Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / BYD (BYDDY)
No. of Recommendations: 3
Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company owned by Warren Buffett, has sold 820,500 Hong Kong-listed shares of electric vehicle maker BYD Co (002594.SZ) for HK$201.73 million ($25.78 million), a stock exchange filing showed.
The sale on Oct. 25 lowered Berkshire's holdings in BYD's issued H-shares to 7.98% from 8.05%, the filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday showed.
https://stocks.apple.com/AJlCGubjDT728JrKfK3bRMg
No. of Recommendations: 1
Selling an EV maker and buying an oil company; a typically contrarian move. Buffett will be attacked even more by the ESG investing activists.
No. of Recommendations: 11
I'm no expert, and asked to be corrected if someone has better information, but my understanding is that this is being misreported -- disclosures occur for HKEX when a single digit percentage threshold is crossed (from 8% to 7.xx%). The reduction from June 19 to today has actually been 10,990,000 shares, so over $330 million or so in sales since June 19. In short, the new filing reveals that the latest sale of 820,500 shares was one small sale among many since the last reported sale in June, with precise details unknown.
The share count change is the relevant figure here:
https://di.hkex.com.hk/di/NSAllFormList.aspx?sa2=a...
No. of Recommendations: 1
Yes, Lear has it correct
No. of Recommendations: 10
Selling an EV maker and buying an oil company; a typically contrarian move.
The Toyota former CEO states: "People are finally seeing reality" - i.e. that the transition to EV light transportation is going to take longer than the public generally realizes. He thinks it will eventually happen but not on the time scale many expect. Many reasons - costs, range, time required to develop large material supplies needed, charging infrastructure, existing fleet replacement, etc. These issues are all known and have been pointed out but only now are starting to sink into public awareness.
And there are many areas of carbon emission that EV's don't address. Airlines and heavy transportation, industrial plants, steel, cement, and fertilizer production, petrochemicals, mining and agriculture, etc.
Economic growth by developing countries requires increased energy consumption. Fossil fuels are cheaper and easier to transport and deliver than electricity.
So, maybe Buffett's moves are just recognizing reality.
No. of Recommendations: 2
I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop and change with EVs becoming more standard. With EVs, virtual reality, augmented reality, fusion power, etc. I'm always reminded of Amara's Law: 'We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.'
Hopefully I'll be around long enough to see some fun and surprising results!
No. of Recommendations: 4
Buffett has been selling since August 2022, trimming this spectacularly successful bet:
Berkshire Hathaway initially purchased its BYD stake in 2008, acquiring 225 million shares for about $232 million. In late 2021, Berkshire owned about 21% of BYD, according to Hong Kong regulatory filings, worth more than $7 billion dollars at its peak last year.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/wa...With the sales announced today, we are down from about 21% to 7.98% of the Hong Kong shares, or about 87 million shares still held, by my calculation.
The share price is 236 CNY, and has been between about 225 and 300 for the last 2 years, so so far, these sales have worked out pretty well. But BYD the company is firing on all cylinders, probably passing Tesla for unit EV sales and doing this quite profitably - they are currently at about 22 times earnings over the last 12 months, and their revenues are up about 80% year over year. They sold 287,454 hybrid and fully electric cars in September alone, on track for 3 million vehicles in 2023, about the same as Tesla. For comparison's sake, world car EV sales this year are projected to be 14 million, and sales (electric and internal combustion combined) are expected to be 87 million this year. So BYD will sell about 15% of all electric cars and almost 4% of ALL cars.
I wouldn't want to bet against them, and I would be happy if Berkshire held on to the remaining 87 million shares, worth about $3.6b.
dtb
No. of Recommendations: 7
The Toyota former CEO states: "People are finally seeing reality" - i.e. that the transition to EV light transportation is going to take longer than the public generally realizes. He thinks it will eventually happen but not on the time scale many expect. Many reasons - costs, range, time required to develop large material supplies needed, charging infrastructure, existing fleet replacement, etc. These issues are all known and have been pointed out but only now are starting to sink into public awareness.
He's wrong. People want more EVs, not less. What they want less of are inferior products made by legacy auto companies who haven't been able to keep up. Expect the carnage to continue.
No. of Recommendations: 18
He's wrong. People want more EVs, not less
He's not wrong at the moment. EV demand is strong. But supply is stronger--demand at the moment is less than supply, resulting in discounting, falling sales volumes, way more days sitting on the dealer's lot. This sort of things doesn't tend to last all that long. It will change, one way or another, and probably fairly soon. Among other factors, some shakeouts and consolidation among suppliers are probably coming.
Longer term? Within a few years it seems reasonably likely that the demand for lithium batteries will exceed supply at a given price, keeping prices high and volumes capped.
My crazy policy idea of the day:
For someone caring about minimizing passenger vehicle pollution (CO2 and other) in the next 5-10-15 years, the answer is obvious: a massive tax on lithium batteries!
Sound counterintuitive? Consider:
Almost no vehicles go over 60 miles in a typical day. The range anxiety and virtue signalling have created battery hoarders, resulting in too small a fraction of cars without tailpipes. It is not socially responsible this decade to own a car with a 300 mile electric range. A huge tax on the battery capacity over 60 miles, used to subsidize the batteries for cars with (say) 20 kWh capacity or less, would give the best environmental outcome in the medium term. Over that range? Hybrid, of course. There are no particular capacity constraints on engine manufacturing. The subsidies would go only to a class of hybrid car that can't start its engine unless the batteries were 90%+ charged in the prior 48 hours and are now empty.
In the near term there are only so many batteries. Environmentally, it would be better to have five "priority electric" hybrids with 60 mile electric range on the road rather than four diesel cars and one purely electric car with 300 mile range--a range that almost certainly isn't getting used on a median day.
Jim
No. of Recommendations: 4
In the near term there are only so many batteries. Environmentally, it would be better to have five "priority electric" hybrids with 60 mile electric range on the road rather than four diesel cars and one purely electric car with 300 mile range--a range that almost certainly isn't getting used on a median day.
More or less what Toyota was saying - they can make 5 hybrids or one EV using the same battery materials. The "priority" restriction wouldn't work politically, of course.
I hear there are lots of plug-in hybrids in Europe, and many drivers don't bother to plug them in. Probably because it doesn't make financial sense when electric prices are so high (35p/kWh in UK - yikes). They get them for the tax breaks. I got one as a rental in the UK early this year and had nowhere to plug in so just ran it on petrol. Got good gas mileage, though.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Range issues with EVs and batteries to me are always about the extremes. Say one lives in hurricane country. If you have to evacuate from the coast, and your family lives 100 miles away. Where's the resilience with EVs to deal with these situations.
You end up creating a whole new arena of fringe case problems by lowering the capabilities of EVs.
No. of Recommendations: 2
The subsidies would go only to a class of hybrid car that can't start its engine unless the batteries were 90%+ charged in the prior 48 hours and are now empty.
This imposes a lot of undesirable constraints on the PHEV architecture. Nobody should want to actually run a PHEV down to zero - even if the current designs allowed it, which they don't AFAIK (certainly my Clarity does not). And if you do run the battery too low, the relatively weak ICE it's usually paired with will have a really hard time making the car perform adequately. Clarity's implementation is known as "angry bees" for the disturbingly high-pitched sound the ICE makes when trying to go up hills or accelerate on low battery.
While in a general sense PHEVs may make economic sense, I'm looking forward to a pure EV for my next car. Adding all the ICE hardware and integration with the battery pack greatly increases the complexity of the vehicle and adds a lot of maintenance burden and failure points.
No. of Recommendations: 12
While in a general sense PHEVs may make economic sense, I'm looking forward to a pure EV for my next car. Adding all the ICE hardware and integration with the battery pack greatly increases the complexity of the vehicle and adds a lot of maintenance burden and failure points.
I never owned a PHEV and went direct to BEV seven years ago for this exact reason. I just didn't want the added complexity. Why do I want to deal with oil changes and transmissions? I might consider a PHEV with 70-100mi of real world range but I live in the wide open Midwest and drive a lot. A serial hybrid like the discontinued Volt was the most compelling in terms of minimal drivetrain complexity, but I'm a bit of an engineering geek at heart.
We are on our second BEV now and the number one question I still get from people is 'Don't you worry about where you will charge it?' No. I charge it in my garage. I get up, I drive it, and I plug it in at night so it's the same experience you get with your iPhone. If I'm going on a trip where EV fast charging would be inconvenient I just drive our gas car and wish the whole time I didn't have to. The laggy transmission and slow acceleration make your typical ICE vehicle a completely boring experience. The fact that I'm driving an electric truck that out accelerates my childhood dream car Porsche 959 completely blows my mind to this day. Life is too short to drive boring cars in my opinion :)
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 9
Got good gas mileage, though.
What seem to not gain enough attention is that increasing miles per gallon is a fast way to reduce emissions - just burn less gasoline. And hybrids can do that using far less lithium - as Jim points out - and without range and recharging stations concerns. So can high mileage ICC's for that matter, just less efficiently.
That's what Toyota is seeing. Just common sense if combatting climate change is the objective.
But hybrids don't offer the thrill of fast acceleration, the prestige, and the "feel good" of owning a pure EV. That's what seems to have driven the first wave of IV's. Not what will impact climate change the fastest and most efficiently. That segment of human nature that Musk has ridden to riches.
Maybe that is starting to sink in as the cost, complexity, and time required to electrify the highway systems is becoming more apparent. I hope that happens to politicians as well as the public.
No. of Recommendations: 12
I never owned a PHEV and went direct to BEV seven years ago for this exact reason. I just didn't want the added complexity. Why do I want to deal with oil changes and transmissions?
Bearing in mind that your situation is atypical if you do actually drive more than 100km in a day regularly--
Well, to some people the answer is "it's not about you".
You have what you want, which is great.
Or, five people could be driving electric-priority 95%+ of the time with the same battery materials, which are not sufficiently plentiful at the moment to allow all five to have long-range battery-only cars.
The large range battery-only is nice for you, but if all five have hybrids it's better for society at large. And your lungs.
'Don't you worry about where you will charge it?' No. I charge it in my garage
Again, this could be construed by some to be the glib answer of the privileged*. It could be seen as a bit "let them eat cake" : )
Over 1/3 of UK residents don't have an off street parking spot, for example. And many people everywhere with off street parking have no way ever to fit it with an electric line metered to them.
Jim
* yeah, I know I'm privileged! I'm just presenting the case that small batteries, either short range cars or electric-priority hybrids, clearly make the most sense for the planet and for human health--for now.
My problem is I'm not fond of current cars. Looking at an electric conversion of a classic Fiat 500...
No. of Recommendations: 1
increasing miles per gallon is a fast way to reduce emissions - just burn less gasoline. And hybrids can do that using far less lithium - as Jim points out - and without range and recharging stations concerns. So can high mileage ICC's for that matter, just less efficiently.
Good point. I frequently rent a small diesel in France, and I'm impressed at how nice they are and amazed how good the milage is. It is a shame they aren't available in the US, where we turned our back on diesel back when many diesel cars sucked, and missed out on the modern ones.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Bearing in mind that your situation is atypical if you do actually drive more than 100km in a day regularly--
Quite atypical unfortunately. We are currently averaging 108km per day on the BEV we purchased in January. And likely going higher now that return to office is in effect unfortunately. With 'privilege' comes sacrifice sometimes.
I actually agree with the math when it comes to hybrids. I just find the products on offer not all that inspiring. Few are PHEV and the ones that are capable of being plugged in only offer about 30 miles of all electric range at best. And the government incentives are not aligned to support them. At least we live in a location where over 50% of our electricity comes from very cheap nuclear and renewables. Keeps my electricity cost under $0.12/KWh and helps me sleep better at night.
Good luck on the Fiat conversion. Some pretty cool EV crate solutions recently at the SEMA shows. I would love to do an EV resto mod on a classic someday.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 0
Nobody should want to actually run a PHEV down to zero
Interesting point. AIUI, phone batteries last longest if you run them most of the way down and then charge them up completely, rather than do lots of small charges. A contrast between day-to-day practicality and getting the longest life.
SA
No. of Recommendations: 5
Interesting point. AIUI, phone batteries last longest if you run them most of the way down and then charge them up completely, rather than do lots of small charges. A contrast between day-to-day practicality and getting the longest life.
This was true for NiCad batteries. But Li-Ion batteries don't like this and wear out faster.
No. of Recommendations: 2
This was true for NiCad batteries. But Li-Ion batteries don't like this and wear out faster.
Ah, interesting. Thanks!
No. of Recommendations: 0
