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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | May 17, 2018 |
The SNEC is just around the corner, however, the actual arrival of the 630 installation boom is still in question, and the market demands has not shown significant growth. According to observation by InfoLink, the 630 has been helping pulling up the demands, but not as efficiently as in last year. Furthermore, the overall capacity of the entire supply chain this year are much higher than that of last year, leading to an oversupplied market. This situation has caused a rather quiet domestic market despite the arrival of high demand season; hence, no obvious rebound have happened so far.
Poly
Downstream multi-Si wafers have reduced in utilization rates, unbearable of receiving any higher polysilicon price. Despite pressure in prices, polysilicon price stayed at the same level as in last week due to an almost empty inventory. Apparent changes will not be seen until after the SNEC.
Wafer
The overall mono-Si wafer price stayed steady at RMB 4.45/piece in China and US$ 0.61/ piece overseas this week; low-resistance mono-Si wafers came to RMB 4.5/piece in China and US$ 0.62/piece overseas.
Multi-Si wafers continues to stock up and manufacturers have lowered utilization rates as multi-Si demand is expected to stay low in the near future. Pressure in multi-Si wafer inventory has not been alleviated, and the price will remain downward before significant reduction of utilization rates. Multi-Si wafer price dropped from RMB 3.35/piece to RMB 3.25/piece this week in China; the lowest price trend appeared even more chaotic due to a pessimistic market. For overseas price, it went down from US$ 0.47/piece to US$ 0.46/piece this week, and will remain downward.
Cell
Affected by weak demands in the multi-Si segment, some large vertical integration manufacturers have stopped purchasing multi-Si cells. As a result, the downward trend has been more apparent in both China and overseas cell prices. However, prices temporarily remained steady as only a few orders were negotiated this week.
Negotiation for prices in June will peak from next week to the SNEC period. During this time, multi-Si cell price is expected to go down. Looking at the US dollar, multi-Si prices in China and in Taiwan will differ significantly, resulting in larger downturn for China cell price than Taiwanese counterpart.
Mono-Si PERC and conventional mono-Si cell prices received more orders thanks to higher market demands for the mono-Si segment. Also, in addition to China, the European and US markets have also shown high demands for mono-Si cells. Therefore, mono-Si PERC cell prices can stay upwards in June. Conventional mono-Si, however, have limited room for growth since it needs to compete with conventional multi-Si in C/P ratios.
Module
Module prices did not show significant fluctuations recently. As expectations for the 630 installation boom is low, module prices can only stay level in the best scenario. However, it is likely to gradually drop in the future as a result of downward wafer prices.