That’ll teach investors to follow Warren Buffett too blindly. Sure, the share price of BYD (Build Your Dreams), China’s second-biggest homegrown car brand by unit sales, jumped more than tenfold in the year after Mr Buffett’s investment through a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway in September 2008. Then it fell by three quarters. And now a profit warning: the company said that its first-quarter net profit could fall 95 per cent from a year earlier. That wiped another 5 per cent off the share price on Monday. Poor performance in BYD’s battery segment, which makes up a 10th of sales, is partly to blame. The bad news, however, is that BYD’s car segment – which makes up half of revenue and carries gross margins one-fifth higher than its average – will do little to turn things around.
盲目跟風華倫•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的投資者得到教訓了。沒錯，在巴菲特通過波克夏哈薩威公司(Berkshire Hathaway)旗下子公司投資於比亞迪之後，這家以銷量計排名中國第二的本土汽車製造商的股價已經上漲了逾9倍。但其後，股價已經跌去了四分之三。現在該公司則發出了盈利預警：比亞迪稱，今年第一季度淨利潤可能比去年同期下跌95%。訊息一出，週一比亞迪股價再跌5%。電池業務表現欠佳是業績下滑的原因之一，這一業務佔了比亞迪銷售額的十分之一。不妙的是，比亞迪的汽車業務——佔營收的一半，毛利率高出公司平均水準十分之一——將無力扭轉頹勢。