Energy Fuels - Q3 2023
November 6, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Energy Fuels Third Quarter 2023 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. 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, then the number two. Thank you. Mr. Chalmers, you may begin your conference.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Thank you, John, and good morning or afternoon, depending on where you're joining this call from. Yes, and thank you for joining the Q3 conference call and webcast today. As John indicated, my name is Mark Chalmers, and I'm President and CEO of Energy Fuels. Joining me today are Tom Brock, our CFO, and Curtis Moore, our Senior VP of Marketing and Corporate Development. All I can say, it has been very busy. Uranium markets are continuing to strengthen, which is bringing more opportunities to the company, and we also believe we're experiencing greater appreciation for all the great things Energy Fuels does in the critical mineral space. Every conference call, I emphasize how Energy Fuels is a truly unique investment vehicle for decarbonization and electrification. If you believe in the energy transition, we are a one-stop shop investment.
No other company I know has the ability to advance uranium, vanadium, rare earths, and potentially even medical isotope production capabilities, while continuing to maintain and improve a very strong and improving balance sheet with zero debt. In addition, many people keep asking me, it's great that you making profitable uranium sales in 2023, but when are you going back into uranium production? The answer is, we could resume uranium production right now if we wished. However, our current plan, we expect to resume commercial-scale uranium production early next year, and we'll talk about this more during the presentation. I'll also elaborate on Energy Fuels' financial and operational accomplishments during the quarter and what to expect during the remainder of the year.
I also want to remind you that you're controlling your slides to the presentation from your own device, and I'll endeavor to tell you when to advance to the next slide. There will also be, as John mentioned, time for questions at the end of the presentation. For those of you who cannot join us today, we'll have replays of this presentation available for two weeks on our website, either later today or tomorrow. So let's get going. Certainly, this first slide, most of you, if not all of you, have seen it before, but again, Energy Fuels is a company that is focused on the energy transition, and when you look at the critical elements on and in the world, Energy Fuels currently has or will have the capability of producing eight to ten of those critical elements. Next slide.
I may be making some forward-looking statements, and they're included in the presentation. Next slide. So again, Energy Fuels is a leading U.S. producer of uranium, vanadium, and rare-earth elements, all created to a better world on the energy transition. Next slide. Now, I've talked about the periodic table and the changes that we're seeing in the mining and processing industries over the last few years, and Energy Fuels, as we all know, has a long history of uranium, vanadium production, but is now adding the rare-earth elements and radium. And so the whole focus on these different elements in the periodic table is increasing more by the day.
When I graduated from the University of Arizona, I have to say it looks much different to a mining or geological professional today than it did 40 years ago because there's all these new elements that are all focused on electrification and decarbonization. Next slide. We know that all of our products that Energy Fuels makes or value adds to are high-value product lines, uranium, which is about 20% of the electricity in the United States and 50% of the carbon zero electricity and getting increasing attention with the focus on small modular reactors and the need for base load energy globally. And basically, all the forecasts are showing increase rates of demand over the coming years because of that realization.
Rare earths use critical elements and for the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles and wind generation, as well as other high-tech appliances. Energy Fuels is quickly advancing our ability to separate rare-earth elements into separated oxides. I'll talk about that more later. Vanadium, again, is a critical element used for high strength and also looked at and considered as a very, very unique element for grid-scale batteries. Again, we have the only conventional vanadium processing plant in the United States. The medical isotopes critical for emerging cancer therapies. We're making great progress on that front and getting closer to signing some offtake agreements in hopefully not too distant future.
Recycling, and I've said this many times, without the ability to recycle natural uranium and vanadium, the mill would have shut down and been reclaimed decades ago, and that's a unique part of our business strategy in particularly weak market periods. Financial strength, significant cash and inventory, and we're always proud to report on our financial strength. $162 million of working capital, which is really quite conservative, depending on how you add that all up. But, and again, I'll talk more about that, but we are very, very proud to always have a strong balance sheet. Next slide. Just a picture of the Pinyon Plain Mine, which I've told many of you that I actually built, bolted together that headframe in 1987. Next slide. So a little bit more on our balance sheet.
$162 million of working capital end of Q3, made up of about $55 million of cash, cash equivalents, $61 million of marketable securities, $30 million of product and inventory, which currently at current commodity prices, is almost $20 million greater than that, zero debt. We have about $1 billion worth of infrastructure that's completely paid for, and we still have significant inventories of uranium, nearly 600,000 pounds of finished uranium, 900,000 pounds of finished vanadium, and also 11 tons of high purity, separated, rare earth carbonate. Now, I also want to mention that in addition to that post-quarter, enCore Energy has repaid an additional $20 million on the convertible note that we have with them, leaving a balance of about $20 million yet to be paid off.
So they paid off, in total, about $40 million of the $60 million convertible notes. So again, just further strengthening our balance sheet. Next slide. This quarter, we did sell 180,000 pounds to a U.S. nuclear utility. That had a gross margin of about 50% and was sold at about $58 a pound. And I want to point out, even though the spot price is $73–$74 a pound, the long-term price is around $62 per pound. So when you sign contracts, you're not gonna get the highest spot price at all times, but you do get certainty with floors and ceilings. More on our preparation of our uranium mines. We are preparing 4 conventional uranium, vanadium mines for production, and I want to explain a little bit about this.
First of all, La Sal Complex. We put in a new building there. We're ordering new mining equipment. We're also getting and hiring miners to refurbish and get ready to start mining at the La Sal Complex, which includes the Beaver and La Sal mines. Also the Whirlwind Mine, which is in Colorado. We did almost a year's worth of refurbishing of the decline, putting it into good operational shape to restart mining in the not too distant future. And the Pinyon Plain Mine in Arizona, we've done a lot of work around the shaft, where we put in all the shaft pockets required for commercial production, and we're currently doing a vent hole, 8-foot diameter vent hole that we're currently advancing as we speak to establish ventilation.
So we're doing a lot of work, and as I said, if we wanted to, we could start mining today, literally with a phone call, but we're getting all these projects ready to restart at commercial production when we're ready to do that. I also want to indicate that these mines that we're getting ready will have the capacity to recommence at a production rate of about 1 million pounds of mine production per year, maybe greater than that, in 2024. And final production decisions really depends on our contract requirements, inventory levels, and market conditions. The one thing that is really unique about Energy Fuels is we can mix and match conventional production, ISR production, alternate feed, and our inventories as required, and that gives us unique flexibility in a number of different ways. We can mine uranium.
We don't have to process it yet. We can stockpile it, we can process it, and nobody can do this, and we can do it at very attractive cost for whatever the requirements are with regard to our contracts or other future uranium sales. Uranium inventory, I mentioned, we have about 600,000 pounds of finished inventory, but we have nearly 400,000 pounds of raw materials yet to be processed uranium. Next slide. So on the rare earth element production, we're currently awaiting our next shipment of monazite from Chemours. We expect that later in Q4 or early Q1 in 2024, and we'll start processing that once we receive it and when we're ready to start commissioning our phase one separation plant, which is expected to be operational in Q1 of 2024.
We started expanding the SX building at White Mesa by modifying it and adding existing or additional solvent extraction capabilities to that existing SX building. We expect to have capacity around 800–1,000 metric tons of separated NdPr oxide per year early next year capacity, given adequate feed. So the development work at the mill is well advanced. Major components have been ordered and are being installed, and we expect that to be the cost of doing that, about $25 million. We also showcase what we're doing at the mill at Open House in October.
We had about 200 people show up for that, and it was really a great event, including Miss America showing up and gave a really wonderful speech to the group about the positive aspects and expanding aspects of nuclear power going forward. Next slide. We're also advancing what we call phase two separation project, and that basically can be as big as we want it to be, depending on what we think the future looks like for securing future feeds of monazite. It could be 3,000 tons or greater per year. We are also expecting to advance the crack and leach circuit ahead of the SX circuit of phase two, to allow the simultaneous production of rare earth and uranium separately at the mill site.
Engineering for phase three and commissioning, and piloting is gonna start. The actual piloting is gonna start later this year, and we still expect to have the capabilities of doing the separation of heavy oxides in that 2027–2028 time period. The Brazil project, Bahia, is advancing. We're having a new sonic drill rig delivered to the site this month. The next phase of drilling is gonna commence soon after that. We've done some initial bulk test work on production of a heavy mineral concentrate. We're waiting results, and we're starting community and stakeholder engagement. Next slide. Not a lot's happened lately on the vanadium sales. We did do some sales earlier this year, and we sold it at about a 37% margin.
Again, I just want to emphasize that the company has the only conventional vanadium circuit in the United States, also a critical element. We still have about 900,000 pounds of finished vanadium in inventory, and we have the ability to recover more vanadium from our tailings or our conventional mines when we decide to do that. Next slide. This slide just highlights a bit more about our significant liquidity and our strong balance sheet, the $162 million, and as I said, that does not include the $20 million paid by enCore Energy on the note post-quarter, and it also does not include the value of our current ISO investment or current inventory values. So again, you know, we define working capital based on GAAP principles.
So we are, again, very strong on all fronts, no debt. Also, the inventories we have of uranium and vanadium, and when you value our inventories at current market values, you could get a substantial upgrade in the value of those finished goods, and those inventories. I mean, just look at, for example, the uranium on our books is on our books for $29 a pound. Current price is $73. It's up over 150%. Vanadium prices have come down, a bit, but still pretty steady on what our value is on the books. So let's just look at what the 2023 guidance looks like.
We will sell or we have sold 560,000 pounds of uranium at an average price of about $59.42, and as I said, you're never gonna catch the spot price. If you try to catch the spot price, you'll never have any long-term contracts. We sold uranium to the U.S. reserve for about $61 a pound earlier this year, and we made two sales to our U.S. utilities, 80,000 and 180,000 pounds in separate deliveries. We're continuing to prepare at least one mine to go in production. It's probably gonna be more than one mine. As I said, we can start any time, but we're waiting until we're completely ready to start at commercial levels and optimal levels.
We're looking for additional long-term supply agreements, which we think, certainly with the price uranium going up and the scarcity of uranium, that there will be other contracts to be had, on the market with utilities. We're not doing any uranium production in terms of processing uranium in 2023 for finished goods. We are processing uranium and keeping it in solution at the mill when we're processing rare earths, and we're continuing to build up our alternate feed inventories, and when we start producing uranium at the mines, we'll be stockpiling uranium when we go back into commercial production.
We plan to process later this year, early next year, about another 600 tons of monazite to commission the circuit, and we'll continue to advance and commission this phase one circuit that I've already mentioned, late, probably later, in Q1 2024. We're still looking for rare earth offtakes. The Bahia project, I mentioned, we're advancing that, and we are aggressively looking for M&A opportunities in both the rare earth space and the uranium space globally. So that's the end. Next slide, just this beautiful sunset in San Juan County, Utah. I now open it up for any questions anyone would have of myself, Tom Brock, or Curtis Moore.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. Please ensure you lift the handset if you're using a speakerphone before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
Hey there. Thanks for taking my questions, Mark.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Hey, Heiko.
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
Also, thanks for taking me on a tour a couple of weeks ago. Your balance sheet is very solid. Let's, let's talk a bit about the use of funds. Can you break down some of the larger things that you're gonna have to spend money on in the next 12 months or through the end of 2024?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah, Heiko, some of the major uses of capital are on increasing uranium production in terms of more mining. I mean, a lot of the development work, as I mentioned, with regard to, like, the vent hole shaft work, all that is getting close to being completed. So basically, for every ton we mine, there will be cash consumed for the mining. You know, in addition, we're looking at, you know, finishing up the Phase 1. Now it's around $25 million, and a significant portion, probably $12.5 million of that has been spent thus far. We're looking at securing or purchasing additional monazite, that you know, is a work in progress. You know, the permitting.
I think the biggest uses are certainly restarting the mines, also you know, you know, advancing our rare earth initiatives. But yeah, we have a strong balance sheet to cover that.
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
You wouldn't be able to quantify any of these, these line items, will you?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
You know, Heiko, I can, I can quantify it, you know, it more, depending on... I'd rather do it offline, but, but, I mean, for example, you know, each ton we mine of ore is gonna cost us somewhere between, you know, $100-$200 a ton for every ton that we mine. Now, that doesn't include processing. But, I don't know, Mr. Brock, you're on there, and you've been working with the some of the budgets for 2024. Is there anything you'd want to add to that in terms of expenditure?
Tom Brock (CFO)
Yeah, thank you for that. I think you're spot on there, Mark. Heiko, Tom Brock here. We continue-
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
Yeah
Tom Brock (CFO)
... to work through the budgeting process for 2024. We're pretty in tune to what's coming down the pike, if you will, based on our business strategies for 2024 and beyond. But as Mark mentioned earlier, one of the outliers here is M&A activity and our success there.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah.
Tom Brock (CFO)
Fair enough.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
You've got the operational activities, but you also have to look at what potential M&A activities we could have that also could potentially consume cash.
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
Fair enough. I was trying to set up a slightly different question, but I think I'm gonna ask it anyways. I mean, you got $54 million in cash, you got $70 million in marketable securities. Obviously, there is a cost to ramping up, starting up, all that stuff. But I mean, at $162 million in working cap, we're probably beyond any limits of anything that could be really done in a logical way. And I get that you want your balance sheet to be strong because who knows what the future holds. But is it fair to say that working cap in excess of $100, $120, $140, $150 million is more than enough than we think we're really gonna need?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
You never have too much cash, Heiko. But really, we're looking at this in a couple aspects, as Tom hit on. We're looking at it at what we need for our current business strategy when it comes to uranium and rare earths, but we're also looking at in terms of M&A activity. So, you know, there's two pieces of that, and we're not being shy on sort of the potential scale that M&A could be. And, you know, so we're trying to make sure we have plenty of powder here, to give us the biggest chances of success on all fronts.
Heiko Ihle (Managing Director, Senior Metals & Mining Analyst)
Fair enough. It's been a great year for the company. Keep up the good work, and I'll get back in the queue. Thank you, Mark.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Thank you, Heiko.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Reagor from Roth MKM. Your line is now open.
Joseph Reagor (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, Mark and team. Thanks for taking the questions. Following a little bit on what Heiko was asking about the budget next year, do you have a range you think your, like, all-in costs might fall into, for uranium once you start the milling campaign?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
You know, I have to be careful, as you can gather, on giving exact numbers because we don't have exact numbers. But I have said this, that our lowest. Well, you know, our inventory is around $30 a pound to finished goods. The Pinyon Plain Mine, we expect it to be somewhere between $35–$40 per pound. When we look at a combination of Pinyon Plain, these other mines are restarting, alternate feed material, we believe it will be under $50 a pound, and very competitive, world competitive in terms of how we can mix and match, as I said, the inventories, the alternate feed, production from Pinyon Plain and other operations. So, it's gonna be, I can say this pretty good.
I believe it'll be well under $50 per pound.
Joseph Reagor (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, that's helpful. And then, I didn't hear you—I know you mentioned ISR, but I'm assuming you're referring to Nichols Ranch. Any thoughts there on when we might see a restart? You know, is it a certain price you need for a certain period of time, or is it just, you know, a certain number in the queue? Like, how do we think about that project?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
I think I've mentioned it before, when you look at the ISR projects, when you produce a pound of uranium from a conventional mine, you can mine it, you can stop that day, you can stockpile it, you can process it. There's a number of steps you can make as you're sort of building your book for production at different steps. With ISR, once you produce a pound from ISR, you're basically committed to that production for 10 years plus through restoration, and it's harder to stop that process. So we're really looking at when we get the absolute demand signals with long-term contracts supporting that longer-term approach. I mean, currently our market contracts go up to about 8 years, but we're really looking for that.
So we like the way that we can be modular with our conventional mining assets and our alternate feed at this point in time, but we're certainly looking for a restart, you know, when the time is right. But we think that in our circumstances, the restart of the conventional mines makes more sense at this time.
Joseph Reagor (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, fair enough. And then one final thing on contracts versus inventory. As you guys look out to 2024 with this plan to potentially start milling in the latter part of 2024 or early 2025, how do you think about your inventory as far as, like, available pounds that you could sell if pricing were to spike versus what's under contract? Like, how much is that gap left, and how much of it would you be comfortable selling in the right, you know, circumstances?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Well, I guess it comes down to, in the right circumstances. You know, we look at the inventory that we have as giving us a lot of optionality on all things like not only when we mine uranium, how much we mine, and when we process. We plan to mine more uranium than we have under contract, and that gives us the ability to play that market when the time is right. So I don't have an absolute answer for it, but we'll always look at what we think makes the most sense for our shareholders.
Joseph Reagor (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, fair enough. I'll turn it over. Thanks, Mark.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance. Your line is now open. Justin Chan, your line is now open.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Okay, thanks, guys. I, I couldn't tell which one was the mute. I think I got it wrong. Can you hear me now?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Hear you fine, Justin.
Joseph Reagor (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, Justin.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
All right, great. Thanks, guys. Sorry about that start. I guess my first question is on just in terms of mining volumes, when you start out to get a understanding of how to model that and what that'll look like. Do you expect to produce a steady volume of tonnage that either matches your contracts or is a higher number, or will mining be similar to processing in campaigns, you stockpile or you choose to process it? Just trying to get a sense of that cadence.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah, Justin, as I said, we're looking at being able to be in a position in 2024, to, at the very least, mine around 1 million pounds or greater per year. And then depending on how the market matures, we can increase that to 2 million pounds of uranium production per year with limited capital. And then we can go up from there, but then we start having to spend greater quantums of capital. I mean, generally speaking, we like to be contracted for, I'd say, in the order of at least 50% of our production, Justin. It could be more, it could be less, but somewhere in that kind of order. So, we're planning on about 1 million-plus pounds per year.
And as I said, it depends on how we want to mix and match with inventories from $30 per pound to, you know, Pinyon Plain and other sources, how we mix it, but it's very competitive. I said it was under 50. It could be in a range of 40–50, depending on how you mix and match to serve the requirements that we're doing. But again, I don't wanna be held down to that because of a conference call like this, but it's very competitive. We're very comfortable with our price structures compared to the rest of the world.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
... Gotcha. But if I were to, so just based on that, once you start up at that kind of 1 million pounds number, you would, you would anticipate, let's say, if market conditions don't change, you kind of produce around that level, and then at some future point, you could increase it?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Correct. Correct.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Okay.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
We got to get the flywheel going. I mean, some of the things that, like, just getting miners rehired and trained and whatnot takes time. So, you know, we're comfortable we can get to that million-pound level quickly, like in 2024. We don't have to process that ore. We'll stockpile it, put it at the mill, keep it at the mine sites, but it will be all along the rate of about a million pounds until we decide to go greater than that.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Okay, gotcha. And then in terms of the, on the rare side, rare earth side of the business, as you ramp up the separation circuit, do you have enough material right now to, I guess, allow you to ramp up? Are you comfortable with your inventory levels there?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah, Justin, we've been challenged on monazite quantities. As you're aware of, you know, we've received material from Chemours, and they've under-delivered. We're still working to resolve that with them. Yeah, to get to that 800–1,000 tons of NdPr per year is still subject to securing of adequate feed. I've said we've been talking to a number of parties in that regard. Now, one thing that's working in our favor is that the price of rare earths has come down quite materially since a year ago or so.
That's helping create more urgency with others to supply material to the mill, but that is certainly subject to securing the feed to get to those quantities, and that's around 8,000–10,000 tons a year of monazite to get to 800–1,000 tons of NdPr tons per year.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Gotcha. Then just maybe a question towards that. At Bahia, I guess, can you talk me through what you expect your timelines are? So there's more drilling in Q4. Would that drilling round give you enough to declare a resource, or do you think you would anticipate more drilling next year before you put out a resource?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah, we're hoping to put out a resource as soon as we can. It's a large land area, and you can appreciate that when you have a large area, you can't drill it out in any, you know, in short order. So, you know, we are looking at, you know, putting out a resource, at least on some areas, you know, in the next—within the next year. We're ramping up the permitting there, community consultation, whatnot. So it's still gonna take a few years to get to producing an HMC concentrate. But, what we do, we plan to ramp it up as quickly as we can.
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Okay, gotcha. All right. Thanks, thanks very much. I'll free up the line. Appreciate your answers today, and congrats on a very, very strong balance sheet, among other things.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Heim, from Noble Financial Markets. Your line is now open.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Thanks. Can you hear me okay?
Justin Chan (Head of Research)
Yeah.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Okay, great. We, we've talked a couple of times about the mill campaign in 2024, 2025. I just want to make sure I understand that. Is that simply just talking about getting things started, or are there upgrades to the system or other type of costs that might come into play that we should talk about?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Well, the 2024 time period is really focused on using the mill for the phase 1, cracking, leaching, and separation into oxides, and that's that $25 million-ish dollars for basically completing the extra SX and the existing excess building. That's really it. When it comes to when we go back into uranium production at the mill, there really isn't any major capital work that has to go in for that, but we have to flip the mill over, so it can produce uranium and vanadium, you know, when we like to do that. So no major capital outside of the, say, $25 million for the SX building for the rare earths.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Okay, and then maybe a question on the rare earths, specifically the cost for the rare earths carbonate. I couldn't help but notice that the cost per ton dropped 30% year-over-year. Is that just a reflection of ramping things up, or are there other items that make that? I guess what I'm looking for is that a reasonable number to use going forward?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
One of the problems we have with the carbonates, the quantities are so low that we, you know, it doesn't really reflect the cost, you know, in absolute terms, because the quantities are so small. So we really got to get it up to get a better cost. Tom, are you on the line? You can answer any question in terms of the rare earth processing costs.
Tom Brock (CFO)
Yeah, I would, I would agree with your comment there, Mark, that the fact that we're not fully utilizing efficiently the process for rare earths at this point in time, you're gonna find a lot of fixed costs that are not being necessarily absorbed or-
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
... leading to a higher cost per production. So to answer your question, I would not use that as a go forward.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Meaning that it could even get better as production ramps higher?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Correct.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Okay.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yes.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
And then-
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Well, it-
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
I guess as you... Go ahead.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yes. If you looked at, Michael, like, processing 500 tons in a year, and you need to be up to 1,000 or 10,000 tons or something, you can see where there's pretty small quantities to get real material numbers on, so.
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Then finally, for me, I just want to ask one question about the M&A that kind of was a little bit new. I certainly don't expect, you know, any exact comments, but can you talk about what type of things you'd be looking to gain through M&A? Is it facilities? Is it, you know, reserves? Is it technology? What type of things would you be looking for?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
The main thing we're looking for the rare earths is what we call pounds in the ground. It's really tons of monazite in the ground. And the main thing there is that if you look at their heavy mineral sands business, even a few years ago, monazite was just a waste stream and wasn't counted to attribute any value into those operations at all. It was even a negative value. And so we're trying to secure as many of our own sources of monazite as we can in at least a few jurisdictions, so that we basically own what we bring into the mill.
Now, that doesn't mean that we're not gonna purchase or partner or joint venture in different ways to also bring feed into the mill, but the real key here is to control and have mines that are dedicated to our project going forward, because we think ultimately that'll lead to the lowest cost in rare earth production. Now, on the uranium front, anything that we might look at in terms of M&A on the uranium front would really be, how do we get improved synergies with either other blocks of land close to our projects or other projects close to our projects to get better synergies from a uranium perspective?
Michael Heim (Senior Research Analyst, CFA)
Okay. It's very helpful. That's all the questions I have.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, should you have a question, please press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of David McCausland. Your line is now open.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Okay, well, thank you very much. I was a shareholder in Lynas and also Medallion Resources. They both are, especially Lynas, has been involved a long time in the processing of monazite for the rare-earth elements, and Medallion was doing a lot of research on various methodologies associated to that process. You know, I, I do have a... Are you using a, I don't even know if I can call it a conventional SX module right now. Are you still-- and this is only one of three of my questions, possibly. Are you, are you looking at less cost-effective one, less cost-intensive ones that are more exotic as far as getting your REE out at a lower cost at the plant level?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
We're really looking at using proven technologies, caustic crack, for the-
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Mm-hmm
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
... the extraction of the uranium and the thorium. And we're using solvent extraction, because we have a long history of using solvent extraction at the White Mesa Mill, and so we're using sort of traditional approaches to processing of monazite. Now, our main advantage is we have the ability to deal with the radionuclides, with the tailings facility and recover the uranium, where others, that is a bigger problem. So, we are focused on existing technologies that are proven, technologies that we're-
David McCausland (Shareholder)
I got you. I can't give you enough credit for that because, yeah, you are already situated to be in the REE business. I saw this four or five years ago, and I actually held your stock a little bit then. But, you know, of course, your uranium is also gonna be possibly extremely more important coming forward here as some of the, you know, the green energy dreams become, you know, not so productive. But, and rare earths, I mean, they're so important as far as super magnets go. I wanna ask, how are you paying... This Bahia property is huge. Has it produced any material amount of monazite concentrate to date?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
No, no, it's really an exploration project. It was quite well known by a number of the heavy mineral sands producing companies. It's... Yeah, so like 60 sq. mi., but it was well known, but it also has good monazite grades. And the monazite grades, historically, were looked as a negative, and now they're looked as a positive. And-
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Sure.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
So, you know, that's why we secured Bahia as one of our acquisitions. And as I said, you know, we're actively looking at securing other acquisitions that are kind of along the lines of Bahia, but certainly anything that's more advanced than the exploration stages is appreciated.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Right, because you don't wanna be politically hostage to maybe an uncapitalistic government, okay? If you do have a very productive mine site in a, you know, a critical field like green energy, right? I mean, Mexico's already nationalized their lithium properties, apparently, right? But so yeah, it would be definitely good to supply. And you know, so but this property doesn't have the, not the vanadium, but zirconium like you know, some of the monazite properties do.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Yeah, it's a traditional heavy mineral sand deposit with titanium, zirconium.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Yeah.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
You know.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Okay. And you've done economic analysis as far as what you think it might be to get a concentrate made in Brazil and shipped up to your plant?
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
We're still working through those pieces and steps, but we have looked at it with consultants previously. We have done some sampling and testing in the early stages. You know, basically, the people that you know were helping advise us thought it was a good project. But yeah, you gotta take all the steps to you know to-
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Right
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
... to get there. And, you know, we're trying to do them all.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
I can't give you enough—I can't give you enough credit for doing this. I mean, you know about old Molycorp, I guess it's now, that mine has reopened. So fortunately, we have a little bit of REE production here in the United States. But we need more. We need more. We definitely do. And this is a, this is, this is if our, if our society continues to go forward in an industrial way. We're kind of go-going backwards right now, in my opinion. And, and, you know, there's all kinds of problems going on in the world that, you know, you know, are gonna affect markets going forward. But, no, I, I, for some reason, I looked at your stock the other day and I saw this project.
Like, I can't give you enough credit for getting involved in this, and I hope it really works out well for you. So-
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Well, thank you. We hope it works out well as well, and we plan to make it work well.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
No, it's a natural fit for what, for uranium processing, you know, because there is frequently a decent amount of uranium type or radioactive materials in monazite, and you already deal with those, okay? And, I don't know about thorium. I mean, there's, you know, people have been talking about going to thorium as a nuclear plant fuel for a while. It just doesn't seem to be happening, and I don't know if there's that much thorium in this monazite down in Brazil. But, yeah, it looks like, you know, and I don't know whether how well disseminated the monazite is in here. You're gonna find some of that out as you drill, I think.
But hopefully, you know, you'll either find the pockets or they will be well enough disseminated, but still rich enough to make this, you know, be a good source of monazite for you. So... And it's not, you don't have to rely on somebody else who can sell it to somebody else. If it's yours, you control it. So-
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Correct. That's the key is controlling some of these projects to dedicate them to our requirements and our infrastructure.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Right. Right, right. And I wish you a lot of luck on the uranium side too. I mean, we haven't built a nuclear plant here, I don't think, in a long time. And, you know, there's resistance to that, you know, we all know why. I mean, in Japan, I mean, I put duct tape on my windows two days after I heard about what happened there and saw it on the news. But, in any case, if we're gonna try to get away from fossil fuels, which ultimately we might have to, I'm not a green energy, I'm not a climate changer, I think it's a scam, but, for political purposes, political control purposes and taking over of economies.
But, in any case, you know, we got, we gotta keep moving forward and trying to find ways to get more out of the energy we have. And, you know, it takes a decent amount of energy to make electricity, but if we can, you know, use rare earth magnets to get a lot of more force out of it than conventional electric motors, then boom, it's a, it's a plus. So anyway, thank you very much.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Thank you.
David McCausland (Shareholder)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back over to Mr. Chalmers. Please continue.
Mark Chalmers (President and CEO)
Okay, well, thank you, John. Yeah, look, and in closing, you know, thank you for your time and your interest in Energy Fuels. You know, as I said, you know, we are a unique story, being able to do all these different things that others cannot do because of the uranium, contained uranium and the radionuclides, low level radionuclides. And as I said, whether it be the rare earths or the uranium, particularly uranium, we can mix and match between existing inventories and whatnot to build, you know, price competitive pricing to fit a number of different requirements, and, and that is in itself very unique, and, it's very competitive. So, we believe we have a very bright future. I always say that we're gonna be aggressive but not reckless.
We plan to continue to have a strong balance sheet to put us in the strongest position possible for our new uranium production, our new rare earth production and processing, and M&A, as and when it makes sense for our company. So we want to be in a strong position. We want to deliver exceptional results as we go forward in this whole critical mineral area. So thank you very much, and that concludes the conference call.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.