Today, more than 20 years later, in the rivers and lakes of anode materials, the three giants are standing behind BYD and CATL with full confidence. They drew their swords and looked around at a loss, however, the Big Three, who wanted to continue to raise their eyebrows, also had some troubles to solve at the moment.
Thirty years to the east of the river, thirty years to the west of the river.
In the past year, the proportion of China's anode materials in the international output is still the existence of no rival.
At the beginning of 2024, the latest data given by Xinchun Information, a domestic professional organization, shows that in 2023, the proportion of China's anode material output in the world will further increase to 973%。The leading enterprises of China's anode materials, such as beiteri, Shanghai Shanshan, Jiangxi Zichen, etc., have still performed eye-catching in the past year.
Anode material is one of the main raw materials for lithium-ion batteries, accounting for 6%-8% of the battery cost. More than 20 years ago, Chinese people in the anode material industry may not have imagined that the waist rod would be so straight one day.
Before 2000, in the context of Japan's basic monopoly on global lithium-ion battery production, there was not only a big gap between China's technology and foreign manufacturers, but also raw materials had to be imported from Japan. In 2000, China's anode material enterprises accounted for less than 8% of the global share. Today, more than twenty years later, 973% of the numbers is unbeatable.
Behind the continuous first global market share of China's anode materials is the result of "building momentum and making a situation". The current situation depends on the take-off of China's new energy industry, and the "capable people" are indispensable Zheng Yonggang, the founder of Shanghai Shanshan, He Xueqin, the soul of beiteri, and Liang Feng, the founder of Jiangxi Zichen.
For decades, the top three positions in the anode material industry have been firmly locked by the companies helmed by Zheng Yonggang, He Xueqin and Liang Feng. These three companies not only made the proportion of Chinese anode materials in the global sales higher than one year a year, but also made Japanese products lose their competitive advantage. How do these talented people and the companies behind them do it?
Anode materials are divided into two categories: carbon materials and non-carbon materials. In the early anode material market, the mesophase carbon microspheres in carbon materials were relatively widely used in cameras, walkmans and other products. In 1997, the Carbon Research Institute of Anshan Thermal Energy Research Institute of Liaoning Province successfully developed mesophase carbon microspheres, which are micron-sized spherical carbon materials, which have become a breakthrough for Shanshan to change its life.
That year, Zheng Yonggang, who was preparing to transform into high-tech, saw the business opportunities of the industrialization of anode materials. At that time, the domestic lithium battery industry was still in the embryonic stage of development, and throughout the 90s, whether it was lithium batteries or battery materials, Japanese companies were unique in the world, and the technology related to them was monopolized by Japanese companies.
Under the leadership of Zheng Yonggang, Shanshan suit, which has won the first share of China's suits for six consecutive years, resolutely established a joint venture with Anshan Thermal Energy Research Institute in 1999 to establish Zheng Yonggang, which is a shareholder of Shanghai Shanshan Science and Technology, thus stepping into the lithium battery industry. Just one year later, Shanshan achieved an income of more than 50 million yuan. At this time, anode materials from Japan still account for 90% of the global share.
In this year, another company called "beiteri" was established in Shenzhen. In the two years after its establishment, beiteri, which takes potassium manganate as its main business direction, has not developed the market satisfactorily: there are technical problems and performance losses. When beiteri was anxious to conduct market research, Shanshan had already achieved an annual output of 200 tons of mesophase carbon microsphere project put into production.
In 2001, Shanshan ended with 1With an income of 700 million yuan, it has become the No. 1 supplier of mesophase carbon microsphere materials in China, and China's lithium battery anode industry is entering a ten-year leapfrog development period. beiteri also ushered in a turning point the following year: it was selected by He Xueqin, the manager of the investment department of China Baoan, and the company was later invested and controlled by China Baoan. In the same year, a person named Yue Min also became the chief engineer and general manager of beiteri.
In 2005, Shanshan had the capacity to produce 1,100 tons of mesophase carbon microspheres per year, and became the largest supplier of lithium-ion battery anode materials in China. However, as the demand for lithium batteries in the global market has soared, since 2007, both the square batteries used in feature phones and the cylindrical batteries commonly used in notebooks have put forward requirements for battery energy density.
Limited by the low specific capacity (the amount of charge that can be stored per unit mass or volume) and the high cost, mesophase carbon microspheres have gradually withdrawn from mainstream application scenarios. Instead, it is a graphite material that has the advantage in capacity and cost. The first to replace mesophase carbon microspheres is modified natural graphite anode products. This is Yue Min's specialty, he used to work in a natural flake graphite mining and processing company, and he is well versed in the performance of natural graphite.
The time and place are favorable, and the opportunity for beiteri to overtake in the corner has come. After joining beiteri, Yue Min soon led the R&D team to successfully modify flake natural graphite into spherical graphite and realize industrialization. By 2007, beiteri spent several years to successively launch several natural graphite anode materials with high specific capacity and high cost performance.
In 2009, beiteri has become the main supplier of anode materials for domestic consumer lithium battery manufacturers, including BYD, Lishen, BAK and other large manufacturers, all of which are the core customers of beiteri. In 2010, beiteri's shipments surpassed Japanese companies for the first time and became the world's first, but at this time, the global anode material market was still the world of Japanese companies.
Until the arrival of this critical time node in 2011: Japan, as the largest country in anode materials, had 311 major events. After the big one, Japan's anode materials are in short supply, and the first of its own material products has skyrocketed due to the dislocation of supply and demand, which has made Japanese lithium battery companies Panasonic and Sony lithium batteries begin to waver, and they will instead purchase materials from Chinese companies.
You know, China has nearly 70% of the world's graphite mineral resources. Japan's natural graphite companies mostly buy raw materials from China, return to China for processing, and then sell them to China at the highest price. Beiteri's natural graphite has a super high cost performance. This not only attracted Japanese companies, but also Korean companies Samsung SDI and LGC, but also switched the main supply of natural graphite to beiteri.
In this way, beiteri, which has achieved "striking iron and its own hardness", was jointly joined by Japanese and Korean companies and sent to the throne of the absolute first anode material in the world: in 2011, beiteri's global market share of shipments was 268%。In the second year of beiteri's success in the global anode market, an anode material company called Jiangxi Zichen was established, which mainly focuses on artificial graphite.
Compared with natural graphite, artificial graphite has better cycle performance, safety performance, charge and discharge rate, and better comprehensive performance. Therefore, natural graphite is mainly used in small lithium-ion batteries and consumer lithium batteries for general purposes; Artificial graphite is widely used in large-capacity automotive power batteries and mid-to-high-end consumer lithium batteries. Benefiting from the rapid growth of the electric vehicle market, artificial graphite has made Shanshan rise again.
After encountering Waterloo on mesophase carbon microspheres, Shanshan successfully developed a new artificial graphite anode material in 2005. It wasn't until 2007 when ATL, Apple's battery manufacturer, used artificial graphite as its anode material, that Shanshan got the opportunity to really grow: to become the first supplier of ATL artificial graphite. By 2011, natural graphite accounted for 4 percent of ATL's anode materials, and 6 percent were man-made, and Shanshan was the only artificial graphite supplier.
In 2014, Shanshan's artificial graphite anode has become the first in domestic production and sales. At this time, there is a saying in the industry, natural graphite looks at beiteri, and artificial graphite looks at shanshan. But the strange thing is that two years later, the first position of Shanshan artificial graphite was taken away by Jiangxi Zichen, which was established for a few years. In 2016, the market share of Jiangxi Zichen artificial graphite anode related products reached 22%. The artificial graphite of Shanghai Shanshan is 20%, lagging behind 2%.
In any case, so far, it has taken more than 20 years for beiteri and Shanshan, and Jiangxi Zichen for more than 10 years, not only in China's negative electrode rivers and lakes, to achieve corner overtaking, but also in the global negative electrode rivers and lakes, for China to play a piece of the sky: by 2020, beiteri has been the top ten years in the global anode material shipment list. Jiangxi Zichen ranks first in the world's shipments of artificial anode materials.
In the natural graphite track, Shanshan is difficult to compete with Beiteri, which has an absolute advantage. In the artificial graphite track, compared with Jiangxi Zichen, why did Shanshan lose its first-mover advantage?
The number one key figure in Jiangxi Zichen is Feng Suning, the developer of Shanshan's best-selling FSN-1, who was the general manager of Shanghai Suneng New Materials (a subsidiary of Shanshan), and joined Jiangxi Zichen as the general manager after leaving office. Chen Wei, the general manager of Jiangxi Zichen's parent company, Putailai, has more than 10 years of experience in ATL, and has served as vice president in charge of research and development.
In this way, Zichen's anode material is more in line with the requirements of ATL performance indicators, which is not difficult to understand. Specifically, for example, the high-end artificial graphite G1 series developed by Jiangxi Zichen surpasses FSN-1 in various performance. It is precisely because of this that since the beginning of the iphone4 era, Jiangxi Zichen has become the leading supplier of battery materials for Apple mobile phones.
Since 2013, Jiangxi Zichen has successively cut into the ** chain of leading enterprises such as ATL, Samsung, LGES, as well as CATL and BYD, and has ranked first in the country's artificial graphite shipments for many years. On the other hand, Shanshan, even if it took the opportunity of taking advantage of the demand for artificial graphite anode and turning to power batteries, expanding production with one hand and starting mergers and acquisitions with the other, the first company to eat crabs still failed to return to the first place.
It was not until 2021 that the output of Shanshan's artificial graphite anode materials returned to its peak and washed away the shame. This cool drama rhythm of "revenge returns" has continued until the past 2023.
This is due to Shanshan's accurate judgment and flexible response to the industry, such as in the face of the overall demand of the industry is less than expected, as well as the overall downward situation, Shanshan has turned the tide by promoting product iteration and upgrading, deepening cooperation with key customers, and fully implementing measures such as reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and expanding production scale.
By 2023, the pattern of China's negative pole triumvirate has been relatively stable. According to the "2023 Annual Competitive Brand List of Anode Materials in China's Lithium Battery Industry" jointly released by EVTark and other authoritative institutions, beiteri, Shanshan, and Jiangxi Zichen ranked respectively.
I. II. Third.
According to the statistics of Xinchun Information, the global output of anode materials in 2023 will be 176210,000 tons, of which the proportion of China's anode materials has further increased to 973%。In terms of shipments, global shipments were 167950,000 tons, of which China accounts for 95%. No matter how the outside world changes, beiteri, Shanshan, and Jiangxi Zichen are still among the top three in the industry, which has its own logic. In the view of Wang Zhaojiang, executive director of Shenzhen Beishan Changcheng ** Investment Research Institute, in addition to taking advantage of the situation to create a situation, there are two reasons.
First, the technical barriers of anode materials are the highest among battery manufacturing materials, and the investment in R&D and production is large. Second, these three companies are the earliest to enter the anode material, have rich industry experience, and the three leaders are very enterprising, so they have formed an oligopoly competition situation.
The financial strength of the three companies is due to the "big tree" behind them. China Baoan Group, which stands behind beiteri, is the first batch of listed companies in China. It was also the entry of China Baoan Group that beiteri began to focus on anode materials. In addition to contributing efforts and money, Baoan Group also contributed people. For example, He Xueqin, who used to be an engineer at China's Baoan Electronics Research Institute, later joined beiteri and became the soul of this company.
Behind Shanghai Shanshan is Shanshan shares, and behind Shanshan shares is Shanshan Group. Shanshan Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Shanshan Group. Shanshan Group is a science and technology group integrating anode materials, polarization, lithium salt, logistics, medical and health industries. The founder, Zheng Yonggang, is quite enterprising and anxious. It is precisely because of these two characteristics of him that after making the suit business to the extreme, he resolutely transformed to the high-tech industry. This is the birth of Shanghai Shanshan, the first enterprise of artificial graphite of anode materials.
Jiangxi Zichen's "backer" Putailai, the full name of Shanghai Putailai New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Pudong, Shanghai. PTL holds a 51% stake in Jiangxi Zichen. The founder of Putailai, Liang Feng, has a great background, he used to be a ** manager, and the ** products managed during his tenure reached a return of 24848%。Liang Feng's resume can be summarized as a counterattack by the manager, and his influence in the financial circle helps the company's financing efficiency.
Although all three companies are in the anode material industry, their product preferences are different. Shanshan mainly focuses on artificial graphite, and the negative electrode takes into account high, medium and low-end products, focusing on the middle and low end; Jiangxi Zichen mainly focuses on artificial graphite, mainly producing high-end anode products. While beiteri focuses on natural graphite, the market share of artificial graphite has also begun to catch up step by step.
The triumvirate of anode materials has its own ambitions. Taking Shanshan Co., Ltd. as an example, after the founder Zheng Yonggang passed away in February 2023, his son Zheng Ju was elected as the chairman of Shanshan Co., Ltd. in March of that year. Zheng Ju has the heart to continue his father's ambition, "Either you don't do it, or if you want to do it, you will be the best in the world." Zheng Ju once said at his father's memorial service.
Later, he also mentioned in public many times that Shanshan would make every effort to build an absolutely leading leading anode material enterprise. In order to express confidence in the future development of Shanshan shares, since October 2023, Zheng Ju and Li Fengfeng, director and deputy general manager, and other company management have actively increased their holdings of listed companies.
For He Xueqin, he probably didn't expect that his small investment back then would create a leader in the subdivision. Today, He Xueqin, who has become the soul of the company, has great expectations for beiteri, "to seize opportunities at strategic opportunities." He also said that beiteri is not about how much money it makes, nor is it about occupying the world's first position in the industry, but about changing the rules of the industry game and changing the perception of foreign companies on Chinese companies.
However, for now, the Big Three have their own anxieties.
In the curse of the new energy industry cycle, the capital market that votes with its feet has exhausted the Big Three.
Putailai behind Jiangxi Zichen and Shanshan shares behind Shanghai Shanshan are both A-share listed companies. beiteri is the Beijing Stock Exchange, known as the first brother in the market value of the Beijing Stock Exchange. Since the end of 2021, the share prices of these three companies have fallen sharply.
Shanshan's share price increased from 43An all-time high of $67 per share, falling to 11. on February 22, 202430 yuan. The share price of Putailai has increased from 68The all-time high of $69 per share fell back to 17 on February 22$32 per share. beiteri's share price has grown from 87 in 202165 yuan per share, down to 18$80 per share.
PTL stock price chart. ** Straight flush).
During the period of beiteri's stock price all the way, it entered beiteri's super bull Sange Weidong in the third quarter of 2020 and has been continuously since the fourth quarter of 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, Ge Weidong once again **78440,000 shares. By the third quarter of 2022, Ge Weidong has another **540,000 shares. As of November 2023, Ge Weidong's shareholding in beiteri is only 067%。
The performance of the anode material giants is also not what it used to be. Take the boss beiteri as an example, its revenue growth in the third quarter of 2023 suddenly slowed down: it achieved a total operating income of 688.8 billion yuan, down 651%, an increase of 345%；Net profit attributable to the parent company 51.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1770%, down 660%。
As for Shanshan shares, the 2023 performance forecast shows that the company's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies is 8600 million yuan to 1.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 59% to 68%.
In view of the decline in net profit, Shanshan shares gave one of the reasons, involving the main business of anode materials: the decline of upstream raw materials, the reduction of graphitization processing and the change of supply and demand in the industry, resulting in intensified competition and other factors to drive the overall decline of the negative electrode, affected by the pressure, the profit margin of the negative electrode industry has narrowed.
The roof leak happened to rain overnight. In Wang Zhaojiang's view, the anode material giants are also facing a common risk, that is, the innovation of new battery technology. For example, silicon-based anode materials are considered by the market to be the mainstream direction of the next generation of anode materials. Although from the current point of view, Shanshan and Jiangxi Zichen have the conditions for the industrialization of silicon-based products, these two companies are difficult to compete with beiteri in this regard. beiteri has become one of the earliest enterprises in China to mass-produce silicon-based anode materials, and its shipments are leading in the industry.
In the field of anode materials, the reason why beiteri leads the country and even the world is focus and focus, "for example, the main direction is to concentrate on anode and high nickel ternary." The second is to keep up with the technical route, the battery technology is updated quickly, and it can also grasp the market trend in real time. Wang Zhaojiang told the city boundary. If you look at the resumes of core executives, beiteri has a very obvious engineer orientation.
In addition to He Xueqin, chairman of beiteri, who has the experience of a technician, Huang Youyuan, the company's current vice chairman, and Ren Jianguo, executive general manager, are all engineers. For example, Huang Youyuan is a joint master of science student from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Peking University, and his research direction is the development and application of new materials for lithium-ion batteries. But this does not mean that Jiangxi Zichen and Shanshan have no chance.
In the eyes of the outside world, Shanshan shares have the characteristics of large production capacity and excellent customers, especially the expansion of graphitization capacity, which can help enterprises greatly reduce costs and maintain product competitive advantages. As early as 2018, Shanshan Co., Ltd. completed the upgrading of box graphitization technology. By the end of 2023, the proportion of graphitization self-supply of Shanshan Co., Ltd. will be 50%-60%. "It is expected to be further improved in 2024. Shanshan Co., Ltd. mentioned in a research summary on January 9, 2024.
Behind Shanshan Co., Ltd. is a group company, "in addition to positive and negative electrode materials, it also develops and produces display materials, in addition to clothing business." Overall, they are doing well. Wang Zhaojiang told the city boundary. As for Jiangxi Zichen, relying on Putailai, its core competitiveness is "technology + cost". Liang Feng is not alone, his partner Chen Wei and Feng Suning, general manager of Jiangxi Zichen, are people with rich experience and professional research and development capabilities in the lithium battery and anode material industry. Not to mention, there are countless researchers under Jiangxi Zichen.
Jiangxi Zichen has obvious cost advantages. Under the integrated mode of self-built production capacity, Jiangxi Zichen adopts the form of external collaboration in the graphitization link. It handed over the graphitization link to Shandong Xingfeng, which is controlled by Putailai. The main difficulty in this process is the control of the heating process. Jiangxi Zichen has its own unique curve, temperature control and special crucible and filler design, which not only ensures the quality of graphite, but also reduces power consumption.
For the three giants of anode materials, Wang Zhaojiang believes that they should be closely tracked and tried carefully. He explained that first of all, the rise trend of global electric vehicles will not change, and other consumer electronics are also expanding the application scenarios of negative electrodes, and their demand still has a long track. Secondly, the technical barriers to the negative electrode are high, the competition pattern is stable, and the development of leading enterprises is still sustainable. Third, the current battery materials are almost bottoming out, and the margin of safety is relatively good.
However, in the curse of the industry cycle, how to stop the stock price of the first and boost the weak performance is the top priority of the three giants of anode materials. After all, if both stock prices and earnings are still falling, the capital markets will continue to vote with their feet. In addition, one point of particular concern is: in the reality of overcapacity of domestic anode materials, how should they continue to overtake in the anode rivers and lakes? "The first thing is to see whether the technical advantage can continue to lead; Second, the ability and effectiveness of overseas market expansion. Wang Zhaojiang told the city boundary.
A fact that has to be admitted is that the domestic anode material industry has overcapacity, but the foreign anode material market is not yet saturated. For example, there is a gap in the European anode material market. Based on this fact, domestic anode material companies have moved when they hear the news. In May 2023, Putailai announced that it plans to invest in the construction of an integrated production and R&D base for anode materials in Sweden, with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons. On September 27, Shanshan Co., Ltd. announced that Shanshan Technology, a subsidiary of the company, plans to invest in the construction of an integrated base project with an annual output of 100,000 tons of lithium-ion battery anode materials in Finland.
Shame is almost brave, and the people should be self-reliant. "Looking back at the process of the rise of the Big Three in the negative pole rivers and lakes, this sentence is used to describe their state of mind, which is so appropriate. The past cannot be chased, but the future can still be. Next, it's up to the Big Three to turn the danger into a disaster and show their powers.
Author |Tao Ting,Edit |Sun Chunfang).