According to the monitoring of SunSirs, the price of thermal coal fell all the way in April. At the beginning of April, the average port price of thermal coal was maintained at about 536.25 RMB/ ton, and at the end of April, the average port price of thermal coal was maintained at about 471.5 RMB/ ton, with an overall decline of 12.07%. On April 29, the thermal coal commodity index was 57.02, down 0.3 points from yesterday, down 44.65% from 103.01 (2011-11-15), the highest point in the cycle, and up 27.56% from 44.70, the lowest point on January 20, 2016. (Note: cycle refers to 2011-09-01 to now)
Analysis of Influencing Factors
Product: in April, with the control of COVID-19 in China, the resumption of work in various regions accelerated significantly. However, the overall sales situation of coal mines in Yulin area was general, the sales of lump coal was good, and the price on the mine was stable for the time being; the overall sales of coal market in Jinmeng area had no obvious change, and the accumulation situation of some mining areas continued. However, the low load operation of the coal terminal resulted in the poor delivery of the whole coal mine and the high inventory operation, and the coal price continued to decline.
Industry chain: the trend of downstream power plants is not optimistic. Downstream power plants still hold a wait-and-see attitude towards resources with low prices. The transaction is weak, and the market expectation is pessimistic. According to the data, on April 30, 2020, the total inventory of thermal coal storage of six coastal power plants was 16.028 million tons, the daily consumption was 53,880 tons, and the available days were 29.75 days. At present, the situation of weak downstream demand still remains unchanged. Traders have a strong wait-and-see attitude, while port inventory remains high.
Macro: coal import increased in the first quarter, and trading prices fell. In March, 27.83 million tons of coal was imported, up 18.5% year on year; in the first quarter, 95.78 million tons of coal was imported, up 28.4% year on year. In addition, COVID-19 spread globally, and many countries began to seal up their countries and ports, resulting in increased downward pressure on the economy. Many export processing enterprises in the southeast coast were unable to fully resume production due to lack of orders, resulting in reduced power consumption. In the first half of April, coal procurement in the lower reaches continued to be sluggish, power plants mainly went to storage, and coal prices continued to fall.
Market Forecast
SunSirs’ analysts believe: the current is a traditional coal off-season; coal market supply is greater than demand, coal prices fall under pressure. Affected by the outbreak of overseas COVID-19 and the slow start of coal demand in domestic coastal areas and other factors, the market supply and demand is unbalanced, and the pressure of coal price decline is increasing. At present, there are few coal pallets, so the market negotiation atmosphere is flat and the market continues to be weak. However, with the introduction of the national policy of stabilizing the market and coal price, as well as the loss management of some coal enterprises, the market space is narrowed, and the possibility of continuing to decline sharply is relatively small. It is comprehensively expected that the thermal coal will be mainly consolidated in the later period or in a small scale, depending on the downstream market demand.
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