The Switzerland-based private bank Vontobel increased its stake in several electric vehicle makers, more than doubling its positions in the Chinese brands Nio and XPeng, as well as in the U.S.-based Rivian during the second quarter.
In its quarterly portfolio update, the bank disclosed it held 1,094,398 Nio shares by the end of the quarter, valued at $3.75 million — after having added over 608,000 shares in the April-June period.
This is the third-highest number of shares that the firm has held in the EV maker since it opened a position, in the last quarter of 2020 — two years after the company went public.
By then, Vontobel bought 65,382 shares in Nio, which were valued at $3.86 million.
Its record stake was reached last year, by the end of the first quarter, when Vontobel held 1.31 million Nio shares. Since then and up until the previous quarter, the firm successively trimmed its holdings in the Shanghai-headquartered company.
Nio shares surged by about 5,000% between late 2019 and early 2021, when it reached a new all-time high of $66.99 per share. However, institutional ownership has dropped sharply over the last few years.
Since mid-2022, the number of Nio shares held by institutional investors has declined more than 61%.
As of Friday, 473 institutional investors held about 221 million shares in Nio, according to Nasdaq.
As of the end of the first quarter, UBS was Nio‘s largest institutional holder, with nearly 75 million shares, followed by Morgan Stanley (20.8 million) and Wolverine Asset Management (19.2 million).
Vontobel also opened a position in Chinese automaker XPeng in late 2020, a couple of months after the company’s Nasdaq debut.
The Swiss bank increased its position in the Guangzhou-based carmaker, in which it held 42,241 shares by the end of the second quarter, valued at $755,000. The stake was raised by 254.1% compared to the first three months of the year.
Vontobel’s highest position in the Guangzhou-based automaker was reached by the end of 2022, with 145,122 shares valued at $1.44 million, which was immediately slashed by half in the following quarter.
According to Nasdaq, XPeng is held by 245 institutions, which collectively hold over 153 million shares.
The investors with the highest positions in the automaker, by the end of the first quarter, were Alibaba Group Holding and Tmt General Partner, with over 30 million shares each, followed by Primecap Management, which held about 14 million shares.
The firm’s position in EV maker Rivian nearly tripled during the April-June period, to 450,318 shares, valued at nearly $6.19 million. It marks a record stake for the firm in the Irvine-based automaker.
Vontobel maintained its stake below 150,000 shares for three years — it went above that number in the first quarter of 2025, when it bought 113,046 shares and raised its position to 157,974 shares.
Rivian is held by 848 institutional investors, which hold about 635 million shares as of Friday.
According to Nasdaq, the company’s largest institutional shareholders in the first quarter were Amazon (158 million shares), which has invested over $700 million in the automaker, followed by major asset managers Vanguard (77 million) and BlackRock (nearly 50 million).
Vontobel started investing in both EV makers Rivian and Lucid Motors in the first quarter of 2022, after the two companies went public in 2021.
The bank’s position in Lucid also reached a new record in the second quarter, with 714,643 shares held by the end of June.
The stake, which increased by 34.2% from the first quarter, was valued at $1.5 million.
Two weeks after the end of the quarter, Lucid announced plans for a 1-for-10 reverse stock split, which according to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, was not prompted by concerns over a potential Nasdaq delisting.
As of Friday, Nasdaq says 543 institutions have a position on Lucid, collectively holding over 2.24 billion shares — a number which includes the Middle East backer.
The company is mostly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which held 1.77 billion shares in the automaker by the end of the first quarter.
It represented 78.9% of all institutionally held shares.
On the other hand, Vontobel cut its position in Tesla by half — it held 103,994 shares in the US brand by the end of June, which were valued at $33 million.
Since it opened a position in the Elon Musk-led company, in late 2020, the company progressively increased its stake up until the end of 2022, when it held a record amount of 553,664 shares. The company had a 3:1 stock split in August 2022.
As of Friday, Tesla was owned by over 4,040 institutional shareholders, which collectively held nearly 1.57 billion shares, according to Nasdaq.
By the end of the first quarter, Tesla‘s largest institutions were Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street Corp, with over 100 million shares held each.
In the second quarter, Valeo Financial Advisors increased its holdings in Tesla by over 6,000% after buying more than 3.7 million shares between April and June.
