Last week, the overall cobalt market ran weak, with divergent trends across different product categories. Electrolytic cobalt, dragged down by high inventories and weakening cobalt intermediates, saw an accelerated price decline, with a single-day drop once widening to over Yuan 10,000/tonne during the week. Ample supply of cobalt intermediates and recycled materials continued to push down cost support across the entire industrial chain. Cobalt salt trading remained sluggish, with smelters reducing output and focusing on long-term agreement execution. Meanwhile, quotations held steady but lacked upward momentum. The trading atmosphere for Co3O4 showed no notable improvement, with the supply side hoping to shore up prices through production cuts. However, downstream lithium cobalt oxide and battery cell plants had yet to work through their inventories, procurement was maintained only on a just-in-time basis, and transaction volumes stayed at low levels, with cost pass-through hindered.