This is the Greatest URANIUM Bull Market in History – 'Massive Growth to 2040'
Summary
Uranium Market: Guest argues the uranium market is in its best position ever with multi-decade demand visibility and robust term pricing driven by global reactor fleets.
Nuclear Energy: Structural demand is supported by existing reactors, planned builds, and SMR potential, with AI-related power needs adding incremental upside.
US Uranium: Strong policy push for domestic supply, FAST-41 permitting, and potential strategic reserve highlight energy security priorities and faster project timelines.
Supply Dynamics: Production shortfalls and guidance misses across the industry intensify the supply deficit, reinforcing the need for new Western supply sources.
Laramide Resources (LAM): The CEO pitches Laramide as a late-stage developer with a U.S. ISR project and an Australian open-pit project, each 50+ Mlbs, targeting Western G20 utilities via term contracts.
Volatility and Flows: Uranium equities volatility is tied to passive flows and AI trade rotations, expected to moderate as more companies transition to producers with earnings and cash flow.
Policy and Permitting: Australian state-level uranium restrictions may soften given defense and submarine needs, while U.S. transparency under FAST-41 aids permitting timelines.
Capital and Liquidity: Company maintains modest cash burn, no warrant overhang, flexibility for future funding, and benefits from inclusion in major passive uranium vehicles.
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Before we dive in, standard disclaimer, nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Today is November 20th, 2025, and my guest is the CEO of Laramide Resources, a company focused on exploring and developing highquality uranium assets in tier 1 uranium jurisdictions. It's Mark Henderson. Great to have you on the show. >> Yeah, thanks Jesse. Great to be here. >> Well, let's start by diving into the uranium market as a whole because it certainly has been an interesting year for both the uranium sector and nuclear energy. So, I'm wondering what are some of the highlights that stand out to you and where do you think we stand today when it comes to the health of the uranium market? >> Well, I think the uranium market is probably in maybe the best place it's ever been in the history of civilian nuclear power to be honest, Jesse. I mean this is kind of the third great bull market in civilian nuclear and this one looks to be bigger and better than the than than the previous than the previous two given you know given the demand we're seeing from all over the planet on nuclear plus you've got you know new new nuclear if you will in the terms of SMRs and and uh what have you that people are talking about mini nukes uh and now you've kind of got this AI uh incremental demand that's overprinting on what was already a pretty bullish story in nuclear really just to fuel the existing civilian nuclear power plants that are already built. Plus, there's a very aggressive growth profile in that in that sector driven by countries like China that you know have decided to go go nuclear as part of their energy. So, it's really in a great great place. the term price has been going up relentlessly now for really three or four years and we're still at a place where where you know a lot of the companies say hey we need higher prices to bring on supply demand's not the problem supply is really the problem and so the market looks super healthy you know from our standpoint out to 2040 I mean there's a organization called world nuclear association that's kind of the equivalent of the IEA that you know that talks about the oil market and they're supposed to be kind of the authoritative voice and their their profile out to 2040 is, you know, compounded growth at levels that would, you know, most industries would die for. >> Well, one of the big stories for uranium in 2025 has been the Trump administration's push for domestic production of uranium and for building more nuclear reactors in the country. How much of an impact have th those policies had so far? And as Laramide has several projects in the US, have you seen or are you expecting any direct benefit from this push for domestic uranium production? >> Oh, 100%. I would say we've been a big beneficiary um you know, from the administration in terms of what they're trying to do to, you know, uh focus on expanding domestic sources of uranium supply. I mean, they have a reactor fleet, existing reactor fleet that needs roughly 50 million pounds a year. you know, the domestic supply piece got down to less than a million pounds. I think they're certainly trying to bring it back to where they can maybe get 40% of their needs for civilian. And then you got to layer on top of that all the military applications including, you know, they got to power the the subs and the aircraft carriers. And so that picture is very strong and and and we got granted uh fast with fast permitting status called fast 41. you know, we've made application and we're we're both of our projects in the US, the latest stage development ones are in that category and are are effectively being monitored by the administration. There's super transparency there in terms of what they hope the timeline will be to get these things online, which is terrific. You know, I think a lot of countries could learn from that model in terms of uh you know, transparency is pretty powerful um in terms of making the you know, the bureaucracy and the permitting people do their jobs and stuff can't get bogged down. So, I think that's been a huge win. And you've seen just this week, you know, if you want evidence of of how serious they are about doing everything. I mean, they just gave a uh giant loan to restart Three Mile Island. I mean the, you know, that that that that may be a bit controversial given the countries that are getting the loan, you know, really uh they're not normally ones that you think would be crying out for government help, but they certainly are demonstrating that they're very serious about getting more nuclear up as quickly as possible. >> And do you think we could see a strategic uranium reserve? I mean, there actually already is one in some sense. The US government did make a one-time purchase from a few different uh producing companies in the US. I believe that was one or two years ago, but we haven't heard anything since um as far as I'm aware about that uranium stockpile being added to. Do you think they're going to kind of revisit that initiative and push that forward as well? >> Uh I think that's certainly the discussion about it is ongoing. I think it's you know I wouldn't say it's highly likely. I think if you know I'd certainly put it at you know no worse than 50/50 that they'll do it. This is a kind of legacy polic policy that goes back to sort of Trump 1.0 and when this initial call to sort of let's get focused on worrying about um you know future sources of supply particularly domestic security and this is a you know it's an energy security question. It's an economic um vulnerability question. When they when they brought this up the first time around I think it was sort of around 2018. I mean the uranium price was in a much different place. The market was really in over capacity at the time. you hadn't had the effect of some of the newer buildouts that have subsequently happened. I mean, since 2018, you know, the demand profile has been boosted substantially by, you know, China just doing what it was doing all along. You had plants come on in the UAE. You had up rates of existing reactors. That's that's been happening kind of uh all over the place, all around the globe. Um, and so the need to have that sort of inventory buffer supply, if you will, I think is way more um realistic and and a logical policy option now given where we are in the market than it was in 2018. So I I'd give it a I'd give it a decent chance of happening. I mean, the the better projects I mean, if you're got a project that's on the lowest part of the cost curve, I mean, you really probably don't need the price certainty of trying to being able to sell into a uranium reserve. But that's kind of a similar concept that they've done with rare earth, right? Where they're trying to provide floor pricing to make sure they address economic vulnerabilities. And you know, I think it'll be quite successful in rare earth. >> Well, uranium equities have been on a roller coaster recently. We've seen some pretty wild up days followed by massive losses on the other side and then back again feeling very volatile at the moment. What do you think is driving this volatility? Is this just par for the course in the uranium sector? And do you think we will eventually see less of these violent swings as the market catches on to the supply shortfall and perhaps even institutions start to step in in a bigger way? >> Um, yeah, it's certainly possible. I mean, I think you've got some some big players in there that are in the stocks indirectly in the passive flows and things like that. And so that that stuff tends to be a little um have a little more volatility attached to it, if you will. And as I said earlier, I think this AI thematic kind of got overprinted on what was basically a uh an industry story that had a basic very good supply and demand setup. Uh and then you sort of layered that excitement around AI that's become a big trade. And so you got people waiting in and out of that. So it it's it's gotten a bit tied to that. I think when that sort of settles out, you'll be back to more of a stable thing. And you've also got companies like on the development side of the ledger, you've got more development companies transitioning to producers and in let's say five years time, seven years time, I think you'll have a more of a an industry that maybe has five or 10 production companies in it. And so the it'll it'll transition to a bit more of a market that's driven by things like earnings and cash flow. Well, supply shortfalls have seemed to be exacerbated particularly this year when it comes to a number of uranium companies facing challenges in bringing production online or meeting production guidance from the two giants Kamako and Kazatam to developers trying to ramp into production. Uh considering that most analysts believe we already are in a supply deficit and I certainly believe that we are how are these production challenges going to impact the market? Oh, I mean I think it's just it's just more fodder for the need to address the supply side of the story. I mean, as I said, we you know, we don't really need any more demand to be honest. Um, luckily there aren't five more free Mile Islands sitting around that you could boot up in, you know, they're talking that being booted up in 18 months. I mean, when that gets booted up, it's going to need fuel. And so, the the the the demand that's already projected out is things that are in some cases haven't, you know, been built yet. They'll get built in the 2030s. the SMRs will will come online. The the supply side is screaming out for action. Um, you know, you've got two giant companies that that have a huge share of the market. I mean, their their existing project profile from those two companies that maybe supply, let's say, 50% of the market or more. I mean, they they don't have visibility on where their their supply is coming from. So, it just exacerbates the existing situation really. Well, let's talk about how Laramide Resources fits into the picture. Start by giving us an overview of the company. >> Yes. So, we're we're a development company. We call late stage development because we have projects that are well known, well established. You know, they have lots of reserves enough to basically they both they're both projects. One in the US, which is a ISR insitue recovery project, similar to how they produce all the uranium in Kazakhstan, you know, and the other's a more conventional open pit type scenario in northern Australia. and they're both, you know, 50 million pounds plus. The one in Australia supports a bigger production profile and would and it would be a bigger capex and and would follow the first one in the United States which is farther along in in the peritting dynamic. But I think there's an advantage to having a multiasset company being in the uranium space because I think your end customer is always going to be really the utilities and the utilities like to see diversification of supplies that if one operation has a hiccup and you see this with you know you mentioned Camo and people like that that have multi-mine companies and different ways to to make sure they can meet commitments because it's really it's also very much a contractual business. You know I referenced the stock mark as the term market earlier. the term market which is really the contractual market is really where the economics of the of the business get driven and where most of the pounds trade. You know, you see numbers on spot pounds and there's some percentage of the overall, let's say you have a 200 million pound a year market and they may be 50 million spot pounds traded, but but a lot of those spot pounds are traded over and over again like like day trade in stocks then and the real market is mostly for the utilities is what do they have under contract because you know you run a nuclear power plant, you got to have certainty around getting fuel. And so we want to be a supplier of choice to those to those um utilities particularly we're probably looking you know western G20 country type utilities because you've got some nation state players that that have uh nuclear reactor fleets like China like Russia etc. And they tend to do other bigger things on the procurement front because if you have demand that's that big, you know, you basically need to own some uranium mines, you need to own pieces of uranium mines. They typically rely on the contract market or the even certainly not the spot market, you know, to a much lesser ex a much lesser extent. So we're our our target our target audience, if you will, for ultimately when these projects get built will be those sorts of utilities. >> Great. Well, could you you shed some light on the team behind Laramide? Maybe starting with yourself, your own backgrounds and and your vision for the company. >> Yeah, I mean, I'm a business guy. I'm resource guy. I've been involved in development, mining development stuff for decades. I mean, spent a lot of time in in gold and silver, which is, you know, all these mining projects are kind of analogous. I mean, development wise, you get it to the point where, you know, it looks very attractive, can be developed. At that point, you're either developing it or or typically a bigger company says, you know, we need that. We've got a gap in our portfolio or what have you and and it typically gets on sold. We're at the point we've got great talent around us to get to how far we got here. The next step in the next year will be layering in that. Okay, we're really building it talent. You know, the engineering team comes in, the design team. We're probably, you know, Q227, if you look at what the fast 41 schedule that was given to us by the government, that's when they're saying we ought to have final permit status and be ready to build it. And so sometime between now and then, we're going to start to add to that team, particularly in the United States. And with people that are, you know, visibly obviously um have expertise in in particular in ISR because ISR is very much different than any other kind of mining. Well, you have a very large portfolio of projects around the world. Can you walk us through how you decide which ones to prioritize along with your strategy for advancing them? >> Well, I mean, some of this stuff, you know, tends to be a little bit serendipitous. I mean, we were fortunate enough to get a big trophy asset in Australia that we've been had for a very long time. You know, we had to weather a bare market. The politics haven't necessarily been favorable all the time. They go in and out of favor. Um, and that project obviously is economically as ready to go as soon as the government kind of gives us the nod. We think we're very close there now. Uh, in terms of being ready to go and then permanent and build it. Um and so but we you know if we're if we're we're trying to decide and we've looked at a lot of things and you're trying to decide to look at things and you're in the commodity business I mean the number one you think the number one thing to be a winner in the commodity business is to be on the lowest part of the cost curve which sort of generally guarantees that your asset if you if it you know firms up the way you think it's going to firm up you're going to be able to bring it into the market and when you're going to basically take the place of people that are higher up in the cost curve. Uranium is kind of a little bit different now because we're in this market that honestly anything on the cost curve that makes that makes pounds that's available in the next 5 to seven years is going to happen. And that's really describes the development side of the of this business at the moment. I mean really you can go look at you know look at the biggest uranium mining fund the spat one and look at the names in there and basically that's a list of who's who in the business in the pure group that essentially has projects that frankly the world needs and the sooner the better you know and some it's all it's all a um you know kind of an ordering as how as to as to how they'll come on and and how they'll happen and whether maybe some of them gets swled up into bigger companies but you don't have a lot of the new development companies that typically have more than one asset. So part of our whole drive was really as I said before just to have more than you know have diversity have a couple of assets. I mean you see this in gold too you know if you you know the minute you're a one mine gold company and you build your first mine every you know the street goes that's fantastic what have you done for me lately what's what are you going to do next you know so it's nice to have it's nice to have your next project that you already own it and you don't have to pay for it or more typically what happens in the resource business you overpay for it. Um or you get to be a big company and your reserves start declining and then you know that's what happened in the gold business you know 10 or 15 years ago to all the big cap gold companies you know and then you go through the angst on the back side of that as people swear off acquisitions and that sort of thing. So, you know, part of it is that, but we typically, you know, our screen is typically to go places we feel comfortable comfortably jurisdiction-wise and that that includes being able to build a project, but also, you know, if you have a problem, can you can you litigate? You know, you know, can you can you get a good outcome notwithstanding not only the project, but if you're if you're got a project and you've got a contractual relationship with the utility, and this has happened many times in the uranium business, you know, because they're mostly to take or pay contracts by design, you know, and you don't want to be in a situation where you need to get paid and they don't want to take and you if you're going to litigate it, you want to be in a place that your shareholders feel very good that you're going to get a good outcome. So, as for as for things like exploration in Kazakhstan and Greenfield and places like that, there's there's probably less than 10 countries in the world that if you were going to go try and find a big new uranium project, those would, you know, and you asked a expert team of geologists to go, where would you go? I'm guessing that the the all had to put 10 names down on a list, there'd be an awful lot of overlap on the list. And, you know, it's a pretty short list. And so that kind of drives where you have to go really if you're serious about that's really the the the green field development pipeline part of a portfolio. Most companies that I find right now aren't really thinking about that. I mean if you think about the companies that are up and running got things up and running by and large they're not drilling green field holes at all. They're doing effectively brownfield things trying to build up around the sites they have. Maybe they only have one site and they're worried about getting mine number two there. Other than the Aabaska basin, I would say in terms of concentration of expiration dollars in this industry, you don't see much in the way of expiration and that and that would honestly include Kazakhstan because Kazadam Prom is a production company. You know, they're not an exploration company. >> Do you have any thoughts on the kind of soft uranium mining ban in Western Australia? From what I understand, they haven't been issuing new permits since 2017. There's been some push back against that. I know there's some people in government who were trying to change that. What are your thoughts there? And and do you expect a reversal of that policy sometime in the next few years? >> Yeah, that's an interesting one because the the the so-called ban or whatever you want to call it in in Australia is now down to a state level thing. The federal government really did away with it at, you know, really in their policy platform at large many years ago, probably 15 years ago now. actually was done when the current prime minister was in the government as well. Um, and they devolved it to the states, but it's a partisan thing where the one party, the left of center party, traditionally has had this anti-ranium kind of stance. It's really an ideological stance to appeal to a particular bunch of voters that they, you know, think they need in order to get power, stay in power, get get enough seats. It's a parliamentary democracy and so and that the states you have it you know Western Australia is still in that camp and that's the reason that it is so and it's currently got a labor you know party in power with a strong majority. The the wrinkle there is that the the American government wants to sell nuclear submarines to the Australians and they'll be the first one to ever get these Australians. The Australians want the nuclear submarines and we're it's going to be an interesting um situation to see if the Americans are willing to give nuclear and they're going to be based out of Perth, Western Australia. And so they're going to have to build up capacity. They're going to have to build up the ability to service these subs. You know, eventually they're going to put their own sailors on these subs, etc. It's going to be interesting if they're going to have a situation where that policy can survive the fact that they want to buy these subs, but they're not willing to even make the fuel in their own country because at the end of the day, you can't power these things without uranium. So, I think somehow or other than the next year or so, the the whole legacy question in Australia is is is going to go um the way of the dodo bird. But how it exactly happens, who knows? We've got a similar situation in Quinza where you had that party in power and they were in power for a very long time. We've got a new party in power there now and so we're expecting that that party will essentially do away with that. It's a legacy thing that's still in the permitting parts of the of the government. It's not a policy of the that particular administration and they just need to amend that so that we can crack on with permitting and then that mine will will go ahead fairly rapidly. >> Let's talk about Laramide's current cash position. um what is the cash position? How much runway does that give you? And what's the strategy for raising capital moving forward when needed? >> Um well, the last two raises were both sort of traditional equity raises. We did one in Australia, I think in late 23, and then we did one that closed in July. They were both fairly smallish. They were both done um brokered but without warrants. Um we managed through the whole previous multi number of years um getting by capital-wise because we had done so many warrants earlier that eventually as the market got better all effectively all the warrant money came in and now we basically have a scenario where there's we're probably one of the few companies without any warrant overhang which is a nice place to be. We'd like to stay there. Um we probably have six or seven million dollars I think was the number most recently reported when the quarter came out. Uh most of what we're doing like through next year is permitting related. So the the cash burn is really not very high at the moment. We're doing a program in Kazakhstan that's been been budgeted. We're waiting to get that started, but it's fairly modest. I think it's a couple million dollars for the initial round of drilling there. Um and then you know we'll be looking at trying to raise money in you know 26 sometime in all probability. But whether again it's another equity thing. We really have properties in some cases that really have no royalty overhang on them. So that's a possibility. there's, you know, there's multiple ways to to to to raise money. Um, we haven't been worried about the especially now you got, I mean, it's a bull market in uranium. It's more not not a question of can you, it's a question of what's the price really. And we're but we're we're very cautious about that and, you know, because we're, you know, big shareholders, insiders, big shareholders. I'm a big shareholder. You know, I actually think a lot about, you know, cost of capital dilution, things like that. >> Great. Well, is there anything we haven't yet discussed or anything you think it's important to emphasize about Laramide Resources to potential shareholders of the company? >> I think in terms of just, you know, like you said at the top, you know, do your own due diligence. I think we're part, as I said, I think we're part of a a peer group. It's a fairly small peer group. You can obviously play this peer group through passives. And it's worth mentioning that we're in all the three big most passive vehicles, you know, and they own probably, I want to say collectively maybe 15% of the company. So that's a and that's very useful to be you know in a re as a developer it's very useful to have that kind of I wouldn't say they're permanent capital but the liquidity that that brings to the story should make people that want to get in and out of the stock a lot more comfortable that they can do that. Uh but I would say if you want to go one of the reasons to look at us as opposed to looking at something like that is look where we are valuationwise versus some of those other companies that have similar attributes uh and and look at their valuation versus ours. I think there's I think we have a lot of upside particularly because we've had this Australian question hanging over us for a long time and if that gets resolved I think there sort of general consensus is that that's a pretty bullish development. We have four analysts covering covering us the targets are all obviously higher. They're all in the I want to say 130 to 150 range. But I mean, we think that's low. And if we get a reval on really what is what's a 5 million pound a year lowest cortile producer in a great country worth, it's worth probably more than the NAV value being ascribed to it now by the marketplace generally or the analyst community or what have you. So I think if you want to look at us, analyze us as as a way to play the market, I think that's the way to, you know, if you want to do your homework, I think that's a good place to start. >> Well, I will go ahead and put a link to the Laramide Resources website as well as social media for people who want to follow the company. Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Yeah, thanks Jesse. I'll see you again. >> Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up todate with the latest episodes.
This is the Greatest URANIUM Bull Market in History – 'Massive Growth to 2040'
Summary
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Before we dive in, standard disclaimer, nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Today is November 20th, 2025, and my guest is the CEO of Laramide Resources, a company focused on exploring and developing highquality uranium assets in tier 1 uranium jurisdictions. It's Mark Henderson. Great to have you on the show. >> Yeah, thanks Jesse. Great to be here. >> Well, let's start by diving into the uranium market as a whole because it certainly has been an interesting year for both the uranium sector and nuclear energy. So, I'm wondering what are some of the highlights that stand out to you and where do you think we stand today when it comes to the health of the uranium market? >> Well, I think the uranium market is probably in maybe the best place it's ever been in the history of civilian nuclear power to be honest, Jesse. I mean this is kind of the third great bull market in civilian nuclear and this one looks to be bigger and better than the than than the previous than the previous two given you know given the demand we're seeing from all over the planet on nuclear plus you've got you know new new nuclear if you will in the terms of SMRs and and uh what have you that people are talking about mini nukes uh and now you've kind of got this AI uh incremental demand that's overprinting on what was already a pretty bullish story in nuclear really just to fuel the existing civilian nuclear power plants that are already built. Plus, there's a very aggressive growth profile in that in that sector driven by countries like China that you know have decided to go go nuclear as part of their energy. So, it's really in a great great place. the term price has been going up relentlessly now for really three or four years and we're still at a place where where you know a lot of the companies say hey we need higher prices to bring on supply demand's not the problem supply is really the problem and so the market looks super healthy you know from our standpoint out to 2040 I mean there's a organization called world nuclear association that's kind of the equivalent of the IEA that you know that talks about the oil market and they're supposed to be kind of the authoritative voice and their their profile out to 2040 is, you know, compounded growth at levels that would, you know, most industries would die for. >> Well, one of the big stories for uranium in 2025 has been the Trump administration's push for domestic production of uranium and for building more nuclear reactors in the country. How much of an impact have th those policies had so far? And as Laramide has several projects in the US, have you seen or are you expecting any direct benefit from this push for domestic uranium production? >> Oh, 100%. I would say we've been a big beneficiary um you know, from the administration in terms of what they're trying to do to, you know, uh focus on expanding domestic sources of uranium supply. I mean, they have a reactor fleet, existing reactor fleet that needs roughly 50 million pounds a year. you know, the domestic supply piece got down to less than a million pounds. I think they're certainly trying to bring it back to where they can maybe get 40% of their needs for civilian. And then you got to layer on top of that all the military applications including, you know, they got to power the the subs and the aircraft carriers. And so that picture is very strong and and and we got granted uh fast with fast permitting status called fast 41. you know, we've made application and we're we're both of our projects in the US, the latest stage development ones are in that category and are are effectively being monitored by the administration. There's super transparency there in terms of what they hope the timeline will be to get these things online, which is terrific. You know, I think a lot of countries could learn from that model in terms of uh you know, transparency is pretty powerful um in terms of making the you know, the bureaucracy and the permitting people do their jobs and stuff can't get bogged down. So, I think that's been a huge win. And you've seen just this week, you know, if you want evidence of of how serious they are about doing everything. I mean, they just gave a uh giant loan to restart Three Mile Island. I mean the, you know, that that that that may be a bit controversial given the countries that are getting the loan, you know, really uh they're not normally ones that you think would be crying out for government help, but they certainly are demonstrating that they're very serious about getting more nuclear up as quickly as possible. >> And do you think we could see a strategic uranium reserve? I mean, there actually already is one in some sense. The US government did make a one-time purchase from a few different uh producing companies in the US. I believe that was one or two years ago, but we haven't heard anything since um as far as I'm aware about that uranium stockpile being added to. Do you think they're going to kind of revisit that initiative and push that forward as well? >> Uh I think that's certainly the discussion about it is ongoing. I think it's you know I wouldn't say it's highly likely. I think if you know I'd certainly put it at you know no worse than 50/50 that they'll do it. This is a kind of legacy polic policy that goes back to sort of Trump 1.0 and when this initial call to sort of let's get focused on worrying about um you know future sources of supply particularly domestic security and this is a you know it's an energy security question. It's an economic um vulnerability question. When they when they brought this up the first time around I think it was sort of around 2018. I mean the uranium price was in a much different place. The market was really in over capacity at the time. you hadn't had the effect of some of the newer buildouts that have subsequently happened. I mean, since 2018, you know, the demand profile has been boosted substantially by, you know, China just doing what it was doing all along. You had plants come on in the UAE. You had up rates of existing reactors. That's that's been happening kind of uh all over the place, all around the globe. Um, and so the need to have that sort of inventory buffer supply, if you will, I think is way more um realistic and and a logical policy option now given where we are in the market than it was in 2018. So I I'd give it a I'd give it a decent chance of happening. I mean, the the better projects I mean, if you're got a project that's on the lowest part of the cost curve, I mean, you really probably don't need the price certainty of trying to being able to sell into a uranium reserve. But that's kind of a similar concept that they've done with rare earth, right? Where they're trying to provide floor pricing to make sure they address economic vulnerabilities. And you know, I think it'll be quite successful in rare earth. >> Well, uranium equities have been on a roller coaster recently. We've seen some pretty wild up days followed by massive losses on the other side and then back again feeling very volatile at the moment. What do you think is driving this volatility? Is this just par for the course in the uranium sector? And do you think we will eventually see less of these violent swings as the market catches on to the supply shortfall and perhaps even institutions start to step in in a bigger way? >> Um, yeah, it's certainly possible. I mean, I think you've got some some big players in there that are in the stocks indirectly in the passive flows and things like that. And so that that stuff tends to be a little um have a little more volatility attached to it, if you will. And as I said earlier, I think this AI thematic kind of got overprinted on what was basically a uh an industry story that had a basic very good supply and demand setup. Uh and then you sort of layered that excitement around AI that's become a big trade. And so you got people waiting in and out of that. So it it's it's gotten a bit tied to that. I think when that sort of settles out, you'll be back to more of a stable thing. And you've also got companies like on the development side of the ledger, you've got more development companies transitioning to producers and in let's say five years time, seven years time, I think you'll have a more of a an industry that maybe has five or 10 production companies in it. And so the it'll it'll transition to a bit more of a market that's driven by things like earnings and cash flow. Well, supply shortfalls have seemed to be exacerbated particularly this year when it comes to a number of uranium companies facing challenges in bringing production online or meeting production guidance from the two giants Kamako and Kazatam to developers trying to ramp into production. Uh considering that most analysts believe we already are in a supply deficit and I certainly believe that we are how are these production challenges going to impact the market? Oh, I mean I think it's just it's just more fodder for the need to address the supply side of the story. I mean, as I said, we you know, we don't really need any more demand to be honest. Um, luckily there aren't five more free Mile Islands sitting around that you could boot up in, you know, they're talking that being booted up in 18 months. I mean, when that gets booted up, it's going to need fuel. And so, the the the the demand that's already projected out is things that are in some cases haven't, you know, been built yet. They'll get built in the 2030s. the SMRs will will come online. The the supply side is screaming out for action. Um, you know, you've got two giant companies that that have a huge share of the market. I mean, their their existing project profile from those two companies that maybe supply, let's say, 50% of the market or more. I mean, they they don't have visibility on where their their supply is coming from. So, it just exacerbates the existing situation really. Well, let's talk about how Laramide Resources fits into the picture. Start by giving us an overview of the company. >> Yes. So, we're we're a development company. We call late stage development because we have projects that are well known, well established. You know, they have lots of reserves enough to basically they both they're both projects. One in the US, which is a ISR insitue recovery project, similar to how they produce all the uranium in Kazakhstan, you know, and the other's a more conventional open pit type scenario in northern Australia. and they're both, you know, 50 million pounds plus. The one in Australia supports a bigger production profile and would and it would be a bigger capex and and would follow the first one in the United States which is farther along in in the peritting dynamic. But I think there's an advantage to having a multiasset company being in the uranium space because I think your end customer is always going to be really the utilities and the utilities like to see diversification of supplies that if one operation has a hiccup and you see this with you know you mentioned Camo and people like that that have multi-mine companies and different ways to to make sure they can meet commitments because it's really it's also very much a contractual business. You know I referenced the stock mark as the term market earlier. the term market which is really the contractual market is really where the economics of the of the business get driven and where most of the pounds trade. You know, you see numbers on spot pounds and there's some percentage of the overall, let's say you have a 200 million pound a year market and they may be 50 million spot pounds traded, but but a lot of those spot pounds are traded over and over again like like day trade in stocks then and the real market is mostly for the utilities is what do they have under contract because you know you run a nuclear power plant, you got to have certainty around getting fuel. And so we want to be a supplier of choice to those to those um utilities particularly we're probably looking you know western G20 country type utilities because you've got some nation state players that that have uh nuclear reactor fleets like China like Russia etc. And they tend to do other bigger things on the procurement front because if you have demand that's that big, you know, you basically need to own some uranium mines, you need to own pieces of uranium mines. They typically rely on the contract market or the even certainly not the spot market, you know, to a much lesser ex a much lesser extent. So we're our our target our target audience, if you will, for ultimately when these projects get built will be those sorts of utilities. >> Great. Well, could you you shed some light on the team behind Laramide? Maybe starting with yourself, your own backgrounds and and your vision for the company. >> Yeah, I mean, I'm a business guy. I'm resource guy. I've been involved in development, mining development stuff for decades. I mean, spent a lot of time in in gold and silver, which is, you know, all these mining projects are kind of analogous. I mean, development wise, you get it to the point where, you know, it looks very attractive, can be developed. At that point, you're either developing it or or typically a bigger company says, you know, we need that. We've got a gap in our portfolio or what have you and and it typically gets on sold. We're at the point we've got great talent around us to get to how far we got here. The next step in the next year will be layering in that. Okay, we're really building it talent. You know, the engineering team comes in, the design team. We're probably, you know, Q227, if you look at what the fast 41 schedule that was given to us by the government, that's when they're saying we ought to have final permit status and be ready to build it. And so sometime between now and then, we're going to start to add to that team, particularly in the United States. And with people that are, you know, visibly obviously um have expertise in in particular in ISR because ISR is very much different than any other kind of mining. Well, you have a very large portfolio of projects around the world. Can you walk us through how you decide which ones to prioritize along with your strategy for advancing them? >> Well, I mean, some of this stuff, you know, tends to be a little bit serendipitous. I mean, we were fortunate enough to get a big trophy asset in Australia that we've been had for a very long time. You know, we had to weather a bare market. The politics haven't necessarily been favorable all the time. They go in and out of favor. Um, and that project obviously is economically as ready to go as soon as the government kind of gives us the nod. We think we're very close there now. Uh, in terms of being ready to go and then permanent and build it. Um and so but we you know if we're if we're we're trying to decide and we've looked at a lot of things and you're trying to decide to look at things and you're in the commodity business I mean the number one you think the number one thing to be a winner in the commodity business is to be on the lowest part of the cost curve which sort of generally guarantees that your asset if you if it you know firms up the way you think it's going to firm up you're going to be able to bring it into the market and when you're going to basically take the place of people that are higher up in the cost curve. Uranium is kind of a little bit different now because we're in this market that honestly anything on the cost curve that makes that makes pounds that's available in the next 5 to seven years is going to happen. And that's really describes the development side of the of this business at the moment. I mean really you can go look at you know look at the biggest uranium mining fund the spat one and look at the names in there and basically that's a list of who's who in the business in the pure group that essentially has projects that frankly the world needs and the sooner the better you know and some it's all it's all a um you know kind of an ordering as how as to as to how they'll come on and and how they'll happen and whether maybe some of them gets swled up into bigger companies but you don't have a lot of the new development companies that typically have more than one asset. So part of our whole drive was really as I said before just to have more than you know have diversity have a couple of assets. I mean you see this in gold too you know if you you know the minute you're a one mine gold company and you build your first mine every you know the street goes that's fantastic what have you done for me lately what's what are you going to do next you know so it's nice to have it's nice to have your next project that you already own it and you don't have to pay for it or more typically what happens in the resource business you overpay for it. Um or you get to be a big company and your reserves start declining and then you know that's what happened in the gold business you know 10 or 15 years ago to all the big cap gold companies you know and then you go through the angst on the back side of that as people swear off acquisitions and that sort of thing. So, you know, part of it is that, but we typically, you know, our screen is typically to go places we feel comfortable comfortably jurisdiction-wise and that that includes being able to build a project, but also, you know, if you have a problem, can you can you litigate? You know, you know, can you can you get a good outcome notwithstanding not only the project, but if you're if you're got a project and you've got a contractual relationship with the utility, and this has happened many times in the uranium business, you know, because they're mostly to take or pay contracts by design, you know, and you don't want to be in a situation where you need to get paid and they don't want to take and you if you're going to litigate it, you want to be in a place that your shareholders feel very good that you're going to get a good outcome. So, as for as for things like exploration in Kazakhstan and Greenfield and places like that, there's there's probably less than 10 countries in the world that if you were going to go try and find a big new uranium project, those would, you know, and you asked a expert team of geologists to go, where would you go? I'm guessing that the the all had to put 10 names down on a list, there'd be an awful lot of overlap on the list. And, you know, it's a pretty short list. And so that kind of drives where you have to go really if you're serious about that's really the the the green field development pipeline part of a portfolio. Most companies that I find right now aren't really thinking about that. I mean if you think about the companies that are up and running got things up and running by and large they're not drilling green field holes at all. They're doing effectively brownfield things trying to build up around the sites they have. Maybe they only have one site and they're worried about getting mine number two there. Other than the Aabaska basin, I would say in terms of concentration of expiration dollars in this industry, you don't see much in the way of expiration and that and that would honestly include Kazakhstan because Kazadam Prom is a production company. You know, they're not an exploration company. >> Do you have any thoughts on the kind of soft uranium mining ban in Western Australia? From what I understand, they haven't been issuing new permits since 2017. There's been some push back against that. I know there's some people in government who were trying to change that. What are your thoughts there? And and do you expect a reversal of that policy sometime in the next few years? >> Yeah, that's an interesting one because the the the so-called ban or whatever you want to call it in in Australia is now down to a state level thing. The federal government really did away with it at, you know, really in their policy platform at large many years ago, probably 15 years ago now. actually was done when the current prime minister was in the government as well. Um, and they devolved it to the states, but it's a partisan thing where the one party, the left of center party, traditionally has had this anti-ranium kind of stance. It's really an ideological stance to appeal to a particular bunch of voters that they, you know, think they need in order to get power, stay in power, get get enough seats. It's a parliamentary democracy and so and that the states you have it you know Western Australia is still in that camp and that's the reason that it is so and it's currently got a labor you know party in power with a strong majority. The the wrinkle there is that the the American government wants to sell nuclear submarines to the Australians and they'll be the first one to ever get these Australians. The Australians want the nuclear submarines and we're it's going to be an interesting um situation to see if the Americans are willing to give nuclear and they're going to be based out of Perth, Western Australia. And so they're going to have to build up capacity. They're going to have to build up the ability to service these subs. You know, eventually they're going to put their own sailors on these subs, etc. It's going to be interesting if they're going to have a situation where that policy can survive the fact that they want to buy these subs, but they're not willing to even make the fuel in their own country because at the end of the day, you can't power these things without uranium. So, I think somehow or other than the next year or so, the the whole legacy question in Australia is is is going to go um the way of the dodo bird. But how it exactly happens, who knows? We've got a similar situation in Quinza where you had that party in power and they were in power for a very long time. We've got a new party in power there now and so we're expecting that that party will essentially do away with that. It's a legacy thing that's still in the permitting parts of the of the government. It's not a policy of the that particular administration and they just need to amend that so that we can crack on with permitting and then that mine will will go ahead fairly rapidly. >> Let's talk about Laramide's current cash position. um what is the cash position? How much runway does that give you? And what's the strategy for raising capital moving forward when needed? >> Um well, the last two raises were both sort of traditional equity raises. We did one in Australia, I think in late 23, and then we did one that closed in July. They were both fairly smallish. They were both done um brokered but without warrants. Um we managed through the whole previous multi number of years um getting by capital-wise because we had done so many warrants earlier that eventually as the market got better all effectively all the warrant money came in and now we basically have a scenario where there's we're probably one of the few companies without any warrant overhang which is a nice place to be. We'd like to stay there. Um we probably have six or seven million dollars I think was the number most recently reported when the quarter came out. Uh most of what we're doing like through next year is permitting related. So the the cash burn is really not very high at the moment. We're doing a program in Kazakhstan that's been been budgeted. We're waiting to get that started, but it's fairly modest. I think it's a couple million dollars for the initial round of drilling there. Um and then you know we'll be looking at trying to raise money in you know 26 sometime in all probability. But whether again it's another equity thing. We really have properties in some cases that really have no royalty overhang on them. So that's a possibility. there's, you know, there's multiple ways to to to to raise money. Um, we haven't been worried about the especially now you got, I mean, it's a bull market in uranium. It's more not not a question of can you, it's a question of what's the price really. And we're but we're we're very cautious about that and, you know, because we're, you know, big shareholders, insiders, big shareholders. I'm a big shareholder. You know, I actually think a lot about, you know, cost of capital dilution, things like that. >> Great. Well, is there anything we haven't yet discussed or anything you think it's important to emphasize about Laramide Resources to potential shareholders of the company? >> I think in terms of just, you know, like you said at the top, you know, do your own due diligence. I think we're part, as I said, I think we're part of a a peer group. It's a fairly small peer group. You can obviously play this peer group through passives. And it's worth mentioning that we're in all the three big most passive vehicles, you know, and they own probably, I want to say collectively maybe 15% of the company. So that's a and that's very useful to be you know in a re as a developer it's very useful to have that kind of I wouldn't say they're permanent capital but the liquidity that that brings to the story should make people that want to get in and out of the stock a lot more comfortable that they can do that. Uh but I would say if you want to go one of the reasons to look at us as opposed to looking at something like that is look where we are valuationwise versus some of those other companies that have similar attributes uh and and look at their valuation versus ours. I think there's I think we have a lot of upside particularly because we've had this Australian question hanging over us for a long time and if that gets resolved I think there sort of general consensus is that that's a pretty bullish development. We have four analysts covering covering us the targets are all obviously higher. They're all in the I want to say 130 to 150 range. But I mean, we think that's low. And if we get a reval on really what is what's a 5 million pound a year lowest cortile producer in a great country worth, it's worth probably more than the NAV value being ascribed to it now by the marketplace generally or the analyst community or what have you. So I think if you want to look at us, analyze us as as a way to play the market, I think that's the way to, you know, if you want to do your homework, I think that's a good place to start. >> Well, I will go ahead and put a link to the Laramide Resources website as well as social media for people who want to follow the company. Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Yeah, thanks Jesse. I'll see you again. >> Commodity Culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up todate with the latest episodes.