Everbright Securities: lithium hexafluorophosphate sustainable prosperity new lithium salt ushered in new opportunities

With the help of policies, the electrolyte has a broad prospect: according to the "Development Plan of New Energy vehicle Industry" issued by the State Council, "the sales of new energy vehicles will reach about 20% of the total sales of new cars by 2025." We predict that in 2025, the sales of new energy vehicles in China will reach about 4.96 million, the installed capacity of power batteries will reach 322GWH, the demand for power battery electrolyte will reach about 435000 tons, and the CAGR will be about 38% in 2021-2025. The market prospect is very broad. Under the situation of rapidly increasing demand for downstream power batteries, domestic electrolyte manufacturers have begun to lay out the construction of new production capacity. According to our statistics, by 2025, the domestic electrolyte production capacity will increase by 628000 tons, the production capacity will reach 920000 tons, and the competition in the industry will gradually intensify.

With the mismatch between supply and demand, lithium hexafluorophosphate is booming: since September 2020, the sales of new energy vehicles have increased significantly, and the price of lithium hexafluorophosphate has been rising under the background of rigid supply. We predict that about 15000 tons of lithium hexafluorophosphate will be needed in the field of power batteries in 2021 and 54400 tons in 2025, with an average annual growth rate of about 40%. The market prospect is very broad. By the end of 2020, the domestic production capacity of lithium hexafluorophosphate was 56500 tons per year, with a CR4 of 55%, with a high degree of capacity concentration. The barrier to entry for the production of lithium hexafluorophosphate is relatively high, even though the current industry operating rate and output have increased obviously, the main increments are still concentrated in the leading enterprises with mature technology, high quality products and stable customers. Moreover, due to the high investment intensity and long production expansion cycle of lithium hexafluorophosphate project, new competitors need sufficient financial support and long return cycle capacity. Therefore, the increase in supply of lithium hexafluorophosphate due to new entrants will be very limited in the short term. In addition, from a cost point of view, the characteristics of high production capacity and low cost of leading enterprises make them have stronger pricing power in the industry, and prices are expected to remain high under the tight supply and demand situation.

LiFSI, the upgraded substitute of lithium hexafluorophosphate, has stepped onto the industry stage: the state requires lithium batteries to develop in the direction of higher safety and higher energy density in the future, that is, the safety requirements of electrolytes are greatly improved.

LiFSI, a new type of electrolyte solute with higher safety and stability, has officially ushered in the opportunity for development. We have calculated the future demand of LiFSI: 1) if LiFSI is used as an electrolyte additive, the demand for LiFSI will reach 2000 tons in 2025, and the market scale is about 800 million yuan. 2) if LiFSI is used to completely replace the existing lithium salt, when the market share of LiFSI reaches 20%, the demand for LiFSI in 2025 will be 13400 tons, with a market size of about 5.3 billion yuan; and when the market share of LiFSI reaches 50%, the demand for LiFSI in 2025 will be 33500 tons, and the market size will be as high as 13.4 billion yuan.

In recent years, domestic enterprises continue to increase investment in R & D, have successfully broken through the technical barriers, and began to build LiFSI production line, gradually breaking the market pattern monopolized by foreign enterprises. In the future, with the gradual commissioning of new LiFSI projects such as New Zebang and Divine Materials, we expect that by 2023, the world will add 9880 tons of LiFSI capacity, bringing the total global LiFSI production capacity to 17280 tons. At that time, China will have a total production capacity of 13200 tons of LiFSI, accounting for about 76% of the world, and the localization process of domestic LiFSI will be further accelerated.

Investment suggestion: under the strong promotion of national policy, the new energy vehicle industry ushered in a period of vigorous development. The rapid increase in downstream demand directly leads to the rapid growth of the demand for electrolyte and its raw material lithium hexafluorophosphate. Electrolyte, lithium hexafluorophosphate and LiFSI all ushered in new development opportunities. Therefore, we recommend the domestic leading enterprises with electrolyte and lithium salt related layout: divine materials, new Zebang and polyfluorodo.

Risk analysis: the output of new energy vehicles falls short of the expected risk, the rapid increase in the production capacity of electrolyte-related products lowers the prosperity risk of the industry, and the industrialization of LiFSI batteries is not as high as expected.