"China Economic Weekly" reporter Lv Jiangtao | Beijing report
Many truths are often spoken in a joking tone.
Recently, at the 2022 World Power Battery Conference, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, said with a smile: "The cost of power batteries has accounted for 40%, 50%, and 60% of our cars, and is increasing, so am I not working for CATL now? ?"
It's a joke, but it's not just a joke.
The semi-annual report shows that in the first half of this year, both new automakers such as "Weixiaoli", and traditional car companies such as BAIC Blue Valley, Jianghuai Automobile, and Xiaokang Co. BYD, which has been the world's top seller in half a year, is only in a state of meager profit, and its profit margin is far less than Tesla.
In this regard, the Ningde era is also "calling grievances", thinking that it is only struggling on the edge of being slightly profitable, and pointing the finger at the increase in the price of battery raw materials.
At the same time, the speech of Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, once again pushed power battery recycling to the forefront.
"King Ning" cannot escape the fate of working for the upstream
In the power battery supply chain, there are often upper, middle and lower reaches.
Upstream raw material suppliers represented by Ganfeng Lithium and Tianqi Lithium, midstream battery manufacturers represented by Ningde Times and China Chuanghang, and many car companies are downstream contractors.
At the 2022 World Power Battery Conference held from July 21 to 23, Zeng Qinghong's speech pointed out that the price of power batteries in the middle reaches is too high, and all new energy vehicle manufacturers (basically) except Tesla are losing money. Car companies are working for the Ningde era.
In addition to Zeng Qinghong, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, and other automakers also said in their speeches: For the healthy and sustainable development of the entire industry chain, supervision should be strengthened, the imbalance between supply and demand should be improved, and the price of power batteries should be reduced. return to a reasonable range.
Unwilling to work for "Ning Wang", it has gradually become a trend for car companies to build their own power battery production lines.
A reporter from "China Economic Weekly" recently learned from GAC Aian, a new energy vehicle company under GAC Group, that GAC Aian's self-developed power battery trial production line has now been built. In the future, 30% of GAC Aian's high-end batteries will be self-developed and produced. And 70% of the low-end batteries will be manufactured by external battery companies.
"Buying cheaper cars for customers and ensuring the safety and stability of the battery supply chain is an important foundation for car companies to achieve the healthy development of the auto industry." Zeng Qinghong said that battery companies will pass the cost pressure to OEMs, and OEMs must also manufacture batteries and buy them. raw materials.
Li Shufu also said at the meeting that Geely Holding Group will cooperate with the upstream and downstream battery industry chains in areas such as battery technology innovation, battery materials, battery charging and swapping operations, photovoltaic green power, recycling and other areas through joint ventures, self-research and production. development, forming an ecological layout.
For the complaints of downstream car companies, the Ningde era is also quite "wronged".
Zeng Yuqun said: "The capital hype of upstream raw materials has brought short-term problems to the power battery industry chain. The prices of upstream materials for lithium batteries such as lithium carbonate, lithium hexafluorophosphate, and petroleum coke have skyrocketed."
Since then, Wu Kai, the chief scientist of CATL, also said in his speech that we usually face complaints from customers, saying that the OEMs are not very profitable. Did your battery factory take all the profits?
Although our company has not lost money this year, it is basically struggling on the verge of making a profit, which is very painful.
You can imagine where the profits will go.
Factors such as upstream raw material price increases, supply and demand mismatches have swallowed up the profits of midstream battery companies, which can be seen from the first quarterly report of CATL in 2022.
In the first quarter of this year, the operating cost of CATL increased by 198.66% year-on-year, exceeding the operating income by 44 percentage points, and the gross profit margin was only 14.48%, hitting a new low in two years. The decline in gross profit margin was mainly due to the pressure of rising raw material prices.
According to the data of the business society, in the first half of this year, the price of battery-grade lithium salt products was at a historical high. On July 21, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in East China reached 478,600 yuan / ton.
In this context, lithium salt manufacturers generally earn a lot of money.
A few days ago, Ganfeng Lithium Industry announced that the net profit in the first half of 2022 is expected to be 7.2 billion to 9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 408.24% to 535.30%.
The semi-annual performance forecast released by Tianqi Lithium shows that the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies in the first half of 2022 is expected to be 9.6 billion to 11.6 billion yuan, an increase of 110 to 134 times year-on-year.
"Lithium King" is not afraid of power battery recycling "grabbing jobs"
In the face of the crazy price increase of upstream raw materials, in addition to buying mines globally to control the upstream of the industrial chain, battery companies have also become one of the options for overweight power battery recycling.
In this regard, Zeng Yuqun said that the price increase of upstream raw materials will cause short-term disturbances to the industrial chain, but in fact, lithium resources are not the bottleneck of industrial development.
At present, the proven lithium resource reserves can produce 160TWh lithium batteries, which can fully meet the global demand for power batteries and energy storage batteries.
Most of the battery materials can be reused. At present, the company's nickel-cobalt-manganese recovery rate has reached 99.3%, and the lithium recovery rate has reached more than 90%.
After 2035, recycling materials from retired batteries could meet a significant portion of the market demand.
These remarks have once again brought power battery recycling to the fore.
GGII data shows that the theoretical decommissioning of lithium batteries nationwide in 2021 will reach 512,000 tons. In the same year, China actually recycled a total of 299,000 tons of used lithium batteries, of which 25.8 tons were used for recycling and 41,000 batteries were used for cascade utilization. ton, further reducing the full life cycle cost of lithium batteries.
According to the research report of GF Securities, in recent years, as the power battery recycling policy has gradually entered a stable period, the number of participating companies has grown rapidly, and many listed companies have also accelerated production expansion.
The power battery market space is rapidly increasing, and the scale of lithium battery recycling in 2030 is estimated to be 108.9 billion yuan.
Data tracked by Soochow Securities shows that with the recent drop in nickel and cobalt prices, lithium prices have remained stable, the waste battery procurement coefficient has risen significantly, and profits have remained stable, higher than the 2021 average.
In this context, listed companies including Ningde Times, BYD, Huayou Cobalt and other companies have begun to deploy the power battery recycling industry in full swing.
Among them, Ningde era has laid out the battery recycling business through the acquisition of Bangpu Cycle in 2015.
At the same time, its 32 billion-yuan integrated new energy industry project has officially started construction in early December 2021. The main purpose is to develop the power battery recycling industry.
Under the catalysis of this "good", the stock prices of A-share listed companies that have already deeply deployed power battery recycling business have risen one after another, while lithium mining giants such as Tianqi Lithium and Ganfeng Lithium have fallen one after another.
In the face of the aggressive "King Ning", "King Li" couldn't sit still.
On July 22, Ganfeng Lithium Industry responded to investors on the interactive platform and stated that the company is currently one of the leading companies in the lithium battery recycling industry, with a comprehensive recycling capacity of 34,000 tons of waste batteries, and the recovery rate of metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. Has reached the first-class level in the industry.
According to estimates from third-party data, it is estimated that the output of recycled lithium in 2022 will only account for between 4% and 5% of the industry's annual predicted lithium supply. Therefore, the company believes that lithium battery recycling alone cannot fully meet the rapid development of industry lithium demand in the short term.
The company will continue to diversify the layout of lithium resources and cooperate with the layout of lithium battery recycling as its development strategy to meet the rapidly growing downstream demand for lithium.
Tianqi Lithium Industry even bluntly stated that lithium recycling in lithium batteries is theoretically possible, but it cannot achieve large-scale recycling and reuse in commercial applications.
Regarding the claim that Zeng Yuqun's lithium recovery rate has reached more than 90%, a relevant person from the Tianqi Lithium Investment Management Department told the media, "The laboratory should be able to do it, but I haven't seen it personally in business."
In this regard, Ningde Times responded again. Regarding this matter, "please ask them to visit our Bangpu. If you can't do it yourself, it doesn't mean that others can't do it."
Power battery recycling, which is highly expected by CATL, is a future trend, but it is difficult to meet the demand for lithium by battery companies in the short term.
Because the recycling speed of power batteries is far behind the speed of manufacturing new batteries, the market is still dominated by newly produced batteries in the short term.
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