Good morning, everybody. My name is Janet Sheriff. I'll be your moderator today. I want to thank everybody for joining us for the enCore Energy Corporate Update. Today we have three presenters. We have William Sheriff, Executive Chairman. We have Dennis Stover, Dr. Dennis Stover, my apologies, a Director of the Board. And we have Rob Willette, who is our Chief Executive Officer, acting, and also our Chief Legal Officer. Dr. Stover and Mr. Willette are in the Corpus office, and Mr. Sheriff is in his office. Please feel free to use the Q&A function to send in questions throughout the presentation. We will have the speakers present, and then we will go into a Q&A. This presentation is being recorded live, and it will be available after on the enCore Energy website. With that, Bill, can you take it away?
Sure, sure. I want to thank everybody for their attention and for taking the time to join us today. Obviously, I've gone through a few weeks of change here at enCore. I've probably spoken to many of you individually over the past few weeks as we've had an enormous number of call-ins, but the message remains clear. enCore is on focus and a very smooth transition here. None of the day-to-day operations have been interrupted. In fact, we've already begun to implement a number of initiatives to streamline and achieve more efficiency in that. I know one of the questions that'll be leading right off the top, so I'll address it right away, is what happened with our former CEO, Paul Goranson. First off, I want to acknowledge Paul's accomplishments in getting this company to production in a very short order.
Aside from that, I will address the more immediate issue. Paul was terminated by unanimous vote of the Board of Directors. This was not something that was thought of quickly or taken lightly. It was not a single event, but it was something I'd given some considerable attention to leading up into that event. You know, one of the things that I've always said about enCore from day one, going back to its inception, is we've got incredibly deep bench strength in terms of uranium expertise and operation. That's evidenced by Dr. Stover, who you'll hear from shortly. We've got 90 employees in the field. An incredible number of those have deep experience in operations of ISR.
I would dare say, if you put our team of operators and experts in the field up against anybody else in North America, certainly, and perhaps the whole world, with the possible exception of Kazakhstan, we would stand up pretty clearly at the top of that list. We continue to operate two plants, and clearly our focus is on Alta Mesa at the moment. That is where we've taken a large number of steps that have been outlined pretty much in the last couple of news releases in terms of increasing drilling and not only increasing the number of rigs on site, but more important, imparting a sense of urgency throughout the organization, especially in the field. Here again, that's not in any way, shape, form, or fashion to be confused with a panic.
It's just a matter of the simple fact that our uranium comes out of the sandstone. We're able to capture it at a very quick rate. That is, our decline curve is about four and a half months. When you compare that to Wyoming, it's typically 12-15 months. We are getting the same net volume of uranium, but we are getting it in a third or less of the time. What that simply means is that we have to keep drilling in order to continue to advance the operation and ultimately fulfill our capacity at the plant. We not only need a larger number of rigs, we need a more efficient operation of those, which is already being implemented. We need to do things in a circuit instead of in a linear fashion.
We need to do it in a more parallel so that we're doing multiple things at the same time so that we can bring more wells on in a quicker pace. That is, in fact, the way to take advantage of that very short decline curve in terms of the uranium, because obviously the biggest factor of having a short decline curve is our payback is almost immediate. We get 80% some of our saleable product in the first four months, which is a real blessing. Many of the startup operations and restarts have problems with either getting the fluids through the sandstones or dissolving the uranium and taking it into solution efficiently, or problems with other minerals that may be in the sandstone that alter the chemistry.
You may well have problems in the plant actually putting the uranium on the resin and then recovering it off of it. Compared to all of those operational type issues, we're very blessed to have that four-month payback on the accelerated recovery. We just have to make sure we stay in front of it. That is where the sense of urgency is. Drill, drill, drill. May sound familiar, but it's our motto here at enCore as well. We have to keep up that sense of urgency on a daily basis and keep those rigs turning. Similarly, the number of rigs we have has grown substantially, but we've got to concentrate on the production. Those have been redirected and will continue to be redirected towards the actual production facility until we reach the ideal number of rigs.
Once we've done that, we'll start looking a bit more towards the exploration for our pipeline of projects. I think that pretty well covers it. Clearly, you're probably aware of our 10-K. One of the things that we can't do again is go out and buy uranium wholesale and, or rather, retail and sell at wholesale. That is, we can't purchase uranium for $20 more than we're going to deliver into a contract. Now, if you look again here at the 10-K, our production cost numbers that were released there were quite reasonable, very good. Here again, we keep striving. With this increased efficiency, we do believe we'll be able to bring those costs down. If there's nothing wrong with the current price, there's a nice margin in it for us. Obviously, we would much appreciate a higher uranium price.
In fact, we believe we'll see one. Nonetheless, it's a sound operation, even at current prices. We just cannot be going into the market and not purchasing to honor our contracts. That's a key. In 2025, that's our main objective, is to not buy a single pound of uranium, but rather to produce every pound that goes into those contracts. I think that's probably a good overview, a good place to introduce our other two speakers, Rob Willette, our Acting CEO. Many years in the public sector, a lot of that in the energy sector. He was an ideal gentleman to step in as the transition to our permanent CEO. He's the Acting CEO. He will retain his position as our Chief Legal Officer going forward once that replacement's in. He can tell you a little bit about that executive search as well.
Following him, you'll hear from Dr. Dennis Stover, one of the early pioneers in the ISR business, holding six or seven patents on it. Undeniably, one of the founders of the in situ, worked around the globe putting a number of different projects in. We couldn't possibly have anyone better or with more experience in terms of well fields and, in fact, plants, et cetera, than Dennis. I could spend the whole hour telling you about his accomplishments, but I won't. I'll just turn it over to Rob for his short commentary. Following Dennis's remarks, we'll be open for questions and answers. Thank you, Rob.
Thank you, Bill. Appreciate the introduction. I echo your sentiments and thank you to everybody who's on the call today. With respect to the session planning, the search that we have currently underway for a replacement CEO, we have engaged a global leader in executive search, Heidrick & Struggles, and had numerous conversations, both myself, Bill, and other board members working with them. They've got a fantastic team over there who have become fully engaged to find that next, find the replacement for our organization. We expect the total process to take somewhere around three, maybe four months at most. What we're looking for is, we're looking for that experienced executive who has a proven track record in a public company delivering results, strategic visionary, somebody that can come in and really do the things that Bill spoke about. We're very confident we're going to find that person.
We're very confident in the team over at Heidrick . We're really looking forward, as we continue through this process, to finding that next candidate, that next replacement, that individual who's going to come in and lead our organization for many years. Separately, over the last two or three weeks since the transitions occurred, I'd like to kind of touch on a little bit of the organizational things that have been going on here. I work at the Dallas office. I've been spending a lot more time down here. The thing that's amazed me most is the excitement that I've seen on the team from the top down. There's been some change, and sometimes that change can be difficult. What I will say is that the organization has stepped up to the plate and really been amazing. They've engaged with me. I've engaged with them.
All I see is a sense of excitement and, utilizing the word Bill said, urgency. Everybody's wanting to jump in and really move forward and take this company where we believe it can go. That's been really invigorating to me, very encouraging to me. I know the rest of the management and the board as well. I'm really excited to see where we're going, especially with the group of people we have. Our people here in this company are our greatest asset by far. We have amazing assets out in the field, but the people are the ones that make it happen. We've got a great group of people here. Dr. Stover, who'll speak in a minute, has been hands-on down here, working with a lot of them.
I am personally very excited to be part of this organization for the long term, given the people that we have around us, because I know we can make it happen. Bill, if you want to introduce Dr. Stover, if you just want to jump right in.
Yeah, I think we'd like to hear from Dennis now. Thank you, Rob.
Okay. As Rob pointed out, it's been obviously a time of change here in the last two or three weeks. I, too, have jumped back in. I've been more or less retired here since August. As a board member, I've really been focused on two functions. First of all, spending quite a bit of time in the field at our field projects here, as a board member, to reassure our staff of our commitment to them. I've been extremely pleased with the very positive responses that I've had in face-to-face conversations across the board, not only with the field management, but with the individual staff members in the field, everything from the people involved with the drilling to the well field operators to the plant operators, the guys that are actually putting the yellowcake in the drums for us.
Everybody is very much on track and sees the value of the company and looks forward to continuing to grow this company. We very much are in a, have been in and continue to be in a hurry up and catch up mode here. As Bill said, we have had this very quick response from these well fields at Alta Mesa in particular. My second function here has been to work with these people, to encourage them and help them, from my perspective and experience, organize ourselves a little bit better to expedite the development of well fields and take into account this extremely rapid and high-quality production that we're getting. We are very much on track to do that. As Bill mentioned, we do have to do a lot of drilling. We have additional drilling rigs.
I will be coming on site this week and later this month as we continue to ramp up that area. The same thing in working with the people out there, looking to make sure that we are encompassing every pound of uranium in the ground and getting it headed in towards the processing plant just as soon as possible. It has been very, very encouraging to see the extremely positive response and enthusiasm from everybody in the field, as well as from here in the Corpus Christi offices. We are very much on track to expedite production and grow it and, more importantly, to sustain the production going forward.
Very good. Thank you, Dennis. We'll open the floor to questions now.
Thanks, Bill. The first question that I have is regarding drill rigs. If it is difficult for companies to acquire or put more drill rigs into place, does enCore look at the option of operating a drilling company and owning drill rigs?
That's a good question. I'm sure Dennis could go on for a long time about that. I'll start. If you have anything to add, Dennis, just pipe right in there. We're not in the drilling business. Drilling is best left to those that are in the drilling business. There are a number of both oil companies and, moreover, mining companies that have had their own drilling subsidiaries, most of which have found it to be untenable going forward. It's a whole different set of problems, a whole different set of expertise. While we don't mind assisting drillers to bring in the right equipment in terms of early payment, that sort of thing, to secure exactly the right rig and that into a contract, we certainly do not want to be in the day-to-day business of running a drilling company.
Do you have any other comments, Dennis?
Yeah, I would add to that. It's an excellent question and one that has come up from time to time over the years. I've been involved with going both ways, trying to have rigs company-owned and then relying on third-party drilling. We've had great success with the small business companies, the small family-owned drilling companies which we rely on. They do an excellent job for us. It's turned out to be far more economic. The productivity actually can be higher by using a whole series of small independent contractors. One thing that happens with that kind of arrangement is it becomes a very competitive environment among the different drilling companies about who can drill the straightest hole, who can do it most efficiently. That competition is very, very, very valuable. It's turned out to work very well.
We have made a lot of progress here just in recent months in making a dramatic increase in the number of available rigs. The quality of the workmanship is continuing to increase also as the competition does.
Thanks, everybody. I've got a follow-up question to this one. Given the pace of extraction at Alta Mesa, do you have the confidence that you have enough people and trained people and drill rigs to stay ahead of production and continue growing?
Yeah, here again, that's Dennis's, but I'll take the first one. Just illustrating here again, we have 90 people and a little over 90 people actually in the field on operations. From our end, in terms of operations, absolutely. As I mentioned, there hasn't been a beat miss with this transition. In fact, there won't be any beats missed as we move to increase the production and our overall efficiency. Drilling really is the issue. Do we have enough drill rigs at the moment? No. As Dennis just mentioned, we have a couple more coming on and then a couple more later in the month. Company-wide, we need probably 30 drill rigs with at least 2/3 of those actually on Alta Mesa moving forward. We're over 20 already with 22. We still have some more to get.
Obviously, we don't take just any rig that shows up. We've got to make sure that they're safe and that they have all of their proper documentation, insurance, et cetera, and of course, their experience. I think with the accelerated effort, it's a matter of months until we reach our objective.
Thank you.
I would add that the experienced people we have at Alta Mesa are more than capable of dealing with the growth that's underway out there at this time. In addition, we have a very experienced workforce at our other project, Rosita. We're sharing the manpower between those two projects and bringing some of those people in to fill in some short-term gaps at Alta Mesa right now. I think we're in very good shape here to continue to increase production. We've got sufficient staff. Where we may foresee shortfalls arising in the near term, we're positioned to fill those positions pretty quickly, partly by taking advantage of the expertise we have at Rosita and moving some of those people over there on a temporary basis and then bringing on additional folks and getting them up to speed.
I would add that we're continuing to grow our field technical organization too. We've had a reservoir engineer join the company here just within the last month. She brings with us additional expertise in focusing on the performance of our well fields. Just part of the growth program that's ongoing here.
Thank you all. I'd like to also give a little bit of a plug for enCore Energy. We're establishing the enCore Energy Education Society that's looking at assisting future staff and future leaders in the nuclear energy industry. And the Dr. Dennis Stover Scholarship with A&M is going to be launched very soon and is focused on chemical engineering with a focus on nuclear, so long-term planning. I have a couple of questions I'm combining for Dr. Stover. One is a question about the most surprising operational challenge you've encountered in the past few weeks. The other is sort of related to that. Alta Mesa was in production before. Any information on the similarities now and then with the decline curve, or was that unexpected?
With respect to the well field performance and this very rapid recovery of uranium, which, as Bill pointed out, is absolutely good news, it has had quite an effect on our planning for sustaining production. It was unanticipated that it would be as aggressive a production profile as that we've seen. We are dealing with a particular geologic formation, the Goliad Formation. I've had experience with that in the past. At other projects in the Goliad, we've seen very rapid recoveries, but not as aggressive or not as fast as we've seen here at Alta Mesa. I cannot stress enough, from a production point of view, that's outstanding news. I've been very pleased the way the field team at Rosita is responding here. We are gearing up to accommodate that more efficiently.
As we brought on additional well fields, the quick decline has been continued to be reinforced. It was not an anomaly. It seems to be a characteristic of the area where we're mining. And we're in position now to accommodate that.
I'd like to just add a point there as well that the previous operations at Alta Mesa were almost entirely for a private ranch company and a private company. They were not looking to have a pipeline of projects such that we do. They were not working to be an ongoing steady producer, but rather take advantage of the uranium that was on their ranch. In doing so, their timelines were considerably different than that of a public company. I think that therein lies some of the real issues. If you own the land and you own the project, you might not have that urgency to keep a steady flow of uranium coming out. That would be my observation.
Thank you. I think this one's more directed at Rob. And it has to do with blackouts around certain material events. If the stock price was declining, if it was an overreaction, did the board use the opportunity to purchase stocks in the open market in significant quantities of over, for example, $100,000 ?
Yeah, thank you, Jen. We obviously have our blackout policy that's in place. We have had an event recently publicly disclosed with our transaction on Verdera for our New Mexico assets. There was a period of time in which we implemented our blackout for that. That's been publicly disclosed now. Following the 10-K results, we followed our normal process under our blackout policy. During that period of time, there have been no reportable events in excess of 100,000 shares of acquisitions or dispositions.
Thank you. We have a few questions about contracting. I'll combine a few of them. Status of your long-term contracts, the company's position on future contracting. Maybe I'll leave that one with you, Bill.
Yeah, sure. I can address that. First off, I would call everyone's attention to our November 4th press release, which was here just four or five months ago. That contract book was published in terms of an overall look. Confidentiality keeps us from identifying any particular counterparty on a single contract. We were able to gain approval of all of our counterparties to put it out in mass so that you can't tell what any single contract is. It does give you a very clear indication of deliverables coming up in 2025 through 2029. We look to do this updating it on a five-year forward-looking basis going forward. I'd point out we're one of the only groups in the business, other than Cameco, that publishes this sort of information. We certainly intend to keep doing so.
You'll also find in that a matrix that assumed different minimum returns to the company in terms of revenue based on a chart with different spot prices on it. Here again, our contracts are not at spot with one exception, the legacy contract we had at spot when we first purchased the first two plants, being Kingsville and Rosita. Outside of that, all of them are with U.S. utilities. Almost all of those are contracts that have ceilings and floors. That chart should give you a lot of information. It does indicate that we have deliveries coming up this year. As I stated before, we entered the year with some inventory at 180,000 lbs from the 10-K that was unallocated.
If you look at that and compare that with what we have to deliver, we think we can achieve that production internally without going back to the market. That is the number one priority. That also takes into effect a leniency that we have received from one of our contractors with 75,000 lbs that, quite frankly, if we deliver it in 2025, they will pay us. If we deliver it in 2026, they will pay us. That flexibility is appreciated. Hopefully, we will not need it. Nonetheless, we do not intend or foresee purchasing in the market to deliver into contracts. That simply was untenable. $20 million loss last year or 1/3 of the loss that we had.
I also point out, even though it is not really part of that question, but an obvious place to go from my last answer, roughly $20 million of that was associated with non-cash items in terms of our change from IFRS reporting in Canada becoming a U.S. reporting issuer in the States where we had to do a three-year look back and convert everything to GAAP. Very painful and lengthy process, but the company did well on it. Any questions about that probably should go to Rob. In terms of our ongoing contract strategy, nothing has changed. When you look at our complete contract book over time, we are targeting 50% of our planned production. It is obviously very front-end loaded in that 2025 is fully contracted. 2026 is fully contracted. When you look out beyond that, we start having some room.
Most of the contracts that we would be looking at now to possibly enter into would be in no earlier than 2029, probably, and then looking out into the early 2030s. With that being said, I'll just save the audience from asking a question. We're still seeing roughly the same terms that Cameco announced here roughly a month ago in terms of the split floor ceiling type contracts. Those are inflation-adjusted collars with roughly $70 floor and $130 ceiling. That's the sort of thing we've been seeing on sole source invitations. Have not entered any new contracts recently, but that's still where we are. That's very, very close to the tops that we were seeing during the last year. Acknowledging the spot prices is a very opaque and difficult indicator and not fully transparent. The long-term contracting, which drives this industry, is still quite robust.
Thank you.
Does that answer the question and a few others?
Yes, thank you. This one, a few questions on this, a bit more of an opinion piece. I will direct it to you, Bill. It is about the current administration at the federal level in the United States. Do you envision there will be improvements to the permitting process that would allow not only enCore, but other companies to advance on a more timely basis? What is enCore doing to potentially take advantage of these potential changes?
Two-part question. Obviously, the first answer is yes. An emphatic yes, I think. Everyone always asks, what do you need the government to do? We need their money to go into building out the enrichment and the conversion, especially in the U.S. Those are the bottlenecks to the industry. There is money going into that. There needs to be more. At the same time, on the permitting side, the momentum commission set up on advancing energy in the U.S. with former North Dakota Governor Burgum and the Energy Secretary, right? We see this as being a hugely important thing. We are actually already seeing bits and pieces of it through EPA actions that are being taken quicker. We think you will see a significant reduction in those regulatory roadblocks. Quite frankly, we could not ask for more. We do not really need a helping hand.
We just need the government to get out of the way in terms of some of these things. Of course, that does not affect us much in Texas, where we're in the most progressive state in terms of permitting. The second part of that question does indeed affect some of enCore's operations. What do we plan to do to take advantage of it? Here again, it's nothing that we can control that is the permitting. We have a number of active permits in other states, principally South Dakota and Wyoming. We welcome any reduction in the regulatory burden, i.e. timelines. We're already underway, so we'd expect to reap some of the benefits of that on our permits and those that we may have in the future as well.
Thank you. I'm just going to make a quick comment, and then I'm going to lead into another question. Just to follow up about insider buying. I just want to say, and Rob, you can confirm this is correct, that any purchasing, any transactions are reported in SEDAR and EDGAR, and people can go and view all of that activity, correct?
Yeah, that's absolutely correct, Jen. It's all publicly available information. Any Section 16 officer director is required to report. That goes through my office. Those filings are made within 48 hours in the U.S., five days in Canada. They are all publicly available, and anyone can feel free to go and look those numbers up.
Thank you. I'm going to think this one is for you, Bill. As Rob mentioned, the Verdera transaction, any elaboration that you can provide on that announcement?
I think the key factor is the bigger picture here. We've had a very aggressive and successful non-core asset disposition program since the company really got off the ground. You can see the evidence of that in our past publicly released transactions. There's a series of them. This is in keeping with that. New Mexico's obviously got a great resource and a very great colorful history of producing uranium. It's not a geologic question in New Mexico. It's a social license question primarily. It is not an Agreement State, so you're dealing with the NRC. You're dealing with a very significant impact on the Indigenous nation there. You really have to take into account the past transgressions, perhaps, of the uranium industry back in the Cold War era.
You really have to look for ways to work with not only government there, but certainly with the stakeholders on the land, that being the Indigenous. That is a full-time job. It is not something that is going to be solved overnight. There are a lot of varied interests there and obviously a lot of history behind it. It is something that clearly enCore is not set up to do. Our focus is on production, production, production. Something that far out needed a dedicated effort to ever bring it along. When we were approached by Tim Gabruch, the CEO, it just seemed to make a really a lot of sense. Tim's got an extensive background dealing with indigenous communities in Canada, a 20-year history with Cameco. He certainly knows the business and has the patience and dedicated efforts to achieve what really needs to be achieved there.
Of course, enCore immediately gets $350,000, which is not meant to be a big injection into the treasury, but certainly owning 73% of the company now and probably around 50% once they're up and trading. That'll inject a huge amount of value onto our balance sheet. Obviously, we intend to share about 70% of that net benefit with the shareholders by way of some sort of a dividend or spinout of the shares that received, or at least a significant portion of them. All the details are covered pretty much in the press release that came out yesterday.
Thank you. Vending the assets into a Canadian company was part of the importance to putting some value on the enCore books?
That's right. The balance sheet strength is what gets us through things. There have been some concerns about where our cash sits. It's obviously tight. I don't think in this business you ever have the word plenty. I've never seen it in 40-some years, but it's always a limiting factor on how fast you can move things forward, etc. We clearly come against a pinch point here somewhere later in the year. It'll be tight, tighter than we like. We're obviously looking at all sorts of avenues there. That ranges from additional non-core asset sales should there be any. You have letter of credit lines that you can enter into. You can do equity financings. There's a whole lot of different angles on that. We're looking at that. Equity is probably our least favorite at this point.
Certainly, as a large shareholder myself, it's my least favorite to see that come in. Even if it were, it won't be a large quantum. That is the sort of thing that management looks at every day when you're forecasting down the road in terms of financing needs. Rest assured that we're evaluating all options for the company in terms of bringing in whatever cash may be necessary.
Thanks. There are a number of questions relating to production and guidance going forward. I appreciate that there are regulatory requirements surrounding this. There are a few questions on if the company can clarify what its goals are and where it is going.
Yeah. I'll be glad to take that one too on top of that. Again, I reference everyone to the November 4th news release. Shows our deliveries this year of 740,000 lbs. Again, referring back to the inventory that was on the 10-K, 180,000 lbs that was unallocated in round numbers. That leaves you at about 560. I mentioned before that we have the 75,000 that we can slide into 2026. As I really emphasized and want to reemphasize, we don't intend to purchase uranium in the open market. That should give you a pretty good idea of what we're looking at and where we stand.
Thank you. I think I have one final question. Can you clarify the comment about contracting 50% of production long-term and 50% in spot?
Yeah. Not necessarily. At first glance, you may well think that the other 50% would go into spot market, but that's not necessarily true. We have several options. You can obviously contract that. You can obviously sell it into the spot market if that's a very favorable thing to do at the time. Otherwise, you can hold it in inventory once your established production rates are such that you don't really "need" the cash right away. The other thing, of course, is you can roll that into longer-term contracts. It gives you a lot of flexibility. You also could, in theory, take out a loan against it. It is a fungible commodity. Having it there gives you a whole array of different possible uses for it. Hopefully that'll answer the question. We do commit 50% on a long-term basis to contracting.
We don't like being in a position. We'd like to see excess production so that we don't have 100% of it contracted because it does give the company that flexibility. Whereas this year, we've got all of our efforts going into honoring contracts.
Thank you, Bill. I just wanted to start to wrap it up. I know people's time is valuable, and we appreciate all of the attendees for joining us today and for all of your questions. If you did not feel that we answered any of your questions, please do contact us at info@encoreuranium.com. That's info@encoreuranium.com. You can also contact us afterwards if you have any further questions that you did not think of during this time. I want to thank our three presenters, Rob Willette, Acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Legal Officer, Dr. Dennis Stover, Director, and William Sheriff, Executive Chairman. Again, thank you, everybody. One final little note. This is the 50th anniversary of the development of in-situ recovery technology. The first project that was fully commercially operated, permitted, licensed for ISR and reclaimed was Clay West, Texas.
I just want to acknowledge the 50 years of work that has gone on to continue to advance the technology that has benefited the industry and created over 60% of the now global production. Thank you again, everybody. Have a wonderful day. This will be online. Again, thanks all.