By CHEN Xiaotong
WANG Xing, the founder and CEO of e-commerce giant Meituan, who is also a non-executive director and major investor of Li Auto, has sold 2 million shares of the EV startup over the past four days, cashing out about HK$310 million (290 million yuan, US$40 million).
According to documents filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 19, the transactions took place between September 12 and 15. Wang cashed out HK$3 million from Li Auto in April and still holds 384 million shares.
Li Auto said the transaction is a personal action, accounting for a very small part of Wang’s total ownership, and does not involve Meituan's holdings.
Wang is an important investor in Li Auto. In 2019, Wang personally injected US8 million into the company while Meituan invested US million with another US0 million following a year later. During Li Auto's US IPO, Meituan subscribed to US0 million in shares, while Wang subscribed to US million. With multiple rounds of investment, Wang and Meituan's total investment in Li Auto reached US.1 billion.
Li Auto is one of the few new Chinese EV startups to make a profit, 2.3 billion yuan in Q2, and the third consecutive quarter of profitability.
In 2020, Wang 2020 predicted that only three EV startups would survive while state-owned enterprises and industry magnates (BYD and Geely for example) would take over the rest of the auto market. Li Auto was on Wang’s list, along with Nio and Xpeng.
Now Li Auto leads its two competitors by a long way. On the US stock market, Li Auto's latest market cap is US$40 billion, while Nio and XPeng are at US$18 billion and US$16 billion respectively.
