TrendForce: May panel industry utilization rate may be revised down by 6%~7%

On May 5, TrendForce released its latest panel price forecast. Specifically: TV panel prices remain flat across the board; monitor panel prices are still expected to maintain an upward trend; laptop panel prices continue to remain stable.

TV panels

Fan Boyu, vice president of research at TrendForce, said that in May, the trend of gradually weakening demand for TV panels has been established, and some brand customers have begun to take this opportunity to gradually ask panel manufacturers to make more concessions on panel prices.

However, panel manufacturers are certainly aware that demand is weakening, so during the Labor Day holiday in May, they launched a series of production reduction measures. It is currently estimated that the average industrial utilization rate in May will be revised by about 6 to 7% compared with April, hoping that through the adjustment between supply and demand, the downward pressure on prices will temporarily ease.

Overall, TV panel prices are currently expected to remain flat in May.

Monitor panel

Fan Boyu, vice president of research at TrendForce, pointed out that in May, demand for display panels still benefited from the fermentation of tariff issues and maintained a relatively strong momentum of supply. Therefore, panel prices still have the opportunity to maintain an upward trend.

However, due to the weakening demand for TV panels after the second quarter, TV panel prices have begun to enter a flat trend, which may also have an impact on the increase in monitor panel prices. It is currently estimated that the increase in May may begin to converge.

Based on current observations, Open Cell panels are expected to increase by US$0.2 in May. In terms of panel modules, 21.5-inch and 27-inch are expected to increase by US$0.1, and 23.8-inch is expected to increase by US$0.2 due to strong demand.

Laptop panels

After entering May, despite the continued fermentation of tariff-related issues, due to the varying degrees of deployment of brand customers' production bases in Southeast Asia, judging from the 90-day exemption period, there is not much room for rapid improvement in overall production capacity in the short term. Therefore, the recent demand for laptop panels has not increased sharply, and has maintained a normal pace.

On the contrary, panel manufacturers are more worried about the possibility of a sharp freeze in demand after the exemption period, so they are more proactive in winning customer orders.

In order to ensure customer orders and compete for more market share, panel manufacturers are bound to use more flexible pricing strategies to respond, thus presenting a different look from the display panel market.

It is currently estimated that the notebook panel price trend in May will remain flat overall. At the same time, each panel manufacturer will also use its own capabilities to negotiate with brand customers to combine more desktop order volumes with price concessions. (Source: TrendForce)