Price to stagnate before late 2018; new quote in prices to begin next week

Poly Price

Mono wafer use polysilicon price remained flat at RMB 80/kg this week. Although the lowest price has slightly dropped to RMB 78/kg, the trading price basically remained stable at RMB 78-82/kg due to a stagnation in prices before the end of this year. Multi product demand is likely to gradually decline as the end of the year approaches, multi wafer use polysilicon price continued to decline slightly. The average trading price dropped RMB 1/kg to RMB 73/kg, with price ranging between RMB 72/kg and RMB 74/kg. But next week’s price may be lowered further slightly. For the overseas, the trading price of polysilicon reached US$ 8.3-9/kg.

Wafer Price

Wafer prices this week stayed flat from last week’s. Multi wafer is priced at RMB 2.05-2.1/piece. After project installations temporarily come to an end before late-2018, multi product demand is expecting to gradually decline. Yet, since top-tier Chinese wafer makers would control capacity utilization rate at a balance level for supply, prices should be able to stay at the current level. Overseas multi wafer prices slightly declined this week, with prices reaching US$ 0.265-0.268/piece. On the other hand, mono wafer prices remained unchanged this week. Prices for January may be revised downward before the Chinese New Year depends on whether Longi will release new quote in prices next week.

Cell Price

Negotiation for cell quantity and price in December has been completed, and thus there were not many new orders this week. Cell prices this week remained unchanged from last week. Although buyers and sellers have started to negotiate orders for January, most of the transactions won’t be finished until next week.

Judging from now, the SE-PERC cell market continued to witness strong demand in January for either China and overseas. In addition, manufacturers will start preparing for stock before the Chinese New Year, leading to slight short supply which may support prices.

Taiwan’s mono PERC cell prices slightly increased with prices reaching US$ 0.17-0.178/W. However, as installation boom comes to an end before late-2018, whether overseas demand can continue supporting conventional PERC and multi cell demand remains to be seen. On the other hand, overall multi cell makers are still running at low capacity. Yet, the number of orders is not likely to plummet right away with demand from India in January 2019 and stock preparation before the Chinese New Year.

Module Price

For module, several top-tier manufacturers have not just increased Chinese prices last week, but also overseas quote in prices, but it didn’t have much impact on the actual market because high-efficiency cell and module capacities have mostly been reserved before the late-2018.  

Judging from the price of modules that will be delivered next year, conventional multi module prices will drop significantly in 1Q19. Many are negotiating at a price lower than RMB 1.75/W. Meanwhile, the high-efficiency mono PERC module market will have price support owing to demand from the “Top Runner Program” in 1Q19 and rising inquiries from the overseas.