The stock that no one understands and with a huge market cap puts in a bit of a rally for the last week

I found a bit of news about battery fires that seems interesting:

Courtesy of Murdoch and shared here so you don't have to add to the Newscorp revenue!

Tech breakthrough tackles deadly battery fires

27 March 2024

The Australian - Online

Gladstone-based Alpha HPA has unveiled a breakthrough in the technology to combat potentially-deadly battery fires.

With lithium-ion (li-on) batteries causing a reported 1000 home fires in Australia last year, the producer of high-purity aluminium has announced a way to reduce the threat. Apha managing director Rimas Kairaitis says the company’s solution builds upon a process developed by world-leading battery anode manufacturer BTR New Materials in the 2010s, using high-purity aluminium nitrate to coat the battery anode with a fine layer of aluminium oxide.

The process has demonstrated a 100 per cent reduction in “thermal runaway events,” ensuring the safety of li-ion batteries. “Until now, commercialisation of this technology has been hindered by the lack of high-purity aluminium nitrate,’’ Kairaitis says.

Kairaitis says news reports of a battery being blamed for a fire that killed two people in Lake Macquarie last week was a tragic reminder of the hidden dangers of the batteries. “At its core, the li-ion battery operates on controlled oxidation reactions.

However, under certain conditions such as trauma or using lower quality materials, these reactions can become rapid and uncontrolled, leading to battery fires,” Kairaitis says.

Alpha has the flexibility to either provide the aluminium nitrate to customers, or apply the coating directly. The company is currently in discussions with 13 anode manufacturers and developers, with the aim of commercialising the technology.

Alpha’s penetration into the battery sector has been assisted by the recent appointment of Annie Liu as a company director. Liu was previously an executive director at Ford, and formerly managed Tesla’s multi-billion-dollar battery supply chain.

ASX-listed Alpha HPA is set to double its workforce to 120 and invest hundreds of millions of dollars over the next two years as it ramps up production of highly pure alumina products for use in computer chips and lithium ion batteries.

@Strawman Were we able to secure a meeting with A4N?

A4N, ASM and Lynas up on news that they attended a roundtable on with PM Anthony Albanese on setting up $4bn worth of funding for critical material projects.

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/albanese-doubles-critical-minerals-subsidies-to-4b-20231024-p5eeiz

Citing A4N because it has the largest market cap and short positions

In addition, A4N has no offtake agreement yet.

I still don't understand the tech enough in A4N so don't hold given also the market cap is still over $700m with no earnings. It would be most helpful if someone can provide a much needed overview on what A4N does, their competitive advantage and why it justifies a 700m market cap given they are just a processor.

I also think it is still too early to imply any funding guarantees for the roundtable attendees

I added ILU since they already got funding from the government on building a rare earths processing plant.

From the annual reports, it appears stage 1 cashflow estimates are around 1.5-5m pa for this year.

However I have not found the report regarding any feasibility study as I'm interested in the revenue numbers as it is probably a better metric than cashflow in case those targets aren't reached.

This is one I'm still researching as I'm curious why it is still at a very high market cap (approaching 900m). But on the one hand Alpha is now producing a number of products which has high interest from a number of companies. Apologies for being vague but a lot of this stuff is outside my area of expertise. I guess not understanding could be a warning sign and I should stay away!

In addition there was a huge dump last week before it bounced although that is on low volume.

Maybe I have missed something but anyone know why this is still trading strongly at the current market cap after they announced a loss in December?

Is there a link to the latest feasibility study and not some old one done pre-inflation times?

Can't believe I had this on my watchlist at around 20 cents in 2020