Since 2026, aided by grand narratives, bulk commodities like resources and energy have generally seen unusual activity, with high market investment sentiment. However, as a secondary energy source, the performance of coke has been relatively subdued. Yet, new positive factors appear to be emerging; Zhitong Caijing noted that earlier this month, coke producers proposed the first round of price increases, with hikes of 50 RMB/ton for wet-quenched coke and 55 RMB/ton for dry-quenched coke. Needless to say, how the coke market trend will develop after this round of price increases still requires more time for observation. However, looking ahead, with the implementation of domestic environmental policies and the rise in domestic demand, the author believes that a return to growth for related companies is imminent, and as a leading enterprise in the coke sector, China Risun Group (01907) naturally deserves even greater attention.

Reflecting on last year's coke market trends, weak downstream demand was a significant factor contributing to the continuous decline in coke prices in the first half of the year. In the second half of 2025, the introduction of the "crackdown on overproduction" policy restricted coal mining companies from exceeding production quotas, leading to a recovery in coal prices, which in turn drove a rebound in coke prices. Nevertheless, the marginal recovery on the supply side was ultimately insufficient to support a sustained unilateral rise in coke prices. On a positive note, downstream demand for coke is expected to improve in 2026. As a crucial midstream link in the ferrous metals industrial chain, coke primarily serves blast furnace ironmaking and non-ferrous metal smelting, making it an essential means of production for ensuring the output of the steel and non-ferrous heavy industries.

For the future coke market, the extent of recovery in the downstream real estate sector is anticipated to significantly influence coke price trends. Recently, multiple media outlets reported that regulatory authorities no longer require real estate developers to report their "three red lines" metrics monthly, with only some financially distressed developers needing to regularly report core financial data; this may signal an adjustment to the real estate financing regulatory policy that has been in place for five and a half years. It is worth mentioning that the market had already held some expectations for a recovery in the real estate sector. A representative view is that expressed publicly by a prominent female private equity fund manager, who suggested that based on factors like a major supply-side clearing and a cyclical overall volume recovery, the property sector might present a "once-in-a-decade opportunity" within the next six months.

The author believes that for coke specifically, not only are both supply and demand expected to reach an upward inflection point in 2026, but also, viewed from a longer-term perspective, current coke prices remain near five-year lows; the price elasticity of this "spring," once compressed to its extreme, should not be underestimated. Furthermore, from the perspective of sector linkage, the rising investment enthusiasm since the start of the year in non-ferrous metals and the petrochemical industry chain is also expected to have a catalytic effect on the value discovery of coke.

Looking back at Risun Group, as the world's largest independent coke producer, the company's coke supply reached 23.8 million tons in 2025. Furthermore, at the end of the year on December 31, 2025, the first coke oven of the annual 1.8 million ton coking project in the Risun Pingxiang Park successfully commenced operation; simultaneously, the company's production park located in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is continuously ramping up, indicating smooth progress in the company's international market expansion. As an industry leader, Risun Group, with its continuously expanding high-quality production capacity, is poised to be among the first to benefit from any recovery in the coke industry. Combined with the recent repeated active performance of Risun Group's stock price, this likely constitutes the underlying logic for some capital positioning itself early.