Title: ASP Isotopes, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASPI) — CEO Paul Mann presentation + Q&A (helium / Renergen deep dive) Show: Emerging Growth Conference (YouTube channel "Emerging Growth Conference"); shared into the Uranium Discord #general channel Guest: Paul Mann, CEO, ASP Isotopes (host: Anna, Emerging Growth Conference) Date: 2026-08-20 URL: https://youtu.be/4mua5fFS8L8 Length: 31:44 Note: YouTube auto-transcript; fillers (um/uh/you know) and stutters removed, wording otherwise verbatim. Auto-transcript mangles names: "Paul Man"=Paul Mann, "reogen/Renogen"=Renergen, "Endra"=Noble Africa (the Nasdaq helium vehicle — check), "alperronostics/alphaostics"=AlphaNostics, "your turbium/Ubian/UTIN/Utopium/Yurbium"=ytterbium-176, "Clu Victto"=Pluvicto (Novartis, "Nevada's"=Novartis), "uticium/lutidium"=lutetium-177, "gatalinium"=gadolinium, "inqai"=in Qatar, "Austral"=Strait of Hormuz (as heard), "Bristol Mask"=Bristol Myers, "34 billion"=$0.75bn (DFC $500m + Standard Bank $250m, per later lines), "EBIT DAR/ebitar"=EBITDA, "TDP plus"=GDP-plus.
00:08 Welcome back everyone. Next we have ASP Isotopes Inc. trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol ASPI and is developing a differentiated isotope enrichment platform to strengthen global supply chain access to critical materials used in nuclear medicine, next generation semiconductors and nuclear energy. Happy to welcome CEO Paul Mann.
00:30 Welcome to the conference, Paul. We are very much looking forward to hearing your presentation today. >> Great. Thanks for your interest, and it's good to be back again. So, we'll move straight on to the slide deck. So, today we've got a few slides of forward-looking statements.
00:46 If you could just review these, that'd be fantastic. And also please refer to our SEC filings for a complete set of risk factors and forward statements and to see the most up-to-date developments at the company. So our goal is to strengthen access to critical materials and specifically these — we have two processes to make isotopes economic: separation process and quantum enrichment — and we have a large helium project in South Africa as well to bring helium to the market.
01:23 The goal over the next six months is to bring most of these divisions into commercial production, start generating revenues and free cash flows and then start to grow, build new plants. In terms of the industries we operate in, it's mainly electronics, nuclear medicine and nuclear fuels.
01:46 And I would describe the company as having four verticals and I'll run through each of these now. And today we're actually going to take a different step to what we normally do in these things. We're going to do a deep dive into Renergen and helium today. So here's the corporate setup. You'll see to the left we have PET Labs and this focuses on radioisotopes and delivering nuclear medicine to people with cancer and other ailments. And PET Labs is growing great.
02:13 We achieved over 50% revenue growth during the first half of the year. Revenue should double in 2026 versus 2025. And when we invest in PET Labs, we typically don't see the pick up in revenues for a couple of years. And so we're really at this point now where revenue is starting to accelerate and build momentum over the next three or four years.
02:37 And so that's very exciting. And we are, I would say, right at the start of a new therapeutic cycle in pharmaceuticals where we use radioisotopes to treat cancer. So there's a great runway ahead there. In PET Labs we also have AlphaNostics and AlphaNostics has developed a number of proprietary drugs to treat cancer and they will go into clinical trials later this year.
03:04 So there'll be lots of news on PET Labs over the next 12 or 18 months or so. Within ASP Isotopes, we've built three stable isotope facilities in South Africa: one for silicon-28, one for carbon-14 and one for ytterbium-176/178. These are all in the process of starting up and being commissioned at the moment.
03:28 The silicon-28 plant is the one that most of us are focusing on right now. We've put together the first 48 stages. We're putting together the final 48 at the moment and that plant is enriching silicon-28 at the moment. These are both going to nuclear medicine and into the electronics industry for next generation semiconductors.
03:50 Renergen will actually be the focus of today's presentation and that focuses on producing helium and LNG. We've got a very unique asset in South Africa that can produce helium and energy and we actually started that plant up this week and that plant should start producing free cash flow by the end of the year with first product going to customers during September.
04:13 That's the expectation there. And then Quantum Leap Energy focuses on nuclear fuels for the future, specifically HALEU, lithium-6, lithium-7, LEU+ and the kind of nuclear fuels the world needs to build to double its nuclear capacity over the next 25 years or so.
04:33 Our goal is to spin Quantum Leap Energy out later this year, ideally in the third quarter, and we filed the S-1 for that in November and I think we're pretty much there with the review process. So this just shows the industries we operate within: electronics, nuclear medicine and nuclear energy, and all of these are growing rapidly and a lot of these are shaping the future of the world. And then in terms of our operational milestones for the next six months or so, we expect to ship our first silicon-28 during the second half of the year. That
05:09 plant is enriching right now and we'll talk more about that later on in the presentation. Carbon-14 is currently producing carbon-12. We're still waiting to get sufficient quantity of carbon-14 feedstock to start commercial production of carbon-14 but that should happen during the second half of the year. And ytterbium-176 —
05:31 we're expecting the continuous processing vessel which allows us to produce large quantities of ytterbium-176, expecting to have that built during September and that's a fairly quick enrichment from that point. We also expect to ship helium and LNG during the third quarter and start generating quite a lot of free cash flow from that towards the end of the year, and phase two will start construction during the second half of the year as well.
06:03 Phase two is 13 times the size of phase one. Expect to see continued growth in radiopharmaceuticals. As I mentioned earlier, our first clinical candidates going into humans during the next several months. So today I'm going to focus on the electronics sector and do a deep dive into electronics and then I think in the next one we do with you guys we'll do nuclear medicine and then we'll do Quantum Leap Energy.
06:31 And so our helium asset is very unique. When we drill for helium we get about 3% helium in the gas, and typically when you drill for natural gas in the United States you get about 0.4% helium and in Qatar you get about 0.04% helium. So this is a very unique asset. We have the only onshore petroleum production right in South Africa and as I said we've completed phase one,
07:01 started production this week and we expect to start phase two during the second half of the year. This is a designated strategic asset by both the South African government and the United States government. We've secured a significant amount of capital for phase 2 from the US government and from Standard Bank, and I'd say this is one of the few assets of its like in the world.
07:33 We announced back in July that we intend to merge this asset into a NASDAQ company called Endra [as heard]. And this will then become the focus of that company and this becomes the first helium pure-play company listed on NASDAQ that's actually producing helium. So it's very exciting. It's a very unique asset, helium.
07:53 So I'll talk a bit more about helium now. Helium is unique in that it's chemically inert and it's zero viscosity as a liquid and as a gas and it's very good for sterilizing and sanitizing certain things. It's got a very low density and has a boiling point extremely low, minus 270 degrees C.
08:21 Here you'll see the end markets that helium is used in, and I think what's driving significant growth right now in the helium market is really semiconductors and rocketry. You can't launch a Falcon 9 or a Starship without a large amount of liquid helium.
08:42 It's the propellant that pushes the fuel out of the rocket. You can't make a semiconductor without liquid helium. And so it's used in a number of industries globally. So it's about a $3 billion market and you'll see over the last 10 to 15 years or so the US strategic reserve has dropped from being about a third of global supply to almost zero.
09:15 And coincident with that the prices have escalated from about 200 up to more like $400 or $500 per MCF. So we expect this growth to continue. It's GDP-plus type demand growth. And if you look here about a third of the world's helium production comes from Qatar, about 15% or so from Russia, and if you look at the supply and demand balances, America's broadly balanced in terms of supply and demand; if you look at Asia and Europe both are significantly
09:55 out of place in terms of their needs and the supply. So we feel it's likely we're entering the fifth helium supply crisis. And what's happened since the start of the year is that Iran has damaged Qatar's gas processing facilities and so Qatar had to shut down its LNG and helium production.
10:23 The strait is also closed so they can't get anything out of Qatar to the rest of the world. Now when Qatar tries to restart its LNG facilities it may take some time and we do understand that some of those facilities are impaired for a number of years rather than just a number of months. Additionally Russia has introduced helium export controls.
10:47 It will no longer be exporting helium to the rest of the world. So almost 50% of the world's helium supply is currently not available for customers. I was in Asia earlier on this year and there are some very nervous semiconductor companies that need helium that are concerned that they're not going to be able to get the amount they need.
11:15 Not so much about price, more concerned about the quantity or the amount. And so it will be interesting to see exactly how the second half of the year plays out. We're about to start up our plant at the moment to help supply some of this market. We can't supply the whole lot but help supply some of it.
11:39 This asset is very unique. This is probably the highest concentration of commercially scalable helium found on the globe. It's a vast multigenerational asset. The location of it makes it extremely efficient to ship around the world. This is also the lowest carbon footprint for incremental helium production. And so it's very unique.
12:02 And it was formed about two billion years ago when two meteorites, two asteroids hit planet Earth at exactly the same point, one three billion years ago and one two billion years ago. What you've got below the surface of the ground is a large concentrated source of uranium about five miles below the earth's surface and that undergoes radioactive decay and produces helium which is then trapped in the upper portion of the rock and that's how it got there. Our acreage is where this red
12:36 patch is on the map. And if you look at the pink bit in the middle, that's the center of where the meteor hit the planet. This is our resource that we have. Our proven reserves are basically in this middle yellow polygon that is drawn there.
12:57 And we expect to start exploring the outer parts and doing a reserve analysis later on this year, but phase one and phase two combined use about half the yellow box in the middle. So we expect to have plenty of acreage and supply for a phase three and a phase four and a phase five if we think the market requires that.
13:24 This just shows the scale of what we have here. Our 1P reserves are basically about the same size as what the US federal helium reserve is. And so it's a vast reserve for many generations to go. South Africa is actually an ideal place to ship helium from.
13:48 When you're shipping helium, about 1% evaporates or turns off into a gas every day you're shipping it. So shipping distances matter. Cape of Good Hope is a great place to ship to all four corners of the world actually. And that means when customers receive their helium in liquid form, there should be more liquid versus gas and they want the liquid and they don't really want the gas.
14:11 It is actually important that customers recognize that. So that's just a quick overview on phase one and phase two, what it looks like. So this is one asset, two products, but actually four markets, and we expect to sell our LNG to gas-to-power, industrial and transport, and helium obviously mainly for the export market to semiconductors and rocketry and so forth.
14:39 So this talks about the size and the scale. So phase one, we expect to produce about 70 MCF a day of helium, about 2,500 gigajoules a day of LNG. And for those in the United States, a gigajoule is approximately equal to an MMBTU. And if we can achieve a sales price of say $600 per MCF on average and say 13 to 14 per gigajoule for the LNG, phase one should generate revenues of somewhere close to $27 million and gross profit of about $11 million.
15:13 Right now we are talking to customers where the price is more like 800 to a thousand and actually the spot price is north of $2,000 I'm told by industry participants, and so there's a lot of operating leverage. So if we can achieve a higher price at 800 to a thousand this asset can do 15 to 20 million in gross profit from just phase one. Phase one started up earlier this week, we expect to ship our first shipments to customers during September and then we'll start moving on to phase two in the
15:47 second half of the year. And phase two is significantly larger, about 34,000 gigajoules a day of LNG and about 900 MCF a day of liquid helium, and at $600 per MCF and $14 per gigajoule this is more like a $370 million in revenue type plant and $300 million in gross profit.
16:12 Obviously, we've got no control over where gas prices go and where LNG prices go, but both kind of feel biased to the higher side in the current environment. Phase two should benefit from a significant amount of debt at half a billion dollars from the US DFC, about a quarter billion dollars from Standard Bank.
16:33 It takes about 44 months to build and we are building this plant in a turnkey contract with an EPC, a construction company that's well known to build these types of plants, and so 2030 we should start to see the first production with 2031 being the first full year of production. So let's just talk quickly about the electronics market with ASPI and where this fits in.
16:59 So this shows the electronics supply chain of how they make a semiconductor and you'll see that isotopes are used in many steps here. So silicon-28 we expect to get used in the first couple of stages and then other unique isotopes we expect to be used in the packaging and other parts of the chain, and throughout the process we're using fluorinated gases and helium.
17:27 So I've explained helium already. So silicon-28 the world believes will produce faster and better semiconductors. It's believed that if we enrich silicon-28 to say 99% or 99.9% we'll see a 20 to 30% benefit in terms of thermal conductivity in these chips and that's quite significant.
17:56 This is probably the largest market for silicon-28 longer term and the plant with 48 stages is capable of enriching to these kind of levels. We're expanding the plant right now to 96 stages and that will produce products for quantum computing. So it's important to have zero-spin atoms in quantum computing.
18:21 And so enrichment of silicon-28 to 99.995 should provide that kind of efficacy and also carbon-12, enriching in our additional plant, may well be used for quantum computing as well. Fluorinated gases are also used in electronics.
18:49 So we have three scientists that have PhDs in fluorination chemical engineering and this is a plant they constructed that can fluorinate heavy rare earth metals and there's significant demand for things like tungsten hexafluoride and germanium tetrafluoride by electronics customers, and actually in our recent trips to Asia many customers said how they're interested in getting another supply of those chemicals.
19:18 So what we're putting together here is an electronics division that has helium that's used in many stages of the semiconductor manufacturing, silicon-28 and germanium-70 and other isotopes that would likely be required for next generation semiconductors, and then fluorinated gases that are used in production as well.
19:38 So we're really touching many parts of the electronics supply chain. So in terms of milestones now, I highlighted this earlier, the kind of milestones to expect during the second half of this year, and our goal is to generate $300 million of EBITDA in 2031. And we've kind of given this guidance as to where we expect that 300 to come from.
20:03 And so if you look at electronic gases that's between 150 and 300. And as I've just said before, LNG and helium alone, we think can probably do 300 at the current kind of prices we're talking about. LNG or natural gas we expect between 100 and 200. Medical isotopes, that's ytterbium-176, carbon-14, gadolinium-160, much harder to predict.
20:34 So a small contributing factor though, expect that to be 40 to 100, and then radiopharmaceuticals, so PET Labs which is growing exceptionally well, more visibility over that, we think that's kind of a 40 to $100 million EBITDA business as we get to 2031. So I've had 20 minutes of presentation time now Anna so let's maybe go to some Q&A from the web please. Okay, great.
21:02 Thank you for that, Paul. Let's jump in. So once the first commercial shipments occur, how quickly can production ramp from initial quantities to nameplate capacity? >> So actually we typically run these plants at nameplate capacity. So I would expect by the end of the fourth quarter we're running at nameplate capacity.
21:28 And what we're doing right now is we're tying in the additional wells to the plant so that we have enough wells tied into the plant to start commercial production and the final few wells will be connected between now and say an October kind of time frame and then we're at nameplate capacity.
21:48 In terms of silicon-28, I'd say right now we're running at nameplate capacity for a 48 segment plant. We need to add more segments over the next few months to get to where we can really enrich to exceptionally high levels of enrichment. Then carbon-14 is running, or carbon-12 and 14 is running at nameplate capacity already.
22:13 And ytterbium-176 we'll start at nameplate capacity once the continuous processing vessel is built. >> Thank you. And a viewer wants you to clarify what does commercial production mean in measurable terms: kilograms per year, enrichment level, yield, uptime and cost per gram. >> Yeah. So it depends on exactly which element we're talking about but typically we're talking about kilograms or grams.
22:39 So for carbon-14 we're talking about grams. For silicon-28 we're talking about kilograms. Obviously for LNG and helium we're talking about tons. In terms of prices, for carbon-14 think about $24,000 a gram. In terms of silicon-28 think about a few hundred dollars a gram. And for ytterbium-176 think about $20,000 a gram.
23:04 That kind of number. LNG and helium, I kind of gave you some numbers earlier. Expect 14 to $20 per gigajoule or MMBTU for the LNG. And right now we're looking at north of $600 per MCF for liquid helium. >> And Dan says you've experienced delays in silicon-28 production due to equipment issues.
23:30 So what engineering changes have you made and why are you confident those issues won't recur as you scale? Yeah. So actually the main issue we've had is with the compressors. This plant has over 400 compressors in it and they were purchased from a compressor manufacturer in Switzerland and they failed to meet the specifications set.
23:51 So the compressors have to be hermetically sealed which means they're helium tight. If they're not hermetically sealed then the plant won't be able to enrich to 99.9999% chemically pure. And one of the things we found is that the O-rings the compressor manufacturer put into the compressors are faulty. So the problems we've had is not really with our engineering team or our plant, it's with the compressors that go onto the plant.
24:19 So we've managed to take apart each compressor and change the O-rings around. That has to be done in a clean room in a clean sterile environment. It has to be passivated. So they've put together enough compressors now to put 48 stages of the plant together and that is successfully enriching exactly as you'd expect it to enrich and we're seeing enrichment happen and the product being prepared, but to get to extremely high levels of enrichment one needs a few additional stages to get there and so we're replacing the
24:51 additional compressors at the moment. What gives me the confidence that this will work? The compressors we have on the plant are working very well. And the enrichment is happening as we expect it to. We just need additional compressors to make the cascade longer to achieve higher levels of enrichment.
25:13 >> And what purity levels are customers requesting and how difficult is it to move from today's specifications to even higher enrichment levels? >> Yes. So our belief is that the way we enrich doesn't change as you enrich to greater levels. And so all one really needs to go to higher levels of enrichment is more time and additional costs and more energy basically.
25:52 And so expect that to happen, and if you can enrich from 1% to 2% you can enrich from 1% to 99.999%, just takes a lot longer. >> And have customers moved beyond sample evaluation into discussions around multi-year supply agreements? >> Yes, so for helium and LNG our contracts are typically between five and 15 years and they have an inflation-linked mechanism within them.
26:27 So you expect the price to increase at South African PPI kind of inflation every year, and we'd expect about 100% of our LNG contracted under long-term 5 to 15 year contracts and about 50 to 75% of our helium contracted on 5 to 15 year contracts, balance being sold in spot. For carbon-14, we have a multi-year take-or-pay agreement there with the Canadian customer who happens to be the supplier of the feedstock.
26:58 It's more of a tolling agreement. And then ytterbium and silicon-28, they're more kind of spot purchases or short-term contracts rather than long-term contracts. >> And how large is the current supply demand imbalance for ytterbium-176? And what's driving demand? Yeah. So Novartis has recently launched a drug called Pluvicto.
27:22 I think it's doing about three to four billion dollars a year now. Market expectations for it to grow to kind of six, seven, eight billion dollars per year by the end of the decade. And there is a new category of drugs emerging. There's about a 100 therapeutics in development phase one, phase two, and phase three for radiotherapeutics.
27:44 And so that's what's driving demand, this growth in the end markets. In terms of the supply demand imbalance right now, Russia is the only country that can enrich ytterbium-176 today in commercial quantities and our messaging from customers is that there's a significant supply shortage and it's taking a long time for patients to get therapy and get drugs because of the supply demand imbalance in the stable isotope.
28:14 I think also if you look at some of the clinical trials being conducted I believe Bristol Myers and Eli Lilly recently announced delays to their phase three trials because of the isotope supply chain. So this is a problem for a number of pharmaceutical companies and our goal is to help solve that supply chain.
28:30 >> And how much Yb-176 could your existing facility produce annually at full utilization? Yes, we believe we can do about a kilogram a year once we have the continuous processing vessel working and I said that should happen during September and then we will start commercial production later on in the year. >> And as lutetium-177 therapies expand into additional cancer indications, how directly does that translate into increased Yb-176 demand? Yeah, lutetium-177 has a half life of a few days.
29:06 So you have to manufacture it every week and the more demand for lutetium-177 the more need for ytterbium-176 and so I would suggest that it's probably a one-to-one relationship between the drug demand and Yb-176 demand. >> If quantum computing demand develops faster than expected how quickly could you expand Si-28 production capacity? So we believe our current plant at 100 stages can probably produce about 80 kilograms a year of silicon-28 at 99.
29:40 995 and several hundreds of kilograms of product at 99% enrichment. We could build an additional plant in about 12 months from starting construction. And so as we get visibility and market demand growing, we'd expect to build an additional silicon-28 plant most likely somewhere like Iceland which would benefit from cheap energy.
30:06 >> And if we are at nameplate capacity like you mentioned at 99% why no sales yet? You stated the lower grade Si-28 was needed. >> Yeah. So we're at nameplate capacity for the smaller, for the 48 stages. We're running at 48 stages. We really need to get to 96 to 100 stages before we can really start producing large quantities of it and we'd expect to start seeing revenues come through during the second half of the year as we do that. >> And can you address the QLE spin-off and why there have been delays?
30:42 >> Yeah, the S-1 was filed in November and the SEC was shut for something like four to six weeks during the fourth quarter last year because of the government shutdown. And so it took a long time for the first S-1 to get reviewed. The financials went stale on February 15th. So we couldn't file the second review until early April.
31:08 Had a couple more reviews. Now after the recent share exchange for the convertible loan note, we feel in a really good position to be able to spin out a substantial amount of Quantum Leap Energy between now and the end of the year. >> Wonderful. Well, Paul, thank you for this presentation and it's nice having you back with these updates and we would love to have you back again with some more.
31:28 >> Thank you very much for your interest and next time back we'll do a deep dive into PET Labs and medical isotopes. Thank you. >> Sounds fun. All right, everyone. We'll be right back.