Here's Why Warren Buffett-backed BYD Stock Is A Better Electric-vehicle Bet Than Tesla

Chinese EV maker BYD Co Ltd BYDDY manufactures a lot more electric vehicles than American EV giant Tesla Inc TSLA if one considers hybrids. The company might soon overtake Tesla in the number of battery electric vehicles sold as well.

What Happened: BYD manufactures battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), unlike Tesla, which makes solely BEVs, Barron’s reported.

However, it is soon set to surpass Tesla’s battery electric vehicle sales as well. In the third quarter, BYD shipped approximately 432,000 BEVs, just shy of Tesla's 435,000 units. Wall Street expects BYD to sell more BEVs than Tesla’s estimated 475,000 in the fourth quarter.

BYD sold about 2.8 million passenger vehicles as of the end of November, marking a 70% rise from the corresponding period last year. BEV sales notched a growth of about 73% in the meantime.

The companies generated almost similar operating profit of about $1.7 billion in the last quarter with an operating profit margin of under 8%. However, while BYD has a market cap of 76.5 billion, Tesla has a market cap of a whopping $809 billion.

The report pins this difference in market cap down to the place of origin of the two companies. While BYD is a Chinese company based in Shenzhen, Tesla is based in Austin and U.S. stocks generally earn higher valuations for investors due to differences in market liquidity, regulation and country-specific risks, the report noted, while adding that stocks in the Shanghai Composite trade for roughly 10 times estimated 2024 earnings while those in the S&P 500 trade for double that.

Furthermore, while Tesla is deemed to be at the forefront of new technologies with its energy storage venture and self-driving features, BYD lacks in-house autonomous driving tech, it added.

However, over 90% of analysts covering BYD rate the stock a “buy,” the report said.

In fact, Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black deems Tesla and BYD to be the sole two investable EV companies at present. "Tesla and BYD are the only two investible EV companies today," said Black.

"Both make money with very different strategies."

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Read More: Elon Musk Is ‘Heart And Lungs’ Of Tesla, Says Wedbush’s Dan Ives: ‘This Is Just Starting’

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