TrendForce: Panel supply-demand ratio rises to 2.6% in the second half of the year, peak demand has passed

Market research firm TrendForce released a report on the 28th showing that as new production capacity increases quarter by quarter, the panel supply-demand ratio in the fourth quarter will rise from 2.4% in the third quarter to 2.9%, second only to the 7.5% in the first quarter of 2020 when demand was frozen due to the outbreak of the epidemic, indicating that the peak of market demand has passed.

In terms of glass investment and shipment area performance in the second half of the year, it is expected that with the continued increase in production capacity of Gen10.5 and HKC's multiple production lines, the overall large-generation TFT-LCD glass investment area is still expected to increase significantly by 5.9 percentage points compared with the first half of the year, reaching 127.2 square meters.

The highest annual glass investment area was in the fourth quarter at 64 square meters. The overall demand area increased by 1.4 percentage points from the first half of the year to 123.9 square meters, supported by the increasing size of TVs and IT demand.

Looking at the whole year of 2021, benefiting from the continued strong momentum of stocking panels for various applications, TrendForce predicts that the supply-demand ratio of large-generation TFT-LCD panels in 2021 will be about 2%, and the market supply and demand will fall in the balanced range of 2.5-3%, which is in a healthy and slightly tight situation.