Li Lu

Li Lu is the founder of Himalaya Capital and an important investor in BYD Company Limited. According to an interview made public by BYD in April 2026, he began buying shares of BYD in the autumn of 2002 and, at the time of the interview, had held them for about 23 years without ever selling them. He founded his own firm in 1997, which began operating in 1998; his investment style is relatively concentrated with long holding periods, and he prefers to select rather unusual companies.

Li Lu first noticed BYD around early 2000. He read in a technical publication that a Chinese company had begun producing rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, and that even Motorola, then at its peak, was using the company’s batteries. About two years later the company went public, and he found that it had an office in Chicago, close to Motorola, so he phoned it directly; the call was answered by Li Ke, who later became a vice president of BYD. Through Li Ke’s arrangement, in the autumn shortly after BYD’s listing, he met BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu at a small hotel near the airport; the meeting, originally scheduled for half an hour to an hour, lasted several hours. Soon afterwards he decided to get to know the company in depth, and bought his first shares.

Over their long association, Li Lu repeatedly discussed strategy, products and technology with Wang Chuanfu, while gaining only a brief understanding of the financial figures. He described Wang Chuanfu as someone who thinks about strategy from first principles and solves problems with an engineer’s mindset, who is strong-willed, and who has a fiduciary spirit towards shareholders, employees, dealers and customers; he also noted that BYD did not bring in venture capital before its listing, that the shares Wang Chuanfu promised to various parties were always given directly by him, and that his own shareholding kept declining.

In early 2003, BYD entered the automobile industry by acquiring Qinchuan Automobile, and its share price immediately plunged. Li Lu had no particular reaction to this; what he cared about was how this business could be made to work and whether it was a good business. He noticed that Wang Chuanfu had considered from the very beginning that developments in battery technology might one day be able to power cars, and that his idea was first to master conventional cars and then to add batteries once they had matured. During the same period, Li Lu was also in contact with Tesla, when Elon Musk had not yet fully taken control and the founder was still Martin Eberhard, and friends hoped he would invest. It was also in 2003 and 2004 that Li Lu became investment partners with Charlie Munger, who thereafter became his business partner as well as his lifelong mentor and friend.

In 2005, BYD’s first fuel-powered car, the F3, was launched. Thereafter BYD ran batteries, automobiles and contract manufacturing of components and other businesses at the same time, with continuous R&D spending, and the pressure on its balance sheet grew heavier. According to Li Qian, by 2007 the company’s balance sheet had reached “the critical point of being stretched at the edge of a cliff”; Nokia was willing to give it contract manufacturing business but was worried that BYD would not hold up, so the company launched the spin-off listing of BYD Electronic, and Li Lu supported Wang Chuanfu in pushing it forward. In December 2007, BYD Electronic completed its listing at the last moment, raising HK$6.7 billion, which allowed the company not only to come through the 2008 financial crisis smoothly but also to keep investing in R&D.

In 2008, through Li Lu’s introduction, Warren Buffett bought a stake in BYD; Li Lu said that by then the Munger family had already held BYD through his fund for at least four years. Li Lu explained in the interview that during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, although from an American perspective the world economy faced the possibility of collapse, his own position was quite good and the share price was at a relatively favourable level; he had always hoped that a company with as unusual a development path as BYD could receive a special input of energy, and that as its R&D and manufacturing capabilities advanced, it might eventually disrupt the industry. He recalled that the company needed a boost to its reputation at the time, while outside pressure and market views had created a huge gap between the share price and its actual capabilities, which offered investors a very good opportunity and made it possible in value terms to bring in investors he trusted and respected, so he began pushing the matter forward in 2008 and 2009. According to Li Qian, the deal was priced at HK$8 per share, against a closing price of HK$8.04 on the previous trading day; on the Monday after the news was announced the shares opened at HK$16, and later surged as high as HK$80 at one point. Li Qian also mentioned that the news was kept highly confidential within BYD, with only three or four people including himself aware of it, and that the company’s share price was very stable for more than a month before the announcement.

According to Li Qian, after Warren Buffett bought in, BYD’s share price rose from HK$8 to HK$80 within a year, and the company expanded rapidly in 2009 and 2010. Li Lu said that whether the share price rose tenfold or later fell 80%, he neither sold a single share nor bought a single share, keeping his original core holding; what he focused on was the change in the company’s long-term intrinsic value. According to Li Qian, in 2011 Wang Chuanfu reflected at an internal company meeting on the adjustment period of the previous three years, when there were problems with the income statement and profits, investment was heavy, the balance sheet faced challenges, models such as the F6 were not successful, and dealers withdrew one after another from the sales network. Li Lu believed that the mistakes BYD made in those years had many precedents in the industry, that the automobile industry itself is full of challenges, that only carmakers that get over this hurdle can become great companies, and that the key lay in the team’s ability to learn and its equanimity. Li Qian also recalled that around 2011 he went to Li Lu’s office in Los Angeles for an in-depth talk of two or three hours, in which Li Lu encouraged him with first-principles thinking and described Wang Chuanfu as resilient, eager for scientific exploration and possessed of a sense of boundaries. Thereafter, throughout a series of processes from the A-share listing in 2011, the new bond issue in 2013 and the lightning placement in 2014 to the 15 billion yuan A-share fundraising in 2015, the two communicated frequently.

According to Li Qian, one afternoon in 2014 the company’s share price suddenly fell sharply, by as much as 50% intraday, and long-term investors called one after another to ask whether something was wrong with the company; he replied that there was nothing wrong with the company. Rumours then spread in the market that “Buffett is going to reduce his holding” and “Li Lu is going to reduce his holding”; he phoned Li Lu, who was on a plane, and Li Lu answered, “It is definitely not me,” and expressed full confidence in the company. That evening the company also got in touch with Warren Buffett’s side and confirmed that he had made no move; at seven o’clock the next morning Wang Chuanfu and Li Qian held a press conference to clarify the matter, and the share price rebounded 30% that day and later returned to its original level. According to Li Qian, Li Lu bought more than 3 million additional shares during this sharp share price fall.

After the epidemic broke out in late 2019 and early 2020, Li Lu launched an angel foundation in the United States, mobilising people, materials and money to support Wuhan. He recalled that the biggest challenge at the time was that masks could not be bought, and that transport capacity also ran into various difficulties for a time; he solved these one by one and raised money, also putting in a lot himself, but the number of masks that could be bought was still very small. In June 2020, BYD launched the Han series of models.

On April 3 and 4, 2026, BYD officially released a video titled “Insight into Value, Across Cycles: Li Lu and BYD’s 23 Years”, presenting an interview of Li Lu conducted by Li Qian, board secretary and chief investment officer of BYD Group. The interview, held in Hong Kong, China, reviewed BYD’s 25-year development and the two sides’ 23-year investment relationship, analysed Wang Chuanfu’s entrepreneurial qualities and BYD’s core, and looked ahead to the company’s globalisation and future development.