BlackRock increased its position in Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio by 64.9% in the first quarter of the year, a regulatory filing showed on Saturday.
The world’s largest asset manager acquired 1,352,058 shares during the quarter, bringing its total holdings to 3.43 million shares as of March 31, according to the latest SEC filing.
Despite the quarterly increase, BlackRock’s overall stake in Nio has declined significantly throughout 2024. The firm ended 2023 with 62.6 million shares and added just 10,000 shares in Q1 2024 before offloading nearly 2.2 million shares in the second quarter, reducing its position to 60.5 million shares.
In the third quarter, BlackRock cut its holdings by 92%, bringing its stake down to 5.1 million shares. The firm further trimmed its position in the final quarter of the year, selling 3,024,566 shares to finish 2024 with 2,082,526 shares.
Shares of the EV maker fell 8% year to date and 27.6% over the last 12 months.
Nio, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2018, saw its stock surge nearly 5,000% to around $67 between October 2019 and January 2021, fueled by a rally in EV stocks and a broader market rebound following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the stock has dropped about 70% from its peak over the following 18 months, institutional holdings climbed to nearly 600 million shares by early 2023. That figure has since declined sharply, hitting now a five-year low of about 203 million shares in December 2024, according to Fintel.
That marked the lowest level of institutional ownership since mid-2019, when Nio shares also traded around $4.
As of Sunday, 495 institutional investors held a combined 202,981,090 shares in Nio —down more than 65% from peak levels three years ago.
In April, the Nio brand delivered 19,269 vehicles globally, up from 10,219 in March and 15,620 a year earlier. The company’s new sub-brand, Onvo, delivered 4,400 units of its debut model, while Firefly—Nio’s third brand—delivered 231 vehicles bringing the Group’s total figures to 23,900.
Meanwhile, Nio registered just two vehicle sales in the Netherlands and two in Sweden, according to national data released last week.
In the same SEC filing, BlackRock also disclosed that it added nearly 2.1 million shares of California-based EV maker Rivian and more than 817,000 shares of Lucid Motors in the first quarter.
