With a new round of decline in lithium prices, lithium carbonate futures and spot prices continue to “fall and fall”.

Following yesterday's sharp decline, on November 23, the main futures contract for lithium carbonate continued to plummet. The intraday decline widened to 5% for a while, hitting a new low since listing. By the close, the decline narrowed to 2.19% to 124,800 yuan/ton

Since July of this year, lithium carbonate futures have continued to decline, with a cumulative decline of nearly 45%. Compared with the listing price of 246,000 yuan/ton on the first day of listing, it has now fallen below 130,000 yuan/ton, which is almost lower than the price.

In addition to the sharp drop in futures prices, a few days ago, the spot price of lithium carbonateIt has fallen below the 150,000 yuan/ton mark.

As of November 23, the average price of lithium carbonate was 141,000 yuan/ton, down 0.3,500 yuan/ton from the previous trading day. Since November alone, the price of lithium carbonate has fallen by more than 10%.

As a key material for new energy electric vehicle batteries,The trend of lithium prices in the past two years is like starting a “crazy roller coaster mode.”

From the second half of 2021 to November 2022, domestic battery-grade lithium carbonate prices exploded. At one point, the price during this period was 600,000 yuan/ton.

However, since then, the format has taken a sharp turn. Affected by the industry's overcapacity, lithium prices have plummeted since last year.

The price of lithium carbonate at the beginning of the year was 500,000 yuan/ton. After bottoming out to 179,000 yuan/ton in April this year, it rebounded slightly in June. However, the decline is still unstoppable, and now it is below 150,000 yuan/ton,The price of lithium has fallen by more than 70% during the year.

Data source: Shanghai Steel Federation

With the overall decline in the industry cycle, the salt lake lithium extraction and lithium battery concepts in the secondary market have also experienced major ups and downs, and the sectors have all fallen back to the level of April 2021.

The two have accumulated declines of more than 39% and 43% respectively since their highs in 2021, and have declined by nearly 17% and 20% since this year.

Related concept stocks have also declined sharply.

Among them,Tianhe Solar and Enjie shares fell more than 53% during the year, Everweft Lithium fell nearly 50%, Tibet's Everest fell more than 40%, and individual stocks such as Shengxin Lithium Energy, Tibet Mining, Tianqi Lithium, and Ganfeng Lithium fell more than 30%.

Ganfeng Lithium, one of the leading lithium miners, once hit a new low in more than two years during the intraday period today. By the close, the decline narrowed to 0.12% to 42.33 yuan, with a total market value of 85.387 billion yuan.

Also, judging from performance, the performance of many leading companies in the lithium industry has declined this year.

Among them, Tianqi Lithium, a leading lithium mining company, achieved net profit of 8.099 billion yuan in the first three quarters, a decrease of 49.33% over the previous year; Yahua Group achieved net profit of 807 million yuan in the first three quarters, down 77.22% from the previous year.

As the saying goes, it moves the whole body with one shot. The continuous decline of lithium carbonate has triggered a chain reaction throughout the industry, and what is behind the continued decline in pricesIt stems from the easing of supply and demand.

Fangzheng, a mid-term futures analyst, said that the recent decline in the current price of lithium carbonate futures is mainly due to changes in the relationship between supply and demand in the market.

On the one hand, demand in the global electric vehicle market has recently slowed, causing demand for battery raw materials to be expected to be cautious; on the other hand, the previous three years of high lithium carbonate spot prices have promoted large-scale exploration and development of global lithium ore resources in key regions, and the market expects that the supply of new lithium salt will be concentrated in the next two years.The spot price of lithium carbonate continues to exceed the decline.

So when will lithium carbonate drop? Zhang Weixin of CITIC Construction Investment Futures believes that the situation where domestic lithium carbonate supply exceeds demand will continue until 2025.It is expected that lithium carbonate futures will continue to be in a negative state this year.

Market analysis believes that with the further release of upstream supply of lithium salt, although pricing power in the lithium industry chain is currently still biased upstream, downstream demand is gradually beginning to dominate the price trend, and pricing power has already spread downstream.