Lithium carbonate futures return to the 170,000 yuan mark, fund manager: Current supply and demand of lithium batteries has achieved a phased reversal.

Last week, the main contract for lithium carbonate futures closed at 175,000 yuan/ton, up 6.6% for the week, ending a month-long decline. In early May, lithium prices briefly returned to the 200,000 yuan mark, then experienced a rapid decline, bottoming out near 157,000 yuan in early June before rebounding again. Looking at a longer period, lithium carbonate has rebounded by about 200% since reaching a low of 58,000 yuan/ton in June 2025. The industry generally believes that lithium carbonate prices have finally emerged from a deep two-year downturn. On the industrial side, strong demand for energy storage projects, AI computing infrastructure, electricity market reforms, and new energy increments have collectively pushed supply and demand into a tight state. "Currently, lithium prices are caught in a game of long and short-term logic." A lithium battery industry chain analyst said that in the short term, the macroeconomic outlook is heating up due to expectations of interest rate hikes, causing pressure on metal prices in general. The core variable for lithium prices in the second half of the year is not in mining output, but in whether energy storage demand can continue to exceed expectations. Jin Xihan, manager of Ping An New Energy Selected Mixed Fund, said that with the continuous realization of energy storage demand in the background, the overall prosperity of the industry is expected to exceed expectations. Currently, there has been a phase reversal in lithium supply and demand. Looking ahead, profit sustainability ranks lithium ion cell leaders above upstream lithium carbonate, which is higher than midstream materials. However, at the present time of continuous realization of demand, the profit recovery elasticity in the midstream and upstream sectors is even greater.