buffett’s longtime business partner also touted the Chinese company’s track record once again.
“BYD had won its spurs in existence by the time we discovered it,” Munger said. “They had realized things which struck me as almost impossible to do, and they’d done them.”
The automaker has grown stratospherically since Berkshire became a shareholder, albeit with the help of government subsidies. Its revenue has skyrocketed from 26 million Chinese yuan in 2008 to 122 billion yuan ($19 billion) in 2019, boosting its net income from 1 million yuan to 1.6 billion yuan ($250 million) over the same period.
Buffett summed up Munger’s fondness for BYD in a 2018 interview.
“Charlie’s in love with the organization and it has done very nicely,” he said. “The fella that runs it’s big, big thoughts and he is very good at executing”
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