Lithium battery plate three yuan positive pole variety attracts a large number of investors(with shares)

In the era of Ningde, as a hundred billion "unicorns" companies will soon land on A-shares, causing the market to pay attention to the mid-stream industrial chain with lithium batteries as the core. What is different from the upstream that the "price increase" of the resources products is the core factor to support the performance of the stock price is that the explosion factor in the middle reaches of the lithium battery is relatively complex, and the three-yuan positive pole varieties with high nickel as the development direction receive high market attention. Since February 7, the extremely high nickel ternary leading company has been pushing up the top lithium and cobalt resources stocks by more than 30 %, while Guoxuan Gaoke, Greenmail, and Shanshan shares and other positive materials companies have also risen. More than 20 %, Leading other sub-blocks in the middle reaches.

Since the release of the State Council's Energy Conservation and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan in 2012, China's sales of new energy vehicles in 2016 and 2017 have exceeded half of the global sales of new energy vehicles for two consecutive years. In the near future, there have been two news of the development of Lido new energy vehicles. That is, in this year's "two meetings" government work report, the government has explicitly proposed an extension of the preferential tax policy for the purchase of new energy vehicles for three years; In an interview with relevant media, Miaowei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, proposed that the proportion of new energy vehicles in 2020 should reach 10 %. The new changes are expected to spur the new energy car industry to grow faster than previously expected. Changes in supply and demand patterns will drive demand for the heart of new energy vehicles. Guosheng Securities predicts that from 2018 to 2020, the demand for power batteries will reach 45/63/89 GWh, respectively, with a compound growth rate of 36 %. Among them, the triple demand was 22/40/64 GWh, and the compound growth rate reached 58 %.

The development of power batteries is closely related to the development of new energy vehicles. In the past five years of rapid development of new energy vehicles, the composite growth rate of power battery installed capacity has reached 160 %. Today, according to passenger vehicle power batteries entering the retirement period of 4 to 6 years, commercial vehicle power batteries entering the retirement period limit of 3 years, brokers generally expect 2018, China's new energy vehicle power batteries will enter a large-scale retirement phase. This means that there will be a new wave of replacement power cells in society. Chenxianfan of Soochow Securities estimated that in 2018, the power of lithium power to the pool will reach 11.09 GWh, corresponding to 6.591 billion market space, and in 2020 it will correspond to 14.82 billion market space.

Three yuan positive pole most has the potential high nickel general trend

In the composition of power cells, positive electrode materials account for about 40 % of the total cost of lithium batteries, and they play a decisive role in the specific capacity, safety, stability, and cycle life of lithium batteries. In the classification of positive materials, at present, Marketized lithium battery positive materials include lithium cobalt acid(LCO), lithium manganese acid(LMO), lithium iron phosphate(LFP), and lithium nickel-cobalt manganese acid(NCM), nickel-cobalt aluminate(NCA) and other products.

Among them, the lithium cobalt acid theory has a specific capacity of more than 270 mAh/g. At present, it has reached an actual specific capacity of 150 mAh/g. In the future, it can increase the space, but its disadvantage is that the structure is unstable at higher voltage and cobalt resources are scarce. Cost disadvantages can not be ignored; Lithium manganate theory has a capacity of less than 150mAh/g. Considering its energy density and high temperature performance, future applications will be limited. Its advantage is that manganese resources are abundant and costs are low; The specific capacity of lithium iron phosphate theory can reach 170mAh/g. At present, the actual specific capacity is about 140mAh/g. There is little room for further increase in the future. The advantages are more mature in technology and better safety performance. It is mainly used in the field of new energy passenger cars in China.; The ternary NCM obtains different electrode characteristics by deploying the proportions of Ni(nickel), Co(cobalt), and Mn(manganese). Nickel can increase the material capacity, and cobalt mainly acts as a stable layered structure. Manganese can improve safety and stability. At present, ternary materials have the advantages of high energy density, long cycle life, and good safety performance.

In the power cell, the ternary positive material NCM(lithium nickel cobalt manganese acid) mainly includes NCM111, NCM532, NCM622, NCM811 and other types. At present, NCM523 is the main material in China, accounting for 76 %, and NCM333 and NCM622 account for 13 % and 10 %, respectively. As power cells require higher and higher energy density, and concerns about cobalt prices also accelerate the development of high-nickel positive materials, future power cells will use NCM811 and NCA(lithium nickel cobalt aluminate) with higher energy density. The NCA material has a high nickel content, the energy density is similar to the NCM811 type, and the compaction density is close to the NCM523 type. However, due to the high synthesis difficulty of the NCA, only a few companies in China are currently experimenting with production, such as BYD, Guoxuan Gaoke, and AVIC Lithium., CATL, Yiwei Lithium energy and so on.

In terms of high nickel ternary materials, the number of A-share listed companies currently in China is not large, and only several leading companies such as fir shares and Dangsheng Technology are involved. Among them, Sequoia shares is the world's largest supplier of lithium battery raw materials, and its positive material production and sales volume is the world's first. The subsidiary Sugiyama Energy plans to invest 5 billion yuan in fixed assets and build 100,000 tons of high-energy density positive materials, of which 20,000 tons in the first phase is planned to be completed by the end of 2020, and 10,000 tons in the first phase of production capacity is planned to be completed by the end of 2018. The company's share of lithium Gaodianya and 532/622 yuan will continue to increase.

When Sheng Technology has a forward-looking layout of high-nickel products and continues to expand its high-nickel production capacity, NCM811 products have begun to supply customers in bulk, and NCA products have also entered the trial stage; Construction of a three-phase NCM811/NCA project with an annual output of 18,000 tons has been started, and the future production capacity of cathode materials will reach 34,000 tons per year. Benefiting from the continuous and significant growth in sales of lithium cathode materials, the company expects a net profit of 35 million yuan to 40 million yuan in the quarterly report in 2018, an increase of 78.21 % to 103.67 % year-on-year. As a three-yuan high nickel leading enterprise, it is expected to enjoy the dividends of technological development.

In addition to the above two leading companies, other positive materials companies continue to extend to the industrial chain from other perspectives. For example, Tianci materials, Grim's layout to the raw material side, purchasing upstream lithium resources and cobalt resources, respectively, locking upstream resource supplies. The layout of Keheng's lithium power business is a two-wheel drive for equipment and materials. In terms of materials, the company's current production capacity of positive materials is 800 tons/month. The planned capacity for the second phase consists of 5,000 tonnes/year for tertiary materials and 3,000 tonnes/year for lithium cobalt high.

Power cell Silicon carbon negative electrode wide space

In the high energy density development path, the power cell is very high nickel ternary material trend is significant, and the specific capacity and working voltage of the negative electrode also directly determine the energy density of the lithium battery. Therefore, with the maturity of the positive electrode process, the negative electrode also needs to increase the battery capacity accordingly..

Depending on the active substance, negative materials can be classified into carbon materials(mainly natural/artificial graphite) and non-carbon materials(including titanium-based materials, silicon-based materials, etc.). In 2017, the production of artificial graphite has exceeded 2.5 times that of natural graphite, becoming the mainstream negative material for power batteries and high-end consumer batteries.

The theoretical energy density of graphite is 372 mAh/g. In the future, power cells develop toward higher energy density, and traditional graphite is difficult to meet energy requirements. The theoretical energy density of Silicon materials can reach 4200mAh/g, and Silicon negative electrode materials have obvious advantages in terms of capacity. Silic-based materials combine high conductivity, stability and high capacity of carbon materials. Therefore, it is generally believed in the industry that silicon-based materials have great potential for development in the future.

The usage of positive and negative poles for power cells is about 2:1. Shenjianguo, an analyst at Founder Securities, calculates the demand for negative poles based on silicon in the corresponding year based on the expected future usage of high nickel triples. Silic-based negative electrode prices are currently high, at a level of 260,000 yuan per ton. Shenjianguo believes that with the maturity of manufacturing processes and technological innovations, processing costs will gradually decline. In addition, as the industry matures, Negative enterprises can also enjoy the cost savings brought about by the large-scale effect. Therefore, it predicts that the price of silicon-based negative poles will go down in the next few years and reach a unit price of 120,000 yuan per ton by 2020. Silic-based negative market space will accelerate in 2018 and reach 1.7 billion yuan in 2020.

It should be noted that the application of Silicon negative electrode requires a high technical barrier, and due to the relatively backward technology in China, the production cost remains high, and the mass production of Silicon negative electrode has not yet broken through. In spite of this, for the time being, Beiterui(1,000 tons shipped in 2017), Sugiyama shares(4,000 tons/year production capacity at the end of 2017), and Qitailai(mass production with the Chinese Academy of Sciences) have all made Silicon negative materials. Layout. As far as the A-share company is concerned, Shanshan shares are the leading lithium electronegative enterprises in China, with the second largest negative production capacity in the country and the first in artificial graphite production capacity in the country. In the first half of 2017, the company shipped 15,300 tons of negative materials, an increase of 50.8 % year-on-year; Revenue was 695 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.07 %, accounting for 18 % of the company's current operating income, second only to the positive material business. As the company raises 3.8 billion yuan to build a 100,000 tons negative pole integration project, the brokerage expects the company's negative material market share and profitability in 2018 will increase significantly.

The "High Energy Power Li-ion Battery Development and Integration Application" project led by Hefei Guoxuan, a subsidiary of Guoxuan Gaoke, has completed the development of battery monomer samples with energy density of 281 Wh/kg and 302 Wh/kg. Both of these batteries use Silicon based negative electrode materials, which is a milestone in the development of the industry. In addition, among A-share listed companies, China Baoan(subsidiary Beiterui) and Changxin Technology(subsidiary Bic Power) have also made some progress in this area.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.