He Xiaopeng, the billionaire founder and chairman of China electric vehicle maker XPeng, bought nearly US$30 million of shares in the company on Friday as a fall in the Alibaba-backed company continued anew.
XPeng slid 0.2% on Friday in New York trading to US$13.71, a record closing low. The once high-flying, Guangzhou-headquartered manufacturer’s shares have lost 61% of their value in New York from a recent high of US$35.29 in June. The company went public in the US at US$15 per American Depositary Share, or ADS, in 2020. Its stock also now trades at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
After buying 2,200,000 ADSs on Friday at an average price of US$13.58, He owns approximately 20.5%, XPeng said in a statement on Sunday.
Shares around the world have tanked of late as central banks have raised interest rates to combat inflation running at its highest level in decades. The global EV industry has further been affected by supply chain problems amid the Covid pandemic. XPeng said earlier this month it delivered 9,578 in August, a 33% increase year-over-year. Yet that was a slower pace than its year-to-date gains. For the first eight months of 2022, XPeng delivered 90,085 EVs, almost double last year’s Jan.-Aug. total.
He founded browser UCWeb before Xpeng; UCWeb was acquired by Alibaba Group in 2014. Alibaba today owns approximately 11% of XPeng.
He is worth US$2.4 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today.
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This article first appeared on forbes.com