Good morning. I'm Craig Hutchison, Director of Equity Research and Base Metals at TD Cowen. Our next speaker probably needs no introduction, but it's Grant Isaac, President and COO of Cameco. I think Grant's going to start with a sort of general macro overview, and then we'll go into some specific questions. So welcome, Grant. Thanks for participating again this year.
Yeah, Craig, happy to do it. In some variation, I think we're on year 12 of doing this with you. Sometimes virtual, sometimes in person in the past, and it's been a really important forum for us. Thank you for the work that you continue to do, not just in the uranium space, but the nuclear fuel and increasingly the reactor space. I think it's really important, especially at a time when, let's face it, there's a lot of new investor interest in this whole thesis. And it reminds us, as new investors come along, that we as corporates, you as sell-side research, the industry, reporters, we actually have a big responsibility to separate facts from fictions in this market. For whatever reason, this market's prone to a lot of fictions, so I want to just provide a few opening comments.
We can get into some specific Cameco issues, but I want to map those back to this macro backdrop that I think is the main punchline, and what that is, and I'm not going to use this word lightly, we are at an unprecedented investor opportunity in nuclear right now, and I know unprecedented is a big word, and it might even be hyperbolic, but I truly believe it, and let me just illustrate it by the recent World Nuclear Fuel Market Report that came out. What's the punchline of the fuel market report? Durable demand is getting bigger and uncertain supply is getting smaller, and that's right across the nuclear fuel cycle, but most profound in the uranium space, and that's a great punchline. It's a great place to start.
What we look at at Cameco is we look at that report and we disentangle it and we go, well, here's a really interesting fact. We think the demand is actually understated, and we actually think the supply is overstated. So we actually think the gap is bigger, and let me just discuss both of those a little bit. On the demand side, it's really just a requirements view of demand. So the installed reactor base plus reactors that are currently under construction and maybe some assumptions on programs that are planning to build that have a track record of building. There's no inventory build in it, and we know inventory is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for some of these new participants in nuclear. They're building 100-year assets. Their worry isn't where the uranium is in 2035.
Their worry is where's the uranium in 2055 and 2075 as they're just about to embark on running 100-year assets. Inventory build is not in there. If you keep going through the list, subsequent operating licenses on life extensions are not in there. A Western launch of large modular reactors and small modular reactors, it's not in there. And of course, there's another piece to it, which is naval propulsion demand is not in there, but it's going to come from the same feedstock, right? So there's a lot of demand that's missing. So we think the demand side is actually understated. When we look at the supply side, our view is it's actually quite overstated. People always think about supply in two buckets: the primary supply and the secondary supply. On the secondary supply, it's a fact, not a fiction. It's a fact.
This market has never had less mobile secondary supply available. So that historic shock absorber that's always carried the industry between production and demand is gone. It's effectively gone. So then you look at the primary stack, and I would say that reports like the World Nuclear Fuel Report and stuff you see from others often does a really bad job separating that there isn't equivalence in these projects that are being built up to come up with a supply number. A promotional press release is not equivalent to a plan. It's not equivalent to a feasibility study. A feasibility study is not equivalent to a permitted project. And a permitted project is not equivalent to production, right? And they tend to all get treated the same in the supply stack. It's an overused term, but you cannot burn a press release in a reactor core.
You cannot burn a feasibility study in a reactor core. You cannot burn a permitted project in a reactor core. You can only burn production in a reactor core, and those supply stacks tend to overestimate all of those other aspects and underestimate where production is actually at, so we look at it. We just say the gap's bigger, and so an actual Tier One producer with actual Tier One assets gets pretty excited in this macro backdrop, but we have to remember as investors that the crystallization of this gap is in the form of long-term demand, and that long-term demand hasn't fully expressed itself in uranium yet. Therefore, a responsible producer remains disciplined, doesn't lose focus on the value that's ahead, and that's effectively at the heart of our strategy. Disciplined, we will not front-run demand with supply. We will not sell supply into the spot market.
We will not sell supply to intermediaries and traders who churn it around the spot market. We will patiently wait for that demand to form to properly price future production. And the analog I will use is our Port Hope conversion facility had to go to 5,500 tons before it went back up to 10,500 tons with historic conversion pricing. And that is what investors have to focus on. Those who have those disciplined strategies are going to capture the most reward in this unprecedented moment for nuclear.
Maybe just on that, it wasn't one of my questions, but you raised a good point. I agree with you. As you kind of look out in the next decade, decade and a half, there's just not enough supply in the market. I think the WNA forecasts for 2040, under the reference scenario, we're going to need around close to 400 million pounds of primary supply. And I can understand how we can kind of satisfy demand towards the end of this decade and maybe early into next, because there are some good projects that could come online. But as I look towards the end of 2030, I don't see a scenario where the world can supply that level of demand. So what can be done? Is there a downstream solution in terms of recycling that's going to meet that demand? Or how do you see it play out?
Because I think you're going to need prices to be materially higher than they are right now to incentivize some of those higher cost projects in more challenging jurisdictions.
Yeah, you answered your question, which is $80 uranium isn't sufficient to meet that demand. I would say three-digit uranium is an absolute minimum. And we're already seeing that. We're going to talk about marketing, I'm sure, and what we're seeing in the market right now. But ultimately, this is about price. In order to convert resources into reserves, you need that pesky economic model in the middle of it. And that pesky economic model requires a much higher price than today. And then as prices start to form and as the demand is expressing higher prices, that gap will be filled. Projects that today are uneconomic will become economic, and they will become part of the supply stack. But if the world believes that $80 is a sufficient price to fill this demand gap, that somebody's going without.
Then we're going to see those heroic spiking moments that we've seen in the uranium space before, because someone will come out with an RFP and it will go unmet. Nobody will bid into it. The panic will start like it did in conversion, like it did in enrichment, like it's gone through fabrication. That panic will hit in uranium. It just hasn't hit yet.
Okay. Maybe we'll switch to some Cameco specific stuff and probably come back to the macro afterwards. But just on McArthur River, I think you guys did a good job kind of framing it for me, the WNA, some of the issues around the kind of the clay halos around the new zones that you guys are freezing and the setup of the isotherm. But just can you give us some more color in terms of how things are going in terms of setting up the freeze and what you can do now to avoid any potential production disruptions in 2026?
Yeah. I'm actually just going to map it back to where I ended on that macro backdrop, which is we are still in supply discipline. We are still in supply discipline because the right amount of demand hasn't been mapped into the market. We haven't seen replacement rate contracting in uranium yet. What that means is we always think about our production decisions through the lens of where the market is at. We didn't build the market this way, but this is the way the market is. And we know how it responds to our production decisions. And so ultimately, we will always strategically pace our production decisions to meet what the market will bear. So we exclusively sell into a long-term contract portfolio. We source that from production, but we have other risk management tools in there.
And ultimately, when we're in supply discipline, when 30% of our licensed and permitted production is still in Care and Maintenance because we don't feel prices are where they need to be, it just means we're not going to take heroic actions to deal with a production situation that means we miss target, because ultimately, there is no tyranny of December 31st from a production point of view, right? Like at our operating sites, there's no difference between December 31st and January 1st. Those are two working days, right? They don't get hung up on what that means come December 31st. We will begin development. We will be producing from those zones. It's just we won't have the pounds coming out of the back end of the Key Lake mill. But here's the thing about mining. Unlike manufacturing, if you miss a mining target, the pounds stay in the ground.
If you believe that there's a fundamental gap between supply and demand that's in your favor, those pounds that are in the ground are actually worth more. This market never rewards anybody for taking pounds out of the ground that aren't needed. In fact, it punishes them very severely. So we will always strategically pace our operating decisions.
Maybe just sticking with McArthur River, and I know you guys, you're very clear right there. You have no intention of bringing additional pounds on the market at this point. Just behind the scenes, what are you kind of doing to look to potentially optimize McArthur River and ultimately potentially expand it to 25 million pounds when the market needs those pounds?
Yeah, so it's just a matter of assessing the mining infrastructure, assessing the milling infrastructure. As we make forward investments, we think about those investments for the future. I mean, we're at a really unique point where the mine and the mill are kind of moving in different directions. McArthur River right now at today's production, mid-2040s, it depletes, and so here's an interesting fact. The world today is not pricing in the end of Cigar Lake and the end of McArthur River. That's 36 million pounds per year that's coming out of this market that it has not been absorbed in price formation yet, so we're thinking about pacing McArthur River appropriately, but when we make decisions at the mill, we're now thinking about the mill for its next door source as well.
So when we talk about optimizing, it's just making sure we're investing the capital that creates the most cost-efficient, optimized assets, brownfield leverage, ready to take advantage of the demand when it shows up, not before.
Okay, great. Maybe just in terms of source and supply meeting your sales commitment, because it does come up a lot with investors. You've guided a purchase of 11-12 million pounds this year. And through Q2, you've purchased about two million pounds. Are you still feeling comfortable on the in-kind deliveries? And what options are available if there are any issues there?
Yeah, you know we've got decades of a track record of risk managing the deliveries that we're committed to. We've never missed. We've never missed a sales commitment. And we do that by we source our sales commitments through production, of course. We hold an inventory for moments where maybe our production's not meeting expectations. We can always purchase in the market. Sometimes we purchase immediately in the market for immediate delivery. And we know that tends to have an effect on the market. Again, we didn't design it this way, but we know how it responds to us. Sometimes we buy forward because somebody's willing to sell cheap uranium out into the future, sell cheap uranium out into the supply gap. I'll take that with a long-term purchase, tuck that margin into our jeans on behalf of our investors. Happy to do that.
We also have these very, very critical pieces of infrastructure, these licensed facilities that have other people's material at it, not just our own, and in many cases, we have the ability to borrow that material if we need to bridge through with repayment terms that can be very, very flexible for us and also for the counterparty, and we always have the ability to go back to our customers and talk to them about delivery timing, so we risk mitigate in order to make sure that if there's any surprises, any delays to those pounds in the ground coming out, it's something we've already planned for. This is a standard that an investor should have on any uranium producer, and we just manage that risk, and as you see from decades of never missing a delivery, we manage it very, very effectively.
Perfect. But as you go forward, I mean, your inventory levels have come down here the last couple of quarters. How comfortable are you with those inventory levels? Is that something you want to see built up over the coming quarters going forward?
Very comfortable with our sourcing strategy.
Okay. Maybe shifting back to just more of the market in general. We saw the term price move up a couple of dollars last week. It's the first time in eight months that we've seen it move higher. Obviously, you guys have really good intel in terms of what's happening in the market. Just what are you seeing more broadly in terms of maybe both the spot market and the term market?
Yeah. You know there's a really interesting signal being sent to the market that just I think it's largely being ignored in the conversations. And that is whether you read the good work that UxC does or the good work that TradeTech does, they will tell you about 30% of the long-term contracting in the market today is done on base escalated terms. And about 70% is done on market-related terms. But what many people don't know is that long-term price that you're referring to only talks about the 30% that are base escalated. Market-related contracts do not inform long-term pricing. So that means 70% of the market information is not being reflected in today's price. But it's incumbent on us to step back and say, well, what is the 70% telling us? Well, it's telling us, certainly from a Cameco perspective, that uranium's already at three digits.
Because the midpoint between where escalated floors are right now and where escalated ceilings are right now is already over $100 a pound. Or put another way, there is no fuel buyer on the planet who is sitting there calculating value at risk in a market-related contract, looking at floors and ceilings and saying, oh, have I got a deal for us? A company like Cameco gets 90% of the upside in the price, and we only get 10% of the downside in the price. They're running a distribution through the floors and ceilings. And that distribution is already signaling those utilities that are willing to pay market-related contracts with these base escalated floors and these base escalated ceilings are already pricing in three-digit uranium. Now, unfortunately, there are some on the supply side who just they don't see it. It drives us crazy.
We don't understand why somebody would sell base escalated pounds right now when the market-related contracts are telling you we're at three-digit uranium. That long-term price, Craig, has to move up to the midpoint of the market-related contracts. And it will when we start to see more demand come into the market and when we see those who are willing to sell material get off this notion that everything needs to be a base escalated sale and willing to move into this market-related with collars that are escalated and rising. But this market is signaling a much higher price than the long-term price is signaling.
So if I do the mental math there based on your comments you said in past quarters, would that suggest the floors are now sort of in that low to mid-70s and the ceilings are sort of that 135 kind of area?
Absolutely. Yeah, and we're in a really unique position where because we are in supply discipline, we can be very fussy with the kind of contracts that we're willing to sign right now. We want those market-related contracts at those floors, at those ceilings. We want to construct stronger and stronger value capture going forward. And if that demand isn't there, we're going to leave the pounds in the ground. We're going to leave assets in care and maintenance. And we're not going to push McArthur to meet a year-end production target if the demand isn't there for it, the future demand.
I wanted to shift to the conversion market. It's not something we talk too much about, but obviously you're one of the biggest businesses in the world in conversion. You recently announced a long-term agreement to sell UF6 to SE in Slovakia. Prices remain strong here. Can you talk about the contracting market in conversion? Are we seeing floors and ceilings? Do the mechanics kind of work the same? And obviously, I would assume based on the prices today, your future revenue opportunity there is going to be significantly higher than what you're getting right now.
Yeah. Conversion, I'm glad you raised the question because it's a great analog. What's gone on in the conversion business is what's going to go on in the uranium business. We spent a lot of years in the mid-teens trying to convince utilities to buy $16 conversion, $18 conversion, $20 conversion in an $8 market. And the response from utilities over and over again was, I am not paying $18 a kgU for conversion. Well, the consequence of not being willing to pay $18 a kgU for conversion is they're now paying $50, right? So the market has reacted by if you're not going to price at appropriate production economics, supply will shift back. And when supply shifts back in the face of inelastic demand, price is the only variable that has to give. That's the same dynamic that hasn't yet hit uranium. But folks, it's on its way.
It's irrefutable, undeniable. It can just be delayed for a few factors, so conversion has gone through that reset. Right now, conversion is also an analog for you only get one chance to sell new capacity, right? Utilities, there's a fiction in the market that utilities are asleep at the switch. The fuel buyers we deal with are some of the smartest people on the planet. Like almost by definition, they're nuclear-trained engineers at a master's or PhD level. Like these are smart, smart people, and what's happening in conversion is a lesson in uranium, and that is there's a lot of utility interest around something like Springfields to restart, and I would have no doubt that Cameco could put together a suite of contracts to restart the Springfields conversion plant, probably at a premium to today's conversion price.
But utilities want like a three-year contract because they're trying to get the production into the market. Because once it's in the market, then they're going to renegotiate the next set of contracts with more capacity. So same with uranium. It's about where's the price, but where's the tenor of demand? And so the lesson in the uranium segment is I'm starting to hear some on the production side say, well, we're going to do some long-term contracting, but don't worry, it's only going to be a three-year contract, and then we'll renegotiate it at a higher price. No, you won't. You only get one chance to price new capacity.
The way we look at Springfields is we say, it has to be premium pricing, and it has to be a duration long enough so that when we're thinking through negotiating the next set of contracts for Port Hope and Springfields, the value is there for us. We're not going to bring on capacity to then undermine the value of two assets. That would be silly. Same goes for uranium. Conversion is a really important analog, really exciting space. There's lessons to be drawn for how we should be commercially behaving in uranium the way we're behaving in conversion.
Rush over, but if you don't mind, I've got a few more questions. There's a lunch break afterwards. I kind of want to get to a couple more here. People have to drop off. Apologies. But just turning to Westinghouse, can you expand a bit more on the Korea-Westinghouse relationship? What other regions could you potentially get IP payments for? And then there's been reports in the media of a Westinghouse KHNP JV. I don't know if you can provide any color on that and what potential benefit that would have to Westinghouse.
Yeah, two very proud nuclear companies, KHNP, KEPCO, and Westinghouse. And for many years, very, very fierce competitors. Now collaborators. One of the strongest industrial logic in gigawatt scale new build is Westinghouse and Team Korea working together. And that is the new dawn that we're seeing. Market after market looking at either the AP1000 reactor with Korean construction involvement or the Korean APR1400 reactor with Westinghouse's licensing and Westinghouse's technology and then Team Korea building it. It's always been the strongest logic. So I think we should imagine a world where we're going to see markets that build AP1000s with Korean involvement and markets where we see APR1400s being built with Westinghouse involvement. But I think the chance of Westinghouse and Team Korea dominating the gigawatt new build space, that's a very, very high likelihood scenario. And it's great for the energy systems business of Westinghouse.
And then it's great for the core of Westinghouse. So this relationship is stronger now than it was before. And I would love to see the kind of super joint venture that really sold an AP1000 on the basis of also having that incredible Korean construction capability, as well as really attractive Korean financing behind a project too. Strongest industrial logic in the business.
Would you see a partnership even in the U.S.? Is that something you guys would do? Or just would you see it more as a standalone Westinghouse AP1000 type model?
We would have like zero problem in seeing the Koreans constructing AP1000s in the U.S. But they will be AP1000s. The United States isn't interested in anything other than their technology because it's design ready, it's fuel ready, it's licensed, and there are six of them running around the planet and at a performance rate that is setting records for gigawatt scale reactors. Why would you do anything different?
Okay. We're five minutes over, but I promise I'll only ask one more question here. Just because I think it's interesting, the Global Laser Enrichment business, obviously the U.S. is short enriched capacity. I think it's on the TRL 6 now. It sounds like the plan is to produce a few hundred kilograms of enriched fuel. Can you just any updates on that? And what are the sort of next milestones to make this technology commercial?
Yeah. Global Laser Enrichment is exciting. It's always been exciting. We've been involved in it for a very, very long time. Cameco wants in the enrichment business. Cameco will be in the enrichment business someday. Exactly what that looks like is still an open question. But at the moment, GLE seems like a really good way to get in because it offers technology diversification. It offers supplier diversification. On technology diversification, I simply mean that Orano and Urenco share the same root technology. They co-own the Enrichment Technology Company. So whether you build more Urenco facilities or more Orano facilities, that's not a technology diversification. So offering laser enrichment that is advanced as GLE is, that has had as much adult work done as Global Laser Enrichment has had over the years is very attractive.
And remember, the swim lane for GLE is both a uranium mine and conversion plant in disguise, which is the DUF6, the depleted UF6 tails re-enrichment strategy, as well as the ability to do straight down the fairway low-enriched uranium to replace the Russians. So GLE's got a much bigger swim lane than it would have had a couple of years ago. It offers technology diversification, supplier diversification. But GLE is exactly the same as Springfields, and it's exactly the same as uranium asset. There is no build it and they will come model. You have to build up your plan along with a marketing strategy. At TRL6, we start to get the confidence that we could really begin to forward contract capacity with utilities.
We won't do that before because you don't build a conversion plant and then knock on people's doors and say, do you want to buy conversion, because there's no in-year enrichment because there's no in-year demand for enrichment, just like there's no in-year demand for uranium, so the commercial strategy is still to come, but technologically, we're just getting more and more excited about where this is at, and we think it can play a huge role in helping stabilize the Western fuel cycle, and at that point, Cameco has everything from the biggest exploration package to reactor sales and reactor services and core going forward and everything in between, so at a time when nuclear is attracting so much investors and so much excitement, we're a one-stop shop.
That's great. I appreciate your patience. I want us to go like seven minutes over here. I appreciate the patience. So everybody stay on the line. Our next session's at 12:25 P.M. It's a keynote with OPG. Thanks again, Grant. That was great. As always.
Thanks, Grant. Thanks very much.
Thank you.