Future judgment of chemical industry prosperity

1 Supply side: fixed asset investment slowed down, and construction in progress began to fall

From the perspective of capital expenditure and the speed of new production capacity, the last round of prosperity has led to a new round of capital expenditure in the chemical industry from 2018, and 2018-2020 is the main time point of concentration of this round of expenditure, and the refining and chemical industry is the main direction of expenditure. At present, this round of capital spending has begun to show a significant year-on-year decline. Among them, chemical fiber fixed asset investment has declined sharply, chemical raw materials and their products, rubber and plastic products fixed asset investment growth has begun to slow down, from the industry inventory situation, chemical raw materials and products inventory close to 2016 low, chemical fiber inventory close to nearly five years low.

2 Demand side: The downstream demand for chemical industry is stable

As a midstream industry, the downstream demand covers clothing, food, housing and transportation. From the perspective of various demand sub-industries, the decline in automobile production and sales has narrowed, the production and sales of refrigerators have rebounded, the toughness of real estate is strong, the new construction has increased, the completion has gradually narrowed, and the sales area has rebounded. Cloth and yarn production declined year-on-year, and overall downstream demand for chemical industry stabilized.

3 Environmental protection and safety supervision: strict supervision has become the new normal

From 2016 to 2019, the supply-side impact brought about by the tightening of safety supervision and environmental protection policies in the chemical industry has entered the process of weakening at the margin, and the threshold of the overall industry has been significantly raised, while the level of enterprise safety and environmental protection governance in the industry has also been significantly improved, which may gradually transition to a steady state.

4 Concentration: The concentration of the head enterprise has increased significantly

In the past few years, under the background of supply-side reform, the concentration of the chemical industry has shown a significant upward trend, and the new capacity of the industry is mainly concentrated in the head enterprises. Taking listed companies in the industry as an example, the top 10% of chemical companies account for 40% of the revenue of all listed chemical companies, and profits and projects under construction are more than 50%. Both figures represent an increase of 10 percentage points from five years ago. We expect this trend to continue and possibly accelerate in the future.

5 Conclusions

1) Capital expenditure on the supply side of the chemical industry is still in the expansion cycle, but the year-on-year growth rate has weakened significantly, and the growth rate on the supply side of other industries has narrowed except the large refining and chemical industry.

2) The demand side is at the bottom except for real estate, and the future demand is expected to bottom out or gradually recover.

3), environmental protection and safety supervision will continue to impact, mainly for the fine chemical industry, the impact margin will gradually weaken.

4) Increased concentration, 10% of the leading market share of more than 50% and is expected to further accelerate expansion.

5) From the point of view of product prices, bulk products are in the bottom stage, and are expected to recover upward, but the strength may be small.

Therefore, it is believed that the change of the core profitability of the chemical industry will gradually evolve from the original industry supply and demand boom to the cost ability and pricing ability of enterprises. In the past, the chemical cycle analysis often focused on the industry beta, picking out the industry with an upward boom and buying the company with the greatest flexibility, while the current and future chemical cycle analysis focused on the company's alpha, buying the industry leaders with declining costs and increasing pricing power.

Big chemicals: Buy the leading companies that have stood out at the bottom of the cycle

1 Basic chemical: Optimistic about the core competitiveness of outstanding growth of white horse leading companies

The chemical industry has entered the Matthew effect stage, with the core competitiveness and moat of the excellent white horse company even in the industry boom in the medium and low can also have the scale of cash inflows to support the sustainable growth of the medium and long term, while relying on the extension of the industrial chain integration, market and technology related diversification, continue to expand its competitive advantage and moat. Therefore, we suggest that investors continue to pay attention to the chemical industry in the core advantages of outstanding, excellent corporate governance, competitiveness continues to expand the growth of white horse leading companies, recommend Wanhua Chemical, Hualu Hengsheng, Sanyou chemical, Linglong tire.