Sudden limit-up break! The stock price plunges! Big news from Elon Musk! The company issues an emergency statement.

Musk once sparked the solar photovoltaic (PV) sector.

In early trading today (April 1), Chinese mainland A-share PV industry chain stocks collectively surged, with Laplace reaching a 20% limit-up at one point. According to reports, Laplace recently won the second phase of Tesla’s solar PV project, with an order value of nearly 10 billion yuan.

Subsequently, during the noon session, Laplace issued a clarification announcement stating that after verification, as of now, the company has not obtained the relevant orders, and there is no major information that should have been disclosed but has not been disclosed. Affected by this, Laplace quickly broke the limit-up, and the share price fell sharply; by the close of trading, the gain had narrowed to 11.72%, while the share prices of other PV concept stocks also pulled back.

Emergency clarification

On the morning of April 1, it was reported that Laplace, a provider of core photovoltaic cell production process equipment and solutions in China, recently won the second phase of Tesla’s solar PV project, with an order value of nearly 10 billion yuan.

Affected by this, A-share space PV concept stocks once collectively surged, with Laplace strongly recording a 20% limit-up. Stocks such as Makiwei Co., Ltd., GigaDevice Co., Ltd., JinkoPower, Jiejia Weichuang, Autove, and others followed the move higher.

However, during the noon session, Laplace quickly issued a clarification announcement stating that after verification, as of now, the company has not obtained the relevant orders, and there is no major information that should have been disclosed but has not been disclosed. It added that if it meets the information disclosure standards in the future, it will strictly fulfill its information disclosure obligations in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.

In addition, Laplace mentioned that there has been no major change in the company’s fundamentals. The company’s stock price has risen significantly in the recent period, and there is a risk of overheated market sentiment and irrational speculation. It does not rule out the risk of a rapid short-term pullback in the stock price. Investors participating in trading may face significant risks. Investors are encouraged to invest rationally and pay attention to investment risks.

After the afternoon market opened, Laplace’s share price quickly opened back up from the limit-up board, and the share price plunged sharply; by the close, the gain had narrowed to 11.72%.

According to information on its official website, Laplace’s main business is the R&D, production, and sales of high-performance thermal processing, thin-film deposition, and supporting automated equipment required for manufacturing solar PV cells.

Also, according to earlier reports, the Space X team led by Musk procured equipment from a leading domestic heterojunction (HJT) equipment manufacturer. The order is expected to be shipped in the first week of May. Semiconductor-like export products all need relevant department filing and approvals, which are still underway.

It is understood that Musk’s team’s PV orders are mainly divided into Space X (S-chain) and Tesla (T-chain), with planned application scenarios being space and ground, respectively. According to sources, the cooperative orders on the T-chain are still under negotiation at present, involving multiple TOPCon equipment makers.

Worth noting is that since this year began, Musk’s updates have repeatedly injected strong momentum into the solar PV industry. On January 23, more than 30 PV concept stocks in the A-share market hit limit-up in a wave, following his statements supporting space PV. On February 4, the A-share PV sector surged again on rumors that Musk’s team was conducting research, and the space PV direction strongly surged, triggering another wave of limit-ups.

The narrative of space PV

Space PV refers to using solar PV technology in harsh environments such as space orbits and the Moon to obtain energy, transmitting electricity to the ground wirelessly, or providing power to facilities such as in-orbit satellites, space stations, and space data centers.

The core driving force behind demand for space PV comes from a dual pull of commercial spaceflight and AI compute power. In commercial spaceflight, orbital slots and frequency bands in low Earth orbit are scarce strategic resources; countries are actively planning satellite constellations to seize opportunities. At present, there are about 15,000 satellites in orbit worldwide. Since the “Starlink” low-orbit constellation race began, the world has submitted more than 300 constellation plans and is expected to deploy over one million satellites, thereby creating sustained and rigid energy demand.

On the AI compute power side, as AI technology iterates, compute energy consumption is growing exponentially, pushing compute infrastructure to extend into space. Against this backdrop, the concept of “space data centers” has emerged: by deploying satellites equipped with AI chips in space and relying on space PV to provide continuous power, it can cope with the future load pressure on terrestrial energy systems.

Dongwu Securities pointed out that PV is the only efficient, long-term stable form of energy for satellites in space.

Space compute centers have disruptive advantages compared with terrestrial data centers. Taking the operation of a 40MW compute cluster for 10 years as an example, the total cost of the space solution is only about 5% of the terrestrial solution. This leads satellite operating models to evolve from “heaven-sensing and earth-computing,” where raw data is sent back to Earth, to “heaven-sensing and heaven-computing,” where processing is done in orbit.

Dongwu Securities further stated that if 10,000 satellites are launched each year in the future, even the low-orbit satellite market alone could create a solar wing market space of nearly 200 billion yuan. If the construction of long-term 10GW-level space compute systems is also considered, the market size could reach tens of trillions of yuan.

CITIC? (No) — Industrial Securities? (No) — The following sentence: “Xingye Securities believes…”
　　Xingye Securities believes that the construction of compute infrastructure is expected to become an important source of new demand for new energy, with wind power and energy storage segments benefiting from even more pronounced elasticity. In terms of the order of benefit across the industrial chain, wind power equipment, energy storage systems, PV equipment, and power equipment companies will directly benefit from increased electricity demand driven by the expansion of compute infrastructure. At the same time, under a background of tight supply and demand, the energy storage battery materials segment is indirectly affected and is expected to achieve price increases.

Guangfa Securities said that AI giants are competing across the board, and “moving compute power to the sky” has become a consensus. With this driving force, space PV as a primary power-supply form is expected to benefit deeply, and is expected to bring a market space on the order of hundreds of billions of yuan cumulatively to PV equipment in the future. This new narrative logic opens up new incremental space expectations for the PV industry.

Everbright Securities believes that recent geopolitical events have greatly disrupted global crude oil supply chains, and new energy sources such as PV will play key roles in energy supply. The PV industry is expected to seize development opportunities. Dongguan Securities said that with the dual-engine drive of chips + space PV, it is firmly optimistic about the three core main lines: “fulfillment of PV equipment orders, localized substitution of semiconductor equipment, and space-compute PV.”

（Source: CICC China）