Operator
Greetings. Welcome to the UR Energy Second Quarter 2026 Earnings and Operations Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to UR Energy's General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Alex Ritchie. You may begin.
Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Today's presentation includes disclaimers related to forward-looking statements, risk factors, and projections, along with cautionary notes to investors. Please review these carefully. Together with the risk factors described in our Form 10-K, our Form 10-Q, and other public filings with the SEC and Canadian Securities Regulators. I will now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gilley.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In addition to Alex, joining me on the call today are Roger Smith, CFO, Steve Hatton, COO, Ryan Shearman, VP of Regulatory Affairs, and Jay Wally, VP Finance. We continue to believe the Iranian market is supported by durable, long-term fundamentals. More and more, nuclear energy is recognized as an essential source of reliable baseload generation. Global capacity is projected to nearly double by 2040. Governments, including the U.S. government, are prioritizing secure domestic fuel supplies. And initiatives in Washington, D.C. are expected to put a premium on U.S. produced uranium. At the same time, there is a structural gap in the industry between expected demand for uranium and primary mine supply. We are positioned right in the center of that gap because we are one of the very few companies that produce U.S. uranium, and we are poised to produce a lot more. We are doing this by building America's first district-scale ISR uranium operation through disciplined, capital-efficient growth. Now let's talk about our operations. In the second quarter, we drummed 141,000 pounds of yellow cake at Lost Creek. That is 47% more than we drummed in the first quarter of this year, and 26% more than the second quarter of last year. We shipped 150,000 pounds. Again, that is 44% more than the first quarter, and 42% more than the second quarter of last year. In other words, we are executing on our production strategy. We met our delivery commitments, selling 215,000 pounds under our contracts, which brought in $14.4 million in sales revenue. We maintained our low-cost production profile, another reason why UR Energy is positioned as a leading U.S. ISR producer. Our cash cost per pound sold, including ad valorem and severance taxes, stayed low at $40.20 per pound. With $95.3 million in unrestricted cash, we ended the quarter with significant liquidity. This means we have the financial flexibility to continue advancing our production growth strategy. And we still had a healthy 348,000 pounds of finished inventory at the conversion facility for contracted deliveries. We also proactively deferred 300,000 pounds of 2026 deliveries to 2027 and 2029 to decrease ramp-up risk and increase flexibility relating to our remaining 2026 delivery commitments. Overall, we believe that our second quarter shows the type of operational execution and solid financial foundation needed to continue to increase production and create long-term value for our shareholders.
Now I'm going to talk a little bit about our flagship ISR mine at Lost Creek.
To grow production at Lost Creek, we worked during the quarter on various optimization efforts. This work included installing a sand filtration system to address fine particles from the well field that impact flow rates and production. But consider that we drummed more pounds of uranium in the second quarter than any quarter since we started ramp up in 2022 without the sand filtration system. Although the system was installed in the second quarter, it wasn't fully commissioned and online until July. We have been making great progress on other projects as well. We broke ground on our wastewater treatment facility in July. We are on track to finish our reverse osmosis upgrades and a new maintenance program by year end. Our infrastructure investments are enhancing operational capacity and reliability at Lost Creek to support higher sustained production levels. We had 17 active drill rigs at Lost Creek that kept our wellfield expansion plans on track. We made progress on delineation drilling in our fourth and fifth mine unit, subject to regulatory approval of our wellfield package. We expect to start wellfield construction in Mine Unit 5 by year end. This additional drilling is accelerating wellfield development to ensure a steady pipeline of production areas to support future output. Together, these initiatives are expanding Lost Creek's production capacity and reinforcing the operational foundation for sustainable long-term growth. Turning to Shirley Basin, we reached some important milestones in our growth strategy since the end of the first quarter to expand our production platform beyond Lost Creek. Shirley Basin is designed as a satellite facility with uranium captured on resin transported to Lost Creek for further processing and drumming. In the second quarter, we began capturing uranium at Shirley Basin and with just limited operations, captured 10,634 pounds. Operations were limited because we needed regulatory authorization from the state to commence full operations and start shipments to Lost Creek. And we received that authorization in late June. Today, I'm excited to share that the plant at Shirley is now in full operation, and six of the 10 production columns in the plant are online. All infrastructure and processes are in place to transport uranium to Lost Creek, so we are ready. The only work left is to finish commissioning and inspecting the specialty trailers for hauling resin, and that first shipment is imminent. Operating Shirley Basin as a spoke to the Lost Creek Hub allows us to increase production while leveraging existing processing infrastructure. That said, we also have processing optionality. We are employing the hub and spoke model to improve capital efficiency and accelerate cash flow. but Shirley Basin is fully licensed to operate as an independent production hub in the future. That gives us strategic flexibility as we continue to grow in the Great Divide Basin and continue to advance our growth pipeline. We have optimization activities at Shirley Basin planned through 2027, including wastewater treatment using engineering from the Lost Creek Wastewater Treatment Project. And as Shirley Basin ramps up production, We expect it to become a large contributor to our long-term production profile.
Now I want to talk for a minute about our growth pipeline.
We are an operating uranium mining company. We are not limited by our existing operations. We have an exploration and development portfolio with multiple opportunities to add resource and expand production. Later this third quarter, we are planning to start an exploration program with 120 holes at our Lost Creek South project. This 16 square mile project offers strong potential to leverage our existing Lost Creek plant infrastructure with shorter development timelines and lower capital requirements. Our Lost Soldier project is another potential spoke for the Lost Creek Hub. Baseline environmental studies are underway at Lost Soldier to support a potential permitting decision as we continue to de-risk the project. We have also started work on a technical report for Lost Soldier that we plan to complete by year end. Our North Hatsall project also remains an encouraging exploration opportunity following our first quarter drilling results, where 13 of 33 drill holes intersected uranium mineralization. Together, these projects strengthen our long-term organic growth pipeline. They provide multiple opportunities to expand production while leveraging our established Wyoming District ISR platform and our significant license capacity. So, we are producing today while advancing a district-scale Wyoming pipeline. We are positioning the company to benefit from a structural domestic uranium bull market. We are executing our strategy. This includes growing a scalable two-asset ISR production platform by further optimizing Lost Creek and ramping up Shirley Basin, advancing low-capital organic growth opportunities to extend our hub-and-spoke production model across Wyoming. We're leveraging our ISR operating expertise, our permitted assets, and our processing capacity to efficiently convert resource into future production. We're capitalizing on the growing strategic importance of U.S. uranium production and and maintaining discipline, operational execution, and capital allocation to support sustainable production growth and shareholder returns. We have a unique advantage with our expertise and proven success permitting projects efficiently and without long delays. We also have the operating expertise and are building the scale to become the partner of choice in the consolidation and development of Wyoming's uranium districts. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator and open it up for Q&A.
Operator
Certainly. And at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star keys. Your first question is coming from Anthony Tagleria from Conicord Genuity. Your line is live.
Hey, good morning, Matt. Maybe first on production. Now that we've seen operations have been ramping up at Shirley Basin, you guys have the sand filter installed at Lost Creek, Jake, can you give us any color on what we might see for production in the second half of the year, and is there a potential for you guys to not have to dip into any of the non-produced inventory to hit the call at 700,000 pounds of deliveries for the rest Anthony, thank you for the call.
So, look, we're not providing clear production guidance, but we are providing that guidance with regards to our contracted deliveries. So, we originally started the year with 1.3 million pounds of contracted deliveries for the year. We elected in July to defer 300,000 pounds of those deliveries. The classic risk management. This was a good opportunity for us in a very controlled fashion proactively to reduce the amount of contracted deliveries for the year to give us flexibility for execution. So I'm not going to provide, the color I'll provide is that we are absolutely on track to meet our deliveries for this year. And we will have, you know, we will have the opportunity and the flexibility now with the deferral to look at different ways to allocate the power.
Okay, great. Thank you for that. Maybe as a follow-up, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think you guys have signed a new contract recently, any new long-term contracts recently. You know, what are you seeing that's changed, maybe call it over the last six months, in terms of, you know, what's available, terms, pricing, you know, appetite for new contracts, that sort of thing?
All right, Anthony. Okay, that's a very good question. So, okay, what I've seen in my six months from when I started to now, when we first started this, we were still very much in a, let's call it a buyer's world. We spent a lot of time talking about the price per pound, and we negotiated the terms. We had already gotten to the stage where we were doing a hybrid contract. We were doing a mix of market and fixed pricing. What I can tell you from my position, my point of view, is that we seem to be entering into a series of discussions with buyers that are much more focused on surety of supply as opposed to negotiating the last 50 cents per pound off of a price. So that's the general flavor. The market is very willing and eager to engage in contracts for surety of supply. The informal conversations we have with many of the utilities are, you know, you don't need to wait for RFPs. If you have pounds you want to commit, let us know. We'll talk. We have not entered into more contracts as choice, right? So we've turned down RFPs. We have a good, solid contract book. We're not looking to add more to it this year. Next year, we'll reevaluate the book and reevaluate the continued production ramp up and make that decision next year on how we want to add to the book. We do have a couple of discussions in play that could add some commitments this year, for future years, of course. But we're not being aggressive right now. Now we see we're very focused on price. Every month we seem to get an indication that both the term price and the future prices are going.
Great. I'll pass it on. Thank you, Anthony.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Jeff Graham from Northland Capital Markets. Your line is live.
Hey. I can ask, on the sand filtration system at Lost Creek, it looks like that was completed last month kind of fully, not trying to get you to guide to anything too explicit, but just wondering kind of early time results or benefits you're seeing from that in terms of flow rates and I guess just trying to contextualize, you know, how big of an impact or restriction was that over the last, you know, couple of quarters relative to what you're maybe seeing in real time now. Okay. So, Jeff, good question. Prepare for your question, Jeff. And I am going to give some just indicative numbers, okay? We averaged just over 2,500 gallons per minute last quarter going through the plant. after the sand filter, last period we've been averaging around 32 to 33 hundred. So just that inclusion of the sand filter has had a statistical, meaningful increase in flow rate to the point now where the constraint is now moving to other aspects. We now have enough flow that we need to get more clever in how we run our production injection wells. So this is just classic theory of constraints. We had a constraint with sand on top of our ion exchange columns. We've removed that constraint, and now we're moving on to the next constraint, and that next constraint will be just bringing on more and more of our wells. Super helpful details. I appreciate that. On shifting to the exploration side, at Lost Creek South, can you touch on the, I guess, relative benefits or streamlining, if you will, of potentially moving that forward, assuming you have some good drill results there? Like, how much of a benefit do you get from that being, you know, basically right on top of your existing assets there relative to, you know, something like Shirley Basin or some of the other satellite projects? Is there a meaningful benefit there in terms of accelerating timeline to bringing, like, something like that online? Well, certainly. certainly i mean so the the the impact of permitting the the effort that's required to permit another property immediately to the south of an existing property is just less and it's also just less when you are dealing with a property in the same hydrologic basin that you're currently in so so look i mean lost creek south is just the south edge of our existing uh plan of operation So the closer we can get to Lost Creek and find more pounds, the easier life is going to be. That adds more flexibility, adds more optionality. And it will, you know, anytime you can increase the denominator, you're looking at lower costs, you're looking at more pounds.
That makes a lot of sense. Sounds good. I'll turn it back. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Andrew Wong from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is live.
Hey, guys. This is Allie McCly on for Andrew Wong. Andrew couldn't make it, so I'm just taking it, but thanks for taking the question. Just a question on the cash costs. Cash costs were $40 a pound in the quarter. What's the cadence for production costs going down, and when do you anticipate going down to a run rate level with the ramp-up of Shirley Basin. I guess just for the model, how do you project these costs going down and when it could reach a steady state? I think you mentioned previously like $20 to $25 a pound.
Yeah, well, our costs are so fixed, are so controlled in a fixed manner, much more than I'm used to in gold and copper. So we model 80% fixed costs for what we're doing. It's all about the production denominator. So the costs go down as the pounds go up. We spend almost the same amount of money every day, regardless of how many pounds we produce. So you can model the cost decline exactly as you would model the production increase.
No, that's really helpful. Thanks. And just one more for me on the wellfield development costs. Can you bring some color on the breakdown between the sites going forward and how much is remaining for 26 and then 27?
I'm not sure. Jay, do you have that breakdown? Look, we spend between $12 and $15 million per quarter on development costs. And that's broken out between Lost Creek and Shirley. We move drills between Lost Creek and Shirley to maximize our efforts and to maximize our flexibility. But you can model between $12 and $15 million a quarter for our development costs for the next, for the next short period, for the next at least year as we go forward. I'm getting a note here from Jade. So, Jade, do you want to talk?
Sure, sure. And those development costs, we don't anticipate those to change much because we're always staying one to two to three years ahead so we can be ready for the next pattern.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, you did see a whole lot of development costs at Shirley Basin ahead of production, as you would expect, right? You've got to develop ahead of your production. But that'll all, you know, we're into the stage now we're starting to levelize out at that development cost per quarter. And as we move forward, then when you start seeing our development cost decrease, we're either at the end or you should be concerned.
Got it. Thanks, guys. Super helpful.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Joseph Rager from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is live.
Hey, Matt and team. Thanks for taking the questions. Thank you. Most stuff I wanted to touch on was already asked, but just one, you know, bigger picture thing. Have you guys seen any change in the M&A market, you know, for development or non-operating assets in the U.S.? Anything where, without maybe naming assets, but just any more willingness by other holders to come to the table and potentially sell something that would help you guys grow faster?
Absolutely, Joe. Always a tough question to answer. I'll be very purposefully vague in my response. I would say that there is a growing appetite for consolidation in the Western United States. We all recognize our position both in the domestic production as well as global production. Growth is imperative for all of us. With the eagerness, we really all work together very well. We know each other very well. And we're always looking for those opportunities where we can create shareholder value, however that shareholder value is created through consolidation. I have to be purposely paid, Joe.
Yeah, fair enough. I totally understand. And then just, you know, with these deferrals that you guys have made, is there any chance you guys would make any spot sales, or at this point is protecting your inventory for future sales more important?
Protecting inventory is more important. We are not interested in spot sales. We could place pounds with utilities if we have excess inventory. So, right now, we are very focused on the concept of risk management, providing us the flexibility to make our contracted deliveries, repay our uranium debt, and to have a stockpile for when opportunistic pricing becomes available that we can engage in that.
Okay, that's fair. All right, I'll turn it over.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Justin Chan from SCP Resource Finance. Your line is live.
Hi, Matt. I guess my first question is on Shirley. Just trying to get a sense of, from a well-filled and header house and just footprint perspective, you know, how much, I guess what I'm trying to get to is what kind of footprint do you need to hit that one million pound a year level or let's say half a million pounds? and how much, you know, how many wells, header houses, how much of a footprint do you have relative to that currently deployed?
I'm going to answer quick. Thanks, Justin. Great question. I'll hand over, I'll answer really quickly and hand over to Steve. You know, right now we have two header houses installed, and we are open. So I just want to make sure you understand from the standpoint of UR Energy, we are in the uranium mining business. We never stop drilling wells. We never stop building and installing header houses. We will continue to be drilling wells and installing header houses until two years before we are done. But, Steve, relative to the long-term position, where are we right now?
So, we have worked our way all the way out into our eighth header house with respect to drilling, understanding that it takes between three and six months ahead from the time you start drilling before it even gets into the construction phase. So ideally for us, we're looking at anywhere between 6 to 10 header houses need to get installed every year to make the nominal 1 million pound a year production rate. Now, the advantage that Shirley has, number one, it's got better grade than most facilities. Number two, it's shallower. so the drilling goes much quicker so we're at lost creek you can see us with 17 rigs we can run eight or nine rigs at shirley one of the other advantages at shirley that you'll see is we have it drilled out already so there is limited delineation drilling required and no exploration for us.
We have to find the resource for the life of the project as it stands. When you're looking at a 1 million pound a year production, how many header houses are you thinking of at that point?
Yeah, we're typically, again, it's grade-based. Matt, I talk all the time. The whole calculation for us is flow and grade, right?
So we have a facility that can handle 6,000 gallons a minute.
A million pounds a year, that's around 40 parts per million uranium coming through. So your peaks will define how long you run everything, as will your flow. So we look anywhere at Shirley Basin needing to have six to eight header houses installed at an annual base.
Justin, does that answer your question?
Gotcha. That's really helpful. Yeah, I think, yeah, that was a great answer. It was really helpful. And I get that each well will be at various stages of increasing or decreasing rate, flow rate, et cetera. So averaging large numbers. But, yeah, that gives me a great sense of kind of where you are in the ramp relative to the footprint you'll have at steady state. So thanks very much for that. And then just maybe just one other question. I'll free up the line. There is that uranium loan that's also, I think, nominally matures in 2.4. What's the guidance there? Is that something that, you know, you could extend or is that something that needs to be delivered into? What's the thinking there?
Thanks, Justin. Our plan right now is to deliver into that loan. That is our base case plan. It's a loan with a trading entity and those are, you know, those are renegotiable and those are flexible. And part of our risk management strategy is always to have multiple options. We will never miss a contracted delivery. We have a system in place to mitigate this risk through multiple opportunities. But the base case plan is to deliver into that loan this year.
Okay, thanks very much. I'll free up the line.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Heiko Isle from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is live.
Hey, Matt and team. Thanks for taking my questions. I'm sure you guys had a chance to see the report this morning. Hey, conceptually, demand for U.S. sourced uranium in your conversations with U.S. utilities. I mean, obviously, there is a bunch of geopolitical risks. Obviously, things have changed. You hinted at this a little bit that, you know, you have the scale of the proven production. But walk me through what you're seeing in these conversations right now versus what may have been gotten discussed a year or even three years ago.
Yeah, okay. So I go, look, right now the conversations are centered on surety of supply. You're hearing U.S. utilities talk about things like, look, we'll just do a 100% market price contract. We will, what can we do to sign a contract such that we have a surety of supply? And also kind of a breaking away or, you know, I don't want to put words in utilities' mouth, but we're certainly having a lot of conversations that are about don't wait for RFPs. Let's get a relationship. And if you have pounds to place, we're interested in that conversation. So when you start breaking away from that RFP, that very rigid RFP process, which is very much at the advantage of the utilities, as we're breaking away from that, my interpretation is that surety of supply is becoming more relevant than negotiating the last nickel on the price per pound. okay fair enough um and then at last soldier i mean conceptually the completion of the technical report and the resources should be you know by the end of the year we're now in mid-august um you want to maybe provide a bit more color on when we should expect to see things how far along you
are in the pipeline and maybe even if there is something that you didn't expect to see Given that we're so close, I would assume if there's anything major, you probably have a pretty good inkling of a Cluedus farm.
Yeah, okay, so look, we know Lost Soldier Wealth, and we published a technical report on it back in like 2006. We know the deposit wealth, and we are now very much on schedule, and I know this because we talk about this a lot, Ico. We are very much on track and on schedule to produce a technical report at the end of this year for resource and economics at the PEA level. We are very eagerly pursuing that. We see a lot of potential here. And, of course, I cannot comment on what we see as the numbers and all that, but I can tell you we are very eager to finish this technical report, to make that known to the investing public, and more importantly, having that known to ourselves and our directors so that we can contemplate construction decisions.
Fair enough. But is it fair to say that there's been nothing that got spotted thus far that would majorly surprise us?
Steve, we don't have any surprises.
No, there are no surprises. This is an area that has been extensively drilled over many, many decades now with all the majors in the Wyoming area. We know what we have. There's a lot of data. There is thousands of holes out there that our geology team is evaluating. So we know it hydrologically. We know it geologically. while it's going through the steps.
And look, let's just add on to that permitting because we are advancing the beginning of baseline permitting coactively in anticipation of a construction decision. Ryan, do you have anything you want to add about the permitting? Are you seeing anything there that is changing from our base case assumption?
No, I don't think so. Like I said, as Steve mentioned, there's no surprises. we're just moving through the process so we're moving through the process for Lost Soldier we're doing baseline work a lot of baseline work has been completed in the past at Lost Soldier and we're using that and trying to leverage that to find some efficiencies to accelerate that permitting timeframe but overall it's moving through the process as would be expected Okay, perfect.
I'll stop hogging the queue, and I'll get back in line. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question is coming from Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is live.
Yeah, good morning, Matt and team. A couple of questions for me. Most of mine have been answered, but I just want to do more. First, now that you're starting to capture some material at Shirley Basin, I'm wondering how metrics like flow rates, recovery curves, et cetera, are reconciling in the field. versus your internal plans.
So, Shirley is an interesting facility. You have been around this industry long enough to know what the norms are in the rest of Wyoming production, including at Lost Creek. surely has tremendous flow rates, which is a blessing and also can be challenging from time to time when you work through the hydrology of trying to contact the oil. So we are seeing flow rates that are significantly higher naturally than what we see at most of the uranium mines in the state of Wyoming. So, we are working through how that works out for us on the final recovery curves. The data that we capture from the first two header houses will help us plan more efficiently in the future, and we are beginning to see how those curves relate, working at the pressures that we need to maintain our lexivian chemistry the way we want it. So, again, we're in the very early stages of learning. We have great grade over there. We have great flow, and we're trying to leverage that to a great, concise production curve that we can model for future periods.
Yeah. So, in general terms, based on our assumptions going into this and the commissioning of Shirley, we are seeing, in general terms, are we seeing the aquifer and the ore reserve resource, pardon me, behave like we expected?
Yes. Yes, we are. We are seeing flows that are typically two to three times what you would see at most other in situ facilities in the state of Wyoming and the grades are certainly our upper class grades there. We are seeing really nice numbers on a per pattern basis and very concise geologic patterns there that will allow us to mine. But again, we are early in the recovery curve and we are developing more data every day as we work with geology and production. Thanks, Steve.
Mike, does that answer your question?
Yeah, yes. Yes, it does. Thank you. And then my second one, which is kind of a housekeeping one, I think you're guiding now with the deferral of some material, I think you're guiding to Q4 sales volumes of 540,000 pounds. My question was, does that include the 250 that's going to be returned to the term loan, or is that 250 going to be extra?
No, the 250 would be extra. So the guidance is for contracted delivery. It's not for the repayment of the ring.
I assume that. I just wanted to check. All right, thank you. I'll jump back in queue.
That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that because it might not have been clear to everybody else.
Operator
Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'd now like to invite CEO Matt Gilley to provide any closing remarks.
Well, I appreciate the questions. I want to thank all of you who joined us today. We are uniquely positioned, and our focus is simple. We are executing on our operating plans. We are growing production in a responsible way, and we are expanding our ISR uranium platform in Wyoming. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. That concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
