The Phase 1 helium plant has finished commissioning and is producing helium steadily into storage. Management expects full capacity in Q4 and is “finalising logistics” for first deliveries.
What’s new:
The milestone is real, the money isn’t yet. Even if the plant ramps straight to full capacity by December 31, Q4 helium sales would be only about $1.8–2.4M at $600/Mcf. What matters is proof the plant runs, which is what Phase 2 lenders need to see.
What the release didn’t say.
Full capacity has moved from Q3 to Q4, and first deliveries slipped from September.
There’s no update on helium contracts: still about 15% signed, against a stated aim of about 75%.
It repeats 70 Mcf/day, while the company’s own figures elsewhere imply 52–58. That gap is worth up to about $11.6M a year of helium revenue.
The market barely reacted.
The stock closed up 3.86%, keeping only about half of its 7.2% pre-market jump.
That’s 0.77 of a normal day’s move, on ordinary volume.
Before that, it fell 33% from the Oct 2 S-4 day to Oct 23. That drop is only borderline statistically significant (p ≈ 0.06).
Valuation. At $2.03, our model is worth $2.85 per share even with Phase 2 valued at zero. The market cap leaves only about $15M for PET Labs, the isotope business, QLE and Alpa, against $142M in our model.
On Oct 5, the price implied about $767/Mcf helium for Phase 2. That calculation no longer works: the stock is now pricing below a world with no Phase 2 at all.
The deal’s own value for ASPI’s helium stake is now 1.9x ASPI’s enterprise value, up from 1.13x.
The October 5 pattern still holds, though weaker. Structure news still hurts the stock more than operational news helps it, even counting both new events (p = 0.032 on two different tests). But the stock’s reaction to good operational news has roughly halved.
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