The most successful investor in the world, Warren Buffett, has announced his investment firm, MidAmerican (part of Berkshire Hathaway), would increase its financial stake in the Chinese automobile battery producer turned carmaker BYD Corp, sending the stock rallying up today.
BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu said today, “MidAmerican has always intended to raise its stake in BYD because it believes BYD has good prospects in the development of renewable energy,”
The exact stake increase is currently unclear.
MidAmerican previously bought a 10-percent stake in BYD for $230 million, at about a $16 billion valuation.
BYD is making good progress on developing electric powered vehicles.
The company says it would launch its e6 electric powered only car in the United States by the end of 2010, one year earlier from the original time line. The vehicle is currently being tested for U.S. safety regulations.
The company says the e6 can travel 249 miles before it needs a fresh charge, and could actually pose a significant threat to the big auto makers such as GM if they do not produce a competing economy vehicle.
BYD is ambitiously forecasting the company could sell up to 9 million e6 cars by the end of 2025.
BYD says it has sold 180,000 cars in the first half of 2009, sending net profit up nearly 50-percent for the period to USD $173 million compared to the same period last year.
BYD is estimating it would surpass 400,000 vehicles sold by the end of this year.
The company is still very actively involved in its core business of developing car batteries and says it would supply them to interested competing carmakers.
Hercules holds a B.Comm Finance from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level 2 Candidate. He was previously a contributor at FiLife, a finance website owned by Dow Jones and IAC. 
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