SMM Cobalt Morning Brief: This week, the cobalt industry chain continued to consolidate on a weak note overall. Refined cobalt traded around 380,000 yuan/mt. Although smelters slightly raised their offers, high inventory and weak end-use demand limited price recovery. The trading center of cobalt intermediate products moved lower. Cobalt sulphate ground lower on a weak note. Transactions of cobalt chloride and Co3O4 were sluggish. Cobalt powder remained under pressure due to the traditional off-season. The pullback in raw material prices dragged down ternary cathode precursors and ternary cathode materials. LCO remained stable with a weak bias. Future market trends still require attention on Q3 restocking and end-use demand recovery.

Fengyuan Shares expects net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 140 million-200 million for the first half of 2026, compared with a loss a year earlier. The company attributed the turnaround to continued growth in global new energy demand, which boosted downstream demand for lithium-ion battery cathode materials. Higher sales volumes and capacity utilization, together with improved economies of scale and government subsidies, supported earnings growth.

Senior Technology expects net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 736 million-900 million in the first half of 2026, compared with a loss a year earlier. The company said strong downstream demand for lithium-ion battery separators supported steady shipment growth, while improving industry supply-demand fundamentals helped separator prices stabilize and recover from last year's lows. Combined with effective cost controls, higher margins drove a significant improvement in profitability.

Do-Fluoride announced that the scheduled completion date for its 100,000 tpy lithium-ion battery electrolyte materials project has been postponed by one year, from November 30, 2026 to November 30, 2027. The company said the project's investment scope, implementation entity, funding plan and intended use of proceeds remain unchanged, with only the construction schedule being adjusted.

L-H Battery Company, the U.S. joint venture between LG Energy Solution and Honda, announced on July 3 that it began mass production of lithium-ion battery cells for ESS at its plant in Jeffersonville, Fayette County, Ohio, on July 2 local time.

Recently, the Shanxi Xiangyuan 42.5MW lithium-ion battery and supercapacitor hybrid energy storage project has entered the grid-connection commissioning phase. The project is jointly constructed by Shanxi Zhongsheng Smart Power Co., Ltd. and Shanxi Zhixian New Energy Co., Ltd., with a total investment of 206 million yuan. Among them, the lithium-ion battery installation scale is 32.5MW/130MWh, a standard "four-hour" configuration, while the supercapacitor installation scale is 10MW/0.083MWh, enabling "rapid power braking or acceleration" within tens of seconds. The lithium battery handles large-capacity energy storage, while the supercapacitor achieves millisecond-level fast frequency regulation. The system can serve both peak-valley arbitrage and grid auxiliary frequency regulation, stabilizing the output of new energy power generation.