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It seems noble already have people arranged to buy the helium straight from the well. If noble has that it’s highly likely that He1 has the same agreements in place prob with the same people if I’m being honest.
KR : Hope so! But He 1 does not have an Anchor Investor that used to run Linde. They talk like midstream people are chasing them to try to get access to any discovery that they make. I am not sure if He 1 is having parallel discussions. I hope so. In the past they DM has talked about $50 million modular processing units. Obviously neither company has $50 million at the moment. The timeline of discovery to helium sales in 12-18 months is highly aggressive. It has taken us much longer than that to drill one more exploration well.
KR - good post and very reasonable analysis. I have been investing in helium for about 2 years as well. I have been thinking that "pick a side and hope for the best" was the right way to go. And both sides might win so there is that. But just very recently I have been rethinking that just a little. There is a lot of enthusiasm that Tanzania might well be a major Helium source for the world. The government certainly wants that to happen. And listening to NHE it seems the industrial gas companies are also keen to have an additional large and stable supply of helium. And the Anchor Investor of NHE (a core early investor listed as a company leader along with Justyn and Shaun and Andrew Garnett and Eddie King) is Kent Masters, who actually has a the formal title of Anchor Investor. Kent is CEO and President of Albermarle (world lithium leader and a company my son has invested in for a long time so I follow it a bit). Before that Kent was Executive Director of Linde, a huge industrial gas player with major involvement in world helium supply chain.
Anyway, I do not want to get Tanzania right - and pick the wrong horse. There are only two horses there. And there is no particular reason not to own both. I did not sell any Helium One but I added a smaller position of NHE so that now my investment in Tanzania is slightly bigger overall and is tilted 80:20 Helium One to NHE. Both are good companies with skilled people and both are targeting potentially huge helium resource. Owning both makes me less anxious that one of them could be the big winner and I might miss out. I will be happy if both of them move forward to a bright future and there is no reason that cannot happen. If I had to pick one, it would be Helium One. But I just recently realized that I do not have to pick one or the other, and adding 25,000 NHE from the Australian exchange proved easier than I thought it would be. And not that expensive. .
Thanks LW. I did consider some of those things. Even though it is 30 plus 30 million new shares, the overall share count has been managed pretty well compared to many AIM companies. There will be about 300 million shares, not billions of shares. And they have got to this point with zero debt. And they really believe they can produce helium in 12-18 months by leveraging the midstreams to build out the infrastructure. They say they have assurances of this. If they do not need more capital to actually sell helium that is quite amazing. (they will ned more money to drill additional wells).
Another factor is that the size of tranche #2 has been determined and will be voted on at the AGM. But the final pricing of tranche #2 shares has not been set. If NHE shares run up (say for success at Tai for Helium 1 for the best possible reason), then this next tranche will raise more capital more efficiently.
If Helium 1 hits a duster at Tai, that will be worse for Helium 1 (might be a fatal wound) than for NHE. Sure the NHE shares will drop but they will still have 2 lottery tickets left. So to me that is another reason to have some NHE shares, and not a reason to avoid them.
My calculus for a long time was same as yours,I picked He1 as the most likely to make a Helium Discovery. But I decided to include a little NHE. I am not sure it totally makes sense
Hi ITV, always appreciate your thoughts and your input. There are times when I should be more silent, but we all deal with our stuff. I added some Noble Helium so my Tanzania soup is now 4 parts Helium One to 1 part Noble. Just saying, still praying is a great motto for the Tanzania Helium story. (likely for most AIM stories).
Well it actually went pretty well. Liquidity on the shares is good, trades 500,000 a day up to over a million.
Bought right after the presentation. Got 25,000 shares at $US .12. That is roughly 9.6 pence or .18 in AUD. Bought the shares at a slight discount to the placing. Cost was $100 commission and 47 dollars in fees to Australian Market. So all in cost was US$ 3147 to pick up the 25,000 shares. Obviously there will be costs to sell them too, but not that bad.
I am not sure why but it just makes sense to me to have a little money on both entrants in the Tanzania Helium Derby. Also makes it a little more interesting to follow the story as it evolves. I have 150,000 shares of Helium 1 so the $ investment is roughly 4 times more. I also have RHC (Royal Helium in Saskatchewan with primary helium wells) at about the same dollar amount as Helium 1. They are having delays in getting their their processing plant up and running. And I have a small amount of DME, a helium play in Arizona Holbrook basin. So I have about $US 40k invested in the helium arena. In 4 small high risk explorers in different areas. I would like to benefit from being a little early in starting to think about and invest in helium over the last few years. Helium 1 I still think has best upside potential. But NHE is also a little more interesting than I thought.
There are other ways to invest in Helium. I passed on Regeneron and they may be first to sales. Some other Canadian companies like Avanti and First Helium in Alberta. There is Blue Helium in Colorado. A number of other small companies like Total Helium and American Noble targeting the Hugoton Field in Kansas (natural gas wells with high helium concentrations). Then there are the big industrial gas companies especially Linde but also Air Liquide. Or Air Products and Chemicals. Or the majors like Exxon but Helium is such a tiny part of their business that it barely makes a difference.
I am sure there are other ideas about how to invest in helium and I would love to hear any best ideas.
1. When asked if they could just cut Helium 1 out of it altogether if there were delays, they said there was plenty of buffer. (There is also the matter of a signed agreement). It was a little odd that their first response to that question was something like "we don't want to talk about that".
2. They sort of joked that Helium 1 drill l could shake out the rig, meaning it would be a test run in a way to get any bugs or glitches resolved, and get everything working smoothly. Presumably also it would be a trial of the testing equipment.
3. They said that the drilling crew was experienced and that the lead (I think) had drilled some of the original wells in the rift basin that had proved up their concept of the kind of traps they are going after. I don't know if Helium 1 is using the same drilling team but that would make sense. Does the drilling team come from Solori with the rig. How does that work?
4. Their wells are simple vertical wells aimed at a specific type of trap. No deviation which they think is important. The Noble wells have TD of 830 m which is less than the TD of 1300 m of the Tai C well.
5. They are going right from well 1 to well2. It is a two well program. Then they plan to retain the rig.
Thanks Keith and Josh. I listened as well. Will add a few comments but try not to repeat too much.
1. Timeline for contract signed and all the other details and have the rig on the boat is within a month.
2. They will follow the first well immediately with a second well (presumably they will have the second part of the capital raise done).
3. They plan to retain the rig to drill production wells if they make a discovery. I hope that Helium 1 also has some rights to drilling time if they retain the rig in Tanzania after their first two Noble wells.
4. They say the kind of structure they are testing is very different than the structure He 1 is drilling. They imply that it is a special structure that has proven itself in drilling oil and gas wells in similar geologies in the rift basin where hydrocarbons are present. Lorna has huge expertise in Africa as well, would love to ask her take on this and what advantages or disadvantages the Tai structure has as compared to Noble targets.
5. They seem to think they can go to selling helium in 12-18 months with the midstream companies setting up the equipment (a refurbished plant) and paying a tolling fee for their gas. Money to do that will be provided by the midstreams. They seem very confident of that. That would be remarkably quick monetization.
Hate to say it but my take after listening was that it might be good to have a little money on each horse. I put in a bid for 25,000 shares. Not that easy to buy NHE.AX in US and there are extra fees like $100 commission from my US broker and also a small 1.5 basis point exchange fee on the Australia end. Does anyone here own some Noble to as a side dish to the Helium One. Is it easier to buy in London since Australia a commonwealth country.
WWP: Good discussion. One thing not fully appreciated is the massive difference in scale between Coho and Cascadura. Coho was supposed to double production but is being held back by pressure differences at Shell facility and has maybe increased production in BOE/d by 50% over legacy production, with less impact on revenues due to low dry gas prices compared to legacy BOE/d which is oil.
HOWEVER with Cascadura we are not talking about a doubling of production but of production increasing by an order of magnitude. There will be a 10 fold increase quickly and then a doubling from there. Changes of an order of magnitude tend to lead to transformative changes in any system or any business. All the things you outline including continuous drilling of multiple prospects with the advanced SV rig and also doing development wells and infrastructure on discoveries will all be internally funded and rapid growth will continue.
For some light reading while we wait.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/order-magnitude-10x-can-change-everything-brian-bulkowski
Re: reversals. JBL had a powerful up trend from March of 2020 through May of 2021 with shares rising from 2 pence to 19 pence. (whole universe of stocks was in an uptrend at that time I might add). Since May of 2021 we have been in powerful downtrend from 19 pence to 5 pence. The downtrend is not broken at this point. (Just pull up the chart one click away on this site). If the shares hit 12 pence, retracing half of the down move, and are steadily rising with increasing volume, then it would be clear that a new up trend is underway. The trouble with reversals (whether downtrend to uptrend or the other way around) is that they can only be confidently called in the rear view mirror. If there was an accurate way to see them in advance then everyone would be rich. TA in general just says how strong a trend is and is helpful in that respect. A strong trend is likely to continue in the same direction. There is no good TA way to predict a reversal, and I have tried them all. But it is totally clear that if you buy heavily in front of a negative reversal or sell short ahead of a positive reversal - well it can be very costly.
One I have followed very closely is GE. Stephen Tusa the JPM analyst correctly identified GE as entering a long brutal downtrend and sold the shares for years, getting totally famous and making his clients huge money. BUT, he was still selling shares at the bottom and GE has a 97% RS for the last year and has been extremely profitable for longs after the reversal to a powerful up trend that happened in September 2022. It has been one of the biggest gainers this year. If you were the last people to take Tusa's sell advice, you lost big. He finally stopped following GE because they are morphing to a pure aerospace company from a conglomerate. But he never saw the reversal coming. (He is still famous though, for one of the better calls of the century).
Anyway GE was $48, spun off $20 a share of GEHC in January, and current prices 9 months later are GE $106 and GEHC about $30 per initial GE share. And GE is in a strong uptrend that will be sustained by next January spin off of Vernova with free shares of that going to GE holders and also an acceleration of GE price when it is shed. (gain by subtraction).
Lots of interest to He 1 investors. Will likely be basis of tomorrow presentation - with some questions too. They will be asked if the rig contract is signed. I'm nit the only one who submitted that question, though they could choose not to answer it.
https://www.investi.com.au/api/announcements/nhe/117cc6ca-046.pdf
SeisNav: I suggest you pull up the two year chart. A downtrend is a downtrend. This one has been brutal. It is multifactorial. Not all companies with PGM exposure have done as poorly over this interval. That said, I do understand that major piece which is beyond JBL control. And the infrastructure (power especially) problems are also beyond their control and they are working to mitigate that. There have been lots of other troubles. The point of my post was to celebrate this positive bit of news. Like all investors (other than short sellers) I strongly favor a powerful prolonged uptrend over a prolonged brutal downtrend. And that takes a reversal. The factors leading to a reversal often include powerful external forces (like economic expansion, pricing improvement) that the company does not cause to happen, but benefits from nonetheless. But an agile well managed company with a good business plan, a good product, increase in demand, technical capability, some kind of moat, in a good jurisdiction - is much more likely to take advantage of improving opportunity. Hoping we can do that.
Sounds like a good agreement, a good direction, a good use of JBL capabilities. And still maintains a focus on PMG recovery from the chrome "waste" if you will. Glad they are trying to make some adjustments. Never hurts to go from 4% to 20% profit on any revenue stream. Don't know it it will be enough to effect a reversal off a brutal downward trend, but it is a good step.
I always have 4-5 high risk high reward plays (usually microcaps) that are looking for a turn-around or a rise from the ashes.
My goal is that 1-2 go BK, 1-2 tread water, and 2-3 are 10 baggers. That math works. Can add wealth.
But my current crop is still waiting for some issue to step up and ramp. Right now JBL does not look like it is going to be one of those good ones. But is gets surprising sometimes, and selling right before a pivotal reversal never feels good. Sadly I have done that too.
I have seen pictures of the Regeneron processing and liquification facility. Lots of capital went there. They have primary helium wells with 3% helium (5-10 times most US and Canadian helium sources whether natural gas associated or primary helium wells like in Saskatchewan). They even have one well at 13% which is unprecedented except for maybe one or two primary helium wells at Teapot dome that produced from the Holbrook basin in Arizona a few decades ago.
My helium picks have stalled out a bit. Helium 1 needs a discovery. RHC and DME need their facilities to work and to start selling helium. NA Helium is doing well and ramping - they are private. Regeneron seems to be way ahead of He 1 and Noble.
Monday should help firm up the timeline. The next few months could firm up the Tanzania primary helium story - or not.
Hi Trek:
Good post. Purgatory somewhat apt description. But still more interesting things going on here than in purgatory.
I have not sold a single share. Bought some in 2013 and 2014 and then have been steadily accumulating since 9/21/2020.
Like you I think that the story is still strong, if anything improving. But it is time now to accelerate the pace of the story. This chapter (Cascadura comes on line and provides easy access to (self generated) capital) has dragged on and future chapters have to come at faster pace and be shorter too. Lots of reasons for this pause, interest rates tripled, capital markets tightened, company found itself cash constrained while it became more and more obvious that the Cascadura facility was pretty complicated and expensive and a big stretch to self finance. But they are almost there.
BT: You write - Yes butters we will know eventually one way or another, better to wait for confirmation though before you part with hard earned.
Sorry but I have already parted with some hard earned. It has been a brutal slog down. Just sayin'.
Well something is an issue. Suggest you pull up the 2 year chart.
https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChart.html?sharechart=JLP&share=Jubilee-Metals
Moneyman64: There is more than that to it. I bought some PICK Global Metals and Mining EFT about 2 1/2 years ago when I bought the Jubilee shares. PICK has exposure to PMG metals and Copper too. That EFT has done poorly, up only 3.61% over 30 months. But JBL is DOWN 55%. (and I bought it on a dip.)