Earnings Labs

Ur-Energy Inc. (URG)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 3, 2016

$1.74

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Ur-Energy’s Third Quarter 2016 Webcast and Teleconference. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Penne Goplerud. Please go ahead.

Penne Goplerud

Analyst

Thank you, Liz. Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2016 teleconference and webcast. We’re required to draw the attention of all of our participants to the legal disclaimers contained in this morning’s slide presentation. At Slide 2, you will find legal disclaimers with regard to forward-looking statements, risk factors and projections, as well as other cautionary notes to U.S. investors. We ask that you read and consider these disclaimers carefully before investing in our shares. As well, risk factors inherent in forward-looking statements and projections are set forth and discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed on February 26, 2016, with U.S. Securities and Exchange on EDGAR and with securities regulatory authorities in Canada on SEDAR. I would now like to introduce and turn the webcast presentation over to our Chairman and Executive Director, Jeff Klenda.

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

Thank you very much, Penne, and good morning everyone. I, too, would like to thank you in joining us. I briefly toyed with simply replaying the webcast from the second quarter, but then thought what the fun in that. So let’s talk a little bit about what happened in Q3 for us. Unfortunately, lower prices continue to define the Uranium space. We reported to you in our last webcast that we had experienced in the second quarter a $4 drop in spot price and there are striking resemblances to the second quarter. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, we dropped another $4 dropping from $26 a pound to $22 a pound. And unfortunately for us, it didn’t stop there. We also saw another $3.50 decline in spot price for the month of October. There were a number of reasons for this. Of course, our industry continues to be characterized by elevated inventories, limited demand and oversupply. And there are actually a number of contributing factors as I think most of you on this call are aware. We have been waiting for the Japanese to restart reactors that has been much slower in coming than we had thought. And we also have seen a growing inventories due to underfeeding in the industry, but I will take just a couple of minutes here to point out a few things and that is that we find ourselves also in a zero interest rate environment, I just came from a conference in New Orleans, where an economic panel spent to better part of an hour talking about the destructive nature of zero interest rates and soon to be probably negative interest rate environment. And the fact is that it is simply a destroyer of capital. But few people associate that with the lower prices that we…

Steve Hatten

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks Jeff, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. All 13 of the originally planned of Header House in Mine Unit 1 are now installed and operating. With Header House 13 coming on in late May of this year. In addition to the initial well installations other modifications were made to wells in Header House 9 through 12, to optimize injection and increase flow rate. No additional drill work is expected to occur in Mine Unit 1 at this time. In late 2015, early 2016, wells were drilled in case within the first three Header Houses in Mine Unit 2. No additional drilling has been completed since that time as Mine Unit 1 has supported our current production needs. It's anticipated that we will begin work in Mine Unit 2 again sometime after the first of the year. Also the Mine Unit 2 date pact is under regulatory review and we anticipate having all the necessary approvals before the beginning of operations in that mine unit. Finally with respect to drilling six wells were installed in the Lost Creek East area to provide additional hydrologic data in response to comments received from the NRC while forwarding the Lost Creek East amendment application. As would drilling surface construction of Header House 13 was completed in May, incorporating modifications to aid in sustaining operating flow rates an illumining well field maintenance activities such as [indiscernible] These changes have proven themselves out over the last several months and are being incorporated into the other operating Header Houses. To-date those changes that provide a positive results and should help us in making the most out of the first Mine Unit. Construction of the infrastructure for Mine Unit 2 is also ongoing with primary fencing and roads complete, and the…

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

Great, thanks, Steve. Couple of comments that I would like to follow-on with respect to Steve's report. I just would like to say that, Steve told you, we began production in Mine Unit 1 in August of 2013 and here we are in October of 2016 and we are still producing still pulling 45,000 pounds to 50,000 pounds a month out of this well field our of this mine unit more than three years later that is absolutely extraordinary and certainly not characteristic of your average ISR property. The other thing – and I think Steve is a bit modest and he might have downplayed this a bit but with the Class V water treatment system that's now being put in place. I think this is yet again evidence of the creativity and the adaptability of our crew out there. This started as an idea of one of our people, it is something now that we will be doing that no one else in the industry is doing, but we will be able to significantly decrease our wastewater which we've been saying for three years is an issue for us and that we have to be very careful and be water wise out at Lost Creek. And now this is a great example of how our guys deploy their creativity and coming up with solutions and in this case to wastewater constraint and that results in a competitive advantage. And I think that now Steve has done a great job of demonstrating that we are producing at some of the lowest costs in the industry. In fact, I think there are only a couple of projects in Kazakhstan right now that are producing at a lower cost than we are, and that is primarily because the Kazakhstani Tenge has declined by 87% over the last three years. So they are right now on a dollar for dollar basis a bit more competitive than we are, but we are far and away the lowest cost producer across all publicly traded companies. But since despite that fact it doesn't mean that we don't have to watch our nickels and dimes. We do so we have to very much. And with that I will like to turn this over to Roger Smith, our Chief Financial Officer, our Chief Administrative Officer and well our Chief penny consultant [ph]. So with that Roger take it away please.

Roger Smith

Analyst

Thank you, Jeff. And good morning, everyone. On Slide 11, we show our cost per pound sold by quarter. We also show the average sales price that we received as compared to the average spot price during the period. During the quarter we had sold 200,000 pounds which included two contracts sales of 100,000 pounds each. The first in July $62 a pound and the second in September $33 a pound. There were no spot sales during the quarter. This generated uranium sales revenues of $9.5 million at an average price of $47 per pound as compared to the average spot price during the quarter which declined to $25 per pound. The average cost per pound sold increased slightly to $29 per pound, enables the saying with a continuing decline in the spot price we are grateful to be able to sell into our higher priced contracts which did average $47 per pound during the quarter. The resulting gross profit for the quarter was $18 per pound and this represents a gross profit margin of about 39%. On a cash cost basis our gross profit was $30 per pound or 63% on a gross profit margin basis. In summary, the price per pound sold in Q3 improved considerably while our costs were relatively consistent. And the resulting gross profit and the related profit margin were nicely up from the previous quarter. Next slide please. Excuse me. This slide shows our operating costs. Year-to-date through September for 2014, 2015 and 2016, our three most significant operating expenditures are exploration, development and G&A. In total, we have lowered these expenditures by one-third since 2014 in an effort to manage our cost in this soft uranium market. Exploration and evaluation cost continue to be held at levels that are necessary to maintain our…

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

Great. Thank you, Roger. And I'd like to just make one more comment Roger you mentioned just a few moments ago that our remaining deliver this year is just under $33 a pound and I can't help to think out interesting and it is that that perceptions change so quickly in the Uranium space. Only a year-ago when spot price was in the high-30s but candidly we declined a lot of contracts at that time because we need them to be unacceptably low as we thought that we would not take them. Recall that for 2015, we actually sold into the spot market of roughly 225,000 pounds at over $37 a pound and now when you keep that all and take that all into perspective into consideration. It's really it makes you think twice about those contracts that we could have entered into at the high-30s and right now if I had been a little bit more dispassionate about that not so intent on realizing prices over $40 a pound. We could have made up for our inability to make spot sales into the market right now have we entered into a few more of those contracts. But with that said we'll move on to our final slide here and then open it up for Q&A. Your last slide is titled additional considerations and here I would just simply like to focus on some other things that we're going to do moving forward not just in the fourth quarter of this year but moving into 2017. All things are on the table when it cost of savings and when it comes to a cost savings, we'll continue to look at everything examined where any costs or any reductions can be made. We consider ourselves to be running very lean and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Joseph Reagor of Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning Jeff and team. Thanks for taking the questions. Obviously tough time in the Uranium market today but kind of looking forward to better times ahead hopefully. If prices were at a point where you could grow production and sell into spot. How quickly could you ramp from current production levels to the million pounds per year that you're permitted for?

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

I love that question, and I’ll tell you why one of the things that we compete with out there in the marketplace. Joe is Blue Sky. And simple fact of the matter is that this is become in my view it's been distorted into a virtue for companies that literally do little or nothing else and they simply tell fact that they represent a call on – in this case uranium, and that that Blue Sky has tremendous value in the marketplace. I have maintained for a long time that the truest form of Blue Sky is our ability to respond to rapidly rising prices in the marketplace and to deliver into near-term contracts. Right now we're producing it roughly 600,000 pounds per year, might be a bit below that this year. Once again as everyone knows, we're responding to market conditions. But I think that we're in a position where as long as we move forward with our development of Mine Unit 2, then we are capable of increasing our flows in the plants and we are one of the few companies that can respond to rising of price environment with deliveries as near as two to three months out. And I don't think – I know that there are any other companies other than majors that would be capable of doing that. But as to how long it would take us to ramp to 1 million pounds a year, I'm going to defer to Steve on that. Steve, would you love to comment on that for us?

SteveHatten

Analyst

Sure. And we put ourselves in a max position with the three header houses drilled out and ready to be completed in Mine Unit 2. With our current labor pool which as we trimmed back earlier that earlier this year, we can start to accelerate construction to a level around a header house coming on every couple of months. With just a few more people added we could accelerate that to really about a header house after every month. And that you could see us get well within a six month period you could see us accelerate production greatly. And our conservative production estimates would take us probably into the six months to nine months range, before we get at that rate that we'd like see for that 1 million pound of your construction or production.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Okay. That’s very helpful for the color there. And then just on the cost side, obviously cost – your costs are still really low, but they didn't bleed in higher. And do you think that will reverse when the second Mine Unit comes online and you have some fresher wells that you may have higher grades going through the process?

Roger Smith

Analyst

Hi, Joe, it’s Roger talking here. Yes, that would be the case because I would expect our quarterly and monthly production numbers to come up. Our cost are relatively fixed or cost per pound decline at that point. Our cost outcome up a little bit. Hence primarily due to the fact that we did have lower production earlier in the year, as higher cost pounds are making their way through inventory and specifically in Q3 we had higher severance ad-valorem taxes as well. The county announced the tax rate increase and we had to adjust our accruals and accordingly we booked about a 17% increase in our ad-valorem severance taxes for the quarter. But that said, assuming our production costs remain consistent, which I expect them to do. And our production in Q4 and subsequent quarters to stay in that same level. We should see our cost in the same basically $25 to $30 range that we've been in for the past four quarters. And again, yes indeed, if we increased our production by bringing down Mine Unit 2, I would expect those costs to drift back down as well.

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

And just that Joe, as you know and as we have said many times on these webcast, there is a very real direct inverse relationship between the volume that we produce and our price – cost of that production. As our volume increases when we can justify that increase in volume, our costs will fall coming shortly.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Okay, thank you. I’ll turn it over.

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There seems to be no question at this time. So I would like to turn the conference back over to Jeff Klenda for any closing remarks.

Jeff Klenda

Analyst

Well, thank you Nicole. The last time this happened that we have this light on questions it also happened that we had a problem with the system. I'm not saying that's the case, but it's also understandable. Look, this is the uranium place, this place is a tough place to be right now. But as I mentioned at the very outset if I could just make a couple of closing comments that I think are positive for our industry, one of them have been the recent events in New York with the clean energy plan there. And soon we may see similar proposals in front of the legislatures of states like Illinois or Ohio and California. These are very positive developments for uranium and for the nuclear industry because for the first time the states are rightly attempting to put a very real value on the carbon free emissions that nuclear represents. But I think in addition to that we in particular as a company are in a unique position. As I mentioned earlier I think you can divide our universe into those that are producing revenues and those that are not. And those that are not are very simply living capital raised to capital raise, there's no other way of putting that. And that means ongoing dilution for their shareholders. I can't promise that we will never have to go back into the marketplace, but I can guarantee you this, our needs are small, they will continue to be small. We will deal with lumpiness of cash flow, but so far we've dealt with it quite well. And we do not anticipate significant dilution in our future and our contracts have significantly derisked our company in that respect. In addition to that, I think we find ourselves in a…

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.