According to the data of business agency, as of May 17, the spot reference price of lithium carbonate was 450000 yuan / ton, which was sideways for a week, down 6.52% from the historical high price of 481400 yuan / ton set on April 1, 2022.
From the perspective of lengthening the time line, this is the first high sideways trend after falling since the lithium carbonate price continued to rise in August 2021.
Zhang Xiang, President of New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi new energy technology vocational college, said in an interview with Securities Daily that in April this year, the sales volume of Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) vehicle market in China was relatively poor, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in Shanghai was almost zero, and the downstream vehicle enterprises stopped production on a large scale. The reduction of orders in the automobile market also reduced the demand for lithium carbonate as a raw material of power battery, and the inventory pressure of lithium carbonate manufacturers increased, resulting in the passive reduction of product prices.
According to Zhang Xiang, from the perspective of lengthening the time line, it is unreasonable for the price of lithium carbonate to rise by 5-6 times during 2021, mainly because the growth rate of the new energy vehicle market in 2021 exceeded 160%, and the sales volume of the whole market exceeded 3 million. The high growth rate led to the contradiction between supply and demand of lithium carbonate. At the same time, since China’s lithium carbonate was previously mainly processed by imported lithium ore, the sharp rise in import prices last year led to the soaring price of lithium carbonate in China. At present, Chinese enterprises are actively carrying out lithium extraction projects in salt lakes in Qinghai and Jiangxi, the production capacity is gradually increasing, increasing the market supply, and the spot price of lithium carbonate has become loose.
ye Yindan, a researcher of Bank Of China Limited(601988) Research Institute, added that in addition to the above reasons, the role of regulatory intervention and enterprise boycott can not be ignored.
“With the rising price of lithium carbonate, market speculation has also increased rapidly in recent years. In mid and late March 2022, the raw materials department of the Ministry of industry and information technology and other four ministries and commissions held a symposium and proposed to jointly guide the rational return of lithium salt price and strengthen efforts to ensure market supply. With the crackdown of the regulatory department on market speculation, the lithium carbonate market has also cooled down.” Ye Yindan also said that in early March 2022, upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain resisted the high price of lithium carbonate. Leading enterprises among manufacturers of batteries and materials sought collective alliances to resist the high price of lithium carbonate.
According to the reporter of the Securities Daily, affected by the covid-19 epidemic, several automobile factories have stopped production since March. Some analysts pointed out that with the gradual resumption of work and production of key downstream enterprises in the future, it is expected that automobile enterprises will speed up production scheduling to make up for the lack of production caused by shutdown, which will drive the price of lithium carbonate back to the rising channel in the short term.
Ye Yindan agreed: “after the covid-19 epidemic eased, all localities have accelerated the resumption of work and production. At present, major vehicle manufacturers such as SAIC, SAIC Volkswagen and Tesla have fully resumed production, and the upstream and downstream smoothness of the industrial chain has been improved. It is expected that the production and sales of new energy vehicles will rebound rapidly from late May to June, resulting in a significant increase in lithium carbonate orders in the short term and driving the price to stabilize and rebound.”
Judging the long-term trend of lithium price in the future, ye Yindan believes that downstream enterprises have a relatively general acceptance of high-priced lithium carbonate. After the current mismatch period of supply and demand, the game state of lithium carbonate price in the market will continue to break the unilateral upward trend.
Zhang Xiang believes that on the whole, the growth rate of the new energy vehicle industry is expected to be only 50% this year, which is lower than that of last year, and the demand for lithium carbonate will also slowly decline.
It is worth mentioning that, benefiting from the continuous high price of lithium carbonate, the profitability of relevant enterprises has been improved. Public data show that 19 of the 30 listed companies in the salt lake lithium concept sector in the A-share market achieved a year-on-year increase in net profit in the first quarter.
For the future investment value of this sector, ye Yindan believes that with the continuous recovery of the downstream demand side, it will boost and repair the prosperity of the upstream lithium salt industry, and is more optimistic about the volume and price rise of relevant companies in the lithium battery industry chain in the later stage.
