Since the beginning of the new year, there has been a slight rebound in polysilicon prices, which has raised hopes for a reversal in the photovoltaic market among many people. But the good times didn’t last long. On Monday of this week, Hemlock Semiconductor Group announced that it will lay off 400 employees. And one of the leading polysilicon manufacturers in China, Poly Xiexin, has issued a warning of possible huge losses for the whole year of 2012. Authoritative experts recently pointed out that in the absence of a significant increase in demand, a sustained rise in prices is a rare event, and the industry may continue to decline in 2013.

Internal and external giants report poor performance

Due to the global oversupply of polysilicon and the threat of tariffs on products sold to China, Helmlock will lay off around 400 employees at its factories in Tennessee and Michigan. As one of the world’s top three polysilicon producers, Helmlock is a joint venture between Dow Corning, Shin Etsu Handotai, and Mitsubishi Materials Corp.

The pessimistic news is that another polysilicon giant, Norwegian Renewable Energy Company (REC), plans to reduce Siemens’ polysilicon production capacity in the Moses Lake area of the United States by 2400 tons; As a representative of upstream equipment enterprises, Jinggong Technology, the leader of the polycrystalline silicon ingot furnace industry, also announced yesterday that its annual performance expectations have been lowered: it is expected to have a net loss of 130 million to 180 million for the whole year of 2012, while last year’s third quarter report estimated a net loss of 68 million to 0.73 billion for the whole year.

After New Year’s Day, our stock price rose for 6 consecutive days. Therefore, we want to tell investors to be rational. Although there is some good news in the industry, last year’s losses were inevitable and we cannot be blindly optimistic. We also do not want the stock price to fluctuate too violently, “said Lv Jinbiao, Deputy General Manager of Jiangsu Zhongneng Silicon Industry under Poly GCL, in an interview with our reporter yesterday.

He believes that the price of polycrystalline silicon will not rise to a very high level in the near future, and it would be great if it could reach a reasonable level of over $20 per kilogram. It is expected that the average price of polycrystalline silicon for the whole year of this year will still be slightly lower than last year.

A deputy director of the Energy Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission recently stated internally that the recent rise in polysilicon prices is short-lived, and there is little possibility of polysilicon returning to $20/kg.