Citadel doubled its stake in Lucid Motors during the first quarter, according to its latest 13F filing with the SEC. The hedge fund added 3,619,244 shares in the EV maker between January and March.
The firm held 6,730,074 Lucid shares by the end of March, a new record stake and a 116.34% increase from the end of last year, when it held just over 3 million. The shares were valued at more than $16 million by March 31.
Citadel first invested in the EV maker in 2021, when the company went public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IV — a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in which the fund already held a stake.
The firm exited its position in Lucid in the first quarter of 2022, but reestablished it in the later months. In the second quarter of 2024, it sold the total 223,310 shares it owned since the previous quarter.
Since then, Citadel’s holdings in the automaker have steadily increased over the past three quarters — from 1.95 million to the 6.7 million revealed on the filing.
In the same quarterly report, the group disclosed that it held 245,508 shares in Tesla (up 20.2%), worth $63.6 million by the end of March. Its position in Rivian increased 56.7% in the first quarter to 1,865,554 shares, worth around $23 million.
Regarding Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) brands, Citadel cut its stake by 33.5% in Shanghai-based Nio, holding nearly 2.27 million shares. The asset manager nearly exited its position in XPeng, with its shares dropping from 2,011,800 to 384,567.
By the end of March, the firm held 57,997 Zeekr shares, having sequentially trimmed its stake in the Geely-backed automaker since it first opened its position in mid-2024, with 482,578 shares. It held a total of 1,800 shares in Polestar, worth $2,000.
Institutional Ownership
The asset manager ranked 15th among Lucid‘s biggest institutional shareholders, just after BlackRock, UBS and Vanguard, if excluding Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns 78% of the shares.
According to Nasdaq, the company has 546 institutional owners holding over 2 billion shares. The number of shares held by institutions jumped nearly 30% (from 1.7 billion) in the first three months of the year.
Vanguard added 615,108 shares in the first quarter, holding a total of 110.9 million. It remained the automaker’s largest institutional owner. UBS surpassed BlackRock to become the second largest, with 57.12 million shares — up 33 million.
Nuveen, a 1.3 trillion asset manager, opened position in Lucid in the latest quarter, with nearly 3.4 million shares, ranking 19th among its institutional investors.
As of the time of writing, Lucid is trading 10% higher at $2.96. Over the last 30 days, the stock gained about 27%.
