ASP Isotopes Inc. Common Stock 0 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Noble Africa webinar. We'll be getting started in one minute. All looks absolutely perfect. We'll get started here in less than 30 seconds. Thank you for everyone joining. We'll be getting started here in mere seconds. This is the Noble Africa webinar. Hello, this is Craig Brelsford with RedChip Companies. Thank you for joining today's event with Noble Africa. Joining us today is Paul Mann. He is the CEO of ASP Isotopes and Noble Africa, and Nick Mitchell, the Chief Operating Officer of Noble Africa. We will begin with a brief presentation in a moment. Then we'll open this event to 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 posted event link.

Once in Zoom, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom 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. Paul and Nick, please go right ahead.

Thanks, Craig, and thanks everyone for your interest in our company. Today we'll go through a slide deck of Renergen or Noble Africa, as we're calling it. I'll start Q&A at the end. The lawyers have been very busy. There's three pages of disclaimers for you to review. If you could just review those, that'd be great. Also look at our SEC filings for a list of risk factors and similar kind of events. Obviously, this presentation will have some forward-looking statements in it. Again, our forward-looking statement disclaimers are in our 10-K and proxy and all the other documents in the SEC filings. As we announced a few weeks ago, we're going to merge Noble Africa, which holds Renergen, with ENDRA Life Sciences, ticker code NDRA.

The plan to do that is when the merger is complete, ASP will own about 89% of the combined entity, and the current ENDRA float and the pipe that we're doing concurrent with this will own about 11% of the company. Exact numbers and shares are detailed in the 8-K that was announced when we announced this transaction a few weeks ago. This is what ENDRA does. We will not spend much time focusing on that. These are all fairly non-core businesses. We'll likely transition out of these and just focus purely on Renergen and Noble Africa. Here's who's talking today. I'm the CEO of Renergen. I'm also the CEO and Chairman of ASP Isotopes. My background is more in finance. I spent 20 years, 25 years or so on Wall Street, investing. I went from Morgan Stanley, Soros, and Highbridge.

I'm a chemical engineer by background, and I'm a CFA charterholder. Nick, can you introduce yourself quickly, please?

Hi, everyone. My name is Nick Mitchell, as Paul mentioned, the Chief Operating Officer for the entity and one of the original founders of Renergen. I come with about 2 decades of oil and gas experience, specializing in early-stage upstream development and taking projects across their value chain and cycle. Prior to this project, have been looking at infrastructure development across the African continent, mainly in the power sector. Outside of that, I happen to chair the Onshore Petroleum Association. That represents all of the call it exploration right holders and production right holders on an onshore basis within South Africa. In that group, we lobby government for legislation, regulation in order to promote an industry that is what we would call at a burgeoning stage in the country at this moment. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Nick. Just quick, a few corporate highlights.

This is a world-class helium reserve with likely one of the highest concentrations of helium you will see on planet Earth, and we'll explain more about that later on. Drilling is well, plant phase 1 is expected to come on stream during 3Q, with customers lined up from September onwards. This is a very strategic asset. Designated a strategic project for both South African government and the U.S. It benefits from a significant amount of funding. About three-quarters of billion dollars of funding is anticipated from the DFC, U.S. government, and Standard Bank. As I say, it's a very, very scarce resource. Many people are asking why now. There's been a significant geopolitical disruption in helium supply chains, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Essentially, right now, 50% of the world's supply is offline.

Helium prices continue to hit new highs. There's very limited new supply coming to the market over the next several years, and we're lucky that we get a by-product, which is LNG hydrocarbons. It's very easy to find a home for that in South Africa. I've spent most of my career looking at interesting companies. When you look at the industrial gas companies like Praxair, Linde, Air Liquide, and Air Products, their highest return on capital, highest gross margin, highest growth businesses are the electronic gases businesses, and the largest part of that is basically helium. To have a pure play helium company out there, I think is a huge opportunity. Many investors have spoken here over the years saying it'd be great to have a pure play helium company, and I totally agree.

I spent years looking for one, and that's one of the reasons why we acquired Verogen about a year ago. Quickly now, let's go over the helium market, assuming people know about it. Nick, perhaps you can just talk through the helium market on this slide here, please.

Sure. Thanks, Paul. Before we get into the uses, let's just look at the unique properties and characteristics. It's both chemically and electrically inert, non-toxic, has a very low density, and an extremely low boiling point. Within its, call it liquid state, at 4 Kelvin or -269 degrees, it becomes what we call superfluid, and gravity has very little impact on this element. As we look into the usage, and we look at this bar chart, the MRI market is essentially where it's used in the medical field. It's a super coolant in the cooling of the titanium alloy magnets that are used in these MRIs. It's used both in the production or fabrication of the actual MRI itself, and then in the ongoing usage and operation of the MRI. Moving into the semiconductor side of the bar chart.

The critical element here, it's used in two critical areas. One is to make the environment in which the microchips or memory chips are produced absolutely sterile, given that it's both chemically and electrically inert. The second is to, as the super coolant medium, to cool the lasers that are responsible for the etching of these chips as they go through their fabrication state. The next interesting segment would be rocketry, essentially that would be what we deem helium is used for in space exploration. If we consider SpaceX, and we look at the Falcon 9 rockets, they would use approximately 11.7 tons of helium for every single launch that takes place. If we look at the launch cycles that took place in the month of May, there was almost a launch every day.

We can look at typically what the volume of helium and the demand of helium that is coming out of that sort of industry and segment. What's important to note is the industry's growing at about 5% to 6% per annum, that's what it's forecasted to grow at. We do believe that the forecasts are rather constrained by a supply perspective. We must note that this also ignores what has been forecasted from a growth perspective in terms of AI prevalence in the new data center that is set to, or data centers, that are set to be developed over the next couple of years. Thank you. Thanks, Nick. Just talking quickly about what the market's looked at and how it's evolved over the last 20 years or so.

You will see that the U.S. Strategic Reserve, the BLM, has gone from being about a third of supply to being almost nothing now. The U.S. BLM is basically exhausted now. It's kind of run out. You will see Qatar's become a much bigger player, about a third of the global market now. Likewise, Russia's become a bigger player as well, about 10% of the market. The prices have steadily increased over the last 20 years and obviously prices right now are trading at extreme prices and there's really a rush to find alternative sources of helium right now from helium buyers. This chart here just kind of shows a supply-demand picture. You will see the Americas is broadly balanced.

Obviously, Europe and Asia are not balanced. It's likely that these regions will see the real knock-on effect of the shortages we're seeing in the world right now. If you look at the news, we're probably entering the fifth helium supply side crisis over the last 20 years. Nick, maybe just quickly talk through the supply side crisis and what's going on right now in the Middle East, to the best of your knowledge.

Right. Thanks, Paul. As has been widely reported, with the Middle East conflict, the helium facilities in Qatar have been impacted. The full extent of the impacts has not yet been fully detailed and quantified, but it's estimated that we will see a prolonged outage on several of the Ras Laffan trains. Over and above that, there was recently an announcement unrelated to the conflict, but still impacting the Ras Laffan plant, is that an explosion during a commissioning exercise of a LNG facility related, or a gas facility related to the supplier feedstock to one of the helium trains has also been impacted. That train has been out since December. Was not widely reported at the time, but this leads us to believe that over and above the direct missile impacts, we are going to be seeing some significant, call it further delays, that will constrain the market.

Over and above that, we've also seen that Russia has announced export controls and restrictions in terms of helium exports. It is looking to constrain that helium within the country. Approximately two or three weeks ago, we saw an impact from a drone strike as a result of the Ukrainians targeting some of the Russian helium facilities. This will see a further impact of some helium into the market. All of these constraints, we are led to believe that will suffice and see the market impacted for an extended period of time.

If we consider the long nature or long lead nature of some specialist equipment, what we've seen in the past in terms of similar impacts is that a helium facility like this could be impacted on the long term for anywhere between three and four years, while these repairs, insurance, and claims processes all kind of manifest themselves into a scenario where the facilities are then restored and back into an operational state where they can produce. We anticipate that it's probably constraints that probably looks at about 20% of market in terms of total supply for that extended period of time. As the news develops, we'll obviously inform shareholders and investors accordingly.

Thanks, Nick. Just first, this is a truly unique reserve, and we'll run through the geology in just a moment. When you're drilling for gas in the Middle East, typically you find about 0.03% helium with it. In the U.S., you get about 0.3% helium with it. Whereas here in South Africa, we get about 3% helium. Well, that's what we've seen so far. We're seeing helium concentrations 10 times what we see elsewhere in the world. That means as the helium market grows and the market needs more supply, we're the lowest, we're likely the lowest levelized cost of incremental production volume in the world. That makes us a very unique asset in that we can bring new capacity on faster and cheaper than anyone else can. These reserves are vast, perfect location.

We've also got the lowest carbon footprint of any other company in the world. As I say, we've got demand for the energy that we get from this resource. Nick, maybe quickly talk about how this gas got here, because it's a pretty unique field. One of a kind. Thanks, Paul.

If we look at the image that's on the bottom right-hand side of the screen, you'll see an impact of, well, a snapshot of a crater that's been created. This was a crater that hit the earth about 2 billion years ago. The body of the asteroid was made up of uranium and thorium. Over time, that undergoes radioactive decay, and that is really the source of our high concentrations of helium. On this image, you've got a very bright red and purple highlight towards the bottom left of that crater or the rim of the crater. That's essentially our production and exploration rights overlain on the impact of this crater.

If we look at that sandy shaded area that emanates out from the pink epicenter, that would be the fruit bowl that is created, and the rim of that fruit bowl would be exactly where we are located. What that means and why it is important is that our geology in that area has become highly faulted, highly fractured, naturally fractured as a result of both the asteroidal strike, but also tectonic forces and plates and movements in those tectonic plates that have created an upward thrust in that area to overturn the Witwatersrand section, and essentially turn that vertical. Obviously being quite a brittle piece of geology has created a naturally fractured segment of geology. Why that is important is because our proven reserve is currently chasing a fractured plane. We have to drill approximately anywhere between 400 and, call it 1 kilometer, to intersect these pathways. We can drill deeper. We have proven that.

The idea is to drill anywhere between those sort of ranges, and we create the preferential pathway for this commingled natural gas and helium to come to surface. The reason that is important is because our drilling costs are significantly cheaper given the depth. The fact that it is low pressure means that we do not need a significant amount of, call it BOP equipment on surface or Christmas tree, which would be required to regulate both flow and pressure. The uniqueness of this gas, given the high concentrations of methane within this natural gas, and the fact that we have zero sulfur, no NGLs in the gas itself, means the fact that we have to process it or purify it at, call it wellhead, in order to ensure the safe protection of equipment is eliminated.

That means the overall cost for running the upstream side of the system is relatively cheap compared to most competitors worldwide. If we look at this image here, what we are seeing in the image is at the bottom, the Dominion Group. That is essentially the body of that asteroid, the Dominion Group, where the uranium and thorium sits. It is creating that radioactive decay, where the helium is then migrating to surface, moving through that Witwatersrand layer. The Witwatersrand layer is essentially the fractured layer that I spoke about that then comes to surface. What is important is we have now capped that off with a Karoo sandstone layer above that. In the most recent campaign, we have announced that we had targeted a sandstone body. That body has never been quantified before in any of our resource statements.

We are now looking at the full extent, and we will be working through the assessment of what that represents as a unique and completely separate reserve or reservoir that will be quantified by our independent specialists in due course. Paul, you are on mute.

Maybe let's talk about how vast the reserve is and what we're using up for phase 1 and phase 2.

Thank you. If we look at the image on the right-hand side of the screen, the black polygon outline represents the production right. That spans approximately 187,000 hectares or close to 500,000 acres. Our proven reserve has been quantified over the bright yellow polygon in the center of the field. That represents approximately 15% of the acreage. Why this is important is because we have essentially not explored the contingent and the prospective areas, as you would see represented by the light shaded yellow and the light blue areas. This represents significant upside and opportunity for further phases and development. If we consider the proven reserve and what we're planning from a phase 1 and phase 2 perspective. Paul, if you can go back one, if you don't mind.

The phase 1 and 2 project would consume approximately 50% of the gas that's been discovered and deemed to be proven in the bright yellow polygon area. If we looked at that as an acreage scenario, it would be approximately 7% of the acreage that we'd see covered by this production right itself. That means that we've got significant opportunities for further phases of development within the proven reserve itself, obviously significant phases of development over, call it multi-decades, multi-generations, in line with any global discovery of significant, call it significance. If we move forward, Paul. Here we look at the proven reserves based on our previous assessment in 2021. What's important here, and we've highlighted it, the 1P reserve sitting at 7.2 Bcf of helium.

Why this is important is the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Strategic Helium Reserve was quantified at approximately 6 Bcf at its height and full capacity. We can already see that our 1P reserve here is much larger than the BLM. If we consider our 2P, significant opportunity for additional supply and volume. What's important to note here is that the BLM has been the provider of helium to the world as a last resort, or first resort in a few instances, for several decades. That's what we see in terms of the natural benefit of this resource and the geology.

Great. I'll take over this next slide here. Shipping helium is not easy. You're shipping it about -270 degrees Celsius, and you lose about 1% in terms of boil off each day it's shipping. It turns into a gas, and therefore the duration of the shipping is important. Cape of Good Hope or South Africa is an exceptional place to ship from around the world. We can likely get to customers faster in a short distance of time than almost any other port. That matters to the customer who's typically paying for ex-factory gates and paying for the shipping. That's important. Many customers have recognized that in our discussions with them. Talking about phase one and phase two now. This is a fairly straightforward petrochemical plant as petrochemical plants go.

We have a number of wellheads out in the field, a gathering system, that feeds an LNG and helium processing plant. This plant essentially just cools the gas down. It cools the gas down to -170 or so, and the LNG comes out as a liquid, then -270, and the helium comes out as a liquid. Phase one is almost complete. It's almost starting up. We completed the drilling in May. The plant has been completed. It's produced some liquid helium already, and we're in the process of connecting the wellheads to the plant now, new wellheads, that'll then get us to nameplate capacity. We expect to start phase two during the second half of the year. The main industries we're servicing, obviously gas to power, industrial transport, and helium in markets. Let's talk a bit about the size and magnitude of phase one.

Phase one is expected to produce about 70 Mcf a day of helium, about 2,500 gigajoules a day of LNG. For those in the U.S., a gigajoule is about equal to an MMBTU. We expect to reach nameplate capacity during the third quarter and start shipping product to customers by September. We'll move on to phase two. Phase two is substantially larger, about 900 Mcf a day in helium, about 34,000 gigajoules per day of LNG. We expect to benefit in phase two for about half a billion dollars of funding from the U.S. government and a quarter billion dollars of funding from the Standard Bank. Phase two will take about 44 months to build. Now, in terms of what is it like in terms of revenues and profits, that's what most people are likely interested in.

12 months ago, we'd have looked at selling helium about $400 per Mcf and LNG at sort of $13-$14 per gigajoule. Right now, your helium prices are looking more like sort of $600 or even greater than $600. Our last contract was priced over $600. If you assume sort of $13-$14 per gigajoule for LNG and $600 per Mcf of helium, phase one's about $27 million in revenue and about $10 million-$11 million in cash gross profit ex D&A. Now, obviously, I can't predict where gas prices are going or helium prices are going, obviously every dollar on the price drops straight to the bottom line, so you can run that math yourself.

In terms of phase 2, assuming, again, $14 per gigajoule and $600 per Mcf of helium, that'll be about $370 million in revenue, about $300 million in cash gross profit. This is a substantial project. This is a very large project. Expect to come online 2030, 2031, for phase 2. Obviously, we get a by-product when we produce helium. We're very fortunate that our by-product is LNG, and we can find buyers for this LNG around South Africa very easily. I've looked at many helium projects over the last two years. This was my favorite, mainly because of the LNG, the price we get for LNG, and the ability to be a real contributor to the bottom line, the P&L. Nick, maybe just quickly talk about the natural gas sector and the users of it, please.

Sure. Thanks, Paul. Right now, all of South Africa's natural gas, outside of what's produced by Renergen, does come through the Rompco pipeline from Mozambique. It's produced in the Pande and Temane fields by Sasol. Sasol have indicated that from 2028, there'd be no ability for them to continue supplying into the external market, and that we can expect to have a supply gas cliff. That means that in order for the South African industry that's connected outside of Sasol, we would need approximately 65 petajoules of natural gas to service the current demand. If we include Sasol's needs themselves, the requirement will step up to approximately 185 petajoules per annum.

If we consider South Africa's not only experiencing a gas crisis, but also has an existing electricity crisis, the forecast for gas to power, as driven by the government's gas master plan, is forecasted to be approximately 870 petajoules per annum by 2032. If we break down our phase 2 project, we will produce 12 petajoules per annum in that project. What we are demonstrating here is that at all points, even in the most conservative scenario, the demand for natural gas far outstrips what we can supply within this project. That means there's no silver bullet for any of the solutions that the government is looking to entertain. We essentially need several onshore natural gas fields to come online.

We need several offshore natural gas fields to come online, we do need imported LNG to come on stream as well in order to avert the crisis that the country will have for the next foreseeable future. That does bode well for all right holders and project developers that are looking to supply into this scenario.

Right. I think you've covered that slide already. Let me run through just the key milestones. Obviously, 2026, the goal is to hit nameplate capacity on phase 1, start shipping product to customers, and commence basically phase 2. We expect phase 2 to be completed through 2027, 2028, 2029, with the commissioning starting in 2030, and the first full year of commercial revenues during 2031. I think it's worth pointing out, obviously, phase 2 is a very large project, about $1 billion of CapEx over 44 months. The main risks I see with that are basically obviously the construction risk and the market risk, obviously financing risk. Financing risk, obviously, we've got two very supportive financial partners, DFC and Standard Bank. For the construction risk, we're basically getting from the leading energy supplier, plant supplier, we're expecting to get a turnkey contract.

That will mitigate risks of price creep, delays, and that, what have you. In terms of market risk, most of our product will be sold on long-term take or pay contracts. Nick, maybe let's talk about the take or pay contracts that we're negotiating with customers right now.

100%. Thanks, Paul. On the LNG side, we are pricing, well, we're packaging our contracts for a 5- to 8-year contract tenor period. In that mechanism, we include an annual price increase or inflator. It's set at South African Producer Price Index. Essentially, if we look back historically over the last five years, that has averaged over 5%. If you needed to build any models out, you would probably be using that as the backward-looking position to provide your inputs. Over and above that, when we move into the helium side of our business, we tend to typically look to longer duration contracts, anywhere between 10- and 15-year agreements. We do include the same price increase or inflator, set with the same mechanism. Essentially, South African Producer Price Index, and as I mentioned, for the last five years has averaged over 5%.

That would typically be the long-term position or trend that we do anticipate moving forward.

Great. Great. Thanks, Paul. Thank you.

Sorry. The one key thing is that both those contracts do come with take or pay mechanisms, and they're set at a threshold of approximately 80%.

Great. Thanks, Nick. I guess to summarize before we move to Q&A, this is a very rare resource, probably one of a kind in the world. The highest grade of helium we've seen, and very profitable. It's non-substitutable demand. You can't substitute helium in the production of semiconductors or MRIs or launching a rocket. It's a really unique gas. Obviously, there's an urgent need to find new suppliers of the gas, given the supply shortages we're seeing right now. As I say, we intend to de-risk phase 2 with solid contracts, both on the construction and on the selling of it. I guess, Craig, we'll stop there and we'll take Q&A.

Thank you, Paul and Nick. To submit a question, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window and type your question into the text box. We can take only your written questions today. There are a number of other exploration right holders in South Africa aiming to develop helium and natural gas operations. Why Renergen or Noble Africa over these other assets?

Nick, do you want to?

Paul, want me to take that?

Yeah, please. Yeah. Go for it, yeah.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. There are several early-stage explorers that are all looking to develop similar opportunities around helium and natural gas. All following on the, call it path, that Renergen has laid out over the last, call it 19 years of development. What I think is important here is that South Africa does have quite a complex regulatory and legislative regime. A lot of hoops and hurdles to jump through. More importantly, if we look at any, call it development of a resource, extractive industry resource, these mechanisms do take time. You have to go through a qualified exploration program that is measured in order to fully quantify what you're dealing with from a resource perspective, but then move into your production state.

At each phase of these licensing regimes, you will need to go through specific authorization permits or licensing requirements for each set of activities. The typical licensing or permitting activity timelines can take anywhere between 12 and 36 months, depending on what application you're looking for. There's no quick path to success in this scenario. Even if someone has blazed the trail before you, there's still a significant window of time and passage of time that takes place. I think the major advantage that Renergen offers is that we have a fully permitted, call it phase 1 operation. We are almost finalized with our phase 2 permits and authorizations, having started this many years ago.

From a timing to market perspective and the best bang for buck in terms of investment dollars, this represents the closest opportunity to see real scaled production in order to unlock that return.

Your guidance for ASP Isotopes in 2031 is for greater than $300 million in EBITDA. Based on current helium prices and your projected volumes for phase 2, doesn't that guidance look rather conservative?

I guess I'll take that one. Listen, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't tell you where helium prices are going to go over the next few years or few months. I think being conservative is probably the right thing to do. We also haven't signed contracts up yet for phase 2. I guess let's wait and see where the contracts for phase 2 come out at. I think we'd probably look to contract 50%-75% of phase 2 out before the end of this year. That will obviously, given the 5-15-year nature of those contracts and the take or pay nature of those, that will allow us to give maybe some more definitive guidance as to what things look like when we've done that. We'll update investors as and when we get more clarity on exactly how things look.

I'm not giving you the formula of how to work out to change that helium price up or down and see how it affects P&L.

What makes an onshore helium and LNG asset in South Africa strategically interesting?

Viktor, you want this one?

Yeah, sure. Given our location, I'll talk LNG first. Within an energy-constrained environment in South Africa, obviously it means that our molecules can all be consumed locally. That's a reduced cost to market, not having to and reduced impact on, call it global shipping and logistics lines. Very simplified operation. If we think about the strategic location from a helium perspective, it goes back to the map that Paul had on locations and shipping times to market. South Africa was originally established and discovered, well, the Cape of Good Hope was originally established as part of the, call it the trade route by the Dutch for a very good reason. Proximity to all corners or all areas of the globe in reduced time and format.

Its positioning from that perspective is very strategic and we're also somewhat removed from any significant geopolitical tensions. That becomes a very interesting, call it solution for our key customers that are super reliant on a sustainable and reliable supply of product into their businesses and can't afford these type of prolonged disruptions from that perspective.

I see a couple of questions here. It's difficult to read the Q&A questions on my computer I'm on now. A couple of interesting questions here that are being asked by viewers. Will current ASPI shareholders get a percentage of Nova similar to the QLE spinout, and what's the rationale for this merger? We're not intending to spin out any of Nova to shareholders. I view it as a highly strategic asset. I love the asset. It produces an incredible amount of free cash flow when it's up and running and it's at full capacity. It's one of a kind like it in the world. We don't intend to spin it out. We intend to maintain a very large proportion of it. On the spin out, the float will be about 11%.

I see another question here about is there an opportunity to have strategic investors or non-dilutive financing into the opportunity? Well, as we go through phase II contracting, a number of those potential customers have expressed an interest in potentially investing in this asset in due course. Obviously, those discussions will happen as and when we go through the phase II contracting, which is expected between now and the end of the year. The great thing here is that ASPI's balance sheet is extremely strong. Nova's raised about $50 million of capital now in this listing. We're very well-financed for at least the first part of the project when we combine the expected loan from the GFC and from Standard Bank Looking down the list. Some other questions on helium-3 production. We've been talking this presentation about helium-4.

We have not really measured the grade of the helium for helium-3 yet. It's possible we have higher levels of helium-3 than we'd see normally in the world. It's possible we don't. I expect us to analyze the helium over the next sort of several months and form a conclusion there as to whether it makes sense to try and extract the helium-3 from this helium source. We'll report back to investors as and when we get closer. Maybe a question here for you, Nick. Are we tied to the previous contracts of Linde to phase 1, 75% at 200 Mcf? Can you elaborate on phase 2 agreed contracts?

No, we're not tied to those historic agreements at the original pricing that was originally set in. Given the passage of time, we now have the ability to re-baseline and realign new contracts more commensurate with current trading conditions. We previously announced, approximately three, four weeks ago, that we have concluded a new offtake agreement at pricing greater than $600 per Mcf. I don't think I could say more than that, but what we're anticipating doing is essentially locking up most of phase 1 helium molecules at similar pricing to that. The idea is then we'll move into the phase 2 allocation and contracting strategy as well, and we look to price at similar levels, to what we're seeing currently.

Given the, call it, medium-term forecast that there is going to be a prolonged shortage, we don't see that scenario changing, at least for the next 24 months. It's from our perspective, at least the strategy to move forward, as we are currently predicting.

Great. Another question I see here. Phase 2 breaks ground in 2028 earliest. Is there any way to accelerate that into late 2027 given all the demand points you've presented? We're doing our best. We'll move as fast as we can. Let's stick with the projections that we've presented so far. There may be ways to modify phase 2 as well to bring certain parts of it forwards. We'll update investors as and when we get more clarity and certainty on that. For now, you should assume a 2028 breaking ground and a kind of a 2030 completion or commissioning, and 2031 first full year of revenues. I'm lost on this Q&A now, Craig, maybe another question from yourself you can see that's been sent in on email.

Absolutely. Why create a dedicated publicly listed helium platform rather than keeping Renergen inside ASP Isotopes?

Yeah, there aren't any pure play helium companies out there that are commercially viable right now or close to commercial scale. As I said earlier, the fastest growing, highest gross margin, highest return on capital businesses of the industrial gas companies is typically their electronic gases business, which is principally helium. To be able to sell a product like this on five to 10 to 15 year take or pay type contracts is really unique. Many investors have told me they'd love to be able to invest in a pure play helium company. I completely agree, let's create that company for people to invest in. We're going to own the majority of it, that's for certain.

Happy to have a free float out there to value this asset as it should be valued at, and we'll let the market tell us where this should be valued at. It's just very unique. I see a question here. Is there any recoverable uranium or thorium in this field? The uranium's about five miles below the surface, so it is probably the most concentrated source of uranium that exists on the planet or discovered on the planet. It's not really economically viable to mine, even at current prices. Don't expect us to mine any uranium or thorium from this location. Craig, any more questions from the email, please?

Yes. What will the combined company be called, and when does it begin trading?

The combined company will be called Noble Africa, it is trading today. It's trading today under the ticker code NDRA. The merger will complete after a few things have happened. We need to file a Form S-4 first of all with the SEC. I'd expect that we file that during the early August kind of timeframe. That'll get reviewed by the SEC. There'll be some comment periods, that kind of stuff. There'll need to be a shareholder vote from both sides. Obviously, the Renergen side is ASPI, so you should expect we're going to vote in favor of the transaction. Obviously, at the end of the vote, shareholders will need to have a shareholder vote on their side, and then the merger can happen after that. I'd expect probably during Q4.

We'll try and bring it into September, but that feels like a push. Probably during Q4 is my guess, but obviously a lot of that timeline's out of our control. It depends how long the S-4 takes with the SEC and that kind of stuff.

Paul, we are now three minutes after the top of the hour. We can end whenever you wish. If you'd like to take a few more, of course, there are dozens of questions out there.

Yeah, there's a lot of questions there. It's 11:00 P.M. for myself and Nick, but we're happy to go on for another 10 minutes or so, given there's a lot of people interested in this and a lot of questions. Yeah. Sounds great. Okay. How constrained for supply are semiconductor companies for helium?

How well covered are they for inventory?

I'm not sure we really want to comment on behalf of the semiconductor companies. I think if you look on the internet, the Intel CEO made some comments on helium impacts on their business or potential helium impacts on their business a few weeks ago, or a few days ago, you should look for those on the internet. Nick and I went to Southeast Asia about a month ago. That trip wasn't on our calendar four months ago, five months ago. There were some pretty urgent meetings with semiconductor companies who want to talk about alternative suppliers of helium. In many cases, it's not about price or finding a cheaper source of helium, it's about finding a more diversified supply chain. Without helium, you can't produce a semiconductor. When you think about it, over 60% of Taiwan's GDP comes from semiconductor manufacturing.

I think it's at 15% for Singapore. This is important. This is a big issue for those countries and for these manufacturers. In terms of their inventories and their supply, this isn't the easiest product to store, so I think you've probably got to ask them what their inventories are. I'd also add that a few semiconductor companies have come to South Africa to visit our facilities, and that trip wasn't on their schedule back in February either. There is some urgency, I think, for new supply in this marketplace.

How is the infrastructure for helium handling and export developed in South Africa? Will this be a constraint to get product out when phase 2 is at 100% capacity?

Yeah, Nick, I'll let you answer the question.

Sure. The supply chain is fairly simple in the sense that helium is exported in 40-foot ISO containers. These are containers built into 40-foot ISO shipping frames. Provided you can truck your ISO container to the nearest port, you then have a readable or ready to go export requirement without any specialist port infrastructure. Any container ship is in a position to carry that cargo and export it to the call it target destination. As we know and previously indicated on the slides, given the establishment of South Africa from a global trading perspective, we have several ports in the country. I think we've got about seven or eight that are within eight-hour call it trucking distances from our facility. That means that we really can ship either south through Cape Town, east through call it Durban and Port Elizabeth, or through the West Coast, if required.

There's a lot of optionality that comes with that.

I see a question here, Greg. Been seeing this presentation for the best part of a decade, and the only thing that changes is the timelines. What makes this time different, and when will customers take delivery of helium? I think, we first started talking to Renergen four years ago, actually. It was a project I absolutely loved. We got involved obviously about sort of 15 months ago. What Renergen lacked really was access to capital and the ability to really scale their workforce to bring this project up to speed quickly. We injected a lot of capital. We're able to get more drilling people out there, where ASPI's got 40 or 50 chemical engineers who can help solve problems in plants and that kind of stuff.

I think the two forces together really brought a lot more infrastructure to bear that would accelerate this project. Now, phase one has finished, the construction of the plant is finished. The plant has shipped liquid helium already. It is shipping LNG today. We're in the process of connecting the wells to the plant via a gathering system, then we expect to start producing helium during the third quarter, with customers ready to take product in September. We'll update you all as and when the plant start up and commissioning starts. Assume it's happening in August. We'll go from there. Nick, anything I missed there? Was that a reasonable answer?

No, I think that's a fair assessment of where we are, Paul.

Great. Capital constraints have certainly impacted the ability to deliver.

I think that's been resolved and we're now looking forward to embarking and delivering on the commitments for shareholders' benefit.

Yeah. I see a question here. Where is your largest client based, Asia, Americas, and have they signed to take on most of phase one helium output via take or pay contracts? The first contract we've signed is with an Asian customer. It's about 15% of phase one. I'd expect most contracts are about a similar size. We'll aim to contract out of 75% to phase one and about 15% of product into phase two. The only constraints in the DFC financing is that we're not allowed to sell product to China, to North Korea, to Iran, the usual list of suspects, basically. That's the constraint in that DFC package regarding product location. Craig, another question from yourself, please.

How should sector-agnostic investors think about this opportunity in the context of other comparable opportunities available today?

Well, listen, we're the management team of the company. We tell you what we're going to do. I kind of think it's up to investors to decide what price they pay for it, what the valuation should be, and how they compare to other comparable companies. I guess, this is a very small version of the fastest-growing part of the industrial gas companies. Quite frankly, that's what we're doing, selling helium and LNG. That's more for investors to decide upon rather than us to give an opinion on.

Question about ENDRA. Why is a helium and LNG business combining with a medical imaging company?

Yeah. We were looking for a company to merge ENDRA into to accelerate the speed of the go public opportunity. The great thing about ENDRA is that they had a very clean cap table. There's no kind of nasty preferred shares, very few warrants. It's a very straightforward cap table, no debt on it. Very few employees, no long-term leases, no long-term liabilities. Businesses that we can divest very quickly or spin out very quickly or just shut down very quickly without costing as much money. It's almost a perfect shell for us to merge this with. We actually put over $3 million into the shell to keep it alive, otherwise it risked being delisted prior to this merger. That's obviously given us a bit more incremental, more ownership of the entity. That's the main rationale for it.

When you do those reverse mergers, and I've done many in my career, you want a clean cap table, clean structure, no big assets or fixed assets or legacy assets or legacy businesses or lots of employees and infrastructure. It's a very clean shell with an operating business that can be divested, sold, or shut down very quickly.

We have time for one more question for you. Yeah. How do you think about helium demand drivers over the next decade, including semiconductors, space, medical, and quantum computing?

Listen, I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't predict the growth rates of those three industries, but all would appear to be growing much faster than GDP. I would therefore expect the helium demand, if it's available, would also grow at greater than GDP. There may not be enough supply to allow all the customers to grow. You may in theory, if we see these supply side shortages remain for a long period of time, some customers may have to get curtailed or some industries may have to stop using helium or what have you. We'll see. Actually, Nick- Thank you Any thoughts on that?

If we see a real supply side squeeze, what industries would have to curtail, would have to stop using helium or just not exist anymore?

Yeah. I think obviously, my opinion here and not necessarily something that we can completely bank on, but I do see the balloon market and lifting market taking the first hit. I think that will disappear quite quickly. I do see the welding market potentially being impacted next. As we start to make our way through it will essentially be the markets that can't afford the significant price inputs or increases that will naturally fall off the table from a supply perspective. That will be chewed up by the industries that can afford to pay the premium and sustain that pricing as it moves forward.

The one closing point I'd like to make there is if we look at the forecasts that come through in order to meet that supply and demand balance and forecast, if we consider that this is an extractive industry, the discoveries around helium opportunities should have been made approximately 10-15 years ago if we are going to see them starting to supply in the next five years into the market. That means that based on what we've seen and what we can see that's publicized in terms of new project development, is we certainly have a lack of project development taking place around new helium projects. I don't anticipate that timing can be accelerated as a result of funding.

I think it's a typical exploration program that follows suit, that does come with a, call it, 15-20-year development cycle from asset identification to scale production.

Yeah. I mean, I would add this should be viewed as a typical commodity chemical business, but it's a very unique commodity chemical. There is a supply-demand curve, when supply exceeds demand, the price will set at the marginal producer there. When demand exceeds supply, those industries that can't afford to pay that price would be the ones that don't get the volumes is my guess. We'll see. It'll be interesting next few years.

Thank you very much, Paul and Nick. For more information about Noble Africa, reach us at 1-800-RedChip or email us at aspi@redchip.com. Please watch Small Stocks, Big Money, RedChip's program featuring exciting small cap companies on CNBC every Sunday morning at 11:00 A.M. U.S. Eastern and on Bloomberg US every Saturday night at 7:00 P.M. U.S. Eastern. Finally, join our next webinar with Venue Holding Corporation tomorrow at 4:15 P.M. U.S. Eastern. Register for tomorrow's webinar and for all RedChip webinars at redchip.com/events. Thanks to our many participants today, and thank you, Paul and Nick.

Thank you for your interest.