By Ying Lou
Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. reported cutting its PetroChina Co. stake for the fifth time after the stock gained sevenfold since the billionaire first invested in China's largest oil producer.
Berkshire sold 66.614 million shares, worth a total of HK$798.7 million ($106 million), at an average HK$11.99 on Sept. 21, reducing its interest in the Beijing-based company to 6.97 percent of the stock not controlled by the Chinese government, a Hong Kong stock exchange filing showed today.
Buffett has sold 868.36 million PetroChina shares this year, according to calculations based on stock exchange filings and Berkshire's annual report. Berkshire bought its stake for less than HK$1.70 a share in April 2003. Activists have urged investors to sell out of PetroChina because of links to Sudan, whose government is accused by the U.S. of supporting genocide.
PetroChina is controlled by state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., which has been developing oil fields since 1996 in Sudan, where 200,000 people have died and 2 million made homeless in the civil war in the western Darfur region.
The Save Darfur Coalition on Sept. 5 called on funds including Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group and American Funds to sell their PetroChina stakes.
Berkshire's stake, worth about $3.3 billion at the end of last year, was equal to about 1.1 percent of PetroChina's entire capital. Buffett paid $488 million for the holding in 2003.
Shares Gain
PetroChina shares fell 3.4 percent to HK$14.10 by the end of trading in Hong Kong. The stock has gained 28 percent this year, compared with a 39 percent increase in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.
This is the fifth time since July that Buffett has disclosed to the Hong Kong exchange that he has sold PetroChina shares. Under the city's Securities and Futures Ordinance, an investor with a stake of 5 percent or more must notify the exchange when the percentage of shares crosses a whole percentage number within three business days.
Jackie Wilson, a spokeswoman for Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire, declined to comment.
China's stock market regulator approved on Sept. 24 PetroChina's plan to sell as many as 4 billion so-called yuan- denominated A shares in Shanghai. The stock sale may raise $5 billion yuan to expand refineries and boost output at oil fields, according to plans set out in PetroChina's listing prospectus.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Lou in Hong Kong at ylou1@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: October 8, 2007 10:01 EDT