Uranium Energy Corp CEO: U.S. needs to drill down on increasing uranium production

Uranium Energy Corp More than 4% since news of that Russian ban. It’s a domestic uranium producer that shut down some of its minds in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. But UEC plans to bring those back online this year and in 2025 to meet soaring demand for the mineral. Joining me now for an exclusive interview is CEO Amir Adnani. Amir, thank you very much for being here. This is such a multifaceted story because it’s not just about nuclear energy anymore. It’s the crossroads of so many different current investing themes. What is it about US uranium production that needs to change in order for us to be better positioned as a country? 3 words grow, grow and grow. That’s like drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill. You got. And the bottom line is we used to lead the world in uranium mining. the US industry did before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet Union collapse, we made room for them in the Western markets. And this is the reversal of that where we’re really seeing a repatriation of the nuclear fuel cycle that the $2.7 billion being provided in policy and the Russian uranium ban should provide. There’s absolutely I think every intention to see growth in front of us here for the domestic industry for all the reasons you mentioned. Oh, so for the oil industry, it’s about trying to find kind of proven reserves, find out where the commodity actually lays underground. Does the US, does domestic US territory have the ability to support ramped up production? How prevalent can we make the uranium business in the USA 100%? The world’s largest producer of uranium is a country, a Kazakhstan. After Kazakhstan, the state of Wyoming for example has produced more uranium using the low cost institute recovery method than any other jurisdiction. We have a / 40 year history of uranium mining in states like Wyoming and Texas and so the the know how is there, the knowledge is there. Mother Nature is there in terms of the mineral endowment. It’s a lot like oil and gas in the sense that when we were importing over 50% of our requirements in early 2000s, it didn’t seem feasible to think we can one day be exporting natural gas or oil. And it’s the same thing with uranium. I think the US has the right ingredients and the companies like ours who are leading the way towards restarting uranium and and look down right now we’re importing over 95% of our uranium requirements. Uranium is so critical to the intersection of all these themes that you talked about, energy security, national security, energy demand from data Centers for AI, generative AI. So we have to address this issue head on. And now what if we have Russian retaliation and we should talk about that. I mean there’s the risk here of what the people was talking about that if we get a retaliation from the Russians to halt exports to the US sooner in reaction to the ban, then we could see even further risk to higher uranium prices. This is a capital expenditure story that’s not one or two or three years in the making. I mean to get these mines up running online productive could be a 35101520 year proposition to really get us the scale that we need. Is the industry. Is your company prepared to make that kind of commitment given the sentiment around nuclear power in this country? Let’s talk about commitment. I started this company 19 years ago. We’ve been committed for 19 years and since the downturn we had in uranium, uranium was a hated sector for a long time. My company has made close to a billion dollars of acquisitions of uranium idled mines and projects when uranium prices were between 20 to $40 per pound. Today they’re over $90.00 per pound. And so clearly the the commitment has been there from folks and companies like UEC that have demonstrated that we want to lead and we lead. You rent your US uranium production higher. We are the fastest growing company, but this is as you point out correctly a long dated industry. These are long term trends and Dom, I think we’re going to have higher uranium prices for longer because even where the price is today at $92.00, we’re well short of the all time high on an inflation adjusted basis which is closer to $200 per pound. Nuclear energy is the new renewable energy power source that we know so to speak versus some of the other technologies out there. But there’s been a an overwhelmingly negative sentiment around nuclear power among certain parts of this country. Do you think that that’s changed enough given the energy demands that we will see around AI and data centers to make people feel like we need to be more comfortable with nuclear power? Just this morning there were reports that data center developers in Northern Virginia are looking for the equivalence of several nuclear reactors power capacity to secure for these new data centers, several nuclear reactors provide enough power for 3,000,000 households approximately. That’s the kind of scale and demand that we’re talking about in the sense that as we look for the screen energy transition to be realized and as we look for economies to become more electrified and the themes around electrification become more important, especially led by generative AI. There’s no doubt that nuclear energy is the best option we have for large low cost emission free power and uranium is the highest form of energy density that we know of on the planet. The uranium fuel really has a huge advantage that I think we’re starting to see that broad acceptance for. And the bill that passed, the Russian uranium van bill, was 100%, had bipartisan support, unanimous support. And in the Senate and the House, and hopefully we’ll see President Biden, Biden sign this any day. It’s a big trend to watch for sure. Amir Adnani, thank you very much for joining us.