(Yicai) Oct. 17 -- Nio's shares advanced after the electric automaker said the lawsuit filed by Government of Singapore Investment Corporation claiming that the Chinese company had inflated its revenue is groundless.

Nio [HKG: 9866] finished 2.2 percent higher at HKD50.35 (USD6.41) a share in Hong Kong today, after sinking 9 percent yesterday. In Singapore, its stock [SI: NIO] gained 2.7 percent to end at SGD6.47 (USD5), recovering from a 9.5 percent plunge the day before. Nio's New York-listed shares [NYSE: NIO] closed 0.2 percent up at USD6.83 yesterday, after opening 7.8 percent down.

GIC filed a lawsuit against Nio in a court in New York in August, accusing the Shanghai-based company and its executives, including Chief Executive Officer Li Bin and former Chief Financial Officer Fang Wei, of inflating revenues and thereby artificially boosting Nio’s shares causing an investment loss for the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.

A Nio representative told Yicai yesterday that the case is unrelated to the automaker's recent operations and stems from false claims made in a short-seller report published by Grizzly Research in June 2022.

The person said that after the report's release, an independent committee of Nio's board, with the assistance of a third-party international law firm and forensic accounting firm, conducted an internal investigation and found that the report lacked factual basis and contained numerous errors, unfounded speculations, and misleading conclusions and interpretations. Its findings were published in August 2022.

Nio also responded to an inquiry from the US Securities and Exchange Commission about the Grizzly Research report in September 2022, the representative added, noting that after the company's response, the SEC did not take any further action.

Nio is listed in three jurisdictions, so all of the company’s accounting practices and disclosures have been reviewed and effectively accepted by regulators in each of those regions, a source familiar with the carmaker told Yicai.

GIC acquired nearly 54.4 million American depository shares of Nio between August 2020 and July 2022. In this period, Nio's stock price experienced significant fluctuations, surpassing USD19 in August 2020, reaching a record of USD66.99 in January 2021, and plunging again below USD20 in July 2022.

The day the above Grizzly Research report was released in June 2022, Nio's shares in New York fell only 2.6 percent from the previous day. They began to decline gradually in September 2022 due to unfavorable economic conditions and lower-than-expected deliveries. By Dec. 28, 2022, Nio's stock price had reached a yearly low of USD9.80.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione