Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the enCore Energy Corp. update today. My name is Janet Lee- Sheriff. I'll be your moderator. Today's guests will be William Sheriff, Executive Chairman, and Rob Willette, Acting CEO and our Chief Legal Officer. This is being recorded and will be available online after the conference call. We do have a Q&A function. It's on the left-hand side of the screen. Please feel free to type in any questions that you want. I will pass this over to Bill and Rob to conduct the update, and then I will be available after to handle all of the questions for them. Again, thank you for joining us, and take it away, Bill Sheriff.
Thank you. I appreciate everyone's attendance. It's been a pretty exciting last few months, starting out with obviously the management change at the end of February, first part of March, which was somewhat unsettling to the investing public. We came out quickly with solid plans for growth and moving on and doing so in a more expeditious fashion, which I think we've more than achieved. We'll be taking you through some of that. We also will talk about some of the more details of the recently closed, in fact, just in the last week, $115 million convertible note offering that was incredibly well received and oversubscribed and a number of other corporate updates.
One of the biggest things to really look at in terms of the performance of the company is the fact that since the March timeframe, we have increased, depending on what timeframe metric you're looking at, daily production rates on the order of 200% - 300%. That speaks incredibly well to our team. I've always told everyone for an awful long time that enCore's biggest strength is its people, and I think nothing has proven more true than that during the last quarter. Everyone stepped up. We promoted from within, and the results speak for themselves. We'll get into that in a little more detail as well. I know there's some folks that are keenly interested in our CEO and CFO ongoing searches. Those are, in the last few days, final strokes.
We're down to the final candidates in each category, and we'll be conducting interviews in the next few days, going to the board with recommendations. I think we're down to days or maybe a short week or two, but certainly not a long number of weeks or months before we name those successors in each position. We're quite excited about the candidates that we have, and we think it'll be a real strong statement for taking enCore into the future. I think with that, I'll just turn it over to Rob for a few minutes, and he can talk to you about some of the details, and then I'll be back to address some other issues and, of course, your questions following our presentation. Rob?
Thank you, Bill. I appreciate your comments, Bill. I just want to reiterate, the last three or four months, we've seen tremendous growth within the organization, and it's a testament to the bench strength and the people within the company. We've had some key promotions on the operations side, and those promotions, once they've come on board, have resulted in tremendous outcomes. As Bill mentioned, we've seen a 200%- 300% production increase, averaging well over 2,500 lbs production a day. If we put over 3,500 lbs in June, we've also seen one of the key metrics that we like to track is the number of days it takes to bring out a well for the gun line. We've gone from a seven-day to just over a day of bringing new extraction and injection production wells online.
That creates efficiencies, which creates the opportunity for us to get more pounds out of the ground quicker, which really is, at the end of the day, the key to all of this. In addition, we saw ourselves in Q1 kind of stuck in a position of drilling rates having around 15% -1 6% drill rates in just over a quarter. We've more than doubled that, and we continuously grow in that phase as well. This gives a testament to the team that we have on hand, the approach that they've been taking, which is getting the job done quickly, efficiently, and not wasting time. The production results that we've seen are real key to that. What's next? We are in a big growth phase. We have a lot of really great projects lined up, some of which we've announced already out to the public.
We're really excited about those, and we have a lot of encouragement about the team that we have behind those projects that we're going to continue to advance them quickly and efficiently at the same pace that you've seen what we've done over the last quarter. We're excited. The next couple of quarters are going to hold for enCore, and we're excited to share those with you as they continue to advance. With that, Bill, I'll pass it back to you.
Sure, thanks. I'll recap a little bit of that because I think about the first three quarters of it, we were having some technical difficulties with the microphone. Just to recap on some of the really key points, in terms of ISR, it may be a little bit unknown, but really the key factor here is your days to installing a production well. When we made our changes back in the first part of the second quarter, it was taking us almost seven days to get a production well online. That's either an injector well or an extractor well. To show you the sense of urgency that I talked about at that time, it wasn't a matter of the change in management by any means, it's just a daily fact of our life in terms of we've got to be urgent every day.
It's a culture that we've instilled to be urgent. As such, we've dropped that time to install a production or injection well from seven days to just over one. That's about an 80% increase in efficiency. That's translated into that production rise that you've seen, and we'll continue to do that. In fact, one of the limiting factors now is, as you all well know, the plants there were built decades ago. While they've been refurbished, a lot of the rolling stock equipment, a lot of the ancillary equipment is not as new. I'll go over a kind of a line item budget for our use of proceeds from the notes, and you'll see that there is, in fact, a line item to upgrade some of that day-to-day equipment that we use, which should result in continued increases of efficiency.
Obviously, as we get down to the one day per well, it starts to get a bit more difficult to see big changes. Establishing that urgent efficiency throughout the whole program is going to continue to yield the best results possible and cement our position as the leading ISR producer in the U.S. One of the other things is, I think Rob touched on, and I'm not sure if you were able to hear it or not, we've replaced and moved and repositioned all of the key production-oriented people within the company and done that entirely from within. Here again, that goes to the bench strength that we've had. We've also obviously been recruiting and have added a few people to back that up and have added to our operations team while promoting from within.
We still have one of the deepest bench strengths in the industry this side of Kazakhstan, and I think we're set up very well to continue our pursuit of multiple production centers. As you well know, we received our radioactive materials license on Upper Spring Creek. Construction is underway there, and it's been announced, and we look forward to that coming online once our final permit is received. Most likely, that'll be in 2026. It's possible it could be a little bit earlier, but I wouldn't count on it. The active drill rate count is another thing Rob had mentioned. We were down in the lower teens in late February, and now we're up just bumping up against 30%. We've also mentioned we'd like to get 30%- 32%. I think we've got 27%- 28% in action as we speak today.
We're well on our way, and here again, that translates to the efficiency of bringing on new wells, et cetera. Everything across the board is moving in the right direction. Now, trying to explain the convertible note to you. First off, even after the upsize and the green shoe on it, green shoe was $15 million. The upsize was $25 million from our original $75 million. First off, it was taken up by an incredibly large number of funds that we've seldom if ever spoken with. I'd say the lowest fund size that participated was right at $1 billion assets under management. The largest was in three digits of assets under management, and the average or typical subscriber to our placement was in the roughly $20 billion assets under management range.
What this has done is it's really opened the door to a whole other tier of level of investor in enCore. There are a number of factors that go into a convertible issuance, but clearly, a large number of those funds were in it for the long-term appreciation of the stock while seeing a very modest return on their capital investment. It shows a great deal of confidence in enCore, and we're very grateful to the consortium of leading funds that participated. What we've done to ensure that any dilution on a potential conversion later on is diminished is we've entered into what's called a capped call arrangement. This is a separate arrangement where we've entered into an agreement with a consortium of four leading international banks around the world.
They're basically essentially backstopping the difference in price such that we end up getting a 75% premium over the stock price the day before the deal was announced. We're up in the $4.50 range for conversion, and that's a substantial premium for where we are. I would argue that that'll be an accretive transaction, not a dilutive transaction. The key advantages are many. Number one, unsecured debt. Number two, it doesn't tie our hands. Number two, it brings in an entire new universe of investors, which we've not seen before. That's going to be very helpful in the long run. The generalist funds participated to a large extent, and this is something that we have yet to see in terms of widespread participation in the sector. We welcome them.
We've been working towards recruiting the generalist funds to take a hard look at nuclear for a long time, and this shows the success or the rewards for that roughly year and a half to two-year program in terms of planting seeds with the generalist funds primarily in the U.S. Quite happy with that. Of course, the low cost of capital, 5.5%, is a very attractive rate for us. Upon redemption, when it's time to redeem the notes, we can pay for that in cash or stock or some combination of both. It gives us an incredible amount of flexibility. That sums up the note offering. It certainly paves the way for future plans, one of which is Dewey Burdock. I'll come back and talk about Alta Mesa and expansion. Dewey Burdock, our property in South Dakota, is moving ahead.
We plan to put a significant amount of cash into that this next coming year and the following year as we ramp that up towards production and get through our last permitting hurdles here with the state of South Dakota and some last tidying up on the EPA permit. The NRC permits are well in hand, and we look forward to developing that, which will be our second multi-decade asset that comes on after Alta Mesa. Turning to Alta Mesa, right before the notes offering, we'd indicated we'd issued a press release where we had finally, after well over a year, year and a half, maybe even more of trying, we've successfully acquired the surface and mineral leases on the project immediately east of the producing and past producing well fields at Alta Mesa.
If you go back to that press release, which was a couple of Mondays ago, I think you'll, and look at the map, it tells, you know, one picture tells the story. It's more than I could go on for an hour explaining, but I'll try and highlight it for you. If you followed it or any of our press releases over the last few years, almost all of the well fields at Alta Mesa have ended abruptly along a vertical north-south line. That's not a geologic control. The uranium doesn't know where that property line is. It ran right up to the property line on a number of well fields. The adjoining property to the east that's called Tacubaya will be an extension of Alta Mesa. In fact, it's part of the joint venture.
Chevron drilled it fairly extensively in a very small area in the northwestern portion of that land block, very successfully identifying uranium in five of the same sands that we have immediately across the line. That was the last drilling seen on the property, and we're looking forward to aggressively mounting our drilling campaign, hopefully as early as October. We've got a number of projected continuations of those mineralized trends that have been exploited both in the past by other operators, as well as our currently operating well field number seven. We look at this as an incredible plus for the company in terms of the relatively shallow resources that we're enjoying at Alta Mesa now, continuing across the property line into the newly acquired Tacubaya or Alta Mesa East, as it'll be referred to, property.
That should, take a look at the map, you can see the obvious implications from that. The other aspect of that map that I want to call your attention to is simply a reevaluation of the incredible amount of drilling that's been done on Alta Mesa proper. That is the area where the well fields that have been produced in the past, as well as the one we're working on now, and another one that has not yet been produced from but is permitted. Here again, those are illustrated clearly on that map. In general, the drilling has always targeted a specific sand, whether that's middle C or upper B or lower B. It's onto a roll front. We have stacked roll fronts occurring in probably seven different sands there, six or seven different sands.
While there is mineralization in roll fronts in each one of these sands, it's not directly beneath one another. These rolls are sinuous, as if you're looking at a piece of spaghetti laid out. They don't necessarily conform to the same shape and pattern in each sand. While you're targeting one and you're following up on proving it up so that you can put it under production like we have, each of these intervals is produced separately. There are a number of reasons for that, which I won't get into technically. If anyone's interested, we'll follow up on that. The other intercepts that you get in the sands below and above that particular producing targeted sand, here again, don't conform to the geometry of the one you're targeting.
When you look at it in whole, you see a whole lot of ore grade hits above cutoff, but you really see the trend you've been following. We've taken that data and gotten considerably more granular on it by taking each specific sand layer and only looking at that sand and the intercepts within it. Then again, adjusting the drill data so that the only thing we see are the holes above cutoff. When we do that, not so surprisingly, new trends emerge. By following up on those, which we've already been doing, we have established the well field three extension, which is under permitting now. That was a result of taking a look at this more granular approach to the data that exists and then doing some infill drilling along the newly emerged trends. You'll also see on that map two different areas circled.
I believe it was in orange, one to the north, one to the south. Here again, these we have not proven up yet, but they have emerged from this granular approach as strong trends within different sands than the one that was produced from that area. Infill drilling on those is continuing, and we're quite optimistic that both of those will be placed into the queue for permitting as additional well fields. A lot of dynamic action is happening at Alta Mesa, a lot of it at Alta Mesa East or the Tacubaya that we picked up. If you missed that news release, I'd really encourage you to go take a look at it. One of the things I do want to do is give you a good idea of what we were looking at in terms of our line item budgets for the offering.
Bear with me for a moment, I'll pull that out. Too many computer screens. The first one was obviously paying our Boss note off. We had taken out a loan with Boss Energy, our Alta Mesa joint venture partner. That was paid back immediately upon the notes closing. That was $10.5 million, roughly. We've got an additional almost $10 million lined up for additional plant equipment and upgrading of our ancillary equipment at both the Upper Spring Creek site, where we're obviously doing construction, but more importantly at the Rosita site, including some automation of those facilities. At the flagship Alta Mesa, we'll be seeing that as well. It includes additional new logging equipment and additional rolling stock. That's very important to continue our march towards ultimate efficiency. In terms of the exploration, Alta Mesa is at about $6 million, and this is Alta Mesa proper.
This is our 70% share of it. 30% of that will be borne by Boss Energy on top of that, so you're looking at almost a $10 million budget there. Alta Mesa East or the Tacubaya , our newly acquired ground just to the east, is going to see significant exploration. We've got that budgeted at $10 million. The exploration and development drilling at Upper Spring Creek, which is a generalized area that's north of the Rosita plant and will be providing satellite feed, covers several different deposits, and we see continuation of those trends as well. We've got a pretty healthy budget in there at just over $10 million over the course of the next 12 -1 8 months. In terms of a longer term, we've got a line item budget in for additional Texas exploration projects that have been partially permitted in the past.
We've got a flex budget in there of about $12 million for those over the coming three years. Here again, that's dependent upon some land negotiations, some exploration, et cetera. Nonetheless, Texas is the premier location in terms of permitting and getting these things into production quickly. Just to remind everyone, we've had four different permits going through the TCEQ since we started, and they've resulted in 36-month, 30-month, 17-month, and 20-month time horizons, which is, I believe, the best in the business. The 17-month and 20-month is about what it takes to permit a sidewalk in a big city, much less a radioactive materials site. We're quite pleased to be working with the TCEQ in Texas and find them to be very supportive. Turning back to our budget, we've got $10 million, $10 million- $12 million budgeted for Dewey Burdock.
This is going to include engineering, obviously, of the infrastructure, including the central processing plant that will have to be built there. It also is intended for moving us through the state permitting as quickly as possible. State permitting has not begun yet, but we look forward to doing that here in the coming months. Obviously, there'll be condemnation drilling once the exact site has been designed for the CPP, et cetera. That's going to be a big movement. You'll see our whole focus on the northern tier expand as a result of this offering. That includes Gas Hills, the next project in line after Dewey Burdock. Gas Hills will be spending $4 to $5 million. There are several other projects that we have that are ISR that are in the neighborhood that would be satellite feed, including (Aladdin), which is roughly a $2 million budget.
We've got several others that are about $1 million. Reclamation, net of boundary funds, is going to be $3 million- $4 million. We've got an M&A budget, general corporate, that's $30 million. That adds up to about $100 million right there. Obviously, we've got more detail than that in our own budgets, but I think for public disclosure, that's probably quite adequate detail. There's some flexibility depending upon success and where you are. The one I want to talk a little bit more about is the $30 million that's in there for M&A and general corporate. For $30 million, you're not going to do a lot of M, but there are some acquisitions that you can undertake with that budget. You can take some toehold positions in companies that you think might be a potential marriage candidate through either merger or acquisition.
I do feel very strongly, as does the board, that we're entering a position where you are a part of the market where you're going to see consolidation. Right now, there's roughly five or six companies that are contending to be ISR producers in the U.S. All of us running a G&A budget, that's not a very efficient program. I think you're going to see a consolidation to where there's probably a couple of us left through mergers and acquisitions of the other companies. That way, you're essentially increasing your G&A only marginally, but your production significantly. If ever there was a business calling out screaming for mergers and acquisitions, it's this one. I think that's applicable broadly across the globe, but more importantly to us, of course, is in the U.S. and North America where we operate. I think that pretty much covers it.
I certainly welcome you to give any other questions here in a minute, just checking to make sure we didn't miss anything right off the top. I think, just in terms of what's coming for milestones, which is always someone's question, I'll just cut it off before we get it. If you look at that line item budget, you can see there are going to be a lot of milestones coming this year and the following year. Obviously, all of it's going to be highlighted by production. The steady march towards increasing that and increasing our platforms for production is obviously key to the company's growth over the next few years. With that, I'll hand it back to Janet, who will take any of the questions you've got, and Rob and I will do our best to answer them.
Thank you, Bill. Apologies for some technical difficulties we had on Rob's microphone. Rob, can you just do a test to see if we can hear you now?
Janet, apologies. Can you hear me OK, or is there still some issues?
Much better. I'll leave it to both of you to decide on how to handle the questions. We've received a number, and I'll try in a reasonable time to get through all of them. If I do not get to your question and you do want follow-up, we are available at info@encoreuranium.com. We have also loaded up the slide. This was a general update and not a slide deck presentation. Bill did mention the map at Alta Mesa with the extension. That is now up on your screen, so you can see that. With that, there are a few questions about this acquisition. Bill and Rob, I'll let you decide how to answer. I know this news came out in advance of the transaction with the convertible note. Was funds used from that transaction used to acquire this?
If you're able to speak to the cost of acquisition or how that was handled?
I'm not going to be specific on the cost of acquisition. You'll be able to see it in a larger budget in our financials. There is a competitive nature of business in South Texas, as I'm sure you're aware. This particular block, just as a bit more background you can see on your screen now, consisted of over 200 property owners. That might explain why it took a year and a half or so to get everybody lined up in an agreement. You can also see these are the things I was talking about here. Clearly, you can see the trends projected into the neighboring block from the well fields to the west, over into the east, into the newly acquired area. You can see the stippled area there where Chevron did most of their drilling.
On the current Alta Mesa side, you see in green right in the center of the well fields there, three extensions. This is one of those, actually, it's the first one of those new areas that was identified by the more granular, detailed search and evaluation of the data that we've got through drilling, and then obviously followed up by additional infill on the newly identified trends. Similarly, at the top and the bottom, you see orange ellipses there. Those are the areas that we've found additional trends that we're following up on and will be following up on throughout the coming 12 months and moving those into permitting as well. I'll point out three extensions has already been, the permitting has already been started on that.
You also see down at the bottom left, I believe it's a wellf ield 5A that's permitted but has not gone into production yet. It's starting to look like a major, major uranium center, which is what we've always thought. We've obviously coveted the ground to the east, and now we have it. This is a huge fundamental push for us.
Thank you, Bill. There are a few questions around production guidelines. Are you able to give any guidance on this?
Since early March, this year our deliveries were outlined for everyone in early November of 2024 in terms of our minimum contractual deliveries for the next five years. We will update that yearly. Incidentally, about the same time every year in the fourth quarter, we'll give you a five-year projection of our contract book in terms of a blended-out approach. We aren't allowed to give you specific contract details due to confidentiality with each of the nuclear utilities. We are able to give you a blended book, which will give you a lot more metrics than most companies provide. We continue to assert we will make our production this year and deliveries without buying any uranium in the market. That is, we will produce enough uranium to meet our demands this year.
That'll be a big improvement over last year where we had to actually purchase some in the market at not particularly our choice in timing to meet a production shortfall. Looking out further than that, we've got so many things that are dependent upon permitting. We are not issuing 2026 guidance at this time. Once we receive final permitting on Upper Spring Creek in terms of the initial satellite plant there, we will be able to provide the market with some guidance. Until then, predicting when permitting is going to be within a 6 month- 12-month period is pretty easy. Predicting what month it's going to be and when you're going to start production is virtually impossible.
There's a question about enCore's ownership in nuclear fuels now that there's been a transaction announced and pending with another company. Can you provide any comment on that?
We are still quite keen on the prospects of the combined company, but nuclear fuels project, the big project at (KC) Wyoming in particular. It's immediately adjacent to the Energy Fuels project up there, Nichols Ranch. In fact, we're right up against the property line. Here again, the roll fronts don't know exactly where the property lines are. We are highly encouraged up there with that. Also, we've just, quite frankly, been a little busy with our financing and this map and concentrating on our own production. We will be taking a very hard look at the assets of Premier. Notably, there are a couple of those that have piqued our interest considerably. We are very constructive on the new company. Obviously, size matters in this business. I guess that was the first step in terms of the mergers that I was talking about. We are supportive.
We will be keeping a close eye on it and evaluating as we go forward. We are obviously a very large shareholder of Premier. I think the consolidation is a good idea.
Thank you, Bill. We have a number of questions about the current Trump administration and their support for domestic energy. I'm going to try and summarize a number of them. They've announced some funding programs from the Department of Energy. There have been different initiatives at different departments. Can you provide any comment on any discussions or interests in domestic energy and how it impacts enCore Energy?
Rob, you want to take that to start? I'll add a couple of comments at the end, maybe.
Sure. We're very encouraged by the efforts and the commentary coming out of D.C., the administration. We certainly see a very strong tailwind coming in to help support the uranium and nuclear industry over the coming years. A lot of the stuff that we've seen come out recently from the administration has largely been on some of the other aspects of the fuel cycle. We certainly think that's going to filter down on the production side. We're obviously waiting to see what that's going to look like on a granular level. We're constantly looking and engaging ourselves with various groups and looking to see how we can help facilitate and get some of the support that we certainly would anticipate seeing. We are excited about that.
We are very encouraged, again, by what the administration is doing and what that means for the overall industry as we move forward, both federally and then as that funnels down to the state level as well. That's one of the other areas, as Bill touched on, the permitting. We're waiting to see how that's going to affect that at the state level. We certainly encourage, and we believe that's going to happen. Questions on the timing of that. We do anticipate seeing some movement in that regard as well.
I would just add that the one thing I would, if anything, the word would be temper the audience on is these things take time. The nuclear fuel cycle, for those of you that aren't familiar with it, I'm sure almost everyone is, but it starts out with our product, yellowcake. That goes to the conversion facility, of which there is one in the U.S., ConverDyn, located in Metropolis, Illinois. It then goes to the enrichment plant. From the enrichment plant, once it's enriched to 5% U-235, it goes to the fabrication of the actual assembly for going into the customer's nuclear reactors. Each one of these steps is contracted separately by the utility. There are two pinch points that are critical to the nuclear plans of not only the U.S., but the world.
Those are enrichment, of which Russia owns about 44% of the enrichment capacity of the world, and the U.S. is very much behind in that, and conversion. Here again, that's a bottleneck, not quite as big as the enrichment one. Those are the areas that are getting the bulk of the current federal funding, and rightfully so, because until you fix those problems, it's just a delay or a hindrance, is a better word, in terms of getting our product, the consumption of it, up to where everyone's expecting it in the next year or two and certainly the decade beyond. I think the money is going in the right places.
I think it will start to come down to the fuel because obviously there's a huge shortage looming in terms of the amount of uranium that's going to be required with all the advances in SMRs, the restart of large reactors, commissioning of new reactors, and of course, the AI applications. I think in general, it's a very positive thing. We look forward to at least three and a half more years of working under the Trump administration.
Thank you. I have a number of questions coming in about, I think, that have been created from your comments about the need for consolidation in the industry. Do you, so I'm going to summarize a few of them. How do you see this playing out as it relates to enCore ? Do you envision, what do you envision your future role in this consolidation?
I think enCore , if you look at our heritage, it started back in 2004 with a number of us in the company with Energy Metals Corp During that three-year period, we did five substantial M&As. The sixth one was where we were acquired by Uranium One. We have a very similar approach here. While we haven't done but one merger in the last three or four years, we've done a number of significant acquisitions, and we will continue down that road. At the same time, I've done, I don't know how many mergers over my career, but the ones that don't happen are usually due to ego issues. There is no ego on this one. We obviously have a great staff and a lot to offer.
If a compelling offer comes along, then obviously with the board and the shareholders' consent and endorsement, we'd be happy to be part of a bigger company moving forward. At the same time, in the absence of that, we aren't going to let grass grow under our feet in terms of us pursuing additional opportunities ourselves.
Another question on how do you envision shareholders profiting from enCore in the next two years? The second part to the question, when do you or do you envision buybacks or dividends beginning?
The answer to the first one is simple, execution. We have all the pieces that are needed. We have, as I mentioned, a very deep bench strength in terms of our production skilled people. We've got great properties in front of us. We've got a number of properties at various stages through the permitting schedule. Permitting is always the one thing that you can't time. You're either in a generally good or an indifferent or a potentially bad permitting environment. Those are the things that we've obviously tried to avoid anything in the bad category. Still, even within the best jurisdiction out there, there's some flexibility and uncertainty over exactly when you're going to get your permitting. In terms of going positive cash flow, you know, we're close. The last two quarters are, and that reminds me of something I really need to bring up, and that's our revenue schedule.
We spend money every day, but we get paid 5x or 6x a year. That's due to the contracts. There are quarters where you will see revenue down, such as last quarter that we reported on. Revenue was down considerably because there was only one contract for 60,000 lbs, as I recall. I can check that number in the queue, but I'm pretty sure that's the right number. Whereas other quarters will be produced, you know, we'll be delivering as opposed to producing the, you know, 3x or 4x that amount. Your cash flow is going to vary from quarter to quarter because your delivery book is not consistent throughout the year. All of these things factor into when we'll be profitable. We aren't, you know, obviously create a stock buyback until we've reached that level. Cash flow positive, I'll say we're right on the cusp of that.
It really just boils down to execution and urgency. I think we've implemented both, and I look forward to that continuing.
Thank you, Bill. Maybe just elaborate a little bit, a couple of questions on permitting and any issues that you expect as you move forward.
I think, you know, the issues you never know until you get them, right? In Texas, it's pretty smooth. I would ask Rob to comment just basically on where we are in South Dakota. I think that would be a good update for people.
Yeah, so South Dakota permitting-wise, we're moving along really nicely. We've got a current pending renewal with the NRC and anticipate that getting wrapped up by early next year. Separately, we have an outstanding litigation going on between the EPA and the (SUE) right now. We're looking at probably the end of the year. It's been gone through the appellate process on a number of appeals. We've been successful at every level and been very happy to see the outcomes of those and believe that we're going to see a resolution of that by the end of this year. We've got our current permitting, which is in place, which is allowing us to move forward on these projects.
That's an important point to keep in mind that through this process, we were issued our permits and we are able to proceed forward with the development of this project, notwithstanding the current appeals process. It's all very encouraging and we don't anticipate any delays in that regard.
Thank you both. I know we're moving close to about 45 minutes, so there's still a couple of outstanding questions, but I'm trying to wrap it up. There's a number of questions about some costs for G&A and working with the consortium within the deal. I don't know if you can answer anything a bit more specific on that.
Yeah, I believe the news release on the financing covered the separate transaction in terms of the capped call. Aside from that, the transaction itself with Cantor was very, very typical, very low single digit, essentially commission, for the lack of a better term. They call it different in a note, but that's that. To get that net increase on the conversion was on the order of about $10 million. I believe that might even be an exact number. Rob, is that correct?
Yeah, that's about spot on, Bill. That's correct.
Yep. What that did, obviously, is increase the amount of income to the company upon exercise of that conversion by a factor of five to six, as I recall. It was a significant impact and certainly lessens dilution. Here again, the key to all of this is execution and production and enlarging our production, and the money gives us the ability to continue our aggressive approach and expand it. That's the big part of it. G&A, obviously, is a big concern for all of these companies. Here again, I view that as the fundamental driver on the M&A front. Everyone's got it. As long as you're employing 130 or 140 people, you've got a considerable burn. All of the actual infield part goes into our cost per pound. Here again, the G&A is something that concerns us.
What concerns us more is being able to increase our production, which answers the problems. More production, positive cash flow is the first step. Then profit comes after that. You're going to have to have the people to do it. There's no excess G&A with this group. You can't maintain a good quality staff in an area that, contrary to what some of the news reports indicate, there is still wage inflation, especially in a field where there's such a competition for highly skilled individuals in a very, I don't know, I'd say a low-density group. There's not a lot of experts running around in In-Situ Uranium. Very few people that have actually done it. It costs what it costs, basically. We keep tabs on it. We don't go around sponsoring the Formula 1 teams or hockey teams or any of that sort of thing.
We try and run a pretty tight ship, but advance the company as quickly as possible to attain those positive cash flow and then profit objectives.
Thanks, Bill. I think I'm going to wrap up the questions there. If anybody does not feel that we answered your questions sufficiently or at all, please do contact us at info@encoreuranium.com. There were several continuing questions about the CEO search, which Bill and Rob addressed. That is wrapping up imminently, as well as the CFO and production guidelines. There were a number of questions on that. I believe Bill and Rob answered those, with the focus being to meet contracted obligations, unless I am incorrect. One last request. What is your biggest challenge going forward?
Biggest challenge is really the permitting. It's an uncertainty. It's always an uncertainty. There are a lot of concerns. Keeping our good staff, keeping our quality people in a competitive environment, we try and incentivize them to where they do it. More importantly than that, we try and provide a culture where they know they're appreciated, where their efforts are rewarded and acknowledged. Really, that's the best way you can build a team. I think we've done really well in that department. I think we'll continue to come up with new ideas to do even a better job on that front. In terms of permitting, we'll obviously be augmenting our permitting efforts as our interests and our endeavors expand. That's the only one that's really got an aspect that's outside of our hand, outside of some sort of black swan event or something.
The future is pretty much in our hands. The culture of urgency and execution that we've done quite well with in the last four or five months is one that, that's the marching order of the day and will continue to be the motto of the company moving forward.
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Rob. As somebody that's involved on the inside, I do see the current administration really pushing to meet some aggressive timelines and have been very impressed with the working relationships with the various government officials as they've been given some clear timelines as well. I want to thank everybody for your time. We know it's valuable. Again, this was recorded and you can watch at your convenience. Thank you, Bill Sheriff and Rob Willette. That's it for me. Everyone, have a great day.
I would like to just say one thing before we leave. None of this would have been possible without our dedicated team, all the way from the general employee in the field through any supervisory level, all the way up. It takes a great team, everybody in the same boat, rowing in the same direction. I'd be remiss not to acknowledge all of their help, as well as a team of consultants. I talk about permitting and some of these other various aspects of the business. Without some of that permitting assistance and outside consultancy, we'd be not in such great shape. With the team we've got, we're very happy with our position and look forward to expanding our lead in the field.
Echo that, Bill. Thanks. Real quickly, yeah, I do believe we have the best team in the industry out there. I think our results over the last couple of quarters have proven that out. Without them, we wouldn't be here right now. I appreciate everybody's effort.
Thank you both.
Our shareholders make it all possible. We would be nowhere without our shareholders.
Thank you both. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Again, thank you for your time.
Thank you.