China's BYD plans to list its battery business by 2022

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's BYD Co Ltd said on Thursday it plans to list its battery business by 2022, the electric vehicle (EV) maker's latest move to rev up its growing battery unit.

The Warren Buffett-backed carmaker did not offer details on where the shares would trade.

The carmaker was confirming a report earlier from Bloomberg, which cited comments from an interview with BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu.

BYD, which sells the Tang series of cars and plug-in petrol-electric hybrid model Qin, has been trying to shift to all-electric vehicles but has faced battery shortages. It is building more battery production bases to boost capacity.

BYD posted a 1.9 percent fall in third quarter net profit to 1.05 billion yuan ($151 million), down from 1.07 billion yuan a year earlier.

China's market for new-energy vehicles (NEVs), a category comprising battery-powered cars and plug-in hybrids, is booming, but profits have been squeezed by intense competition between established firms and start-up rivals, as well as Beijing's moves to slash subsidies for the market.

BYD has opened a new lithium battery plant in the northwestern province of Qinghai, which will be the world's biggest when construction is fully completed next year.

BYD is considering cell production in Europe, an executive told Reuters earlier this year. The company already produces electric buses in Hungary and France.

(Reporting by Yilei Sun in BEIJING and Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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