Here is a great response/post from reddit on HPQ Silicon, thanks to AMPA-R for this:
You need to ask yourself why you invested in this company in the first place. If you invested blindly because a friend told you to without doing your own due diligence or assessing your risk tolerance, then you're going to have a rough time in the stock market regardless of which company you pick. The stock is not the company, and this downturn is not specific to HPQ - many small cap stock prices are 70-80%+ lower than their all time high. So what now? What is the overall outlook? Well, if you've been keeping up with HPQ's news releases, you'll remember that:
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GEN3 of the QRR pilot plant will be in operation before the end of Q1, producing 5 MT of 2N-4N purity silicon metal per month. The addressable market for 2N silicon metal alone is 10+ bil by 2025. What's so special about the QRR? It requires cheaper feedstock, lower OPEX, and is a safer and greener alternative than legacy tech that relies on processing silane gas.
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Alternatively, the 2N-4N silicon metal could also be used as feedstock for the NSiR which will further convert this silicon metal into high purity nano-sized silicon powders for applications in EV battery anodes. GEN1 NSiR nanosilicon samples are currently being 3rd-party validated and will soon be sent to automanufacturers that asked. GEN2 NSiR design will soon follow. What is extremely exciting is that per the January 12 NSiR update news release, HPQ can now produce nanosilicon powders as small as 10 nm and as big as micro sized if necessary. This flexibility will be important to meet the customized demands of various battery players looking to incorporate silicon in the battery's anode.
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HPQ is also looking to disrupt the fumed silica market space with the FSiR, a one-step-process reactor that converts quartz directly into fumed silica while requiring significantly less energy consumption, does not use or emit harmful chemicals, and does not require as much starting feedstock. On the latter point, quartz itself as a feedstock is only 5cents a kg. Legacy tech on the other hand has to first convert quartz and other materials into 2N silicon, which is then used as feedstock to make fumed silica. 2N silicon as feedstock costs 2.5$+/kg, so HPQ's one-step process is 98%+ cheaper in the feedstock department alone.
Much of this information is available in HPQ's latest investor deck: https://hpqsilicon.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/HPQ-DECK-H.C.-Wainwright-Hosts-23rd-Annual-Global-Investment-Conference.pdf
Alternative business lines include:
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5N, or possibly 6N silicon metal from the QRR.
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Porous silicon (Apollon Solar holds the patent for this, so it remains to be seen if HPQ finds a way to get their hands on this)
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EBH2 hydrogen venture, which will produce green hydrogen at an extremely low price per kg using electrolysis technology. This development is still underway and awaiting validation. But if successful, EBH2 tech can directly be incorporated into all of HPQ's reactors, the QRR, NSiR and the FSiR to lower opex by ~40%.
You may be skeptical by this point, sounds a little too good to be true? Good thing that HPQ isn't going about this alone. They are partnered with Pyrogenesis Canada (PYR), a world leader in the development and commercialization of advanced plasma processes. All of HPQ's reactors (except for EBH2) are built by PYR engineers. PYR itself is a future blue chip in the making with many business verticals and whose tech is vetted by multiple billion dollar entities, but save that for another post. If you look through HPQ's old news release, you will see that this partnership started back in 2016 with a risky idea to turn quartz into solar-grade silicon. 6 years later, the QRR is almost at commercialization stage, and HPQ now has multiple future business verticals. Completely de-risked, with more legs to the stool. HPQ and PYR are years ahead of the competition, and are not some nobody startups looking to cash in on the recent silicon hype. Silicon prices and demand are soaring through the roof, HPQ is extremely well positioned with its array of disruptive plasma tech to one day offer the entire gambit of cheap silicon solutions.
Back to your question, what is the overall outlook? Bullish as f.