Energy Fuels Inc Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call

Thank you for joining us. I'm Eric, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Energy Fuels Q3 2025 Conference Call. I will now hand the call over to Mark Chalmers, CEO and Director. Please proceed.

Thank you for joining our Q3 conference call today. I want to express my gratitude to everyone in attendance. I am confident that our team has successfully delivered on our commitments this quarter, which is a rarity in today’s environment, especially regarding project restarts. We achieved increased sales and revenues, while also ramping up our uranium production, which helped us lower costs. This positions us well for improving gross margins by 2026. We are making significant strides in our rare earth segment, particularly in heavy rare earth piloting and outlining plans for commercial production. We have secured qualifications for our NdPr production, which is currently being supplied to major auto manufacturers. Additionally, we received all necessary government approvals for our Donald joint venture project in Australia, which has substantial heavy rare earths and NdPr resources. We were also granted a conditional letter of support from Export Finance Australia for up to AUD 80 million related to our senior debt project financing for this venture. Recently, we completed an upsized offering of a $700 million convertible note under favorable terms. Following the quarter, our working capital balance approached USD 1 billion. These achievements are exceptional in our sector, which has its challenges in uranium, heavy mineral sands, and rare earth productions. We are committed to a long-term vision, and our track record reflects that commitment. We have assembled the right team with the necessary skills, placing the company in a strong position within the critical minerals sector, particularly uranium. We are leveraging our strengths, including expertise, infrastructure, permits, and global capacity across all three sectors. A replay of this conference call will be available on our website later today, and as always, we will allocate time for questions at the end of this presentation. Joining us for today's call and presentation are Ross R. Bhappu, our President, and Nate Bennett, our CFO, who will discuss company finances, and Ross will address the convertible note. Towards the end, Nate, Ross, Dave Frydenlund, our Executive VP and Chief Legal Officer, and Nathan Longenecker, our Senior VP and General Counsel, will be available for any questions I cannot answer. Let's get started. I always find this slide exciting as we are building a globally significant critical mineral company in the U.S. This image was taken not far from our White Mesa Mill. Please note that I may make forward-looking statements, which are mentioned on Page 2 of this presentation. An investment in Energy Fuels essentially encompasses three major areas: uranium, where we are the leading producer and lowest-cost producer in the U.S.; rare earths, which are gaining importance; and heavy mineral sands, which provide the rare earth feed, monazite, for our processing. In essence, you are investing in three companies in one, all built around our strong uranium business. All these materials contain naturally concentrated uranium found alongside these minerals. Our uranium mines are performing well, with the Pinyon Plain mine in Arizona currently in production and ramping up. It is said to be the highest-grade uranium mine in U.S. history, and we are actively mining and shipping ore. We are also advancing mining in the LaSalle complex, which includes several other mines along an 11-mile trend in the area, reactivating operations as the business improves. Moving forward with uranium production, we have started processing newly mined ore from Pinyon Plain this quarter, marking the first uranium production at the mill from this ore. We expect to produce between 1.1 million and 1.4 million pounds of uranium in the first quarter of 2026, which could extend beyond that timeframe. Each month we operate the mill, we expect to produce between 200,000 and 250,000 pounds. In Q3, we mined about 415,000 pounds at Pinyon Plain with an average grade of 1.27%, which is slightly lower due to mining the upper section of the main zone. Year-to-date, we’ve mined 1.15 million pounds at an average grade of 1.66%, with an expectation of over 2 million pounds annually from the Pinyon Plain by 2026. We have resolved earlier haulage challenges and are currently averaging 250 truckloads per month, sufficient for achieving our 2 million-pound production rate. Our relationship with the Navajo Nation is progressing positively, and we’ve seen support from them, highlighted by their representatives attending our recent open house event. We anticipate a decline in our uranium production costs. Previously, we indicated that the costs at Pinyon Plain are expected to be in the range of $23 to $30 per pound as production ramps up and we process this material. Currently, we have an inventory of 485,000 pounds at the mill, with a cost of around $50 to $55 per pound. This is due to a mix of various feeds processed, including LaSalle and other materials. However, as we ramp up the Pinyon Plain production, we foresee these costs dropping significantly, potentially reaching $30 to $40 per pound in Q1 of '26 and decreasing thereafter. On the contract front, we maintain four existing contracts, and we are observing an increased demand for long-term contracts with utilities. For 2025, we have contracts for 300,000 pounds, having sold 140 in the last quarter. Commitments are growing for 2026, ranging between 620,000 to 880,000 pounds and possibly even higher. We are also exploring additional uranium inventories for potential spot and mid-term sales, allowing us to benefit from margins since we haven’t over-committed like some other companies. We’ve also received a small quantity of ore from a third-party miner in Colorado. In terms of our rare earth and heavy mineral sands highlights, we are fast becoming the leading rare earth producer in the U.S., including our heavy rare earths. Our NdPr oxide is being validated by outside manufacturers, particularly with POSCO, where some surplus is directed towards electric and hybrid vehicle production. Piloting has shown excellent results, including nearly 30 kilograms of 99.9% pure Dy oxide recovered, with plans to pilot Tb soon. Based on pilot results, we anticipate advancing to commercial production of heavy rare earths in 2026. The Phase 2 feasibility study at the mill is progressing and is expected to be completed by year-end, with designs for significant quantities of NdPr oxide and other rare earth oxides. Our monazite concentrate remains a critical advantage, offering high grades and lower costs through our heavy mineral sands mining process. We are the only U.S. facility capable of processing monazite into both light and heavy oxides. Regarding the Donald project in Australia, it is shovel-ready and a significant source of heavy rare earth oxides. We may finalize investment decisions by early 2026 and expect monazite deliveries by late 2027. It boasts high concentrations of heavy oxides and is in a stable jurisdiction. We have conditional support for project financing and expect to fund the initial $120 million before splitting the remaining costs with our joint venture partner. Current rare earth oxide prices, particularly outside of China, suggest significant revenue potential as the production increases. Toliara in Madagascar remains an economically robust and scalable heavy mineral sands and rare earth project, deemed one of the best undeveloped deposits globally. While unrest in the country has caused some delays, signs indicate that the new government is supportive of economic development, and we continue working on the project. We believe Toliara can be transformative for our company as we advance. Our timeline remains consistent, with added efforts in rare earth processing and ramping uranium production, alongside evaluating several key projects. With ongoing execution across multiple fronts, the timing is advantageous for us. Now, we will show a video about our heavy mineral sand processing, and I’ll hand it over to Ross Bhappu to discuss the convertible note, followed by our CFO, Nate Bennett.

Thank you, Mark. Well, as Mark mentioned, the company is in a very strong financial position right now. Following about a $700 million fundraising we just recently did, we intend to use those funds to expand our Phase 2 project at the White Mesa Mill. We also intend to use some of those funds for the Donald project development. Again, it was a fantastic outcome, and really, the funds were very, very inexpensive. It's an inexpensive source of capital. We used an unsecured convertible debt structure that gave us maximum flexibility. The interest rate on that note was a 0.75% coupon rate, which is incredibly low. It gave us a 32.5% conversion premium. So the reference pricing was $15.30. With that premium, it gave us a $20.34% conversion rate. The all-in effective tax rate on that note is about 2.1%, again, a very, very inexpensive financing. The nuance of the note was that we put in a capped call feature. The capped call effectively gave us insurance against future dilution and gave us an effective conversion price of $30.70. So it was a very successful offering. Again, we raised $700 million, and it was oversubscribed by more than 7x. The use of the funds is shown on that slide, particularly for the Phase 2 expansion. If we go to the next slide, it gives you a sense of just how big White Mesa will be. Effectively, we plan to double the size of the facility to give us individual lines for both processing uranium and rare earths simultaneously. So it's an incredibly impressive project that we're undertaking, and we've got a great financial position to undertake these future plans. With that, I'll hand it to Nate to talk a little bit more about the financial structure.

Okay. Thank you, Ross. During the third quarter, we continued to strengthen our financial position as we're preparing to develop our long-term projects in the next couple of years, and we finished the quarter with $750 million in total assets. We also increased uranium revenues leading to an improved net loss of $16.7 million compared to the second quarter's net loss of $21.8 million, and we continued low-cost uranium mining at our Pinyon Plain mine. We expect this to continue to improve as we mine and produce low-cost uranium inventory and increase future uranium sales in the fourth quarter. At the end of the third quarter, our working capital was approximately $300 million, which includes $235 million of combined cash and marketable securities, with the majority of these marketable securities being interest-bearing securities, treasury bills, and bonds. This does not include the $625 million net proceeds from the senior convertible note completed in the fourth quarter, and this will be reflected in our fourth quarter balance sheet. By the end of the year, we expect working capital to be somewhere between $900 million to $1 billion. During the third quarter, we sold 240,000 pounds of uranium at a realized price of $72.38 per pound and a gross margin of 26%. We expect similar margins for our fourth-quarter sales as we sell and average down our 485,000 pounds of finished uranium inventory that we had at September 30, and as we start to add our approximate 670 pounds of low-cost finished uranium inventory during the fourth quarter as we process those pounds at the mill. As we continue to mine and process ore into 2026, we expect our finished uranium inventory cost per pound to decrease from approximately $50 to $55 per pound to approximately $30 to $40 per pound, with our gross margins expected to increase to approximately 50% or above. With that, I'll turn it back over to Mark.

Thank you, Nate and Ross. Look, these last few slides are a bit repetitive, so I'll try not to repeat too much. But look, we plan to retain our status as the largest uranium miner and processor of uranium ores in the United States. There was a time when people questioned if we were leaving the uranium business. Well, we're not. We're still going to be number one in the U.S. We're processing ores. As discussed, the White Mesa Mill is running with Pinyon Plain alternate feed materials and some LaSalle material. We're increasing or have the ability because we have not overcontracted. We're looking at opportunistic spot sales and other opportunities to add to our contract sales volumes, and we'll have a material amount of additional uranium to do that whether that be later in '25 or in '26. The cost of goods sold is decreasing, as Nate has mentioned, with the addition of the Pinyon ore. We're increasing our ability to produce uranium of 2 million pounds plus per year. We could probably do that with Pinyon Plain alone without alternate feed, without the LaSalle complex, and other projects. So we're very comfortable in saying that. The margins are expected to improve materially with lower costs and increasing improved uranium prices. We've talked about the three conventional mines that are currently in production. We're getting a number of other mines ready for production. Some of those are already permitted, while some are not, but we're advancing the ones that are not fully permitted to get our ability to produce 4 million to 6 million pounds per year, particularly once Phase 2 is completed and the mill is able to be dedicated 100% to uranium production. We're still continuing advancing the R&D work on uranium recovery. Next slide. Just talking a little bit about guidance. We haven't really changed this since Q2, but I want to say that we are always conservative on guidance. I am very, very hopeful and positive, and we mentioned in the press release that we are on the higher ends of a number of these areas, and we hope to exceed guidance in some of these areas. For example, on the mined uranium, I'm quite confident we're going to be well above that. Look at sales. We have 350,000 pounds. We've already sold 290,000 pounds year-to-date, and we have contract sales of another 160,000, which would put us at 450,000 and whatever spot sales we might have on top of that. We want to be conservative because we deliver on what we say we're going to do, and I like to surprise people on the upside or the company does and the team does. Last slide just talking about the rare earth and the mineral sands. We mentioned the piloting on the heavies. We also mentioned that we're planning to have the ability to commercially recover heavies later in '26. The Phase 2 expansion project is going along very well. I already talked about the quantums for NdPr, the Dy, and the Tb. We're planning to have that update for the feasibility study at the end of this year. The Donald project, we discussed with the FID. We think it is in a unique position to supply a material amount of heavies and lights to the United States as required. Toliara FID is still expected in 2026. We're still working through this, pursuing the permits and approvals with the new government. However, as I mentioned earlier, they appear to be pro-business, pro-development. We just have to kind of see how things shake out there. We also have all our exploration permits to restart some of the drilling at the Bahia project in Brazil. On top of that, we're always looking at other opportunities. We do not stand still at Energy Fuels, and we're looking for value-accretive opportunities on a number of fronts, and we'll continue to do so. We have a strong balance sheet to deliver on our existing projects, but we also have a strong balance sheet to look at other opportunities that may come our way. The last slide is just this pretty picture again, showcasing the diversified nature of our business with these multiple critical elements. Now I'd like to turn it over to questions for those that are listening, and we will do our best to answer those questions.

Your first question comes from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.

Conceptually, for the Donald project, I mean, you got the final government approvals. You got the $80 million from EFA. You actually discussed that earlier on this call. We might see the FID as soon as next month. But I mean, just again, conceptually past that, you've got the balance sheet and liquidity to put whatever number is needed really into this. Why are we not doing that? I know the timeline is quite accelerated, but I feel like we might be able to shave 1 or 2 quarters off of that now.

Yes, Heiko, it's ready to go. What we're looking at is, as you know, there's this huge interest in getting these materials from the Donald project in the United States, particularly the heavies. We're just looking at our options potentially with offtakers for that project. We're working through what that can look like. We've been talking and basically seeing what opportunities could present. I think there's also this opportunity when you look at that project and you look at these higher prices that are placed on non-China material; there can be premiums there. We are really looking at those to help us make the best informed decision there. That's really what we're doing, is shopping around to see what interest there is in those products, whether it be private or even government agencies that might be interested.

It wouldn't make sense to essentially skip that into the secondary step and just move forward now while you're looking for that?

Yes. I mean, Heiko, we're looking at all these opportunities in a holistic way. Yes, we have the capacity to do that right now. So we're just looking at all our opportunities on how we best go forward. I don't know, Ross, if you want to add anything on that front?

I agree. We are waiting to try to secure some offtake agreements. We also have a number of different options on financing, and we're just trying to run those to ground, Heiko, and do the best thing that's best for shareholders on utilizing the money that we have in the bank right now.

I just have one quick clarification on your preliminary guidance for next year. It says there you expect to sell between 620,000 and 880,000 pounds with the long-term uranium sales contracts. Where is that delta between the 620,000 and 880,000 come from? Is that a timing? Is that a pricing issue? What exactly could make it go from one end to the other end of that range, please?

It's really the flex up or flex down; that's what that is, Heiko.

So it's purely your choice.

No, that's a selection of the contracts. I know some companies have said they're not going to do flex up or flex down. We have. It doesn't really bother us too much because a lot of these arrangements are evolving as things progress. So that flex up, flex down. We're still looking for homes, whether it be spot, midterm, or other contracts for the future. So if we are up at 2 million pounds of uranium production, thereabouts, 1.5 million to 2 million, and we've currently got that kind of contract portfolio, you can see we have a lot of headroom there for doing other arrangements as we see fit.

So I guess the first thing on the rare earth separation plant at White Mesa, I know you guys have floated a cost of $300 million to $500 million, but there hasn't been a lot of like ranges put on IRR or NPV for this project. When do you think we'll get those numbers? And then as we're leading up to that, is there a range you're comfortable putting on that so we can start to try to build these into our models?

Well, Joe, first of all, thanks for asking the question. We're really on the cusp of getting a number of these feasibility studies completed. One is for the Phase 2 separation plant. We're also completing the feasibility on the Toliara project and getting final investment numbers for Donald. With that publicly disclosed, you'll have all the information you need to figure out what all those costs are going forward. About the Phase 2 processing plant upgrade, we've added a lot of additional infrastructure including the ability to recover heavies. Some of those costs are going up, but the actual facility is becoming more capable to do more things. We expect to have, again, all these studies completed by the end of the year, and the dots can be connected with certainty.

Maybe a follow-up to that then. Would it be fair for us initially to assume that the economics are roughly similar to what we see for this kind of thing historically, where CapEx and NPV are roughly equal and IRRs are in the high teens, low 20s?

Look, I don't want to speculate until those studies are completed. However, we believe our strategy with the multiple assets we have is going to deliver a very low cost compared to our peers for producing these multiple rare earth oxides and some of these other critical elements. We are very confident that our focus on monazite is going to be a very attractive and low-cost opportunity for our shareholders going forward.

One other thing on the uranium production side, you guys kind of gave guidance for Q1 only. Is this to say that mining at Pinyon Plain is going to wrap up and then the mines to go back on care and maintenance, or is it that you're not comfortable giving a guide yet for next year?

The main reason we've only given guidance into part of 2026 is that we have a rare earth plant as part of the White Mesa Mill in that Phase 1, where we share the mill. We're also doing trade-offs on how much rare earths we have to process versus uranium versus our ability to stockpile. For example, when we process the Pinyon Plain ore, we're going to keep mining Pinyon Plain, and we will stockpile it for future processing. That may extend that run in 2026, but we're also giving ourselves the option to recover both lights and heavies later in the year if need be. We've not gone too far out, but we will have enough mining capacity and pounds that are coming out of those mines to keep running that mill if we elect to do so on uranium only.

Maybe starting on the uranium side. You mentioned blending Pinyon Plain's higher-grade ore with LaSalle's lower-grade material through early '26. Can you quantify the margin differential between Pinyon Plain as a stand-alone campaign versus the blended approach? Given Pinyon Plain's superior economics, I mean, why wouldn't it make more sense to process higher-grade ore from that asset now while spot prices are above the $75 level and preserve the LaSalle material for potential toll milling arrangements further down the road?

It's a combination of things. The Pinyon Plain is obviously our lowest cost source, with the exception of occasionally some of the alternate feeds can be lower. We look at which feeds to process. We will have the ability in 2026 to run just Pinyon Plain ore alone. We've made some modifications in the mill to do that. But at the end of this year, we have to do some blending to cut the grade down to some extent. The LaSalle complex—right now, we're not recovering the vanadium. When you look at the LaSalle complex, Pandora, our costs are in the low 70s, recovering just uranium, but not recovering the vanadium, which can be brought back at a later date. We can still come up with a very attractive combined production cost, but where we are in our processing, we will push Pinyon Plain as much as we can. We'll complement alternate feed and LaSalle, look at that blended cost, and we're also likely to gain inventory of mined unprocessed material this year, which will be ready for processing whenever we really choose, up to the complete design capacity of the White Mesa mill.

Switching gears, you've signed the MOU with Vulcan that could lead to an offtake agreement for downstream magnet production. We'll be getting something on the product validation front in the near term. Can you just remind us what really the critical steps beyond that validation would be and kind of how that plays into commercial production decisions later in '26?

These various groups that are looking for our oxides, initially, it’s about the validation. After that, it is working together to come up with potential offtake arrangements and pricing, which we are not at that stage yet. We are in some initial discussions on those fronts, but we have not really advanced those. Between POSCO, Vulcan, and we're talking to others, it's pretty dynamic at this point. However, we haven't secured any binding agreements for offtake at this moment.

I wanted to speak to the excitement around the Toliara acquisition. You guys are always looking at value-accretive opportunities. What might those opportunities look like, and what is your forward-looking appetite to expand via acquisitions on any part of the uranium supply chain, or is there excitement around some bolt-ons, divestitures, or JVs?

We look at every opportunity on its own. We've expressed our desire to do further integration from one aspect, but we're also looking at having additional feed and diversification as we go forward. What you're seeing is that people in the business, whether it be heavy mineral sands, rare earths, or uranium, see our strength and the momentum we've built. The world desires an integration story of scale, which is what we're building. Companies are reaching out to us to see how they might join with us. We will look at them based on their merits. We are always going to look for unique and good opportunities to bolt on to what we have. There's no shortage of those, and the key is finding ones that will be accretive and provide good value for us. I'd say that both in uranium and rare earths tied to mineral sands, so monazite is critically important.

Tatiana, it’s a great question because there’s so much activity going on in the market right now. I would say we’re looking at probably two dozen different opportunities on our plate that are potentially opportunistic. We will remain opportunistic. There’s a lot on our plate with our own assets. But we will always look for unique and good opportunities to bolt on to what we have.

It sounds very exciting. Were most of those two dozen opportunities just around traditional mining or anything around uranium extraction or other parts of the supply chain?

They can be anything really. As a general rule of thumb, I'd say most are more rare earth-oriented, but they can be different things. We have the infrastructure, we're processing uranium. There are people that would like us to purchase their ore, the same thing and whether it's monazite producers or heavy mineral sand producers. They see the momentum and capacity we’ve established over the last few years.

How soon do you anticipate going back out to the market? I know you just did the $700 million fund raise that was oversubscribed. How soon should we expect to see you guys going out again to raise more capital?

We're in a strong position right now. You look at our balance sheet, the convert, the revenue from uranium we're in good shape. I'm not going to speculate on how soon we might go out to the market again. We're only going to go out when we think it makes sense; we think it made sense to go out on the convertible, and it was a real successful execution. We’re very proud that Goldman Sachs took the lead on that, and we’re very happy with the outcome.

Given that this current administration is a lot more active about making strategic investments in critical mineral producers, including the Pentagon's equity stake in MP or the DOE's investment in Lithium America or the even more recent Westinghouse partnership. I was just wondering if you guys were in talks with the administration regarding any sort of strategic partnerships?

That's a loaded question. Everyone in these critical minerals sectors are in D.C. talking to the administration about what support might be available or not. We're no different. We spend a lot of time in D.C. We're not prepared to speculate on what the U.S. government may or may not do. We believe we've been driving our own bus. We've secured multiple projects. We're producing many of the elements the government is interested in. We are moving forward on our strategy. Does that mean that might attract government or private entities interested in securing U.S. processed non-China material? I believe it does. We are positioning ourselves. We're playing the long game. We'll see where we go from there. But yes, there are investments going on. Just look at the assets we have and locate where we fit in the supply chain.

I want to go back to your long-term contracting philosophy on the uranium side. You have fresh capital, utilities are discussing supply concerns. So I think you're uniquely positioned to sign baseload contracts that would really derisk production. Can you just speak to what percentage of 2026, 2027 production capacity you could target for term business? What would be the remaining spot exposure?

A tough one to quantify fully. Generally speaking, from my experience, if you are not highly leveraged, I generally say 50% of both one or the other is not a bad place to be because you're either 50% right or 50% wrong and you're not overcommitted. We want to make sure that we don't have to put too much material on the spot market because it's not very actively traded. We discuss frequently how to position new contracts we are willing to commit to. I believe the price of uranium has to continue to increase because the true cost of producing a pound of uranium isn’t around the $80 level. We will play it by ear. You can safely assume we’re going to have 50% of our production contracted in some form, maybe a little bit more, but not less.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mark Chalmers for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, everyone, for your interest in Energy Fuels. It's been an exciting time for Energy Fuels. Look at our share price and how it's appreciated over the last number of months. I think people are finally getting our strategy and the importance of our strategy. I don't think we could ask for better timing when it comes to the realization by governments around the world that we've become overly dependent on Russia and China. We plan to continue to execute. So watch this space. We are aiming for the stars and doing extraordinary things.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect.