BlackRock increased its holdings in Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio for a second consecutive quarter, acquiring more than 400,000 shares in the three months to June, according to a regulatory filing late on Tuesday.
The world’s largest asset manager held nearly 3.85 million shares at the end of June, up from 3.43 million shares on March 31, when it had boosted its position by about 1.35 million shares in the first quarter.
As of Wednesday, with several large institutions yet to disclose their second-quarter holdings, BlackRock ranked as Nio’s 13th-largest institutional shareholder.
The latest additions come after BlackRock sharply reduced its stake in 2024.
The firm ended 2023 with 62.6 million shares, adding just 10,000 shares in the first quarter of that year before selling nearly 2.2 million in the second quarter, cutting its position to 60.5 million shares.
It then reduced its holdings by 92% in the third quarter to 5.1 million shares, and trimmed further in the final quarter, selling 3,024,566 shares to close the year with 2,082,526 shares.
Nio, listed on the New York Stock Exchange since September 2018, 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.
The shares have since fallen about 70% from that peak, while institutional ownership has dropped from nearly 600 million shares in early 2023 to a five-year low of about 203 million late last year.
As of Wednesday, data from Fintel showed 464 institutional shareholders holding roughly 234.4 million shares.
Earlier this week, Citigroup reported it had reduced its Nio holdings by 6.51% in the second quarter to 6,830,241 shares, down 475,902 from March 31.
Citi, the seventh-largest holder at the end of the first quarter, kept call options unchanged at contracts referencing 500,000 shares but cut put options by 58.82% to contracts referencing 140,000 shares.
Nio’s shares rose 2.2% to $4.52 in premarket trading on Wednesday, after falling nearly 9% the previous day when registrations for its three brands — Nio, Onvo and Firefly — fell sequentially in China and Citi disclosed its reduced stake.
