This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CYATY) took a hit this week, and the timing could be telling. The company’s third-largest shareholder, Huang Shilin, plans to offload 1% of his holdings to institutional investors, a move that pushed CATL’s Shenzhen-listed shares down as much as 5.4%. Its Hong Kong stock slipped too, trading at roughly a 20% premium but feeling the weight of a Nov. 19 lock-up expiry on 77.5 million cornerstone shares. For investors, it adds another piece of supply arriving into a market that has already watched both CATL lines surge.
What complicates this moment is the political backdrop. US House Republicans urged the Commerce Department to tighten restrictions on imports of Chinese-made solar and grid components, and Morgan Stanley analysts noted that battery inverters were singled out as a grid-security concern for the first time. That shift could be interpreted as another pressure point for energy-storage system names, especially in the A-share market, where sentiment might already be cautious. Still, Huang’s sale is not set to occur in the open market, and a Changjiang Securities trading memo suggested the direct impact on CATL’s stock performance could be limited.
Even so, some investors may see something different beneath the noise. The Changjiang memo argued that the selloff could be an accumulation window, pointing to what it described as strong fundamentals and the expectation that lithium demand could grow 30% in 2026. That kind of forward setup could be a reason investors revisit CATL once the overhang clears, though the market may want to digest both the stake sale and the policy signals from Washington before deciding whether this downturn becomes a longer-term opening.