Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic during the Spring Festival holiday, the international crude oil price fell sharply. Affected by this, the opening and closing of PTA directly after the holiday, and then the market panic eased, and the PTA price was slightly repaired.
Social inventory surge
From a macro perspective, the macro counter-cyclical adjustment is expected to increase, and the People's Bank of China lowered the MLF interest rate by 10 BPs, followed by a one-year and a five-year LPR reduction. In January, new social financing was 5.07 trillion yuan, exceeding market expectations. Monetary easing and fiscal policy are gradually fulfilled, which will provide certain support for commodity prices in the short term.
But due to seasonal and epidemic effects, PTA social stocks have surged. It is understood that the current social inventory has exceeded 2 million tons, an increase of about 500,000 tons compared to the pre-holiday period. In fact, since the first quarter of each year is in the seasonal accumulation period, the accumulation library is expected in the market during the Spring Festival this year. As the downstream construction started in the past year, the pressure of the accumulation library will gradually be released, but this year due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Epidemic prevention measures in various places have been continuously upgraded, downstream start-ups have generally been delayed, and PTA supplies have remained relatively resilient, resulting in market accumulation exceeding expectations. In addition, due to the impact of the epidemic, stricter traffic control, limited logistics, and weaker demand, the inventory backlog at PTA factories is more serious.
Short-term installation load reduction
As of February 21st, the PTA plant load was 81%, which was a decrease from 85.6% before the holiday. The PTA processing gap fell to around 400 yuan / ton, entering a low processing gap range, and some plants began to lose money. In addition, the impact of the epidemic situation, The high inventory pressure was outstanding, which forced the PTA device to reduce the load in the short term.
However, in recent years, the integration trend of the PTA industry is obvious, and it gradually extends upstream and downstream. For example, Xinfengming (603225, stock bar) PTA new equipment supporting polyester, these companies value the profit of the industrial chain, not pure PTA Poor processing, so the company has a strong ability to resist risks and will not stop at will. In addition, leading companies such as Hengli and Yisheng will gradually add new capacity in 2020. The new device has a strong cost advantage. For example, the new Fengming Dushan Energy has added 2.2 million tons of PTA capacity with 200-300 yuan / ton. The cost advantage can withstand lower processing differences.
It is more important to pay attention to the fact that the PTA futures market presents a long-month premium pattern, and there are often risk-free arbitrage opportunities, and the concentration of PTA production capacity is getting higher and higher. The traders with financial strength cooperate to hedge and return the funds in advance. Therefore, in the long run, there will be no large-scale load reduction in the PTA industry.
At the same time, polyester load is recovering. As of February 21, the polyester load was about 60%, and recovery is currently slow. On the one hand, due to the impact of logistics, the inventory of auxiliary materials in the polyester factory is urgent, and the inventory of finished products is backlogged. On the other hand, employees arrive slowly, and even if they return, they need to be isolated, so that the recovery of polyester load is limited. However, the logistics is gradually improving, coupled with the introduction of measures to promote the company's active return to work, polyester load will increase in March.
In short, there is support and resistance under the current PTA price, and the short-term trend is not obvious. Under the background of high inventory, industrial customers focus on the current risk-free arbitrage opportunities.
