The world's second-largest lithium producer, Chilean chemical mining company (SQM), recently released its financial results, showing a huge loss of about 6.3 billion yuan in the first quarter due to the price of lithium products plummeted by more than 70%. The results were much lower than expected, mainly due to an oversupply of lithium metal, which is needed for power batteries in electric vehicles, leading to a sharp decline in prices. Despite an increase in the sales volume of lithium products, the average sales price fell sharply year-on-year.

SQM pointed out that China remains the main market for global lithium resources, accounting for more than 75% of the total, and is also an important target market for it. Despite the downward trend in global lithium resource prices since last year, demand continues to grow. sQm expects lithium production to grow by about 18% this year, and expects global lithium demand to grow by 20% in 2024.

At the same time, domestic lithium giants Tianqi lithium industry and Ganfeng lithium industry in the first quarter also faced performance losses. Tianqi lithium due to lithium products sales prices fell sharply and investment income decreased and losses, while Ganfeng lithium did not detail the reasons for the loss, only mentioned that the decline in product sales prices led to a decline in revenue. The performance of these companies reflects the volatility and challenges of the global lithium market.