Ur-energy Inc Aktie

Greetings. Welcome to the Ur-Energy's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings and Operations Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Ur-Energy's General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Alex Ritchie. You may begin.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

We do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Today's presentation includes disclaimers related to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections, along with cautionary notes to investors. Please review these carefully together with the risk factors described in our Form 10-Q, our Form 10-K and our other public filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators.

I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Matt Gili.

Thank you, Alex, and thanks to all of you who joined us today. The market backdrop supports Ur-Energy's disciplined development of a domestic district scale ISR platform. Let me begin with the broader market backdrop. We see several powerful long-term drivers for nuclear energy and uranium. Global nuclear generating capacity is projected to nearly double by 2040. At the same time, the industry faces a widening structural gap between anticipated uranium demand and supply.

Here in the United States, energy security is increasing the focus on domestic uranium production and more secure fuel supply chains. That is the opportunity we are building toward at Ur-Energy, America's first district scale ISR uranium operation with aggressive growth driven by disciplined capital-efficient development.

Operationally, Ur-Energy is focused on optimization as we advance production ramp-up at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. Our year-over-year results reflect this progress. Turning to our third quarter results. We continue to make progress across our operations as we focus on optimization and advancing production at both Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. During the quarter, we delivered 190,000 pounds of U3O8 under long-term contracts, generating $12.3 million in revenue.

Year-to-date sales increased 67.3% compared to the same period last year. Pounds captured increased 26.4% year-to-date, while pounds drummed 341,058 through the first 9 months, an increase of approximately 18% year-over-year. Our third quarter cash cost was $40.40 per produced pound with year-to-date cash costs declining 7.6% compared with the same period in 2025.

We ended the quarter with 233,378 pounds of finished inventory at the conversion facility. And in-process and plant inventory increased from 19,496 pounds to 85,708 pounds, including inventory adjustments. While our production ramp-up continues, these year-over-year improvements reflect the progress we're making as we optimize our operations and build production capacity across both assets.

Lost Creek continues to advance production growth through operational improvements, infrastructure investment and expansion of wellfield capacity. At Lost Creek, we drummed 341,058 pounds through the first 9 months of 2026, an increase of 18.2% from the prior year period. A sand filtration system was brought online in July to increase flow rates while a new wastewater treatment facility is being constructed. The new facility is on schedule to be in operation in the second quarter of 2027 and is expected to fully optimize wastewater capacity.

The sand filtration system has been effective in decreasing fine particles from the wellfield and increasing flow rates. And since the end of the quarter, we have implemented process and other measures to better manage wastewater, while advancing the permanent facility. Since the end of the quarter, we have also completed maintenance of the elution and ion exchange systems at the plant to increase processing and drumming of pounds.

In the wellfield at Lost Creek, we are advancing in Mine Unit 5. Wellfield construction is well underway with regulatory approval and the start of production targeted for the first quarter of 2027. Together, these initiatives are advancing our ramp-up and positioning Lost Creek for sustained production growth. We are building a district scale ISR operation and reestablishing Wyoming as the top uranium district in the U.S. We are achieving this through steady ramp-up of existing operations and by advancing multiple assets with potential as future satellite mines. The satellite model allows us to employ our capital more efficiently by our skilled, experienced team.

At Shirley Basin, we reached an important milestone in August when we made our first uranium shipment to Lost Creek for processing. This marked our transition to a multi-asset domestic uranium producer. We have captured 25,330 pounds of uranium year-to-date at Shirley Basin, including 14,697 pounds in the third quarter. Our team is improving wellfield operating parameters and plans to bring additional header houses online during the fourth quarter of 2026 and throughout 2027. We are also optimizing the operation's lixiviant chemistry. Optimization since the end of the quarter has produced positive results as we continue the production ramp-up. For now, Shirley Basin operates as a spoke of our Lost Creek hub, and we are pleased with the ramp-up progress. However, it is important to note that Shirley Basin also retains the flexibility to become a stand-alone production hub as the Great Divide Basin develops.

With ramp-up underway at our operating mines and processing hub, we are accelerating progress at a selection of other assets in Wyoming, paving the way for mine expansion and new satellite operations. Not many people realize that our Lost Creek property is 55 square miles, and we are producing on just a fraction of that land package. This is incredibly prospective land. That is why at Lost Creek South, where we have 3 major trends, we have commenced a 120-hole exploration program, testing 7 miles of composite trend. We're testing mine expansion targets as well as regional targets with strong potential for hosting a new resource.

At Lost Soldier, which is just 17 miles from Lost Creek, we are in the final stages of a technical report. We expect to release the report by year-end with a construction decision to follow. Its proximity to Lost Creek provides yet another opportunity for development as a satellite operation within our growing production platform. At North Hadsell, 13 of 33 widely spaced drill holes with spacing up to 1,000 feet intersected production-grade uranium in our drilling program that we completed earlier this year. Planning is underway to follow up this highly successful program.

Together, these projects demonstrate the depth of our organic growth pipeline and the opportunity to expand our district scale uranium production platform by leveraging our existing infrastructure and operating expertise. Our strategy combines near-term production growth, district scale expansion and disciplined capital allocation.

To close, our growth strategy has 6 clear priorities. First, increase uranium production and cash flow as we continue to advance production ramp-up and operational optimization at both Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. Second, expand our district scale ISR production platform across Wyoming. Third, advance a pipeline of capital-efficient satellite mine opportunities to support long-term growth. Fourth, build upon our leading operating execution and maintain a competitive low-cost production profile. Fifth, build on the growing strategic importance of a domestic U.S. uranium supply.

And finally, remain disciplined in how we grow and allocate capital with the objective of delivering sustainable long-term value. That is how we intend to translate our operating assets and development pipeline into America's uranium powerhouse. Thank you. We look forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Soundarya Iyer with B. Riley.

So I'm just curious, like can you walk us through the path -- the production path to 2027, like specifically the timing of MU5 permit, how that feeds into '27, '28 production? And how you see that 1.4 million pounds 2027 deliveries being covered between inventory and new production?

Thank you for the question, Soundarya. I appreciate it. Expected a question from Soundarya. So look, I'm going to kind of answer it in 2 different ways, 2 different -- looking at each of the different properties. So when we talk about Lost Creek, we are laying the groundwork for a plant that can be expanded to progress the output of multiple mines as we go beyond the 2 that we currently have in production. This year continues our successful track record as we continue to see larger year-over-year increases in production and efficiency.

We talked about in the call, some of the things we're doing at Lost Creek to improve the flow rates and to improve our wastewater treatment capacity and to just continue the very successful ramp-up at Lost Creek. At Shirley Basin, we're in the early phases of ramp-up. And during this time, we've been optimizing our processes, including the resin transfer system, elution and ion exchange systems at Lost Creek, well performance in our first 2 header houses and lixiviant chemistry, and we have seen very positive results since the end of the quarter.

So each of the properties were in ramp-up. We're continuing that ramp up. It's going very well. It's going very successful. Steve, did you have any other color to add to that?

No, I think the main thing that what Matt and the rest of the team are doing is we are focusing on optimizing the main components of production, which are always flow and grade. And we work daily to increase those, and that's where we see ourselves going in '27.

Yes. It's really an exciting time. And I can't be more thrilled with the progress. When I look at Lost Creek, our flow rates have increased substantially. And like Steve said, it's flowing. The flow rates at Lost Creek are really coming up. They come up every single day this month. I couldn't be more thrilled. And at Shirley basin, that optimization of the lixiviant chemistry is absolutely demonstrating itself with significant improvements in the grade that we received from the wells.

So both properties are advancing through start-up, advancing through ramp-up. I couldn't be more thrilled with the progress. And that's the color I've got there, Soundarya. Does that answer your question?

Yes, Matt. Just a follow-up on that, like on prioritizing development spending and the CapEx requirement for '27. So how are you looking at managing the liquidity next year? And what milestones do you see that you actually gets to that EBITDA inflection point somewhere in late '27, early '28 year time frame?

Absolutely. And so we're projected to spend another $26 million on the Lost Creek wastewater facility and another $8 million on Shirley Basin through next year. With our expected production and sales in the pipeline, together with our existing cash resources, this is our source of funding.

And importantly, we also maintain financial flexibility, have a range of options available to support our ongoing operations and growth initiatives. We will continue to evaluate our capital requirements with a focus on accelerating our production ramp-up and advancing our organic growth pipeline.

Your next question is coming from Anthony Taglieri with Canaccord Genuity.

Maybe just to get a bit more granular at Lost Creek. So you guys indicated some of the lower grades that were realized in the quarter just given the decline from some of the older header houses. Is this something that can improve before Mine Unit 5 Phase 1 comes online early next year? Or is that sort of what we're waiting for to see some of those -- that grade profile improve?

I guess what I'm getting at is I know you don't provide quarterly guidance, but given we're in Q4, you have some results that you've already been seeing this quarter, directionally, should we expect an improvement in finished production in Q4 or something similar to Q3?

Great question, Anthony. Ramp-up is not always straight line. The key driver of Lost Creek is the flow. So right now, we're in the grade environment that we're in. As we progress into Mine Unit 5, we'll get into a new environment with different grades. Really, the target of our initiatives at Lost Creek right now are the increase in flow and the flow is going up and production is flow times grade. So we have flow going up and grade holding constant, which implies an increase in production.

Steve, any more color on Lost Creek and how we're progressing through the rest of this year?

Sure. Look, we continue on a daily basis to look for nuggets that we can assist in increasing that grade. As Matt said, our primary focus there has been grade and flow. And with respect to flow, we have seen the increases. We have seen productivity. We have seen optimization due to the sand filters that we installed, and we are very much looking forward to that wastewater facility coming on early next year.

The areas that we're working on right now, we are going back pattern by pattern, trying to find areas, where we can make small increases in grade. But your assertion that the grade is what it is for the remainder of this year is closer to the reality that we face in the later stages of mining in any pattern in any ISR facility.

Yes. And it's important to note that we have -- we've moved out of Mine Unit 2. We moved into the second phase of Mine Unit 1. So we've moved into the second phase of Mine Unit 1, and then we will then progress into Mine Unit 5. So we're always advancing through our mining units as we go. We're not -- we do not have any permitting delays. We're just advancing through our Mine Units.

Right now, we're in a phase of lower grade, but grades can and do fluctuate in ISR. The overall grade has exceeded our estimates, and we expect the end of the decline curve in Mine -- as we approach the end of the decline curve in Mine Unit 2, we are already in the process of transitioning to a new mine unit flow.

That's what we focused on. It's -- Lost Creek is flow. And I couldn't -- I wish I couldn't be more thrilled with the progress we're making on maximizing flow and understanding how to operate the new filtration.

Okay. Great. That's super helpful. Maybe just a follow-up on the contracting front. So we saw one of your U.S. peers recently, they signed 2 market reference contracts with no floors and ceilings, so indexed 100% of the spot price at the time of delivery. Are you guys also seeing some of these contracts available? And would that be a preferred structure moving forward?

Anthony, it's my favorite question. All right. We absolutely. We all get the same interactions with the utilities. We're all in the same environment. And we are absolutely in a state of transition, in my opinion, in a state of transition with how uranium is contracted. What you are seeing -- I believe I'm being careful with my wording. What I believe you are seeing is absolutely a shift from pricing security to security of supply.

Customers want security of supply. I know this because the term price is $10 more than the spot price. I don't have to read between the lines. I just read the line and it says the utilities are concerned about future supply. I see this as an opportunity. And I see this absolutely as a chance. I don't want spot price. I want a premium spot price going forward. And I see we're poised for a real change in how this works and our interactions with our customers are becoming very different.

And again, they're very much focused on surety of supply, and that implies a premium. Does that answer your question, Anthony?

It does.

Your next question is coming from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.

Matt, it's Kate filling in for Heiko here. Now that we're halfway through fourth quarter, would you be able to walk us through maybe the expected cash burn on the Shirley Basin ramp-up quarter-by-quarter over the next few?

Well, I'm not really -- okay. So when we talk about the cash burn at Shirley Basin, the spend -- we call it spend. The spend we do on development and operations remains constant. We're not -- as we advance Shirley Basin through mine development, we're not changing the amount of drills rigs and how we change the development going forward at Shirley Basin. So our cash spend is relatively constant at Shirley at Lost Creek as well.

We don't operate under campaigns. We don't bring in groups of drills and drill a bunch of wells and then have them leave. We just maintain a steady production of 25 or so rigs across the company and march our development forward. Our development is our mining, and we're always preparing for moving into the next environment. And we install 8 to 10 header houses at each mine each year, and we're just going to continue to do that for the next decade.

So our cash burn is relatively consistent. We did touch on the finishing up the capital projects. Shirley Basin will finish off this year with another $8 million projected for next year to finish off the wastewater treatment plant there, and we're finalizing the wastewater treatment plant at Lost Creek. Does that give you color?

No, absolutely. I appreciate the answer. And if I could just follow up with one more regarding Lost Soldier. Are there any other critical milestones you think we should be paying close attention to before a construction decision beyond the aquifer test and technical report, which I assume the latter is coming next month.

Yes. So look, the aquifer testing is done. We're now just compiling the technical report. The absolute catalyst, the milestone is going to be this publication of the technical report at the end of this year. Very excited about being able to share our analysis of Lost Soldier and then moving into a construction decision in 2027. The catalyst you're looking for is the publication of that technical report.

Your next question is coming from Jeff Grampp with Northland Capital Markets.

At the risk of beating a dead horse at Lost Creek on the production front, it sounds like grade is steady. Flow is up quite a bit sequentially, but pounds were down a little bit. So was there just some downtime at the plant during the quarter or some other kind of interruptions that explain the lower production in Q3 versus Q2 given the other variables you talked about?

Thanks, Jeff. I'll pass over to Steve to give a little bit of color.

Jeff. I think during the end of the previous period, we had seen some activities related to bringing the sand filters online. Again, flow grade, right? I beat the same dead horse all the time as well. We know that grade is fairly constant at this phase of mining in the Mine Units that we have. So our whole focus was on flow.

And during the end of the previous quarter, we had some maintenance activities that drove a lot of that flow, and we are also really learning how to optimize the use of our sand filter system I can really say confidently that we have done a great job doing that, and we are seeing growth on a routine basis now.

Yes. Yes. Thanks, Steve. Yes, that's the color I've guided. It's about increasing flow at Lost Creek. As Steve pointed out, we did some maintenance to the ion exchange columns in the third quarter. That impacts your ability to take flow from the wellfield. And the sand filters have just completely changed the environment there and really pleased with their performance.

All right. Great. I appreciate those details. And for my follow-up on North Hadsell, given the positive results earlier this year, can you update us on potential timing for additional work there? Is that something that could happen next year? Just any commentary on next steps would be great.

Thanks, Jeff. Look, we're very excited about North Hadsell. I mean, to get that kind of results from what is -- it's almost just greenfield exploration. Ryan, from a permitting standpoint, are we able to execute additional drilling in North Hadsell next year?

Yes. So we've already submitted an expanded drill program to the BLM that would allow us to do larger scale drilling in North Hadsell. We're under that process right now. But yes, in all likelihood, it's indicative that we'll be able to go to North Hadsell.

And John Cooper, why are you as the Head of Geology, why are you excited about North Hadsell?

Well, excited because we had very little data to go on and just to go out and drill these wide spaced holes and encounter these types of grades and thicknesses. On wide spacing is pretty exciting.

Yes. So you can tell, Jeff, we're very excited about it. We have the permits in place. We have the desire, and we will pull together our plans as we go through the next couple of months for where we're going to execute our growth strategy in 2027.

Your next question is coming from Ali Mecklai with RBC Capital Markets.

Stepping in for Andrew Wong, who can't make it today. It looks like there were some issues with transporting material from Shirley Basin to Lost Creek. Just curious what were the specific modifications needed at Lost Creek to unload Shirley Basin material? And do you expect those bottlenecks to persist through Q4?

Great question. Great. Steve, I'll hand it over to you. Transporting resin from Shirley to Lost Creek.

Transporting really wasn't a major issue. Any time you do something the first time, it takes time. So there is always -- we're going to call this granular ramp-up, okay? So when you start a new process, this was the first time for the new facility at Shirley to ship the product. So there was a learning curve there. And when we do the same thing receiving product at the Lost Creek facility, there was a learning curve there.

We have since had multiple shipments and they've become much more streamlined. So initial steps, always the first time, much more careful. Our regulatory process is in place. New procedures are in place. We have become much more comfortable with all those, and it's becoming much more routine.

Yes. That's the real message there is that we've become very routine in shipments of resin from Shirley Basin to Lost Creek.

I think it's clear. We've had issues not with transportation. That has gone smooth. It's on the receiving end of those vessels.

Yes. So things are going really well. I was there -- I was at Lost Creek on Thursday and we were doing a transfer of Shirley into the plant. It's going beautifully.

Yes, definitely. Just one follow-up. It looks like pounds captured were up 50,000 pounds quarter-over-quarter. Pounds drummed were down roughly 35,000 pounds quarter-over-quarter. Can you just talk about which metric do you think is more important and why they might have differed in Q3?

Okay. Great question. You're very astute and you've looked at the data carefully. Look, they both matter because they both are really measuring the same things. We get paid on pounds drummed. So I tend to look at pounds drummed, but pounds captured just gives you an indication that there are -- there's pounds coming into the system. When you have -- when you're doing maintenance at the plant, sometimes you get into a position where you build up plant inventory.

At Shirley Basin, we're absolutely building up captured pounds of inventory is just as you build that dead load -- not the dead load, but the uranium load within your resin exchange columns, so it takes time, and we started up with 0% resin, and now we're building that up. And the other part of it, too, is that we just -- in the third quarter, did an inventory adjustment in that we were drumming significantly more pounds than we were capturing, which is not physically possible. And so it just indicated that we were underestimating our pounds captured. Pounds captured is a calculated number. Pounds drummed is measured, and that's gospel. So we just adjusted our capture to reflect what we were showing in our drums.

Your next question is coming from Matthew Key with Texas Capital Securities.

Most of my questions have been kind of touched on, but I wanted to talk a little bit about costs, came in a little bit higher in 3Q relative to the previous quarter. I imagine a lot of that is due to just fixed cost leverage.

But I guess I wanted to ask you if you're seeing any additional inflationary pressures present in the business? And what are your kind of expectations over the coming quarters in regards to costs as output hopefully increases here in 4Q and into '27?

Yes. Thanks, Matthew. Thanks for the question. Jade, would you like to field this question for Matthew?

Jade [ Walle ] here. Were you saying comps or cost -- or cost. We couldn't hear your sound, Matthew.

Yes. It was regarding costs.

Are we talking cost of sales in terms of cost per pound? It's still part of that...

Yes.

Or cost production cost side of things. During the quarter, we only sold 10,000 pounds of produced costs and the cost per pound of those was relatively static with what it was the previous quarter. We did sell 180,000 of non-produced pounds. And of course, they have a higher cost.

So it changed the weighted average during the quarter increased the total average cost per pound sold because of those non-produced pounds that we sold during the quarter. That was just a function of the type of pounds that we sold during the quarter.

Yes. That makes sense. We had some pounds in inventory that we purchased previously. And so we just took this opportunity to get them out of the system. And so we have almost -- we have very little produced pounds left on purchased pounds left on inventory.

You asked a question about inflation. We're not seeing inflationary pressures in that we don't -- our lixiviants that we use are oxygen and carbon dioxide and baking soda, and they just don't have the same sort of inflationary pressures that you might be getting from people that are using sulfuric acid or something like that.

So we don't see that kind of pressure. We see the normal pressures associated with employment in that Wyoming is a state with essentially no unemployment. But it's just a normal inflationary. There's no other drivers in Wyoming that are leading to an inflation on labor that's any different than just the overall inflation rate.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I would now like to invite the CEO, Matt Gili, to provide any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Very pleased with the ramp-up as it continues at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin and very energized by our growth strategy and the opportunities we see across our assets as we continue to build America's premier uranium powerhouse across the state of Wyoming. Thank you, everybody, for participating in today's call, and thank you to my team for all the hard work that you do every day. Thank you, operator.

Thank you, everyone. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

Greetings. Welcome to the Ur- Energy Second Quarter 2026 Earnings and Operations Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Ur-Energy's General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Alex Ritchie. You may begin.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Today's presentation includes disclaimers related to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections, along with cautionary notes to investors. Please review these carefully, together with the risk factors described in our Form 10-K, our Form 10-Q and other public filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gili.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In addition to Alex, joining me on the call today are Roger Smith, CFO; Steve Hatten, COO; Ryan Schierman, VP of Regulatory Affairs; and Jade Walle, VP, Finance. We continue to believe the uranium market is supported by durable long-term fundamentals. More and more, nuclear energy is recognized as an essential source of reliable baseload generation. Global capacity is projected to nearly double by 2040. Governments, including the U.S. government, are prioritizing secure domestic fuel supplies and initiatives in Washington, D.C. are expected to put a premium on U.S. produced uranium. At the same time, there is a structural gap in the industry between expected demand for uranium and primary mine supply.

We are positioned right in the center of that gap because we are one of the very few companies that produce U.S. uranium, and we are poised to produce a lot more. We are doing this by building America's first district scale ISR uranium operation through disciplined, capital-efficient growth.

Now let's talk about our operations. In the second quarter, we drummed 141,000 pounds of yellow cake at Lost Creek. That is 47% more than we drummed in the first quarter of this year and 26% more than the second quarter of last year. We shipped 150,000 pounds. Again, that is 44% more than the first quarter and 42% more than the second quarter of last year. In other words, we are executing on our production strategy.

We met our delivery commitments, selling 215,000 pounds under our contracts, which brought in $14.4 million in sales revenue. We maintained our low-cost production profile, another reason why Ur-Energy is positioned as a leading U.S. ISR producer. Our cash cost per pound sold, including ad valorem and severance taxes, stayed low at $40.20 per pound. With $95.3 million in unrestricted cash, we ended the quarter with significant liquidity. This means we have the financial flexibility to continue advancing our production growth strategy. And we still had a healthy 348,000 pounds of finished inventory at the conversion facility for contracted deliveries.

We also proactively deferred 300,000 pounds of 2026 deliveries to 2027 and 2029 to decrease ramp-up risk and increase flexibility relating to our remaining 2026 delivery commitments. Overall, we believe that our second quarter shows the type of operational execution and solid financial foundation needed to continue to increase production and create long-term value for our shareholders.

Now I'm going to talk a little bit about our flagship ISR mine at Lost Creek. To grow production at Lost Creek, we worked during the quarter on various optimization efforts. This work included installing a sand filtration system to address fine particles from the well field that impact flow rates and production. But consider that we drummed more pounds of uranium in the second quarter than any quarter since we started to ramp up in 2022 without the sand filtration system. Although the system was installed in the second quarter, it wasn't fully commissioned and online until July.

We have been making great progress on other projects as well. We broke ground on our wastewater treatment facility in July and we are on track to finish our reverse osmosis upgrades and a new maintenance program by year-end. Our infrastructure investments are enhancing operational capacity and reliability at Lost Creek to support higher sustained production levels. We had 17 active drill rigs at Lost Creek that kept our wellfield expansion plans on track.

We made progress on delineation drilling in our fourth and fifth mine units. Subject to regulatory approval of our wellfield package, we expect to start well field construction in Mine Unit 5 by year-end. This additional drilling is accelerating wellfield development to ensure a steady pipeline of production areas to support future output. Together, these initiatives are expanding Lost Creek's production capacity and reinforcing the operational foundation for sustainable long-term growth.

Turning to Shirley Basin. We reached some important milestones in our growth strategy since the end of the first quarter to expand our production platform beyond Lost Creek. Shirley Basin is designed as a satellite facility with uranium captured on resin transported to Lost Creek for further processing and drumming.

In the second quarter, we began capturing uranium at Shirley Basin and with just limited operations, captured 10,634 pounds. Operations were limited because we needed regulatory authorization from the state to commence full operations and start shipments to Lost Creek and we received that authorization in late June.

Today, I'm excited to share the plant at Shirley is now in full operation and 6 of the 10 production columns in the plant are online. All infrastructure and processes are in place to transport uranium to Lost Creek, so we are ready. The only work left is to finish commissioning and inspecting the specialty trailers for hauling resin, and that first shipment is imminent.

Operating Shirley Basin as a spoke to the Lost Creek hub allows us to increase production while leveraging existing processing infrastructure. That said, we also have processing optionality. We are employing the hub-and-spoke model to improve capital efficiency and accelerate cash flow. But Shirley Basin is fully licensed to operate as an independent production hub in the future. That gives us strategic flexibility as we continue to grow in the Great Divide Basin and continue to advance our growth pipeline.

We have optimization activities at Shirley Basin planned through 2027, including wastewater treatment using engineering from the Lost Creek wastewater treatment project. And as Shirley Basin ramps up production, we expect it to become a large contributor to our long-term production profile.

Now I want to talk for a minute about our growth pipeline. We are an operating uranium mining company. We are not limited by our existing operations. We have an exploration and development portfolio with multiple opportunities to add resource and expand production. Later in the third quarter, we are planning to start an exploration program with 120 holes at our Lost Creek South project. This 16 square mile project offers strong potential to leverage our existing Lost Creek plant infrastructure with shorter development time lines and lower capital requirements.

Our Lost Soldier project is another potential spoke for the Lost Creek hub. Baseline environmental studies are underway at Lost Soldier to support a potential permitting decision as we continue to derisk the project. We have also started work on a technical report for Lost Soldier that we plan to complete by year-end.

Our North Hadsell project also remains an encouraging exploration opportunity following our first quarter drilling results, where 13 of 33 drill holes intersected uranium mineralization. Together, these projects strengthen our long-term organic growth pipeline. They provide multiple opportunities to expand production while leveraging our established Wyoming District ISR platform and our significant license capacity.

So we are producing today while advancing a district scale Wyoming pipeline. We are positioning the company to benefit from a structural domestic uranium bull market. We are executing our strategy. This includes growing a scalable 2-asset ISR production platform by further optimizing Lost Creek and ramping up Shirley Basin, advancing low capital organic growth opportunities to extend our hub-and-spoke production model across Wyoming.

We're leveraging our ISR operating expertise, our permitted assets and our processing capacity to efficiently convert resource into future production. We're capitalizing on the growing strategic importance of U.S. uranium production and we're maintaining disciplined operational execution and capital allocation to support sustainable production growth and shareholder returns. We have a unique advantage with our expertise and proven success permitting projects efficiently and without long delays. We also have the operating expertise and are building the scale to become the partner of choice in the consolidation and development of Wyoming's uranium districts.

With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator and open it up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question is coming from Anthony Taglieri from Canaccord Genuity.

Maybe first on production. So now that we've seen operations have been ramping up at Shirley Basin, you guys have the sand filter installed at Lost Creek. Can you give us any color on what we might see for production in the second half of the year? And is there a potential for you guys to not have to dip into any of the nonproduced inventory to hit the, call it, 700,000 pounds of deliveries for the rest of the year?

Okay. Anthony, thank you for the call. So look, we're not providing clear like production guidance, but we are providing that guidance with regards to our contracted deliveries. So we originally started the year with 1.3 million pounds of contracted deliveries for the year. We elected in July to defer 300,000 pounds of those deliveries. The classic risk management. This is a good opportunity for us in a very controlled fashion proactively to reduce the amount of contracted deliveries for the year give us flexibility for execution.

So I'm not going to provide -- the color I'll provide is that we are absolutely on track to meet our deliveries for this year. And we will have the opportunity and the flexibility now with the deferral to look at different ways to allocate the pounds.

Okay. Great. Maybe as a follow-up, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think you guys have signed a new contract recently, any new long-term contracts recently. What are you seeing that's changed, maybe, call it, over the last 6 months in terms of what's available, terms, pricing, appetite for new contracts, that sort of thing?

All right, Anthony. Okay. That's a very good question. So okay, what I've seen in my 6 months from when I started to now -- when we first started this, we were still very much in a, let's call it, a buyer's world. We spent a lot of time talking about the price per pound and we negotiated the terms. We had already gotten to the stage where we're doing a hybrid contract where we were doing a mix of market and fixed pricing. What I can tell you from my position, my point of view is that we seem to be entering into a series of discussions with buyers that are much more focused on surety of supply as opposed to negotiating the last $0.50 per pound off of a price. So that's the general flavor.

The market is very willing and eager to engage in contracts for surety of supply. The informal conversations we have with many of the utilities are you don't need to wait for RFPs. If you have pounds you want to commit, let us know, we'll talk. We have not entered into more contracts as choice, right? So we've turned down RFPs. We have a good, solid contract book. We're not looking to add more to it this year. Next year, we'll reevaluate the book and reevaluate the continued production ramp-up and make that decision next year on how we want to add to the book.

We do have a couple of discussions in play that could add some commitments this year for future years, of course. But we're not being aggressive right now. We see [indiscernible] we're on price. Look at every month, we seem to get an indication that the both term price and the future prices are going.

Your next question is coming from Jeff Grampp from Northland Capital Markets.

On the sand filtration system at Lost Creek, it looks like that was completed last month kind of fully. Not trying to get you to guide to anything too explicit, but just wondering kind of early time results or benefits you're seeing from that in terms of flow rates. And I guess just trying to contextualize how big of an impact or restriction was that over the last couple of quarters relative to what you're maybe seeing in real time now?

Okay. So Jeff, good question. Prepared for your question, Jeff. I am going to give some just indicative numbers, okay? We averaged just over 2,500 gallons per minute last quarter going through the plant. After the sand filter, last period, we've been averaging around 3,200 to 3,300. So just that inclusion of the sand filter has had a statistical meaningful increase in flow rates to the point now where the constraint is now moving to other aspects.

We now have enough flow that we need to get more clever in how we run our production and injection wells. So this is just classic theory of constraints. We had a constraint with sand on top of our ion exchange columns. We've removed that constraint and now we're moving on to the next constraint and that next constraint will be just bringing on more and more of our wells.

Got it. Super helpful details. I appreciate that. On shifting to the exploration side at Lost Creek South, can you touch on the, I guess, relative benefits or streamlining, if you will, of potentially moving that forward, assuming you have some good drill results there? Like how much of a benefit do you get from that being basically right on top of your existing assets there relative to something like Shirley Basin or some of the other satellite projects? Is there a meaningful benefit there in terms of accelerating time line to bringing like something like that online?

Well, certainly. I mean, so the impact of permitting the effort that's required to permit another property immediately to the south of an existing property is just less. And it's also just less when you are dealing with a property in the same hydrologic basin that you're currently in.

So look, I mean, Lost Creek South is just the south edge of our existing plan of operation. So the closer we can get to Lost Creek and find more pounds, the easier life is going to be. That adds more flexibility, adds more optionality. And it will -- any time you can increase the denominator, you're looking at lower cost, you're looking at more pounds.

Your next question is coming from Andrew Wong from RBC Capital Markets.

This is [ Ali MacLean ] on for Andrew Wong. Andrew couldn't make it, so I'm taking it.

Just a question on the cash cost. So cash costs were $40 a pound in the quarter. I guess what's the cadence for production costs going down? And when do you anticipate going down to a run rate level with the ramp-up of Shirley Basin? I guess just for the model, how do you project these costs going down and when it could reach a steady state? I think you mentioned previously like $20 to $25 a pound.

Yes. Look, our costs are so fixed, are so controlled in a fixed manner, much more than I'm used to in gold and copper. So we model 80% fixed costs for what we're doing. It's all about the production denominator. So the costs go down as the pounds go up. We spend almost the same amount of money every day regardless of how many pounds we produce. So you can model the cost decline exactly as you would model the production increase.

No, that's really helpful. And just one more for me on the well field development costs. Can you bring some color on the breakdown between the sites going forward? And how much is remaining for '26 and then '27?

I'm not sure, Jade, do you have that breakdown? Look, we spend between $12 million and $15 million per quarter on development costs. And that's broken out between Lost Creek and Shirley. We move drills between Lost Creek and Shirley to maximize our efforts and to maximize our flexibility. But you can model between $12 million and $15 million a quarter for our development costs for the next short period, for the next at least year as we go forward. I'm getting a note here from Jade. So Jade, do you want to talk?

Sure, sure. And those development costs, we don't anticipate those to change much because we're always staying 1 to 2 to 3 years ahead, so we can be ready for the next pattern.

Yes. 100%. I mean you did see a whole lot of development costs at Shirley Basin ahead of production, as you would expect, right? You've got to develop ahead of your production. But that will all -- we're into the stage now we're starting to levelize out that development cost per quarter. And as we move forward and when you start seeing our development costs decrease, we're either at the end or you should be concerned.

Your next question is coming from Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital Partners.

Most stuff I wanted to touch on was already asked. But just one bigger picture thing. Have you guys seen any change in the M&A market for development or nonoperating assets in the U.S., anything where -- without maybe naming assets, but just any more willingness by other holders to come to the table and potentially sell something that help you guys grow faster?

Absolutely, Joe. Always a tough question to answer. I'll be very purposefully vague in my response. I would say that there is a growing appetite for consolidation in the Western United States. We all recognize our position, both in the domestic production as well as in the global production. Growth is imperative for all of us. There is an eagerness, we really all work together very well. We know each other very well. And we're always looking for those opportunities where we can create shareholder value, however that shareholder value is created through consolidation. I have to be purposely vague, Joe.

Yes. Fair enough. I totally understand. And then -- just with these deferrals that you guys have made, is there any chance you guys would make any spot sales? Or at this point, is protecting your inventory for future sales more important?

Protecting inventory is more important. We are not interested in spot sales. We could place pounds with utilities if we need -- if we have excess inventory. So right now, we are very focused on the concept of risk management, providing us the flexibility to make our contracted deliveries, repay our uranium debt and to have a stockpile for when opportunistic pricing becomes available that we can engage in that.

Your next question is coming from Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance.

Matt, I guess my first question is on Shirley. Just trying to get a sense of from a wellfield and header house and just footprint perspective, how much -- I guess what I'm trying to get to is what kind of footprint do you need to hit that 1 million pound a year level or, let's say, 0.5 million pounds? And how many wells header houses, how much of a footprint do you have relative to that currently deployed?

Okay. Look, I'm going to answer. Thanks, Justin. Great question. I'll hand over -- I'll answer really quickly and hand over to Steve. Right now, we have 2 header houses installed and we are -- so I just want to make sure you understand from the standpoint of Ur-Energy, we are in the uranium mining business. We never stopped drilling wells. We never stopped building and installing header houses. We will continue to be drilling wells and installing header houses until 2 years before we are done. But Steve, relative to the long-term position, where are we right now?

So we have worked our way all the way out into our eighth header house with respect to drilling, understanding that it takes between 3 and 6 months ahead from the time you start drilling before it even gets into the construction phase. So ideally, for us, we look at anywhere between 6 to 10 header houses need to get installed every year to make the nominal 1 million pound a year production rate.

Now the advantages Shirley has, number one, it's got better grade than most facilities. Number two, it's shallower. So the drilling goes much quicker. So where at Lost Creek, you can see us with 17 rigs, we can run 8 or 9 rigs at Shirley. One of the other advantages at Shirley that you'll see is we have it drilled out already. So there is limited delineation drilling required and no exploration for us. We have to find the resource for the life of the project as it stands.

When you're looking at a 1 million pound a year production, how many header houses are you thinking of at that? Yes. We're typically -- again, it's grade-based, Matt, I talk all the time. The whole calculation for us is flow and grade, right? So we have a facility that can handle 6,000 gallons a minute, 1 million pounds a year, that's around 40 parts per million uranium coming through. So your peaks will define how long you run everything as well your flow. So we look anywhere at Shirley Basin needing to have 6 to 8 header houses installed on an annual basis. Justin, does that answer your question?

Got you. That's really helpful. Yes, I think -- yes, that was a great answer. It was really helpful. And I get that each well will be at various stages of increasing or decreasing rate flow rate, et cetera. So averaging large numbers. But yes, that gives me a great sense of kind of where you are in the ramp-up relative to the footprint you'll have at steady state.

And then just maybe just one other question. I'll free up the line. There is that uranium loan that's also, I think, nominally matures in Q4. What's the guidance there? Is that something that you could extend? Or is that something that needs to be delivered into? What's the thinking there?

Thanks, Justin. Look, our plan right now is to deliver into that loan. That is our base case plan. It's a loan with a trading entity, and those are renegotiable and those are flexible. And part of our risk management strategy is always to have multiple options. We will never miss a contracted delivery. We have a system in place to mitigate this risk through multiple opportunities. But the plan -- the base case plan is to deliver into that loan this year.

Your next question is coming from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

You had a chance to see the report this morning. Conceptually, demand for U.S.-sourced uranium and your conversations with U.S. utilities, I mean, obviously, there's a bunch of geopolitical risks. Obviously, things have changed. You hinted at this a little bit that you have the scale and the proven production. But walk me through what you're seeing in these conversations right now versus what may have been gotten discussed a year or even 3 years ago?

Yes. Okay. So Heiko, look, it's -- right now, the conversations are centered on surety of supply. You're hearing U.S. utilities talk about things like, look, we'll just do 100% market price contract. We will -- what can we do to sign a contract such that we have a surety of supply? And also kind of a breaking away or I don't want to put words in utilities' mouth, but we're certainly having a lot of conversations that are about don't wait for RFPs. Let's get a relationship. And if you have pounds to place, we're interested in that conversation.

So when you start breaking away from that RFP, that very rigid RFP process, which is very much the advantage of the utilities, as we're breaking away from that, my interpretation is that surety of supply is becoming more relevant than negotiating the last nickel on the price per pound.

Okay. Fair enough. And then at Lost Soldier, I mean, conceptually, the completion of the technical report and the resources should be by the end of the year. We're now in mid-August. Do you want to maybe provide a bit more color on when we should expect to see things, how far along you are in the pipeline? And maybe even if there is something that you didn't expect to see, given that we're so close, I would assume if there was anything major, you probably have a pretty good inkling of a clue thus far?

Yes. Okay. So look, we know Lost Soldier well and that we published a technical report on it back in like 2006. We know the deposit well. And we are now very much on schedule. And I know this because we talk about this a lot, Heiko. We are very much on track and on schedule to produce a technical report at the end of this year for resource and economics at the PEA level.

We are very eagerly pursuing that. We see a lot of potential here. And of course, I cannot comment on what we see as the numbers and all that. But I can tell you, we are very eager to finish this technical report to make that known to the investing public and more importantly, having that known to ourselves and our directors so that we can contemplate construction decisions.

Fair enough. But is it fair to say that there has been nothing that got spotted thus far that would majorly surprise us?

Steve, do we have any -- we don't have any surprises.

No, there are no surprises. This is an area that has been extensively drilled over many, many decades now with all the majors in the Wyoming area. We know what we have. There's a lot of data. There is thousands of holes out there that our geology team is evaluating. So we know it hydrologically. We know it geologically, it's going through the steps.

Yes. And look, let's just add on to that permitting because we are advancing the beginning of baseline permitting proactively in anticipation of a construction decision. Ryan, do you have anything you want to add about the permitting? Are you seeing anything there that is changing from our base case assumptions?

No, I don't think so. Like I said, as we said -- as Steve mentioned, there's no surprises. We're just moving through the process. So we're moving through the process for Lost Soldier. We're doing baseline work. A lot of baseline work has been completed in the past at Lost Soldier, and we're using that and trying to leverage that to find some efficiencies to accelerate that permitting time frame. But overall, it's moving through the process as would be expected.

Your next question is coming from Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald.

A couple of questions for me. Most of mine have been answered, but I just -- 1 or 2 more. First, now that you're starting to capture some material at Shirley Basin, I'm wondering how metrics like flow rates, recovery curves, et cetera, are reconciling in the field versus your internal plans.

All right, Steve, this is you. So Shirley is an interesting facility. You have been around this industry long enough to know what the norms are in the rest of Wyoming production, including at Lost Creek. Shirley has tremendous flow rates, which is a blessing and is also can be challenging from time to time when you work through the hydrology of trying to contact the ore.

So we are seeing flow rates that are significantly higher naturally than what we see at most other uranium mines in the state of Wyoming. So we are working through how that works out for us on the final recovery curves. The data that we capture from the first 2 header houses will help us plan more efficiently in the future, and we are beginning to see how those curves relate working at the pressures that we need to maintain our lixiviant chemistry the way we want it.

So again, we are in the very early stages of learning. We have great grade over there. We have great flow, and we're trying to leverage that to a great concise production curve that we can model for future periods, yes. So in general terms, based on our assumptions going into this and the commissioning of Shirley, we are seeing in general terms, are we seeing the aquifer and the ore reserve resource pardon me behave like we expected?

Yes. Yes, we are. We are seeing flows that are typically 2x to 3x what you would see at most other in situ facilities in the state of Wyoming. And the grades are certainly are upper class grades there. We are seeing really nice numbers on a per pattern basis and very concise geologic patterns there that will allow us to mine. But again, we are early in the recovery curve and we are developing more data every day as we work with geology and production.

Thanks, Steve. Mike, does that answer your question?

Yes. Yes, it does. And then my second one was just kind of a housekeeping one. I think you're guiding now with the deferral of some material. I think you're guiding to Q4 sales volumes of 540,000 pounds. My question was, does that include the 250,000 that's going to be returned on the term loan? Or that 250,000 going to be extra?

No, the 250,000 would be extra. So the guidance is for contracted deliveries. It's not for the repayment of the uranium loan.

That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that because it might not have been clear to everybody else.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'd now like to invite CEO, Matt Gili, to provide any closing remarks.

All right. Well, I appreciate the questions. I want to thank all of you who joined us today. We are uniquely positioned and our focus is simple. We are executing on our operating plans. We are growing production in a responsible way, and we are expanding our ISR uranium platform in Wyoming. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Greetings. Welcome to Ur-Energy, Inc.'s Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the meeting over to your host, John Cash, Ur-Energy's Chairman. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Ur-Energy's Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders. My name is John Cash. I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ur-Energy. Greetings to everyone who is listening on their telephone lines and webcast today. I would like to introduce the nonmanagement directors of Ur-Energy who are with us today in person or by telephone. Rob Chang, Elmer Dyke, Gary Huber, Thomas Parker, John Paul Pressey and Kathy Walker.

I would also like to introduce the officers of Ur-Energy, who are with us today in person or by telephone. Matt Gili, President and CEO; Roger Smith, Chief Financial Officer; Steve Hatten, Chief Operating Officer; Ryan Schierman, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs; Jade Walle, Vice President, Finance; and Alex Ritchie, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Additionally, I would like to introduce Virginia Schweitzer of Fasken Martineau, our Canadian Legal Counsel; and Nathan Hartman, our audit partner from BDO USA, P.C. Both of them are joining us by telephone today. I now call to order this Annual General and Special Meeting of the Shareholders of Ur-Energy, and I am pleased to welcome you to the meeting.

At today's meeting, holders of common shares are entitled to be present and to vote. I will be acting as Chair of the meeting, and Alex Ritchie will act as Secretary. I hereby appoint with your consent, Computershare Investor Services, Inc. to act as the scrutineer for the meeting. I now table statutory declarations of Computershare Investor Services, Inc. and Broadridge Financial Solutions, certifying the due mailing of the notice of intent availability under the applicable notice and access rules and for those who requested a full mailing, the mailing of the notice calling the meeting, the management proxy circular and form of proxy and the annual report, including the company's audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2025.

I will dispense with reading the notice calling the meeting. I direct that a copy of the statutory declaration confirming the mailing of the mentioned documents and copies of those documents be kept by the Secretary as part of the records of the meeting. I'm advised by the Secretary that there is a quorum present. As notice has been duly provided and a quorum of shareholders is present, I declare the meeting to be regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. Before we proceed to the business of the meeting, I ask the Secretary to read the customary cautionary warnings on forward-looking statements.

So Alex?

So during this meeting, there may be reference to forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements contain information that is generally stated to be anticipated, expected or projected by Ur-Energy and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results and performance of Ur-Energy to be materially different from any future results and performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information.

With regard to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections as well as other cautionary notes to investors, we direct attention to the legal disclaimers that are contained in the corporate presentation to be made later this meeting. The disclaimers apply equally to the oral presentation this afternoon and the corporate PowerPoint presentation. We ask that you read and carefully consider these disclaimers before investing or trading in our shares.

As well, the risk factors inherent in the forward-looking statements and projections are set forth and discussed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed on the United States Securities and Exchange EDGAR system and the Canadian SEDAR+ system on March 10, 2026. Ur-Energy undertakes no obligation to update publicly or review any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

All right. Thank you, Alex. The Canada Business Corporations Act and the bylaws of the company entitled any shareholder present in person at the meeting to request a vote by ballot rather than a show of hands. We will be conducting the voting by ballot for those present in person at the meeting on special matters to be voted upon today. I will ask the Secretary to read the scrutineer's report on attendance and voting by proxy. Alex?

The scrutineer's report shows that there are present at the meeting, 0 registered shareholders representing 0 common shares and that there are also present at the meeting 124 proxy holders representing 281,472,014 common shares for a total representation in person and by proxy of 281,472,014 common shares or 70.84% of the issued common shares of the corporation.

Thank you, Alex. A copy of the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2025, together with the report of the auditors on the financial statements has been made available on the Internet, including on the Ur-Energy website under applicable rules of notice and access and mailed to shareholders of Ur-Energy who requested a copy of the financial statements. Management of the company is available to answer any questions on the financial statements. Are there any questions on the financial statements?

All right. Hearing none. In view of the need to attend to formal corporate matters, certain shareholders have volunteered to move and second resolutions where required. While this procedure will facilitate the handling of formal matters, it should not discourage any shareholder or proxy holder who is present from speaking on any matter before the meeting. When I recognize you, please give your name and state whether you are a shareholder or a proxy holder.

[ Theresa Horne ]?

Theresa Horne, a shareholder.

And [ William Boberg ]?

Boberg, shareholder.

Thank you. The next item of business is the election of directors. I declare the meeting open for nominations for the election of directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed.

I nominate John W. Cash, Rob Chang, Elmer W. Dyke, Matthew D. Gili, Gary C. Huber, Thomas H. Parker, John Paul Pressey and Kathy E. Walker.

As there are no further nominations, I declare the nominations closed, and it is now in order for someone to move and someone to second a resolution electing those nominated as directors of the corporation.

I move that the persons who have been nominated for election as directors are elected directors of the corporation for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed.

I second the motion.

I now put the motion to the meeting. All those in favor of the motion, please signify in the usual manner by raising your hand. Any contrary? Carried. I declare those nominated to have been elected as directors of the corporation for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed.

The next item of business is the appointment of auditors for the current year and authorization for the directors to fix their remuneration. It is now in order for a motion to be made appointing auditors for the current year.

I move that BDO USA, P.C. be appointed auditors of the corporation to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are appointed at such remuneration as may be fixed by the directors and that directors be authorized to fix such remuneration.

May I have a second?

I second the motion.

As a motion has been made and seconded to appoint BDO USA, P.C. as the company auditors, is there any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please signify in the usual manner by raising your hand. Any contrary? Carried.

The next item of business is the nonbinding advisory proposal on executive compensation or say-on-pay. For approval, the executive compensation proposal must receive the affirmative vote of a majority of the shareholders that are represented in person or by proxy at the meeting. The Board of Directors recommends that the shareholders approve this proposal. The vote on this proposal is advisory only and will be taken into consideration by the Board of Directors in establishing executive compensation in the future.

Does anyone have any questions concerning this proposal? It is therefore now in order for a motion to be made on the advisory nonbinding resolution on executive compensation.

I move that the company's executive compensation be approved.

May I have a second?

I second the motion.

As a motion has been made and seconded to put the advisory nonbinding vote on executive compensation to the shareholders. I now put the motion to the meeting. Voting on this resolution will be conducted by ballot. Upon registration, the scrutineer has identified those shareholders and proxy appointees who are eligible to vote on this or any other special matter and has provided those individuals with a ballot. If you have not registered with the scrutineer, please do so now. Please complete the ballot marked say-on-pay by indicating a vote for or against the resolution and signing your ballot.

When the next item of business -- I'm sorry, the next item of business is the advisory vote on the frequency of the votes on executive compensation or say-when-on-pay. The proposal seeks a vote for every 1 year, 2 years, 3 years or an abstention. The choice receiving the most votes of the shares that are represented in person or by proxy at the meeting will be deemed to be the preference of the shareholders. The Board of Directors recommended that the shareholders approve annually for the advisory vote on executive compensation on this proposal. The vote on this proposal is advisory only and will be taken into consideration by the Board of Directors in determining the frequency with which they will seek shareholder say-on-pay.

Does anyone have any questions concerning this proposal? It is, therefore, now in order for a motion to be made on the advisory nonbinding resolution on the frequency of shareholders say on executive compensation.

I move that the company's executive compensation be put to the shareholders for advisory approval on the preferred frequency of every year, every 2 years, every 3 years or abstain.

May I have a second, please?

I second the motion.

A motion has been made and seconded to put the advisory nonbinding vote on the preferred frequency of shareholder vote on executive compensation to the shareholders. Now I put the motion to the meeting. Voting on this resolution, again, will be conducted by ballot. Please complete the ballot marked say-when-on-pay advisory vote by indicating a vote for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years or abstaining and signing your ballot. We will collect all ballots at the conclusion of balloted voting.

The next item of business for consideration is the renewal of the Ur-Energy Inc. amended and restated stock option plan dated 2005 as amended and to approve and authorize for a period of 3 years unallocated options issued under the plan. The shareholders of the corporation last ratified, confirmed and approved the renewal of the stock option plan and approved the authorized for a period of 3 years, all unallocated options issued under the plan in June of 2023. The stock option plan is part of the company's overall share-based compensation plan for eligible employees, officers and directors of the company. The maximum number of common shares available for issuance is the aggregate under the stock option plan, together with Ur-Energy's restricted share unit and equity incentive plan will not exceed 10% of the issued and outstanding shares of the corporation at the time of the grant.

A majority of the votes must be cast in favor of the stock option plan resolution. I now ask for a motion.

I move that the stock option plan resolution as set out in the management proxy circular be approved.

Thank you. May we have a second, please?

I second the motion.

Thank you. The resolution has been moved. Are there any questions from the floor? I now put the motion to the meeting. Voting on this resolution will be conducted by ballot. Please complete the ballot marked stock option plan resolution by indicating a vote for or against the resolution and signing your ballot. The scrutineer will now collect all of the ballots, and I would ask everyone to hand all of your ballots to the scrutineer. We will take a few moments to finalize the counting of the ballots.

We now have the results of the voting by ballot. So Alex, I'll turn it over to you to report those results.

For the advisory vote on executive compensation or say-on-pay, the proposal has been approved by approximately 97.63% of the votes cast for the resolution. The advisory vote on executive compensation is approved. For the advisory vote on say-when-on-pay, the proposal has been returned with a vote of approximately 98.2% of the votes cast for 1 year or annually. 0.23% of the votes cast for 2 years, 0.97% -- sorry, 0.70% of the votes cast for 3 years and 0.87% of the votes abstaining. The shareholders' preference is deemed to be 1 year or for an annual say-on-pay advisory vote. For the stock option plan resolution, the proposal has been approved by a vote of approximately 55.27% of the votes cast for the stock option resolution. As a result, the stock option plan resolution has also been approved.

All right. Thank you, Alex. As there is no other business before the meeting, I will entertain a motion to conclude the meeting.

I move that the meeting be concluded.

May I have a second?

I second the motion.

All those in favor of the motion, please signify by raising your hand. Contrary, same sign. The motion is carried. I now declare the formal portion of the meeting concluded, and thank you, everyone. We appreciate your participation. And at this point, we'll jump into the corporate presentation and just a discussion of what the company is up to. So give me half a second here to transition for that. I've got to check my glasses here and see which one works best for the screen. I think we'll stick with the glasses.

So we have been doing a lot of work, Matt and his team to update the corporate presentation. So we'll be going through that. The presentation is also available on our website. So we'd encourage you to take a look there as well as a lot of other fantastic information about the company, our projects, its governance and references to all of our disclosure as well.

So without further ado, we'll jump into the corporate presentation and give you an update on what the company is up to, and it certainly has been an exciting time. We do have our standard disclaimer, which I'm not going to read through because Alex has already highlighted some of the concerns with forward-looking statements. I'll try to stay away from those, but do be aware that some may be made, but we would ask you to rely on our disclosure on investing decisions.

We continue to receive, it seems like almost daily, good news from the uranium market and the nuclear market, broadly speaking, globally, not just here in the U.S., but every country around the world, it seems is taking a hard look at nuclear. And so that nuclear renaissance that really initiated just a few years ago is continuing and it just continues to pick up speed. AI data center growth has been immense. And a lot of those large data companies, big names like Google, for example, are looking to nuclear because they need carbon-free baseload energy to power those data centers. They don't want to rely on gas if they can get away from it. They certainly don't want to rely on coal. So the world is turning to nuclear with massive demand from AI and big data. And so -- we're continuing to see that grow. And I think that is going to continue to escalate as we go forward.

Reactor restarts. We've commented on this before and would comment on that again. As recently as 2, 3 years ago, we would have said that several reactors in the U.S. would be shutting down as they just aged out and the owners of those, the utilities simply would not be seeking relicensing to keep those open. But that's not true anymore. Right now, every single reactor that's online in the United States is going to be kept online for many, many years to come. A handful of reactors that have been shut down are being refurbished and being brought back online. We're very proud to comment on that, that we are actually providing the fuel to one of those restarts, that's the Crane Energy Center that Constellation is about to get started. So we're a proud customer of Constellation, and that's an American-made restart. And so we're very pleased to be a part of that story.

And that's not just true here in the U.S., around the world. Nations are looking for every opportunity to keep reactors on and keep them going with rare exceptions to that. But by and large, there is a significant global push. In fact, if you take a look at the COP meetings, you see that a number of countries around the world have committed to doubling or tripling the use of nuclear power by 2050. And so they are putting their money. They're putting their legislation where their mouth is at, and we're seeing tremendous growth. Here in the U.S., the federal government continues, again, day after day, it seems like we continue to get more and more good news out of the U.S. government on how they are assisting. Congress has passed a number of bills along with funding. You would have seen some months ago that $2.7 billion was allocated to enrichment.

Those awards have now been granted to several actors here in the U.S. to build out additional capacity or new capacity. And just a couple of days ago, you saw that there was an announcement by URENCO that they would be significantly increasing their capacity at their facility in New Mexico. In that press release, they commented a lot about U.S. made. And that was likely the nice bump we saw in share price with Ur-Energy and a number of our peers was a result of that. And so they have been contemplating that in the past, and we were very happy to see that, that decision had been made.

But we see that U.S. government support for a number of enrichers. We're seeing that with R&D. We have let the investor community know that we have a number of national labs, 5 to 6 national labs that are routinely doing work at Lost Creek to advance new technology. And I love to talk to people about that in the future. If you have questions on that, I won't take the time now to go through all of the programs they're working on, but it's a number of them. And so they will be out there soon actually to install UVVI system that can do direct measurement of uranium, and that's pretty exciting. That's a technology that up to this point has never existed, and that's going to be truly beneficial to Ur-Energy and the broader industry.

The NRC is also looking at significant revisions to a number of their regulations as a result of Executive Order 14,300. I would encourage you, if you're interested in that, look at the NRC web page. They have a wonderful description of all of those regulations that are being revised. They affect NEPA. They affect in-situ rulemaking, administrative hearings. I've had the ability to listen in on some of those public hearings, and it's very obvious that this administration and the NRC is very serious about improving the efficiency of their regulatory oversight of the nuclear industry. And that's going to affect not just the in-situ miners, it will affect the converters enrichers and certainly the utilities. So we're moving in the right direction there.

When it comes to the supply gap, we continue at Ur-Energy to entertain RFPs. We respond as appropriate, but there's big demand out there. A number of utilities have kind of given us the green light of any time you want to talk about it, don't wait for an RFP, the door is open, come and talk to us. That's a bit unusual. I've not seen that much in my career. And so we do have an open door to those utilities. Only about 8% of the 2024 uranium deliveries were U.S. origin, and those utilities are really wanting to get more secure supply. They don't want to rely on Kazakhstan as much. They really like U.S. supply. So we're happy to be there. And we always like to say we're there at the right time with the right projects. And we'll talk more about our Lost Creek and Shirley Basin projects here.

But we are a well-known, established producer here in the U.S. Lost Creek, we've been producing at now for over 12 years. So we've established a very good track record of production there. We've now commenced operations at our Shirley Basin project very recently. That's our second ISR mine, and it brings ISR back to its birthplace. Back in the very early 1960s, in-situ mining was invented at the Shirley Basin project through a pilot project that recovered about 1.5 million pounds using that technology. So it's just kind of apropos that we're bringing in situ back to Shirley Basin. So as far as contracts go, we've got 1.3 million pounds in contracted uranium sales for 2026. That's a big year for us, and we're continuing to produce into that from our facilities.

As far as our license capacity and our ability to produce, when you take a look at our mill capacity, we've got 4.2 million pounds licensed mill capacity, and we've got well fields ramping up at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin to fill that mill capacity. That total includes the license capacity at Shirley Basin. Please recall, although we didn't build out the back end of the mill, it is fully permitted, and we can build that out at 2 million pounds a year without any additional regulatory approval. And so that's there as the company grows, and we can advance that fairly rapidly. We've also got a great pipeline of projects for resource expansion. We'll take a couple of slides to talk about that. That's one of our priorities for 2026 is to expand our resources. And so we've got a better pipeline and increasing pipeline to feed those mills with.

We like ISR. We're well known as an ISR miner. We have not dipped our toe into the conventional world but we like ISR because of the low capital cost, the low operating cost and the minimal environmental impact. And so we're not afraid of conventional. If the right projects come up, we'll certainly dive into that. Certainly, with Matt now at the reins with CEO, he's got a tremendous amount of experience with conventional mining. So we're certainly not afraid of it. But right now, our preference is for ISR for those reasons that we've listed.

So taking a closer look at Lost Creek. We've got our updated tech report that's available online. I would encourage everybody to take a look at that. But we've got a tremendous number of roll fronts at Lost Creek. Any of you who have sat through one of my presentations in the past know that I really focus on that. And we've got a map upcoming that will show those roll fronts. It doesn't mean that those are necessarily mineralized or that they're economic, but you've got to have roll fronts before you can have uranium out there. And we've got roll fronts like crazy and historic drilling and more modern drilling has illustrated that. But right now, our measured and indicated resource is at 11.9 million pounds at a grade of 0.048%.

Our inferred resources at 10.4 million pounds at 0.047%, that gives us a remaining life of 13 years of production, and we look forward to expanding that going forward. The annual capacity from the mine site is at 1.2 million pounds per year. That's pursuant to our license that we have with the State of Wyoming. And the plant itself is licensed and constructed out to 2.2 million pounds per year. The tech report has got the full economic analysis in there, all-in cost as we get ramped up, averaging $55 a pound, an NPV of $244 million and a net cash flow of $442 million.

So this is the map that I just love to talk about. And I like it again because it shows those roll fronts. And you can see the historic drilling. Those are the small little black dots look like little ants out there. You can see on a lot of our property, those roll fronts are defined by very, very few drill holes. And what that means is we have a lot of room for additional infill drilling and opportunity to locate more resource and bring it into resource categories and include those in the tech reports. That will obviously require drilling, and we don't know for sure what we'll find until we go out and drill, but we do know that the role fronts are there. And we've got a very large land position out in the Great Divide Basin of over 35,000 acres. A lot of that is Bureau of Land Management mineral claims and a little bit of that is state land. So over the...

[indiscernible]

And inferred -- yes, that's right at Lost Creek and at LC East, exactly. And so when you see outside that licensed area, you don't see the gray areas, you see the dash lines. That's where the roll fronts extend outside of Lost Creek and into our surrounding properties. And those have been defined by drilling. So we know they exist. That's not hypothetical. So we've produced over 3.5 million pounds since going into production in 2013.

In April of this year, we had our strongest month on drum pounds that we've had in a very, very long time, did over 57,000 pounds in the drum, and we're working to continue to improve on that. Flow rates are improving. And with the sand filtration that we expect to have online in Q2 of 2026, that should continue to improve. We are making good progress on that, and we're on schedule. So no revision to that schedule whatsoever. We have existing ISR infrastructure that supports scalable district growth. So not only at Lost Creek and the surrounding 35,000 acres there that you see in the map, but potentially for our Lost Soldier, North Hadsell and other properties in the area, that plant has tremendous capacity to be able to serve those going forward.

And again, our -- one of our objectives this year is to really amp up exploration. That's something we've not focused on for a long time, but we do plan to put about 120 holes into LC South. That's on the South Central side there of Lost Creek. We know from historic drilling and also drilling that we've done that those fronts extend from, I believe it's mine unit 7 and 8 into LC South.

Moving over to Shirley Basin, measured and indicated resource of 8.1 million pounds at 0.22% grade. That gives us a 9-year mine life, 1.4 million pounds of annual capacity at the mine and 2 million pounds at the plant. Estimated operating cost is going to be about $50 if you average it out. That gives us an NPV of $83 million and a net cash flow of $119 million. Love the picture there that shows the new plant that's being constructed. That's a few weeks old. We're making great progress on getting that wrapped up. And we're far enough along. We are in production. The regulators have given us the green light to be in production. We have not shipped any resin yet from Shirley Basin over to Lost Creek for processing, but we will be doing that as we get through our final inspection by the regulators. So that's coming up soon.

I would point out that we don't need any more permits. We have all the permits. They're done. We're essentially down to that pre-ops inspection, getting that signed off before we begin shipping resin. So another shot here from about the same angle, but we do expect to be shipping resin this summer from Shirley Basin over to Lost Creek. It's just over 100 miles road distance between the 2, so not very far. This really expands our capacity as a company. It gives us good diversification by going into a different basin and also to a different project. So we're very pleased to be bringing that on and to have 2 operations up and running.

And I would just comment a little bit further on ISR and why we like it. We've got a picture here for those of you who are not initiated on what in-situ mining is. But in that photograph, that is an actual operating mine, and that's the level of disturbance you see. You can tell that it's very minimal. And when we get done mining, we will simply plug those wells, take out the wellheads, do a radiologic survey and do a free release. So that land can be returned to grazing or whatever the federal government wants to use for that land. It doesn't have to be held by the Department of Energy and perpetuity much like a tailings facility would.

But in-situ is Latin, it means in the place. And so we drill water wells down into the ore body. And in that ore body through the wells, we introduced a solution of water, just plain old groundwater fortified with oxygen and CO2. We may also add a little bit of bicarbonate if the chemistry requires, but that dissolves the uranium keeps it in solution and we pump it to the surface and just absolutely minimal disturbance, very low capital and operating cost.

So taking a look in some detail at our contracts over the next several years. You can see in the chart there on the left, a total of 5.75 million pounds under contract between 2026 and 2033. The 8 contracts that are outstanding. There's a mix in those contracts in the structure. Some of them are escalating fixed price and some have market-related components with floors and ceilings. We love that structure. We have a lot of uncontracted production capacity through 2033. As I mentioned earlier, we've got the ability to fill that very quickly if and when we want because of that increasing demand and interest in U.S. utilities, in particular, from getting U.S. supply.

We may also have some opportunity in the future to sell to the NNSA. So we'll keep tabs on that and watch that very carefully. And we've sold to them in the past, actually through the uranium reserve that was set up by Congress. And it's possible that through the uranium reserve, there'll be some additional funding there and additional purchases or there may be direct purchasing through the NNSA for defense needs. But with full optional and flex volumes, contracts represent about 45% of licensed and constructed capacity through 2033. The market-linked pricing components provide upside exposure with about 23% of base commitments tied to market-based pricing with full flex and -- I'm sorry, optional volumes, about 30% of the capacity is market priced once Shirley Basin is online in 2026. Contract structure secures substantial revenue while allowing downside protection and upside exposure. That's why we love those collars that we strive to get.

Going back to exploration. Great map here showing some of the work that we've been doing and we plan to continue to focus on. First, at Lost Soldier, that would be the project that's in that light candy yellow on the eastern side of the map. We've held that for a number of years that came to the company with the initial acquisition, including Lost Creek. But right now, we're working on technical and hydro studies, including pump test to better understand the resource that's there. And we have installed 18 wells that was done in 2025, and they're being used for those pump tests. The nice thing about Lost Soldier is it's not very far from Lost Creek. Maybe slightly too far to pipeline fluid, but certainly with an easy trucking distance if we decide to put a satellite in there and move material from there to Lost Creek for processing.

North Hadsell, those are the 2 blue pieces of property kind of north, north-central. If you've listened to my commentary on this in the past, you know that historically, there has been some drilling there, but we don't have the data for that. We have minimal data there. So we put our geologists on that, and they put in 33 pretty wide spaced exploration holes and had great success. 13 of those 33 had intercepts of greater than 0.20 GT. For Lost Creek, 0.20 GT is considered ore grade. I can't say that that's ore grade at North Hadsell. We'll have to determine that in the future. But certainly, those intercepts at Lost Creek would be considered ore grade.

Multiple mineralized horizons within those sandstones. It's a fluvial system. So we're very pleased by that. It's a nice stacked system that's very comparable to Lost Creek. And there's some scale there. Some of those drill holes that were, again, ore grade mineralization by Lost Creek standards were 1.5 miles apart. So that shows that there is considerable potential to grow that resource there. We won't know until we get the drill rigs back out there, but I'm excited about that project and those stacked roll fronts.

We do continue a lot of work in our Casper construction office. They're doing a wonderful job now producing header houses that we can load on trucks, as you see in the picture here and ship those out to either Lost Creek or to Shirley Basin. That's really improved our efficiency by doing that work in town, and they're churning out header houses at a very rapid pace now as the demand has obviously increased significantly for the second mine that's come online.

So turning to our corporate structure. This is all information that you can get it on your favorite app that tracks stock, but our share price, we've been in a great position here lately. And you can see that this is a share price from a couple of days ago. We've had a nice run upward, really enjoying that. And so our share price has had some really nice accretion. We're not at our weekly -- our 52-week high, but we're not terribly far off of it.

Volumes, very important. We have outstanding volume within the company. We're very investable. We're easy to get into to hold shares. And our market cap, we've been running $700 million to a little over $800 million in that market cap. Shares outstanding, we're just shy of 400 million outstanding. We do have the convertible notes from the financing that we did in December of last year. I would point out the cash position at the end of April, we had $107 million.

So we've got a good strong piggy bank. Our research coverage has been increasing significantly over the last few months. And so we've got some great coverage now, and that's growing as interest in the uranium space, but in more particular, in Ur-Energy continues to increase. And we also have some of the most sophisticated investors out there in the uranium space. So we're very pleased to have such a large percentage of institutional holders in our story.

So in summary, a few things I just would highlight again. Ur-Energy, we're in the right place at the right time. We've got 2 operating ISR facilities that are ramping up right now that's really diversified our risk and it has given us production flexibility. That puts us in a great position. We've got 4.2 million pounds of annual license production and processing capacity across the facilities. Shirley Basin is ramping up. Before too long, we'll be shipping resin from Lost Creek over to Shirley Basin. We're scalable, especially within the Great Divide Basin with so many exploration properties there and with such a great facility built out at Lost Creek, we can scale that going forward.

And this is all at the right time. We continue to see nuclear growth not only in the U.S. but around the world, and we're ready to sign contracts. We've got the capacity to do that production and sign up contracts as we believe they come into the place where they should be to support the company. We're not overly excited to do that. We're being judicious in the timing of those contracts. Matt is doing a great job of talking with utilities and keeping his finger on the pulse to see what their needs are.

But the execution, driving value. We're in a proven ISR producer. We've proven that at Lost Creek since 2013. We've produced over 3.5 million pounds. We're advancing the second project into operations. We did that in about 2 years. So we've done it. We know how to do it, and we're doing it again. We have shared processing infrastructure at Lost Creek that drives operating efficiency and improves our development capital. And we would encourage you to take a look at our technical reports that go into great detail on how we do that. So again, right place at the right time. It's exciting to be with Ur-Energy.

And with that, I'm sure we've got a few questions in the room. So I'll pause there. And operator, with that, we'll go ahead and end the broadcast here. But we thank everyone for participating via the webcast.

Thank you. This concludes today's meeting, and you may disconnect at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Greetings. Welcome to the Ur-Energy Q1 2026 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Alex Ritchie, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. You may begin.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Today's presentation includes disclaimers relating to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections, along with cautionary notes to investors. Please review these carefully together with the risk factors described in our Form 10-K and our other public filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators.

I'll now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gili.

Thank you, Alex. On Slide 3. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In addition to Alex, joining me on the call are Roger Smith, our CFO; Steve Hatten, our Chief Operating Officer; Ryan Schierman, VP of Regulatory Affairs; and Jade Walle, VP, Finance.

It is an exciting time to be a U.S. uranium producer. The nuclear and uranium market environment continues to strengthen and support our long-term growth strategy. Electricity demand growth driven by AI data center development is increasingly pushing the world towards nuclear energy for clean, reliable baseload power. Nuclear momentum continues to build through reactor restarts, life extension programs and SMR development initiatives. Recently, countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan that depend on LNG imports have increased efforts to restart their -- or expand nuclear generation in response to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. And just a few weeks ago, TerraPower broke ground on the first utility scale advanced nuclear power plant here in the state of Wyoming.

At the same time, U.S. government policies and programs are supporting domestic nuclear fuel supply chains and regulatory reforms and intend to accelerate nuclear deployment. In January, the Department of Energy announced approximately $2.7 billion in contract awards to support the development of domestic low-enriched uranium and high-assay low-enriched uranium enrichment capacity. Long-term demand growth is expected to require significant new mine development. And while the nuclear industry is increasingly focused on secure uranium supply, only about 4% of uranium deliveries to U.S. utilities in 2024 were U.S. origin. We believe these market tailwinds continue to highlight the strategic importance of domestic uranium production.

Now let's talk about what we, Ur-Energy, are doing to contribute to the transformation of the nuclear industry. Slide 4. The first quarter of 2026 brought several meaningful operational wins as we continue executing on our uranium production growth strategy. At Lost Creek, we improved our operational performance, which reflects the work we've been doing to improve flow rates. We captured 110,000 pounds on resin during the first quarter. That is an increase of 41% over the last quarter and 48% more than the first quarter of 2025. We dried and packaged 96,000 pounds during the quarter and increased finished inventory at the conversion facility to more than 417,000 pounds, which is a 14% increase since year-end.

We also continue to improve our cost profile at Lost Creek. The average cash cost per pound sold dropped 13% quarter-over-quarter to $37.5 per pound. This cost amount per pound includes ad valorem and severance taxes. We sold 55,000 pounds during the quarter, which was in line with our committed delivery schedule. Note that our delivery schedule for 2026 is heavily weighted towards the second half of the year as we continue to ramp up with both mines. Our average sales price was $71 per pound, which is a 12% increase over the fourth quarter of 2025, as our sales this quarter were under newer contracts with more favorable pricing structures. We ended the quarter with $123 million of unrestricted cash.

On Slide 5, Lost Creek. Looking forward at Lost Creek, we drummed over 57,000 pounds in April. That's our highest monthly total since we decided to ramp up operations in '23. Our production trend at Lost Creek continues to move in the right direction, but we are still focused on getting better optimized -- we're still focused on better optimizing operations and increasing production rates. We've made some great strides ramping up production rates at Lost Creek. However, our flow rates continue to be impacted by fine particles from the host formation. To manage these fines, we are installing and commissioning a sand filter system that is on schedule to come online this quarter.

Our 2026 production plans in the wellfield are focused on Phase 2 of the first mine unit, Mine Unit #1. These plans remain on schedule with the new header house continuing to come online. We continue to prepare for the next mine unit, Mine Unit 5 to come online in 2027. Again, while production is trending in the right direction, we believe the specific initiatives that are underway position Lost Creek for stronger production performance as the year progresses.

Slide 6, Shirley Basin operations. The company reached a major milestone in April when we commenced initial mining operations at our Shirley Basin mine. After Wyoming regulators completed their inspection, we brought our first header house online, and we are now capturing uranium on resin from production solutions. Construction and wellfield development activities at Shirley Basin accelerated and progressed significantly during the first quarter. By the end of the quarter, we had pilot drilled 540 production and injection wells, cased 312 of these wells and constructed 5 header houses. We have been operating 8 drills, in line with our production needs.

Shirley Basin is a satellite facility. We will be transporting uranium loaded resin to Lost Creek for final processing and packaging. So our next major milestone is to start moving resin to Lost Creek. At this point, the infrastructure at Shirley Basin is substantially complete. Subject to our additional and final regulatory approval, we expect to start these shipments in the summer. This integrated operating model enhances efficiency, supports production scalability and should substantially increase our uranium production. Shirley Basin is a historically significant uranium district that played an important role in the early development of ISR mining in Wyoming, and we are on track to bring this back into commercial production soon.

Slide 7, our Wyoming ISR growth portfolio. Beyond our operating projects, we continue exploration activities across our Wyoming project portfolio that will support development decisions. At our Lost Soldier project, we commenced aquifer testing in April and plan to start baseline environmental studies this year. We are on plan to have an updated technical report, including economics, completed by year-end. There are 4,000 historic drill holes at Lost Soldier, and it is close to Lost Creek, so the project has strong potential to be a future satellite operation that leverages our existing infrastructure.

We also completed 33 exploration drill holes at our North Hadsell project before the seasonal sage grouse restrictions started in March. The results include 13 ore grade intercepts and indicated potential for a stacked roll-front ISR system with up to 8 individual roll fronts. Looking ahead, we also have plans to begin a drill program of approximately 120 holes at our Lost Creek South property later this summer with the goal to further extend Lost Creek into new mine units.

And on Slide 8, closing, we entered the second quarter with $123 million in cash, over 417,000 pounds of uranium and inventory at the conversion facility and momentum building on both of our operating mines. As we move through 2026, our priorities remain focused: Continue to increase flow rates and optimizing operations at Lost Creek; achieve commercial production this summer at Shirley Basin, followed by production ramp-up; continue to advance our Wyoming exploration portfolio towards development decisions; continue to improve our safety culture and performance, which has already seen significant improvement; and meet our 2026 uranium sales agreement commitment from existing inventory and production.

On that point, our production plans still support our potential to meet these commitments after commencing shipments from Shirley Basin, bringing the sand filters online at Lost Creek and our other initiatives to continue to increase production. And as I mentioned, the substantial majority of our deliveries are scheduled for later in the year.

We are capturing uranium at Shirley Basin and are close to having 2 ISR uranium mines in commercial production. We are improving our production momentum. We are advancing our Wyoming ISR project pipeline, and we have a strong balance sheet. We are also bullish on the need for a larger supply of U.S. produced uranium for an expanding nuclear industry. As one of the few U.S. uranium mining companies that is actually producing uranium, we believe Ur-Energy is well positioned to help meet the growing demand.

And with that, I'll turn the call back to the operator to open up the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question for today is from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.

Can you give a bit of color on what you're seeing in conversations with your utility partners given the current geopolitical risk factors that we're seeing around the world? I mean I assume that conversations, the tone is quite positive. But maybe you want to provide the audience with a bit of color on what you're seeing in the actual market.

Absolutely, Heiko. Okay. So what we are seeing is a lot of activity from U.S. utilities in this -- in the first quarter, regarding contracting future uranium supply. Now of course, I mean, of course, you would expect that, right? We're also seeing -- I'm trying to be very careful. I don't want to ever disclose anything confidential. We're starting to see a lot more interest in securing supply over price negotiations. I wouldn't -- kind of, in summary, Heiko, without divulging anything confidential, there is a lot of energy right now regarding utilities looking to secure future supply. And of course, for utility, future supply generally starts like 3 years out.

But we're starting to see -- there's a lot of interest. We get a lot of inbound RFPs. We're very careful and choosy about what we respond to because we don't want to overcommit. We've got a very well-crafted commitment forecast, and we like to keep pounds extra so that we have the ability to be flexible in the future. But there, it is very strong out there right now regarding utilities looking for pounds.

Fair enough. And then just for our model, how much has been -- money has been spent at Shirley Basin year-to-date? And maybe if you want to give a bit of color on the rest of the year quarter-by-quarter, please?

Absolutely. So what I have -- I'm going to answer quickly, and then I'm going to pass over to Roger to fill in the details. The entire commitment for Shirley Basin for capital this year remains at $25.5 million [indiscernible].

Okay. So that's unchanged?

Yes, it's unchanged. The total capital commitment for the water treatment upgrades at Lost Creek is now forecasted between $25 million and $33 million. What we did there is we've expedited and brought forward the building of those sand filters, which is critical to us meeting our production goals. And we have incurred a slight increase in expense by bringing those sand filters forward. Steve can go through that in more detail, but we are now at the stage the sand filters are installed on a pad -- plant. We're piping in the sand filters, and we have the aggregate ready for installation within those sand filters.

Steve, anything else you want to touch on that?

No, I don't think so. Just note, Heiko, that we will be focusing and we are focusing on the very detailed engineering for the Lost Creek work, working already with the construction team as well and getting procurement done as quickly as possible so we can really advance hard construction at Lost Creek this summer. But Shirley is moving along steadily. Most of the main equipment and any of the things that you see on our site show you that. So we feel good about that.

Roger, did you have any further color on the quantities at Shirley Basin we spent in the first quarter?

Yes, just a bit. Heiko, thanks for the question. During Q1, we spent approximately $11 million of that $25.5 million of CapEx for this year. So we have probably just under $15 million yet to spend on Shirley Basin CapEx throughout the year.

Thanks, Heiko, for the question. And does that cover what you're looking for?

It does. But like would you want to guess a little bit on a quarterly basis, like a little bit more color?

Well, I don't want to get -- look, it's going to -- Shirley Basin construction is heavily weighted towards the first half of the year, further quarters, because we're in the very final stages of construction.

Your next question is from Anthony Taglieri with Canaccord.

Maybe just on Lost Creek. So noting the 57,000 pounds drummed in April, should we expect this to be linear for the rest of the Q2? Is there any reason why production in May and June might be a bit lower than April?

Well, again, I'm being very careful with putting out future guidance. I will say that in April, we actually exceeded our internal plans for production for the month of April. So April was a really good month. You talk about -- I would look at more linear from a quarter-to-quarter standpoint versus a month-by-month standpoint, peaking out -- getting us -- with Shirley Basin getting us to that 1.3 million pounds.

Okay. Great. So maybe just as a follow-up for Shirley Basin. How has that start-up been versus expectations? Maybe some commentary there would be great. And what still needs to happen there from a regulatory point of view to begin shipping loaded resin to Lost Creek. And when you say summer months, is that sort of like a mid-June time line?

Okay. So I'm going to answer the first question and then hand over to Ryan. So look, we were -- our internal plan was that we would have the ability to add lixiviant start liberating uranium by the end of April, and we were able to beat that time line. So we were actually a few days, a week or 2 ahead of schedule. That's progressing very well on track. We're very excited about what we're seeing so far at Shirley Basin.

Ryan, can you give more color into what is that final regulatory approval?

Yes. So final regulatory approval is a preoperational inspection. What this is, is just a verification that infrastructure and our programs are in place to safely do what we said we were going to. At this point, we don't believe we have anything that would preclude us from passing through that inspection. We've been preparing for it, and it's been on our radar. It's a regular part of business. So nothing out of the norm for us on that.

And yes, when we say when we expect to do that, again, being careful, but your original assumption was fairly on track of when we expect the timing.

Your next question for today is from Jeff Grampp with Northland Capital Markets.

Matt, so outside of the wastewater and some of the kind of upgrades to address the fines issue, it sounds like there's some other general optimization initiatives at Lost Creek that you guys are evaluating or implementing. I was just hoping to get a little more detail on what some of those other projects are? And are these kind of cost optimization, production optimization or any other details you can share?

Okay. So the other main business improvement activities at Lost Creek are not capital improvements at all, but they're really -- they're procedural and operational improvements. And they're specifically regarding our maintenance systems, just getting a well-built, well-articulated and well-executed maintenance program for the plant itself as well as bringing in procurement, getting -- we beefed up our procurement team and getting it aligned with maintenance so that your parts are there when you need them and your kits are ready when you need to do maintenance. Those are the 2 other initiatives, the primary initiatives at Lost Creek regarding beefing up operation.

Got it. Great. Appreciate that. My follow-up on the exploration side, specifically looking at Lost Soldier, I noted you guys are looking at kind of some pre-permitting activities, technical report coming later this year. Is the technical report, would you say kind of a prerequisite, if you will, in getting some positive data there to kind of, I guess, more fully look at a full-blown kind of permitting exercise? Or how comfortable are you guys kind of trying to accelerate potentially permitting and getting that to production relative to technical report and more kind of technical evaluation internally?

Yes. I understand your question, Jeff. It's a really good question. Look, we are progressing along with the technical report of Lost Soldier, and we will do the work to the standard we always do the work, which is extremely high standard with economics. We have initiated or are in the process of initiating the baseline surveys as the beginning of our permitting because we feel very comfortable in spending that money before we finalize the technical report to make a construction decision. It's a modest spend at this time, but it is prudent, and it will accelerate the permitting process should we make a positive investment decision at the end of this year.

Got it. And in general, I'm not trying to hold you to too specific time line, but is, I don't know, 2, 3 years a good kind of rule of thumb for permitting a project like that? Or am I off base one way or another?

I would say 3 to 5 years is a fair estimate.

Your next question for today is from Joseph Reagor with ROTH Capital Partners.

Most of my questions have already been touched on, but a couple of other kind of fine-tuning things. Matt, in your prepared remarks, you commented on contracts being second half weighted. Is that just because Q1 was so light that even if we put the rest of them evenly across the year, then it's going to be second half weighted? Or even over the remaining 3 quarters, is it still second half weighted?

Yes. I mean, so it's weighted in the second half of the year. You know how lumpy our delivery contracts are. And that's one of the consequences of the way that we contract, is it comes in real lumpy. We focused our delivery commitments for the second half of the year to -- to be fair, to match our production profile for ramp-up, Joe. And that's -- so I would -- we would -- we don't -- we put out some guidance in the 10-Q to show the delivery commitments by quarter. They're weighted to the second half to match our production ramp up.

Joe, does that kind of answer the question you're looking for?

Yes. Yes. No, that's fair. And then just in general, as you think about kind of how Lost Creek has performed since it restarted, there's been a number of challenges or hurdles as we've gone along from hiring to getting enough header houses built. But do you feel that the underlying resource has performed as expected and this is simply a matter of you got to get enough header houses built so that you get operating so you can get production up to nameplate? Or is there anything that has underperformed kind of under the hood that we haven't talked about yet?

Okay. Very, very good question, Joe. All right. So at Lost Creek -- and this is reflected in our updated technical report earlier this year. Lost Creek has demonstrated the ability to produce uranium as an ore body. The resource is very solid. We've updated that resource, and we're very confident in that resource. And to the point, we actually added almost 4 million pounds into that resource. So the resource itself and the ability to get uranium into solution has been very well documented at Lost Creek. What -- and there were challenges in the startup and there were -- labor was tight and drill rigs were tight and all those things, and we've worked our way through all those.

The thing that is hindering us from increasing ramp-up even further right now is those fines that are coming in from the wellfield. It's important to note, our hypothesis right now, those fines aren't really present in the ore body. What they are, they appear to be iron mineralization that is being liberated by the kind of the same process with the oxygen that we're adding into the lixiviant oxygen we're adding into the solution, is also oxidizing some iron mineralization. We refer to colloquially as orange grunge that comes out on top of our resin columns. So we really see -- while we didn't anticipate needing prefilter into the plant before, we now have -- we're installing the sand filters so that we have -- we're prefiltering all of the solution coming into the plant as well as on all the header houses, we've installed -- all the new header houses for Mine Unit 1, we have installed filtration at the discharge of the production wells as well.

So I mean, in summary, very confident in the resource at Lost Creek. And it's demonstrated, it's proven itself multiple times as being there and being very, very amenable to what we do. So again, very confident in the resource itself. I don't have something that's hidden that you -- I don't think you know about and really see the solution to the fines as being the next major change and inflection point in the production ramp-up curve at Lost Creek.

Your next question for today is from Soundarya Iyer with B. Riley Securities.

Matt and team, congratulations on the quarter. So I just have 2 questions. Starting with the realized price, you realized about $71 a pound on Q1 sales, which was a meaningful step-up from last quarter and last year. So how should we think about the blended realization as we go into the second half of 2026?

Yes. Very good questions, Soundarya. Yes, look, we've disclosed this in the 10-Q as well. We are -- we have committed to deliver 1.3 million pounds for the year, and we expect that realized price from that 1.3 million pounds to be $83.2 million. So that tells you what the blended. You do that math and you see what the blended price is for the year. The $71 that we received in the first quarter was a good contract, relatively better than some of the other contracts we're delivering into this year.

Got it. That's helpful. And then on just the macro front, the U.S. uranium, we have just a handful of producers with permitted ISR sites. How are you thinking about the M&A landscape right now or going into -- going through 2026? What's the appetite for organic growth or inorganic growth in this industry today?

Okay. So very probing question. Look, I believe that all the CEOs you talk to are going to tell you that we are in a period that appears to be amenable -- I'm being very careful in my words here, appears to be amenable to consolidation. And so it's a very exciting time to be a uranium producer in the United States. There is opportunity for consolidation. And we, at Ur-Energy, are very well placed to participate in that consolidation. We are producing today. We're located in -- our corporate headquarters are in Casper, Wyoming, and we have a very healthy balance sheet with the cash necessary to utilize for high-quality opportunities should they arise.

I will now hand the floor over to Valerie to moderate webcast questions.

Thank you. Our first question, we've touched on this earlier, can you describe some of the terms on the long-term contracts that you've signed recently?

Well, I don't -- we don't disclose that. I mean what I can tell you is the present appetite for long-term contracts right now -- and I'm really regurgitating what Cameco talks about quite a bit. You see your term price, your term price is in the low 90s right now, and that's -- all these prices being escalated, typically around 3%. But you're seeing the term price being around the low 90s. You're starting -- you see -- almost all contracts now include a portion of the delivery that is market related with floors and ceilings. The floors and ceilings typically run kind of in the -- right now in the kind of $80 is a floor and kind of towards $120 is the ceiling. Each one of these contracts is different. Each one of these contracts has its own nuance. And I'm really just regurgitating what you've heard Grant at Cameco disclose. So I'm being a little careful, but that's generally the industry trend right now.

Okay. There are no more questions from the webcast.

All right. Thank you, Valerie.

There are no further questions from the phone lines. I will now hand the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for participating in the call today. Really -- a very strong quarter from the standpoint of the ramp-up at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. We're very proud of the activities that we've completed. We're very, very energized by what we're seeing going forward. We look forward to 2026 to be a real inflection year for Ur-Energy, and we're proud to be part of the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle.

So thank you, everyone, for joining today.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Thank you for joining UR-Energy's Year-end 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Alex Ritchie, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Ur-Energy.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions, and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We don't undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Slide 2 contains disclaimers that relate to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections and cautionary notes to investors. Please consider these carefully, along with the risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K that was filed on March 10, 2026.

I'll now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gili.

Thank you, Alex, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Slide 1. As many of you know, I joined Ur-Energy midway through 2025. From my perspective, it was a year of strong execution and meaningful progress. Across our operations, development pipeline and financial position, we delivered tangible improvements that position the company for production growth in 2026.

Slide 2, disclaimer. As Alex mentioned, we will likely make forward-looking statements today. Please read the disclaimer at your leisure.

On to Lost Creek, Slide 3. At Lost Creek, our focus on operational execution translated into significant year-over-year gains. We ended the year with 406,000 pounds of product in inventory, an increase of 21% over 2024.

We increased pounds drummed in 2025 by 65% over 2024. We also improved wellfield flow rates, increased pounds captured by 40%, and increased our profit per pound sold by more than $12. Our average cash cost per pound sold, including severance and ad valorem taxes was $42.89. These results reflect stronger wellfield performance improved plant throughput and disciplined operating focus.

Slide 4. Ongoing drilling at Lost Creek continues to create value. As detailed in our updated SK 1300 technical report, the measured, and indicated resource is now estimated at 11.9 million pounds, and the inferred resource is at 10.4 million pounds.

The estimated mine life at Lost Creek was extended by nearly 3 years, and the post-tax net cash flow increased to $442 million, roughly 45% more than the previous estimate. The NPV with an 8% discount rate is now estimated at $244 million with an internal rate of return of almost 66%.

On Slide 5. We still only drilled a portion of the more than 35,000 contiguous acres at the Lost Creek property. As our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Steve Hatten, said in yesterday's press release, every time we drill Lost Creek, we've been fortunate to increase the resource base. This underscores Lost Creek's scale, longevity and long-term growth potential.

On to Slide 6, on Shirley Basin. At our Shirley Basin project, we made substantial progress towards bringing our second ISR production facility online. The initial processing plant construction is nearing completion with all ion exchange columns installed and key tanks in place. To support start-up of operation, we've drilled 469 injection and production wells.

In Mine Unit 1, Header House One is ready to begin initial injection and recovery from the wellfield pending approval from the State Environmental Department. They began their preoperational inspections in late February and are looking at our wellfield data package. So that process is underway. The March 2024 technical report for Shirley Basin estimated at a 9-year mine life and 8.8 million pounds of resource, in the measured and indicated categories.

The estimated post-tax net cash flow is $119 million. The NPV with an 8% discount rate is $83 million with an internal rate of return of 69%. The estimated all-in cost is $50 per pound. During 2025, we grew our Ur-Energy workforce by 55% and welcomed 56 new team members. The majority of those were added to support Shirley Basin, but we also strengthened our operational, technical and corporate teams across the company. We are proud of the team we're building.

Slide 7. From a financial perspective, we ended the year with $123.9 million in cash, driven largely by the successful closing of our 4.75% convertible senior notes. Our cash position as of March 4, 2026, was $115.3 million. That doesn't include $18.5 million that we will receive this month for 24.7 million warrants that were exercised last month for about 12.3 million of our common shares. All of our outstanding warrants were exercised over the last few months, except for an insignificant number that expired.

The strength of our balance sheet gives us the flexibility to fund Shirley Basin commissioning, continued ramp-up at Lost Creek and disciplined resource growth. And while we're not taking any victory laps just yet, it's worth pointing out that we finished the year with a positive gross profit of $74,000, a modest number, but an encouraging milestone as operations and production continues to improve.

On Slide 8. At our Lost Soldier project, we installed 18 aquifer test wells in late 2025 to support the evaluation of the potential for ISR development. Aquifer testing will this month followed by baseline environmental studies for permitting -- for potential permit.

Lost Soldier is just 17 miles from the Lost Creek processing plant, which could mean an opportunity to develop it as a satellite operation using our existing infrastructure.

We've also started work on a technical report for the project that we expect to complete by the end of this year. At our North Hadsell project in the Great Divide Basin, drilling continues to deliver very encouraging early results. Through the end of February, we drilled 32 wide-space holes totaling 33,000 feet.

7 of those intersected significant uranium mineralization, including 13 intercepts exceeding our Lost Creek cutoff grade. These results suggest multiple stacked roll front horizons with grade and thicknesses comparable to Lost Creek, supporting the potential for future ISR development.

The results include 2 standout holes, about 1.5 miles apart that intersected significant stacked mineralization at similar depths, giving us some early confidence in the potential scale of the system. And North Hadsell is only 18 miles from Lost Creek.

Once we wrap up the 50-hole program at North Hadsell, we'll move the rigs over to our Lost Creek SaaS project this summer. Lost Creek is located adjacent -- Lost Creek South is located adjacent to Lost Creek, and we're planning a 120-hole drill program there this year.

These exploration programs are critical to expanding our development pipeline, growing our resource base and diversifying potential future production across multiple projects.

Slide 9, wrapping up. As we enter 2026, we continue to optimize our operations at Lost Creek, while our second ISR facility at Shirley Basin is making significant progress towards startup.

Our combined estimated mineral resource totaled 21 million pounds in the measured and indicated categories, and 10.4 million pounds in the inferred category as of December 31, 2025, providing a strong resource base for our production.

We have contracted for sales of 1.3 million pounds in 2026. We plan to cover those sales with pounds in inventory and new pounds that we produced at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. And on March 4, we had 379,000 pounds in conversion facility inventory.

With our growing resource base and strong balance sheet, we believe Ur-Energy is well positioned to benefit from positive uranium market fundamentals and increased demand for secure U.S. uranium supply.

And with that, I'll turn it back to the operator and open it up for questions and answers. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today is coming from Soundarya Iyer from B. Riley Securities.

And congratulations on the quarter. I just have two questions. So starting with the $1.5 million commitments, including the $250,000 loan repayment, with current inventory levels, can you help us understand, like what gives the confidence in meeting these deliveries, and increasing utilization from the current levels to that 50%, 60% range?

Certainly, Soundarya. Thanks for the question. So look, when you talk about what gives us that confidence, it's what we're seeing now with the current ramp-up of operations at Lost Creek combined with the positive progress on construction at Shirley Base.

So we do our mine planning, we do our analysis of risks and opportunities. As we go through this year, our plan, which is a very solid plan that we've gone through very carefully, those we were able to make our deliveries of 1.3 million contractual sales for the year from the existing inventory as well as the new production that we will be bringing on during the year.

There's a lot of different parts there. I mean, we're just -- what we're seeing is a continued ramp-up of operations at Lost Creek. We're seeing the wellfield continue to produce high-quality uranium and solution. The improvements in the plant are really taking shape.

The team at the Lost Creek plant is expanding. We've got a very strong business improvement program in place there. We brought on key individuals as well as we're going to be adding sand filters to the front of the Lost Creek plant over the next several months. So these are the parts from Lost Creek to give us the confidence.

Shirley Basin is the positive construction. We're on track to be able to start moving solution through the plant this month, and we're on track for our -- to begin shipping resin deliveries in the second quarter.

So that's all coming together nicely. We still require pending environmental approval from the State of Wyoming. Those are all on track, and they seem clear. We can't always predict when we'll get those. But everything seems on track, and we're very confident in our abilities this year.

The next question will be from Anthony Taglieri from Canaccord Genuity.

Just curious on the product loans that you have outstanding. Given your cash balance, when should we expect that this might get repaid? Would it be sort of by the deadline in November? Would you settle it earlier? And then maybe on the settlement, does it have to be settled by replacing the physical? Or could it be cash settled as well?

All right, Anthony, good questions. So we have a 250,000 pounds loan with the trading entity that is due in November of this year. As you kind of pointed out in your question, Anthony, we have multiple options on how and when we repay this loan.

We could always -- with our cash balance, we could always have the opportunity to pay back that loan by buying pounds on spot. Regarding the payment of the loan, the loan is to be repaid in physicals. That's not necessarily our physicals, but the loan is to be repaid in physically.

So I'm not -- we're not going to pin down exactly how we're looking at that. What we are doing, Anthony, is we're looking at our opportunities, if we were to see a short-term decrease in spot price, that could give us an opportunity to just get that loan off of our books, so we're hearing very favorable price. Other than that, we look at other opportunities.

So we haven't pinned down, and we're not projecting a certain path on that. We do know that loan is outstanding. It's due in November, and we have the contingency plans in place to fulfill that loan.

Great. That's very clear. Maybe just as a follow-up, how should we think about the cadence of realized prices through 2026? Do you expect sort of a ramp in prices to stay fairly consistent? How should we be thinking about that?

Well, look, we haven't given specifically a price per pound for 2026, but you can see in our 10-K, the detail there that shows we are contracted to deliver 1.3 million pounds for proceeds of up to $82 million. Those contracts are all different stages and different prices throughout the year. So there's not like a ramp-up through the year. Those were all contracts that were signed multiple years ago for delivery in 2026. You can do the math and come out with the average price per pound.

And you should think of it as an average because of the way that the contracts come in and the way that we deliver on to those contracts, it's not a ramp-up, but it is a series of different prices at different slots.

The next question will be from Jeff Grampp from Northland.

I was curious at Lost Creek, given we're a couple of months plus into the quarter, any commentary you can share on how production has trended thus far in Q1 relative to Q4 levels, and maybe how you're expecting that asset to ramp throughout the year?

Yes. I'm going to -- yes, yes, good question again. I'm going to be hesitant to be too specific because I want to keep everything nice and tight as far as disclosures. Certainly, the ramp-up continues at Lost Creek. I will say, in December, we had a significant weather event of 11 days of power disruption from a windstorm that came through Wyoming with winds well over 100 miles an hour.

We recovered -- the plant delivered beautifully through December, and the teams responded to that power outage and really, really did a fantastic job of stripping resin and drumming resin -- drumming uranium, pardon me. We will -- January is rough as we reloaded the resin. We're back on track for February, March looks on track for very positive. So the ramp-up continues, Jeff, I'm being very coy in giving you real specifics yet, but you'll get those numbers as soon as they're available.

Well, look, we're on -- we see the steady path for ramp-up at Lost Creek, and its ability with Shirley Basin to deliver into that 1.3 million pounds. That kind of our standard answer there, Jeff, and that's what we're committed to.

Fair enough. We'll stay tuned. For my follow-up on the cost side of the equation, any thoughts on kind of where cash costs go in '26? Should we expect as Lost Creek kind of ramps up, we see some downward pressure on the cost side and how might the introduction of Shirley Basin pounds impact some of that arithmetic?

Sure. So again, we're not giving cost guidance. But I will tell you that in an ISR operation, your costs are incredibly fixed. So it's really a function of pounds drummed, or I guess, pounds sold. So more pounds you sell, the lower your cost per pound. It really is incredibly fixed. Cost structure, the wells of the wells, the electricity, electricity.

The same number of people are there regardless of how many pounds you drum, and the cost of the excipients is really just oxygen and carbon dioxide, and they're relatively minor in the big scheme of things. So it is quite a linear relationship there between pounds sold drummed sold and cost per pound.

The next question will be from Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital.

I guess, also want have been answered. But on the regulatory front, some of your peers have kind of noted that because there's a rush to get production up across the industry that there's been regulatory processing delays. Is that kind of what you're dealing with at Shirley Basin? And then on that note, do you guys have a time line on when you'll get regulatory approval there to get started with production?

Yes. Okay. Joe, thanks for the question. I'll start off with the answer, and I'm going to hand over to Ryan. He's our VP for Regulatory Affairs. I'm going to start off with the comment. I think the commentary you're hearing about the delays in the process from the increase in activity is fairly focused on Texas, but nonetheless, there is a growing amount of activity across the industry, and that does impact everyone.

With regards to the timing of the regulatory approvals, we certainly anticipate those to be approved in this month, but I'm going to pass this over to Ryan for some more color. Ryan, do you mind answering Joe's question?

Absolutely. So the one thing that I would just add is Ur-Energy, we have an excellent working relationship with our regulators in the state of Wyoming. We worked very closely with them in partnership to come to those approvals. As Matt said, all indications are that we are under timely review for those wellfield data packages and approvals to start Shirley Basin. So there's nothing that causes us or points us to likely delays. We are working with the state, and they are.

But a concern that you have mentioned is as there's more activity, those resources at the state do get stretched, and we are aware of those, and we monitor those, and we work with the state as we try to overcome those delays.

But as far as Shirley Basin is concerned, we don't -- everything is on track. We are working closely with the regulators and anticipate receiving those approvals soon.

Okay. And then just as a quick follow-up. If you guys had the regulatory approval in normal course, when would have that Header House started production? I realize it's ready now, but how long ago was it ready?

I'm sorry to mislead you in my commentary, Jose. We're building the plan. We're on track. So we have the well house ready for production on schedule, we have it ahead of schedule of the production plant, just because that's good planning.

We will be ready, mechanically ready for the plant to receive solution on Monday of next week. And that's when we're going to be loading the first resin tank. And then that will be when any delays passed then would be due to waiting for regulatory.

The next question will be from Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald.

It's been a while since you guys have done an earnings call, so I appreciate it. Most of my questions have been answered already. I had one kind of housekeeping type one left, though. I noticed there was a large discrepancy between pounds drummed and pounds captured at Lost Creek in Q4, much wider than any other quarter I can recall. Could you just give some detail on what drove that in Q4, and should I just expect that to kind of mean revert in Q1?

Mike, good question. Mr. Steve Hatten, this is a COO question.

Sure. I was going by. This is Steve Hatten. The biggest difference is you had heard Matt talk about the issues we had with not environmental, but with the environment where we had some power down. And at these facilities, we run the plant on generator power and the wellfield is all online power.

So if we have a major power outage that can affect the production that we see coming in versus the -- versus what we can do in the plant. So any variance, for instance, if you see production lagging coming in from the wellfield that gives the plant a chance to distill process material and vice versa, if the plant is doing maintenance for whatever reason, you'll see the wellfield captured come up versus the plant go down.

[Operator Instructions] The next question will be from Justin Chan from SCP Finance.

My first one is just on maybe getting a sense of milestones through the year. In terms of ramping up towards that 1.3 million pounds delivered, and let's leave aside moving the loan around for a sec. What would you like to see at each operation, I guess, when we speak at this time next quarter at Lost Creek maybe to get a bit more granular in terms of mine units and Header Houses. And at Shirley Creek, if you could provide some more detail, that would be really helpful.

All right. So let's -- thank you, Justin. Thank you for the question. The first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to answer you say, look, I'm going to answer general, and I'm going to turn it over to Steve to give you some more color on the number of Header Houses in very granular details there, Justin.

So when we talk about milestones for the year, but we're looking at for the continuing ramp-up of Lost Creek and fairly linear for the entire -- the Lost Creek ramp-up for this year is fairly linear. The Shirley Basin, what the milestones there you're seeing that we're looking for is the delivery of solution into the plant in March, and then the loading of resin and the shipping of resin to initiate in the second quarter to Lost Creek facility.

So the mine unit at Lost Creek, the ramp-up is fairly linear. The plant itself is going to have a lot more loaded resin delivered to it, and so we're anticipating the plant at Lost Creek to have a ramp-up that's not linear, but that really peaks in the second -- pardon me, in the third quarter.

So we get some initial deliveries coming in, in the second quarter, and then you see a large jump in the third and fourth quarters for the amount of pounds that are drummed in the Lost Creek facility. Steve, do you want to give any clarity on Header Houses?

Sure. One of the big things is -- and as you are very aware, this is a stepwise production at any ISR facility. So you've got to get the drilling ahead first, and then that focuses on so much of ore determination and pattern layouts, and then we get those patterns installed, then they go into surface construction, and then that turns into flow into the plant.

So one of the things is that we have really stretched ourselves out on over the last year or so is to develop those new areas. So we are out actively developing Mine Unit 5, getting that monitor ring going there, so we can get it tested and be in production later this year on that. But Mine Unit 1 Phase II is -- has been very productive from a construction standpoint. The rigs spent a lot of last year and are focused heavily this year on getting that done.

So we have already seen Header House 14 come on. Header House 15 is in reserve mode to bring grade up, and 16 is in the pipeline next, and that continues on throughout the course of this year, as Matt said, in a linear fashion to bring up both production, flow and grade, okay?

The 2 components that make up production. So all of those are the main components for the Header Houses. And I think Matt hit it spot on, on Shirley. We have our targets for initial excipient movement in the wellfield in the month of March, and then we expect in the second quarter to bring that into realized capture -- true significant capture on resin.

That means shipping over to Lost Creek and getting that turned into drum production. Does that help?

Yes, that's really helpful. And maybe just for each operation, what is a good deployment rate of bringing new Header Houses or mine units online through this year? Like maybe on a monthly basis or quarterly basis?

I'm going to continue answering, and then Matt can stop me if he wants to. What we like to see at Lost Creek you're typically at a 1 million pounds a year production rate, you're looking about 8 to 10 Header Houses a year for construction, drilling construction readiness. And at Shirley, as you have seen in our previous press releases, we are anticipating much higher flow rates there.

And so we will determine how that plays out during the first year of operations. So we're going to go pretty heavy there initially and try and get 6 to 8 Header Houses on this year. And then depending on how that production grade curve goes and the flow comes in from each area, then we -- I think you're going to see us possibly, that's one of those forward-looking statements, but possibly scaling back to 6, maybe 8 Header Houses here over there.

What we have seen over there initially from our first drilling is, it's been very, very good for us. We've been very happy with the pounds that are showing up under pattern there, but that's still early on.

Justin, does that give you the color you're looking for?

Yes. That was fantastic. Matt and Steve, maybe just one last one. I led the witness a little bit on the question. But I guess, to hit your targets, maybe more holistically, is it a case of deployment of wellfield development in Header Houses? Or is it also on the plant side of things, are there improvements you'd like to see there in order to hit those numbers? I guess, what are the keys to hitting those targets this year?

The key business improvement initiatives right now are focused on the plant. The Lost Creek wellfield just delivers, and we're well ahead on the drilling there. We've deployed a lot of drills at Lost Creek over the last 2 years, and we're well advanced on the drilling of Header Houses and patterns at Lost Creek.

Shirley Basin is in the same mode. The wellfield there is well developed, and it's on track. It's on schedule and that's going well. So the key business improvements for this year are focused on plants. And if you then drive down into a subset of that, it's on fines management and what we're doing there to improve -- to remove fines coming into the plant so that it reduces just the complications that fines in the plant caused with the resin tanks.

And that's where the key focus is on right now. You'll see in our 10-K that we are dedicating some fairly significant capital towards upgrading the water treatment at Lost Creek, and that is both on the front end with the fines and sand filters in front of the plant as well as on the back end with the reverse osmosis and water treatment for delivery of the water back into the shallow aquifer and/or surface discharge.

And is that more of an IX issue going into the IX plant or just to clarify?

The fines in the IX columns just caused inefficiencies, right? So it's about keeping the fines out of the resin columns. The resin columns act as a sand filter. They're essentially a sand filter. If you put fines into them, then you create a fines layer on top of the resin, and it just makes it inefficient. You have to clean that up. And so that's what we're working on is improving that part of the system.

Understood clearly. So it's essentially fine to clog it up.

Yes, fines are bad. No, it's a good -- it's a great fines are actually -- they're kind of actually good for us in that a significant portion of our uranium is in the fine. So fines are making uranium, but you have about this removing fines from the solution before it enters the plant, that's the real business.

And the next question is coming from Matthew Key from Texas Capital Securities.

I want to ask a little bit about future sales commitments and whether you guys are working on, or if it's possible to fold in some incremental commitments in '27, 2028, or are talks at this point mostly for 2029 and out at this point?

Matthew, thanks for the question. Our talks right now are mostly for 2029 and beyond. That's really where we're focusing. We're comfortable with our sales book right now. As many of our peers have done, we're not looking -- we don't see the necessity to have our book completely committed several years in advance. We're looking for opportunity -- and of course, we are.

We're a uranium miner, but we're very optimistic and bullish on the uranium price. And we like the idea of having some pounds in inventory that we can in place opportunistically when the time is right.

Got it. That makes sense. And just a broad one for me. Most of my questions were asked. But just how are you thinking about M&A in the current environment? Any targets out there that could potentially be compelling? Or do you see the need for mergers in this space right now?

When you say the need for M&A, we don't necessarily say there's a need for M&A. What we do say is that adding more resource base to Ur-Energy will have a very valuable contribution to the company. We recognize that more resource is going to help this company a lot, and it's going to provide us with what we need to continue to advance. How we get those extra pounds?

You've heard us talk this morning, we're very focused on exploration, both in the Great Divide Basin in general as well as immediately adjacent to Lost Creek. Lost Creek has a lot of open -- on almost all sites, it's open for expansion and exploration. So we're not going to -- when it comes to M&A specifically, we're going to always answer like every corporation answer -- at answers when they're asked that question.

What I can also say is that part of the catalyst for the convert issue at the end of last year, was so that we would have funding available such that an opportunity were to arise, we could act on that opportunity. And so that was part of the catalyst and why we went for that convert raise and that those funds are available for our use in a very prudent and disciplined manner.

The next question will be from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

Just following up on Matt Key's question a little bit there. Can you just walk me through what you're seeing with the demand for longer-term pricing as opposed to spot? How desperate are the buyers? And just maybe a bit of are they pushing towards longer-term contracts and what kind of pricing structures they're guiding towards?

All right. Heiko, thanks for the question. I was wondering who was going to ask that question, desperate. Look, I'm not going to use the adjective desperate, but I am going to say that the interest in securing uranium supplies for use in the nuclear industry is growing and is vibrant. So we get a lot of requests for proposals.

We are careful in what we look at. And again, we kind of touched on before, we're not interested in over-obligating in the near term. And we kind of have a curve going in front of us of our commitments. We have a kind of a model that we've built on what we're looking for committing of our forecasted production in every year ahead of us and it peters out after 6 years.

And then, of course, each year, the wave moves forward. From the standpoint because -- okay, so if you're getting a lot of RFPs coming in, you know how that affects pricing. We're seeing right now is that pricing has a -- certainly has a market-related component.

And that market-related component is becoming more meaningful, and the majority of the way that pounds are being sold going forward. I don't think I'm telling you anything unique to Ur-Energy at all. That's certainly the same commentary you're hearing from other producers, but the industry is moving more towards market-related contracts and less certainly deemphasizing term with escalation.

And what are you seeing with geopolitical demand factors as things are progressing here, especially given what happened in the last couple of weeks?

Yes, on the geopolitical standpoint, Heiko, from the U308 standpoint, the geopolitical doesn't come in as much as you would think. Kazakhstan is still the world's major producer and still feeds into the market. You see a lot of geopolitical coming from the enriched side. But from our standpoint, producing U308, we don't see the geopolitical as far as the world market.

What we are seeing, and we've seen significant over the last couple of months is the idea of U.S.-based production, not U.S. legal production, but U.S.-based production. We feel this is a very forward-looking statement, but we feel like there is growing potential for U.S.-based production to see a meaningful premium compared to U.S. legal production.

And so that's part of the reason that we're being careful with the deployment of contracts. We want to be able to keep some material available for opportunistic placements in contracts that have a premium for U.S. based production.

And there were no other questions from the phone lines at this time. I would now like to hand the call over to Valerie Kimball, IR Director at Ur-Energy for webcast questions. Valerie?

Thank you, Paul. Our next question is regulatory in nature. How confident are you in your ability to navigate regulations that might be reinstated down the road?

Thank you, Valerie. Okay. But how confident are we in being regulations that may be reinstated down the road? I'm not necessarily sure. I'm going to ask Ryan, do you have an idea of the basis of that question, Ryan?

So what I would say, I don't know if I entirely have a basis, but I would say we are actively monitoring all rulemakings, and we are actively participating in those purposes. So as part of our management of our business, we are aware of those, and we keep pretty good track of any changes to regulations or policies and are responding and working with regulators appropriately to minimize risk to our operations.

Sure. Yes. Thanks, Ryan. I mean, I know -- do you think that question might be pointed towards some work that's being done on the ISR mining regulations? And Ryan, you just want to summarize your involvement and you as a representative for Ur-Energy in that rulemaking?

Absolutely. So as you know, there is major changes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, much of which was directed by Executive Order 14300. In response to that, the NRC will be issuing draft rules in the coming months on ISR. We are very much involved in that process.

We have been involved with NRC Commissioners, National Groups, National Mining Association, Wyoming Mining Association, Nuclear Energy Institute, a number of different groups that are all watching that, and we are all participating as much as we can to ensure we understand how that will affect our business and ensure that is appropriate for the business that's been established over the last 50 years or so.

I could go in more detail on why the ISR rulemaking is needed. But at this point, I'll just leave it at that, Matt, unless you want me to expand further.

I think that's a great summary. Thank you very much, Ryan. Valerie, do you feel like the question is answered?

Yes. Our next question concerns new technology. Do you have any plans to work with new technologies of uranium productivity, for example, Lightbridge fuel or some other company looking to up the efficiency of uranium power?

All right. So thanks, Valerie, for that question. I'm going to -- look, I'm relying heavily on Ryan today in this call. Ryan, so we -- as Ur-Energy, we are quite active, and I'm very proud of this. We are very active in the advancements in the uranium industry. First, I'm going to ask Ryan to give a quick summary on what we're doing with the DOE labs for initiatives in advancing uranium.

For sure. So I think overall, in our culture as a company, we are always looking to advance and to increase efficiencies and look at new technologies. That is something that we have always participated in and to give a flavor of what Matt was talking about, we have partnered with National Laboratories to look at a number of different issues.

We, in essence, partnered with those laboratories to say, here are some struggles that we may have or that could use some efficiencies, and they are working very closely with us. It's exciting to see. And these are national labs across the United States. It's not just a single national lab, but this is all with the Department of Energy.

So we have some exciting things that we're looking at. But as far as your question as far as fuel and new fuels and things of that nature, while yes, we may be a provider of the source material for those fuels, we are not actively engaging in those fuel fabrications like you mentioned, Lightbridge. Does that make sense, Matt?

Yes, that makes sense. I will also stress that the recent commitment of over $2 billion towards the advancement of the enrichment capacity of the U.S. We are involved -- we're in discussions involved with all of those parties with regards to the potential to supply them with U308 as they're doing their testing and as they're doing their ramp-up of their facilities, and we can build those out. So we're very much involved. I mean if -- look, we're a major U.S. producer. If you're involved in nuclear industry in the United States, you're involved with us. Okay, Valerie.

Okay. There are no more questions. I'll hand it back over to you for closing remarks.

All right. Well, thanks, everybody. I was thrilled with the interaction, the number of questions, the interest in Ur-Energy. I'm thrilled to be here. I couldn't be more proud of the operations and our teams. Thanks, everybody, for being in this call. This was a great restart of the quarterly earnings calls, and I'm very excited about being able to talk to you in the next 3 months. Thank you.

This does conclude today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.