Billionaire Buffett to visit China's BYD Co. Sept. 27

At the invitation of BYD, the famous stock guru and BYD stockholder Warren Buffett will the company on Sept. 27 during his China visit. He will first inspect BYD’s production base in Shenzhen and then Beijing, Changsha and Huizhou. He is scheduled to return to the United States on Sept. 30, Shanghai Securities News reported Tuesday.

Buffett will pay a visit to BYD's sedan production base located at Shenzhen's Longgang district, which is capable of producing 200,000 sedans per year with 8 production lines and also is BYD's major research and design center for electric vehicles. And here Buffett will have a top meeting with BYD’s senior executives.

After that, Buffett will visit BYD's production bases in Kuiyong that produce OEM batteries and cell phones. And then he will visit its Baolong production base, which is responsible for home appliance projects and employee training and the Huizhou production base, which takes on the tasks of producing automobile components and doing research and development on automobile engines.

It is noteworthy that Buffett will pay a visit to BYD's Changsha bus production facility. According to a report, BYD took over Changsha-based Midea Coach Manufacturing Co., Ltd. at a price of 3 billion yuan (about 442 million U.S. dollars) in August 2009 and turned it into an electric bus and passenger vehicle production company with an annual capacity of 300,000 units.

Warren Buffett's investment in BYD started from September 2008 when MidAmerican Energy, a unit of investment mogul Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in BYD for 1.8 billion HK dollars (about 30 million US dollars).

By October 2009, the share price of BYD rose to 88.4 HK dollars a share from 8 HK dollars when he bought it, which brought him a definitely high return. Even though the price has fallen to 49.2 HK dollars a share at present, Buffett also got nearly 1 million HK dollars.

Based on the investor relations, Warren Buffett has been hoping to visit BYD in China. And he announced early this May at a meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that the detailed schedule of his visit to China would be arranged by BYD and he was looking forward to this trip to China

Apart from his inspections of BYD facilities, Buffett will host a joint charity banquet with Bill Gates in Beijing on Sept. 29, which will be attended by 50 wealthy Chinese individuals.

By Zhao Chenyan People's Daily Online