Conference Transcript - LEU 2026-05-06

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Centris Energy Q1-2026 Earnings Call Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode, and following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Neil Nagarajan.

Neal Nagarajan, Head of Investor Relations

Nagarajan, please go ahead. Good morning. Welcome and thank you to all of our callers as well as those listening to our webcast. Today's call will cover the results for the first quarter of 2026 and in March 31st. Today we have Amir Vechler, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Todd Tinelli, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. This conference call follows our earnings news release issued yesterday. We have filed our report for the first quarter on Form 10-Q earlier today. All of our news releases and SEC filings, including our 10-K, 10-Qs, and 8-Ks are available on our website. A replay of this call will be also available later this morning on the Centris website. I would like to remind everyone that certain information we may discuss on this call today may be considered forward-looking information that involves risks and uncertainty, including assumptions about the future performance of centers. Our actual results may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in our forward-looking statements is contained in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking information provided today is time-sensitive and accurate only as of today, May 6, 2026, unless otherwise noted. Please note that we report results using non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide investors with additional understanding of the company's financial performance as well as its strategic financial planning analysis and period-to-period comparability. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measurements is included in the financial results section of our earnings release. This call is the property of Centris Energy. Any transcription, redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of the call in any form without the express written consent of Centris is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your participation, and I'll now turn the call over to Amir.

Amir Vexler, CEO

Thank you, Neil, and thank you to everyone on the call today. The first quarter of 2026 began our historic undertaking to return the United States to domestic commercial uranium enrichment and was marked by numerous wins and great operational progress. Centris remains the only company with a proven American technology that can meet the growing demand from the commercial LEU and HALU markets as well as the national security market. Our centrifuge manufacturing program and expansion efforts are enormously significant for the company and the country. A once-in-a-generation opportunity to reclaim American leadership in uranium enrichment with American technology built by American workers. As a reminder, our initial build-out will address our substantial commercial LEU enrichment backlog of more than $2.4 billion and 12 metric tons of HALU. Furthermore, our base case build-out is expected to be sufficient to reach our end-of-a-kind costs. Further additions to our build-out will be progressive, tied to securing additional firm customer orders and capital resources. This quarter's highlights include progress across the milestones set forth in our 2026 guidance, new external partnerships that bring best-in-class expertise and allow us to maintain our hyper-focus on reducing costs as well as bringing in timelines, and progress with the U.S. government, including winning a $900 million HALU Enrichment Award from the U.S. Department of Energy. But first, let me turn to the quarter's results. As many of you know, there can be a significant amount of variability quarter to quarter due to the nature of our business. And as such, we believe our annual results are more indicative of our LEU and CTS businesses' In the first quarter, we achieved $76.7 million in revenue, a gross profit of $31.5 million, an operating income of $0.8 million, net income of $10 million, and diluted earnings per share of $0.45. and adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share were $23.5 million and $1.05 per share, respectively. Since we've begun our HALU operations contract, we have contractually produced over 1.6 metric tons of HALU UF6 for the government. Todd will discuss the results and their respective drivers in more depth shortly. Turning to our commercial backlog, we finished the first quarter with $3.9 billion of backlog that extends through 2040. This is comprised of $3.1 billion in our LEU segment and $0.8 billion in our technical solution segment. The LEU segment's backlog is broken down between $700 million of broker-dealer backlog and $2.4 billion in contingent LEU enrichment sales that are all under definitive agreement. As for our U.S. government opportunities, we are limited in what we can say, as we are in a procurement cycle. However, as previously noted, in January, we won a $900 million ALU enrichment award that has the potential to exceed $1 billion and still needs to be finalized through negotiations. The award provides another pool of low-cost capital and helps support the 12 metric tons of HALU capacity we are building. Regarding national security, recall that we were notified by the National Nuclear Security Administration of its intent to sole source certain enrichment activities from Centris. While we are in procurement, we can confirm that we have submitted our response to their request, and we stand ready to support our national security mission. In late January, we launched a $560 million investment in our Oak Ridge centrifuge manufacturing plan, an investment aimed at expanding and accelerating our historic centrifuge manufacturing program. And we have thus far signed three important partners to support our build-out. We have repeatedly said that our day-one focus is to reduce costs and bring in lead times. Centris Energy will maintain control over design, engineering, and manufacturing know-how of our centrifuges, while partners bring operational excellence and best-in-class capabilities. First, we signed Fluor, a best-in-class EPC with extensive experience in launching and supporting large-scale complex industrial build-outs. Fluor will perform design, engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning for the expansion. We also sign Palantir as a strategic partner. Here, Centris intends to leverage Palantir's foundry and artificial intelligence platform to integrate distinct systems across classified and unclassified environments and utilize AI to optimize our build-out. Since late January, we have identified approximately $300 million in potential cost savings and additional improvements expected to reduce manufacturing lead times and accelerate our timetable. This is just the beginning of our continuous improvement efforts. And most recently, we added Geiger Brothers to lead the on-the-ground construction work in Ohio. Geiger Brothers previously served as a key construction partner in the deployment of our existing HALU cascade, as well as our 2013 LEU demonstration cascade. We believe this structure generates efficiencies and may mitigate some project costs. These partnerships underscore our vigilance and commitment to decreasing costs and bringing in lead times while maintaining operational excellence. We also announced that we are exploring a joint venture with Oklo, focused on deconversion services for HALU, which currently does not exist commercially, and will strengthen our position in the HALU market. This demonstrates our commitment to leading the domestic fuel cycle, and we look forward to updating the market when we have more to share. Operationally, we made strong progress in our workforce additions in both Piketon and Oak Ridge. These jobs span engineers, assembly technicians, maintenance technicians, enrichment operators, lab technicians, project management, and project controls. Our Senior Vice President of Field Operations, Patrick Brown, and team have also made great progress on our other operational targets. In the first quarter, we finalized contracts with approximately one-third of the partners we deemed critical, while the team entered into the conceptual engineering design phase of the first CFC package. Therefore, we are reaffirming our 2026 annual guidance for finalizing contracts with 100% of the partners we deemed critical. Total capital spent in the range of $350 million to $500 million. dollars, release of a certified for construction package, and at least 100 net new employee hires at our Oak Ridge facility. Simultaneously, given the strength of our first quarter and commercial progress, including conversations around potential new enrichment of the contract, we are raising our 2026 annual guidance for revenue to a range of $450 to $500 million, from $425 to $475 million. And our Python workforce additions from over 50 net new employees to over 100 net new employees. This was a very successful quarter for the company across all fronts. I will now turn the call over to Todd and return with some final thoughts and comments.

Todd Tinelli, CFO

Thank you, Amir, and good morning to everyone on today's call. Let me first walk you through our results before providing more details on some of what Amir discussed. Our results were in line with our internal projections and reflected not only the typical quarter-over-quarter shift in contractual mix, but also the beginning of spend for our manufacturing program. As noted on last quarter's call, I will be presenting financials on a quarterly and trailing 12-month basis. Furthermore, we are introducing adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share to our reported financials to better reflect and differentiate the ongoing business results from our cost of expansion. Total revenue for the first quarter was $76.7 million, an increase of $3.6 million, or 5% versus the same period last year. TTM revenue was $452.3 million. The LEU segment generated $44.6 million in the first quarter, a 13% decrease versus the previous period last year. SWU revenue in the quarter decreased by $9.7 million due to a 47% decrease in volume of SWU sold, partially offset by a 52% increase in the average price of SWU sold. Centris also had $3 million of uranium sales in Q1. The technical solution segment delivered revenue of $32.1 million in the third quarter, a $10.3 million or 47% increase over the previous period, due to primary to a $9.8 million increase in revenue from the HALU operations contract. Centrush generated gross profit of $31.5 million and $116.1 million for the first quarter in TTM, respectively, compared to a gross profit of $32.9 million in Q1, 2025. The LEU segment's first quarter cost of sales decreased by 17%, or $3.4 million, due to the 47% decrease in SWOO volume, partially offset by a 45% increase in the average cost of SWOO sold versus Q1 2025. Technical solutions cost of sales increased $8.4 million, or 42%, from Q1 2025, primarily attributable to the HALU operations contracts. The company generated net income of $10 million and $23.5 million of adjusted net income in the first quarter, compared to net income of $27.2 million and adjusted net income of $28.6 million, respectively, in Q1 2025. On a fully diluted basis, this equates to first quarter 2026 earnings per share of $0.45 per unit and an adjusted earnings per share of $1.05, respectively, compared to $1.60 and $1.68, respectively, for Q1 2025. On a TTM basis, Centris generated net income of $60.6 million and adjusted net income of $87.8 million, respectively. The first quarter net income decrease was primarily attributed to a $15.9 million increase in advanced technology costs in Q1, 2026, and a gain from an $11.8 million non-reoccurring extinguishment of long-term debt in Q1 2025. This was partially offset by a $9.7 million increase in investment income and $5.5 million decrease in income tax expense for Q1 2026. First quarter adjusted net income excludes $17 million of growth expenses in our advanced technology costs and $400,000 in stock-based compensation costs, which combined and tax adjusted equates to $13.5 million. The advanced technology costs are short-term, non-capitalizable costs related to the expansion of our operations in Python and Oak Ridge that cannot be capitalized as they are associated with manufacturer readiness and security training ahead of the build-out. Please refer to the financial results section of our earnings release issued yesterday for a reconciliation of net income and adjusted net income. Going forward, we can expect to have a certain level of these types of expenses flow through our income statement as we prepare for our build-out. Turning to our capitalization and capital spend, recall we previously noted that capital spend for this project will include CapEx and non-CapEx spending. The latter is attributable to cost in investments such as prepayments to suppliers or growth costs associated with our manufacturing pre-preparedness. In the first quarter, we had a total of capital spend of $45.2 million with $23.2 million coming from CAPEX and $22 million classified as non-CAPEX. That $22 million is comprised of the aforementioned $17 million of growth costs and $5 million related to prepayments for the Palantir agreement. Going forward, we can expect the pace of our CAPEX and non-CAPEX spend to accelerate throughout the year. We finished the first quarter with $1.9 billion in unrestricted cash and did not access our ETM program. We continue to feel confident in our existing cash balance, and we believe we are sufficiently funded to meet our near-term capital requirements. As Amir noted, our commercial and operational progress to date have allowed us to raise our 2026 annual guidance for revenue to $450 million to $500 million from $425 million to $475 million, workforce additions in Pipedin, Ohio to $100 plus up from $50 plus. We are simultaneously reaffirming the rest of our financial and operational guidance for fiscal year 2026. With that, I will turn the call back to Amir. Amir?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Thank you, Todd. We made great progress across our operations and continue to have meaningful conversations with future commercial and government partners for LEU and HALU offtake. This includes our conversations with the advanced reactor and hyperscaler communities, conversations that have continued to pick up and pace since we announced our build-out that includes 12 metric tons of HALU. While these first-of-a-kind conversations take time, we are excited by their increased tenor. And we continue to explore other adjacent areas in the nuclear fuel cycle where we can further strengthen our offerings to the market, including our announcement this quarter with Oklo to explore HALU deconversion. On a macro level, we continue to see strong progress from the United States and the rest of the world doubling down on nuclear power. Reactor developers and their customers, from big tech to the U.S. military, are rolling out ambitious plans to deploy reactors on a large scale and at potentially faster rates. Moreover, the U.S. government is reducing regulatory hurdles for new reactor design. We're also seeing new use cases, including space propulsion. Furthermore, global conflicts and rising tensions continue to highlight the need for governments to diversify away from fossil fuels and strengthen their domestic power sources to drive future sustainable economic growth. Nuclear stands to be a key player in this drive to energy independence. We look forward to sharing more with you on our upcoming calls. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the 1 on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the 2. We want to remind participants to please stick to asking one question. If there is a follow-up you would like to ask, you can queue up by pressing star 1. If you are using a speakerphone, please hit the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. And your first question comes from Ryan Finks from B. Reilly. Please go ahead.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

On guidance, you touched on it a bit in the prepared remarks, but can you give more detail on what's driving the increase in expected revenue for this year?

Todd Tinelli, CFO

Thank you, Ryan, for the question and, you know, the remarks on this quarter. So we see continue to be active in the market, and we see both near-term and line-of-sight to long-term offtake, and that has allowed us to increase our guidance marginally to what we believe will potentially be the outcome of the year and, you know, move us up about $25 million within the range.

Operator

Thanks. Thank you. And your next question comes from Rob Brown from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Rob Brown, Analyst — Lake Street Capital Markets

Good morning. Congratulations on all the progress. Could you give us a sense of the pricing and margin trends in the backlog? It seems like things on the SWOO side, things are moving up, just what's the sort of average pricing trend in the backlog?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Hey, good morning, Rob. Good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. I can't specifically address contractual pricing as we stated in the past before. I will say to you that the trend is continuing to look like it has in the last few years where you have constricted supply, you have increasing demand both from the existing fleet and from the new reactors that are either in demo state or reactors that are planning to be started up soon. I mean, people are starting to think about fuel and start putting their fuel orders, that puts pressure on the market. So what you're seeing overall from a macro level, you're seeing pressure on the price through the demand side of it, and so we're seeing a lot of favorability there. So once again, I cannot comment specifically about prices, but we certainly are seeing favorability in the short, midterm, and the long run in terms of contractual activity.

Rob Brown, Analyst — Lake Street Capital Markets

All right. Thanks for the call.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Joseph Rager from Ross Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Todd Tinelli, CFO

Hey, I'm Aaron Team. Thanks for taking the questions.

Neal Nagarajan, Head of Investor Relations

I guess just kind of a follow on to one of the previous questions.

Todd Tinelli, CFO

The additional $25 million that you guys have added, was any of that in Q1 or is it all future looking, just so we can understand kind of the cadence of how things kind of come to be? Good morning, Joseph. Thanks for the question. We would look at it more as obviously our business, and I described this in the call. It's wise to look at our business on a TTM basis as shipments and deliveries can move from quarter to quarter. It's difficult to comment to say exactly which quarter it took place. We do have comments within our MD&A section. What I would say is we're in line with our expectations for the first quarter, and the future quarters, I would say, you know, would be rateable to comparable periods in the past and to always adjust based on a TTM view, which gives us the best 12-month period to look at total revenue, net income, and performance of the company. Okay, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Nick Amicuri from Amicor ISI. Please go ahead.

Nick Amicuri, Analyst — Amicor ISI

Hey, Amir and Todd. Good morning. A couple of quick ones for me. I just wanted to kind of dig into the Palantir partnership a little bit. So, there's an outline that you identified opportunities to reduce manufacturing lead times. Should we be thinking about that in the realm of the first cascade on the 42-month time frame or kind of across the board? And then as we think about just the cost for the full build-out, right, $1.9 billion worth of cash on the balance sheet, You're in a strong position now, but if we could just kind of provide some color, you know, on, you know, the initial build, and then at what point do you get to, I guess, for lack of a better term, proof of concept where then you can entertain other financing options, like maybe project financing, you know, the Cascade or something to that nature?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Hey, good morning, Nick. Good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. So let me address the first part of your question, and then maybe I'll let Todd weigh in on the second part around the capital. So I'm glad you're mentioning this partnership with Palantir because it is transformative for us. Really, the relationship here and the value that we're seeing lasts much, much longer than the first cascade, the first centrifuge. I mean, we're viewing this as sort of a business-altering type structure in terms of our unit cost and our ability to meet our lead times to market and beyond. So layering Palantir's AI platform really provides us with real-time data and empowers our team, the Centris team, to take a more meaningful role in the project management. It allows us to add efficiencies across our work streams, which obviously can lead to additional cost mitigations and will allow us to bring in lead times. So, for example, these efficiencies can help us reduce fuel supply chain risk and could, as I mentioned earlier, reduce execution time and costs. I'll turn it over to Todd to weigh in on the capital question.

Todd Tinelli, CFO

Yeah, thanks, Nick. So just as a reminder, correct, we have $1.9 billion on the balance sheet that we, you know, can deploy. But we also have the $900 million HALO award that will be rateably come into us based on milestones, payments. So, you know, essentially the way we look at it is we have about $2.8 billion currently. Our focus is to always look at many pools of low cost of capital. This may involve, you know, the NNSA, third-party investment, foreign direct investment, and then also continuing to be opportunistic in the market when we see fit. We don't feel any pressure to be actively out there raising capital in the down market. We did not participate in the ATM program in the first quarter, even though we have one that is open. And that was that we just didn't feel it provided the right shareholder value, and we believe there are better low-cost-to-capital options out there, which we're continuing to explore to fund the full build-out.

Nick Amicuri, Analyst — Amicor ISI

Great. Thanks so much, guys.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Mark Shooter from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on all the progress this quarter. What we're seeing is advanced reactor companies are pushing through the markets, also with the DOE and NRC licensing. And a lot of them are using HALU and TRISO. So I'm just wondering if you could update us on where you see the most SWU value in LEU or HALU, and has anything changed how you're looking at that strategically?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Good morning. Good to hear from you, Mark. Actually, I'm glad you brought this topic up. This is a great strategic question about our general market, and it's something that we spend a great deal of time discussing internally and paying very close attention to as to where the market is going. As you know, we are preparing expansion of both LEU and HALU. We are dealing with both sides of the house in terms of customers in addition to national security as well. So we have a pretty broad perspective of the market. So you are correct. The market is actually starting to mature now on the advanced reactor side. If you and I had this conversation a couple of years ago or even, I don't know, eight months ago, I would have said that a lot of the advanced reactors are not fully thinking or focused on fuel just yet. Their attention is more to the administrative side of the licensing, through the executive orders, through some of the emergency-type activities that have been put by the Department of Energy and, quite frankly, by the entire administration into nuclear, I would like to think also fueled by some of the crisis we're seeing in, generally, energy markets, we're now seeing a lot of the reactors get to a phase where they are starting to seriously procure and commit to fuel. Now, that's a big step. That is a significant purchase for all of them. Obviously, we're in participation with the vast majority of them. The fact that the Department of Energy has selected Centris for the HALO Award puts us really in the front position, in the most credible position. The fact that we have a cascade operating cements that position. And to your specific question about where would the majority of the value be derived from HALU or LEU, as I read your question, just from a physics perspective, when a company plants their initial core, they would be thinking about feed, and they would be thinking about HALU. Feed, in most cases, would come in an LEU form. And just from a physics perspective, there is a significant amount of LEU feed that would be required to create a single unit of HALU. So from a volume perspective, the value comes from LEU because LEU drives a lot of the volume. I believe from just generally margin and market being ahead of everybody else, HALU has a lot of the advantages for us. So we're deriving value from both is really the answer in different ways. But the good news, and just to end it on the sentiment, the good news is we're seeing almost across the board all the reactors that were in different states of development are now actually moving towards significant and serious committed fuel procurements.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

That's great. I appreciate all the detail, Amir. Talking about your ongoing conversations with SWU offtakes, I'm wondering if you can give us an update on the engagement with hyperscalers or traditional utilities and IPPs. Has one been more aggressive recently than the other? And I'm also wondering if how the war in Iran and the constrained oil markets have factored in, has that put any more urgency into the type of conversations? Thanks.

Amir Vexler, CEO

Good question. Who is more aggressive from our perspective? Look, I'll tell you this. The reactors that are operating have very seasoned fuel buyers. They have been through many markets. They have been through up markets, down markets. They know how to buy fuel, not to say that others don't. They've been through these cycles before, and you can't always tell as to what's driving their buy. Is it a strategic buy? Is it sort of a desperate need? We don't know, and we don't really get into these types of questions. every utility has their own strategy, and usually they execute very well on it. And we're kind of seeing a steady flow of requests for pricing, requests for quotations on that kind of business. And as I mentioned earlier, we're still seeing the prices trend up, whether it's for midterm or long-term swoos in that market. So I would not classify this as aggressive behavior, but definitely strategic behavior, because all of these utilities want to cover their bases, and they will not take any undue risk in procuring fuel. I think price is important to them, but obviously it is secondary to security of supply. On the other hand, the hyperscalers are getting into this market now. they're informed. I think they're hiring people or consultants that help them decide on how they want to handle strategically fuel purchases. And I think they do a good job at it. And the earlier comment that I made is, it is true. I mean, we're seeing fuel buying activities and a lot of attention being put to those activities. I would give the upper hand to hyperscalers when it comes to trying to go faster and stronger just because fuel represents, in my view, a fairly significant question mark and uncertainty about their reactors. They want to cover that risk as early and as thoroughly as possible, especially as they progress through funding and capital raising for their projects. This is not a risk they should have on their books and they don't want to have it on their books, and we fully understand it and work very closely with them to make sure it is not. So we're seeing them becoming more interested and, more importantly, more able to commit. Your question about the global conflict, I mean, this, on a macro level, it highlights the need for governments to diversify away from fossil fuel. I mean, we know it still is an important source of energy. It will continue to be an important source of energy. But just like history showed us many times before, you know, diversifying to nuclear gives you a huge lever in conflicts like this, whether it's politically or whether it's economically. So we are seeing it being a very helpful parameter for decision-making for a new nuclear build.

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Eric Stein from Craig Holland. Please go ahead.

Mark Shooter, Analyst — William Blair

Good morning. So you mentioned the, we know the NSA had notified you of intent to award and you responded to it. So I'm just curious, I mean, now what would next steps be? I mean, maybe it's something that's very difficult to answer, but expectations on kind of how that plays out. and then can you just remind me what the potential amount of that funding source would be?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Good morning, Eric. Good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. Starting with just a general statement, we are in a procurement cycle, and therefore we're very limited by what we can say. As I mentioned on the call, we can confirm that we have submitted a response to the NNSA's request, And, again, as a general statement, we stand ready to support our national security mission in any way required. I mean, we know the requirement, demand is real, and there's not a whole lot more that I can say about that. We're going to let the NNSA and the government drive the announcements and the information released to the public on this. To your question about quantities and things of that sort, again, this is not something that we have disclosed. I'm going to let the NSA and the government drive that information to the public.

Mark Shooter, Analyst — William Blair

Okay, thank you.

Operator

And your next question comes from Bill Peterson from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Neal Nagarajan, Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, hi, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. You mentioned the prepared remarks and there was a press release in March about a JV or potential JV with Oklo for deconversion.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

Can you discuss your strategy around deconversion more broadly? Are you looking for additional kind of commercial partnerships or arrangements? You know, what does the market look like today for you,

Neal Nagarajan, Head of Investor Relations

and what would give you confidence in Centris taking a role in deconversion in the coming years?

Amir Vexler, CEO

Yeah, well, good morning, Bill. Thank you for the question, and good to hear from you. So let's maybe start from just some of the very basics so that listeners can understand what's driving us to think the way we do. First of all, just from a market perspective, there is a hole in the fuel cycle right now when it comes to advanced reactors, and particularly sort of halo-type fuels, the conversion of uranium hexafluoride or UF6 to whether it's an oxide form or a metal form, more predominantly metal form, that process does not exist commercially. And so this is the reason why, obviously, the Department of Energy is getting ready to make an award, And they have all the drivers and all the intention to help industries stand up that part of the fuel cycle, which, again, is critical to standing up the entire fuel chain supply for advanced reactors. But we also are taking a very proactive role because we see an opportunity. We see a commercial opportunity. And the commercial opportunity is really highlighted by this partnership with Oklo. Oklo is not only a potential participant in here, but there also are a large off-taker and customer. I mean, this is the fuel form that they will be using. This is the fuel form that they require. Most importantly in the strategy is if you were to have a blank sheet of paper type design and you were to ask yourself, where and how does it make most sense for me to construct my deconversion facility, you will automatically arrive at the conclusion for many parameters and many factors, you will arrive at the conclusion that it makes the most sense to put my deconversion together with enrichment. Now, it's a lengthy conversation why that is, and there's many important factors that feed into it. Efficiency is one of them. Security is another one. But we believe that we're driving towards something that will provide great efficiencies to the market. From our perspective, it allows us for potential vertical integration and further differentiation of our enrichment of HALU.

Rob Brown, Analyst — Lake Street Capital Markets

Thanks for that.

Operator

And your next question comes from Lawson Winder from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Lawson Winder, Analyst — Bank of America Securities

Thank you, Operator. And good morning, Amir and Todd. Thank you for today's update. I would take it positively that you see the ability to hire in 2026 at a higher rate than previously expected. Would you describe the additional hiring more as a need for greater resources than previously anticipated to do the same work? Or is this a need stemming from the required work just going faster than expected? And then if I could kind of sneak in a follow-up on that, taking an early look at 2027, do you foresee hiring needs being similar, lesser, or greater than 2026?

Todd Tinelli, CFO

Good morning, and thank you for the question. What I would say is, right, hiring in today's world, there's a number of components that we have to look at. One is, can we source employees from the local community and area? Do we have to look nationwide? So how quickly can we bring those employees on board? How quickly can we get them? As a reminder, at our facilities, you have to be a cleared individual, so you have to go through security, which is part of our uncapitalized cost. And then because we do one-of-a-kind work, we have to train these individuals. The rate at which we were able to source employees in both Oak Ridge and in Pipedon in the local communities was actually stronger than we anticipated, which allowed us to accelerate our hiring curve. And that allows us to move quicker than we anticipated if we have a strong workforce then we're able to not have any delays. Obviously, human capital is critical to our build-out. So we see this as a very strong positive. And the sooner we get people cleared, trained, and working towards our project, it allows us to move swiftly. But obviously, we want to be cautious in our approach. We want to make sure that we have critical execution throughout the project. And so what I would say going forward is, look, where we are finding people now is unions, local shops, where we're going down to universities, all different areas to build up our workforce. And the rate at which we hire will dictate how quickly we can get those people on board. I would say that for 2027, our growth is always going to be tied, or we have our base case, but we can accelerate based on additional potential offtake that we see, or in customer demand, we'll increase our rate that would require additional human capital.

Amir Vexler, CEO

Also, this is Amir. I want to add something to Todd's comment. I think this is a really important topic. As you know, we are doing something here that historic, which is not only building the first enrichment facility, but we're also building the first centrifuge manufacturing facility that's American-owned, American technology, which is a great milestone and for us as a nation and obviously for the industry as well, a lot of what's driving this project, we're actually driven to intersect the demand curve that up until now has been trending to increase in size and is always moving in. And so as we evaluate the project, project span, and how fast we go, it is always driven by the need to meet this demand that we're seeing that is real. Some of it is already signed into contract. Some of it is in discussions. But to my earlier comments to some of the analysts' questions, this is a developing and fast moving changes in how

Operator

we view the project. Thank you both very much. Your next question comes from Jeff Gramp from Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

Good morning. Circling back on the Palantir Partnership, I was curious, Amir, the $300 million in savings that you guys have identified thus far, can you give us a sense for what are the main factors driving those cost savings? Is it particular components or just any other commentary you can provide to give us a sense for where those are coming from

Amir Vexler, CEO

specifically? Thanks. Sure. Well, good morning and thanks for the question. And I know we talked a little bit about it, but I think that I would like to talk about it a lot more if I can because I think it is really a critically important item for us. So what I mentioned earlier is when you stand up a manufacturing facility like we're doing, there's a lot of challenges in doing that. Obviously, there's the technological aspect of it. You have the suppliers that you need to line up as part of your supply chain. But what really holds everything together and lines up the efficiencies is the informational system and our ability to make decisions quickly and with high fidelity. What Palantir does and what their AI platform allows us to do is it actually provides us with real-time data, which is critically important for a company like ours that is standing up a manufacturing facility and handles hundreds of suppliers. I mean, that is a critically important aspect of it. And we're seeing huge and meaningful reduction in cost in project management. It allows us to shorten our lead times and cycle times. I mean, so far, we've already declared $300 million in cost savings, and as I said on previous calls, I mean, we're not stopping there. We're continuing to push and expect more, and I believe we will see further developments on this front. So I guess the quick answer, without getting into a lot of detail, is it allows us to manage information, allows us to make decisions, and really introduces efficiencies at that level.

Ryan Finks, Analyst — B. Riley

First of the details.

Operator

Thank you. And your last question comes from Samir Jozi from H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Samir Jozi, Analyst — H.C. Wainwright

Hey, good morning, Amir. Todd, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the progress. And thanks for all the color you are providing. Just a quick one on the prepared remarks. I think I heard that the SWOE prices were up around 52%. At the same time, SWOE costs were also up around 45%. So that clearly gives you a gross margin boost a little bit year over year. Should we expect gross margins from SWOE increasingly positive going forward?

Todd Tinelli, CFO

So the rate at which swoop prices move, obviously, it has to do with our contractual mix. And we can't comment on our actual contracts and the margin associated with that. But depending on when shipments take place is to when we record revenue, when we record when we have shipments come in and the cost. So what I would always point to is look at this on an average basis over several quarters. That's why we continue to emphasize that we want to talk about this on a TTM. We have seen positive movement in SWOOP prices. That provides additional options within the market. We have a contractual mix that allows us some flexibility on our supply sourcing. and some of that has to do with our increased revenue guidance for 2026 and also it allows us to have better line of sight for additional offtake with through pricing in the out of years.

Samir Jozi, Analyst — H.C. Wainwright

Understood. Thanks for that. And Todd, thanks for doing the 12-month metrics that helps us understand better the general health of the company. On that line, just a follow-up, should we expect uranium sales in the second quarter? In the recent history, at least, they have tended to concentrate in the second and fourth quarter. So, given that you're providing TTM, highlighting TTM metrics, should we expect 2Q to have uranium sales?

Todd Tinelli, CFO

We can't provide any guidance on specific sales. What I would say is uranium sales are optimistic in the market. They can happen occasionally throughout the year. But right now, we can't make any comment as to when those sales are going to take place or if they are going to take place, you know, in any future periods.

Samir Jozi, Analyst — H.C. Wainwright

Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking that question.

Operator

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Neil Nagarajan. Please continue.

Neal Nagarajan, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Kelsey. This concludes our investor call for the first quarter of 2026. As an aside, please note that we are introducing a summary slide deck to our earnings materials, which can be found on our Investor Relations website under the Presentations tab. As always, I want to thank you and our listeners and our analysts who called in. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you very much for your participation.

Amir Vexler, CEO

You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great day.