Energy Fuels - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 1

Morning. My name is Jeannie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Energy Fuels second quarter 2025 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session where you will be able to ask one question and one follow-up question should you desire. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. Mr. Chalmers, you may begin your conference.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Jeannie, and thank you for that introduction. Again, Mark Chalmers, CEO of Energy Fuels, and thank you for joining our Q2 conference call today. I can say with absolute confidence that we had a big quarter with regard to momentum on many fronts, and I don't believe our timing could be any better. Namely, rapidly advancing our uranium production with very high grades being mined, dropping unit costs, increasing production rates as we ramp up to 2 million pounds per year, and we expect the Pinion Plain cost looking forward to be around $23 to $30 per pound of finished goods of uranium, which are exceptional and Q1 cost.

We're also rapidly advancing our rare earth separations with the expansion of the White Mesa Mill phase two and significantly improved rare earth pricing, particularly ex-China, where the prices ex-China for Dy and Tb are approximately 350% higher than China prices. At the same time, NdPr prices are up about 20% in the mid-$70s in the last month. Our heavy mineral sands portfolio is also rapidly advancing, so there's no shortage of things to do at Energy Fuels. We received our final regulatory approvals on the Donald Project, which is rich in heavies. We're also advancing our feasibility study and nearing the completion of our feasibility study on Toliara and the other agreements with the Madagascar government and the permits and drilling at Bahia. We have improving financial results, and we have a strengthened balance sheet as compared to Q1 2025.

Our cost and margins of uranium production are improving materially as Pinion Plain ore is planned to be processed starting in Q4. No Pinion Plain ore has been processed as of this date. As I typically do, I'm going to be making a short presentation to update listeners on the overall strategy of the company and the state of play of the company. I believe that you're going to be controlling the slides. Is that correct?

Speaker 1

I'll be controlling the slides, yes.

Speaker 3

Kim, there will be conference replays available at the completion of this conference call on the website. As always, there will be time for presentations at the end of this presentation. Nate Bennett, our CFO, and David Frydenlund, our Executive VP and Chief Legal Counsel, will be available for questions that I'm unable to answer. In addition, it is my pleasure to have Ross Bhappu, our new President, with us. While Ross is new to our organization, he is not new to mining. Feel free to ask questions of Ross at the end of the presentation on his past experience in the resource sector or his first impressions on day four with Energy Fuels. Let's get going. Again, our story is different because we are building a global, critically significant critical mineral company. I always tell everybody, I love this picture. This is in San Juan County.

It's not far from the White Mesa Mill, which is our critical mineral hub that is advancing in leaps and bounds. Next slide. I may be making some forward-looking statements. Those are included on page two of this presentation. Next slide. Many of you have seen this. Really, Energy Fuels is basically three businesses in one, with the three sectors that we've been advancing and focused and built around our core uranium business, which, as I said, is ramping up very quickly and turning into immediate cash flow at large scale and low cost. I believe largest scale and lowest cost in the entire United States and competitively lower quartile in the entire world. We're very excited, and we'll talk more about that.

Certainly, the rare earths, we're emerging as a global leader on the rare earth fronts with our ability to separate NdPr, Dy, and Tb, and heavy mineral sands with the heavy mineral sands projects that we've acquired for titanium and zirconium minerals. Really, three sectors basically in one company, Energy Fuels, which those three in one equate to about 10 critical elements, which gives us broad diversification in sort of the peaks and valleys in the volatility of a lot of the critical minerals that we've seen over the last couple of years. All three of these segments have one common denominator, and it has a natural occurring uranium, which is all our basically significant advantage that we have as a company and our ability to deal with that at the White Mesa Mill. Next slide. All of this is in demand.

You're hearing about these critical minerals every day, whether it be for energy, defense, mobility, health, or improvements in electrification. Uranium, certainly the focus on fuel for clean baseload energy, data centers, space travel. Uranium is back front and center globally, and particularly in the U.S. and developing countries where you're now seeing bipartisan support. Rare earths, Energy Fuels is becoming a leading producer of rare earth oxides, also used in energy efficiency, automotive, advanced manufacturing, defense, and robotics, and other technologies. The heavy mineral sands projects that we've acquired are world scale, world class, and basically contain the titanium and zirconium minerals and monazite. That is part of those three sectors that we have that all fit perfectly together. We also are a leading producer of vanadium, and we have a vanadium circuit at the mill.

It's currently not operating, but it is the only conventional vanadium circuit in the U.S., and it is also a critical mineral. Medical isotopes, we're still advancing in our R&D work on the potential to recover radium for emerging medical technologies. Next slide. Uranium highlights. We're producing more uranium than anybody else in the U.S. today. We're mining high-grade ore, as many of you will have seen in Q2. We mined newly mined ore of over 660,000 pounds of uranium, which was from both the Pinion Plain mine, La Sal, and Pandora mines. If you extrapolated out that 665,000 pounds, that would be a 2.7 million pound rate. We had very high grades at that point in time. We're not changing our guidance at this point in time, but it just gives some example of capacity when the right stars align.

In 2025, our guidance, so we haven't changed it yet, is between 875,000 to 1.4 million pounds of uranium, newly mined uranium, where you can see what we produce in a quarter. We're really getting all the pieces in place when it comes to our mining, including additional trucks to haul the ore from the Pinion Plain mine to the mill. This is all ramping up very quickly. We're working towards a 2 million pound run rate, which many of you know I've been talking about for years, we're getting there. This is a run rate that we don't require a lot of capital. We've already spent the capital, and it really is just getting the mining going, getting the miners hired, getting the reagents in place. It is also going to be at very attractive costs.

Watch this space as we ramp up the mining, which then goes to processing. Processing at the White Mesa Mill, while we're also building significant inventories at the mill. In the first half of the year, we produced 330,000 pounds of finished uranium, and most of that was a mixture of La Sal ore, alternate feed, and cleanup material. It wasn't at this ultra high grade that we have at the Pinion Plain mine. For 2025, we expect to have finished uranium between 700,000 pounds and 1 million pounds by the end of the year. One of the reasons it's not more is we're preparing the mill to run hard. The mill has not been asked to run this hard for decades. There's a lot of work that's being done on the mill.

There's a lot of ore that's being mined and delivered to the mill to get that material to be available for feed as the mill starts up. We're also looking at things like critical spares because, again, the mill hasn't run this hard. There's a lot of work going on. When the mill is actually running with Pinion Plain ore, it can be doing approximately between 230,000 and 250,000 pounds of finished uranium per month that it runs. There is a bit of a lead lag between the time we mine things and we process things and we do a campaign run. I think that's important. We'll go into more detail today on that because it's important for investors and analysts to understand those dynamics. Next slide.

Uranium moving forward, the newly mined ore, I expect that we're going to be able to mine 1.6 million pounds per year or greater going forward from 2026. We still have a lot of exploration to do in the Juniper Zone, but what we're seeing, we're super encouraged with the grades we're seeing, the increases in uranium that we're finding in the main zone, the Juniper Zone, and literally pretty much everywhere we drill, we're seeing to find additional ore. We have more work to do on that front. The next mill run is planned to be the beginning of October, and that's going to go from Q4 into 2026. This mill run, the next mill run, we expect to produce between about 1.1 to 1.4 million pounds of finished uranium during that run. When you look at Pinion Plain, and this is what's extraordinary.

On average, Pinion Plain ore mining and transport costs are expected to be $10 to $14 a pound recovered. That is remarkable. When you look at that after it's processed, for $10 to $14 per pound, it's delivered. When you process that ore, the cost of processing is about $13 to $16 per pound. When you combine those, that's when you get cost of $23 to $30 per pound recovered. We believe those are absolutely exceptional to our peers, not just in the United States, but globally. Right now, when you look at our cost of goods, currently, we have 725,000 pounds in inventory of finished goods, and those are currently on the books between $50 and $55 per pound. A lot of those pounds need to be sold at that cost of goods pricing at those prices because that was the cost of making those pounds.

As we ramp up our uranium production, particularly with these lower costs at Pinion Plain, alternate feed, and other mining feeds from wherever we're getting it from, Pandora or La Sal, we see these weighted costs start dropping. We expect them to be between $30 to $40 per pound in Q1 of 2026. As more Pinion Plain ore is mined, these costs should continue to drop. We are in a position where we have to clear out the existing cost of goods in inventory to this transition as we ramp up our uranium production and get the economics of scale and the benefits of the higher grades. Next slide.

Pinion Plain, and I've said this to many of you, I built that mine 38 years ago, and it is exceeding my expectations on every front with regard to the grades, the low cost, and larger than originally expected with upside exploration potential. In an earlier part of my career, I mined four breccia pipes. As a matter of fact, the largest, most successful breccia pipe ever mined on the Arizona Strip was HAC-2, and it was about 7 million pounds of uranium. It is my hope that Pinion Plain is going to be much better than HAC-2, but we still have exploration to do to further quantify that. It absolutely has better grades than HAC-2. That's a really great outcome for our company, particularly at this point in time. We discussed, I said, we mined over 600,000 pounds in the three months ending June 30th. Great outcome.

The grades have been double, in some cases triple, what we expected in certain areas. We likely believe that there's going to be more ore in what we call the main zone. When we shift to the Juniper Zone, which is lesser explored, and it starts just literally a few hundred feet, 100 to 200 feet below the main zone. The recent exploration drilling that we've done has confirmed super high-grade areas just below the main zone. We're driving drift down to that lower zone, and we'll be putting in additional drill stations to expand that. Approximately half of the breccia pipe that this ore is contained in has had very limited exploration. That's why we're really encouraged about the upside. In the little box, that little yellow box, I talked about the $23 to $30 per pound really commencing in Q4 of 2025 and going into 2026.

As we are able to deplete this existing cost of goods sold that I mentioned at that $50 to $55 per pound and shift over to more Pinion Plain ore, our cost of sales will drop materially. As I said before, and I want to repeat, none of the high grade from Pinion Plain has been processed to date. We have to get that ore processed where we see those very low costs that I mentioned about getting that material to the mill at these exceptional costs. Next slide. We continue to grow our portfolio of long-term uranium sales contracts. We have four existing contracts. We are continuing to look at other opportunities as they present, particularly as they present with the growing uranium production that we are seeing and expecting this year and into next year and on for a number of years.

We have 300,000 pounds of contract deliveries that are happening in the last two quarters of this year. You're going to see a real increase on our contract sales coming in strong, but we also have the ability to make spot sales if we elect to, even in 2025, 2026 going forward. We will have plenty of finished goods to do that if we elect to. There has been a reluctance for us to put product into the market at like the $70 per pound. We did sell a small amount for $77 per pound. We still believe the price of uranium is going up. We're going to just play that by ear, but we're really looking at ramping up our revenue stream and our margins over the next, literally over the next few months.

We also have an agreement to purchase ore from a third-party miner not too far from the mill, and we have ore coming in from that third party at this time. Next slide. Did I flip? Oh, sorry, I flipped one page too soon. Okay. We'll shift gears from uranium to rare earths and heavy mineral sands. As I said earlier, we're making rapid progress on that front and really getting a lot of recognition as an emerging, rapidly expanding producer of rare earth oxides. NdPr that we've made with our phase one run that we did last year is currently being validated with a number of metal alloy and magnet manufacturers. I'm very encouraged with the results that we're getting from that feedback. You know, we announced the arrangement or the relationship with POSCO.

We're piloting heavy rare earths as we speak, and we've had a few releases on that. We plan to have one kilogram of Dy oxide, 99.5% pure, in August this month, expanding that to about 15 kilograms of Dy by October of 2025, and then a kilogram of Tb expected, 99.99% pure in October. All that information gives us the ability to have our plans solidly in place for going towards a commercial production plant quite rapidly as these things evolve. We have the technical ability to produce all the rare earth oxides that are currently under Chinese export restrictions. We are advancing the phase two feasibility study at the mill. That should be completed in October or November, and that increases the capacity to produce monazite or process monazite from 10,000 tons, which is our phase one capability, to 60,000 tons per year of monazite.

That is equivalent to Lynas-level capacity. This is a large-scale facility in the United States. The final investment decision on Donald is still pending. It could be as early as December of 2025, but it is fully permitted, shovel-ready, a heavy mineral sands project with exceptional heavy rare earth oxides, very high grade, over 2% Dy, about 0.4% Tb. We're really excited about that, and very few companies have fully permitted projects that are shovel-ready. We're also advancing the Toliara Project in Madagascar. We're advancing the final investment agreements under negotiation with the government. The Toliara feasibility study is very advanced and should be out fairly soon, but we have to make sure that we clear all the final reviews by legal and whatnot, particularly with regard to United States compliance. The final investment decision for Toliara could be as early as 2026. Next slide.

Let's talk about monazite because monazite is our structural advantage in the rare earth business, the ability to process it at the White Mesa Mill, and it is simply a superior rare earth mineral concentrate. Super high grade, 50 to 60%, more NdPr, more mids, more heavies, lower cost, includes a credit for uranium, easy to process, and high recoveries. We are the only facility in the United States that can process monazite. Those pictures on the side, those are commercial scale recovery SX circuit. Most people are still doing things on a desk or on a lab scale, and this is a commercial facility that operates in below one-ton bags, super sacks of NdPr, not in a beaker.

We have proven our ability to produce NdPr at specification, and we're rapidly advancing the ability with our piloting and our future plans for commercial scale recovery of both the mid and the heavy rare earth oxides that could be used for defense needs. Next slide. Growing leader in the industry. If you compare our market cap to MP and Lynas, we're the third largest publicly traded company outside of China in the world focused on these critical minerals and rare earths. I've talked about, certainly, the rare earth, the heavy rare earths are in high demand and the shortage because the world is so dependent on rare earths, heavy rare earths, particularly from China. We talked about the work that we're doing on the separations. The Donald Project is a world-leading heavies deposit in the concentrations that we have.

As I mentioned, it's shovel-ready, it's permitted, and with the rising prices of rare earth oxides, and particularly the growth in the heavies, we are absolutely in a fantastic spot. Benchmark has done a new update of both in China and out of China prices. NdPr prices have gone up about 20% in the mid-$70s, as I mentioned. What is really extraordinary is Benchmark is publicizing Dy prices in Europe of $800 per kilogram as compared to $230 in China. That's almost three and a half times higher for Dy. When you look at Tb, it's effectively the same thing. The China price is around $1,000 per ton, but in Europe, it's $3,600, which is 3.6 times. This is really an unusual circumstance that we have where people are saying they will pay more than China prices for products that are not coming out of China. Next slide.

This timeline, many of you have seen this before. As we're advancing the Donald Project, the Bahia Project, the Toliara Project, those all equate to Lynas scale in due course once those are fully permitted, constructed, and operating. At the bottom, I just want to highlight that we are ramping up this uranium production from 2 million pounds, and in due course could be up to 5 million pounds, while the uranium sector of our business is generating material cash. Material cash. When you look at the margins that we can generate with the increased uranium production and even current uranium prices, it is extraordinary. Next slide. We'll talk a bit about our financials. Next slide. Really producing low-cost uranium end of June 30, developing tier one critical mineral assets, maintaining a strong balance sheet. We had liquidity at the end of June 30 of over $250 million.

That's about $253 million of working capital. A large component of that is cash, cash equivalents, and liquid market securities, and also inventories and various trade receivables. The finished product inventory was nearly $60 million, and if you add that at current commodity prices, you could add about $13 million to liquidity. I talked about the finished goods of uranium. We also have nearly a million pounds of vanadium, 9,000 kilograms of separated NdPr and carbonate. I should say 9,000 kilograms of high purity partially separated mixed rare earth carbonate, and 37,000 kilograms of separated NdPr in inventory. No debt. We have a lot of assets and no debt, and that in itself is exceptional. We did have a net loss in Q2, really on a number of factors, but mainly we elected not to sell a bunch of uranium due to the low and weak uranium prices.

We're also spending a lot of money on development and general operating costs to advance these three projects that we have. The net loss was $22 million or $0.10 a share. That is an improvement from Q1, which was a net loss of $26 million and $0.13 a share. As we start getting to this increased uranium production, the Pinion Plain ore, and everything, you should see a very dramatic improvement because of the investments we've made and the positioning and the momentum that we're securing there. We did sell 50,000 pounds of uranium at $77 per pound. I think I've mentioned to a number of you that I don't want to sell uranium below $80 a pound. We took a small sale there, but we again are focused on cash flow and our margins and moving the uranium sector to profitability as quickly as we can.

We did have a 31% margin on that material that we sold. Next slide. Let's go back to the kind of the wrap-up on uranium. We're actively mining ore, three conventional mines. We're actively processing uranium ore, including alternate feeds and cleanup material at the mill, increasing levels of contract sales, as I mentioned, later this year into next year, and building on that going forward. The cost of goods is going to go down, trending lower, starting in Q4 with the low-cost Pinion ore being processed. We will opportunistically look at selling uranium on the spot or in the midterm markets. Again, we'll play that by ear, but we are actively looking for a home for a lot of the uranium that we'll have that will be marketable and sellable at short notice. We are increasing the uranium production up to around that 2 million pounds plus.

As I mentioned, we expect the Pinion Plain mine to be producing 1.6 million pounds or greater. You can see we're going to get there with alternate feed and the other feeds that we have from the other mines. We are advancing the permitting on three large-scale uranium mines. We have the Roca Honda on the FAST 41 government list, and we can increase production over time beyond the 2 million pounds up to 4 to 6 million pounds. We're continuing to do the R&D on the radium recovery, which potentially can be used for medical isotope cancer treatments. Next slide. We haven't materially changed our guidance on any front, but I do want to point out a few things because I think this slide says a lot, and it's important, certainly for analysts, that as we mine the uranium, that doesn't mean it's instantly processed.

We have guidance of 875,000 pounds to 1.435 million pounds, but I want to point out we did over 600,000 pounds in a single quarter. If we're mining uranium at full tilt, you know we can get well past that, but we're keeping guidance where it is right now because we're ramping up our trucking and we're getting our mining fully in place. The alternate feed, we haven't changed anything, but alternate feed still is a very material part of our business, up to 200,000 pounds for the year. The processing of uranium to 700,000 to 1 million pounds. I talked about getting the mill ready, the critical spares ready. When the mill's running Pinion Plain ore, 230,000 to 250,000 pounds of finished goods per month when the mill's running.

You can see you can run it for four months or six months or seven months or eight months reliably, and you get large quantities of finished goods at large margins. Sales under contract in the small sale that we did earlier at 350,000 pounds, we are going to focus on making spot sales if it makes sense or additional contracts to find a home for some of that product. Finished goods by the end of the year, and again, this could be subject to any spot sales, but between 900,000 and 1.2 million pounds of finished goods, that is enough for all our contracts this year, next year, matter of fact, all the way through next year, depending on how many pounds we sell under spot. Total inventories at the end of the year between about 2 million and 2.5 million pounds.

Now, if you go up just the next level above, you can see a big chunk of that is finished pounds, but it's also Pinion Plain pounds that are yet to be processed. Next slide and last slide, 2025 activities for the rare earths and heavy mineral sands. We are looking at potentially being in a position to commercially produce heavies in 2026 following our current uranium run, but we definitely will have the piloting complete, and we'll be looking at how we can ramp that up and do course, and only Energy Fuels has unique capabilities and how we can respond and do a lot of these things that others can't do because of our unique capabilities at the White Mesa Mill.

The phase two rare earth expansion at the White Mesa Mill, which is the complete separate facility, separate from the uranium mill, has the capacity of 6,000 tons of NdPr, which is 6,000 tons of monazite, and also the ability to produce Dy and Tb, and we should have the feasibility study out in a few months' time. We're currently piloting the heavies, as I mentioned. The Donald Project FID could be as early as this year, later this year. Potential offtake sales financing options are being evaluated, including the increased cost and value, not cost, but value of the heavies. Toliara Project, we're getting close to finalizing the feasibility study, but also could well be in a position to make a final investment decision as early as 2026.

We're pursuing the final agreements at Toliara that basically memorialize and formalize the fiscal terms with the government of Madagascar, and the drilling at Brazil and permitting of the Bahia Project is advancing. We hope to have a resource estimate soon, later 2025 or 2026. Front and center is developing a final comprehensive project financing strategy because we have a lot of projects, but we again are going to maximize this uranium sector to generate as much cash as possible and take off some of the burn on these other two sectors that are developing rapidly. I'll stop there and say I'll now open it for questions that anybody might want to ask.

Speaker 1

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from a line of Nick Giles with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everyone. My first question, you know, obviously there's a ton of excitement across rare earths, and you know I have to imagine others are trying to have discussions with agencies like the DOD that I think you hinted to last quarter for potential offtake and funding. My question is really, what do you feel is the most critical differentiator, specifically in the eyes of those agencies, that gives you a greater likelihood for either offtake or funding, so on? Thank you.

Speaker 3

I think when we say we're going to do something, we do it. We also have the infrastructure to actually do it. You can take people to the White Mesa Mill, and there's a built operable site with 100 plus people working there, laboratories, a phase one separation circuit. You've got product that has been qualified by some of the end users, and you see the number of projects that we've accumulated. We're not just a one mine company. We have Bahia, we have the Donald Project, we have Toliara, we have our agreement with Chemours, we secure the monazite from Florida and Georgia. What they see is scale, low cost, infrastructure in place, and the skills required to advance. I think that really sums it up at a high level. You can go touch and feel it.

It's interesting, a lot of people are in DC talking about their projects. They don't have any project. They have a PowerPoint presentation. We actually have a fully constructed site and multiple projects that are advancing and in a lot of cases permitted to advance. The molecules. We're the molecule machine. A lot of people are short of molecules.

Mark, I appreciate that perspective. Maybe just to follow up, can you just walk us through your plans to procure sufficient levels of feedstock as we think about processing as early as Q4 2026? I mean, should we think about this is coming from Chemours, or could you explore other sources outside the scope of Energy Fuels?

Yeah, that's a good question because really on the rare earth front, we're constrained on feedstock. I mean, right now, the only feedstock we have is what we get from Chemours. They once or twice a year send us a few hundred tons, and we're stockpiling. We're getting a fairly reasonable stockpile built up. There are other companies that come to us and ask if we would be willing to procure monazite from them, and it could be from pretty much any place in the world. A lot of them are shipping to China right now. There are companies from Australia and the United States that are still shipping monazite to China. It's not a good look. We're always open to looking at what opportunities may be out there to procure additional material and stockpile it at the White Mesa Mill and then run it in due course. It's dynamic.

I don't have a complete answer there, but we're building up inventories. We're still talking to people about buying inventories. Once we get projects like the Donald Project, if it passes the final investment decision and gets built, we start having world material commercial scales that are coming from our own operations that we can depend on because it'll be coming at a regular rate and an expanding rate as we get these progressive projects in line and operating.

Mark and team, thanks for the update this morning and continued best of luck.

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Hey, Mark and team. Congrats on another good quarter. It's been nice to watch you guys transform the firm over the last few years here. Let's talk about Pinion Plain a little bit. The site is obviously a big driver for the firm right now. I mean, I searched your press release, and Pinion Plain is mentioned a couple 20 times in it. You mentioned $23 to $30 per pound in cost earlier on this call, and then in the release, you actually break it down $10 to $14 for transport and $13 to $16 for milling costs. Great margin at those prices. Let's talk about what things could move us from the lower to the upper end of this guidance range, if you'd be so kind. I mean, especially on the mining and transport, you got a 40% range. Is it labor?

You know the mill quite well, so I assume there's only so much variability there in that part.

Speaker 3

Yeah, Heiko, I mean, on the guidance, we're always trying to be conservative on our guidance. You know, I was trying to hint a bit that if we did 600,000 pounds in a quarter, you know, we can put a lot of pounds out there or send it to the mill. Our biggest limitation has been the truck and trucking from the mill, and we're building that up. We currently have about 10 trucks per day, five days a week, and we're trying to get that up to, it will average no more than on an average on a daily basis, seven days a week, no more than 10 trucks per day. That's really the limitation.

I can tell you if there was no limitation on the amount of ore that we're hauling from the mill or to the mill, we could be putting a lot more uranium down on the ground right now. What we're doing is as we're producing the uranium, we're also doing the required development work down to the Juniper Zone as we are advancing the development there so that we can put in additional drill stations and we can do more drilling. We're trying to keep it balanced. The trucking is the major impediment there, but we're working to resolve that and we're building up momentum on that front. Also, it's grade dependent. You have to have the trucks and you have to have the grade. The average grade we've mined thus far has been about 2%, which is very, very high grade.

You can get about 30 pounds per ton in every truck. That's the reason for the range. We hope to beat guidance, okay, but we haven't changed the guidance. Our goal is always to exceed guidance, but until we have all those pieces together, Heiko, we're being a little conservative.

Fair enough. It's one could read between the lines here a little bit better now. Completely different question. You have the strongest balance sheet the firm has ever had since I started following it the way it is right now. Arguably, this is even more impressive given your recent M&A. Conceptually, has your internal thought process on minimum cash or minimum working capital changed over the past, call it, 12 or 24 months?

I mean, we've got a lot of activities, Heiko, and a lot of these activities could require cash in different shapes and form, whether it be an M&A transaction potentially. It could be some of the certification payments required for Toliara, which can take a pretty large load on us. I've always been of the believer to have a very strong balance sheet because, you know, Murphy's out there somewhere. I think really from a management perspective and a board perspective, the focus has been just to maintain that strong balance sheet, to have plenty of cash, and be in a position that we are not short cash because the last thing you want to be in this business is short cash, particularly when your success makes you short of cash, depending on what, you know, makes you short of cash.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair enough. I'll leave it at that and get back with you. Thank you, Mark and team. Congratulations.

Thank you, Heiko.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from the line of Katie Lachapelle with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Hey, Mark and team, thanks for taking my question. Two days ago, we actually saw some reports out of Australia that the Australian government is considering setting up floor price to support critical minerals projects, specifically rare earth. That'd be very similar to what the DOD did with NP materials. I'm just wondering, in your discussions with you and your partners at Astrun, have you been in discussions with the Australian government regarding potential funding support for the Donald Project or potential floor prices? Similarly, do you also think you could see similar support from the U.S. government?

Speaker 3

Yes, Katie, thanks for calling in. Yeah, this whole world is talking about floor pricing to provide some protection to China manipulation and China costs. Yeah, we have had discussions with Astrun. I've had discussions with the Australian government on all these things, similarly to what we've had discussions with the U.S. government. I think the realization is that you will never be able to materially break away from China unless you have some level of support. I am very encouraged with these announcements and what we're seeing with NP because it just gives an insurance policy that China isn't going to flood the market and put you out of business. It's all a work in progress. Really, when you think about it, the floor pricing discussions are fairly recent. They've come out over the last month or so, month or two, but it obviously is getting additional traction.

I think we're ideally placed, as I mentioned, when you look at NP and Lynas, and we're the third largest market cap publicly traded rare earth company out there, and you look at the scale that we have. I think we're just so well positioned that the activities we've had, Katie, over the last five years with the acquisitions and the advancement of our processing just puts us in a very, very unique position.

Definitely. Maybe one follow-up on potential support from the U.S. government. Are you of the view that the U.S. government will be more likely to allocate funding or support towards the expansion at White Mesa? Do you think they would extend beyond the United States and actually look to potentially provide support on the development projects Toliara and Donald?

Yeah. Look, I think the U.S. government, in the first instance, prefers to advance and fund projects that are in the United States. You also have to get back to the realities of the United States. With the exception of Mountain Pass, there really aren't a lot of quality rare earth deposits in the United States. I mean, you look at the monazite we get from Chemours and Florida and Georgia, it's high in heavies. I think they prefer the United States, but they recognize they have to have a global footprint. I mean, you look at how they've reached out to Australia in a number of cases, certainly Canada, and even into Africa. The U.S. government is interested in securing reliable material scales so that they have some geographic diversity.

They prefer, but yet at the same time, the realities are there are not a lot of heavies in the United States of America unless it comes really from the monazite. In the case for us, you have the Donald Project in Australia, which is high in heavies. We think that the appetite is there from a number of different angles with the U.S. government to help finance projects globally. It could be floor prices alone would be sufficient.

Awesome. Thanks, Mark and team.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Chan with SCP Resource Finance. Please go ahead.

Hi, Mark and team. Congrats on being where the puck is starting to go early. Strategy is coming together. Just a few questions. One is on Astrun and Donald. To confirm the financial side of things in FID, can I confirm that you will essentially make a payment if you both elect to go ahead with the project of A$183 million, and that will secure your 49%. That amount is payable towards your share of CapEx, or would your share of CapEx for Donald be in addition to that A$183 million?

Speaker 3

No, the $183 million is really our buy-in to the project, and the equity portion is really what it's geared around. Both parties will have to pay their own debt portion per rot on their share and any additional equity that might be required to obtain financing. Yeah, it's really our buy-in. Dave, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Yeah, no, that's right. The $183 million would basically cover the equity contributions of both parties, and that would be our buy-in. Our buy-in would be paying Astrun's equity contribution, and then we would pay our own, and that would all total the $183 million. As Mark says, if that increases at all due to financing needs, that would be paid pro rata by the partners.

Yeah. Basically, our buy-in on that project was about $60 million or thereabouts. So far, with some of the pre-fit work and everything, I think we've invested about $20 million or something around that at this point in time. We're pleased that we have that project, and we have that project permitted, and it's at a good address in Australia and permitted.

Gotcha. Just to make sure I'm clear on this, that $183 million goes into, let's say, the Donald Project code, or does that go to Astrun? I'm just trying to calculate what the balance to fund is.

Yeah, it goes into the joint venture. Yeah.

Right. That 183 is available for both of you?

Yeah, the $183 million goes into expenditures by the joint venture in advancing the project.

Right. You could effectively, as a group, fund the remainder then?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, okay. Thank you.

Mark said that's Australian dollars.

Yeah, they're a lot smaller than U.S. dollars.

Okay. Gotcha. Could you maybe talk us towards sort of what the next steps are for confirming FID there now that it's got its permits? Is it just investigating offtake? There was a revised capital estimate, I think, less than a year ago. I'm just curious what the next steps are.

Yeah, it's really focused on bankable offtakes, both for the heavy mineral sands and the rare earth products, is really what it boils down to. We're looking at that in relationship to the capital operating costs, the returns on the project. That's really the bit, getting the bankable offtakes, securing financing, and getting the position, the project ready to go into construction. The project is ready to go into construction right now. If you had all that done, you could go into construction quite quickly. It's not over until you get all the money to do the project. It is relative to the rare earth world. It's a pretty small strike rate. If you look at it in U.S. dollars, it's around $300 million for the project to combine both parties in terms of, you know.

Watch this space, Justin, but we really got to get the bankable offtakes and be in a position to get the financing to make the fed decision.

Gotcha. Maybe just a bit more color on that. Is it offtakes more on the titanium and zircon products or on the rare side of things or both?

Both.

Okay. Gotcha. Perfect. Thanks. On Pinion Plain especially, I mean, you've been way outperforming the reserve grade. The drilling's been encouraging. Just wondering what your timelines are on putting out an updated either reserve or mine plan to help the market kind of start pricing this into the long-term outlook for your company.

Yeah, we've got SOR working on that right now. I don't know, Dave, have you heard the exact timeline on that? I mean, they've got some stuff that's still into the laboratories for analysis, and they're pulling together. You know what's interesting about the Pinion Plain, and Justin, you'll appreciate this, is that what we think we're seeing is that when the original modeling was done, the model constrained on high grades and the area influence of the high grades to be conservative. What we've seen and what we think we've seen is that we didn't need to constrain it because those high grades actually could be projected out for quite a large distance. That's why we're getting this significant increase. Also, even though we've done drilling in the Juniper Zone, as I mentioned, over half of that Juniper Zone still has a whole pile of drilling to do.

I think what you're going to see fairly soon, probably, I'm guessing by the end of the year, an update on the resource, and then there's going to be this geologic potential to expand this further. What you're also seeing is that when you look at some of these grades like 5%, 7%, you can fit a lot of uranium in a very small space like you see in Athabasca. Effectively, the Pinion Plain mine is a miniature Athabasca mine with the grades that we're seeing and doesn't take a lot of space to hide a lot of pounds if it's very high grade.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's doing great. Just can't wait for, I guess, more data. It's just pricing into the long term. One on, I guess, Toliara and maybe the rare earth master plan here. In terms of, I guess, pressing the button on the phase two expansion for White Mesa, do you imagine that would be around the same time as FID on Toliara, i.e., you were mentioning you could make that decision next year?

Yeah. I mean, right now, our main focus is on the projects that we have that are fully permitted and can go forward right now. When you have Donald, you have the ability to receive material from Chemours and you could receive from others. You look at where we are with the White Mesa Mill. We still have to submit our phase two documentation to the state of Utah for final approval. I don't believe that we may pull the trigger on phase two, even without all the permits in place on Toliara. In the perfect world, we'd like to have both, right? It takes time, and how we phase things is still a work in progress, Justin. You know we want to have the larger scale.

We want to have the separate plant and the ability to process both uranium ores unimpeded and rare earth ores unimpeded as soon as we can. We'll just be evaluating how best to do that. Just quickly, the Pinion Plain resource update should be December, not to change topics. We see the expansion of the White Mesa Mill in the U.S. as something very attractive for whether it be the government or even private parties because of its ability to produce monazite. We'll just see how that unfolds with the various other projects we have.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from a line of Zach Perry with Robertson Stephens. Please go ahead.

Hey, Mark. Congratulations on every good quarter. People have really kind of poked at the financing of rare earths. Obviously, it's a big geopolitical game, as I've always said. I hate to have you try to read the mind of the government, but does the U.S. government understand both the structure of your supply chain, what you need to do, and if you get to scale, your superior volume and cost structure? Because if so, you would think that you guys would be a very high priority after they sort of walked in with saving NdPr.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Look, Zach, thanks for calling in. I think with the U.S. government, it's part of an education process because most of the people in the U.S. government are not, you know, rare earth technically skilled mining engineers, processing engineers. I mean, they have some of that, but you just have to keep telling your story and showing that you can advance your story. I think it is resonating with them that there are a lot of stories out there, but there really are only a handful of legitimate stories. A lot of them are more hopes and wishes, and we can do it if you give us money stories. We're not that. I think that they're getting more up to speed with how this market interrelates and the importance of each step.

I think they're also aware that they can't have, you know, investment in a single project, that they have to have multiple projects because, as you know, Zach, a lot of projects will fail or underproduce or may never produce. I think they're getting up to speed. What's remarkable is how keen they are to reshore a lot of these capabilities and get world-scale molecules. Not just world-scale molecules for the Defense Department in the U.S., but, you know, countries like Canada and the European Union, even places like Japan, they need molecules too. You don't have those mines in Europe, and you don't have those mines in Japan. It's kind of a global issue. I think they're getting it more, but it's been a learning process. It's been a learning process for a lot of people.

Could your timeline be sped up if the government, you know, pushed fast forward on their support?

Look, money can speed up a lot of things, but you also have to look at the practicalities too because you have things like how much can you speed up the permitting, how much can you speed up the construction, and long lead times and things like that. Yes, it can be sped up. The question is how much. What's interesting and unique for us is, for example, we have the phase one. It's already constructed, and we have Donald permitted. We can speed up at least to the capacity of phase one for the lights and potentially the heavies quicker than others can. That's a unique position that Energy Fuels can do uranium. It can do the rare earths at the phase one scale and/or in the future at the phase two scale. We have stepping stones that others don't have.

Got it. Thanks. Real quick on uranium, congrats on proving incredible cost structure. The uranium market has sort of been in a Mexican standoff for, I feel like, a couple of years in terms of pricing. Pricing's gone up a lot, but we haven't seen true contracting at what you would expect high prices needed to create increased supply. Obviously, I think that's what you're waiting for. What actually finally breaks that standoff where you actually see contract pricing come in at volume at a price that we might think clears the market?

I think it's just the beginning, but I think that the utilities are starting to see where a number of new producers are failing to deliver on time and are struggling. We've seen that starting to emerge over the last year. A lot of the discussions we have with utilities is that they need more product. In our case, they flexed up on some of our contracts because they're short of material from new producers that are not producing. There is a pretty active market right now. We're getting quite a few RFPs coming in. The term prices are $80 or even higher. You do have a higher term price than the spot, which I think reflects that the utilities believe that the price is going to be higher. The ceilings are going higher, and the floors are coming up.

I think all the pieces are in place to see these improvements in the spot price and the term price going forward.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from a line of Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Please go ahead.

Hi. Just a couple. I just wonder, and I apologize if you touched on this earlier, could you just talk a little bit about, you know, there's still all the excitement with the SMRs versus the different projects for restarting existing legacy reactors? Could you just talk a little bit about sort of a reality check on the legacy versus the SMRs and their impact on uranium demand? I feel like they tend to get discussed as a little bit lumped together. Any thoughts there would be great.

Speaker 3

Yeah, no. Look, the quickest way to increase demand is restart a reactor that's already built. I think that's surprising people because you're seeing even reactors in the U.S. that are being restarted. I mean, you look at Japan. Japan, you know, shut down all these reactors after Fukushima, and they're restarting them. The demand is going to increase quicker with restarts because, you know, given six months or a year or two years, they can restart, and they have to be reloaded. You see that, you know, where they have to go out and buy uranium.

Speaker 1

SMRs are ways off, quite a ways off. I think the disconnect is that it's just that the existing, it's really no different. If you have a permitted mill, you can do something with it. If you don't have a permitted mill, you can't. When you look at it from the mining or processing side of things, I see the restarts as immediate demand, and you can bank on that, particularly when you see big tech companies putting the money into the restarts and the utilities signing an agreement. That's the way to get the demand up quicker. SMRs are work in progress, and you're looking out probably at least 2030-ish or so before that starts to become a real factor. It takes time for all these things. It doesn't matter if you're mining or you're doing nuclear power plants.

It takes a lot of time to get the permits and to build them. I'm really encouraged with what I'm seeing with restarts.

Speaker 3

Great, thanks. Just to clarify a bit for me, is there a time horizon, and I know I'm asking you to predict the future, which is always hazardous, but do you have a sense of a threshold where perhaps the SMRs, you know, some of those go into FID, they become, their plans become more concrete where the market starts to sort of backfill a bit and start thinking about what premium, to what, what sort of time premium really should be built into the price to sort of make sure that, you know, wherever the demand's coming from, that any given party can lock in supply and not be the last one trying to crowd through the door. Any sense of in advance of the SMRs going live that you could see the pricing ripple into the market?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think the best way to get a handle on that is you go to TradeTech or UX, and they have forecasts that are a lot more scientific than I can give you over the phone or on this call. I do see this, that I, and after being in the business for coming up on 50 years, I don't know how we're going to fill the demand with new uranium projects. I think when you look at existing projects that are becoming mined out and have to be replaced, whether it is anywhere around the world, if you start to double the demand for nuclear fuel products, you're going to have to double the mining of new uranium. People haven't explored for uranium for decades in any material way, and I don't know where it's going to come.

I think all of these pieces, including the restarts, SMRs, but also the build rate in China, I don't know where they're going to get all their fuel.

Your next question comes from the line of Gary Steele. Please go ahead.

Morning Mark, hope you can hear me all right.

I do, Gary. Thanks for calling in.

Absolutely. Absolutely exciting quarter beyond belief, after having watched the company for many years. What a treat. A couple of questions. With all the press and excitement around this Ramico thing up in Rochester, Wyoming, and of course Mountain Pass, is there anything you can share or would be at liberty to share regarding any synergies or opportunities with those two projects?

Geez, I have to think about that, Gary. I think, again, we go back to this differentiator being monazite, monazite sands, very high grade, good distributions of NdPr and heavies, and the economics. Our strategy is different than theirs, and for me as a mining engineer, grade is always key when you're processing things. I don't really know the synergies between the groups, other than we will have probably likely more heavies than any of them with the projects we have and the monazite deposits we have. Everybody in the rare earth space is getting attention right now. I do think that the realities of the cost of production and the grade of these deposits is really going to be something that's important in the scheme and the economics going forward.

We know with what we've done thus far and the monazite that we've received and the project we have, that we're going to be a low-cost producer. We're focusing on being a low-cost producer, and the others will have to do their studies and make sure they can process and do the things that they say they're going to do.

Sure. Another totally separate question. I assume that your uranium runs and your rare earth runs have to be done separately and involve a clean-out and turnaround between runs. Is that accurate?

Yeah. We're trying to be flexible here. Right now, just conceptually, when we talked at two million pounds per year or thereabouts, that's about an eight-month run or a nine-month run. We can have a window between that run, a uranium run, and the next uranium run and a rare earth run. We're going to be flexible because we can generate really exceptional margins on the uranium. We've got to have enough rare earth feed to justify a run, but it does take time to switch over. The mill, you don't just flip a switch. It probably takes a month to retrofit and take certain equipment out of the tanks and whatnot, about a month each direction. We want to minimize that as much as possible, but we really want to make sure that we're really focused on our best margins for our shareholders going forward.

We have the ability to do both, but it isn't a switch until we have phase two. Phase two will be completely separate, and they can both run independently, and then we will not have to do that.

Phase two will have you sign in to the SX circuit so that you can run both materials independently from one another?

Correct. Completely independent. Gary, you know this, the mill has not been ran at capacity for a lot of years. I think that our best years are ahead of us because I think we are going to need to run both our facilities at or near capacity going forward, including the phase two plant.

Your final question comes from the line of Aaron Bedaken with Delta. Please go ahead.

Mark, team, thanks for taking the call and congrats on all the progress this quarter. I'm glad you brought up the benchmark ex-China pricing. It's really exciting and something that I've been looking at too. I'm just wondering if you could share how those prices and how those changes have impacted your off-take conversations.

The benchmark prices came out a week ago or, you know, so it's recent, okay? What's interesting, I did get a text message this morning from another forecaster and said they think they're low, okay? They think they're actually higher. I haven't verified that. I think it kind of goes back to this whole story on these floor prices that people are realizing that you've got to pay more if you're going to compete with China. I have to admit, it surprised me when you had 350% more with this first publication. It's certainly not going to hurt them. We think that this whole concept you have to pay more is a reality. I think that's gaining traction. I think the MP deal proves that the government thinks you have to pay more. Let's see where it goes.

The Australian government talking about floor prices, I think everybody's just realizing that there's got to be a different market. Otherwise, you're truly not independent.

Great. Thank you.

I just want to thank you all for calling in, for watching the webcast. We very much appreciate your participation. I just want to remind and let everybody know that our management team will be attending several upcoming industry and investor conferences. I'm just going to run through a couple of them very quickly. There'll be the Citi 2025 Natural Resources Conference, Intercom Denver, U2025 Global Uranium Symposium, the World Nuclear Symposium 50, Jefferies Industrials 2025, the H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference, the Paine Institute Critical Minerals Symposium, the E-Uranium Summits, and the Power Up BNP Power Bus. Thank you again, and we'll try and get all of that information uploaded onto our website so everybody can follow along. Now, Mark, we'll just say a few closing words.

Yeah, again, thank you for those of you who joined. I think that really the closing words I have is we've been playing a long game. We're not playing short games, flash in the pan. We've been focused on uranium for decades, or at least the assets have. When we added the rare earths, I mean, we started a journey about five years ago. We held to that. There were criticisms from people that we shouldn't be getting into rare earths, critical minerals. It's interesting because a lot of them are calling me up now and saying, wow, that was great. Why didn't you? Yeah, we're happy you did that. We are focused on continuing the journey to build a world-significant, cost-competitive, critical mineral company that has 10-plus critical minerals that can be produced commercially and at scale. I don't know anybody who's done that. It's been a unique strategy.

We're starting to bear the fruits of that. Even with our uranium peers, year to date, we've been the best producing uranium share this year, year to date. Even when you look back a year or even start looking back over five years, we have outperformed our peers in many cases in the uranium space. We're performing well in terms of our peers in the rare earth space. This is not an accident. It's a strategy that we've been committed to and will continue to be committed to. Thank you very much.

Thank you for participating in the Energy Fuels Conference call. Please reach out to the company directly for any additional investment questions. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.