Recent positive first-quarter earnings reports from leading companies have driven a recovery in the rare earth sector's sentiment since late April. Combined with market expectations of a synergy between supply constraints and demand recovery, this has led to increases in both prices and market mood. The related product, the Huatai-PineBridge Rare Earth ETF (516780), has seen net capital inflows for two consecutive trading days (May 6-7, 2026), attracting a total of 36 million yuan.
On April 28, 2026, a leading A-share rare earth company announced its first-quarter results, reporting operating revenue of 11.859 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.69%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 918 million yuan, a surge of 113.12% year-on-year. These figures confirm the recovery in upstream profitability. Additionally, on April 10, 2026, the same company announced a 44.61% quarter-on-quarter increase in its rare earth concentrate transaction price for the second quarter, significantly exceeding market expectations. This cost signal is expected to transmit from the mining stage to the separation process, providing support for price trends across the rare earth industry chain.
Fundamentally, the tight supply-demand balance continues to strengthen. On the supply side, strict production controls, environmental regulations, and quota restrictions in China's rare earth smelting sector are limiting capacity expansion, while imports of rare earth ores from overseas are shrinking. Overall, supply and demand remain in a tight equilibrium. On the export front, policy optimizations and rising raw material costs are driving a recovery in overseas orders, further supporting domestic prices. On the demand side, bulk inventory replenishment in downstream sectors such as new energy vehicles, industrial motors, and AI computing infrastructure is generating substantial incremental demand. Amid this tight supply-demand dynamic, rare earth prices have shown strong upward momentum. Data from the China Rare Earth Industry Association indicates that from April 2026 to May 7, 2025, the price of praseodymium-neodymium oxide climbed from 710,000 yuan per ton to 752,600 yuan per ton.
The Huatai-PineBridge Rare Earth ETF (516780) closely tracks the CSI Rare Earth Industry Index, which selects securities of listed companies involved in rare earth mining, processing, trading, and application to reflect the overall performance of the rare earth industry. Its top five constituent stocks are China Northern Rare Earth, Goldwind Science & Technology, Xiamen Tungsten, Shenghua Lithium Energy, and GEM Co., all competitive leaders in the sector.
According to the 2025 fund annual report, as of December 31, 2025, the Huatai-PineBridge Rare Earth ETF (516780) had 60,300 holder accounts, making it the only rare earth-themed ETF in the market with over 50,000 holders at that time.
Huatai-PineBridge Fund, the manager of the Rare Earth ETF (516780) and its feeder funds (Class A 014331, Class C 014332), is one of China's first ETF managers, with over 19 years of experience in index investment. It has developed transparent, easily tradable, and low-cost index tools for investors, such as the Huatai-PineBridge CSI 300 ETF (510300) and the Huatai-PineBridge A500 ETF (563360). By the end of 2025, the company's ETFs had generated cumulative profits exceeding 164 billion yuan for holders over the previous two years, making it one of only four fund companies in the market to achieve cumulative profits of over 100 billion yuan during that period. In terms of fees, 77.8% of the company's ETF assets under management adopt the lowest fee structure currently available for equity index funds in the market, with an annual management fee of 0.15% and an annual custody fee of 0.05%.
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