No problem. Based on some of the things I’ve read here it sounds like you’re preoccupied at this point with a fund that you’re managing? Should I consider this website past tense?

Aspen Aerogels (ASPN) is a publicly traded aerogel insulation company. I had forgotten about it because it is not profitable.

I don’t think it’s France so much as where you use the insulation. The ability to transpire moisture is good in an attic, where you want it to get out… not so much in a basement, where you want to keep it from getting in.

(Right – I’ll use polyiso where I don’t have space. I also heard about moisture resistance from my Ithaca friend – it’s funny, in that plant-based insulation’s absorbing and releasing moisture is considered a *virtue* in France. Let me not veer off-topic, however…)

I’ll keep an eye out. I know several companies by now, but none that are publicly traded, AFAIK. I thought Fixit (which does aerogel-based products, not cellulose) might be, but I wasn’t able to find anything. I’ll get plant-based insulation from what looks like a medium-sized company that certainly isn’t publicly traded.

At the same time, while it is less of a respiratory irritant than fiberglass (which is itself much better than asbestos, say), it remains an irritant. The jury is out on whether it has any measurable carcinogenic effects – presumably meaning, at this stage of the game, that such effects would have to be very slight – but some other concerns remain.

I’ve been reading up on this because I’m carrying out a renovation project. In the end, I decided to use a “natural” (cellulose-based) insulation material instead of rock wool for my bedroom and study. A friend of mine in upstate NY read up on fiberglass and rock wool, and decided to start switching towards rock wool; that sounds like a good idea, except he has an open box of rock wool in the garage – I’ve told him that’s not great, but I doubt he will listen.

At any rate: perhaps we should look up at plant-based insulation materials as well?

IR got back to me. As suspected, the only differences are liquidity and voting rights. A shares have 10x the voting rights of B shares.

They seem to be on the exact same trajectory (3% difference in performance over 5 years) as far as I can tell. B shares are much more liquid and the only ones that have an ADR, so I plan to track ROCK-B for the perposes of list performance. I suspect (but am not sure) that A shares have more voting rights (this is trpically the case when companies have two very similar share classes with one more liquid (thinks CWEN and CWEN-A). I’ve been buying the A shares preferentially for that reason, but thanks for the prompt-I just sent a note to investor relations to find out for sure.