Graphene: "Hero" is useless

In 2016, graphene was eye-catching.

In July, Dongxu Optoelectronics released the application of “Alkenwang mobile power” for graphene-based lithium-ion battery. The stock price surged from 8 yuan/share, up to 17 yuan/share, and the stock price doubled in two months.

This is just a microcosm of the graphene A-share market. By the end of 2016, there were more than 30 listed companies with A-shares involved in the graphene concept.

According to public information, in 2004, British scientists stripped graphene from graphite, breaking the conclusion that the graphene could not be stably existed in the physics community. Because of the performance of graphene materials in electricity, heat and light, it is called "black gold". And "universal materials", scientists who first discovered graphene won the 2010 Nobel Prize, the heat is evident.

After graphene has taken root in China, the industry generally predicts that in the next few years, this new material will appear in batteries, anti-corrosion, touch screens, flexible displays, and even in the fields of chips, sensors and high-end electronics.

According to the forecast data from China Industrial Development Research Network, the global graphene market may reach 195 million US dollars in 2018, and 2023 will exceed 1.3 billion US dollars. According to the report released by China Graphene Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance Industry Research Center, China The graphene application market forecast will form an industrial explosion point in 2018, and will grow to a market scale of 100 billion yuan in 2020.

No wonder, the capital market has instantly detonated graphene.

Although the bright future is infinitely imaginative, its overestimated views also exist, especially the fact that graphene has not yet made a substantial breakthrough in application and industrialization.

At the same time, companies involved in graphene have not developed a recognized industry standard, and there is no shortage of concept speculators.

I am afraid that only when the tide recedes will you find out who is swimming naked.

The application is not open yet

As a new material, graphene has been valued by developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan since its inception, and the Chinese market seems to be particularly enthusiastic about graphene.

Since 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Finance have continuously issued articles to encourage the development of basic research and technology including new frontier materials such as graphene. It is planned to form a complete graphene industrial system to achieve graphene by 2020. Material standardization, serialization and low cost, large-scale application in many fields, the formation of several graphene enterprises with core competitiveness, and the establishment of a new industrialized industrial demonstration base featuring graphene.

There are many early adopters in the capital market. Dongxu Optoelectronics, Huaxi Energy, Del Future, Dow Technology, Gorgeous Family, Zhongtai Chemical, China Baoan and many other listed companies have invested heavily in the graphene field.

Strongly supported by the national policy, it has become the darling of the capital market. The graphene industry has been smooth sailing, technology, policy, and capital. Everything is ready, and the industry has portrayed a moving “Qian Jing”.

However, as a new material that has been around for a long time, the overheating of graphene still raises doubts. At the same time as the capital boom, many parties believe that the market is too optimistic about the future development of the graphene industry.

In the graphene industrial chain, the upstream is mainly graphene raw materials and preparation equipment, mainly including oxidation equipment, CVD equipment, graphene cleaning lines, etc.; the middle reaches are graphene preparation, including powder and film; the downstream is graphene in energy, electronics , composite environmental materials and other applications.

Li Dan, a researcher at the Raw Materials Research Institute of the CCID Research Institute, believes that the graphene industry is currently suspected of excessive speculation and misleading the public. This speculation and misinformation are firstly confused with the scarcity of graphene industry and resource scarcity, despite the earliest graphene. It is found in graphite, but its industrial preparation has little to do with graphite, and the demand for raw material resources is extremely small.

That is to say, due to the surge in demand for power lithium batteries, the supply and demand of lithium hexafluorophosphate, the key material, is unbalanced and prices are skyrocketing. This story does not occur in the graphene industry.

The concern about graphene is mainly due to its uncertainty at the application end.

Li Dan believes that the market exaggerates the performance of graphene. Although graphene itself has extremely strong conductivity and heat dissipation, from the macroscopic application, it may not be able to combine heat dissipation with large devices at present. Meanwhile, graphene is also too optimistic as a substitute for semiconductors. Graphene semiconductors are still in the stage of theoretical assumptions and concept propaganda. Graphene has become an alternative material for silicon semiconductors, and it is difficult to achieve in 20 to 30 years.

As one of the earliest listed companies involved in the graphene industry, Wang Zhonghui, deputy general manager of Dongxu Optoelectronics and chairman of Shanghai Carbon Source Huigu New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., expressed the same view in an interview with the Securities Market Weekly.

Wang Zhonghui believes that when graphene began to heat up three or four years ago, a large number of enterprises turned their attention to the upstream of graphene. There is no raw material problem in graphene itself. After the breakthrough of technology, graphene can also be mass-produced. The problem now is a large amount of graphene. After being produced, the industry does not know how to use graphene; at present, the focus of graphene industry development has shifted from preparation to application, who can make a real breakthrough in the application side, who is the real winner.

It is hard to say whether graphene will become a disruptive material in the distant future; however, at present, the application end has not yet opened, which determines that the graphene industry does not have considerable profitability in the short term, despite policy support, but The excessively hyped graphene concept is also inevitable.

Regarding the phenomenon of hot speculating graphene in the capital market, Li Dan said that many companies only add graphene powder to the original materials, claiming to greatly improve the performance of the products; in fact, there is currently no macroscopic method to measure graphene. As an additive material, how much material performance is improved, many companies do not have the research and development capabilities of graphene applications.

In the latest "two sessions" held in 2017, Tian Zhongqun, dean of the Institute of Graphene Engineering and Industry of Xiamen University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview that the current graphene industry is overheated and the stage results are enlarged. There is a gap between basic research and industrialization.

He also said that graphene is not the "golden oil" that most people think of. The use of graphene in different fields still requires careful and systematic research.

The production side is bleak

In the case that the application side has no real performance guarantee, the days of the midstream graphite preparation company will certainly not be better.

Most of the A-share companies are involved in the graphene field in the form of investment participation, and the information disclosure is not complete. On the contrary, most of the companies involved in the New Third Board are mainly graphene, and their performance may be more valuable.

The sixth element of the New Third Board Company (831190.OC) has a capacity of 100 tons of graphene powder, and is planning a 1,000-ton production line later.

According to the financial report, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, the operating income of the sixth element was 22.96 million yuan and 7.86 million yuan respectively, and the net profit after deduction was 19.09 million yuan and 13.72 million yuan respectively.

The sixth element stated in the 2016 semi-annual report that graphene is still in the research and trial production stage in many application fields, and the overall maturity of product application technology is low, although the company's graphene materials have begun to shift from previous research institutions to downstream applications. Enterprises, but at this stage, the external market demand scale is small overall.

The same is true for graphene films. Two-dimensional carbon (833608.OC) has a capacity of 200,000 square meters of graphene film.

According to the financial report, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, the operating income of two-dimensional carbon was 9.46 million yuan and 5.6 million yuan respectively, and the net profit after deduction was 22.46 million yuan and 10.26 million yuan respectively.

In the same way, the two-dimensional carbon said in the semi-annual report that the main reason for the large loss of the company is that the graphene application products are in the initial stage of market development, and the verification cycle of graphene materials and downstream products is long, which affects the market development speed of graphene products. .

In the semi-annual report, the two-dimensional carbon also pointed out that how to make the excellent physical properties of graphene through the product and form an irreplaceable core application is still a common problem faced by the graphene industry, as a strategic emerging industry, although at home and abroad. Different industries and institutions have invested huge amounts of resources in this industry, but the graphene industry still faces many uncertain factors in the initial stage of development.

In the case where the "heroes" of graphene are useless, the production capacity of graphene is still increasing.

According to the data of Chuancai Securities Research, at present, the production capacity of graphene powder in major graphene enterprises is between 4,000 tons and 5,000 tons, and the production capacity of graphene film is between 1.2 million and 1.5 million square meters.

Just when the graphene industry chain has not been formed, the downstream vacuum, the middle and upper reaches of the loss, but there is no shortage of "exciting."

In October 2016, Huaxi Energy acquired a 15% stake in Hengli Shengtai, a manufacturer of graphene powder, for 1.35 billion yuan. The announcement shows that Hengli Shengtai's operating income for January-August 2016 was 332 million yuan and net profit was 228 million yuan.

However, behind the “Qiqi” is that more than 80% of its revenue comes from related party transactions, and there is almost 100% gross profit margin. Huaxi Energy has not announced the specific name of Hengli Shengtai customers, but only indicates that customers are strategic cooperation units. 100 subsidiaries, the purchase of graphene is mainly used in the field of layers, new energy vehicle batteries, heat conduction and heat conduction.

Of course, the questioning and cooling of the graphene industry cannot deny the possibility of becoming a revolutionary material in the future, but it is still not certain that this is a stable business.

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