Collective price increases in home appliances, with a rise of 5% to 20%: driven by rising raw material costs, Q1 to Q2 2026 may become the profit verification window.

Ask AI · Will the price hike wave accelerate the expansion of advantages held by leading companies in the home appliance industry?

A number of mainstream home appliance brands, including Hisense, Haier, Midea, Siemens, TCL, Panasonic, and others, have successively announced price increases for their products starting in April. The price adjustments cover multiple categories such as air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions, and kitchen appliances. The overall industry-wide increase ranges from 5% to 20%, with some Midea air conditioner models seeing increases as high as 30%. At present, offline channels have not fully implemented the price adjustments; some high-end new products have only been stocked in offline outlets, while online models have already initiated the price hikes first.

The core driver of this round of price increases is a significant rise in raw material costs. Data from the Shanghai Futures Exchange shows that recently, the copper price broke through 95k yuan/ton. Key raw materials such as aluminum, plastics, and crude oil have also moved higher in tandem, directly pushing up production costs for major white goods such as air conditioners and refrigerators. In particular, air conditioners use a large amount of copper, making the impact the most pronounced. Independent financial commentator Zhao Huan said that the main reason for the home appliance price increases in this round is the sustained and substantial rise in the prices of core raw materials, along with an escalation of geopolitical risk in Iran that drives crude oil prices higher; the entire petrochemical chain moves up across the board, boosting prices of chemical inputs such as ABS and PP plastics significantly.

In a recent research report, Huachuang Securities, while revisiting multiple cycles in the white goods sector, found that raw material costs have a clearly negative correlation with gross margin. The transmission of costs to the gross-margin end generally takes about one quarter. The fluctuation range of gross margins for leading white-goods companies is significantly smaller than that of other white-goods enterprises, and net margin performance is more stable. Huachuang Securities believes that the first quarter to the second quarter of 2026 is more likely to become a validation window on the profit side. Under current assumptions that air conditioner costs rise 10% year over year and gross margin is 30%, if companies want the gross profit amount per unit to remain unchanged, the corresponding ex-factory pickup price would need to be increased by about 7%.

Huachuang Securities points out that going forward, three indicators should be重点 monitored: first, if upstream raw material costs continue to rise, whether price increases on the manufacturer side can be sustained; second, whether retail-end prices can keep pace and rise in parallel with pickup prices; third, changes in sales volume and market share after price increases by each manufacturer, in order to judge the sustainability of maintaining price increases.

Zhao Huan further said that this round of price hikes is expected to accelerate structural divergence in the industry. Leading companies with stronger cost-control capabilities, brand premium, and comprehensive full-industry-chain layout can better absorb cost pressures, and may even use this opportunity to adjust channel inventory, accelerate product mix upgrades, and drive technological innovation, thereby strengthening their market position.

Statement: The market involves risk; investment requires caution. This article is generated by AI based on third-party data and is for reference only and does not constitute personal investment advice.