Market Outlook: The podcast discusses a significant shift in the nuclear energy market, highlighting the US as a growth market for nuclear power for the first time in 20 years, with plans for new reactors and advanced micro reactors.
Political Influence: Emphasis is placed on the bipartisan support for nuclear energy in the US, with executive orders and legislative actions such as the Russian uranium ban, indicating strong political backing for the industry.
Company Strategy: The company has strategically positioned itself by acquiring assets during market lows, which has now placed it as the largest US uranium mining company, poised to benefit from the current market conditions.
Industry Partnerships: The company has formed strategic partnerships with major players like Microsoft and Terra Power, indicating a strong alignment with future energy demands driven by AI and data centers.
Supply Chain Challenges: The podcast highlights the critical need for uranium refining and conversion facilities in the US, with plans to build one of the largest such facilities to address current bottlenecks in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Investment Opportunities: The discussion points to a supply deficit in uranium production, with current production meeting only 75% of demand, suggesting potential for price increases and investment opportunities in the sector.
Future Prospects: The company is focused on ramping up production, leveraging its low-cost production capabilities, and exploring further growth through strategic investments in SMRs and other nuclear technologies.
Leadership and Vision: The CEO emphasizes the importance of having a strong team and strategic vision, positioning the company as a national champion in the uranium industry, ready to capitalize on the growing demand for nuclear energy.
Transcript
You know, I mean, I've been looking back to see how long we've known each other. You know how long that's been? Have you any idea? >> Well, it sounds like you've thought about it. So, what's the answer? >> It's like about 15 years. When I look at your company and I see this even when you put up like like a 5-year chart, you know, I was looking at UC was trading below a dollar during uh you know, COVID 2023 fell for to 250 from six. In April, 6 months ago, we're looking at at at below $4. Now, you need an all-time high at 1350. After what, 20 years of finding this company, has the ups and downs, have you got used to the ups and downs yet? Cuz it's been a wild ride. It's so nice to see where it was compared to where you are right now. The ups and downs are definitely in the context of key events, right? So, Fukushima was a key event that obviously was a very difficult moment for the industry and who would have known back then how long that bare market was going to last. along the way obviously having things like COVID or even like this year like around liberation day sort of volatility and selloff there are these sort of non-nuclear uranium events but where where we are now just feels fundamentally so different Frank for the first time in 20 years that I've been doing this the US is actually a growth market for base load like that we actually have base load growth now and that's what nuclear has always been good at is providing base load But the reality is we didn't have base load growth for 20 plus years. What has fundamentally changed now is this has gone from not just being a story where it was only China and Russia and emerging economies that were building new nuclear reactors and wanting to expand nuclear capacity for energy production. But now we're actually seeing the US become in growth mode when it comes to nuclear. It's the most exciting thing I've ever seen because we're talking about possibility of of potentially large 10 large new reactors to be built or to be under construction by 2030. We have this whole new universe of small advanced micro reactors that are being developed by an array of companies and the presidential executive orders that are absolutely unprecedented in nature to quadruple nuclear power in the US. So yes, we've had ups and downs to your point over the last 15 plus years in the nuclear uranium world, but those ups and downs have been turbulence before hitting this inflection point. And this inflection point being we're now in a proper growth mode market for nuclear and particularly in the US. How important is it to really have the right administration in there? Because if you're looking, you mentioned where Trump signed executive order to quadruple US nuclear energy in terms of the US uranium refined conversion corporation fast-tracking permitting sweet water banning Russia urania imports. I mean, how much fun is this? Because, you know, someone that's come here for a long time. You didn't really have the right administration. Then you had Fukushima. A lot of countries were just, you know, worried about uranium and we hate uranium. And now it just the growth that you're seeing with this, how important is that to be in that right circle? because it seems like if you're in the right circle with Trump, especially what we're seeing even with Intel, especially what we're seeing with AI companies and you know, if you're in that circle, it seems like, you know, you're getting the business, but it seems the perfect scenario also on a political front. Talk about how important that is to you. For the 20 years I've been doing this and for my colleagues who've been doing this for 40 years or or longer, it would be normal that if you were in the uranium business or the mining business or the nuclear energy business, you would pray to have a Republican administration. Then the Democratic party didn't didn't even officially acknowledge or support nuclear energy. There has been a fundamental shift in that and that fundamental shift really started around four years ago which was the fact that nuclear truly became a bi bipartisan issue and as much as there's a lot to be said for President Trump's executive orders that are transformative in nature we actually have to truly acknowledge that today we have this incredible benefit and the fact that politically nuclear is accepted for different reasons by the left and the right. Truly bipartisan support. The Russian uranium ban that you touched on did pass Congress while President Biden was in office and it passed Congress with unanimous support. Not a single member voted against it. It's rare to find too many, you know, any topic in Washington these days where there's bipartisan support on. So I think that also really confirms that the growth and the thematic in front of us of growth for nuclear energy, it's not one that's limited through political cycles. It really transcends that and that again I think is what is necessary in an industry like this where life of a reactor Frank don't forget is measured in 50 to 100year cycles. I mean the usefulness life of these assets are tremendous way more than a gas fired power plant or an LNG terminal. That's the huge advantage of nuclear power and it's for that reason so critical to know that that bipartisan support is there. I want to talk about some of the stuff you did to position yourself in a market that was pretty shitty for a long time. All right. And sorry to put it that way, but it's a truth. And even if you look at the past 10 years or so, and I want everyone to take a look at this cuz I thought this is fascinating. This is just some of the things that you did during a period where yeah, I'm not going to say a lot of people sat on their hands, but look at these acquisitions that you made since 2016. And you could have just sat there and said, "Okay, you know, uranium prices are down." And you had the green line showing uranium prices here. Most of these deals are done below $40. I believe we're at over 80 right now. Just, you know, uranium one started the physical uranium program, but North Reno, Reno Creek, diease, you know, then you have to rough rise, sweet water. talk about this part of the strategy because where you were where you positioned your company just to acquire these companies during times when things are bad that's to me it shows true character of a leader how difficult was it and you feel like you're in good position where you might look to acquire more or is it like hey now we're producing you know not so much on the M&A side I guess if the right deal comes along it would be great where are you right now with your company because it seems like you position yourself perfectly after these acquisitions >> well looking back it was not difficult to have conviction in the thesis that it was the right time to be acquiring those assets and that the uranium prices when they were $20 a pound or even sub $20 per pound, it was actually easy to understand that that was not sustainable because we could see that mines were being shut down. Not just any mine, some of the best mines in the world were being shut down. You can see that supply side discipline was ultimately going to cause uranium prices to recover and that we lived in a world where year in and year out over 400 nuclear reactors operating around the world were consuming uranium and it was a depleting commodity. It was being consumed. Uranium isn't used as jewelry. There's no other demand for it other than just being used in a nuclear reactor to generate electricity. So I would say it was not difficult to understand that it was difficult to find ways to finance these acquisitions at the bottom of the cycle and compete for them and and to be able to complete them. That was difficult when we acquired Uranium 1 from the Russian government. And believe it or not, the Russian government owned some of the biggest best assets in the uranium industry in the United States. Let's not get into how they got their hands on that, but the reality is they owned them. And before their invasion of Ukraine with uranium around $25 per pound, it was a difficult task to come up with $110 million in cash, which is what we did. We go acquired those assets. And of course, you look at the value of those assets, which are now in production today in Wyoming with 80 plus dollar uranium with the ban on Russian uranium imports now in place and with everything else that I've touched on taking place. Now, now it makes a lot of sense. But in terms of you know back then what was difficult and what wasn't difficult. I think the thesis is always kind of the key thing execution yeah execution can be very difficult but look we did a billion dollars of acquisitions at near cycle lows even our acquisition of Sweetwater which was in a very competitive process. Sweetwater we were fortunate in acquiring before the hyperscalers came into nuclear energy. We announced that acquisition from Rioento a few days before Microsoft's announcement that they were going to invest in reopening three mile island unit one. And I don't think anything can be as important of a symbol of the rebirth of nuclear energy in the US as reopening 3M island unit one. When you think about the site of the only nuclear accident on US soil and one of the largest most forwardthinking companies on the planet like Microsoft believing so much on the importance of nuclear power that to make an investment to sign a premium price per power purchase agreement to get constellation to reopen that. We were fortunate enough that our acquisition of Riotinto from Sweetwater occurred before that because I think frank that Microsoft constellation deal from last September was definitely another inflection point. Since then we've seen numerous hyperscalers or or large tech companies announce deals with small modular reactor companies or with large reactor companies and finding a solution to powering data centers and nuclear energy. And now for the first time people talk about the fact that it's this reality that the end user the energy end user is now got the deepest pockets on the planet to be able to underwrite the future growth of nuclear energy. That this isn't about government subsidies or loans or anything. It's market forces and some of the biggest companies on the planet voting with their wallets that's really underpinning this growth and nuclear energy. So you go back to our acquisitions. Our acquisitions didn't just happen near cycle lows, but they fortunately because we didn't have a crystal ball that told us Microsoft and all these hyperscalers were coming in with AIdriven, you know, demand. But you got to get lucky as well. That's growth on top. We saw a great business case to buy these assets and do a billion dollars of acquisitions based on fundamentals that existed before data centers to power AI growth was even a thing. That for us is now the ideal scenario to be in that we see this whole other leg up in growth that wasn't previously there. And yet we're extremely well positioned. In fact, the way we're positioned is that we are now the largest company, the largest US uranium mining company by estimated resources, by the size of our licensed production capacity, we're that national champion. And that's what we've been building for for 20 years. That when people in this country, whether it's the government, utilities, investors, whoever it is, think about uranium, think about the nuclear fuel cycle, we want to be top of mind and we want to have the assets that puts us in being top of mind. And that's exactly after 20 years and all those acquisitions that you showed. That's the positioning that we have. And yeah, I think we've gotten a bit lucky because we couldn't have asked for a better market setup than the market setup that we have right now. Creative acquisitions over a billion dollars. I could say not lucky, right? The the whole market when it comes to to hyperscalers, it is unbelievable, right? We we're going to talk about that in a minute. But even, you know, we're talking about like over the past 10 years, you closed, I believe, street water in December 2024, you were able to buy 175 million pounds of historic resources for $175 million, right? I I mean with infrastructure already in place I'm like really you know from Rio and that's an amazing deal and you know it's not just the past 10 years of deals that I showed I put up on the screen it's that that's a recent deal right which is a creative so my question to you is and hopefully you can answer this if you can't I perfectly understand you have been walking into rooms and different conversation traveling around the world nuclear stuff like that what is that environment when you have a Microsoft and Amazon one of the hyperscalers talking to you now and you walking in that room. I mean, these are guys that are capable of probably writing a a check that's the size of your market cap and they won't even know they wrote it the second they walk out the door. I mean, here's a different mentality of you going into a meeting like that and meeting some of these people because I've been covering this trend easily for the past two years when it comes to energy. We do not have enough energy to power the AI energy needs. People do not realize that. I mean, they're focusing on on AI energy where, you know, I could put this chart up and I I'm sure you saw some of this at least when it comes to a Google search, right? It's 0.3 watt hours of electricity. A single chat GBD query is 25 times more power. I mean, all the analysts that I look at, whether it's Goldman, whether it's Morgan Stanley, all the people that cover this sector, they're basing their energy in the gigawatts that we're going to need over the next 3 to 5 years based on this. Agentic AI is using 79 times more power. This is reasoning. This is where they're going to operate autonomously. This isn't the first inning, right? This is a new power chips which I'm going to get a look at. I as you know, you you come with me to the consumer electronic show one year. You know, last year it was Nvidia at the keynote. They're probably going to do that again as well. AMD is going to be there. They're going to announce the next generation of chips that require more power, right? So, being positioned here when you're walking into the room with them, how is that landscape? I don't know if you could talk about it, but I'm sure there's a lot of those meetings going on where you're like you're just like, "Wo, this is a lot different from the traditional meetings I used to have." >> To achieve what we're talking about here in terms of the scaling needed in data centers to meet the energy needs. It's going to take a lot of uranium. It's going to take a lot of copper. It's going to take a lot of steel. It's going to take hard assets to realize this. And when you look at the capex commitment from the hyperscalers just in one year, like over the next 12 months, and we're talking in the hundreds of billions of dollars, that number, forget about UC's market cap, but that number of total capex commitment is greater than the market caps of all mining companies, including BHB. I mean that's the reality of the size and magnitude of what we're talking about and traditionally as you know very well the hyperscalers the Microsofts of the world were not capex spenders but for for the benefit of the audience when we talk about capex we're most of the time talking about hard assets commodities things that basically you can touch and feel and that's a reality that a Microsoft that was traditionally focused on writing code and then marketing software didn't have and it's it's a whole new paradigm shift for these companies And it's much larger than the magnitude of like I say the entire mining complex yet alone the uranium number one. Number two yes and and frank as as UC has achieved more and and really position itself to be the American national champion for uranium. We've also made sure to get a seat at the global table and and and make sure that we're making the US uranium case relevant again on a global basis. Recently, I've joined the board of the World Nuclear Association, and I can tell you being there this past September where we had our annual event, it was exciting to welcome Microsoft as the newest member of the World Nuclear Association. Think about that. This association just turned 50 years old. And for the first time in its history, a company like Microsoft has become a member of this organization. So yeah, the people sitting around that table are not just stateown companies of China, Russia, the Japanese, the Koreans, but now an American company like UC is at the table, but so is so are people like Microsoft. So the table, the number of seats at the table and the players sitting around the table pay attention to that. We pay attention to that and we look at sort of what the issues are and how we can position our company to not only grow but grow in providing the right solutions as a fuel supplier. And the big issue that we identified was the serious shortage of uranium refining and conversion. Uranium refining conversion sits in the middle of the fuel cycle between uranium mining or so mined uranium or yellow cake U308 and enrichment. And in order to be able to get the uranium to enrichment, you got to be able to convert it. It's this key middle step bottleneck. And there's only one facility in the US that does this and that facility is 70 years old and on its own it does not meet the US requirements for conversion and that's current requirements. yet alone if we were to quadruple this domestic capacity for generation and remember if we're going to quadruple nuclear generation then we need to quadruple the size of the fuel cycle that's mining conversion enrichment. So that's where we've also really positioned ourselves and announced recently as you touched on briefly there the intention plans and this initiative to build the newest and largest uranium refining and conversion facility in the US and it will be one of the largest in the western world. And so again, having the Microsofts around the table, being at that table, being at that table with size and scale as a result of the acquisitions we make at Cycle Lows. All of that combined is what makes the opportunities today so exciting because you can genuinely see that you're solving bottleneck problems. You're providing solutions to these issues in order to provide the ability for energy generation and energy production growth to be realized. Without conversion, without uranium, we can't just run nuclear reactors on air, right? Nuclear reactors without fuel are just buildings with expensive equipment inside. So fuel is really critical to this whole equation and we're solving for that in a big way. >> You were modest about it and you you just breezed over the World Nuclear Association one. I want to say congratulations that you you're in it April, right? I believe you you got elected to it to the board. That's like being in in the Hall of Fame of nuclear energy. And I'm not kidding here cuz I if you bring this up and again I I love your modesty here, but I mean if you look at at some of the names on here and the vice chairman you have the the Camo, you have Orano, two of the largest producers, you have GE here, you have all kinds of countries here, whether it's, you know, Korea. I mean this he is a CEO of Kamico, Constellation executive IP VP. I mean there there's a lot of heavy hitters on here, you know. Congratulations on that. How do those minis go? I mean, it's probably really, really exciting for everyone because you have the biggest spenders with the deepest pockets that are in dire need of energy and I feel like you guys just sitting there for in nuclear going, you know, hey, we're here. We've been here and now, you know, here's you the growth that's taking place in this industry is incredible. It's got to be fun being in that in that meeting and being in that room, isn't it? >> Well, I mean, first of all, I I wouldn't say it's a Hall of Fame because Hall of Fame is where you go to retire, I guess, right? And this is hardly that this is very accurate. >> Good point. >> On your >> but here's the interesting dynamic, Frank. Right. The dynamic is that the the US used to lead the world in uranium mining. Okay. Until from the 70s through the 80s, number one uranium producer globally. Then the cold war ends and as a way of accommodating Soviet Union post end of the Soviet Union era, US signs this highly enriched uranium treaty with them to dismantle Soviet era warheads and take uranium out of those basically you know bombs and blend it down and sell it into the US market. This basically displaced the domestic industry for uranium mining and this went on for 20 plus years. And then of course Fukushima happened which delayed the inevitable and the inevitable was that we had to rebuild the domestic industry. >> Well fast forward to today and when I joined the sport it was incredible to me that the US today despite the fact that we've gone through a period of no growth is US is the largest consumer of uranium and nuclear fuel on the planet. 96 units are operating. It's 20% of the electricity grid and it's a quarter of the world's nuclear fleet. And yet there wasn't a single person on that board of the WNA representing the domestic US uranium industry. And so we really felt that it was important as well to really get that right to really show the the global industry and that you know the from a global point of view that hey guys US industry is coming back. US uranium miners are coming back and we're coming back with the vengeance because our industry has basically been in a complete down and out mode due to other geopolitical dynamics and now we're reshoring now we're rebuilding the supply chains full supply chains to support the nuclear fleet in the US and more in terms of the growth that's coming. It's great to be at that table because you sit around the table and you touched on some of the individuals who are there who are all CEOs of major utility companies but half of them are stateowned and that's the big thing. We compete with stateowned companies of China, Russia, Korea, the Koreans are huge players in this but these are more or less government-owned companies. I mean even Chemico has its roots in having been a government-owned state you know a crown corporation in Canada. So that's why I keep emphasizing the fact that you know we need team America when it comes to the fuel cycle and that means uranium mining domestically conversion domestically enrichment domestically you know when people like department of interior Doug Bergam talk about mine baby mining you know it doesn't mean mining in Africa or Asia mind baby mine means rebuilding the mining industry in the US reshoring these capabilities domestically and we're at the forefront of that and we're telling that story on a global stage page when it comes to an association like WNA. >> We're talking about this administration. We just saw the Trump administration take use taxpayers money to take a stake in Lithium America's great for investors. MP materials, I mean Intel's different a little bit outside the industry, but MP materials rare earth minor. Do you see the possibility of Trump doing that with nuclear companies, uranium companies, with your company? And if they do that, I mean, how do you say no? I guess. But is it kind of like crossing this road where as an investor you're probably like hey you're in Trump's circle and now you have all the resources of all these countries and when he signs tariffs you're going to be in the room with everybody or is it kind of like all right we kind of like where it is right now at independence but I I'm just surprised that we've never really seen this before on on the US side where they're taking stakes in actual companies and they're doing it within your industry of where earth metals lithium will go to nuclear will it go to uranium I don't know is that that something that you think about at all or you just not really >> these are developments around us. Literally, we're seeing deals like this get announced on a weekly basis. Okay? And so, there's a paradigm shift here where clearly there's a recognition politically that supply chains matter and supply chains of critical minerals that have national security implications and energy security implications matter even more. We're not talking about toys or gum or soccer balls. We're talking about issues that go to the heart of national security. Uranium in particular is interesting because not only does it power data centers and power homes and is fundamentally an energy commodity, but uranium also powers the nuclear navy. The micro reactors that power aircraft carriers and submarines run on nuclear power require uranium. Department of Defense as and department of war as it's called now as it looks to power military bases using small modular reactors will require uranium and nuclear fuel and in particular the uranium and nuclear fuel requirements for the US government have to be by law what is called US origin unobligated uranium that means in in essence it has to be produced on US soil can't be Canadian can't be Australian sure as hell can't be Russian and Chinese. And so for sure when you think about what are those critical supply chains with national security implications, uranium is on the top of that list. Now there is no priority order in terms of which deals you going to see get done first, whether it's a rare earth deal or or a lithium deal. But I would argue the most important transaction or announcement that US government could have had on uranium, there are a couple of things that have already been announced. In fact, they were announced during the Biden administration. It was the standing up of the uranium strategic reserve where the department of energy is now buying uranium for the government account and we're a very proud supplier of uranium to that. And we have also we were the largest recipient of the award for that program. And the fact that the Russian uranium ban was passed which hardcodes an end December 2027 beyond which no more Russian material can be imported into the US and so it codifies the fact that we have to build the domestic capability. Currently there is a section 232 investigation as well on critical minerals including uranium that commerce is running Frank and recommendations from department of commerce are going to the president very soon. Commerce did this back by the way in the first Trump administration and their recommendations back then were that there is a national security problem on uranium that there's too much imports from Chinese and Russian sources and that there should be remedies like quotas or tariffs etc that the US implements. So stay tuned because there is in my opinion more news to come on matters related to nuclear fuel, uranium and the whole supply chain that supports the 96 reactors that are operating the needs of nuclear navy and the growth that's coming from small modular reactors and large reactors. Just two days ago, I don't want to date this interview, there was a massive $ 1.6 6 billion award that DOE gave to another company for enrichment capacity. As you work down the cycle, the fuel cycle, you're not going to award billions of dollars to enrichment and not be thinking about what feeds enrichment. And what feeds enrichment is conversion and what feeds conversion? It's uranium mining. Supply chains matter. And I think you got to keep your eye on that. >> That's a good point. And I want I want to stay on that topic because if you're looking you know if you look at the industry the largest traded publicly uranium companies and let's take out chemico which is like 50 billion but if you look at USC nextg centress energy fuels dennis and uranium royalty I get a combined market cap of around 25 billion it's funny it's a drop in a bucket to Amazon who's spending a h 100red billion alone on AI this year right just to put in perspective 25 billion mark cap with those companies and you're with UC also in your royalty but then when I pull this chart up and you'll see this is a company called Oaklo and Oaklo what we just mentioned which is the poor portable electricity. This is a company that has remember those companies 25 billion it's a $19 billion market cap and and no revenue. You look at Bloom Energy is another one. I mean you look at SMR is is another company. When you see the demand that these companies are getting with no revenue compared to all the assets that you own, does it ever make you think of of maybe somehow changing the business model where there's a reason why Tesla trades is is bigger than all the the car companies combined because it's not a car company, right? It's kind of like they're looking at the future. They're talking about Optimus, they're talking about robotics, they're talking about robo taxis, you know, solar energy powering a lot of this stuff. Have you ever looked at that and said, "Wow, how do we capture that premium these companies are getting where they don't even have revenue when you're looking at Oklahoma who's not going to generate revenue for another two, three years?" I haven't seen if they have proven technology yet, right? I mean, they say they do, but it's not scalable yet. They're not generating revenue to 20 billion. They're going to have to generate over 100 billion in revenue to support that just a five times sales. Do you look at it that way or just say, "Hey, you know what? Is like you said just before I answer this question, look, it's all going to be coming from mining and we're in the right position." But do you think about that at all? >> We think about it a lot and I think we're doing things about it. So first of all, we're the first uranium mining company anywhere in the world who in in the last few months has announced major initiatives to go beyond mining uranium and go downstream and to announce our initiative on refining and conversion which we've been working on for over two years. But these things take time to develop. And if you're going to be a serious player, you have to put in the time to do the ground work, to do the tech, to do the engineering to be able to make those announcements. So UC today is already highly differentiated, not just as the largest US uranium company, but as the largest US uranium company and the only American company that's now covering end-to-end capabilities from uranium mining to planned initiatives around refining and conversion of uranium. That's one of a kind in the US and arguably the only company in the world that's doing that right now in terms of going vertically integrated into the two key segments of the fuel cycle to support growing enrichment. Second, we recognize and actually see tremendous upside in the development of what's going on with SMRs. Now, SMRs for us, regardless of where they're valued in the market today, represent a source of a future source of demand for uranium and conversion and nuclear fuel. So, we want to see as many of these units come online and and and we want to be supportive of that, especially in the US where the SMR companies are leading the charge. So to that end, you've seen that we've signed a supply agreement with Bill Gates's Terra Power who's in Wyoming and we're in Wyoming and we're looking to supply their uranium needs and we made that deal with them over a year ago and recently as you may have seen Nvidia even made an investment into Terara Power. These are the players that we are supportive of in terms of trying to support their plans and initiatives and these are some of the best players you could be involved with. We also have a supply agreement with Peter Teal's Radiance. That's another SMR company. These are private ones. I mean, you touched on Oaklo. That's a publicly listed one. But there are many, many of these SMR companies out there who are looking to stand up the generating capacity on a small to mediumsiz basis. And again, none of that potential future demand for fuel is reflected in the market today. And that's where I get excited, Frank, is that we have a market today for uranium where we're in a supply deficit. You know, the world is only producing enough uranium to meet 75% of current demand. >> So 25% of current demand is uncovered. That's the production gap. That's massive. And that does not include SMRs coming online, new large reactors being built, life of reactors being extended. That's a really key message here. >> Yeah. And I love that you this is in your presentation and stuff, you know, just you're showing, you know, the massive imbalance has always been there even before the huge demand from hyperscalers. And I guess I I'll ask you this, you know, it's great cuz you also have some other partnerships that I that I could talk to talk about as well because you're not just partnering, you're partnering with like the biggest companies in the world like just seems like you're positioned where you have, you know, part of show with Kamo, Arano, Ronaldo is Ariva, right? One of the largest Iranian producers as well. But my next question to you is how do you position yourself? Because now you have a lot of money in the bank over 300 million if you include in your investments and also I think it's 300,000 of uranium on the balance sheet. Going into production mode right now your stocks ramping higher near an all-time high at 13. I'm going to show you a chart of that in a minute which investors are loving it because you know we've covered this such a long time. I'm still getting emails of me people saying thank you so much for introducing me and I own UAC forever. you know, it's the kind of investors you really want, right, that to go on that journey with you, you know, just buying in certain times, but buy and hold long term. And then you have Goldman Sachs, right? You have some of the largest investment bankers covering you now. Is the next step focusing on the production? Is it, you know, what is that next step? Well, you talk a little about SMR. You're investing in some of these companies, which is great. I guess where do you see it going in the next year to three years? And I'm saying a year. I know you doing this for over 20 years, but we're talking about $500 billion dollars in investments in AI just in the month of September alone, right? When it comes to to just so many deals with with Nvidia, with Core Weeave, with Microsoft and and Nebulus, and just going into, you know, OpenAI deals and stuff like that, what's the next step for you guys to position yourself right in the next years? Hey, we're ramping up production right now. You got uranium prices going to $80 now, go ramping higher, you know, and you are a very lowcost producer, one of the lowest in the industry. I think it's at $36. You can correct me if I'm wrong on that. But what is that next step? Is it like, hey, we're going full-blown in on production investing. I mean, what is the plan? Because it's exciting and and I think there's so many avenues right now open to you. If we zoom out, right, and just context, right, in the 20 years that UC has been formed and has been active and has been growing, we've had cumulative 17 bad years and cumulative three good years in terms of market conditions. Okay, that's context. And for most of our 20-y year life, we were either focused on making acquisitions to grow our platform or just just fighting for survival. I mean I mean like just to be blunt I mean this was not an easy industry to be in. What makes me excited more than anything when I wake up in the morning is that I know we have some of the most talented people in this company when it comes to understanding the business of exploring for uranium mining uranium developing uranium constructing uranium. We're and and it's just so rewarding for me to see that this incredible team, this incredible team of talented individuals that we have don't have to come to work and think about survival. They're coming to work and now we're thinking about growth, right? You you look at the most recent announcements that we've had building new mine units in Wyoming, commissioning and building and bringing online a new mine in South Texas, our broker project. We're in construction mode. We're in development mode. We're growing the team. We're hiring. This is the first time in 20 years that we have a window that is opening where you can have sustained growth. We we we have had really two false starts here in these 20 years, right? We had the the the Fukushima sort of issue that just completely disrupted the growth and there was no sustained growth. There was nothing but sustained downturn and you know also 2008 the financial crisis that interrupted a mini bull market that was developing for uranium. So we have for the first time a window an environment where you can see this is where you can have sustained growth. This is where you can bring out the best of what your team and the talent that we've assembled. We talk about the assets we've assembled. You won't you have to appreciate the team that we've assembled the personnel that we have with very scarce skill set because uranium mining as an industry has been dormant for these 20 years. It's tough to find the people that actually understand the business and the operational side of what we're talking about. And UC has that in space. And so when you think about sort of the steps ahead, context is important. And part of that context is to understand the uranium price. We're at $80 a pound. That's nothing to write home about. Conversion enrichment prices are at all-time highs. Everything on this planet right now is priced at all-time highs. From the stock market to the price of commodities, from gold and silver, uranium is at 50% of its all-time highs. Uranium has no business sitting at $80 a pound. Uranium should be at $150 a pound, its previous all-time highs and arguably higher than that. That's when it starts to get interesting. And I'm not just saying this because I'm biased towards the higher uranium price. I'm telling you that because I see at $80 uranium, the large companies are not commissioning new mines. So what that tells you is that this is not incentive level pricing. This is not the the clearing price at which we're going to see new mind development. And new mine development is going to be spurred by higher prices. And higher prices are previous highs. And just like again we've seen previous highs in conversion and enrichment and in just about everything. We're going to see that in uranium as well. And uranium has been lagging due to again policy paralysis, the issues around tariffs, the issues around the Russian ban. utility has really forced utilities into sitting on the sideline trying to make sense of all of this. >> Yeah. >> So context is important and in that sense when you kind of look at UC Frank you've got a couple of things about UC that you know I'm proud of and that we've positioned this company for having size and scale but we have a company that's debtfree and that's really key. The balance sheet of this company couldn't be stronger. No debt ample liquidity with what you just touched on over $300 million of cash in inventory. We actually have 1.4 million pounds of inventory in our account and another 300,000 that we're purchasing in December at $37 a pound. These are parts of contracts that we signed when uranium prices were low and we just wanted to create a physical stream that we can buy in the future at low prices. All these things that we planned for years and years in advance anticipating this turn, right? And so you have a company that's unlevered, no debt, unhedged. Tomorrow the US government comes and says we need uranium. We need US origin uranium. Guess what? All of our production is available and we can sell it. We haven't gone and pre-sold our our uranium production which is what hedging is to not be available when the right strategic opportunities come at the right point in the market. So this company also as you touched on it has a really deep deep bench of assets. We talk about Wyoming in Texas, but in Arizona, in Canada and Atabaska Basin, joint ventures with Kamakuro and Orano, a million acres of land, >> three countries outside of the US. >> We're in three countries. We're in Paraguay. I mean, there's a deep bench of assets that frankly we don't even spend time talking about other than what's immediately in front of us, which is what we're producing from in Wyoming and what we're going to be building in South Texas. But behind that you've got a very significant pipeline of per projects permitted assets the Sweetwater plant that we acquired from Riotinto. I can go on and on that is not even enough time to cover it in and in the time that we have together but again context is important. These are early innings in an industry that was down and out for most of the last 20 years. Yeah, it's incredible. And you've been talking a lot about, you know, your team and everybody coming together. It's because I got a good leader, man. Seriously, I followed you for a long time. I see you at booths when uranium is not good and you're always hanging out there talking to people and you don't see a lot of CEOs doing that. And you know who else is really really happy right now, I can tell you is your shareholders. I mean, this is a really great chart just to see the success of what you built, right, and going here, which is awesome. And also, I want to add you haven't sold I don't think you sold a share, right, since you've owned this company, right? >> No. When you do, dinner's on you, bud. I'm just letting you know. Dinner's definitely on you. So, listen, I know that you're traveling. I know you go crazy. I wish we could talk a little bit more. And I just want to say I really appreciate you coming on. We have a lot of investors here. You know how long I've been in business. Well, for a long time, covering you a long time. A lot of people own your stock and they follow you. They're really happy and they love when I interview you. So, I I really appreciate that you taking the time to come to the podcast and give us a scoop, give us the update cuz I know how busy it is for you and enjoy your success. You deserve it. You worked your ass off. I saw personally and it's really good to see and I know the shareholders are happy too man. So I appreciate you coming on. >> Thank you Frank. I appreciate it and those photos that you shared at the beginning that's real and it's real in that you recognized the potential that UC and then the sector offered really early on. You were a contrarian when you recognized it. You put boots on the ground and came and visited what we were doing when I invited you to come out and I appreciate that. And so I'm sorry that it took so long for things to recover for this industry, but we hung in there and we kept the company in a in a good position and and makes me extremely happy that we're able to generate the returns that we are for our shareholders. And I'm grateful to you for having seen that potential so early on ahead of anyone else and came and spent time and now and and you got the photos to share as well with the yellow cake which is super cool. You know, I'll obviously open invitation to you because Texas, which is where you visited last, we have a whole new brand new mine coming online, our Burke Hollow project, and that's going to start operating in December. We'd love to have you attend when we do our ribbon cutting there. And hopefully we'll we'll have people that we'll invite, you know, from the government side, from the industry side, from, you know, our shareholders. It's an exciting moment because this is the newest uranium mine to come online in America. And it's one of the newest uranium mines to come online anywhere in the world. And we want to show that this can happen in the US. That the industry here and companies like UC are not just talk but actually capable of standing up brand new minds to answer the call of the president to rebuild the nuclear industrial base to support the quadrupling of nuclear power and we're going to lead the way in doing that. So thank you and I hope to see you in South Texas soon. >> Yeah, I'm definitely in for that invite. That's awesome. And hopefully you join me at Consumer Electronic Show. But even before that, which you did, we we did once before in January soon electronic show. It is exclusive here. You're going to be doing you agreed to do a live virtual Zoom for first ever Kuria One conference on November 10th. I know that you squeeze it in because you're going to be overseas. I think it's at a Goldman Sachs conference and we set we put it sometimes a time slot together where you know we're going to make it happen. So you know I really appreciate it. I think everyone's going to love it. We're going to do live Zoom for my cursy one conference and I can't wait to interview you again and get updates for you then. So I really appreciate everything here. So, >> I look forward to that, too. >> All right, man. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. And yeah, great job and really appreciate all your success, man. Awesome.
The Answer To AI Energy Crisis is Nuclear
Summary
Transcript
You know, I mean, I've been looking back to see how long we've known each other. You know how long that's been? Have you any idea? >> Well, it sounds like you've thought about it. So, what's the answer? >> It's like about 15 years. When I look at your company and I see this even when you put up like like a 5-year chart, you know, I was looking at UC was trading below a dollar during uh you know, COVID 2023 fell for to 250 from six. In April, 6 months ago, we're looking at at at below $4. Now, you need an all-time high at 1350. After what, 20 years of finding this company, has the ups and downs, have you got used to the ups and downs yet? Cuz it's been a wild ride. It's so nice to see where it was compared to where you are right now. The ups and downs are definitely in the context of key events, right? So, Fukushima was a key event that obviously was a very difficult moment for the industry and who would have known back then how long that bare market was going to last. along the way obviously having things like COVID or even like this year like around liberation day sort of volatility and selloff there are these sort of non-nuclear uranium events but where where we are now just feels fundamentally so different Frank for the first time in 20 years that I've been doing this the US is actually a growth market for base load like that we actually have base load growth now and that's what nuclear has always been good at is providing base load But the reality is we didn't have base load growth for 20 plus years. What has fundamentally changed now is this has gone from not just being a story where it was only China and Russia and emerging economies that were building new nuclear reactors and wanting to expand nuclear capacity for energy production. But now we're actually seeing the US become in growth mode when it comes to nuclear. It's the most exciting thing I've ever seen because we're talking about possibility of of potentially large 10 large new reactors to be built or to be under construction by 2030. We have this whole new universe of small advanced micro reactors that are being developed by an array of companies and the presidential executive orders that are absolutely unprecedented in nature to quadruple nuclear power in the US. So yes, we've had ups and downs to your point over the last 15 plus years in the nuclear uranium world, but those ups and downs have been turbulence before hitting this inflection point. And this inflection point being we're now in a proper growth mode market for nuclear and particularly in the US. How important is it to really have the right administration in there? Because if you're looking, you mentioned where Trump signed executive order to quadruple US nuclear energy in terms of the US uranium refined conversion corporation fast-tracking permitting sweet water banning Russia urania imports. I mean, how much fun is this? Because, you know, someone that's come here for a long time. You didn't really have the right administration. Then you had Fukushima. A lot of countries were just, you know, worried about uranium and we hate uranium. And now it just the growth that you're seeing with this, how important is that to be in that right circle? because it seems like if you're in the right circle with Trump, especially what we're seeing even with Intel, especially what we're seeing with AI companies and you know, if you're in that circle, it seems like, you know, you're getting the business, but it seems the perfect scenario also on a political front. Talk about how important that is to you. For the 20 years I've been doing this and for my colleagues who've been doing this for 40 years or or longer, it would be normal that if you were in the uranium business or the mining business or the nuclear energy business, you would pray to have a Republican administration. Then the Democratic party didn't didn't even officially acknowledge or support nuclear energy. There has been a fundamental shift in that and that fundamental shift really started around four years ago which was the fact that nuclear truly became a bi bipartisan issue and as much as there's a lot to be said for President Trump's executive orders that are transformative in nature we actually have to truly acknowledge that today we have this incredible benefit and the fact that politically nuclear is accepted for different reasons by the left and the right. Truly bipartisan support. The Russian uranium ban that you touched on did pass Congress while President Biden was in office and it passed Congress with unanimous support. Not a single member voted against it. It's rare to find too many, you know, any topic in Washington these days where there's bipartisan support on. So I think that also really confirms that the growth and the thematic in front of us of growth for nuclear energy, it's not one that's limited through political cycles. It really transcends that and that again I think is what is necessary in an industry like this where life of a reactor Frank don't forget is measured in 50 to 100year cycles. I mean the usefulness life of these assets are tremendous way more than a gas fired power plant or an LNG terminal. That's the huge advantage of nuclear power and it's for that reason so critical to know that that bipartisan support is there. I want to talk about some of the stuff you did to position yourself in a market that was pretty shitty for a long time. All right. And sorry to put it that way, but it's a truth. And even if you look at the past 10 years or so, and I want everyone to take a look at this cuz I thought this is fascinating. This is just some of the things that you did during a period where yeah, I'm not going to say a lot of people sat on their hands, but look at these acquisitions that you made since 2016. And you could have just sat there and said, "Okay, you know, uranium prices are down." And you had the green line showing uranium prices here. Most of these deals are done below $40. I believe we're at over 80 right now. Just, you know, uranium one started the physical uranium program, but North Reno, Reno Creek, diease, you know, then you have to rough rise, sweet water. talk about this part of the strategy because where you were where you positioned your company just to acquire these companies during times when things are bad that's to me it shows true character of a leader how difficult was it and you feel like you're in good position where you might look to acquire more or is it like hey now we're producing you know not so much on the M&A side I guess if the right deal comes along it would be great where are you right now with your company because it seems like you position yourself perfectly after these acquisitions >> well looking back it was not difficult to have conviction in the thesis that it was the right time to be acquiring those assets and that the uranium prices when they were $20 a pound or even sub $20 per pound, it was actually easy to understand that that was not sustainable because we could see that mines were being shut down. Not just any mine, some of the best mines in the world were being shut down. You can see that supply side discipline was ultimately going to cause uranium prices to recover and that we lived in a world where year in and year out over 400 nuclear reactors operating around the world were consuming uranium and it was a depleting commodity. It was being consumed. Uranium isn't used as jewelry. There's no other demand for it other than just being used in a nuclear reactor to generate electricity. So I would say it was not difficult to understand that it was difficult to find ways to finance these acquisitions at the bottom of the cycle and compete for them and and to be able to complete them. That was difficult when we acquired Uranium 1 from the Russian government. And believe it or not, the Russian government owned some of the biggest best assets in the uranium industry in the United States. Let's not get into how they got their hands on that, but the reality is they owned them. And before their invasion of Ukraine with uranium around $25 per pound, it was a difficult task to come up with $110 million in cash, which is what we did. We go acquired those assets. And of course, you look at the value of those assets, which are now in production today in Wyoming with 80 plus dollar uranium with the ban on Russian uranium imports now in place and with everything else that I've touched on taking place. Now, now it makes a lot of sense. But in terms of you know back then what was difficult and what wasn't difficult. I think the thesis is always kind of the key thing execution yeah execution can be very difficult but look we did a billion dollars of acquisitions at near cycle lows even our acquisition of Sweetwater which was in a very competitive process. Sweetwater we were fortunate in acquiring before the hyperscalers came into nuclear energy. We announced that acquisition from Rioento a few days before Microsoft's announcement that they were going to invest in reopening three mile island unit one. And I don't think anything can be as important of a symbol of the rebirth of nuclear energy in the US as reopening 3M island unit one. When you think about the site of the only nuclear accident on US soil and one of the largest most forwardthinking companies on the planet like Microsoft believing so much on the importance of nuclear power that to make an investment to sign a premium price per power purchase agreement to get constellation to reopen that. We were fortunate enough that our acquisition of Riotinto from Sweetwater occurred before that because I think frank that Microsoft constellation deal from last September was definitely another inflection point. Since then we've seen numerous hyperscalers or or large tech companies announce deals with small modular reactor companies or with large reactor companies and finding a solution to powering data centers and nuclear energy. And now for the first time people talk about the fact that it's this reality that the end user the energy end user is now got the deepest pockets on the planet to be able to underwrite the future growth of nuclear energy. That this isn't about government subsidies or loans or anything. It's market forces and some of the biggest companies on the planet voting with their wallets that's really underpinning this growth and nuclear energy. So you go back to our acquisitions. Our acquisitions didn't just happen near cycle lows, but they fortunately because we didn't have a crystal ball that told us Microsoft and all these hyperscalers were coming in with AIdriven, you know, demand. But you got to get lucky as well. That's growth on top. We saw a great business case to buy these assets and do a billion dollars of acquisitions based on fundamentals that existed before data centers to power AI growth was even a thing. That for us is now the ideal scenario to be in that we see this whole other leg up in growth that wasn't previously there. And yet we're extremely well positioned. In fact, the way we're positioned is that we are now the largest company, the largest US uranium mining company by estimated resources, by the size of our licensed production capacity, we're that national champion. And that's what we've been building for for 20 years. That when people in this country, whether it's the government, utilities, investors, whoever it is, think about uranium, think about the nuclear fuel cycle, we want to be top of mind and we want to have the assets that puts us in being top of mind. And that's exactly after 20 years and all those acquisitions that you showed. That's the positioning that we have. And yeah, I think we've gotten a bit lucky because we couldn't have asked for a better market setup than the market setup that we have right now. Creative acquisitions over a billion dollars. I could say not lucky, right? The the whole market when it comes to to hyperscalers, it is unbelievable, right? We we're going to talk about that in a minute. But even, you know, we're talking about like over the past 10 years, you closed, I believe, street water in December 2024, you were able to buy 175 million pounds of historic resources for $175 million, right? I I mean with infrastructure already in place I'm like really you know from Rio and that's an amazing deal and you know it's not just the past 10 years of deals that I showed I put up on the screen it's that that's a recent deal right which is a creative so my question to you is and hopefully you can answer this if you can't I perfectly understand you have been walking into rooms and different conversation traveling around the world nuclear stuff like that what is that environment when you have a Microsoft and Amazon one of the hyperscalers talking to you now and you walking in that room. I mean, these are guys that are capable of probably writing a a check that's the size of your market cap and they won't even know they wrote it the second they walk out the door. I mean, here's a different mentality of you going into a meeting like that and meeting some of these people because I've been covering this trend easily for the past two years when it comes to energy. We do not have enough energy to power the AI energy needs. People do not realize that. I mean, they're focusing on on AI energy where, you know, I could put this chart up and I I'm sure you saw some of this at least when it comes to a Google search, right? It's 0.3 watt hours of electricity. A single chat GBD query is 25 times more power. I mean, all the analysts that I look at, whether it's Goldman, whether it's Morgan Stanley, all the people that cover this sector, they're basing their energy in the gigawatts that we're going to need over the next 3 to 5 years based on this. Agentic AI is using 79 times more power. This is reasoning. This is where they're going to operate autonomously. This isn't the first inning, right? This is a new power chips which I'm going to get a look at. I as you know, you you come with me to the consumer electronic show one year. You know, last year it was Nvidia at the keynote. They're probably going to do that again as well. AMD is going to be there. They're going to announce the next generation of chips that require more power, right? So, being positioned here when you're walking into the room with them, how is that landscape? I don't know if you could talk about it, but I'm sure there's a lot of those meetings going on where you're like you're just like, "Wo, this is a lot different from the traditional meetings I used to have." >> To achieve what we're talking about here in terms of the scaling needed in data centers to meet the energy needs. It's going to take a lot of uranium. It's going to take a lot of copper. It's going to take a lot of steel. It's going to take hard assets to realize this. And when you look at the capex commitment from the hyperscalers just in one year, like over the next 12 months, and we're talking in the hundreds of billions of dollars, that number, forget about UC's market cap, but that number of total capex commitment is greater than the market caps of all mining companies, including BHB. I mean that's the reality of the size and magnitude of what we're talking about and traditionally as you know very well the hyperscalers the Microsofts of the world were not capex spenders but for for the benefit of the audience when we talk about capex we're most of the time talking about hard assets commodities things that basically you can touch and feel and that's a reality that a Microsoft that was traditionally focused on writing code and then marketing software didn't have and it's it's a whole new paradigm shift for these companies And it's much larger than the magnitude of like I say the entire mining complex yet alone the uranium number one. Number two yes and and frank as as UC has achieved more and and really position itself to be the American national champion for uranium. We've also made sure to get a seat at the global table and and and make sure that we're making the US uranium case relevant again on a global basis. Recently, I've joined the board of the World Nuclear Association, and I can tell you being there this past September where we had our annual event, it was exciting to welcome Microsoft as the newest member of the World Nuclear Association. Think about that. This association just turned 50 years old. And for the first time in its history, a company like Microsoft has become a member of this organization. So yeah, the people sitting around that table are not just stateown companies of China, Russia, the Japanese, the Koreans, but now an American company like UC is at the table, but so is so are people like Microsoft. So the table, the number of seats at the table and the players sitting around the table pay attention to that. We pay attention to that and we look at sort of what the issues are and how we can position our company to not only grow but grow in providing the right solutions as a fuel supplier. And the big issue that we identified was the serious shortage of uranium refining and conversion. Uranium refining conversion sits in the middle of the fuel cycle between uranium mining or so mined uranium or yellow cake U308 and enrichment. And in order to be able to get the uranium to enrichment, you got to be able to convert it. It's this key middle step bottleneck. And there's only one facility in the US that does this and that facility is 70 years old and on its own it does not meet the US requirements for conversion and that's current requirements. yet alone if we were to quadruple this domestic capacity for generation and remember if we're going to quadruple nuclear generation then we need to quadruple the size of the fuel cycle that's mining conversion enrichment. So that's where we've also really positioned ourselves and announced recently as you touched on briefly there the intention plans and this initiative to build the newest and largest uranium refining and conversion facility in the US and it will be one of the largest in the western world. And so again, having the Microsofts around the table, being at that table, being at that table with size and scale as a result of the acquisitions we make at Cycle Lows. All of that combined is what makes the opportunities today so exciting because you can genuinely see that you're solving bottleneck problems. You're providing solutions to these issues in order to provide the ability for energy generation and energy production growth to be realized. Without conversion, without uranium, we can't just run nuclear reactors on air, right? Nuclear reactors without fuel are just buildings with expensive equipment inside. So fuel is really critical to this whole equation and we're solving for that in a big way. >> You were modest about it and you you just breezed over the World Nuclear Association one. I want to say congratulations that you you're in it April, right? I believe you you got elected to it to the board. That's like being in in the Hall of Fame of nuclear energy. And I'm not kidding here cuz I if you bring this up and again I I love your modesty here, but I mean if you look at at some of the names on here and the vice chairman you have the the Camo, you have Orano, two of the largest producers, you have GE here, you have all kinds of countries here, whether it's, you know, Korea. I mean this he is a CEO of Kamico, Constellation executive IP VP. I mean there there's a lot of heavy hitters on here, you know. Congratulations on that. How do those minis go? I mean, it's probably really, really exciting for everyone because you have the biggest spenders with the deepest pockets that are in dire need of energy and I feel like you guys just sitting there for in nuclear going, you know, hey, we're here. We've been here and now, you know, here's you the growth that's taking place in this industry is incredible. It's got to be fun being in that in that meeting and being in that room, isn't it? >> Well, I mean, first of all, I I wouldn't say it's a Hall of Fame because Hall of Fame is where you go to retire, I guess, right? And this is hardly that this is very accurate. >> Good point. >> On your >> but here's the interesting dynamic, Frank. Right. The dynamic is that the the US used to lead the world in uranium mining. Okay. Until from the 70s through the 80s, number one uranium producer globally. Then the cold war ends and as a way of accommodating Soviet Union post end of the Soviet Union era, US signs this highly enriched uranium treaty with them to dismantle Soviet era warheads and take uranium out of those basically you know bombs and blend it down and sell it into the US market. This basically displaced the domestic industry for uranium mining and this went on for 20 plus years. And then of course Fukushima happened which delayed the inevitable and the inevitable was that we had to rebuild the domestic industry. >> Well fast forward to today and when I joined the sport it was incredible to me that the US today despite the fact that we've gone through a period of no growth is US is the largest consumer of uranium and nuclear fuel on the planet. 96 units are operating. It's 20% of the electricity grid and it's a quarter of the world's nuclear fleet. And yet there wasn't a single person on that board of the WNA representing the domestic US uranium industry. And so we really felt that it was important as well to really get that right to really show the the global industry and that you know the from a global point of view that hey guys US industry is coming back. US uranium miners are coming back and we're coming back with the vengeance because our industry has basically been in a complete down and out mode due to other geopolitical dynamics and now we're reshoring now we're rebuilding the supply chains full supply chains to support the nuclear fleet in the US and more in terms of the growth that's coming. It's great to be at that table because you sit around the table and you touched on some of the individuals who are there who are all CEOs of major utility companies but half of them are stateowned and that's the big thing. We compete with stateowned companies of China, Russia, Korea, the Koreans are huge players in this but these are more or less government-owned companies. I mean even Chemico has its roots in having been a government-owned state you know a crown corporation in Canada. So that's why I keep emphasizing the fact that you know we need team America when it comes to the fuel cycle and that means uranium mining domestically conversion domestically enrichment domestically you know when people like department of interior Doug Bergam talk about mine baby mining you know it doesn't mean mining in Africa or Asia mind baby mine means rebuilding the mining industry in the US reshoring these capabilities domestically and we're at the forefront of that and we're telling that story on a global stage page when it comes to an association like WNA. >> We're talking about this administration. We just saw the Trump administration take use taxpayers money to take a stake in Lithium America's great for investors. MP materials, I mean Intel's different a little bit outside the industry, but MP materials rare earth minor. Do you see the possibility of Trump doing that with nuclear companies, uranium companies, with your company? And if they do that, I mean, how do you say no? I guess. But is it kind of like crossing this road where as an investor you're probably like hey you're in Trump's circle and now you have all the resources of all these countries and when he signs tariffs you're going to be in the room with everybody or is it kind of like all right we kind of like where it is right now at independence but I I'm just surprised that we've never really seen this before on on the US side where they're taking stakes in actual companies and they're doing it within your industry of where earth metals lithium will go to nuclear will it go to uranium I don't know is that that something that you think about at all or you just not really >> these are developments around us. Literally, we're seeing deals like this get announced on a weekly basis. Okay? And so, there's a paradigm shift here where clearly there's a recognition politically that supply chains matter and supply chains of critical minerals that have national security implications and energy security implications matter even more. We're not talking about toys or gum or soccer balls. We're talking about issues that go to the heart of national security. Uranium in particular is interesting because not only does it power data centers and power homes and is fundamentally an energy commodity, but uranium also powers the nuclear navy. The micro reactors that power aircraft carriers and submarines run on nuclear power require uranium. Department of Defense as and department of war as it's called now as it looks to power military bases using small modular reactors will require uranium and nuclear fuel and in particular the uranium and nuclear fuel requirements for the US government have to be by law what is called US origin unobligated uranium that means in in essence it has to be produced on US soil can't be Canadian can't be Australian sure as hell can't be Russian and Chinese. And so for sure when you think about what are those critical supply chains with national security implications, uranium is on the top of that list. Now there is no priority order in terms of which deals you going to see get done first, whether it's a rare earth deal or or a lithium deal. But I would argue the most important transaction or announcement that US government could have had on uranium, there are a couple of things that have already been announced. In fact, they were announced during the Biden administration. It was the standing up of the uranium strategic reserve where the department of energy is now buying uranium for the government account and we're a very proud supplier of uranium to that. And we have also we were the largest recipient of the award for that program. And the fact that the Russian uranium ban was passed which hardcodes an end December 2027 beyond which no more Russian material can be imported into the US and so it codifies the fact that we have to build the domestic capability. Currently there is a section 232 investigation as well on critical minerals including uranium that commerce is running Frank and recommendations from department of commerce are going to the president very soon. Commerce did this back by the way in the first Trump administration and their recommendations back then were that there is a national security problem on uranium that there's too much imports from Chinese and Russian sources and that there should be remedies like quotas or tariffs etc that the US implements. So stay tuned because there is in my opinion more news to come on matters related to nuclear fuel, uranium and the whole supply chain that supports the 96 reactors that are operating the needs of nuclear navy and the growth that's coming from small modular reactors and large reactors. Just two days ago, I don't want to date this interview, there was a massive $ 1.6 6 billion award that DOE gave to another company for enrichment capacity. As you work down the cycle, the fuel cycle, you're not going to award billions of dollars to enrichment and not be thinking about what feeds enrichment. And what feeds enrichment is conversion and what feeds conversion? It's uranium mining. Supply chains matter. And I think you got to keep your eye on that. >> That's a good point. And I want I want to stay on that topic because if you're looking you know if you look at the industry the largest traded publicly uranium companies and let's take out chemico which is like 50 billion but if you look at USC nextg centress energy fuels dennis and uranium royalty I get a combined market cap of around 25 billion it's funny it's a drop in a bucket to Amazon who's spending a h 100red billion alone on AI this year right just to put in perspective 25 billion mark cap with those companies and you're with UC also in your royalty but then when I pull this chart up and you'll see this is a company called Oaklo and Oaklo what we just mentioned which is the poor portable electricity. This is a company that has remember those companies 25 billion it's a $19 billion market cap and and no revenue. You look at Bloom Energy is another one. I mean you look at SMR is is another company. When you see the demand that these companies are getting with no revenue compared to all the assets that you own, does it ever make you think of of maybe somehow changing the business model where there's a reason why Tesla trades is is bigger than all the the car companies combined because it's not a car company, right? It's kind of like they're looking at the future. They're talking about Optimus, they're talking about robotics, they're talking about robo taxis, you know, solar energy powering a lot of this stuff. Have you ever looked at that and said, "Wow, how do we capture that premium these companies are getting where they don't even have revenue when you're looking at Oklahoma who's not going to generate revenue for another two, three years?" I haven't seen if they have proven technology yet, right? I mean, they say they do, but it's not scalable yet. They're not generating revenue to 20 billion. They're going to have to generate over 100 billion in revenue to support that just a five times sales. Do you look at it that way or just say, "Hey, you know what? Is like you said just before I answer this question, look, it's all going to be coming from mining and we're in the right position." But do you think about that at all? >> We think about it a lot and I think we're doing things about it. So first of all, we're the first uranium mining company anywhere in the world who in in the last few months has announced major initiatives to go beyond mining uranium and go downstream and to announce our initiative on refining and conversion which we've been working on for over two years. But these things take time to develop. And if you're going to be a serious player, you have to put in the time to do the ground work, to do the tech, to do the engineering to be able to make those announcements. So UC today is already highly differentiated, not just as the largest US uranium company, but as the largest US uranium company and the only American company that's now covering end-to-end capabilities from uranium mining to planned initiatives around refining and conversion of uranium. That's one of a kind in the US and arguably the only company in the world that's doing that right now in terms of going vertically integrated into the two key segments of the fuel cycle to support growing enrichment. Second, we recognize and actually see tremendous upside in the development of what's going on with SMRs. Now, SMRs for us, regardless of where they're valued in the market today, represent a source of a future source of demand for uranium and conversion and nuclear fuel. So, we want to see as many of these units come online and and and we want to be supportive of that, especially in the US where the SMR companies are leading the charge. So to that end, you've seen that we've signed a supply agreement with Bill Gates's Terra Power who's in Wyoming and we're in Wyoming and we're looking to supply their uranium needs and we made that deal with them over a year ago and recently as you may have seen Nvidia even made an investment into Terara Power. These are the players that we are supportive of in terms of trying to support their plans and initiatives and these are some of the best players you could be involved with. We also have a supply agreement with Peter Teal's Radiance. That's another SMR company. These are private ones. I mean, you touched on Oaklo. That's a publicly listed one. But there are many, many of these SMR companies out there who are looking to stand up the generating capacity on a small to mediumsiz basis. And again, none of that potential future demand for fuel is reflected in the market today. And that's where I get excited, Frank, is that we have a market today for uranium where we're in a supply deficit. You know, the world is only producing enough uranium to meet 75% of current demand. >> So 25% of current demand is uncovered. That's the production gap. That's massive. And that does not include SMRs coming online, new large reactors being built, life of reactors being extended. That's a really key message here. >> Yeah. And I love that you this is in your presentation and stuff, you know, just you're showing, you know, the massive imbalance has always been there even before the huge demand from hyperscalers. And I guess I I'll ask you this, you know, it's great cuz you also have some other partnerships that I that I could talk to talk about as well because you're not just partnering, you're partnering with like the biggest companies in the world like just seems like you're positioned where you have, you know, part of show with Kamo, Arano, Ronaldo is Ariva, right? One of the largest Iranian producers as well. But my next question to you is how do you position yourself? Because now you have a lot of money in the bank over 300 million if you include in your investments and also I think it's 300,000 of uranium on the balance sheet. Going into production mode right now your stocks ramping higher near an all-time high at 13. I'm going to show you a chart of that in a minute which investors are loving it because you know we've covered this such a long time. I'm still getting emails of me people saying thank you so much for introducing me and I own UAC forever. you know, it's the kind of investors you really want, right, that to go on that journey with you, you know, just buying in certain times, but buy and hold long term. And then you have Goldman Sachs, right? You have some of the largest investment bankers covering you now. Is the next step focusing on the production? Is it, you know, what is that next step? Well, you talk a little about SMR. You're investing in some of these companies, which is great. I guess where do you see it going in the next year to three years? And I'm saying a year. I know you doing this for over 20 years, but we're talking about $500 billion dollars in investments in AI just in the month of September alone, right? When it comes to to just so many deals with with Nvidia, with Core Weeave, with Microsoft and and Nebulus, and just going into, you know, OpenAI deals and stuff like that, what's the next step for you guys to position yourself right in the next years? Hey, we're ramping up production right now. You got uranium prices going to $80 now, go ramping higher, you know, and you are a very lowcost producer, one of the lowest in the industry. I think it's at $36. You can correct me if I'm wrong on that. But what is that next step? Is it like, hey, we're going full-blown in on production investing. I mean, what is the plan? Because it's exciting and and I think there's so many avenues right now open to you. If we zoom out, right, and just context, right, in the 20 years that UC has been formed and has been active and has been growing, we've had cumulative 17 bad years and cumulative three good years in terms of market conditions. Okay, that's context. And for most of our 20-y year life, we were either focused on making acquisitions to grow our platform or just just fighting for survival. I mean I mean like just to be blunt I mean this was not an easy industry to be in. What makes me excited more than anything when I wake up in the morning is that I know we have some of the most talented people in this company when it comes to understanding the business of exploring for uranium mining uranium developing uranium constructing uranium. We're and and it's just so rewarding for me to see that this incredible team, this incredible team of talented individuals that we have don't have to come to work and think about survival. They're coming to work and now we're thinking about growth, right? You you look at the most recent announcements that we've had building new mine units in Wyoming, commissioning and building and bringing online a new mine in South Texas, our broker project. We're in construction mode. We're in development mode. We're growing the team. We're hiring. This is the first time in 20 years that we have a window that is opening where you can have sustained growth. We we we have had really two false starts here in these 20 years, right? We had the the the Fukushima sort of issue that just completely disrupted the growth and there was no sustained growth. There was nothing but sustained downturn and you know also 2008 the financial crisis that interrupted a mini bull market that was developing for uranium. So we have for the first time a window an environment where you can see this is where you can have sustained growth. This is where you can bring out the best of what your team and the talent that we've assembled. We talk about the assets we've assembled. You won't you have to appreciate the team that we've assembled the personnel that we have with very scarce skill set because uranium mining as an industry has been dormant for these 20 years. It's tough to find the people that actually understand the business and the operational side of what we're talking about. And UC has that in space. And so when you think about sort of the steps ahead, context is important. And part of that context is to understand the uranium price. We're at $80 a pound. That's nothing to write home about. Conversion enrichment prices are at all-time highs. Everything on this planet right now is priced at all-time highs. From the stock market to the price of commodities, from gold and silver, uranium is at 50% of its all-time highs. Uranium has no business sitting at $80 a pound. Uranium should be at $150 a pound, its previous all-time highs and arguably higher than that. That's when it starts to get interesting. And I'm not just saying this because I'm biased towards the higher uranium price. I'm telling you that because I see at $80 uranium, the large companies are not commissioning new mines. So what that tells you is that this is not incentive level pricing. This is not the the clearing price at which we're going to see new mind development. And new mine development is going to be spurred by higher prices. And higher prices are previous highs. And just like again we've seen previous highs in conversion and enrichment and in just about everything. We're going to see that in uranium as well. And uranium has been lagging due to again policy paralysis, the issues around tariffs, the issues around the Russian ban. utility has really forced utilities into sitting on the sideline trying to make sense of all of this. >> Yeah. >> So context is important and in that sense when you kind of look at UC Frank you've got a couple of things about UC that you know I'm proud of and that we've positioned this company for having size and scale but we have a company that's debtfree and that's really key. The balance sheet of this company couldn't be stronger. No debt ample liquidity with what you just touched on over $300 million of cash in inventory. We actually have 1.4 million pounds of inventory in our account and another 300,000 that we're purchasing in December at $37 a pound. These are parts of contracts that we signed when uranium prices were low and we just wanted to create a physical stream that we can buy in the future at low prices. All these things that we planned for years and years in advance anticipating this turn, right? And so you have a company that's unlevered, no debt, unhedged. Tomorrow the US government comes and says we need uranium. We need US origin uranium. Guess what? All of our production is available and we can sell it. We haven't gone and pre-sold our our uranium production which is what hedging is to not be available when the right strategic opportunities come at the right point in the market. So this company also as you touched on it has a really deep deep bench of assets. We talk about Wyoming in Texas, but in Arizona, in Canada and Atabaska Basin, joint ventures with Kamakuro and Orano, a million acres of land, >> three countries outside of the US. >> We're in three countries. We're in Paraguay. I mean, there's a deep bench of assets that frankly we don't even spend time talking about other than what's immediately in front of us, which is what we're producing from in Wyoming and what we're going to be building in South Texas. But behind that you've got a very significant pipeline of per projects permitted assets the Sweetwater plant that we acquired from Riotinto. I can go on and on that is not even enough time to cover it in and in the time that we have together but again context is important. These are early innings in an industry that was down and out for most of the last 20 years. Yeah, it's incredible. And you've been talking a lot about, you know, your team and everybody coming together. It's because I got a good leader, man. Seriously, I followed you for a long time. I see you at booths when uranium is not good and you're always hanging out there talking to people and you don't see a lot of CEOs doing that. And you know who else is really really happy right now, I can tell you is your shareholders. I mean, this is a really great chart just to see the success of what you built, right, and going here, which is awesome. And also, I want to add you haven't sold I don't think you sold a share, right, since you've owned this company, right? >> No. When you do, dinner's on you, bud. I'm just letting you know. Dinner's definitely on you. So, listen, I know that you're traveling. I know you go crazy. I wish we could talk a little bit more. And I just want to say I really appreciate you coming on. We have a lot of investors here. You know how long I've been in business. Well, for a long time, covering you a long time. A lot of people own your stock and they follow you. They're really happy and they love when I interview you. So, I I really appreciate that you taking the time to come to the podcast and give us a scoop, give us the update cuz I know how busy it is for you and enjoy your success. You deserve it. You worked your ass off. I saw personally and it's really good to see and I know the shareholders are happy too man. So I appreciate you coming on. >> Thank you Frank. I appreciate it and those photos that you shared at the beginning that's real and it's real in that you recognized the potential that UC and then the sector offered really early on. You were a contrarian when you recognized it. You put boots on the ground and came and visited what we were doing when I invited you to come out and I appreciate that. And so I'm sorry that it took so long for things to recover for this industry, but we hung in there and we kept the company in a in a good position and and makes me extremely happy that we're able to generate the returns that we are for our shareholders. And I'm grateful to you for having seen that potential so early on ahead of anyone else and came and spent time and now and and you got the photos to share as well with the yellow cake which is super cool. You know, I'll obviously open invitation to you because Texas, which is where you visited last, we have a whole new brand new mine coming online, our Burke Hollow project, and that's going to start operating in December. We'd love to have you attend when we do our ribbon cutting there. And hopefully we'll we'll have people that we'll invite, you know, from the government side, from the industry side, from, you know, our shareholders. It's an exciting moment because this is the newest uranium mine to come online in America. And it's one of the newest uranium mines to come online anywhere in the world. And we want to show that this can happen in the US. That the industry here and companies like UC are not just talk but actually capable of standing up brand new minds to answer the call of the president to rebuild the nuclear industrial base to support the quadrupling of nuclear power and we're going to lead the way in doing that. So thank you and I hope to see you in South Texas soon. >> Yeah, I'm definitely in for that invite. That's awesome. And hopefully you join me at Consumer Electronic Show. But even before that, which you did, we we did once before in January soon electronic show. It is exclusive here. You're going to be doing you agreed to do a live virtual Zoom for first ever Kuria One conference on November 10th. I know that you squeeze it in because you're going to be overseas. I think it's at a Goldman Sachs conference and we set we put it sometimes a time slot together where you know we're going to make it happen. So you know I really appreciate it. I think everyone's going to love it. We're going to do live Zoom for my cursy one conference and I can't wait to interview you again and get updates for you then. So I really appreciate everything here. So, >> I look forward to that, too. >> All right, man. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. And yeah, great job and really appreciate all your success, man. Awesome.