Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Electric vehicle maker Nio, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in late 2024, listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2018.
At the time, its first Chief Financial Officer, Louis Hsieh, assumed the brand was aiming at Tesla’s Model X in China with the company’s debut model, the Nio ES8, unveiled in December 2017.
The stock struggled in its early months of trading and fell to $1.19 within 10 months of its listing. However, the company began to recover as it expanded its portfolio with the launch of the five-seater SUV, the Nio ES6, which remains its best-selling model to date.
In 2022, Nio also listed its shares in Hong Kong and Singapore, becoming a publicly traded company on three exchanges.
Between October 2019 and January 2021, Nio’s stock surged by about 5,000%, reaching an all-time high of $66.99 per share. This rise came amid a bubble in the EV sector and a recovery in financial markets following the initial impact of COVID-19.
Other NEV makers also saw similar gains during this period: Tesla’s shares rose 1,665%, while Li Auto’s shares tripled in November 2020, four months after its IPO. XPeng, the Guangzhou-based EV maker which went public in September 2020, saw its shares climb from the low $20s to a record $74.99 within two months.
When Nio’s stock peaked at $66.99 in early 2021, institutional investors held about 500 million shares. By then, the EV maker had expanded to Norway a few months earlier and was preparing the arrival in another four European markets, including Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.
Despite a 70% decline in stock price over the following 18 months, institutional holdings rose to nearly 600 million shares by early 2023. However, since then, institutional ownership has sharply decreased.
As of the end of last year, institutional ownership stood at 229.7 million shares, according to Fintel data. This represents the lowest level since mid-2019, when the stock was trading at a similar price of around $4.
Over the last three years, the number of shares held by institutional investors has dropped by over 60%. As of Tuesday, Nio has 555 institutional owners and shareholders holding 229,691,620 shares.
Nio’s Chief Financial Officer, Louis Hsieh, left the company in November 2019 and was succeeded by Steven Feng.
In July of last year, and after five years in the role, Feng resigned citing “personal and family reasons” and was replaced by Stanley Qu, who was promoted from his role as Senior Vice President of Finance.
Nio’s Largest Shareholder
CYVN Holdings, a firm backed by the Abu Dhabi government, is Nio’s largest shareholder, holding a 21.7% stake.
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.
As part of the June deal, Nio issued another 85 million new Class A shares to CYVN at $8.72 per share. However, CYVN is not considered in the institutional shareholder figures previously shown.
Tencent Holdings, previously one of Nio’s significant shareholders, has been steadily reducing its position. In May 2024, Tencent sold over 28.4 million shares, reducing its stake by 22.9%. This followed a similar move in 2023, when Tencent sold more than 40 million shares, cutting its stake by 24.4%. Tencent’s holdings now stand at 95.66 million shares.
Morgan Stanley has also made adjustments to its position. In the first quarter of 2024, the firm increased its holdings to a record 28.2 million shares. However, it nearly halved this position in the second quarter, reducing its stake to 15.76 million shares.
Last November, Morgan Stanley reported that it further reduced its stake by 12.8%, leaving it with 13.73 million shares, valued at $92 million at the end of the third quarter.
In 2024, Nio’s vehicle deliveries grew by 38.7% to 221,970 units after having reached a record month in December with over 30,000 EVs. Starting in late April, Nio will start deliveries in China of its third brand Firefly as it aims to double sales to 440,000 units this year.
