On the evening of January 9, Xingyuan Materials (300568) announced that the company signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with RS Technologies Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "RS Technologies") on January 8, and the two sides intend to carry out cooperation and exchanges in the field of semiconductor materials, transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and scientific and technological service ecology.

According to public information, RS Technologies, the strategic partner of this time, is a leading enterprise in the world's recycled wafer processing, mainly engaged in semiconductor silicon wafer manufacturing and processing, recycling processing, and semiconductor equipment quartz silicon consumables, semiconductor devices and substrate manufacturing and processing business. It is worth mentioning that RS Technologies is the controlling shareholder of Youyan Silicon (688432), a company listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, which is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of semiconductor silicon materials.

Xingyuan Material, which is mainly engaged in lithium battery separator business, why does it intend to set foot in the field of semiconductor materials? In the company's view, the strategic cooperation with RS Technologies will further leverage its advantages in R&D, production and sales in the field of materials, and bring positive effects to the promotion of semiconductor materials.

According to the agreement, RS Technologies will give priority to the cooperation and exchange of its semiconductor material scientific and technological achievements with Xingyuan Materials, and the two parties will collaborate on semiconductor material research. At the same time, Xingyuan Materials will use its business model to empower the transformation and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements of semiconductor materials, and assist in the implementation of joint R&D, sales and resource integration of semiconductor materials enterprises in the Chinese and Japanese markets.

In addition to the layout of semiconductor materials, Xingyuan Materials has recently gained a lot in the field of traditional separator business.

On November 11, 2024, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Xingyuan Materials, Euro Xingyuan, signed a fixed-point agreement with the power battery subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, agreeing to supply wet-coated lithium-ion battery separator materials to the latter from 2025 to 2032, and is expected to supply a total of about 2.09 billion square meters, and on November 19, 2024, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Sepion Technologies, Inc., agreeing that SEP will provide polymer coating materials, Polymer design technology and polymer inks for coatings, the company provides separator substrates, coating technologies and coating processes, and the two sides jointly develop the global separator market, predicting that the sales volume of separators will be about 1.174 billion square meters from 2026 to 2028, and on November 21, 2024, Xingyuan Materials' subsidiaries will be designated by EVE Lithium Energy to sell battery separators to the latter during the period from 2025 to 2030 with sales of no less than 2 billion square meters.

From the perspective of customer structure, Xingyuan Materials has established long-term and stable cooperative relations with well-known lithium-ion battery manufacturers at home and abroad, such as CATL, BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, China Innovation Airlines, EVE Lithium Energy, Sunwoda, South Korea's LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and Japan's Murata. The company said that at present, the orders are full and the capacity utilization is sufficient. In the first three quarters of 2024, the company achieved revenue of 2.605 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.86%, but due to the decline in product prices, net profit fell by 47.66% to 349 million yuan.

For the future industry trend, Xingyuan material said that fast charging + safety has gradually become the main theme of power battery evolution, battery manufacturers are rapidly improving the performance requirements of lithium battery separators, and the demand for medium and high-end separators is relatively strong. The company has taken the lead in mass production of nanofiber coated separators, polyimide-coated separators, aramid coated separators and other products, which have the characteristics of high temperature resistance, high strength and fast infiltration, which can meet the performance requirements of high-voltage fast charging and effectively reduce the risk of battery thermal runaway. In the future, the market volume of high-performance and high-safety batteries will also return to the competition between product technology and mass production.

At present, the fifth-generation super wet normal single line built by the company has a wide equipment width of more than 8 meters and a production capacity of 250 million square meters, which has refreshed the industry standard in terms of quality, efficiency, intelligence, low-carbon and other indicators, and maintained the leading edge in the industry in terms of single-line production capacity and production efficiency.

In terms of solid-state battery layout, the oxide electrolyte of Shenzhen Xinyuanbang Technology Co., Ltd., a shareholding company of Xingyuan Materials, has reached the mass production stage, and the sulfide and polymer electrolyte are in the stage of small batch supply. In November 2024, the Company entered into a framework agreement with Dacao Chemical Co., Ltd., which identified the Company as the sole designated partner for separators for its semi-solid-state battery project. In the same month, the company established a strategic cooperative relationship with Zhongke Shenlan Huize, and agreed to jointly develop solid-state electrolyte membranes, and further expand commercial cooperation at the right time to develop, produce and sell solid-state electrolyte membranes.