Citigroup more than quadrupled its holding in XPeng and bought Nio shares for the first time in five quarters, positioning itself in Chinese EV makers whose US-listed stocks fell throughout the period — an early read on institutional flows before most of Wall Street discloses its second-quarter books.
The bank held 1,350,191 XPeng shares as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing submitted this week, up 353.0% from 298,050 three months earlier.
The purchase of 1,052,141 ADS extends a build that began in the first quarter and takes the position to more than eleven times the 121,177 shares Citigroup held at the end of 2025.
Citigroup’s stake was valued at $17.9 million at quarter-end, making XPeng the bank’s second-largest Chinese EV equity position after Li Auto.
XPeng‘s US-listed shares lost 22.6% over the quarter, sliding from $17.11 on March 31 to $13.24 on June 30.
The accumulation runs against the stock’s 2026 decline as the company seeks a second half push to reach its own annual sales target.
Founded in 2o14 by He Xiaopeng, the carmaker is betting on the L03 coupe SUV, the G9L and the flagship SUV GX to boost demand in the final five months of the year.
In 2025, XPeng‘s deliveries more than doubled to 429,445 vehicles in 2025 and overseas sales climbed 96% as the EV maker expanded to 60 countries and regions.
First Nio Add Since Q1 2025
Citigroup also lifted its Nio holding by 37.7% to 680,573 ADS, after acquiring 186,358 shares between April and June.
The increase is the bank’s first since the first quarter of 2025, when the firm built a record 7.31 million-share position that briefly made it the EV maker’s fourth-largest institutional investor.
Citigroup then reduced the stake for two straight quarters before dismantling it almost entirely in the final months of 2025, when the position collapsed 91.5% to 539,616 shares.
A further trim in the first quarter of 2026 took the holding below 500,000 shares — its lowest level since 2024 — before the second-quarter reversal.
The rebuilt position was worth $3.4 million as of June 30.
Options data tempers the bullish signal.
Citigroup opened a new call position referencing 295,300 Nio shares, valued at $1.5 million, but kept put options on 3,000,000 underlying shares worth $15.2 million.
The bearish book that still covers more than four times the common stake, largely intact from the eightfold put expansion the bank disclosed in the first quarter.
Citi’s research arm has taken a friendlier line on the stock, raising its Nio price target in April for the first time in seven months, days after the EV maker reported its first-ever quarterly GAAP profit for the final quarter of 2025.
Li Auto Untouched
Citigroup left its Li Auto position essentially unchanged, adding 3,013 ADS — a 0.1% move — to hold 2,790,866 shares.
The stillness follows an active first quarter, when the bank more than doubled the stake from 1,317,667 shares and closed out put options on 100,000 shares, leaving the position unhedged.
Li Auto‘s falling stock did the damage instead: the holding’s value dropped 34.1% over the quarter to $32.8 million, mirroring the US-listed shares’ slide from $17.83 to $11.74.
Despite the decline, the position remains Citigroup’s most valuable among the three Chinese EV makers — nearly double the XPeng stake and almost ten times the Nio holding by market value.
Li Auto has been the laggard of the trio operationally as well, with December deliveries of 44,246 vehicles falling from 58,513 a year earlier as the company contended with slowing sales and margin pressure through 2025.
The EV maker crossed 1.54 million cumulative deliveries by the end of last year while pushing into new markets across Central Asia, the Caucasus and Africa.
An Early Look at Q2 Flows
The disclosure follows the bank’s diverging moves in US EV makers, where Citigroup cut its Rivian stake by 29.4% while raising its Lucid holding for a third consecutive quarter, as EV reported earlier on Thursday.
Citigroup is among the first major institutions to disclose second-quarter positioning.
Most large asset managers and banks have not yet filed their Q2 2026 portfolio updates, which are due to the SEC by August 14, 45 days after quarter-end — meaning the flows disclosed so far offer only a partial picture of how institutions traded the Chinese EV trio during the quarter.
The bank’s overall 13F reported $302.7 billion in total value, up from $234.5 billion in the first quarter.
Among earlier disclosures in Nio, UBS slashed its stake by 59% in the third quarter of 2025 while remaining the EV maker’s largest institutional shareholder.
Stocks Under Pressure
All three US-listed stocks declined during the quarter Citigroup was buying.
Nio‘s ADS fell 16.1% between March 31 and June 30, from $6.03 to $5.06, while Li Auto dropped 34.1% and XPeng lost 22.6%.
The trio rallied in late July on Beijing’s push for national smart-driving standards, before giving back ground in early August on mixed July delivery results.
Nio‘s parent company delivered 35,934 vehicles in July, up 71.0% from a year earlier, though the group still needs a record pace over the final five months to reach its annual target.
Nio shares closed at $4.65 on Wednesday, down by 8.82% this year and well below the 52-week high of $8.02 reached last October.
XPeng has lost 42.06% in 2026, trading near $11.75, while Li Auto is down more than 24% from its end-of-2025 close of $16.93.
Citigroup first invested in Nio at the time of the company’s Nasdaq listing in the third quarter of 2018, shortly after the initial public offering.
