UBS trimmed its stake in Rivian by 2.9% in the first quarter, selling 882,172 shares, according to its latest SEC filing on Tuesday.
As of the end of March, the Swiss-based firm held 29,152,186 shares in the U.S. EV maker, valued at nearly $363 million.
In addition to cutting its Rivian stake by nearly 3% between January and March, UBS reduced its call options by 7% to 13 million and slashed its put options by more than 58%.
The Swiss bank sharply increased its stake in the Irvine-headquartered company during the fourth quarter of 2024, adding nearly 29 million shares in a 2,743% jump — bringing its holdings to a peak at the end of the year.
UBS began investing in Rivian shortly after its IPO, buying 66,127 shares in the fourth quarter of 2021. The stake grew steadily until the third quarter of 2024, when the bank sold more than half of its 2 million shares.
In the first quarter, UBS more than doubled its position on Lucid, the same filing showed. The firm now holds 57.12 million shares in the U.S. brand, up from 24.11 million late last year.
The bank decreased its position by 10.4% on Tesla and held about 6.5 million shares valued at $1.68 billion by the end of the first quarter.
On Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) brands, UBS increased its stake in Nio from 30.79 million to 74.96 million shares. Regarding the Guangzhou-based XPeng, Switzerland’s biggest bank dumped 20% of its position.
As of Wednesday, Rivian has 1,134 institutional owners holding 670,092,943 shares — a new high since mid-last year. UBS is the fifth largest institutional shareholder in Rivian, while Amazon comes first, with 158.36 million shares of the company since its initial public offering.
CEO Jeff Bezos had previously announced in 2019 that Amazon ordered 100,000 Rivian electric delivery vehicles as part of its plan to transition its delivery fleet to 100% renewable energy by 2030.
On the biggest institutional owners list follow the two leading asset managers globally, Vanguard Group and BlackRock, and Baillie Gifford, with 77.09 million, 49.77 million and 48.54 million shares, respectively.
Baillie Gifford trimmed its stake in Rivian by selling 1 million shares, a 2.14% decrease from the 49.6 million it held at the end of last year.
Goldman Sachs, its seventh largest holder, increased its position by 158.7% to more than 11.7 million shares.
Last week, the company reported a record gross profit of $206 million for the quarter, marking its second straight quarter of positive profit, a result that was mainly due to $157 million in revenue from automotive regulatory credit sales. Wall Street analysts considered the results to be a “mixed bag.“
