Title: πŸŽ₯ Scott Melbye: "The Fundamentals Have Never Looked Better" Show: Prinsights Global Spotlight (Substack) β€” video interview, recorded live at the Rick Rule Natural Resource Symposium, Boca Raton, Florida Host: Nomi Prins (founder/CEO, Prinsights Global; ex-Goldman Sachs MD) Guest: Scott Melbye (President, Uranium Producers of America; EVP, Uranium Energy Corp β€” UEC; CEO, Uranium Royalty Corp β€” UROY) Date: 2026-AUG-18 URL: https://prinsights.substack.com/p/scott-melbye-the-fundamentals-have Length: ~7 min (approximate) Note: video interview on Substack; no timestamps; fillers removed, wording otherwise verbatim. Speaker labels added for readability. Auto-transcript name mangles corrected to the real entities: "Iranian Producers of America" β†’ Uranium Producers of America; "Uranium Ban Act" β†’ Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act (the 2024 Russian uranium ban); "Advanced Act" β†’ ADVANCE Act; "Roy's the ticker" β†’ UROY is the ticker; "Ontario Teachers Pension Plant" β†’ Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan; "Tron and Sodash" β†’ trona and soda ash; "Secretary Burgum" β†’ Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; "Fast 41" β†’ FAST-41; "pre-cash flow" β†’ free cash flow. One badly garbled clause ("we agree to the 9,500") is rendered as its evident meaning β€” that spot should catch up to the $95-100 area β€” and is flagged here rather than silently guessed. A truncated clause is left with an ellipsis rather than completed. Saved for personal study. Uranium: spot stuck at $85 as a "coiled spring," the long-term market at $95 pulling spot over $100 in 2H26, Prinsights' $110 target, Uranium Royalty's $1.1B Sweetwater Royalties acquisition (the original Union Pacific land grant β€” 5.3M acres, ~90% of world trona/soda ash), the DPA consortium production survey, a Strategic Uranium Reserve, the Russian ban going full force in January 2028, and UEC's planned 10,000-tonne domestic conversion facility. ================================================================ PRINS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this special episode of Prinsights Global Spotlight, live from the Rick Rule Symposium, Boca Raton, Florida. I am joined here by one of my favorite people in the commodity space, Scott Melbye, who has so many different hats. We've talked about all of them over time here, but president of the Uranium Producers of America, SVP at UEC, CEO of URC β€” UROY is the ticker β€” so many acronyms about your esteemed career. So much is happening in uranium right now. And we have seen the price of uranium pretty much stay in this higher but pretty solid 85 range where all these other commodities are moving all about. You talked about that in your speech. MELBYE: Yeah, absolutely. And Nomi, it's great to be with you and your network and here at the Rule Symposium. There's so much going on with nuclear right now, which is kind of ironic because the uranium equities have kind of been pulled back. We're really excited. Yes, uranium price has been stuck, but it's been stuck at an $85 level, which β€” I'm old enough to remember $7, $8, $9, $10 a pound uranium in the darkest bear market. So we're excited. I truly believe that in the second half of this year, the spot uranium price is a bit of a coiled spring right now, where the long term β€” and it's strange β€” I think the spot price is going to be pulled up by activity in the long-term price. Already the long-term market is trading at $95. But what I mean by that is utilities are going out for long-term proposals soliciting offers from miners and producers, and they're getting fewer and fewer offers and less quality offers in terms of price and flexibilities and everything else. So if they don't like what they see in the long-term market, their only option is to come to the spot. And so I think we're going to have that dynamic play out in the second half of this year. And we'll see spot prices over $100 a pound, and that will improve. We're building uranium mines as fast as we can do it in two states. And Uranium Royalty is really growing to be the capital provider to new miners and developers, not just in the US, but globally. PRINS: That's very interesting. I want to talk about both of those. Specifically, there's been a lot of new developments around URC and around how you're constructed. Can you talk about those? MELBYE: Sure. So our biggest recent news is our announced acquisition of Sweetwater Royalties for $1.1 billion from Orion Resource Partners and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Sweetwater is the current owner of what was the original Union Pacific land grant that the federal U.S. government gave to the railroad in 1860 to build the Transcontinental Railroad. So now that transferring to our ownership gives us 5.3 million acres of land from Cheyenne all the way to Salt Lake City, and more importantly, all the minerals and oil and gas underneath that. We're the largest public company landowner in the United States, largest in Wyoming. On that land lies 90% of the world's soda ash and trona deposits, which is a key ingredient in glass. Five operating mines that are going to be cash flowing are already generating EBITDA of around $74 million a year and free cash flow in the range of $30 to $50 million. So really the objective there was not to pivot away from uranium or nuclear, but to provide the financial strength and cash flows to really turbocharge our acquisitions of additional royalties and streams in the uranium space. PRINS: Yeah, that's what I was really interested in, because you're keeping your core commitment to uranium. MELBYE: I would be the last person on earth to pivot away from nuclear at this moment. PRINS: I think you would. And nor should anybody. But this will be a way to catapult to other countries. MELBYE: Yeah, it's very hard to find uranium royalties that would generate that kind of cash flow between now and 2030. By the time 2030 rolls around, our portfolio of uranium β€” 27 royalties on 24 projects β€” it starts to cash flow on the $20 to $50 million a year annual level in the 2030s. We just wanted to do something to really lift our financial power to go out and build the uranium portfolio between now and then. But these assets have been producing for 50 years. They have 250-year mine life, lowest quartile of cost globally. And we basically get half of the production. It's split with the Department of the Interior. I met with Secretary Burgum over the 4th of July weekend, and we discussed how we're partners on 10.6 million acres of land because it's a checkerboard. Every other quarter section is our land and Department of the Interior BLM land. So he's happy to hear that we're going to work the land, not just for trona and soda ash, but all the uranium potential across southern Wyoming, just south of the Great Divide Basin, also oil and gas and critical minerals, including helium. So we're very excited to really do a survey of what we have on that land. But also we have leases for wind farms, potential for data centers, battery storage. So the optionality on the land β€” just the soda ash revenues are expected to increase by two and a half times over the next five years. But then when you take the optionality of the value of the rest of the land, we're really excited. PRINS: It's super exciting because also, you mentioned in the beginning, and we've seen this, that uranium prices have been high at the 85, stable, should catch up. And we agree it should catch up to the $95 to $100 level. We actually have a target of 110 for this year. But also some of these stocks and share prices in the uranium space have actually underperformed, which is rare throughout the commodity space, the actual level of the commodity. So when you talk about the optionality of something like uranium β€” your royalty corporation, it seems the stock right now is very, very undervalued relative to that. MELBYE: That's the message to the symposium here: I think most people buy into the thesis for nuclear and uranium supply and demand. And really, UEC, URC are all trading well below where they should be given the fundamentals. Nuclear power is doubling in the base case, likely to triple, or President Trump's goal of quadrupling in the US. That's going to rely on a doubling or tripling of uranium conversion enrichment. And our market just isn't prepared. It will be. And higher prices will stimulate that growth and that production. But I anticipate a very long, sustained bull market in uranium that'll be very rewarding for investors. And I think you're not going to have to wait. I think the second half of this year, we go into December 31st and your uranium equities are up significantly over where they are today. PRINS: Yeah, no, absolutely. And we've talked for years about the legislation, some of the bigger legislation. You talked about this in your talk again β€” the ADVANCE Act a few years ago, the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act in 2024. We're about to hit β€” and when I say about, it's in January 2028, but we're fairly close to hitting β€” where that ban really becomes full force as opposed to having some loopholes around it. How does that play into this whole thing? MELBYE: Well, it's critically important. And the real thing that we're looking to in the Trump administration is looking to the domestic industry to ramp up, to basically get us off of that Russian dependency and not fall dependent on Chinese imports. And it's quite interesting that the Trump administration, as part of the Defense Production Act consortium activities, has asked the Uranium Producers of America to survey its members to indicate how much could you produce under strong market conditions and support of public policy, which I'll argue we have both right now. And the number for by the end of next year could be as high as 6 million pounds, but by 2033, it goes up to 35 million pounds. Okay, that's a bit aspirational, and I would love for our industry to hit that number, but even if it's 25 to 30 million, that would coincidentally replace what we're… I think that really should be our goal. And I think that goal resonates with this administration. They'd love to see nothing more. So things like a Strategic Uranium Reserve is something that we're lobbying for, that Trump β€” it was put back. That brings with it all the preferential FAST-41 permitting and licensing and all the stuff that's going to help us get to that 25, 30 million pounds a year. PRINS: You personally, and as president of the Uranium Producers of America, have been so instrumental. I know this because I know you have these conversations at the highest level and on a constant basis. You were instrumental in getting that Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act in 2024 passed. You were very much a part of getting the ADVANCE Act passed. So when you sit here and tell me that you are actually actively working on this, I believe that's going to happen. MELBYE: Well, thank you. I think if we get those policy successes, I think we're going to have a very robust fuel cycle in the United States. Of course, the critical missing gap there is conversion, but our company UEC is engaging in efforts to build a 10,000 metric ton domestic uranium refining and conversion facility, which will close that gap. We can't rely on just one 70-year-old facility in Illinois to meet our needs. We need another facility of equal or larger size. And we're getting really good reception within the Department of War, Department of Commerce, Energy, White House. They have a lot of critical minerals to get through right now. It feels like they're going through the whole periodic table and deciding which are the most urgent to fund. And so they get it. It's the Naval Propulsion Program β€” our aircraft carriers and navies depend on it. But also the energy security of all this buildout or quadrupling of nuclear power. Got to have the fuel cycle to go with it. PRINS: No, absolutely. And we'll continue to have this conversation, I'm sure, many, many times going forward. Scott, thank you so much for giving us your time here today. MELBYE: Thank you. PRINS: And thank you so much for tuning in to Prinsights Global Spotlight.