The Silex Systems Ltd (ASX: SLX) share price is having a phenomenal Thursday.
At the time of writing, shares in the company are trading for $1.35. Earlier, however, they reached an intraday high of $1.49 – an astonishing 23.7% rise on the previous day's close.
Let's take a closer look at what's going on.
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Company profile
First, let's take a quick look at what Silex does for the unfamiliar.
According to The Motley Fool, Silex is an Australian research and development (R&D) company. Its area of expertise is focused on uranium enrichment technology. Its premier product is the Silex Systems laser uranium enrichment system.
Silex also says it has an interest in semiconductor technology and silicon-based quantum computing.
Why the Silex share price is rising
One possible reason for the rising Silex share price may be continuing investor interest from its market announcement of 30 August.
In this announcement, Silex revealed "the completion of a key milestone in the Zero-Spin Silicon (ZS-Si) Project". This milestone was the successful start-up of a prototype demonstration facility and testing of the ZA-Si Project.
According to the company, the ZS-Si production technology "is based on a variant of the SILEX laser isotope separation (LIS) platform technology." The project is being completed in partnership with Silicon Quantum Computing Ltd (SQC) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Silex CEO, Dr Michael Goldsworthy, said of the developments
We have continued to make very good progress to date, meeting all Project milestones despite the headwinds created by the COVID pandemic. We remain on track with the overall goal of developing our SILEX LIS technology for the production of high-purity ZS-Si for the emerging quantum computing industry by the end of 2022.
The Project now moves into the next phase of work – undertaking rigorous process measurements with the facility over the coming months, characterising and optimising the process and improving the technology for efficient production of high-purity ZS-Si.
The Silex share price rose 28.9% over 2 days after this announcement was made, and rising substantially again after a small reprieve yesterday.
Silex share price snapshot
Over the last 12 months, the Silex share price has increased 127%. Year-to-date it is 24.1% higher. While its returns since the beginning of the year are not as impressive as those over 52-weeks, it is still outpacing the ASX All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) by 13 percentage points.
Silex Systems has a market capitalisation of around $208 million.
