Hong Kong Hedge Fund Slashes Nio Stake 32% Shortly After Rebuying Shares

Hong Kong- and Beijing-headquartered WT Asset Management, which oversees about $4 billion in assets, reduced its stake in Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio by 32.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The hedge fund sold 6,039,704 shares from October to December, leaving it with 12,611,190 shares worth $63.5 million, according to its latest SEC filing. This reduction followed WT's major re-entry into the stock during the third quarter of 2025, when it bought 18.65 million shares after fully exiting in late 2021.

WT first bought into Nio in the second quarter of 2020, acquiring 2,541,800 shares amid a surge in the EV sector that drove Nio's American depositary receipts to a peak of $66.99—reflecting a nearly 5,000% increase from October 2019 to January 2021. By late 2021, the position had expanded to 2.44 million shares, but WT offloaded everything in the first quarter of 2022 as Nio's shares plunged more than 90% over the next two years. The fund remained on the sidelines for more than three years before returning in the third quarter of 2025, a period when Nio's stock more than doubled from $3.51 at the beginning of July to $7.62 by the end of September. That rally was spurred by the debut of affordable three-row SUVs, including the L90—previewed in July and launched on August 31—and the third-generation ES8, released in mid-September with a six-month order backlog.

The value of WT's Nio position dropped 54.7% from the third to fourth quarter, due to the sales and a decline in share price by year-end; shares closed at $5.04 on December 31, 2025, and have traded recently at $4.92, down 2.3%. Challenges in the sector continue, with JPMorgan analyst Nick Lai recently cutting his price target for Nio to $7 from $8 while maintaining an Overweight rating; he made a similar 32% reduction to $34 for XPeng, also keeping an Overweight view. Nio's shares rose 7% on Friday, ending at $5.04, after the company previewed its first quarterly profit and indicated about 39% upside to the adjusted target.

Preliminary Nasdaq data ranks WT as Nio's seventh-largest institutional shareholder, though many fourth-quarter filings are still pending. Hong Kong-based Aspex Management, which added 35 million shares in the third quarter, ranks second behind CYVN Holdings as the top institutional owner, but its most recent filing is not yet available. UBS reduced its holding by 14.7% to 24.5 million shares in the fourth quarter, following a 59% cut in the prior quarter that eliminated 41.4 million shares. Other significant holders include Jane Street Group with 19.2 million shares after a 3,778% increase in the third quarter; BNP Paribas Financial Markets with 18.6 million shares, up 874%; Morgan Stanley with 16.2 million shares, increased 60%; and D.E. Shaw with 13.8 million shares after re-entering the position.

In total, 477 institutions hold more than 309 million Nio shares, a rise from under 200 million midway through 2025 but a 61% drop from the early-2022 peak of nearly 600 million. Abu Dhabi-based CYVN Holdings owns the biggest stake at 21.7%, obtained through $2.94 billion in funding in 2023.