Investors in the Avantis Emerging Markets Equity ETF (AVEM) now have a lot more exposure to Shanghai-based electric-vehicle company Nio Inc. (NIO) than they did before.
The $11.6 billion exchange-traded fund disclosed in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it now owns 911,470 shares of Nio as of the end of May—up nearly 49% from the 613,576 shares the ETF disclosed owning in an April filing.
The latest, second-quarter purchase of the EV stock is the largest from AVEM and marks 21 consecutive quarters of buying, per a report from Electric-Vehicles.com.
AVEM, which launched in 2019, is an actively managed fund that invests in emerging market stocks of all market capitalizations. It’s designed to increase expected returns by overweighting securities trading at lower valuations and with higher profitability ratios, according to Avantis Investors’ fund factsheet (Avantis is owned by American Century Investments).
The expense ratio is 0.33%, and its benchmark is the MSCI Emerging Markets Investable Market Index.
AVEM may have recently increased in ownership in Nio, but its top holdings are Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM), Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), Samsung Electronics Co., Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) and China Construction Bank Corp. The fund is up 20.6% year to date.
“AVEM has seen very strong inflows so far this year—more than $2.5 billion through the first six months of 2025, around one-quarter of the net inflows into the EM category, according to data from Morningstar,” Avantis Investors Chief Investment Strategist Phil McInnis told etf.com.
“We invest in Chinese companies across many of our emerging market ETFs. The aim of these strategies is to provide investors with low-cost, broadly diversified building blocks to use in their portfolios. Our approach is designed to marry the benefits of indexing with active oversight and the potential to outperform. As we continue to see strong inflows into the strategy, we continue to allocate to names with attractive valuation and profitability characteristics,” he said.
In recent years, EVs have continued to gain market share—and that’s not a trend that’s expected to slow anytime soon.
As a result, more firms are looking for ways to allow investors to bet big on EVs. In April, for instance, GraniteShares launched two leveraged, single-stock ETFs giving investors daily leveraged exposure EV stocks: The GraniteShares 2x Long LCID Daily ETF (LCDL) and the GraniteShares 2x Long RIVN Daily ETF (RVNL).
