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Can you hear me?
Yes, I can, Paul. Good to see you. Let us get started then, shall we?
Great. Yep, let's do it.
Hello, this is Craig with RedChip Companies. Thank you for joining today's event with ASP Isotopes, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker ASPI. Joining us today are Paul Mann, CEO of ASP Isotopes, Ryno Pretorius, CEO of Quantum Leap Energy, and Stefano Marani, currently CEO of Renergen , who upon the conclusion of the Renergen minute merger will become CEO of Electronics and Rocketry. We will begin with a brief presentation in a moment, and then we will answer your questions. Welcome to everyone joining us today on X, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. To submit your question, we invite you to join us on Zoom. Use the link at the bottom of your screen. Once in Zoom, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your window and type your question into the text box.
Before we begin, please allow me to read the safe harbor statement. This call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. I now turn this webinar over to the ASPI team. Go ahead, gentlemen.
Thanks, Craig, and thank you, audience, for your interest in this call tonight. Most of you know me. I've been on this call once a quarter, twice a quarter for the last three or four years. Today I'm honored to be joined by Ryno Pretorius and Stefano Marani to help. Yes, you can see some of the other executives we have at ASP Isotopes. Perhaps I'm first going to ask them to introduce themselves to you, and then I'll run through a quick update on what we've achieved in the company since our last RedChip call about two to three months ago. We'll open up to Q&A. It's a fairly quick pair of remarks for ourselves and plenty of time for Q&A. Ryno , perhaps you can just introduce yourself, where you came from, how you got here, your background, and go from there.
Hello. I'm Ryno Pretorius. I studied chemical engineering at the University of Pretoria way back in the day. My first job was at the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Company in South Africa, which was the genesis really of modern SMR reactors. Unfortunately, it was a little bit too early to the market, and that got closed down. Luckily for all of us, now we have lots of SMR companies in the world. That's great.
Most of those employees left South Africa, went to the U.S. to start up the SMR companies in the U.S. It brought some good stuff to the world. Ryno , continue.
After that, I worked at NECSA, which is the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, where I worked on the fuel side, i.e., the fluorination side. I did a PhD and a Masters there and developed some new fluorination techniques, specifically on some very heavy metal fluorination. After that, I worked for an EPC, EPCM engineering company, where I developed first-of-a-kind technologies for clients, did techno-economic evaluations, and developed a few new technologies myself. After that, I started my own company, where I did basically the same thing, where I provided engineering services, techno-economic analysis, and scaler capabilities. I'm very happy to say that we assisted very, very many clients in scaling their technologies up from a beaker scale to kiloton scale. I closed that business down to move to the U.S.
I would add that's actually where we met Ryno about four years ago. When I acquired [the ASP ], it was at a business rescue. I recognized straight away I needed more chemical engineers. We immediately hired Ryno 's firm to bring the chemical engineering expertise we needed to ASP I, and then when Ryno moved to America, we hired them all and they came to work for us. It was a very good relationship. Ryno , back to you.
Yeah. I was going to say, yes, when I moved to the U.S., unfortunately, I did a spend, but found a good home for most of the employees and helped some of them start their own engineering companies, which are stored within the ASP I network. I've worked here for a couple of, for two and a half years now in the U.S. I'm currently in Milwaukee. Hello from Milwaukee, where I helped a couple of startups in the San Francisco Bay Area scale up their technologies from small scale to big scale. I was contacted by Paul serendipitously at the end of last year and asked to join this ASP business formally and complete our engagement, our professional engagement. Here I am as the CEO of Quantum Leap Energy, and we're here to bring the world some energy isotopes.
Thank you, Ryno . Stef, maybe you just introduce yourself, a bit about your background and how you got here.
Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for attending. My background, my previous incantation, I was at Morgan Stanley. Ironically, at the same time that Paul was at Morgan Stanley, we were both in London. He and I were doppelgangers. He was on the equity side, and I was on the debt side. Funnily enough, our bosses both reported to the same boss. There's serendipity for you. I left Morgan Stanley. For better or for worse, my co-founder, Nick Mitchell, who is the COO of Renergen, and I acquired the stranded gas asset in South Africa back in 2013. Shortly after the acquisition, they discovered abnormally high concentrations of helium in the gas, which then resulted in us listing the world's first listed Helium Company. That was in 2015 on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. We then acquired a second listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Along the way, obviously, then started to develop the Virginia Gas Project into a strategically important helium and LNG business. Along the way, obviously, Paul and my paths crossed. Paul, maybe you want to elaborate on that part of it. That's been a journey of about four years, which has culminated in today.
Yeah, that's right. Yes, Stef and I met about four years ago. We stayed in contact. Both had very interesting businesses. We sat down in November last year, got talking about what it was like to put the two businesses together. It became obvious, actually, that there were so many synergies between the businesses. We really could create a powerhouse of critical materials, putting the two companies together. It became an obvious transaction to do. I think we formally announced it in probably April of last year. We hope it will close in the next several weeks. Thank you, Ryno and Stef, for just providing your background so the listeners can better know who you are. I'm going to provide some updates on what we've done since the last call about sort of two months ago, and then we'll go straight to Q&A.
I think the first achievement in the last sort of eight weeks or so is we shipped our first samples of enriched silicon-28 to a U.S.-based customer. That's really important because it's going to allow us to calibrate our measurements in the plant and make sure that when we get the final product, it'll be exactly where it wants to be. We think we're there, but we need to make certain before it ships. That was fantastic. Second achievement is that we're in the final stages of enriching Ytterbium-176. I think it's going to go before the end of the month, and that'll be fantastic as well. Well done to the team. We've been working 24/7 for the last, actually 24/6. They have Sundays off for the last sort of two months or so on that.
Right now, they're running in a batch process, and that's about sort of three to five hours of enrichment per day, five to six days per week. We should actually have a semi-continuous process ready by the end of September. We've had a short delay there, and one of the long lead time items was hoping to finish it in the early part of September, but one long lead time item is going to be three weeks away. That should allow us to produce really large quantities of Ytterbium-176 where we process for 24 hours a day, basically three months at a time. The Carbon-12 plant is going well. There was an annual environmental inspection that took place during August. That took a few more days than anticipated, so they're about 10 days behind schedule, and that should finish in the next sort of few days or so.
I think the final achievement is that we've signed a large memorandum of understanding with Fermi, a very large U.S. strategic partner. They are in the process of constructing a vast 11-gigawatt energy complex in Texas. The idea in this memorandum of understanding is to have a joint venture between Quantum Leap Energy and Fermi to produce nuclear fuels. ASP Isotopes will build a plant on the site to enrich strategically important isotopes for the U.S. We really look forward to accelerating that project during the next several months. I guess the final achievement is yesterday we listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. We went down to Johannesburg in the morning to blow the kudu horn. Kudu is a wild animal in South Africa. We blew the kudu horn at the opening of the exchange. We owe it to the South African people to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
We wouldn't be here without them. They've been extremely helpful while I've been here. We've had a great reception from the South African population. We felt it was our right and our need to list on the JSE. We did that yesterday. With that, those are my prepared remarks, Craig. With that, I'll hand over to you for Q&A. I'm sure there's lots of questions from investors on the call. Over to you, Craig.
Thank you very much, Paul. We now will take your questions. To submit your questions, we invite you to join us on Zoom. Use the link at the bottom of your screen. Once in Zoom, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your window and type your question into the text box. Please do not use the raise hand tool today, as we will not be able to take your spoken questions. Paul, we've already received dozens of questions. Here's the first one I'd like to use. When do you expect to break ground at the Fermi site?
Right. That's putting the cart before the horse. I may let Ryno answer some of that. You know we need to go through a licensing stage first, and we need to get the relevant permits and permissions. That may take some time. The government administration has promised to accelerate all nuclear permits. Things appear to be done in record timing. I think breaking ground, let's get permits first. Ryno , anything else to add to that?
Yes. I think I'll answer this question with one of the other questions from Anders Grief in the chat or in the question section. We're looking to, as the saying goes, ASP stands for as soon as possible isotopes. We want to get involved as quickly as possible at the Fermi site. When we visited them two weeks ago, they were already doing geotechnical preparation of the soil and preparing for concrete to be laid. They're moving at light speed. To answer part of Anders' question here, we are looking into the enrichment side, conversion, and deconversion. We'll move as fast as we can in terms of timeline.
Fermi expect to have the first gigawatt of power available by next summer, the Northern Hemisphere summer. They can probably bring that forward to March if a customer needs it by March. This team is moving at rocket speed. I think we're similarly aligned with them that the world needs this now, not in 10 years' time. Thanks for that question, Craig. Next question, please.
Can you sell HALU from this site to any customer?
I believe in theory we probably can. However, we will likely get long-term contracts with strategic customers lined up before we commit capital to the plant. In theory, those customers could be any customers. I'm pretty skeptical on the SMR market myself. Maybe there are 70 SMR companies in development. I bet you 67 fail. If I'm wrong, I suspect 68 fail. We'll see. We've selected partners right now who we think are going to be successful. In theory, we can sell to any customer. I suspect there will be U.S.-based customers as well.
Gentlemen, in addition to HALU, what other isotopes will you produce from the Fermi site?
It's a good question. I mean, Ryno 's been looking very closely at building a Lithium-6 and L ithium-7 plant within Quantum Leap Energy, within QLE. I'll let him talk about it in a moment. You know we believe the U.S. needs a lot of semiconductor gases and strategic gases for semiconductors. It's an obvious place to build a plant to enrich silicon-28 and other isotopes. The U.S. needs to maintain its advantage and overlook the rest of the world in semi [just], Ryno , maybe talk quickly about L ithium-6 and L ithium-7, and their needs and their uses and why we and the interest in them.
Sure. Lithium-6, L ithium-7 are some very interesting isotopes. They can be chemically separated, which is odd. That's beside the point. Lithium-6 and L ithium-7 are critical to both fusion and fission. Lithium-6 and 7, respectively, are used in tritium breeding that is critical towards energy security and is critical for fusion. Most of the fusion reactors in the future will look at deuterium-tritium fusion. Tritium is not a naturally occurring isotope due to its instability. It needs to be bred from nuclear reactors. Lithium-7 goes into FLiBe, which is fluorinated lithium-beryllium. That's used as a cooling fluid for a lot of the up-and-coming SMRs, as well as some of the fusion reactors. Very interesting salt.
I think the Fermi site provides an excellent opportunity for us to combine or actually bring back, because fluorine really came into its heyday with the Manhattan Project to actually convert uranium into a gas for enrichment. Having that capability on the Fermi site enables us to produce a lot of fluorinated chemicals that the market needs, such as semiconductor gases and some other heavy metal fluorides.
Thank you, Ryno .
Do you think you will be able to get any grants from the U.S. government? Have you applied for any?
We'd like to think we can. We haven't applied for any yet. We've had good conversations with the DOE, many levels of the organization. Renergen , which is Stef's organization, has got a huge amount of money coming from the DOE. I'll let Stef talk about that now. We'd like to think that our goal here is to provide critical materials to the U.S. to secure its needs. We'd like to think that many governments would like us to be in their countries helping us. Stef, maybe you can just talk about the loan we have from the DOE.
Thank you. In 2018, the world went through the second of its helium crises. The world has four helium crises under the belt in the last six years. The United States, which was predominantly an exporter and the world's single largest producer of helium, in 2017, that all changed. It is anticipated that around 2025, 2026, maybe 2027, the United States will go from an exporter of helium to an importer of helium. This is obviously quite a disaster when you consider helium's criticality with regards to the semiconductors, think the CHIPS Act and the onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. The second thing is its criticality in rocket launches, where, bizarrely enough, one rocket launch uses about 12% of the entire planet's helium production for that day, just for one single rocket. When you take all of that into account, Renergen was declared critical to U.S.
national security in 2018 at the peak of the second crisis. That was under the then-Trump administration. In 2023, Congress ratified the approval of a second loan to build the Virginia Gas Project, the Phase II operation. That loan is a $500 million loan from the United States government through the DFC. That was ratified under the Biden administration. That is for us to produce and bring online the Virginia Gas Project's helium supplies, which will represent about 8% of the entire planet's helium supply. Funnily enough, that'll only be around 4% of the Virginia Gas Project's acreage, just giving you an idea of the extent and the magnitude of the deposit in South Africa. To Paul's point, it means that between Renergen , along with AS P and QLE , we have so many multiple touchpoints with the government.
Through the various transactions that we're doing, we only seek to strengthen our relationship and collaboration with the U.S. government. I wouldn't be surprised if you see that there are significantly larger areas of collaboration and potential grants that we see coming out of this.
Can you update us on the timing of the QLE spin-off? Is it still expected during the second half?
Yes, it is still expected during the second half. So far, I haven't spoken to the lawyers for a week or so, but the lawyers are dealing with it right now. There are various SEC filings that have to happen and what have you. I think we're looking good for an October-November kind of October kind of spin, but again, subject to all the regulatory kinds. Actually, the thing that may delay is I'm in hospital in September-October for some surgery. We'll have to see how quick my recovery is from that. Hopefully, we're looking good for October-November, that kind of timeframe.
Thank you, Paul. Please talk about the synergies between Renergen and ASP Isotopes. How does this business fit into the ASP I business? When do you expect the Renergen business to break even?
I'll give a very high-level overview, and I'll let Stef answer the rest of it. I mean, the goal here is to create a vertically and horizontally integrated critical materials business. Helium is the backbone for any electronics, any electronics semiconductor fab. We aim to make isotopes that will enable next-generation semiconductors. The goal here is to have a vertically and horizontally integrated business. Stef, why don't you take a second answer to that question, please?
It would help if I came off mute. The signal dipped. Paul, could I ask you to just quickly paraphrase the question again? I missed the question. I only heard yours.
What are the synergies between Renergen and ASP Isotopes? How does this business fit into it? When do you expect Renergen to break even? Maybe you actually don't answer that last bit because we haven't given that guidance. The rest of it, great.
Perfect. All right. So first and foremost, as I mentioned before, helium is the backbone to the semiconductor industry, as well as to the rocketry industry. Now, when you consider around 2015-2016, helium represented, well, rather the semiconductor industry represented around 4% of the world's consumption of helium. That's now subsequently changed. As it stands right now, it's about 14% of the world's consumption of helium. It's anticipated that that number is probably going to grow. The most wildly optimistic scenarios are 26% CAGR year on year for the next decade, which would mean that the helium industry would almost exclusively supply only two industries. That would be semiconductors and rockets. When you consider the criticality of helium in the process of semiconductors, think about this. The cost of helium per microchip is probably the ninth or tenth decibel. It's so small that it's very difficult to quantify.
It doesn't really matter what a fab is willing to pay for helium to manufacture the semiconductor in the first place. However, if you do not have helium for the day of production, the whole fab shuts down. There's nothing that you can do about it. That cost for one day's loss of production because you didn't get helium puts you in a position where their losses exceed the entire year's worth of purchases of helium. On that basis alone, helium becomes such a critical input. It's inch-wide, mile-deep risk. The semiconductor fabs see helium as an absolutely critical piece in their supply chain. Now think about how many critical pieces go into their supply chain. Silicon for the epitaxy process in the wafer or rather silane. They need pure copper, pure nickel, pure silver. There are so many different pieces that go into the manufacture of a semiconductor.
The average person thinks that it's input in in one factory and you've got a microchip ready to put into a laptop. It doesn't work like that. There are actually five factories at a minimum that a typical semiconductor will take to go through. It takes five months to grow a wafer. You've got so many different pieces that go into the supply chain. Now, we're creating a world first. We're creating a company that's going to have complete vertical and horizontal integration. That eliminates such a significant portion of risk for our customers that that value alone is incredible, aside from the fact that we're also going to make these materials isotopically pure, which in and of itself is a massive enhancement.
You're taking isotopically pure materials and you're taking the backbone, key ingredient that's necessary that opens the door to discussions with absolutely any consumer of electronic gases on the planet, i.e., helium. You put those into one. You can walk into any fab anywhere in the world and everyone is going to take you seriously because you have helium to sell them. You offer them isotopically pure materials. It becomes, as Paul says, a complete hand-in-glove fit.
Right. I suppose. Next question, please, Craig.
Yes. The U.S. has helium. Why is South African helium so strategic that the U.S. funded the Renergen project?
Listen, that is a great question. The interesting part is, if you recall what I said a little bit earlier in the call, the United States becomes a net importer of helium in the near future. This changes the game. Think about a situation where you had a commodity where, for seven decades, more than half of the planet's commodity came from a reservoir that was artificially made by man. That artificially made reservoir suppressed the price of helium. That reservoir ran out in 2018. That means that now you've got a commodity which is catching up with what its fair value should be because the reservoir is almost done. That's the first thing: pricing stability. The second thing is that because the United States' reservoir is empty, it means that the United States now has to rely on its own natural production of helium.
At a concentration of 0.35%, you've got to sell an inordinate amount of LNG and natural gas in order to be able to produce meaningful quantities of helium. We're selling over 3%, which means that we only have to produce a small amount of LNG or even gas to power in order to be able to get very interesting volumes of helium out the ground. The third part that makes South African helium so strategic is that South Africa and the United States, despite what's being seen on television, the United States and South Africa enjoy a particularly strong relationship with the United States being one of our biggest trading partners. You consider the fact that the rest of the helium is either coming from the Middle East or Russia. The United States has a problem if it's becoming a net importer.
That in and of itself means that having an ally produce helium becomes a vital, vital point from its procurement process. The final point is that, unfortunately, when the Earth was made, it was not bestowed with helium in very easy-to-reach places. The result is that moving helium, you've got to move it to your customer in 45 days. That's a challenge. There is only one country on planet Earth that can reach all four corners of the globe in under 35 days by ship, and that is the port of the Cape of Good Hope. That was why South Africa was actually set up by the Dutch East India Company all that way back when, because it was the spice route. We don't have to go through the Suez Canal. We don't have to worry about pirates on the east coast of Africa. We can get east.
We can get west. We can get to Europe in two weeks, the United States in two weeks, South America in under two weeks, Australia in three weeks, China in four weeks. It makes us strategically the easiest point from which to ship a very volatile, not volatile in the sense that it burns, but volatile in the sense that you're transporting it at such deep cryogenic temperatures that the slightest perturbation to your tanks makes it boil off. You need it in liquid when it gets to the other side. That's why South Africa is, you couldn't ask for a better strategic geographic location for helium to be present.
Thank you very much for that one. Yes, thank you. How does liquefied natural gas fit in with the business as a whole?
That's Stef's one for you as well, not for me.
Although I will call on Paul after I've spoken just to speak about the integration of Renergen and ASP Isotopes on the use of cheap energy from South Africa to run the plants in Belcom. Belcom is the home of our site. It doesn't take a lot of searching on the internet to see that South Africa had and still has a very deep energy crisis. The power you've got running blackouts is an app on your phone. An app on your phone tells you when you're going to lose power and you lose power, whether it's in.
I will add we have 1.8 MW of diesel generators sitting outside the silicon-28 plant in case we lose power. We use them. That's how serious the problem is.
I mean, there was a point in time when you didn't have power for 13 hours a day. Just try and picture an electronic life with no power 13 hours out of every 24 hours. There's a deep energy crisis in South Africa. There's another looming additional crisis in the form that about 220,000 MMBtu's of natural gas come in per day from Mozambique through a pipeline called the Sasol pipeline. Sasol has already announced that in 2026, they're shutting that pipeline down to Johannesburg. They're trying to make additional alternatives available in the form of either higher alkane gases or converting coal into methane or one of a number of different solutions to try and keep a little bit of gas flowing into the pipeline.
The long and the short of it is that selling natural gas in South Africa, you can get between $13- $18 per MMBtu if you sell it in liquefied form direct to a customer site. When you combine that with the fact that we've got an abundance of natural gas because our natural gas is kind of a byproduct of the helium, it puts you in a beautiful position to be able to capitalize on two major revenue streams. The first and the foremost being the natural gas, which you have to evacuate. You don't have a choice. The second is obviously the helium side. On the natural gas side, we've got three primary pillars: selling it as a substitute for diesel into transport, selling it as a thermal alternative to customers, and power generation.
With power generation, I'm going to hand over to Paul, who can give you a little bit of an idea and the flavor as to, again, why there are such synergies between the two companies.
Yeah, thanks, Stef. I've made a lot of back-of-envelope math so far. I mean, the wellhead cost of gas at Belcom is about $0.35 per MMBtu, which compares very favorably to the $2 to $3 you see for Henry Hub. When we think about low costs of energy, obviously Iceland is one option and Belcom is now a second option. We're always looking for low energy costs for our ASP processes. This will really, you know, I also believe we have to have the lowest cash costs and lowest levelized costs of production. This will allow us to have both of those. Yeah, it's a great fit for the business.
Thank you, gentlemen. How does silicon-28 improve the speed of a semiconductor? What revenues do you expect in 2025 and 2026 from silicon-28?
I'm going to let Stef answer this one as well because he knows a lot more about it than I do. I'll take the second part if that's OK, Stef. You do the first part.
Perfect. The key to semiconductors at the moment is that we've reached a physical limit with regards to what we can do in terms of the number of transistors that we can put on a chip. The biggest issue that you have, without overcomplicating it, is that chips produce far too much heat. Think about it this way. We know thermodynamics, conservation of energy. You don't create or destroy energy. You just convert its natural state. If you're putting a lot of current and you've got a lot of transistors doing the work, those transistors have to generate heat. That heat somehow needs to be dissipated from the system if there's too much heat to damage the chip. If you damage the chip, that would be a disaster. These chips have built-in natural safety mechanisms.
You've got all sorts of things like thermal throttling, where the chip reduces its speed if it gets too hot. The beauty about isotopically pure silicon-28 versus normal silicon-28 is, think of it this way. A wafer is like a lattice. Picture a page. There are 1,000 dots on it, and those dots are neatly organized in rows and columns. Perfectly perfect lattices. Now, picture that, say, 3% of those dots are moving in a completely random, haphazard way, and the rest of them are all moving north-south on the page. Because they're all interlocked, that crystalline lattice is locked in place. Because you've got these 3% of atoms that are just jumping all over the place, the entire lattice has a completely random, unpredictable way in which it vibrates. When you're shooting current or electrons through it, the electrons have to go in between the nuclei.
They've got to go down the paths of where you've got all of these little balls. Every single time that a nucleus hits one of these electrons, it marks a north course. If you remove the naughty atoms that are moving in a haphazard way and you have all of your particles all moving north-south and you shoot your electrons north-south down the columns in between these atoms, electrons don't get knocked off course. Long and the short, you dissipate heat faster, current moves faster through it, and you end up with the ability to put a couple more transistors on the chip, therefore more power. That's the really, really simplified way of thinking about how silicon-28 is really going to enhance chips.
Great. Yeah, it's more and I'm more nice than about semiconductors. That was fantastic. Thank you, Stef. In terms of revenues of 2025, we haven't given guidance. We're talking to a lot of customers, and we'll update contracts as and when we get them to the marketplace. We're talking to a lot of interest in what we're doing there. Next question, please, Craig.
Yes. Can you provide an update on Carbon-14? Is there a penalty to your customer for the delay in the feedstock supply? Also, what is Carbon-12 used for? What is the potential market size? I know there's a lot, but that's what they wanted to know.
Yeah. So Carbon-14, you know we're going to take over the procurement of Carbon-14 now rather than the customer. I think we've got better engineers who can do it better. We'll start that fairly soon. That should accelerate and get it back on track, or at least make up some of the lost time. Yes, there is a penalty. I believe about a $2 million penalty can be charged to the customer for the delay. Carbon-12 is used. I'm kind of stretching my knowledge here, but I'm sure I'm Jacob on the line. Carbon-12 is used for, I think, quantum sensing, which is used in next-generation. Ryno and Stef are nodding, so that's good. That's a positive sign. Carbon sensing, which is used in next-generation GPSs. Ryno says electronic warfare is a lot worse than was originally expected or modeled or marketed.
The world needs new GPSs and things like that kind of stuff. Carbon-12 goes into that. Anything else you've got to say? I didn't say it there, Stef and Ryno .
Essentially, anything quantum. Anything quantum-related, you need to remove the nuclear spin.
Yep. Gentlemen, other than party balloons, what is helium used for? Can you get Helium-3 from the Renergen site?
Squeaky voices. I mean, don't underestimate the size of the squeaky voice market. Like Alvin and the Chipmunks, I think they were the biggest user of helium in the production of that movie. Its single biggest use case today is MRIs. You cannot manufacture an MRI, and you cannot operate an MRI without helium. Then it's semiconductors. It's rocketry. It's used as a pellet in the expulsion of the gases, which creates the thrust. It's used in the manufacture of fiber optic cables. That's actually a very, very big user in the industry. It's used in laboratories. It's used in pipeline leak detection. It's used in underwater breathing. Surprisingly, that's actually bigger than the balloon market. It's used in welding for very high-end welding and then high-end particle physics. The single largest consumer of helium on planet Earth is CERN. They consume just an obscene amount of helium by themselves.
There are a number of applications. It basically touches every single aspect of life as we know it today. There isn't one single part of technology, whether it's your phone or your laptop or your tablet, this call, the way that the ones and the zeros travel through the data lines, all of it used helium in its manufacture or in its operation.
Helium-3. I'll answer that. There probably is Helium-3 at the Renergen site, but it's probably, let's assume it's not.
Too early to talk about it.
Too early to talk about it, yeah. Too early to talk about it, yeah.
The stock trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange closed today at a 120% premium to the U.S. stock. Is this type of premium normal?
I can't answer that. I have no idea. Yeah, it just happens to us.
The caveat and the disclaimer is just check the volume before you look at the price.
I think probably 10 shares traded today. Next question, please, Craig.
Things appeared to have stalled with NESCA and the HALU project in South Africa. Can you provide an update?
Yeah, I'll let Ryno chip in here. I mean, you know we have to go through a licensing phase and a regulatory process. Ryno and his team are running that at the moment. These things just take time. Governments move slower than companies do, generally speaking, and these are government organizations. I would add that we're talking to two regulators, the NNR and the DE, the Department of Energy and Electricity. DE appear to be very, very keen for the process to happen. They regulate the procurement, the proliferation kind of risk. The NNR regulate the safety and what have you of the plant. Ryno , anything you want to add to that comment?
We have deployed the best people we can find in the country as quickly as we can. We've made enormous strides in the last couple of weeks. I wouldn't paint that statement as absolutely factual. I don't think we've slowed down at all. In fact, I think we've done amazing work in the last couple of weeks. We've got an amazing team in South Africa, a lot of ex-NEXA people like myself. We know the right people in the right place, and we've got great support from the South African government on a ministerial level.
OK. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Next question. Why is the short interest on ASP I so high?
I can't really answer that. I speak to a lot of investors. The short interest in a lot of the nuclear names is high. I don't view ours as being so different. You pick your basket of nuclear names. It takes two to make a market. You have to have sellers as buyers. I'm absolutely fine with that.
Do you expect to enter the uranium conversion market, or will you just stick with enrichment?
I'm going to let Ryno answer this because this is exactly in his wheelhouse. I would add that there aren't many people in the world who know how to build uranium conversion facilities. Uranium conversion prices have upped sevenfold or eightfold in the last two years. You know, $70 a kilo right now. There's a lot of people in South Africa who have that expertise. Ryno , you answer that question, please.
Yes. I think it's a natural evolution of our targets. We have the expertise. We've got a great team of people. South Africa had an initiative 15 years ago that I was part of called the Fluorochemical Expansion Initiative, where they saw the writing on the wall. They realized that all of the graybeards and grayheads are going to the grave with their knowledge. They spent an inordinate amount of money making sure that the next generation of engineers and scientists know how to do fluorination on industrial scale, which includes uranium fluorination. Given the need and the market demand and the price for enriched uranium at the moment, it is definitely something that we are looking into. It is something we are very much interested in.
Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you to our many participants today. We have so many questions.
Yes, Craig. Yeah, we can keep going another five to 10 minutes. There's still a lot of questions left unanswered. You know, I have another five minutes.
Excellent. We will do that. Again, to our participants, if your question is not answered today, you can email us at aspi@redchip.com. We will forward your question to Paul so that he can see what's on your mind. Gentlemen, how much cash do you have on the balance sheet? You keep raising equity. Why haven't you raised any debt?
Yes, so we finished the last quarter with about $70 million in the balance sheet, I think it was. If you look at what we've raised in the last quarter, you'll probably realize we have about $120 million plus minus pro forma for that. I'll let you run the numbers yourself. Having a strong balance sheet allows us to go to government regulators and be in a much stronger position to get deals done, to find customers. I don't think we would, if we're limping along with $10 million on our balance sheet, we probably wouldn't be able to sign an MOU with Fermi or, for that matter, a deal with TerraPower. You have to be well-capitalized to actually be able to get these contracts. The stronger the balance sheet, the better the negotiating position for against our customers and our partners.
In terms of where we're raising the debt, I haven't felt we've been in the position to be ready to raise debt, quite frankly. I think that time is changing now. I've been very cautious, always been very cautious. Maybe now's the time to look for some debt rather than equity. That's what I can say, really.
Can you provide an update on Iceland? Specifically, have you delayed planning for operations in Iceland because of the inexpensive and readily available natural gas from your Renergen acquisition?
Yeah, so we've almost finished the permitting process in Iceland. The Icelandic government has changed the laws of the country to allow us to go there. We're very grateful for that. We've had a great reception from the Icelandic government. We're currently looking for a site to build the first plant for in Iceland. I guess we've been slow-walking a little bit. The results from the quantum enrichment are looking so good that actually our first plant in Iceland was going to be Zinc-68. We kind of feel, having seen the results of quantum with the Ytterbium, we might be better off doing that using quantum rather than ASP. We've kind of slow-walked the decision to commit to that. The return on capital for a QE plant is substantially greater than the return on capital for an ASP plant. It's important to, you know, that's the most important measure.
In terms of would we stall it or delay it because of the cheap gas at Welkom, probably not. It's going to come down to the decision of whether we want geographic diversification or cheaper gas. I suspect producing at Welkom will be maybe sort of 90% cheaper than producing at Klerksdorp, where our current silicon plant is. I suspect Iceland's 85% cheaper. It's a decision over do we want to save a few pennies on our production costs or have some geographic diversification. That's a decision we'll make later on this year.
How will you get the additional money for the plant that TerraPower gave you? A smaller loan based on ASPI being able to get a much larger loan elsewhere?
Yeah, so we're talking to a number of debt providers in South Africa. Think about things like pension funds, government agencies, that kind of stuff. There's a lot of enthusiasm for this project. It's a priority project for the government. I've been having conversations with various parties in South Africa over the last four or five months or so. I expect to conclude those discussions and get the funding we've acquired in place by the end of this year, end of this calendar year.
Paul, I think this will be our final question. How do you protect IP in the U.S.A. plant? Will it be operated by ASPI people?
Transfer of IP across borders is challenging. We have a strategy to do it. We think it'll save a lot of time. It's probably not something I really want to talk about on this call right now. We have a strategy to do it. We've spoken to, we have a team of lawyers working on it. We're very much looking forward to being able to produce isotopes in the U.S. with U.S. employees doing it rather than South African employees doing it. It's going to require a lot of work and process.
Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you once again to our many participants today. I'll repeat, if your question was not answered today or if you have more questions after this webinar is over, email us your question at aspi@redchip.com. aspi@redchip.com. Of course, you can always call us at 1-800-REDSHIP. RedChip also created an information page for ASP I. It's aspiinfo.com. There, you can view and download the investor presentation and fact sheet and sign up for news alerts on ASP Isotopes. RedChip is excited to announce the launch of Red Chat, our advanced AI assistant designed to empower investors with instant in-depth insights on more than 4,000 small cap and micro cap stocks. Try it now at aspiinfo.com or at red.chat. Watch "Small Stocks, Big Money: RedChip's Program" featuring exciting small cap companies every Saturday night at 7:00 P.M. Eastern on Bloomberg U.S.A.
Finally, join RedChip's next webinar with Phoenix Motor Cars Tuesday, September 2nd at 4:15 P.M. U.S. Eastern. Register for all RedChip webinars at redchip.com/events. Thanks again to our many participants today. Thank you, Paul, Ryno , and Stefano.
Thanks, everyone. Appreciate the time.
Thanks, everyone.