In short: "And UC" — most likely Uranium Energy Corp (caption garble; identification probable, not certain) — the third name with a market cap big enough for generalist funds; a scale benchmark for his merger argument.
9:38But in order to get to where the Citadels of the world can purchase you, the big hedge funds, the big generalists, you've got to be bigger. And right now, there's only a couple of companies out there, Camo and maybe Dennis now and UC, that have a market cap big enough for these guys. They want to be able to write a $50 million check and not become an insider.
In short: Holds licensed capacity "in abundance" at Irigaray, Hobson and Sweetwater, but "licensed capacity and delivered pounds are separate animals" — under 70,000 lb in a recent quarter. "Spreadsheet pounds are not the same as actual pounds, no matter how flashy the presentation is"; his bet for the NNSA order is Energy Fuels "if UEC keeps on focusing more on presentation than delivery."
UEC owns several licensed US uranium processing sites, so on paper it could supply a lot of the government's new domestic demand. In practice it recently produced under 70,000 pounds in a quarter.
Mart's criticism is the gap between what a company says it could produce and what it actually delivers — "spreadsheet pounds are not the same as actual pounds." He expects Energy Fuels, not UEC, to be the one that actually delivers.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: His own company (EVP). Full production at Christensen Ranch/Irigaray (~265,000 lb to date), Burke Hollow in Texas started last quarter, Ludeman satellite and the 4 Mlb/yr FAST-41 Sweetwater plant coming; "our total licensed capacity is 12 million pounds a year" with 300 Mlb of resources within 50–100 miles of its plants. No guidance yet — steady state over 2027. Building a US refining and conversion facility with a "very warm reaction" in Washington, and positioned for the DOE's US-origin purchases ("We will" be ready by 2030).
Uranium Energy is a US uranium miner and Melbye is one of its top executives, so this is management describing its own business. The new angle in this interview is Washington. The Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons agency says the uranium stockpiles built during the Cold War for submarines, aircraft carriers and warheads are running out, and it has taken the first formal step toward buying 3–4 million pounds a year starting in 2030. Crucially, that uranium must be mined in the US and be "unobligated" — free of the international safeguard promises that stop commercial nuclear fuel being used for military purposes. Only a handful of US producers can supply that, so a buyer restricted to them tends to pay more than the world price. The last time the government did something similar, UEC says it received a 20–30% premium.
The company mines mostly by in-situ recovery — pumping a solution through underground sandstone and bringing dissolved uranium to the surface, more like an oil field than a pit. Its Wyoming operation is producing (about 265,000 pounds so far), a Texas mine started last quarter, and two more Wyoming sources are coming. Its licences allow 12 million pounds a year and it claims 300 million pounds of resources near its plants, but it has not yet given a production forecast; it expects the mines to settle into steady output during 2027. It is also building a US facility to refine and convert uranium — the processing step between the mine and the enrichment plant that the US currently has little of — which is the kind of project the government has been willing to back with equity stakes elsewhere. All of these figures are the company's own.
10:09That's a fast 41 project in the Trump administration where they've agreed to fast track permitting and licensing of that 4 million pound a year operation in Wyoming. So our total licensed capacity is 12 million pounds a year. Obviously, we're not going to fully utilize that in the immediate term. But knowing that we have that capacity and we have 300 million pounds of resources within 50 to 100 miles of those processing plants should give the investor confidence that not only can we produce today, but we can ramp up and produce for many years into
In short: Melbye (EVP): "UEC, URC are all trading well below where they should be given the fundamentals." Building uranium mines "as fast as we can do it in two states," and working to build a 10,000-tonne domestic uranium refining and conversion facility to close the US fuel cycle's one missing gap — "we can't rely on just one 70-year-old facility in Illinois" — with "really good reception" at the Departments of War, Commerce and Energy and the White House. Note: the speaker is UEC's EVP.
UEC is an American uranium miner — it owns permitted deposits in the US and is bringing them into production "as fast as we can do it in two states." The bull case Melbye states plainly is that the stock is "trading well below where it should be given the fundamentals": the commodity is about to move, the demand is contracted decades ahead, and the company already holds the permits that take years to obtain.
The more interesting piece is the conversion plant. Mined uranium is not reactor fuel. It has to be converted into a gas (UF6), enriched, and then fabricated into fuel rods — and the United States has essentially one conversion facility, seventy years old, in Illinois. That single point of failure is the reason America can mine uranium and still not be able to fuel its own reactors. UEC's plan for a 10,000-tonne refining and conversion facility would close that gap, and Melbye reports encouraging conversations at the Departments of War, Commerce and Energy and the White House. If it gets built — and government funding is the open question, since Washington is triaging "the whole periodic table" of critical minerals — UEC stops being only a miner and becomes a piece of national fuel-cycle infrastructure, which is a different and more defensible kind of business.
What to discount: Melbye is UEC's executive vice-president, so this is management talking about its own stock. The conversion facility is an effort, not a funded project, and the "two states" mine build-out carries the usual permitting, cost and grade risks he doesn't dwell on.
In short: Held at a 6.25% target weighting in the Dynamic Model portfolio (the more actively traded of the two books) alongside Cameco, Denison, NexGen and SPUT. No standalone commentary this issue; also named as URA's fourth-largest constituent at 5.29% of the ETF.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Named alongside Cameco, Kazatomprom and Energy Fuels as a producer — the rung most immediately lifted by a rising uranium price.
8:41There's not a lot of us out there. So when you're looking at producers, they're going to be the most immediately impacted by the price of uranium rising and those would be the likes of a Cameco, Kazatomprom, which trades in London, Energy Fuels down in the US, Uranium Energy Corp. So there are a number of producers but no more than a small handful and they're of course going to be directly impacted by the price of uranium.
In short: His own company. "Famously unhedged and indexed to spot pricing… we work for the investor not the utility" — sold pounds above $100 two quarters ago and declined to sell last quarter. Burke Hollow's weak 34,000 lb quarter was a Texas/Wyoming permitting bottleneck, "not a technical issue"; Irigaray/Christensen Ranch running under $40 all-in cost to date; Ludeman satellite into production late next year; Sweetwater's 4 Mlb/yr mill in FAST-41; Roughrider toward the early 2030s. Spending and hiring toward "roughly 5 million pounds of production within 5 years… license capacity to go to 12," aiming to be "a global top 10 uranium producer."
Uranium Energy is a US uranium miner, and Melbye is its executive vice president — so this is a company officer describing his own business, not an outside analyst. What makes it distinctive is a deliberate pricing choice: most uranium miners sign long contracts with power utilities that cap the price they can receive, trading upside for certainty. UEC refused to do that. Its pounds are sold at whatever the market price is on the day — "unhedged," in the jargon — which means shareholders get the full benefit if uranium rises and the full pain if it falls. His line for it is blunt: "we work for the investor not the utility." It sold pounds above $100 two quarters ago and simply chose not to sell into the current $85 market, which is the flexibility that model buys.
Most of its production uses in-situ recovery rather than digging. You drill wells into the sandstone that hosts the uranium, pump a sodium-bicarbonate solution down, and pump uranium-bearing liquid back up — much closer to an oil field than to a pit mine. The important consequence is that the mine is never finished: you have to keep drilling new well fields and building new "header houses" just to stay level as older ones deplete. That is exactly why last quarter's production was so poor. Burke Hollow in Texas delivered only 34,000 pounds, and Melbye's explanation is that state environmental regulators in Texas and Wyoming are so swamped with uranium applications that routine approvals took two and a half months out of a three-month quarter. If he's right that this was paperwork rather than geology or engineering — and those well fields are now approved and flowing — the miss says nothing about the asset. That is the single claim to verify in the next few quarters.
The growth plan stacks four things: Burke Hollow ramping in Texas; expansions plus a new satellite deposit called Ludeman feeding the Wyoming plant; a conventional mill at Sweetwater bought from Rio Tinto, licensed for 4 million pounds a year and now on a federal permitting fast-track; and Roughrider in Saskatchewan for the early 2030s. The target is roughly 5 million pounds a year within five years against licences that permit 12 — with costs so far running under $40 a pound, well below the $85 spot price. Treat every one of those figures as management's own.
12:35And so we'll be feeding Irigaray from both Christensen and Ludeman in addition to the ramp up that's already occurring at Burke Hollow. — And just so we've got a number in our heads, what is the amount of production you're targeting this year? — Well, all of these operations, the interim stages are to get up to — Irigaray Christensen Ranch previously produced at a million pound rate under the Uranium One days.
In short: Re-affirmed from the August-2024 monthly issue: a prominent U.S.-based uranium mining and exploration company headquartered in Texas that controls two production-ready uranium projects. As bilateral supply deals like the India–Australia pact tighten the global commercial uranium market, fully-permitted, domestic Western producers are poised to experience "an unprecedented demand squeeze."
UEC is a U.S. uranium company based in Texas that both mines uranium and holds exploration-stage projects — importantly, it already has two projects that are "production-ready" (permitted and set up to start producing), which is rare because permitting a new uranium mine takes many years. Uranium is the fuel for nuclear power plants.
Prins' argument here is about supply, not the company's quarter. When a country like India signs a deal to buy uranium directly from Australia for decades (as it just did), that uranium is effectively spoken for — locked into a government-to-government contract instead of being available on the open market. As more of these bilateral "I'll sell my resources straight to you" deals get signed, the pool of uranium left for everyone else shrinks. That tightening market pushes the price up and makes any producer that is already permitted and located in a friendly Western country — like UEC — more valuable, because buyers who got shut out of those deals have to source elsewhere. She calls this an "unprecedented demand squeeze" on domestic Western producers.
So UEC is re-affirmed (originally recommended in the August 2024 monthly issue) as the way to own that squeeze: a home-grown, ready-to-produce U.S. uranium supplier positioned to benefit as the world's uranium increasingly gets locked up in nation-to-nation deals and as nuclear power (India alone targets 100 gigawatts by 2047) keeps growing.
In short: Ranks it a 5 (a 6 on valuation alone), owns a lot at zero basis — "a victim of their own success." Marked up to 5 for the likely US-produced-uranium premium: 3–4 years out, likely "far and away the largest US domestic producer," gone from hated to likely-subsidized under the Trump administration.
UEC is a US uranium developer Rule owns heavily (and, like NexGen, has already recouped his original investment from). On the raw value of its assets he'd grade it a 6 — "a victim of their own success," meaning the stock has run up — but he marks it to a 5 because he expects American-mined uranium to command a price premium, and UEC is on track to be by far the biggest US producer in 3–4 years. It's gone from being a hated outsider to a company likely to be subsidized by the Trump administration on energy-security grounds.
46:18— Understood. All right, next one, UEC, Uranium Energy Corp. — They're a victim of their own success. UEC has done a truly spectacular job over time. I own a lot of UEC. I need to disclose that. I have sold enough UEC that I have no basis in my stock. The founder of the company is a good personal friend of mine.
In short: Transformed under Amir Adnani — could become an 8–10 Mlb/yr US producer; "absolutely in the catbird seat" for the American-uranium premium, though not cheap.
UEC mines uranium in the US. Rule says management (led by Amir Adnani) transformed it from a company that couldn't profitably produce anything into a potential 8-to-10-million-pound-a-year producer with a strong balance sheet and good relationships with regulators in Texas and Wyoming. His key insight: US politicians want a domestic uranium supply, so American-produced uranium should command a price premium — and UEC is "in the catbird seat" to capture it. Not cheap, but well positioned.
32:58I got to say it was a lot easier to own UEC a couple billion dollars ago. Uh that company's done an amazing job. On the other hand, it's a transformed company. uh three years ago that was a company that at the then prevailing uranium prices couldn't put a uranium project in production. It didn't make sense at this uranium price with the ability to contract uranium and with the amazing balance sheet they have uh they could become an 8 to 10 million pound a year uranium producer.
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