Deutsche Bank trimmed its Nio stake by 18% in the second quarter while sharply expanding positions in fellow Chinese EV makers XPeng and Li Auto, its latest 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed.
The quarterly portfolio update reverses the direction of the first quarter, when the Frankfurt-based lender aggressively rebuilt its Nio position after nearly exiting the stock at the end of 2025.
XPeng received the largest capital allocation of the three, with the bank increasing its shareholding nearly sevenfold during the April-to-June period.
XPeng
Deutsche Bank added 1,010,116 shares in XPeng during the second quarter, boosting its position by 597% to nearly 1.2 million shares from 169,205 at the end of March.
The stake was valued at approximately $15.6 million as of June 30 — making the Guangzhou automaker the bank’s largest Chinese auto holding by a wide margin.
XPeng‘s US-listed shares closed at approximately $17.10 on March 31 and at $13.24 on June 30 — a decline of 22.6% during the quarter.
Despite the price decline, the sheer scale of buying pushed the stake’s value from $2.9 million to $15.6 million — a 439% increase.
The purchase dwarfed the first-quarter buildup, when Deutsche Bank more than doubled its XPeng holdings to 169,205 ADS from 80,883 at the end of December 2025.
The second-quarter position is the bank’s largest in XPeng since the third quarter of 2022, when it held 401,574 ADS — all of which it subsequently disposed of by year-end.
XPeng Position History
Deutsche Bank first invested in XPeng in 2020, coinciding with the automaker’s August initial public offering, acquiring 339,253 ADS worth $6 million.
The position surpassed 1 million ADS by mid-2021 before being nearly halved in the following quarter to 594,057 ADS.
After exiting entirely at the end of 2022, the bank re-entered with approximately 45,000 shares in the third quarter of 2023 and has added in every quarter since.
The Q2 purchase comes as XPeng‘s delivery momentum accelerated, mostly overseas. In the first half, the company registered nearly a fifth of its volume outside of China.
As of press time, the company’s stock was trading 1.8% lower at $11.79 on Tuesday’s market session.
Li Auto
The German bank also added 317,724 shares in Li Auto between April and June.
The increase lifted the firm’s position in the Chinese automaker to 751,717 ADS from 433,993 at the end of March — a 73.2% increase.
Despite the 73.2% share increase, the stake’s value rose only about 15.5% — from $7.7 million to $8.8 million — due to a sharp stock price decline of 33.3%.
Li Auto‘s US-listed shares had closed at approximately $17.83 on March 31, and had fallen to just $11.89 on June 30.
The Beijing-based automaker was trading 1.95% lower at $12.59 as of press time.
Li Auto Stake
Deutsche Bank has held a position in Li Auto since the automaker’s Nasdaq listing in mid-2020, when the bank acquired 399,800 ADS.
Holdings grew rapidly through 2021, peaking at approximately 1.5 million ADS in the third quarter of that year.
The position then declined steadily over two years. By the fourth quarter of 2023, the stake had fallen to 15,273 ADS.
Holdings continued to shrink through 2024 and into 2025, dropping to as few as 155 ADS by the end of Q4 2025 — effectively a placeholder.
At 751,717 ADS, the current position is the bank’s largest in Li Auto since mid-2022, when it held over 1.5 million ADS.
Nio
Deutsche Bank sold 74,359 Nio American depositary shares (ADS) during the second quarter, reducing its position to 341,698 shares — a 17.9% cut.
The stake was valued at approximately $1.7 million as of June 30, down 31.1% from $2.5 million three months earlier, according to Fintel data.
Nio‘s US-listed shares closed at $6.03 on March 31 and declined to $5.06 by June 30 — a 16.1% drop across the quarter.
The company’s stock peaked at $7.00 on April 17 before entering a sustained pullback.
By mid-June, the stock was trading in a $4.70-to-$5.00 range, where it has largely remained since.
As of press time, Nio‘s US-listed shares were trading 5.7% lower at $4.56 on Tuesday’s market session.
Seven-Year History
Deutsche Bank first invested in Nio in the fourth quarter of 2018, shortly after the EV maker’s New York Stock Exchange listing, with an initial position of 199,452 ADS worth nearly $1.3 million.
Holdings expanded eightfold by mid-2019, reaching nearly 4 million ADS as the stock traded near its all-time low of $1.19.
The position hit a record 7.1 million ADS in the third quarter of 2021 — when the stock had surged above $40 — before the bank began a gradual reduction that continued for most of the period since.
By mid-2025, the stake had fallen to 364,189 shares. By the fourth quarter, the bank had cut it to near-zero.
At 341,698 ADS, the current position is the third-smallest quarterly holding since Deutsche Bank first entered Nio, trailing only the near-exit last two quarters of 2025.
Other Positions
Deutsche Bank’s filing lands alongside a handful of early Q2 disclosures from other major holders.
However, and as of Tuesday, most institutions had yet to file their quarterly portfolios with the SEC.
Citigroup returned to Nio buying for the first time in five quarters, adding 186,358 ADS for a 37.7% increase to 680,573 shares — a stake valued at $3.4 million as of June 30.
The bank more than quadrupled its XPeng position to 1,350,191 ADS, up 353% from 298,050 at the end of March, lifting the stake’s value to $17.9 million.
Citigroup left its Li Auto holding essentially unchanged at about 2.8 million shares, though the position’s value fell 34.1% to $32.8 million on the stock’s decline.
BlackRock cut its Nio position by 11.8% during the quarter, selling 1.2 million shares to end the period with 9,461,793 ADS — valued at $47.9 million.
The reduction ended two consecutive quarters of aggressive accumulation.
The world’s largest asset manager also trimmed its XPeng stake by 23.5% to 2.2 million ADS, valued at $29.5 million.
IMC-Chicago moved in the opposite direction, more than doubling its equity stakes in both Nio and XPeng during the quarter.
The Dutch firm’s Nio position surged 120.4% to 2,572,872 ADS, valued at $13 million, while its XPeng holdings rose 121.2% to 1,085,529 ADS, valued at $14.4 million.
IMC also expanded its Li Auto position by 746.3% to 105,083 ADS, from just 12,417 three months earlier.
