Berkshire Hathaway has sold its final stake in BYD, closing the book on a 17-year partnership that propelled the Chinese automaker into the global spotlight and delivered one of Warren Buffett’s most lucrative investments, according to Nikkei Asia.
Berkshire first bought 225 million shares in September 2008 for about HK$8 apiece, just weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed. The deal gave Berkshire a 9.9% stake, which BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu hailed at the time as a vote of “confidence” in the company’s future. The funds went toward batteries and EV development, fueling BYD’s global rise.
Buffett himself praised the automaker to shareholders, once describing its plug-in EV as “the future” and “amazing.” BYD became a fixture in Berkshire’s annual reports and at one point ranked among its largest equity holdings, alongside Coca-Cola and American Express.
Nikkei Asia writes that the payoff was immense for the man who always claimed to "never bet against America". Berkshire disposed of most shares at over HK$200 before a recent stock split, compared to HK$113.5 last Friday, when news of the full exit emerged. A $230 million investment turned into billions in profit.
Buffett credited his late partner Charlie Munger with championing the bet. “Charlie twice pounded the table with me and just said, you know, ‘buy, buy, buy.’ And BYD was one of them, and Costco was the other,” Buffett recalled at Berkshire’s 2024 meeting.
Yet Buffett has long warned of the auto sector’s volatility. “Don’t count on us foreseeing who the winners will be, and don’t count on us for predicting when something will happen,” he said in 2024. A year earlier, he cautioned that even Henry Ford “owned the world” before losing money two decades later. “They’re not going to go away, and they look like a winner at any given time, but it doesn’t get you a permanent place.”
BYD itself faces mounting challenges. It ranked seventh globally in auto sales last year, ahead of Honda but behind Ford, yet is now under pressure from rising Chinese rivals and global scrutiny of low-priced EV exports.
The exit also reflects Berkshire’s shifting focus. Buffett sold out of PetroChina in 2008 amid controversy and later doubled down on BYD, but more recently pivoted to Japan’s top trading houses. With Munger gone and Buffett preparing to hand the CEO role to Greg Abel in January, Berkshire is entering a new era.
BYD acknowledged the moment on Monday. Li Yunfei, its head of PR, thanked Buffett and Munger for 17 years of partnership. The company has reason to be grateful: since Berkshire’s investment, revenue has jumped 37-fold to 777 billion yuan ($109 billion), while net profit climbed 25 times to over 40 billion yuan.
For Buffett, the BYD chapter is closed. For BYD, the challenge is whether it can keep its momentum in a tougher global market—without the backing of the “Oracle of Omaha.”
Buffett has long preached “never bet against America,” but when it came to cars, it seems even the Oracle of Omaha knew better than to bet on himself.