Reference types vs Nullable types ToString()

Could someone please be kind enough to explain why calling ToString() on an empty reference type causes an exception (which in my mind makes perfect sense, you cant invoke a method on nothing!) but calling ToString() on an empty Nullable(Of T) returns String.Empty? This was quite a surprise to me as I assumed the behaviour would be consistent across types.

Nullable<Guid> value = null;
Stock stock = null;
string result = value.ToString(); //Returns empty string
string result1 = stock.ToString(); //Causes a NullReferenceException