Uranium Energy Aktie

Good day, and welcome to the Uranium Energy Corp.'s Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amir Adnani, Uranium Energy Corp.'s Founder and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. A presentation accompanying today's call is available on our website. Some of the commentary today will include forward-looking statements, and I would encourage everyone to review the cautionary language on Slide 2 of the presentation. With that, let's begin with highlights from the quarter. This quarter was marked by several defining milestones along the continued execution of our long-term strategy to become America's first and only vertically-integrated uranium company from mining and processing through refining and conversion. We are also pleased to provide an update on our critical mineral portfolio. The commencement of production at Burke Hollow is a significant achievement for UEC and an important milestone for domestic uranium production in the United States.

It is the largest greenfield ISR uranium project to come into production in more than a decade. It has been incredible to see our team develop the project from a grassroots discovery in 2012 to production in 2026. Let that sink in for a moment. It took 14 years to bring a new uranium mine online. That time line highlights the scarcity and strategic value of fully permitted and operating uranium mines, not only in the United States but globally. It also underscores a significant competitive advantage for UEC, which today controls permitted uranium projects in the U.S.

We are very proud of our team's efforts and accomplishments over the past 14 years to advance Burke Hollow. In addition, we would like to thank our landowner and stakeholders for their support. Building on the scale of our asset base, we are now operating 2 of our 3 U.S. hub-and-spoke ISR production platforms. We control the largest uranium resource base in the United States, which provides the foundation for decades of staged production growth. Our strong balance sheet and inventory position with no debt provides us with the opportunity to pursue our 100% unhedged strategy, selling opportunistically and capturing industry-leading realized pricing, generating meaningful returns for shareholders.

Through our wholly-owned subsidiary, United States Uranium Refining and Conversion Corp., we have created maximum alignment with the renewed bipartisan focus on energy independence and national security in the U.S. This opportunity positions UEC as the only American vertically-integrated nuclear fuel supplier from mining through conversion as nuclear power expands and fuel sourcing ships back onshore. With policy momentum building and long-term uranium supply gaps growing, we are strategically placed at the convergence of market demand and government priorities.

With that overview, let's turn to operational highlights. In the third quarter, our focus remained on expanding production capacity while maintaining a low-cost production profile. As I highlighted, commencing production at Burke Hollow was a significant achievement. Burke Hollow is an important part of UEC's growth strategy, allowing us to initiate production at our second hub-and-spoke platform anchored by the Hobson central processing plant. At Christenson Ranch, we received regulatory approval for expanded production, adding an additional 3 header houses at the end of March. With these approvals now in hand, we anticipate increased production rates in the fourth fiscal quarter.

We have an additional 5 header houses under construction and 1 additional Header House has been completed and is on standby for regulatory approval. During the quarter, 32,000 pounds of uranium concentrate were produced at a total cost of pound of $54.61, including a cash cost per pound of $46.69. Cost per pound did increase during the quarter, but we view this as a temporary and largely a timing-related event. Regulatory approvals delayed production from new header houses, while costs associated with bringing those production areas online were incurred before the associated uranium production was fully reflected in quarterly volumes. Given the sensitivity of unit cost to production rates during this stage of the ramp-up, together with higher state taxes, these factors increased cost per pound during the quarter as production rates increase from the newly commissioned header houses, we expect cost per pound to improve.

Since commissioning, UEC's total cost per pound remains a leader in the domestic industry at $39.30 including a cash cost per pound of $32.40 across 276,000 pounds produced. At Ludeman, our next planned ISR uranium operation in Wyoming, we completed a 240 hole delineation drilling program at Sweetwater, our stored hub-and-spoke production platform anchored by the Sweetwater mill. We completed a 200 hole delineation drilling program in the first 2 planned well fields at Roughrider, our development stage conventional asset located in the Athabasca Basin in Northern Saskatchewan, core drilling is over 80% complete to support our planned prefeasibility study.

A key component of our long-term strategy is the United States Uranium Refining & Conversion Corp., or UR&C. Uranium conversion remains an acute bottleneck in the Western nuclear fuel cycle with insufficient commercial UF6 capacity outside Russia and China. At the same time, a critical gap in the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle is the lack of a vertically-integrated domestic supplier, spanning mining, processing, refining and conversion. That gap underscores the importance of UEC's initiative with UR&C. During the quarter, we made important strides to advance the project. We achieved our first U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing milestone through receipt of a docket number.

Further, ongoing discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy regarding strategic nuclear fuel cycle infrastructure led us to add additional candidate locations to ensure coordination and alignment with federal priorities for restoring domestic uranium conversion capacity and strengthening America's nuclear fuel supply chain. We have now developed a final short list of candidate locations. Finally, we're excited to spotlight a recent update for one of our critical mineral projects, Alto Parana in Paraguay. A recent completed independent report determined that the project represents a globally significant critical minerals platform with the potential to materially contribute to the security and diversification of U.S. supply chains for titanium and vanadium.

UEC's critical minerals portfolio, which includes the West Bar cobalt nickel project in Canada, has been assembled through timely acquisitions over the last decade and represents additional embedded value that we will look to unlock for shareholders through ongoing initiatives. This strategy and component of our business aligns with the urgent need of reestablishing critical mineral supplies in support of national and economic security. Now turning to our financial position. We finished the quarter with $794 million in liquid assets, including $488 million in cash, along with uranium inventory and equities and importantly, no debt.

As of April 30, 2026, we held 1.4 million pounds of U308 valued at approximately $127 million at current market prices. Excluding the additional approximately 277,000 pounds of precipitated uranium and dried and drummed U308 held at the Irigaray central processing plant. USD's balance sheet, combined with our unique unhedged strategy provides the flexibility to be selective in the execution of sales as demonstrated in the third quarter where we preserved our inventory. As many are familiar, our operational platform is built around scalable hub-and-spoke ISR operations in Wyoming and South Texas, supported by longer-term development projects at Sweetwater and Roughrider.

Starting in Wyoming. Through our ongoing construction campaigns, we continue to scale production at Christensen Ranch which operates as the first spoke to the Irigaray CPP. As of April 30, 2026, total cumulative production from Christiansen Ranch since restart was approximately GBP 277,000 of precipitated uranium and dried and drummed U308 at the Irigaray CPP at a total cost per pound of $39.30 including a cash cost per pound of $32.40. The company continued to develop new production areas at Christiansen Ranch during the quarter.

Turning to Ludeman, US's next planned ISR operation. The previously announced 240-hole delineation drilling program was completed. This work will assist wellfield pattern design currently underway. Engineering of the satellite ion exchange plant progressed with the planned layout and pad design, largely finalized and fabrication of the ion exchange vessels ahead of schedule. We continue to advance the remainder of the mechanical equipment specifications, which allows the company to begin to procurement process for longer lead time equipment.

Turning to South Texas. We commenced production at the Burke Hollow project on April 8, 2026, in order to initiate the uranium recovery process, oxygen and carbon dioxide were injected into the wellfield and will provide initial feed to the Ion Exchange plant. The satellite ion exchange plant was commissioned and wellfield development continues in Phase 1a. Now that it is online, we expect to see production from Bucalo accounted for in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2026. Looking further ahead towards our development stage assets, Sweetwater is earmarked to be a major future production center, and we are working expeditiously towards this operation as both a conventional mill and a central plant for processing ISR production.

Further, a 200-hole delineation drilling program in the first 2 planned wellfields at Sweetwater commenced in March and was completed in early May. A second 200-hole delineation drilling program is scheduled to begin in July 2026 where the third ISR well field at Sweetwater is planned. Finally, the ion-exchange vessels for the Sweetwater ISR circuit are under construction. In Saskatchewan and Canada, we continued advancing the Roughrider project, one of the highest grade undeveloped uranium projects in the world. More than 80% of the planned 35,000 meter drilling program has now been completed in support of the upcoming prefeasibility study.

Turning to UR&C. In addition to the progress we have made on Siding, we continue to accelerate engineering work led by Fluor and have advanced into a new phase with a significant expansion of engineering and technical resources supporting facility design, siding, licensing and development. Through this process, we have been engaging with the U.S. Department of Energy to align with key national priorities regarding restoring nuclear fuel cycle sovereignty. As a result, additional candidate locations were added to ensure coordination and alignment with such priorities.

Last but not least, Ulta Parana, our project in Paraguay. As mentioned, a recently completed independent report concluded that the project represents a globally significant critical minerals platform with the potential to materially contribute to the security and diversification of U.S. supply chains for titanium and vanadium. The project's unique strategic fit includes being located in a U.S. aligned partner country is access to clean, low-cost power and its ability to integrate into U.S. and allied downstream processing supply chains. We view the project as notable because it addresses structural vulnerabilities in U.S. critical minerals policy.

It demonstrates our long-standing approach to identifying, acquiring and developing assets that align with U.S. national security advanced manufacturing and resilient critical mineral supply chains. Finally, the broader policy backdrop remains robust. On April 23, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy through his Office of Nuclear Energy and the Defense Production Act nuclear fuel cycle consortium. Launched the nuclear dominance, 333 campaign to secure the United States' nuclear fuel supply chain and support future reactor deployment. The campaign is structured around 3 core objectives to be achieved by 2033, including catalyzing a secure and cost competitive domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, accelerating advanced reactor deployment and finally, leveraging the DPA framework to align workforce development, financing innovation and industry collaboration in support of the nuclear build-out.

Against that backdrop, let me briefly summarize the progress we made during the quarter. First, we successfully brought online the largest greenfield ISR project in the U.S. in over a decade. Burke Hollow's progression from discovery in 2012 to production in 2026, serves as a reminder that uranium production capacity cannot simply be created overnight, reinforcing the important strategic value of UEC's operating assets and portfolio of permitted uranium projects.

Second, we have expanded capacity, enabling increased production rates as we move towards the end of the fiscal year. Lastly, we have advanced UR&C to a final shortlist of candidate locations and are moving towards the next phase of engineering, siding and licensing activities. All of this was accomplished while maintaining 1 of the strongest balance sheets in the sector with significant liquidity and no debt. With the largest uranium resource base in the United States, growing production infrastructure and a clear pathway towards expanding our role across the nuclear fuel cycle, we believe is well positioned for the next phase of growth in the uranium market.

Our strategic critical mineral portfolio provides for adjacent opportunities supported by similar policy priorities. Before we open the line for questions, I'd like to note that I'm joined today by Josephine Man, our Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, our Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, our Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.

I guess I had a couple here. First on the cost side. I mean I'd be curious, I know you said it's going to normalize a bit here into fiscal Q4 and beyond and the lower volumes in fiscal Q3 and the tax has obviously pushed costs up in the quarter. Can you maybe quantify a little bit sort of what that normalization is going to look like over the next quarter or 2, are you back into the 30s as quickly as fiscal Q4? Is that going to take a couple of quarters? And then maybe give us some of the moving pieces beyond volume? Are there other cost drivers beyond just higher production volumes.

Brian, thank you for the question. And as you've seen in the press release in the remarks earlier that I made, we did highlight sort of the key drivers here and really to expand on it on your question. As you know, a large portion of our operating costs are fixed. So again, when production volumes are temporarily lower due to the timing of these well field approvals, unit costs are impacted. We would definitely sort of draw attention to the total cost per pound over the course of the 276,000 pounds produced, which comes in, as you know, within a cash cost per pound of roughly $32.40. This remains industry competitive and a leading number in the domestic industry in the U.S. As we mentioned in the press release and the material, Brian, we do expect that the trend on production going into fiscal Q4 and beyond is higher.

So again, in an environment where this is the biggest sensitivity for us and the economies of scale do matter. I definitely think that we should be improving on the numbers that you saw in this quarter. Let me just pause and hand it over to our CFO, Josephine Man, for just any additional color or commentary on that.

Thanks, Amir. This is Josephine. Yes, I think Amir is correct. As we are expecting to increase our production in the coming quarters, definitely, we will see the total cost of pound and cash cost per pound to be comparatively lower than this quarter. As [indiscernible] mentioned that a big portion of our operating costs are fixed. So when the production volumes are temporarily low during this quarter, it definitely drives the total cost per pack increase as compared to Q2. But with the new wellfields in Christensen Ranch and Burke Hollow coming to production in fourth quarter this fiscal year, we are expecting to have a lower cost per pound in the coming quarters. Back to Amir.

Thank you, Josephine. Brian, did you have a follow-up on that?

Yes. No, that's helpful. Maybe just as we think about those production volumes with the 3 header houses on in Christianson Ranch and Burke Hollow, producing in Q4, sort of what's the step function? It seems like there should be a step function increase in volumes. Is it pretty linear where we can kind of take the header houses in Christensen Ranch and look at the volume from Q3? And sort of triple that? Or what's sort of the ramp-up cadence, if you will, at least in the near term? And then maybe last question, if I could squeeze it in. Just thoughts around URC and the timing of key milestones as we think about the second half of the calendar year here?

Thank you, Brian, and you certainly squeezed the lot in there, but okay, we'll unpack all of that. We've been really ramping up when it comes to our construction capability and campaigns to build additional header houses, which is basically production capacity. And yes, there is a linear relationship there. And again, for context, if we step back, this is after our industry really collectively was dormant for about 15 years. And the last couple of years, we're coming back into this area and this time of incredible progress and activity. I'm going to hand it to Brent Berg to speak a bit about the growth we've had year-over-year in terms of our personnel workforce capacity and the ability to keep expanding and constructing this production capability. Brent, over to you.

Go ahead. You were muted, Brent, but just start from starting then.

Okay. Very good. Brian, I was just saying that a year ago, we had 103 employees in Wyoming and Texas. Today, we've grown our operations team to 185 personnel so in 2025, the UEC team was heavily dependent on external contractors or construction and continued mine development. Today, much of that work is being done in-house by our own team, and we continue to build the team that can rapidly deploy other projects in UEC's portfolio. And maybe just 1 other note with respect to production and normalizing. So during the quarter, the bulk of that production came from wellfield 8 and 10 with 8 active header houses and production predominantly came from new wells that were installed in 2025 with header houses 10, 7 and 10, 8 accounting for the bulk of the production during the fiscal quarter. Of course, we started up well field 11, 3 new header houses at the end of the quarter, and it's -- we really won't see that production until this fourth quarter, but anticipate that to move up substantially. Thank you. Back to you, Amir.

Okay. And Brian, I think you were asking about UR&C. And specifically, as we mentioned in the release, we're really ramping up into the next phase here of engineering work siding, permitting with an expansion of the engineering team and the work that's being provided by Fluor as well. Our own team increased in size and scope over this period. The siding work has been coordinated as we mentioned in the press release with some of the initiatives that are taking place at the Department of Energy, making sure we have maximum alignment there. We've always believed that the project and really the need to build a new conversion facility was and has maximum alignment with priorities in the U.S. right now around creating a more resilient nuclear fuel cycle and to really repatriate the nuclear fuel cycle with the Russian ban kicking in by end of 2027, really that's around the corner.

The current key bottleneck in our mind and in the market really remains a shortage of sufficient domestic conversion. So that work is advancing and really has kicked into next year from a standpoint of the engineering siting and licensing, as we mentioned.

And the next question comes from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainright.

I just want to point out, the stock is still up 68% year-over-year. So some thing's gone, right? That said, how much in this quarter, would you say was a continuation of regulatory delays that we've seen in the last quarter? I mean it looks like you're working past all of that. But maybe just give a bit of color. I mean, it's now almost mid-June, some color on the current quarter and maybe even the remainder of calendar 2026.

Thank you, Heiko, and I appreciate the context that your question provides. And if we step back and if you've been following the company, you know that we talked about these regulatory delays extensively in our last quarter. And so really, this is a continuation of that and it's a continuation of a broader theme of industry growing pains that we're experiencing just as the industry and ourselves are ramping up. Brent spoke about the fact that the sheer size of our workforce has gone from just over 100 people to almost 200 people year-over-year, imagine that kind of growth, well, the regulators are going through similar type of staffing and other bandwidth capacity that they need to have. And so these regulatory delays that we experience, which impacted lower production in this quarter were discussed and really described in the last quarter, and we're making good progress.

Those approvals did come in, except that they came in near the end of this quarter. And so hence, it was a delay, but these are delays that have been resolved. And so that's important to highlight as well. So things are progressing, and that's why it gives us the confidence as well to be able to speak to a better outlook and improved numbers going into the fourth fiscal year of the -- for the company and beyond that. So for sure, I think to your point, if we step back, there should be no surprises here. But at the same time, when you look at even the numbers for this quarter from a production cost point of view, you zoom out and look at it over to 276,000 pounds produced, the company is still delivering on the lowest cost production in the United States and in the domestic industry.

So we've got a lot of capacity in front of us coming online, the additional header houses at Christensen Ranch, the construction that's going to be taking place at Ludeman, that will be our third ISR operation in Wyoming and not to mention Burke Hollow that did start operations this quarter and will be contributing to production moving forward. We're very proud of the work at Burke Hollow. As you know, that's a project that's 14 years in the making. I talked about it earlier in my remarks. And so can't lose sight of all the construction development and deliverables that we have here as well.

Fair enough. Completely different things. Let's talk about your equity book a little bit. I mean, it's obviously has been creating a decent amount of volatility over the past few quarters. Is there a way to more normalize this going forward, just for stability and more predictability for the analyst community?

Yes, that's a fair question, Heiko. And as you know, our equity book is strategically positioned in some names that we have exposure to in the sector. It does cause this quarterly mark-to-market volatility. This quarter, as you also know, given some weakness and kind of flat movement we saw in the uranium prices we selected to continue to maintain our inventory position. So there were no sales this quarter. And again, that was intentional, and that's a function of our unhedged strategy. But moving forward, as we achieve more of a regular quarterly cadence of sales and reporting around that equity book, I think, can probably move towards more of a -- on an adjusted basis where we can maybe pulled that out and not have it impact the reported numbers. And Josephine, if you want to comment on that as well. But I think that's part of the progression of we're hopefully heading. Josephine, if you want to add to that?

Yes. Thanks, Amir. I think that's right. The volatility in the market creates a little bit of unknown to the income statement, as you can see in our quarterly results about $19 million was attributed to that change in fanmarket, value of our equity securities. So moving forward, the reconciliation of disclose of adjusted EBITDA, I think would help the community and stakeholders to understand our result of operations better. Back to you, Amir.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Heiko.

The next question comes from Alexander Pearce with BMO.

Great. So I mean, Amir, well, this may be a question for Brent. Just building on the question you had before about production in the quarter. If we took the delayed new head of houses aside from it, production was down quarter-on-quarter. So maybe you can just talk about what you're seeing in the older head of houses. And what was the sort of function of tie-ins or flow rates or what -- that's the first part of the question.

Thank you for that good to have you on the call. Yes, I'll hand it over to Brent here shortly, but definitely, I would say, again, most of what you would normally see Alex in terms of how an operation like this would really multiple header houses would be able to manage some of the near-term natural decline curves that are going to be inevitable in some of the producing wellfields with much fewer numbers online right now, there's bound to be some greater volatility in kind of the quarter-over-quarter numbers. But certainly, as that bandwidth increases in terms of number of wells well fields and header houses, we should be able to smooth the numbers out and better manage that natural decline curve that exists and institute recovery and hand it over to Brent now. Go ahead, Brent.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. Alex, maybe just a little color on that. So the production at Christensen Ranch came predominantly from wellfields 8 and 10 with 8 active header houses operating and that production came predominantly from new wells that were installed in 2025. So Header House is 10,7 and 10,8 accounted for over 50% of that production in the fiscal Q3. and 87% of overall production came from new wellfield patterns that we installed in the same year. So with that, we've really focused our production ramp-up with ongoing mine development, and that development continued in both wellfield 12 and 10 extension, where we have 5 header houses under construction, 2 of those in wellfield 10 are nearing completion with another 2 under construction and 1 header house in wellfield 12 is nearing completion of construction.

So in total, 4 header houses are planned in wellfield 12 for future production. We -- the monitor wells have been completed, the pump test is planned with respect to well installation, all drilling is completed for Header House 12,1. And in that wellfield 10 extension drilling at Headerhousens 10, 9, 10, 10 and 10,11 is complete. -- and drilling started for header house 10, 12. So we've been really focused on development. And of course, collaboration with our regulators is important. But really, I think the best way we can ensure that new production comes online quickly is by steadily advancing new infrastructure on the ground. Amir back to you.

All right. Thank you, Brent. Alex, back to you.

Okay. Maybe the second part of the question then, obviously, you've mentioned the new wellfields coming on with the new regulatory approvals. But have you seen any streamlining of the process for getting the regulatory approval so that going forward, maybe you can manage better and avoid some of the delays that you saw for this round?

Go ahead, Brent.

Yes. I would say the state regulatory agencies have demonstrated a very high level of collaboration and are -- they're actively working to address some of those longer lead time challenges that naturally arise during periods of increased industry activity. I would -- UEC, of course, has remained active and has an ongoing dialogue with the agencies continuing to advance well field development in parallel. And I'd say this coordinated approach allows us to progress and maintain both regulatory and operational fronts. The timing for the review ultimately rests with the agencies themselves. However, I can confirm that the infrastructure development and related activities continue to move forward. And we'll certainly provide more updates to key operational milestones are achieved.

I would say the regulator much, much like us when we restarted operations is, of course, growing and responding to increased regulatory submissions that come across their desks, and we are seeing some progress and some improvement. Back to you, Amir.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Alex.

The next question comes from Justin Chan with CPR Financial.

It's SCP, but I'll figure them that. I was probably bumbled there. and Brent, maybe just a follow-up on Alex's question on -- maybe first to clarify, I guess you would have 5 header houses now producing at Christiansen Ranch, like 5 plus or 2 plus 3. And then maybe just as a bigger kind of my main question on this direction is what level of header houses and maybe rollouts per month do you think you would need to get to that 1 million or 2 million pounds a year level given some of the wells will be declining, you'll need new ones to come on. I guess what do you see as a steady state in that regard?

Justin, thanks for the question. And there's no doubt, and this is what you're building on that there is a linear relationship between this construction activity, building new header houses and well fields and the increase in production that we're expecting and building out -- we're right now, as you know, reporting and kind of providing updates on this activity in our quarterly reports. And by the time I think you see us report to fiscal year-end, where we've had a chance to bring several more of the header houses online and some actually in operation. There will be a better ability to kind of forecast and see the contribution from each header house towards a segment of production.

Bottom line is that not every header house is the same size or created equal. So while there is a linear relationship, I think some of that ability to kind of just extrapolate that forward may not be as simple as kind of this many header houses to get to that end result. And as you know, we're really looking to get to those higher production output. We have the largest resource base in the U.S. We've got 12 million pounds of combined license capacity. But to really increase production, we need to be able to continue to deliver on some new projects and new header houses, all of which is moving forward and advancing Burke Hollow being a notable one. And so we'll have more information on all of that. But Brent, if you want to just comment on that too, additionally for Justin's question.

Yes, absolutely, Justin. As you noted, we had 2 header houses constructed and installed in 2025. Those are header houses in wellfield 10 expansion, 10,7 and 10,8. Of course, we recently added 3 into production in wellfield 11. So that's 11, 1, 3 and 4. And we've got 5 under construction now. The other thing I would note, Justin, is we've significantly increased our drilling capacity to install wells that, of course, drug drive production as well, and we've got a threefold increase from when we started the operation at Christensen Ranch today. So we're really ramping up our construction capacity and zeroing in on increasing our production profile as we move forward. And Amir, back to you.

All right. Thank you for that. Thank you, Justin.

And the next question comes from Joseph Reagor with ROTH Capital Partners.

A lot of what I wanted to ask was already touched on, but just kind of a few things that I guess, you guys are good at Jobo explaining why production declines over time. But as you look back at Christensen Ranch's performance to date compared to what was, let's say, the model ahead of time. Has it performed in line with expectations, slightly better, slightly worse, obviously, the regulatory stuff out of your control. But how is the mine performing compared to the model?

Joe, I mean, thank you for that. And we couldn't be any more clear about the performance. I mean the ultimate performance of any mine is the cost and the output and the efficiencies there. And for a project that on this call, in particular, we've spent a lot of airtime given to regulatory delays that are outside of our control. We can lose sight of the fact that we're 277,000 pounds in across really a modest number of header houses, and we have industry-leading production cost. That's really a testament to the efficiency of the operation, the quality of our team and the work that's being done to really deliver these industry-leading numbers.

So I would argue, and I think you would -- you and I have talked about this, that the cost numbers out of Christianson Ranch, in fact, have come in better than expected and better than expectations that folks said in terms of how the project can do. So there's no doubt that as we continue to expand the project, our confidence is built on the foundation that this could be a very efficient low-cost operation and it really is about making sure we can install and construct and build that additional output and capacity which header houses afford and provide.

So certainly something that we're very pleased about. This is a project that is a brownfield and historically has prior to our restart had 6, 7 years of prior operating history as well. So it's certainly a notable project. Along the way, as you know, we've had not just refurbishments, but upgrades and all types of work done that we've reported in prior quarters. So we've come a long way in a very short period of time. And it's really only been about 15, 16 months since production started. And as I mentioned in the last quarter, most of this low-cost production so far has been carried at say, 6 -- almost 70% of the load has been carried by 2 header houses. That's quite remarkable.

So certainly, it gives us the confidence to continue to invest and you've seen that in our numbers that we had increased investment in Christensen Ranch this past quarter, which was really driven by the additional construction work that we're doing and are completing and have underway.

Yes. Just good to have you say it, that is the sense I got. And then the other item, as mentioned in the release that you're working on the PFS for Rogier. What's the timing goal for you guys to have that PFS like have the summer at least?

Joe, that's a great question. And we're -- as you noticed in the release, didn't list and time on that, and that's mainly because we're almost done with the conversion drilling. We're 80% done. We need that work to be completed. We need to make sure that all the steps with respect to getting our chemical assay results back on that drilling is in hand, and so the work can be completed with the third-party technical and engineering firms that are on board and available. If I had to sort of estimate at this point what we're looking at, Joe, I would say we're estimating towards the end of the calendar year to have that PFS ready but that's an estimate at this point and -- but something that we're definitely working towards and hopefully, we'll have it by that.

And the next question comes from Kristian Koschany of National Bank Capital Markets.

Kristian Koschany on behalf of Mohamed. Just going back to the URC timing that we were talking about earlier. I just wanted to confirm that the conversion study should now be expected in 2027.

Yes, Kristian, thanks for that question. I it should be a 2027 event. Between now and then, we will have further updates along the way as we're progressing on the work, including, again, whether it's on siding, whether it's any of our discussions with strategic partners and/or the U.S. government and/or even potential utility offtake discussions that we're having. So there will be updates along the way. But with respect to the work that will culminate and supporting what would ultimately be a Class IV cost study, which is what the next phase of study on this will be a first half of calendar 2027 event.

Great. And then I was wondering if you folks could provide us with some more color on the change in ad valorem taxes and/or production-based royalties in Wyoming for modeling this is?

Yes, I'm going to hand it over to our CFO, Josephine Man, to provide some color on that. Go ahead, Josephine.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. Thanks for the question. Yes. So this is normal and routine process with the Wyoming Department of revenue. So they have been very fair to the uranium industry during the previous ups and downs in the commodity cycle. So we see that the state of Wyoming Tax, let these 2 separate tax on the mineral production in the state. So it's a service pack and the volume tax. The service tax is imposed on at the state level, ,while there volume taxes imposed on the country level. So right now, we see that there is an increase in the industry factors that the department of revenue used to capture the value of the uranium production to calculate both taxes. So we see -- so in this quarter, we saw there's an increase that in this industry factors -- and the increase was for a 4-year cycle. So new industry practice is applied prospectively to -- from 2026 to 2029.

So we'll see steady industry factor that will be applied to our uranium production in the next couple of years. Back to you, Amir.

Okay. Thank you, Josephine, and thank you, Kristian.

I would like to turn the conference back over to Amir and Nanny for any closing remarks.

Yes, thank you, and thank you all for joining the call today, and we look forward to any follow-on communications that we might have with you in the coming days, and look forward to the quarter ahead. Thank you all, and have a good rest of your day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to the Uranium Energy Corp.'s Fiscal 2026 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. Today's call will be hosted by Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Also joining for the Q&A session of today's call are Josephine Man, Chief Executive Officer; Scott Melbye, Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, Senior Vice President, U.S. Operations. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded. Today's call will run approximately 15 minutes for prepared remarks followed by Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. A presentation accompanying today's call is available on our website. Some of the commentary today will include forward-looking statements, and I would encourage everyone to review the cautionary language on Slide 2 of the presentation.

With that, let's begin with highlights from the quarter. This quarter reflected continued execution of our long-term strategy, building America's first and only vertically integrated uranium fuel supply chain from mining through refining and conversion. What differentiates UEC is the scale of our asset base. We control the largest uranium resource base in the United States, which provides the foundation for decades of staged production growth as nuclear energy expands and supply chains increasingly shift back towards domestic fuel security. This is in strategic alignment with the strengthening U.S. policy support and anticipated structural supply deficit.

During the quarter, we also demonstrated the advantage of our unhedged marketing strategy, we sold 200,000 pounds of U3O8 and $101 per pound approximately 25% above the quarterly average price of about $80 per pound. Our strategy has been consistent, maintain a strong balance sheet, hold physical uranium inventory and sell opportunistically when pricing supports value creation for shareholders. Those sales further strengthened our financial position.

We ended the quarter with $818 million in liquidity and no debt, maintaining one of the strongest balance sheets in the uranium sector. At the same time, we continued advancing the broader strategy that underpins UEC's long-term growth, expanding beyond mining into refining and conversion to help address both a critical and structural gap in the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. With the increasing focus on energy and national security, we believe UEC is strategically aligned with where both the market and policymakers are heading. In summary, the quarter reinforced three themes that continue to define UEC: Scale, financial strength, and strategic positioning within the U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain.

With that overview, let's turn to operational highlights. In the second quarter, our focus was on delivering significant construction milestones in Wyoming and Texas. We are thrilled with the completion of construction at Burke Hollow, which is now the newest ISR uranium mine in the United States. This project has been more than a decade in development since its discovery in 2012. And I want to recognize the outstanding work of our technical and operations team in bringing it to the stage.

With that, expanded production infrastructure required for higher output is now in place across our Burke Hollow and Christensen Ranch ISR projects ready for operations, pending final regulatory approvals. During fiscal Q2, the UEC produced 45,743 pounds of U308 driven by only two active header houses at Christensen Ranch at a total cost per pound of $44.14 and a cash cost per pound of $39.66. Since the restart of operations at Christensen Ranch, accumulated production has now reached 244,321 pounds at a total cost per pound of $37.28 and a cash cost per count of $30.50 and demonstrating the efficiency of our ISR operating platform.

At Christensen Ranch, four new header houses were completed and three additional header houses are currently under construction, expanding well field capacity and supporting future ISR production growth once regulatory approvals are received. At the Irigaray central processing plant refurbishment of the Christensen Ranch was completed allowing the sort of 24/7 operations and fully optimizing the facility for increased processing throughput.

At Ludeman, delineating continued at the first planned well field, while engineering progressed for the satellite ion exchange plant. Taken together, Christensen Ranch, Irigaray and Ludeman represent the next stage of near-term production across our Powder River Basin platform. As the uranium sector accelerates, we are also seeing something that has not occurred in the United States for more than 15 years, a broad restart of domestic uranium development activity that renewed activity is positive for the industry, but it also means regulators are processing significantly higher levels of permitting activity than they have in many years. resulting in some regulatory backlog across the sector.

We are working constructively with regulators and industry peers through a coordinated working group aimed at supporting efficient and responsible approvals. These are normal growing pains when an industry transitions from dormancy back into expansion. And we believe the collaboration underway will help ensure that process continues to move forward effectively. Beyond our current production hubs, we also continued advancing our significant development assets.

At Sweetwater, development activities accelerated with the completion of 23 case monitor wells and the coring program for advanced metallurgical testing. Along with the commencement of the 200 whole delineation drilling program on March 2, 2026. And in Saskatchewan, we continued to achieve notable progress with the Roughrider project, completing more than 30% of the core drilling programs supporting the upcoming prefeasibility study. In parallel, our Canadian team is also working with SaskPower toward a definition phase agreement for a high-voltage power connection to the project.

Turning to the financial results. We finished the quarter with $818 million in liquid assets, including $486 million in cash, along with accounts receivable, Uranium inventory and marketable equities and importantly, no debt. This financial strength provides the flexibility to advance production growth while maintaining a disciplined and opportunistic approach to uranium marketing.

As mentioned earlier, during the quarter, we sold 200,000 pounds of U3O8 and $101 per pound, well above the average quarterly uranium price of approximately $80. These sales generated over $20 million in revenue and $10 million in gross profit. As of January 31, 2026, the company held $1,456,000 U308 valued at approximately $144 million of market prices. Excluding an additional 244,321 pounds of precipitated uranium and dried and drone U308 at the Irigaray gare processing plant. Maintaining strong liquidity, including physical uranium inventory remains an integral part of our strategy as we position the company ahead of evolving policy developments and tightening uranium supply fundamentals.

A key component of our long-term strategy is United States uranium Refining & Conversion Corp., or URNC. Uranium conversion remains an acute bottleneck in the Western nuclear fuel cycle with insufficient commercial UF6 capacity outside Russia and China. At the same time, a critical gap in the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle is the lack of an integrated domestic supplier, spanning mining, processing, refining and conversion. That gap underscores the importance of UEC's initiative with URNC.

During the quarter, URC continued high-level engagement with government officials and further advance the feasibility spend at the floor while also expanding both the technical and licensing team supporting the project. We also initiated a detailed siting study, evaluating potential locations across the United States based on permitting considerations, infrastructure, logistics and workforce availability. The objective is straightforward build America's first and only company capable of anchoring the nuclear fuel supply chain required to support enrichment and the expansion of the U.S. nuclear industrial base aligned with current U.S. policy initiatives to grow nuclear power.

Our operational platform is built around scalable hub-and-spoke ISR operations in Wyoming and South Texas. Supporting by longer-term development projects at Sweetwater and Roughrider. Starting in Wyoming, Christensen Ranch continues to operate as the first spoke to the Irigaray central processing plant, and we increased our work progress at the Ludeman project that will serve as the second spoke. During the quarter, we continued advancing new production areas at Christensen Ranch and Ludeman through delineation drilling header houses and additional well field development.

Turning to South Texas and a major accomplishment, we have completed the construction of our Burke Hollow mine. The operations team is currently preparing for start-up while awaiting the state regulator's final approval of the drilling and completion report for the waste disposal one, which is a standard protocol before commencing ISR operations. The first production area at Burke Hollow includes 129 injection and recovery wells, all of which have been tested for mechanical integrity and should provide feed to the IX plant once operations begin. Looking further ahead, Sweetwater is earmarked to be a major future production center, and we're working expeditiously towards this operation as both the conventional mill and a CPP for processing ISR production.

During the quarter, the Sweetwater plan of operations progressed through the Bureau of Land Management review process, positioning the project for the next phase of federal permitting. Finally, in Saskatchewan, we continued advancing the Roughrider project, one of the highest grade undeveloped uranium projects in the world. More than 30% of the planned 4,000-meter drilling program has now been completed in support of the upcoming prefeasibility study. The broader policy backdrop remains robust.

In January 2026, a President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation directing negotiations under Section 232 related to national security risks associated with imports of process critical minerals, including Uranium. Uranium was formally added to the U.S. Geological Survey Critical Minerals list in November 2025 and is now explicitly covered by this investigation. The proclamation highlighted the United States reliance on foreign uranium processing capacity and emphasize the need to rebuild a secure domestic uranium fuel supply chain.

Negotiators are expected to provide a status report by July 13, 2026, after which additional measures for specific remedies may be considered. Against that backdrop, let me briefly summarize the progress we made during the quarter. First, we demonstrated the strength of our unhedged strategy, capturing a strong pricing opportunity. Second, we continued advancing staged production growth, including the completion of the Burke Hollow ISR mine and expansion of our Wyoming ISR production platform. And third, we progressed URC in the next stage of our fuel cycle strategy aimed at strengthening the U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain. All of this was accomplished while maintaining one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector with significant liquidity and no debt.

With the largest uranium resource space in the United States, growing production infrastructure and a clear pathway towards expanding our role across the nuclear fuel cycle we believe UEC is well positioned for the next phase of growth in the uranium market. Before we open the line for questions, I'd like to note that I'm joined today by Josephine Man, our Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, our Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, our Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations. Together, our leadership team is supported by UEC workforce representing more than 900 years of combined uranium industry experience, which continues to drive our operational execution and strategic development. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.

I guess, first, to start off on the uranium marketing. I'd be curious, Amir, if you can comment on whether there's been any subsequent sales of uranium the quarter outside of the $101 per pound price you realized there were periods of pricing well in the 90s for a period of time as well. So I'm just curious if you continue to sell down some inventory? And then just maybe bigger picture.

I know historically, you've talked about $80, $85 a pound sort of being the sweet spot, if you will, to start thinking about monetizing some of the on your balance sheet. We spent most of this year at or above that level. I'm curious if your thoughts around the pricing environment and what in the sense you to sell has changed at?

All right, Brian, thank you for that question. And just starting out to answer your question, as the schools in the quarter that we just filed, there are no subsequent event notes with respect to additional sales pursuant to the sales that were made during the quarter and reported, which was at the $101 per pound level. With respect to the strategy, again, I think it's very important to drive on the points that we made already. We've always felt and we've always positioned the company with this unique 100% unhedged strategy.

This quarter, in particular, demonstrates the true strength of an unhedged strategy in a market that is in a structural deficit based on global supply-demand fundamentals not to mention in the U.S. where we are as a company and where we have U.S. inventory, U.S. produced pounds, the U.S. has even a more acute supply-demand profile. The U.S. is effectively importing over 95% of its uranium requirements. Just to even share some color, we've seen a situation in the market when prices are really not being tested by normal run rate utility demand. And so we think as things normalize, we expect to see a strong price.

So, it's important for us to demonstrate the power of our unhedged strategy from time to time, which is what we did during this quarter. But we also finished the quarter with $1.46 million of inventory on hand and an additional 244,000 pounds of precipitated uranium and Dried and Drunk at Irigaray with production expected to obviously ramp up. So ultimately, the last point I'll make to all of that, Brian, is UEC's capital intensity being on the lower end for mine development when it comes to institute recovery. institute recovery projects do have the benefit of lower capital in Ten City.

And as a result, you see UEC's balance sheet with no debt at $818 million of liquid assets, arguably one of the strongest balance sheets in the entire sector. So we'll remain opportunistic, Brian. We'll remain aligned with the fact that the company's capital needs total capital requirements are more than adequately covered with liquidity on hand. The inventory position that we have is very strategic and valuable. And look, we expect, again, so much more to still happen this year on the policy front with the U.S. government with the presidential proformations that I spoke about earlier and we discussed in the press release.

And so we're wanting to see how things develop also with the national security concerns that the U.S. government has right now. with respect to too much uranium imports coming into the country, particularly from sources like Russia and China. Hope that answers your question, Brian.

Absolutely. Maybe my follow-up question to partner on the Solstice recently expanded to [indiscernible], you made an announcement, I think, on the last earnings call, I would be curious what, if any implication of that add for your strategy going forward?

And then Secondly, it sounds like you've accelerated a bit on that front. Could you talk a little bit maybe in more precise terms around timing of milestones and then you've been able to accelerate what you expect the timing for siting, maybe breaking ground and the feasibility study and any other milestones you might point to you actually have a bit more graph on timing?

Yes, for sure, Brian. The conversion market remains one of the tightest segments of the nuclear fuel cycle anywhere in the world. There's a real bottleneck, and there's a lot of concern about simple lack of capacity that's available globally. The same goes in the U.S. and the U.S., which is the world's largest market for nuclear fuel demand, there's only 1 conversion facility that was built in the 50s. By comparison, there's now a foot race to stand up at least 5 or 6 new enrichment facilities.

And obviously, there are several mines operating in the country. So when you look at the fuel cycle, conversion is the real bottleneck, again, both in the U.S. and globally. There's only 5 conversion facilities in the world, and China and Russia really control that market globally. And so when you think about the same playbook that we've seen in the rare earth markets where there's too much control in the hands of the adversaries. The U.S. needs more capacity and can't have a single point of failure with just one facility, and there needs to be more capacity to meet demand currently and even with any expansion plans, Brian, at the existing facility. U.S. will only meet half of its demand and that demand is, of course, expected to increase significantly, judging by the presidential executive orders, the demand coming from growth in SMRs and advanced reactors and the needs of the U.S. government, including nuclear propulsion, Department of War and of course, with the U.S. strategic uranium reserve.

And so all of that will look at Uranium. We'll look at the need for more conversion. Our plans are, as we've mentioned in the quarter, accelerating and intensifying. We will have a lot more to report over the course of this calendar year. The feasibility study is advancing with floor permitting work, team building and our engagement with the government.

I look forward to those updates. Thanks, guys. I will pass it on.

Yes. Thanks, Brian. And just the last point on that before we go to the next question. And we've said this during the call already, but just to repeat it, what again differentiates UEC's effort to enter conversion is to truly build an American supply chain from mining, refining to conversion. That's never been done before in the U.S. under one roof. That's what really also differentiates the supply chain solution from anything else that currently exists that doesn't have the same control that we expect to have and want to build on the front end of the fuel cycle from mine to conversion.

And the next question comes from Alexander Pearce with BMO Capital.

So production was down a little bit quarter-on-quarter. Maybe you could just provide a little bit more color on what drove that. Was it related to sort of the California refigure upgrades that you were making in the previous quarter? And then maybe you can just talk about what the ramp-up could look like over the next quarter.

Alex, thank you for that. And it was good to see you recently at your BMO conference. We were extremely busy over those few days. Let's be clear. The last quarter, we reported several fronts where we had production infrastructure under construction. This quarter, we've delivered very much on completed construction activities across those key projects at Christensen Ranch with new header houses and their construction of Burke Hollow being completed, which is the newest uranium mine in the United States, Alex, as you know. So now we are awaiting the regulatory approval.

The bulk of the production, Alex, in the last few quarters had been carried. Again, majority of the production has been carried by only header houses at Christensen Ranch, only two. And so any production step change here and growth will come from the additional houses that have now been constructed. And the Burke Hollow satellite project that has been completed and expected to come on. You heard us talk about pending regulatory approval.

Let me emphasize that both Christensen Ranch and Burke Hollow are fully permitted projects. This is a significant advantage for both projects and for use. The reviews that are currently underway in Wyoming really relate to well field data packages that have been submitted, and the regulators classify these as nonsignificant revisions.

Ordinary course these take significantly less time but with the resurgence which is a positive we're seeing for the industry. This means regulators are also processing higher volumes of permitting activity more than they've seen in recent years. So essentially, these are somewhat growing pains in the industry that's moving from dormancy back into expansion, but these approvals will come in. And as they do Alex, we'll have a better handle very soon. on how the sequencing and the ramp will look like. And I'm going to also let Brent Berg chime in on that as well, with regards to the work that we've done. Go ahead, Brent.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. Alexander, I would just add that production is predominantly coming from new wells installed in 2025 with header houses and 107 and 108 at Christensen Ranch. And as Amir said, we're continuing our production ramp-up with ongoing mine development. That continued in well filled 11 where we have 4 header houses that were constructed, pressure tested, and they're now ready for recirculation. And those header houses will start up following state agency review and approvals. So I think we're in a pretty good spot in terms of additional construction capacity and header houses ready to start in Wyoming and then, of course, with the Burke Hollow mine ready for operational start-up.

Maybe I can just ask a follow-up question, which -- maybe you could just remind us of the process once you've got those approvals, is it then almost immediate that you can start recovering the uranium from those head houses? Yes, it is. And Brent, if you want to maybe just expand on that a bit with the operational readiness we're developing.

Yes, sure. Thank you. Yes, it's a normal process. the chemicals, including oxygen and carbon dioxide are on site, and they're added to those production areas to activate the uranium recovery process as the great uranium increases in the feed to the in exchange plant, the Uranium content on the loaded resin subsequently increases. Once that resin is loaded, it's transported in a resin hauling trailer to the central processing plant for processing. So essentially, those units are ready to go following regulatory approval.

And the next question comes from Joseph Reager with ROTH Capital Partners.

Most of what I want to touch on was already touched on, but just want to follow up on the regulatory side, has there been any indication from them on a time frame that they expect they caught up in since it sounds like such a kind of minor approval?

Joe, thank you for joining. And again, it's very difficult to provide. But the good news is that, again, we're not talking about long delays here, we really are optimistic that we're talking days and weeks and not months and quarters, Joe. But Brent, maybe you can speak to some of the industry working group and some of the some of the other interactions that you're closer to.

So thanks, Amir. Joe, I would just add that the regulatory agencies has been very collaborative and are working to address some of the longer lead time challenges that naturally occur when the industry actively accelerates. We're an open dialogue with the state agencies and continue investing our well field development activities in parallel. Because the timing of these reviews are. Ultimately, they sit with the regulators. We're not providing guidance on approval time lines.

But what we can say is that the infrastructure and development work is continuing to advance, and we'll certainly provide updates as key operational milestones are reached.

Okay. That's fair enough. And then the other item was most of your peers who are producers tend to provide like production sales data production ahead of time, ahead of their earnings. Is that something you guys might consider doing going forward, given, obviously, you're not hedged, you don't have sales schedule just so we can all be a little bit more accurate around the earnings?

Joe, thanks for that. As you know, there are these unique points about UEC's positioning and differentiation to the more kind of, let's say, contracted or hedged peer group. But I think, for sure, as we see things not normalized, but some of the potential or some of the developments that we're waiting to see how they play out like U.S. government policy and Section 232 U.S. reserve, et cetera, as you can appreciate as a U.S. producer with U.S. capabilities and U.S. eligibility to sell to the U.S. government. There are very strategic reasons here as to why we've kept our books on hedged and production available to maximize value.

So I think this is hopefully seen as the positive and differentiating point that it is. And as we get a better handle on those specific volumes of demand from those sources within U.S. government or the reserve or Department of Energy, et cetera, then we can also pinpoint better and share with you some of the expectations around the sales that are going to be coming up. But for the time being, as you can see, our total working capital requirements to advance all the production expansion are very adequately funded.

And so as a result, the inventory that we have and the sales we will make will be extremely positioned for maximizing returns and creating value for shareholders. And we see it all as again, kind of a positive that we're set up this way for very specific purposes in the United States.

Yes. No, it's good to see a $100-plus price realization. Yes. I'll turn it over.

The next question comes from Justin Chan with SCP.

Maybe just my first question is just a bit more clarification around production in the upcoming quarters. So for Q3, which we're in now, is it still the two header houses or how many header houses and which well field should we be modeling production from?

And then if you could give us some color on maybe Q4 or is that the quarter where I guess, this quarter or next quarter. Is that where you're kind of waiting on regulatory approval for the new header houses you've constructed?

Yes, thank you. I'll let Brent go into the details, but at a high level, Justin. So as mentioned, the production that is currently -- the current production is, again, majority from the two and only two header houses at Christensen Ranch. As soon as we receive the regulatory approvals that we've been discussing on this call, then we're able to turn on new capacity at Christensen Ranch and Burke Hollow.

So Justin, we're obviously still inside fiscal Q3 right now. And so those developments could still happen in Q3 and positively impact Q3. But for the most part, as we said in the last quarter as well, we did expect to see this fiscal year's production volumes be weighted towards the second half of the fiscal year. That still seems to be the case and arguably, increasingly weighted towards Q4, but Q3 possibilities are still alive and well, and we're literally in daily interactions with the state regulators. Brent, over to you.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. Justin, thanks for the question. So production in the fiscal quarter came from well fields 8 and 10 at Christensen Ranch. And as Amir mentioned, the production is predominantly coming from new wells that were installed in 2025. And our houses 10, 7 and 10 8. In terms of what's currently under development and what's coming up, we have well field 11, where there's 4 header houses that are constructed, they were pressure tested. They're not ready for circulation.

Startup will follow review or follow from review and approval of the state. We've got another 3 that are under construction in Wellfield 12, header houses 12, one the Wells, 97% case. The house is set and the PLC and MCC are in place in Wellfield 10 extension, Header House 109, 94% of the wells are cased the house is set and the PLC and MCC are in place.

So those are both well along in the construction path. At our house 109, the pattern layout is completed by the geology team and drill holes are planned and stated in the field at the end of the fiscal quarter. So lots of construction activity underway. And while we await the regulatory approval, we're continuing to press on the gas with well field development.

Got you. And with these new houses, when they're approved, is there much preconditioning you need to do? Or can you put solution directly and there's not much of a lead time there?

Yes. Good question, Justin. We typically preconditioned for a very short period, and then we'll start adding chemical oxygen and carbon dioxide very quickly. Start the leaching process.

Okay. Got you. And Texas is -- are the time lines for preconditioning similar to Wyoming?

Yes. We'll follow the same type of start-up that we would in Wyoming for the initial well field down in Texas.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you for that. Again, in summary, this quarter for UEC reinforces 3 themes that continue to define the company, scale financial strength and strategic positioning within the U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain. With that, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Operator, back to you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and welcome to Uranium Energy Corp.'s Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Results Conference Call. Today's call will be hosted by Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Also joining for the Q&A session of today's call are Josephine Man, Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations. [Operator Instructions]. Please note this event is being recorded. Today's call will run approximately 15 minutes for prepared remarks followed by Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Please note that a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the Presentations page of our website. Some of the commentary on today's call will include forward-looking statements and I would direct everyone to review Slide 2 of the presentation, which includes important cautionary notes.

All right. Let's get started. This quarter was an exciting step change for UEC with major production expansion initiatives and the introduction of a strategic new business line. The launch of United States Uranium Refining & Conversion Corp positions the company to become the only U.S. supplier with both Uranium and UF6 production capabilities. In parallel, we maintained low-cost in-situ recovery production and advanced our growth projects in Wyoming and South Texas, supporting higher output through the balance of fiscal 2026. These developments strengthen our platform as America's largest integrated nuclear fuel supplier aligned with U.S. policy. We continue to enjoy the backdrop of increasingly favorable macroeconomic and policy tailwinds and as such, have continued to increase our Uranium inventory ahead of the Section 232 decision.

A year ago at this time, we had just resumed operations at Christensen Ranch. In only 12 months, we have delivered low-cost production at our first mine, are positioned for near-term production at our second mine Burke Hollow and are excited to have commenced development at our third mine, Ludeman.

In the first quarter, we maintained low-cost production as we achieved a cash cost per pound of $29.90 based on 68,612 pounds of precipitated uranium and dried and drummed U308 produced. At our Irigaray central processing plant, upgrades were completed to support the transition to 24/7 operations including a full refurbishment of the yellowcake thickener and calciner. After quarter end, drying and packaging operations resumed on November 13, 2025, producing approximately 49,000 pounds of dried and drummed U308, subsequent to that date during the month of November.

At Christensen Ranch, the focus has been on expanding ISR production capacity through the construction of 6 additional header houses in new well fields 11 and 12 and 10 extension. Further, we have commenced development at our Ludeman ISR project, the company's second satellite project in the Powder River Basin to our Irigaray hub-and-spoke operations. At Burke Hollow, we are nearing operational status, major construction milestones, including the ion-exchange plant and wellfield are substantially complete, setting the stage for initial operations at South Texas' newest ISR production facility and for Burke Hollow to become America's next producing uranium mine. These advancements position the company for higher production rates through the remainder of the fiscal year as new capacity comes online.

Switching gears to our development assets. At Sweetwater, work is progressing under the FAST-41 permitting designation for the project. Planning of initial delineation drilling in the first wellfield area and assessment of the mill refurbishment plans were advanced. At Roughrider, a 34,000 meters core drilling program commenced in October 2025 to target conversion of inferred to indicated uranium resources to support the announced pre-feasibility study for the world-class high-grade Roughrider project in Saskatchewan, Canada and the prolific Athabasca Basin. And finally, the launch of United States Uranium Refining and Conversion Corp, positions UEC to provide end-to-end capabilities of the secure geopolitically-reliable source of uranium hexafluoride, supporting [indiscernible] enrichment.

Moving to our financial highlights on Slide 5. Our balance sheet remains strong with $698 million in cash, inventory and equities at market prices and no debt. We completed a $234 million public offering to accelerate the growth of our new business line, while bolstering our balance sheet. Our uranium inventory stands had 1,356,000 U308 held at October 31, 2025, which excludes the additional 199,000 pounds of precipitated uranium and dried and drummed uranium concentrate at the Irigaray CPT produced since we restarted production. We also expect to purchase an additional 300,000 pounds through the end of this month from purchase contracts at below market rates of $37.05 per pound in addition to growing inventory from operations. By remaining 100% unhedged, we maintained full exposure ahead of the results of the U.S. Government's Section 232 investigation, while in a tightening global market with a structural supply deficit, positioning UEC to benefit from expected higher uranium prices.

Our financial strength, coupled with the efficiency of our low-cost ISR operations enables us to ramp production responsively as market fundamentals and policy direction evolve. The current uranium price backdrop, underpinned by growing global nuclear demand and supportive U.S. policy provides a compelling setup for value creation. Importantly, the launch of UR&NC positions UEC to be the only vertically integrated American uranium producer. We are moving quickly. During the quarter, we commissioned the detailed feasibility study with Fluor and have begun hiring key technical and project personnel. Federal stakeholder discussions are ongoing and an extensive citing process has been commenced with potential host states and local governments. This initiative builds on UEC's existing uranium platform, advancing a fully American supply chain aligned with U.S. energy policy and defense needs.

As a reminder, we are focused on four key pillars of production growth. The Powder River Basin hub-and-spoke operations anchored by our Irigaray Central Processing plant in Wyoming, the South Texas hub-and-spoke operations anchored by our Hobson CPP, the Sweetwater hub-and-spoke operations anchored by our Sweetwater plant in Wyoming and finally, the Roughrider project in Canada. We are actively advancing each of these growth pillars and have provided a detailed update on our quarterly news release. I will now focus on our operating activities in the Powder River Basin and South Texas.

Moving to the next slide. We will start with the Powder River Basin hub-and-spoke operations. Since the resumption of operations as of October 31, 2025, accumulated production from Christensen Ranch was approximately 199,000 pounds of precipitated uranium and dried and drummed U308 at our Irigaray CPP. As part of the ongoing production ramp-up, UEC continue to develop new production areas at Christensen Ranch, mine development advanced with active well installation, piloting, casing and under-reading in wellfields 11 and 12 and delineation drilling in wellfield 8 and 10 extensions. Additionally, construction continued on 6 new header houses and wellfields 11, 12 and 10 extension. These new production areas will form the base for UEC's future production plans at Christensen Ranch.

In parallel, process upgrades at our Irigaray CPP continued in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, including a full rebuild of 1 of 2 yellowcake thickeners, replacing the rig gearbox and motor along with the repair of replacement of multiple calciner components, together with the refurbishment completed at Christensen Ranch earlier in the year, these timely investments are expected to support higher production rates in addition to improved operational efficiency and performance.

We are excited to announce that development plans have commenced at the Ludeman Satellite Project. This is a fully licensed and permitted project that will be constructed as a satellite ion-exchange plant sending uranium loaded resin to the Irigaray CPP for resin elution, precipitation, drying and packaging. Just 10 miles northeast of Glen Rock Wyoming, delineation drilling in the first production area at Ludeman commenced on November 19, 2025, with 200 holes planned. The delineation drilling will assist wellfield pattern design, Ludeman's SK 1300 compliant resources are 9.7 million pounds of measured and indicated and 1.3 million pounds of inferred uranium. 41 monitor wells are already installed for the production area and baseline water quality sampling is planned for these wells in Q4 fiscal '26.

Engineering for the satellite plant is in progress using internal technical expertise with external engineering plan to commence in January 2026. Design and procurement of the ion-exchange vessels for the plant is also underway. Just as a reminder that in the Powder River Basin, the Irigaray CPP has a license capacity of 4 million pounds per year, surrounded by 17 satellite projects, 4 of which are fully permitted, including Christensen Ranch and Ludeman.

Turning to South Texas. Construction of the Burke Hollow ion-exchange facility and first production area progressed on schedule during the quarter with key advances made across wellfield development and processing infrastructure. All large diameter tanks have been installed at the ion-exchange facility and testing of the disposal world was completed with the state regulatory agency in attendance. The utility provider completed the installation of 3-phase power into the project site, and all facilities have been energized. Well completion and mechanical integrity testing reports are underway following completion of construction. The company's workforce in South Texas has grown to 86 personnel in preparation for the startup of the Burke Hollow project.

As we close out calendar 2025, the macro backdrop for uranium has never been dis-encouraging with strong bipartisan support for safe, clean, reliable nuclear energy. We see strong support from the U.S. Government including the recent designation of uranium as critical mineral. Big tech is a key component of new demand and with the largest hyperscalers continuing to invest heavily in the energy sector to secure the necessary power required for their massive data center investments. Overarching all of this is the fundamental supply deficit, which is expected to exceed 1.7 billion pounds by 2025 on a cumulative basis. As I've stated before, we have never seen a more positive policy environment for our industry.

In summary, this quarter, UEC has neared an exciting inflection point of growing from a single asset producer towards diversified uranium production while becoming a U.S. origin supply chain from mine to conversion. UEC is uniquely positioned to meet the growing demand for secure domestic uranium supply. We're excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to delivering further value to our shareholders. Before I turn it back to the operator, a couple of points.

First, today's call is scheduled to conclude around noon Eastern. If we don't get to your question, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Investor Relations team, and we'll be happy to follow up directly. Second, please note that I'm joined today by Josephine Man, our Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, our Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, our Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations. Together, the four of us are backed by UEC team with more than 900 years of combined experience in the uranium industry. That depth of experience is what drives our daily execution across operations finance and strategy. With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.

I just wanted to first start on the UR&C venture. I know you're making progress there, but just trying to understand a little bit better maybe the next set of milestones in the development of UR&C and maybe the timing of what you're expecting there through the first half of 2026? And then maybe where you'd like to be on that venture by the end of next year? And I had some questions around production as well.

Okay. With respect to UR&C, we are moving as fast as possible and mobilizing various initiatives around siding study that is now progressing very well. State level discussions and meetings that we've had with stakeholders and state-level governments. We would like to -- and we'll provide more information on this, Brian, but the work has commenced on our feasibility study with Fluor and other consultants that we have involved in that. We really want to be in a position to deliver that inside 2026 calendar year and hopefully towards the midpoint of that.

But again, that's the date that we'll be able to speak to with more confidence as we approach fiscal Q2 for UEC. In the meanwhile, we've been very pleased with the way team building has been coming around in terms of building our technical team and technical bench strength around this new initiative. So overall, kind of multiple parallel tracks all moving forward. And we'll have a lot more to share in our fiscal Q2 results when those come out.

Okay. Looking forward to it. And then just second question around production, a lot of moving pieces here. You have the upgrades at Irigaray, you're starting to move forward on Ludeman. Maybe as we zoom out, can you kind of give us a sense of what the production cadence is going to look like here into 2Q and then through the rest of the year?

And maybe just specifically on Irigaray, the 49,000 pounds in less than 3 weeks, you sort of run rate that. It looks like it's 0.25 million pounds in a quarter potentially. Is that the right type of run rate that Irigaray is going to be running at now? And what does that mean for the cadence of production overall across the various sites through the rest of the year in the next couple of quarters?

Thank you, Brian. Just to zoom out again and again for perspective. And as I mentioned during my prepared remarks, 12 months ago, we were sitting in a place where we were just starting to ramp up at Christensen Ranch. We now have 2 solid quarters of results, demonstrating the low cost that we're delivering at Christensen Ranch and Irigaray amongst the lowest in the U.S. We are talking about bringing online Burke Hollow very soon. 6 additional header houses at Christensen Ranch, and now Ludeman is in the development construction pipeline as well. So you're right, there are a lot of moving parts.

Brian, as you recall, much of the production that's been reported has come since April of this year from header houses 10-7 and 10-8. And now there are 6 new header houses coming online, which will be most hopefully inside second fiscal quarter. And then with Burke Hollow coming online, most of the production from Burke Hollow really contributing towards fiscal Q3. So to answer your question on cadence, we would expect to see more of a step change in that cadence in fiscal Q3 and Q4 as we see a greater contribution of production coming in from Burke Hollow and from most of the 6 header houses that are currently under construction at Christensen Ranch.

The next question comes from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.

Just a couple of follow-ups here. With Irigaray, the plant upgrades, obviously, you're done now. I assume the answer is no, but this doesn't really have a ramp-up period, right? In other words, this goes from off to full capacity pretty much at the flip of a button, right?

Yes, correct, Heiko. So most of that work is basically what we mentioned in the press release since coming online on November 13. So again, just to step back the refurbishment of the yellowcake thickener and calciner were sequential. And so as such, the equipment was offline for much of the quarter, while this repair and replacement of key components were underway. Once online on November 13, we were at steady state operations and had the steady-state operations had resumed basically with the drying and packaging throughput really nearing a rate of almost 1 million pounds per year. Let me just also allow Brent Berg, our Senior VP of Operations, step in on that. Go ahead, Brent.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. I would just add that similar to the refurbishment that was undertaken in fiscal '25 for Christensen Ranch with the ion-exchange plant, we felt that it was an opportune time to do those similar upgrades to the Irigaray central processing plant. And so the refurbishment to the calciner was really centered around increasing throughput of dried yellowcake. And all of the updates that we did were things that included components as recommended by the manufacturer to increase operational efficiency, that work has really led to continuous 24/7 operation and the ability to operate the plant at design capacity.

Fair enough. And then with Uranium Refining and Conversion URC, just a couple of follow-ups here. I mean, what would you say the major misconceptions in the market? I mean we've been getting a lot of questions on scalability and time to profitability even. How should analysts like myself show off how this thing can unlock shareholder value? And are there maybe any catalysts that are underappreciated by the market in your opinion?

Thank you, Heiko. At a strategic level and at a positioning level, clearly, this is an opportunity in a new business line that highly differentiates UEC. There are simply no other companies in the U.S. that have end-to-end capabilities from uranium resources to mining to processing and now the planned refining and conversion that we have in place. So strategically speaking, it's a highly differentiated positioning for UEC to be a true supply chain provider.

With respect to the way the financial analysis around that work. The best outcome there is when our feasibility study is completed and reported. And as I mentioned earlier, we're aiming for that to be hopefully around the midpoint of 2026 calendar year, but again, we will firm that up as we report fiscal Q2 results, but we are moving very rapidly. We're capitalized to be able to move rapidly. And of course, as you know, this is work that is building on the last couple of years of prior early work that we completed, that was the foundation of what allowed us to be in a position to announce this UR&C initiative in early September. So it was only early September that we formally announced it and in just 60 to 90 days, we're making incredibly fast progress.

And look, this is a very essential piece of the overall value chain and the supply chain for nuclear fuel. This is a serious bottleneck, without another conversion facility in operation, this is the real kind of pinch point right now between connecting mining and enrichment. So it's very integral, and we're very excited by it. And I think, yes, you'll have hopefully much more information to be able to value and assess this by in the coming quarters.

The next question comes from Katie Lachapelle with Canaccord Genuity.

In your prepared remarks, you noted that you've made a positive development decision for the Ludeman project. Can you provide any guidance on the potential production time lines or operating rates that you expect for that wellfield? And then in addition to that, how are you now thinking about the sequencing of the various ISR wellfields in Wyoming?

Thank you, Katie. I'll go first, and then I'll hand it to Brent Berg as well. So again, for context and as we zoom out, UEC has a very powerful position in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and the Powder River Basin, have multi-decades of productive history for uranium mining, and we've assembled over the years of M&A and consolidation that we did, a platform that includes our central hub, that's the Irigaray central processing plant and 17 satellite projects. 4 of which are fully permitted and 2 that we're talking about now, Christensen Ranch, that's in operation and now Ludeman that we want to bring online next.

So Katie, this is all speaking to the production ramp-up that obviously we have planned and that bench strength that we have and the sheer number of properties that we control, including fully permitted projects. So sequentially, you can see Christensen, obviously, is going to continue to grow. Ludeman, we've commenced the development work. And most likely, again, depending on market conditions, depending on the outcome of Section 232, we may even develop Reno Creek and more in parallel track. Again, we're taking our cues from the market. And when you're in a position where you're already operating, you're already permitted, you have the luxury to be able to make those decisions and respond accordingly.

The Ludeman project is very well situated in terms of being just south of previously producing Smith Ranch mines that were in production for a very long time. And I'll let Brent maybe speak to some of the kind of accessibility issues and development plans that are currently underway at Ludeman. Go ahead, Brent.

Sure. Thanks, Amir. Katie, I would just add that at Christensen Ranch, header houses 10-7 and 10-8 accounted for a large percentage of 2025 mine production. And it really highlights the importance of these new mining areas as we continue to ramp up production with mine development now routine at the Christensen Ranch operation. We've continued that development in wellfields 11, 12 and 10 extension where we've got 6 header houses underway with case well installation, nearing completion and surface construction on schedule for start-up of additional fresh production in the coming year.

Ludeman of course, is an attractive project for us being fully licensed and permitted and just down the road from our Irigaray central processing plant. And so we will develop that project just as we would our new wellfields at Christensen Ranch and we'll truck loaded rest into Irigaray, for processing, no different than we are doing at Christensen Ranch, but it's a little further out in the next next exciting phase of our development at UEC.

Awesome. And then maybe just one quick follow-up. Just now you referenced the potential for the U.S. strategic uranium reserve as a potential outcome of the Section 232 investigation. Just wondering if you can provide any comments on expected time lines for that release? And then any additional key outcomes that you anticipate from the Section 232 investigation?

Katie, I'm going to let Scott Melbye, our Executive VP comment on that. And for the benefit of the listeners, Scott is also the President of the uranium producers of America, that's our industry association in Washington, D.C. Go ahead, Scott.

Great. Thanks, Amir. And Katie, we are optimistic about the potential for the strategic uranium reserve being really expanded over what was done in the first term. The report -- the 232 report has been submitted to the President. He has a statutory timeline to reply to that. Why are we so optimistic? Because none of those details have been released publicly, but we know we have a precedent from the previous 232 investigation. It was a remedy that President Trump chose to institute the first time around. I think the findings of import penetration hasn't changed over what were the conditions back then. In fact, the world has gotten more complicated with geopolitics. So we think the conclusion is the same, and we feel that, that's a remedy the President may go to.

Secondly, we've also heard very supportive comments from Secretary Wright and Secretary Bergum, on the need for an expanded uranium reserve, public remarks that they've made in the last weeks and months.

Three, I think it's safe to say this was in a very small way in the first term, a successful policy initiative. And speaking on behalf of UEC and I think the broader U.S. domestic industry, reinstituting the strategic reserve would result in advanced development activities at U.S. uranium operations.

And then four, don't underestimate the defense needs for U.S. origin, un-obligated uranium for things like the naval propulsion program, if we're building more aircraft carriers and submarines as is President Trump's desire, we need more U.S-origin uranium. And I just direct people's attention to language in current National Defense Appropriations Act Legislation that's before Congress right now does direct Department of War and NSA to report on the status of our stockpiles of U.S-origin uranium and the adequacy of those stockpiles to move forward with further growth in our Naval Propulsion Programs.

So we're optimistic we'll see like everyone else, what comes from that. But I think the legislative mandated timelines really kind of come around the end of the year. So we're hopeful we'll hear something in December. But if not, early January, we should hear the President's recommendations.

The next question comes from Joseph Reagor with ROTH Capital Partners.

Most of mine are kind of follow-up to other people at this point. I guess first one, just as a follow-up on Section 232. Is it fair for us to assume that you guys are probably withhold for making any spot sales barring a jump in the stock price between now and the Section 232 readout?

Go ahead, Scott.

Yes. I mean we're quite content to build that strategic inventory. Of course, to have U.S-origin uranium available to sell into strategic reserve, is one objective. But two, we just believe that this market is in such a structural deficit today, and doesn't seem to be getting -- the gap isn't closing, if anything, with a doubling of nuclear generation now and production lagging. We're quite content to have these new pounds produced and our inventory to sell into stronger markets in the coming year.

Okay. Fair enough. And then over at Irigaray, one question I don't think it has been asked yet is, do you guys have a rough estimate of how many pounds of production were held back because of the upgrades during fiscal Q1?

Joe, nothing was held back because we continue to keep material basically in circuit. So operations kept going, and we -- it was really just the final step of packaging the uranium, that did not occur. And the costs associated with that final step is extremely nominal. So really not that you've seen kind of from mid-November to end of November, things are -- things that have resumed post all those upgrades. It's finishing that final step. But otherwise, everything was working at the plant and supporting the feed that was coming in from Christensen. Brent, would you like to add to that?

Sure. Thanks, Amir. Maybe I'd just add that the upgrades that we did were sequential. So we first tackled the thickener in the precipitation circuit. And this is 1 of 2 storage vessels for storing precipitated yellowcake prior to drying and packaging. So we did a full replacement of the rig, the gearbox and the motor for the rig dry. And then with the calciner, we did a number of upgrades, including all the wear parts like bearings, sand seals. We replaced the rake arms with insulated components and new teeth to increase retention time in the dryer. And additionally, the drive the motor, the gearbox, the bevel pinion were all replaced, but -- as a result, drying and packaging is now running 24/7 two-shift operation and as it should.

Okay. One final thing, if I could. Do you guys have a budget, capital budget yet for Ludeman, or if not, when might we be getting them?

Yes. Joe, we'll look to provide more feedback on that in the next quarter coming up or current quarter that we're in for fiscal. But at the same time, you can expect very similar development cost there, as we've seen with Christensen Ranch and that we're looking basically -- we're utilizing many of the same drilling companies or drilling rigs that we used at Christensen.

So one of the key components of our development cost, which is drilling to delineate the wellfields and install the wells. That cost is quite consistent in terms of what we've seen so far. And also Ludeman is much more of an accessible project, that's closer to nearby town. And so we also feel we may have some benefit there in terms of development cost has been moved forward. But again, some good parallels and similarities with what you've seen out of Christensen Ranch exists with Ludeman.

The next question comes from Justin Chan with SCP Resource Finance.

I guess as a follow-up to the questions on Christensen Ranch and Ludeman. So you've got the 6 header houses that are under construction. Do you plan to construct more over the next, let's say, the remainder of this fiscal year? Or will the Christensen Ranch be what you're planning there? And then the new header houses are at Ludeman? Yes. Can you just give us an update on that? And for Texas, can you give a sense of what the milestones are over the next, let's say, next quarter and then the quarter after that so we can judge progress?

Yes, for sure. Brent, why don't you go ahead on Ludeman and Christensen Ranch?

Sure. Justin, thanks for the question. So at Christensen Ranch, of course, when you were at site, we toured the well development, wellfield development. And we're very much focused on mine unit 11 or wellfield 11 at that time. We've since started development in wellfield 12 as well as 10 extension. But we will continue on with further development and additional header houses at Christensen Ranch. So wellfields 10 extension as well as an extension to wellfield 8 are both quite large, and there are a number of header houses with associated with both. So we will -- you'll continue to see this pace as we progress.

In terms of Burke Hollow. Construction is substantially complete. So what the team is very focused on right now is preoperational testing and commissioning of equipment, training key personnel and finalizing as-built drawings mechanical integrity tests and well completion reports. As far as next milestones, the wellfield at Burke Hollow will be brought online gradually and increasing the flow to the satellite ion-exchange plant chemicals, including oxygen, carbon dioxide and bicarbonate will be added to the initial production area to activate the uranium recovery process. And then as the grade increases in the feed to the plant, the uranium content loaded on the resin will subsequently increase.

And of course, once that resin is loaded, it will be transported to -- in one of the new resin hauling trailers to Hobson for processing. So that's what I foresee the next few months looking like.

Got you. So at Burke Hollow, let's say, this time next quarter, you'll have solution into the wellfield. Presumably, it will be a target PH, and we'll start to get some information about grades and flow rates and stuff like that? Is that a good way of tracking over the next few months, what I might be asking you in 3 months' time?

Yes. Justin, I think that's exactly right. So as we start adding the chemical to the wellfield. We'll see the uranium grade respond as well as the PH and we'll get a lot better picture of what that production profile is going to look like as we ramp up Burke Hollow and send that uranium loaded resin to Hobson for process.

The next question comes from Mohamad Sidibe with National Bank Financial.

Most of my ones have been answered. But maybe just on your UR&C, given the work that you're advancing in fiscal year 2026 ahead of the feasibility study, can you maybe provide us with a little bit of color on maybe the spend required to advance some of these initiatives specifically for fiscal year '26?

Mo, just I heard your question. What was the required part you asked for -- the bandwidth required?

No, no, the spend. So just trying to understand how much spend to advance the feasibility study, the engineering work, advanced negotiations with host governments? Just to understand a little bit better the impact to your balance sheet use for fiscal year 2026 as you advance work on the conversion facility?

Thank you for the question. Relative to the size of our balance sheet and relative to the current quarterly cash burn rate Mo, given the sort of study phase that we're at right now with UR&C, the requirements, the capital requirements are still very modest. In the coming quarter or 2, we'll be able to obviously speak to that with more estimates and especially as the feasibility study comes out. But certainly, I would say we are very sufficiently capitalized for the work that needs to happen there. And the current spending is very modest, again, because we're at that study stage and that work you would appreciate is -- is going to be like that.

But ultimately, again, there is a serious kind of ramp-up in work and efforts coming and there will be another kind of step change in the work we're doing once the feasibility study is released once the siding work has been completed once site selection has been announced and sort of planned. So again, major milestones ahead. But between now and then, very adequately funded to continue to advance the work.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

All right. Thank you for that. Thank you for everyone who participated in today's call. We really appreciate it. Again, as we said at the outset that this quarter represents a major step change for UEC both in terms of the strategic initiative that we have launched with our uranium the United States Uranium Refining and Conversion Corp. Again, this highly differentiates UEC as being the only company with U.S. origin supply chain from mine to conversion. The work that has been done in operations, again, we were just a year ago, just resuming at Christensen Ranch and came into this quarter as a single asset producer, and we've laid the groundwork during this quarter to become a multi-asset producer with Burke Hollow coming into production eminently and with Ludeman now in development and construction.

The other area in terms of the operating results at Christensen Ranch, we're really pleased with demonstrating the continued low cost production profile that, that project carries between uranium recovered and processed, between Christensen Ranch and Irigaray plant. So again, all in all, a lot happening, a lot of significant progress. We're very excited by it all. But also to highlight that we remain in an incredibly strong balance sheet position. In fact, even stronger than before. We continue to be debt-free and with almost $700 million of cash, physical uranium and liquid assets. Finally, with 1.4 million pounds of uranium in inventory, not including the 199,000 pounds produced and not including another 300,000 pounds that we have the ability to purchase this month. We're sitting also in a very strong inventory position ahead of the Section 232 decision, and hopefully, that will be a positive catalyst as we believe it could be for our industry, particularly the U.S. uranium industry where UEC is the leading company in that space and the fastest-growing and largest U.S. uranium company.

Thank you again for your time today and wishing everyone a pleasant December, Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Uranium Energy Corp.'s Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results Conference Call. Today's call will be hosted by Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Also joining for the Q&A session of today's call are Josephine Man, Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, Senior Vice President, U.S. Operations.

[Operator Instructions] Please also note, today's event is being recorded. Today's call will run approximately 15 minutes for prepared remarks, followed by a Q&A. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Amir Adnani, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. For those not currently on the webcast, a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the Presentations page of our website. Some of the commentary on today's call will include forward-looking statements, and I would direct everyone to review Slide 2 of the presentation, which includes important cautionary notes.

All right. Here we go. Fiscal 2025 was a breakthrough year as we delivered initial low-cost production in Wyoming, with approximately 130,000 pounds at total cost of $36 per pound. We are now firmly in ramp-up mode with new Header Houses at Christensen Ranch online and Burke Hollow 90% complete, which will be America's next ISR mine. At the same time, we achieved substantial scale through the accretive acquisition of Rio Tinto's Sweetwater complex, establishing our third U.S. hub-and-spoke platform and expanding license capacity to 12.1 million pounds annually, making UEC the largest U.S. uranium company by estimated resources and total licensed production capacity.

Our balance sheet remains strong with $321 million in cash, inventory and equities, and no debt. We have a 100% unhedged strategy to capture upside as prices rise.

And with the launch of UR&C, we are moving to become America's only vertically integrated uranium company, expanding downstream into refining and conversion.

Moving to our financial highlights on Slide 4. We're encouraged by the strong position we find ourselves in today. As of July 31, 2025, UEC maintained a robust balance sheet with $321 million in cash, inventory and equities based on market values, and no debt.

Our sales strategy for the first half of fiscal 2025 year resulted in $68.8 million in revenue and $24.5 million in gross profit from the sales of 810,000 pounds of U3O8 from our physical inventory at an average price above $82.50 per pound. In the second half of fiscal 2025, we have focused on building our inventory. We have 1,356,000 of U3O8 held in inventory valued at $96.6 million at the uranium market price of $71.25 as at July 31, 2025. This inventory does not include the approximately 130,000 pounds of initial Wyoming production earlier discussed.

Our 100% unhedged strategy maximizes our exposure to rising uranium prices, and we're committed to building strategic inventory to supply the U.S. strategic uranium reserve and other government programs and global market demand. Our financial flexibility, combined with our low-cost ISR operations, allows us to scale production in step with market and policy signals. The strong uranium price environment driven by global demand for nuclear energy and U.S. policy support positions us to capitalize on these opportunities.

Now moving to Slide 5 and zooming out. The last several years of over $1 billion in accretive acquisitions has built UEC into an enviable position with global resources of over 230 million pounds in the measured and indicated categories and a further 100 million pounds in the inferred category. This does not include the Sweetwater complex. Furthermore, we boast the largest license production capacity in the U.S. with 12.1 million pounds per year across our plants.

In our portfolio, we're focused on our 4 key pillars of production growth: Irigaray central processing plant or CPP in Wyoming, Hobson CPP in Texas, Sweetwater CPP and the Roughrider project in Canada. We're actively advancing each of these growth pillars, which we'll speak about in further detail shortly.

Following a string of bear market acquisitions, near cycle lows, we were able to establish UEC as the largest U.S. uranium company. This unparalleled scale is what has allowed us to identify the market need and opportunity for a single American company with scale and vertical integration, which means further growth into refining and conversion services.

The launch of UR&C is designed to position UEC as the only U.S. company moving towards end-to-end capabilities in uranium mining, processing, refining and conversion for delivery of natural UF6 to enrichment plants for LEU and HALEU production.

The timing couldn't be better as U.S. nuclear policy is undergoing a seismic shift. President Trump's executive orders to quadruple nuclear energy, combined with Energy Secretary Chris Wright's call to eliminate reliance on Russian uranium supplies have created unprecedented tailwinds for restoring the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. The planned facility would be a centerpiece of this effort, ensuring a secure domestic supply chain for nuclear fuel. We're moving this project forward in stages subject to contingencies and look forward to providing updates as it progresses.

Moving to Slide 8. We will start with the Irigaray hub as we provide a bit more detail on the ongoing initiative at our 4 production pillars. A key driver of our Wyoming production growth was the commissioning of 2 new ISR mine units at Christensen Ranch, Header Houses 10-7 and 10-8. We've also made significant progress on wellfield development with active well installation in Wellfield 11, delineation drilling completed in Wellfield 12 and extensions planned in wellfields 8 and 10. Construction of 4 additional header houses in Wellfield 11 is underway, with power pools placed and buildings being set on the foundations. These efforts will form the backbone of our future production plans. And as a result of this ramp-up, our Wyoming workforce has grown to 73 personnel, reflecting the scale of our operations in the Powder River Basin.

Turning to South Texas. Our Burke Hollow project is on track to become America's next ISR mine. Construction is 90% complete, with a target completion date of November 2025. We're positioning for operational startup in December. This project represents a critical component of our South Texas hub-and-spoke production platform, which leverages our Hobson CPP.

At Burke Hollow, we've made significant progress on the ion exchange facility and the first production area known as PAA-1. Key milestones, including the completion of injection and recovery wells, the installation and loading of ion exchange columns with resin and the drilling of a deep disposal well. The high-density polyethylene trunk line connecting the satellite facility to PAA-1 has been fused, pressure tested and connected to the plant. Concurrently, 3 phase power is being advanced to the site and equipment installation continues on schedule. With these advancements, our South Texas workforce has grown to 56 personnel supporting our broader regional operations.

Moving back to Wyoming, to focus on our newest asset, Sweetwater. As I mentioned previously, one of the most transformative events of fiscal 2025 was our $175 million acquisition of Rio Tinto's Sweetwater plant and Wyoming uranium assets, which established UEC's third U.S. hub-and-spoke production platform. This transaction added the Sweetwater plant, a conventional mill, 1 of only 3 in the U.S. with the project having approximately 175 million pounds of historic resources. The Sweetwater plant with a license capacity of 4.1 million pounds of U3O8 per year is a 3,000 ton per day mill that we plan to adapt for processing loaded ion exchange resins from ISR operations, unlocking significant synergies with our existing Wyoming assets.

On August 1, 2025, the Sweetwater uranium complex was designated as a FAST-41 transparency project by the U.S. Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, following President Trump's executive order to increase American mineral production. This designation expedites ISR permitting for deposits on federal lands. Coming alongside the federal government, the Wyoming State government has agreed to match the permitting time lines enabled through the FAST-41 program.

With regards to project advancement at Sweetwater, we've initiated a new drilling program to define future ISR wellfield areas, and we subsequently aim to publish a technical report summary to incorporate these results, ensuring a comprehensive resource estimate.

Now moving to Slide 11 to discuss Roughrider in more detail. In 2024, we drilled metallurgical holes across the west, east and far east zones, collecting core to confirm metallurgical testing. Since January 2025, we have conducted bulk solvent extraction, yellowcake precipitation, tailings neutralization and effluent treatment tests. These results will assist in completing our planned prefeasibility study for which we've issued requests for proposals to engage qualified firms. The PFS will be a critical step in advancing Roughrider toward development.

Before I close out on our 2025 fiscal year results, I wanted to provide a brief overview of the current uranium market backdrop. As many of you know, we are entering into a supply squeeze where we have seen significant underinvestment into uranium mines over the last decade. Growing demand, coupled with this under investment, has led to a structural supply deficit that is projected to continue and widen reaching a cumulative deficit of 1.7 billion pounds by 2045.

In the U.S., we have seen unprecedented and bipartisan support for nuclear energy to combat this supply squeeze. Under the Trump administration, U.S. policy has shifted decisively toward restoring and expanding the domestic nuclear fuel cycle as part of the broader strategy to bolster energy independence, resilience, dominance and national security. A key goal is to avoid reliance on foreign uranium, conversion and enrichment services, while supporting critical infrastructure, including artificial intelligence and military needs.

President Trump has set an ambitious target to quadruple U.S. nuclear energy capacity by 2050, surpassing the World Nuclear Association's tripling goal, and to advance roughly 10 new large-scale reactors by 2030. To strengthen the fuel cycle, the U.S. administration is invoking the Defense Production Act, to enter voluntary agreements with domestic companies for enriched uranium, and is considering federal offtake commitments to create secure markets for newly expanded or built facilities. At the same time, regulatory and institutional reforms aim to accelerate licensing, fast-track projects, enabled advanced reactor deployment and reduce dependence on foreign nuclear fuel sources. In summary, we have never seen a more positive policy environment for our industry.

Amid this favorable policy backdrop, major technology companies are increasingly turning to nuclear energy as a reliable carbon-free power source to meet the soaring electricity demands of AI and large-scale data centers. This growing interest underscores nuclear's emerging role as a cornerstone of the U.S. digital infrastructure strategy. This includes major investments into nuclear energy from every hyperscaler, the latest being NVIDIA's investment into TerraPower in Wyoming to support the Natrium reactor. We're now witnessing an unprecedented flow of private capital into nuclear projects, from hyperscaler power purchase agreements to advanced reactor investments, reinforcing the critical need for U.S. origin uranium and conversion capacity.

To wrap up, fiscal 2025 was a year of execution and transformation for UEC. We achieved initial production in Wyoming, advanced Burke Hollow to near completion and expanded our U.S. platform through the Sweetwater acquisition. The launch of UR&C is designed to position us as a leader in the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle, and our strong balance sheet provides the flexibility to execute on our growth strategy.

With unprecedented policy support and a tightening uranium market, we feel UEC is uniquely positioned to meet the growing demand for secure domestic uranium supply. We're excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to delivering further value to our shareholders.

Before I turn it back to the operator, a couple of points. First of all, today's call is scheduled to end around noon Eastern time. If we don't get to your question, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Investor Relations team, and we'll be happy to follow up directly.

Second, please note that I'm joined today by Josephine Man, our Chief Financial Officer; Scott Melbye, our Executive Vice President; and Brent Berg, our Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations. Together, the 4 of us are backed by a UEC team with more than 900 years of combined experience in the uranium industry. That depth of experience is what drives our daily execution across operations, finance and strategy.

With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Brian Lee from Goldman Sachs.

Thanks for hosting this call. I know there's a lot of focus around your ramp-up efforts here and go moving from kind of asset status to producer status, so helpful to kind of start to see the early milestones and what's happening from a production standpoint.

So kind of really my first question, kudos on the production and the cost realization here in fiscal '25. I know you might not be ready to give full guidance metrics, Amir, but can you at least give us some sense of what target ranges are potentially reasonable outcomes as you think about the next 12 months? You're going from 130,000 pounds to Christensen Ranch sounds like it's accelerating. You have a lot of early-stage successful milestones, it sounds like, at Hobson and Sweetwater. So is it fair to say we're going to still be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds of production in '26? Or could we be thinking about even 1 million pounds plus? Sort of what are kind of the low and high-end outcomes that you could consider just based on how the next 12 months goes, both from a production standpoint, but also from a market price and demand standpoint?

Brian, thanks for that question. And just again, operator, making sure you can hear me okay?

Yes. Coming through loud and clear.

Okay. Perfect. Brian, thank you again for that question. And something to touch on, when you look at these results and when you look at the ramp-up, the bulk of production that we're reporting here came from mine units or header houses 10-7 and 10-8, which, as we disclosed, really only came on in the last few months, 10-7 in April and 10-8 in June. So you can already see and appreciate that new header houses that are providing fresh new output and production are definitely putting us obviously on an uptrend. Burke Hollow is going to be another source of production growth. And clearly, that's going to, as we indicated, be completed around, in terms of construction completion, by November and the operational startup in December.

So any way you look at this, Brian, production is ramping up and is going to continue to ramp up. And for context, Christensen Ranch and Burke Hollow are only 2 of 7 fully permitted projects in terms of satellite projects that we have in the pipeline that can support ongoing production growth, and that does not include the sweetwater complex, which with this fast-tracking news and development, hopefully, we could get the permit amendments necessary to conduct ISR at Sweetwater and be able to develop that project, bring that online as well.

When you look at our total license capacity of 12 million pounds or over 12 million pounds per year, and when you look at our significant resources that I've already spoken to, you can see that this company's goal and ambitions are certainly to build a multimillion pound per year uranium producer. And obviously, that's a plan and objective that we'll look to achieve over the coming years. But very much in lock-step with market conditions, market pricing and government policy and particularly the developments we're seeing in the U.S. around the strategic uranium reserve.

This fiscal year, we did not see the strongest uranium prices. In fact, we ended July 31 around $70 per pound. That was a signal to us that it was a great time to build and scale operations, but not to necessarily be making sales. And you saw that we intentionally held back production exactly for that reason. And then you saw overnight the uranium prices are actually over $80 per pound.

So just to come back and to finish the answer to your question there, Brian, this is our first call of many calls to come in terms of earning calls. As we have more of these calls, we look forward to more interactions to demonstrate and show how the production ramp-up is progressing. I think you could say that in 12 months, we've delivered on 2 or 3 key takeaways.

Number one, low cost. We've achieved low cost coming out of the gate at a time where we've seen struggling operational restarts out there. UEC and these operations and our team demonstrate that we've got the efficiency and the personnel and the team and asset base to deliver low-cost production. These numbers we've reported today are amongst the lowest cost reported by any company over the last 1 or 2 years using U.S. ISR or ISR in general. Volumes will increase as we build additional header houses, as we build additional satellite projects in quarters and years to come. And we have fully permitted projects to do that with. We're not limited by the long, long delays that are associated with permitting. So we're in the driver's seat with what we're doing.

Super helpful. I appreciate the comprehensive answer. Maybe just one more and I'll pass it on. You alluded to government policy. There's been a lot of headline developments. I know you yourself, Amir, spent a lot of time in D.C. So I wanted to touch upon a couple of things there. So any thoughts you can share on state of the state with respect to, there's been talk about a strategic uranium reserve in the U.S., anything you can share on what you're expecting timing impact wise from potential Section 232 as it relates to uranium?

And then thirdly, on this UR&C, I know it's still early stage, but -- and then there's probably multiple potential outcomes for how you move forward. What's your thought process in structuring that venture to include some sort of either government funding investment, offtake? Like, what are the different government involvement exercises that potentially could play into that? I know a lot of investors are focused on what happened with MP and I think just overnight with Lithium Americas. So how does UR&C and UEC potentially fit into that? And how are you trying to, if you have your choice, structure that with government involvement?

Brian, I'll tackle that question in 2 ways. Let me just comment first with respect to the UR&C. That's our U.S. Uranium Refining & Conversion Corp. initiative. And then I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Scott Melbye, to speak on some of the government policies that we're seeing developing in D.C. and on the Hill.

Look, very clearly, and as we've stated, we've identified and seen for the last 1.5 years to 2 years that there is substantial bottlenecks in uranium refining and conversion, particularly in the U.S., but even on a global basis, especially if we're going to see a doubling and tripling or quadrupling of nuclear energy as President Trump is calling for, not only is the current capacity not enough to meet current demand, but it's going to have to expand substantially from these levels.

We're looking at similar models across the world. You look at how Chinese state-owned companies and Russian state-owned companies that we compete against, how they operate in the nuclear fuel cycle, they operate in a vertically integrated way. They don't just mine uranium in isolation or convert uranium in isolation. It's done under one banner. And what we're trying to create here is really that American champion that can have end-to-end capabilities, which frankly has never existed before. But if we have ambitions to try to compete with Russia and China and if we're going to quadruple nuclear energy, that type of business model, that kind of company is necessary that can go from mining uranium to refining it and converting it and delivering the UF6 that enrichers need to support and enable further enrichment growth.

And so this is one of a kind. This has never been done before in the U.S., but it's being done around the world by major nuclear players. Clearly, this has massive alignment with government policy. And we've seen this, and as you touched on, not only is government focused on these key areas of national security vulnerability with lithium, rare earths, antimony, but uranium and nuclear fuel has been identified several times, several ways by Department of Commerce, by Department of Energy as a national security issue that needs to be addressed.

So we think the alignment is very much on mark. It's timely. We started this initiative in terms of laying the groundwork, the engineering work, the engineering studies over 1 year, 1.5 years ago. We have that first-mover advantage and the vertical integration is a key differentiator. We're the only company in the U.S. really tackling this issue end-to-end from uranium to conversion. And we've structured this to be able to address partnership from strategic involvement, whether it's government, utilities or other strategic partners to be involved.

When we look at how this gets evolved, and to get more detail about the funding of it, Brian, obviously, as of right now, UEC is funding this 100% and UR&C is a 100% wholly owned subsidiary of UEC. But as we have meetings and trips and discussions in the coming weeks and months, we'll have more updates and information to share in that time, and more news flow will come on this very exciting initiative and development. We're very excited by it. We think it's very well timed. It's early days. So again, we'll have more information on it.

But let me also give the floor to Scott to speak a bit more on some of the U.S. government policy developments. Scott, over to you.

Great. Thank you, Amir. Brian, with regards to the strategic uranium reserve, I think -- we were very encouraged to hear Secretary Wright's comments over in Vienna at the IAEA meetings where he put forth pretty clearly in his remarks that the strategic uranium reserve is a policy that we should be pursuing to ensure energy security, national security and build up our domestic stockpile.

So we feel that as the uranium producers of America, we've lobbied very heavily along those lines. We think the strategic uranium reserve is good policy where taxpayer dollars are transferred to assets on the balance sheet of strategic U.S. origin uranium reserve that can serve both utility emergency, supply emergencies for the electric utility industry, but can also support our defense programs, the naval propulsion programs as well.

We're also obviously looking forward to the end of the Russian imports, with the Russian uranium ban fully kicking in at the end of 2027. We're working very hard to extend that to China. We've seen some disturbing import-export data between Russia, China and China back into the United States that would indicate that they're, at worst, violating U.S. trade law and bringing in that Chinese uranium, which has really circumvented Russian supply, or quite simply just bad policy. So we're lobbying on that front to see -- we love global trade, but we draw the line at China and Russia in terms of strategic minerals.

And then critical minerals designation, President Trump already considers uranium a critical mineral and is issuing executive orders along those lines. Really the executive order to revitalize the industrial base to support a quadrupling of nuclear power in the United States is really focused on the fuel cycle, uranium conversion, enrichment. And one of the things that we've seen, the most material thing that we've seen so far is the fast-track permitting, the FAST-41, the transparency dashboard. Basically, the Trump administration is saying if you have a project that the federal government, either through inaction or action has held up your project, bring it to the White House and they'll get it on the dashboard and put firm time lines for the review and issuing of permits. Uranium is a critical mineral; if we want more of it sooner, this is what it's going to take.

So we're very encouraged just across the board, the Trump administration support for nuclear power more generally and specifically supporting the uranium conversion enrichment. I think you see with our unhedged book and 12 million capacity, and hopefully now moving into a vertical integration into conversion will also give us some very specific support coming out of this administration. But we'll see in the coming weeks. We're going to be in Washington, D.C. quite a bit between now and the end of the year and hope to gain some clarity on that.

And our next question comes from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

That was a very comprehensive answer here before, so one of my question's already been answered. But Amir and Scott, maybe if you want to provide a bit of color on -- the conversion business has obviously been ridiculously well received. You want to provide some color on the vertical integration that should allow you guys to go more downstream with that, please?

Heiko, thanks for that question. And really, again, it goes back to what we were saying here in terms of the business model around vertical integration is a very battle-tested business model. This is again how the French -- how the Chinese, how the Russians are conducting the nuclear fuel cycle for maximum resiliency. The conversion business and downstream activities from uranium mining do also really help improve and expand on margins, and we do generally see a different type of industrial-type margin downstream from uranium mining than mining itself.

So really, when you kind of look at the business model of combining the ability to control the uranium mining and processing assets and infrastructure that UEC has put together, and as I mentioned at the beginning, the sheer size advantage, right? We're not talking about building conversion on top of a mediocre size mining operation. We're talking about the largest resource base and license production capacity ever assembled in the U.S. by one company as the foundation of what we're building the conversion on top of. And that sheer size, combined with going downstream, we just think is the perfect one-two punch. And again, it speaks to the market opportunity the bottlenecking conversion is real. And that bottleneck in conversion, in fact, has arguably maybe to some extent, hurt the uranium price in terms of not allowing to uranium price to reach the all-time highs that we all believe it should get to. Conversion enrichment prices, conversely, are near their respective all-time highs.

So this is really about providing diverse sources of revenue to the company as it develops multiple ways of delivering nuclear fuel supply. And it's really about that entirety of the supply chain for the nuclear fuel that one company can control that makes that company more strategically valuable. And I think that's why this has been well received, Heiko, since we announced it, not just from a market point of view, but from conversations and feedback that we've received directly from the end users and the actual nuclear fuel market participants as well.

Fair enough. And then obviously, you guys have an insane amount of experience in the uranium space. Building on some of your comments from earlier, do you want to just maybe walk us through a bit where you see geopolitical factors go for the industry? I mean, obviously, demand for North American and especially for your product from South Texas is through the roof. But do you want to just maybe provide the audience with a bit of color on where you see that going and key factors that may be underappreciated or not so much seen by the market yet?

Yes. And again, we'll do it in 2 parts. I'll go first, and then I'll let Scott speak to that too, especially within his role as the President of the Uranium Producers of America, that's our industry association. But as recent as yesterday, as recent as the last year, we have seen a premium on uranium that can be delivered to a buyer in the U.S. -- warehouse in the U.S., compared to other locations.

When the Department of Energy purchased an initial round of uranium for the strategic uranium reserve to stand that up over 1.5 years ago, it paid an over 20% premium because of the way it's qualified. The U.S. reserve can only be filled through U.S. companies with U.S. production or U.S. inventory. And so we have certainly seen that this dependence on foreign uranium and nuclear fuel where the U.S. is effectively importing 100% of its nuclear fuel requirements does create an opportunity to be a domestic supplier. But at the same time, that domestic supply initially carries a premium with it because of the scarcity factor. Over time, of course, as domestic supply expands production, conversion and enrichment, market pricing should be more aligned with global market prices.

But there is a pinch point right now and the most acute undersupplied market when it comes to nuclear fuel is the biggest market in the world. The biggest market in the world is the U.S. for nuclear fuel consumption. Over 90 reactors operating makes this the largest market anywhere. And yet, again, there's this almost 100% dependency on foreign imports.

Let's not forget, we have the Russian uranium band that has already passed and is law, and it kicks in December 2027, which is really around the corner. When you think about the fact that uranium mining, conversion, enrichment doesn't happen overnight, it takes years to permit, develop and build these operations.

So that's part of the reason we have commenced our initiatives now, is to really be in a position to be there and be that domestic source of supply, especially as the Russian ban takes full effect in late 2027. But between now and then, I think we can expect to see a premium on U.S. sources of mining and conversion.

Scott, would you like to add to that?

Yes. Heiko, I think you know the market structural deficit that we face globally today, if we look over the next 2 years, the world is consuming about 50 million pounds more than it's producing with the global mines. And that structural deficit is only going to get bigger as we're now -- I left the World Nuclear Association meetings in London a week before last, where the base case for nuclear growth outlook through 2045 is a doubling of nuclear power. And that's just the start. If we go to the aspirational goal of tripling nuclear power the World Nuclear Association set out, or President Trump's quadrupling. So we need a lot, not just a little in terms of new production. We need a lot.

And it's also important to note that the world's largest producer today. It was the United States in 1980. It then was Canada on the strength of Saskatchewan. But today is Kazakhstan, producing over 40% of global production. They share 2 very big important borders with Russia and China, who have very fast, big growing programs of their own, and they recognize the strategic value of Kazakhstan, not only their uranium, but their oil and gas.

So I think going forward, I think we shouldn't expect -- I think already today, 80% of Kazakh uranium goes to Russia or China. So we need to be developing uranium resources in stable western jurisdictions. And the United States clearly has been underdeveloped in recent years, not for lack of resources. The United States Geological Survey estimates that there's over 1 billion pounds of known and likely resources of uranium in the Western United States.

So we're excited about this revitalization. We're happy to be at the forefront of it. But it really is a time where we're going to see U.S. uranium production really on a revitalization path, and it really is an attractive premium product today.

And Scott, I know we spoke yesterday, happy belated birthday again.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Alexander Pearce from BMO.

Amit, Scott and team, so you flagged in the [indiscernible] you're working on upgrades for increasing the pace of drawing and drumming the uranium. Is it fair to say this is currently the bottleneck for the project, the drumming side? You mentioned you're bringing on new wellfields and that seems to be going very well. But can you give us a bit more update, more detail on the changes you're making within those upgrades? And how much do you expect to spend? And then maybe when you expect to complete those upgrades, so we can expect the uptick in drummed outlook?

Alex, thank you for that. And I'll take that up first and then I'm going to invite Brent Berg to speak to that as well. But really, the way we saw this, Alex, was more to do with the fact that during fiscal Q4 with the intentional strategy we had on holding back inventory and the fact that we were not in any way required to make deliveries of the finished good, the dry drummed uranium. We really took advantage of that opportunity and moment in time to make further upgrades to the equipment that is on the processing side, the packaging side of the plant, so that we can make sure when we did basically go into even further ramp-up mode and when sales and deliveries became more mission-critical, that we were able to support 24/7 operations with 2 shifts basically. And so it was really more to do with taking advantage of that window to give ourselves even more capacity for downstream or later in time.

And so to that end, I mean, as you know, keeping the uranium and precipitated form is every bit as good as whether it's dried and drummed. There's very nominal cost associated from going from precipitated to dried and drummed. And that's why we also presented some of the dried and drummed material to make sure that we were able to deliver and show what the initial production cost numbers are, which we're very pleased with.

But I'll let Brent also speak a bit more in terms of the details of what we're doing with the thickeners and calciners. And Alex, to be clear, this is not a bottleneck right now. We could be drying and drumming uranium right now. We're simply increasing the capacity. And again, because we didn't have any deliveries to make, it gave us the time to do that work without putting the team under the pressure of doing both the upgrade and drying and drumming at the same time. But Brent, go ahead if you'd like to add to that.

Yes. Thanks, Amir. And Alex, I would add that refurbishment activities were undertaken earlier in the fiscal year at the Christensen Ranch satellite ion exchange plant. We rebuilt the ion exchange columns in the main plant. And that work led to continuous 24/7 operation and the ability to operate the plant at design capacity.

So as Amir mentioned, in a similar manner, with no need for uranium sales, it was clearly an opportune time to upgrade the Irigaray central processing plant. At this stage, we're rebuilding 1 of 2 thickeners. It's a storage vessel for precipitated yellowcake prior to drawing and packaging. And the refurbishment includes the replacement of internal components with new parts.

Additionally, we will do some refurbishment to the calciner that we used to drive our product to increase throughput of dried yellowcake. And again, updates will include components as recommended by the manufacturer to really increase our operational efficiency moving forward. And these are upgrades that are happening now and in the coming weeks.

Our next question comes from Katie Lachapelle from Canaccord Genuity.

Most of my questions have actually already been answered, but maybe just one more on the inventory side. You ended the year with quite a considerable amount of inventory having deliberately held back some material in the second half. As you said, the decision to not sell was due to low prices, but we've since seen small prices rise, about 15%, since the end of your last quarter. So how are you guys thinking about inventory build going forward and the timing of future sales? Like is there a particular price point, say, north of $80, north of $85, that you would look to monetize some of this existing inventory? Or is the plan to continue to build inventory and hope for even higher prices?

Katie, thank you for that question. The 2 things go hand in hand. So you're right about the inventory, but you also got to take note of the balance sheet. And the balance sheet with over $320 million of available liquidity, and no debt, is part of what allows us to have the ability to make calls like what we did here, right, where we thought $70 was just kind of a ridiculous price and it didn't make sense to make sales there and be able to be in a financial position to make that decision to intentionally hold back. And similarly, today, as you pointed out correctly, we've seen an interesting pop in the uranium price overnight. We're back over $80 this morning. And one of the other sequesters out there this morning is raising more money to buy physical uranium.

But Katie, I would say, as of right now, we have our kind of focus squarely on pending developments coming out of Washington. I think with the comments that Scott Melbye made already about Secretary Chris Wright's comments about boosting the strategic uranium reserve and some of the potential news that might come around what that reserve and the timing of U.S. government purchases will look like, along with the fact that there's a Section 232 investigation on critical minerals and uranium that the results of which or recommendations by Department of Commerce are expected soon to be also sent to the White House, all of this really kind of creates an environment where we love the idea of sitting on as much U.S. warehouse uranium inventory as possible with these developments and actions taking place, particularly again, in the U.S.

So there isn't a price that we have in mind right this day. Just because uranium is at $80 doesn't mean we're rushing out and selling uranium at $80. We think they could be more interesting developments in the market, again, coming out of Washington that we want to be ready for.

And I'll let Scott add to this point as well. Scott, go ahead.

Yes. Katie, it's just we love the flexibility and we have the luxury of being able to hold again. As Amir said, we could have signed contracts over the last 3, 4 years that would have pressured us to produce faster, pressured us to sell into contracts that would be well below where the current spot and long-term prices are today. So we've never felt more comfortable being uncommitted and unhedged going into the market that we're seeing develop right now.

Our next question comes from Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital Partners.

Amir and team, so I guess first thing, just kind of a point of clarity. On the 130,000 pounds you produced at Christensen Ranch, you guys referred to it as dried and drummed, is it not considered part of your inventory because there's like one final finishing step? Or is it like some companies where they separate their inventory from the inventory that's at a converter compared to the inventory that's on-site at a project?

Joe, thanks for that question. It's the latter. We just wanted to clearly, given that you see had an inventory position that was previously purchased at market lows, we wanted to be very clear in making the distinction around that inventory and what is now, obviously, as we have transitioned into production is a production-related inventory.

But Josephine, did you want to add to that point as well?

Yes. Thanks, Amir. This is Josephine Man. So the finish -- the uranium concentrate that we mentioned about is included as part of the inventory on the balance sheet. So you can see that in the breakdown of the inventory, so that is part of the uranium concentrate from extraction.

Okay. I just want to make sure I was understanding it correctly. And then on UR&C, Amir, can you walk us through kind of how you see potential news flow as you advance that over, call it, the next 12 months? What can we and investors look for as far as updates from you guys?

Yes. Joe, in no particular order, I would say, there are several tracks that we're running simultaneously. So one track involves the work that we're continuing to do with Fluor, and that's building on the past year's work of engineering analysis and reports and studies and details and tech work that had already been completed that got us here. So one track will be engineering-related work by Fluor that will continue to do. And as updates become available there, that'd be one source of news flow.

Second track is we are in team-building mode to also continue to develop the dedicated team around the refining, conversion initiatives. So there will be information to share on that front. There are numerous discussions underway from government level discussions to offtakers, utilities, strategic partnerships and investments and investors, et cetera. all of which could be potential sources of updates as there's developments there.

So again, multiple tracks and everything is happening on parallel tracks. And in no particular order, as we have developments and news from these various tracks, we could maybe be and hopefully be in a position to provide more updates. At least that's the goal, Joe, and how we're looking to push this forward. But we're pushing and really are pushing to move expeditiously. This is a very timely opportunity and the feedback we're getting from various groups that we're in discussions with is that this is something we need to move very quickly on because it's very necessary.

Our next question comes from Kristian Koschany from National Bank Capital Markets.

I'm asking on behalf of Mohamed, who is on a site visit right now. I was just wondering if you could provide a bit more color on the cash costs and total costs, specifically what's included in the noncash costs and how we might expect the cash costs to progress as the Christensen ramp continues, and how the full rebuild of the yellowcake thickener and improvements to calciner might improve things or change things in the future?

Yes. Thank you for that question. So again, and I'll let Josephine go a bit deeper, but again, at a high level, as you've seen with our numbers that we've reported so far, this low-cost production that we've achieved in such early innings of the production ramp-up is very noteworthy. It's industry-leading in terms of where it's come in. It really speaks to the efficiencies and the asset base and team that's operating here. Total cost per pound of $36.41, and I'll let Josephine break down the cash component of that and the noncash.

But to address your other question, the work that's almost complete on the thickener and calciner upgrades, that should not have any impact on future production cost numbers. And if anything, like we said, it's meant to give us expanded capacity at the Irigaray plant. Josephine?

Yes. Thanks, Amir. So generally speaking, the total cash cost per pound is comprised of, obviously, labor cost, chemical and utility costs that we incur at Christensen Ranch and also the Irigaray processing plants.

And in terms of the noncash production cost, that mainly is coming from the depreciation of the mineral property acquisition costs from the time that we acquired Christensen Ranch from [indiscernible] so we allocate part of the allocation cost to the Christensen Ranch mine that we are producing at right now.

So would we expect that these costs that we saw in this quarter to be roughly what we would -- should be looking at going forward, or...

Yes. Go ahead, Josephine.

Okay. Yes. So the noncash portion of the production cost is quite steady because we amortized on a straight-line basis in terms of the acquisition cost. In terms of the cash production costs, we are foreseeing that it will be quite stable as compared to the Q4 of the fiscal 2025. That's also impacted by the production volume that we are expecting to have in the coming quarters.

And our next question comes from Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance.

Brent, I want to thank you, Brent, for your time last week. Really appreciate it, and [ Derek ] and the team as well. Just a lot has been asked, but given your market-driven strategy, which has really played out really well so far, you haven't had contracts [indiscernible] market. I was just curious how you plan the Header House ramp-up and just your operational ramp-up given that you do have to manage volumes, but you also have -- your balance sheet gives you the luxury of being able to, let's say, set up off for the long run instead of rush production. I'm just curious how you guys are looking at the next year with Texas coming on and Wyoming, and at the current prices and also the direction things are trending? I guess, similar to the first question I asked, I don't need an exact production range, but I'm just curious how you see things and how much focus there is on ramping up quickly versus seeing where the market goes.

Justin, thank you for that, and thank you for taking the time to tour our Wyoming operations last week. We appreciate that. I'll go first and then hand it over to Brent. I think there's kind of a few different sets of elements here to consider. So one is obviously the uranium price. And our view remains that just as we've seen conversion, enrichment prices near their respective all-time highs, we should see uranium prices at some point based on, again, the current supply-demand fundamentals and given the supply deficit we see globally, not just in the U.S. but everywhere, on uranium supply-demand studies. We really do believe that uranium prices need to, similarly to conversion, enrichment, probably reached their previous highs. And as that happens, we would look to obviously take a fuller sort of advantage of our permitted and existing capacity that we have of facilities, the processing plant, the resources, et cetera.

Having said that, there's also a human resource limitation. So as we go through this update, you notice that we kind of proudly and, importantly, highlight the number of personnel that we have in our Wyoming and Texas workforce. And this is an industry globally that has been quiet and somewhat dormant for the last decade. So today, the entire industry is really facing human resource challenges as it ramps up. This is an area that we're very focused on, we're investing in, and we continue to, again, demonstrate that the size of the team is growing to support those future ambitions of increasing production.

And as you, as a company, tackle and build new projects, I think there's a tremendous competitive advantage you're building and know-how around new construction. Look at the fact that -- and I'll let Brent speak to this, but I mean, you got to come and visit what we're doing at Burke Hollow. That is the newest uranium project anywhere in the world. That is the only new greenfield anywhere in the world that has been built from scratch. And it's 90% complete and, as we mentioned, should be operational by December.

The team that we have that has been directly involved with that project from, by the way, day 1, going back to 2012, to now, by the end of completing this, we'll have a tremendous understanding around building new projects and commissioning new operations. And that becomes a lasting advantage for UEC as we go to additional satellite projects and increasing production.

Brent, I'll let you take it over from there.

Sure. Thanks, Amir. And Justin, thanks for taking the time to visit our Wyoming operations. So as you know, UEC is continuing with our production ramp-up. Mine development continues in Wellfield 11 at Christensen Ranch where 4 header houses are currently under construction, [indiscernible] well installations nearing completion and surface construction is on schedule for startup of additional fresh production in the coming year. Additionally, we've been doing delineation drilling in Wellfield 12 as well as extensions to wellfields 8 and 10, and that will form the base of production at Christensen Ranch for the coming years.

Down in Burke Hollow, as Amir mentioned, the project is 90% complete. The initial wellfield is now set up with pumps downhole and the team testing operation of those. The trunk line from the wellfield to the satellite being [indiscernible] pressure tested and hooked up to the satellite and final touches going on there.

In terms of the team, I just got to say I'm blessed to have some really skilled people working on our team in both Wyoming and Texas. And I look forward to continuing to grow the team and ramp up production in both states. Thank you.

That was very comprehensive. And yes, maybe just one follow-up. If prices do kind of ramp up much faster here or perhaps there's some action from the administration that creates a U.S.-specific price or et cetera, I guess what would change from your operational plan, say, if uranium was $120 right now, how would that next year look different?

Just simple, Justin, just rate, the rate of change on development and acceleration of wellfield delineation, rigs operating and construction activity on whether it's wellfields or header houses. So really, it's about also having that flexibility and optionality to adjust the rate accordingly to both market pricing and conditions.

Got you. And just given the constraints, for example, on the HR side, do you have a sense of how much faster you could do things?

Yes, we do. I mean, I think, again, the benefit of being in a position where you're operating and you're ramping up, and the market can see that and the labor market can see that, frankly, we've really benefited from incoming inquiries from folks who are working in the industry or used to work in the industry and left the industry and are really attracted to the opportunity to come to UEC. They see the platform that we put together, they see the scale that we have. And there's an opportunity to see a real longevity when it comes to a career here.

So everything we're doing in a way has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of being acting as a real magnet for us for being able to continue to attract the talent. And again, as we see there's a need to accelerate, then we can also accelerate the uptake and intake of that HR sort of source and force that's coming to us.

Got you. So for example, do you think doubling your rollout rate would be conceivable within the year if prices were there? Or I'm just trying to get a sense of quantum.

Look, our goals and ambitions are very much that. And we, again, we hope that the market conditions support that. We were somewhat frustrated by the way prices were subdued basically through to July 31 when we -- when our fiscal ended and we just thought the $70 uranium price made no sense. But sometimes the market can be that way, and before it starts to really reflect the supply/demand fundamentals.

But luckily, we're seeing some sort of noticeable improvements here, as we've talked about with respect to price. And again, we have to see how it all plays out, but we wouldn't be surprised if we saw further improvements in price and that, again, giving us the backdrop with which we can continue to progress and ramp up our efforts.

And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we will conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Again, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Fiscal 2025 was truly a landmark year for UEC. We're just getting started. With our operational achievements, strategic acquisitions and the launch of UR&C, we envision a platform to lead America's nuclear fuel cycle. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the quarters ahead. Thank you, and have a great day.

And ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.