The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is having a fairly decent day of trading so far this Thursday. At present, the ASX 200 has put on a healthy 0.17%, which lifts the Index to back over 7,260 points. But one ASX 200 share isn't joining in the fun. That would be Pilbara Minerals Ltd (ASX: PLS) shares.
ASX 200 lithium stock Pilbara has decisively gone the other way today. At the time of writing, the lithium leader has shed a nasty 1.71% and is down to $4.03 a share. It was even worse earlier this morning too, with Piblara dipping as low as $3.96. That's the lowest this company has been for over a month.
As my Fool colleague Bernd covered this morning, this share price fall is probably the result of Pilbara trading ex-dividend for its first-ever dividend payment to shareholders. But there are also some interesting rumours swirling around about a major investor possibly selling a massive parcel of shares.
As we discussed on Tuesday, rumours have surfaced that China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology (Hong Kong) Limited (CATL) has just sold off a major tranche of Pilbara shares.
CATL has been a Pilbara shareholder since 2019 when it was able to pick up a massive stake in Pilbara at 30 cents per share. CATL reportedly threw $55 million into Pilbara shares back then, worth around 8.5% of Pilbara's entire market capitalisation at the time.
At today's share price of $4.03, CATL would have made a return of over 1,240% based on its 30 cents per share entry point. Not bad for just four years of waiting.
Did a whale just sell $600 million of Pilbara shares?
But according to reporting in The Australian today, we can now put a figure on these CATL sale rumours. CATL reportedly might have sold up to $601 million worth of Pilbara shares. The article stated that "the block sale of Chinese battery giant [CATL]'s shareholders was undertaken by brokers, according to reports".
This could indicate that CATL has sold the majority of its Pilbara stake. The report found that CATL held 207.5 million Pilbara shares on its books as of 14 September 2022. So if CATL has indeed offloaded $600 million worth of shares, it has cashed out around three-quarters of its entire Pilbara stake.
So with so many shares possibly up for sale, it's perhaps no wonder that the Pilbara share price has fallen by more than 10% over the past week or so:
