Shanghai-based EV maker Nio has seen retail investors steadily increase their stake in the company, while institutional investors have gradually reduced theirs to a new record low.
According to data from the Chinese trading platform MooMoo, the ratio of institutional ownership peaked in 2019 at more than 40% and has since more than halved to 15.46% as of the end of September.
Meanwhile, after reaching a new peak of over 60% last year, ownership by retail investors further increased to 73.56% by the end of the third quarter.
The chart was shared on X by the Nio shareholder and enthusiast Marcel Münch.
As of Friday, and according to data from both Fintel and Yahoo Finance, Nio had 2.23 billion outstanding shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
Of those, 172 million (about 8%) are held by 443 institutional investors while insiders own 2.1% of the shares.
The data indicate that retail investors hold roughly 90% of the company’s stock.
The ownership trend was first reported by the Nio shareholder and X user Marcel Münch.
Nio saw its stock soar almost 5,000% from October 2019 to January 2021 to around $67, driven by a rally in EV shares and a broader post-pandemic market rebound.
Since then, institutional ownership has dropped from nearly 600 million shares in early 2022 — when the stock traded in the $15-$25 range to less than 200 million.
As of May, a total of 491 institutions were holding approximately 199.6 million shares in the EV maker.
By the end of the second quarter, the decline extended even further — 443 institutions collectively held 172 million shares in the automaker, Fintel data shows.
Year to date, the stock has jumped 53.7%.
Last April, the stock reached a new 5 year low at $3.34.
Starting from the pre-launch event of the L90 SUV in early July — which was priced significantly lower than expected — the stock rose by about 90% also fueled by the release of the ES8 SUV under the main Nio brand.
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund, CYVN Holdings, is Nio‘s largest shareholder with a 21.7% stake.
The position was built through a pair of transactions totaling $2.94 billion in 2023.
In December 2023, CYVN completed a $2.2 billion investment in Nio (294 million newly issued shares), following an earlier agreement in June 2023 to invest approximately $738.5 million.
By the end of June, the largest institutional owner following CYVN was UBS, with over 70 million shares (after nearly doubling its stake in the prior quarter).
Institutional shareholders are expected to start reporting their third quarter portfolio update by late October/ early November.
As of the press time, Nio‘s US-listed shares are trading 1.7% lower at $6.71.
