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Westwater Resources, Inc. (WWR)

Q2 2010 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 9, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Uranium Resources, Inc. second quarter 2010 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jim Culligan, Investor Relations for Uranium Resources Inc. Thank you. Mr Culligan, you may begin.

Jim Culligan

Management

Thank you Melissa and good morning everyone. We appreciate your interest in Uranium Resources. On the call today, President and CEO, Don Ewigleben, will discuss recent events and the outlook for the company. He will be joined by Tom Ehrlich, CFO; Rick Van Horn, Exec VP of Operations; and Mark Pelizza, Senior VP of Environmental Affairs. We will conclude this call with an opportunity for Q&A. If you do not have today’s news release, it can be found on our Web site, which is www.uraniumresources.com. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during the formal presentation and the Q&A portion of this teleconference. Those statements apply to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from where we are today. These factors are outlined in the news release as well as in documents filed by the company with the SEC. You can find those on our Web site where we regularly post information about the company as well as on the SEC's Web site, www.sec.gov. So please review our forward-looking statements in conjunction with the precautionary factors. With that, let me turn the call over to Don to begin the discussion.

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thank you Jim, and good morning to all. We appreciate your interest in Uranium Resources. I am going to touch on a couple of the basic things that occurred during the second quarter that has moved this company forward. It has been a very exciting time for us in the second quarter, and we are looking forward to what the rest of the year brings. At the end of this discussion, I will turn it over to Tom Ehrlich, our CFO, who will discuss the financials for the quarter, and then we will open it up to questions and answers, and that is the reason I have asked Rick Van Horn and Mark Pelizza to join Tom and I on the call to discuss the various specifics that we can with regard to public information on our activities. Let me start by saying that the second quarter was a very eventful quarter for Uranium Resources, Inc. It moved us down the track towards meeting multiple objectives that the Board of Directors had set for us in our new strategic plan as devised and approved in the first quarter. More specifically, we are going to be able to move forward on our development plans in New Mexico as a result of some court decisions, and the improved liquidity position that we find ourselves in today. The first issue is the question of what happened in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. You will recall that for many years our permitting activities were in question because of jurisdictional disputes having to do with a particular part of our project known as Section 8. In that area of the Churchrock in Crownpoint project, the question had been raised whether under Federal Law that property was Indian country, and if it was, then the…

Tom Ehrlich

Management

Thank you Don. As Don mentioned, the biggest, the most significant portion of what we achieved during the quarter was the equity raise that we completed in June and the results of an over-allotment option that was issued and completed in July. In terms of the operations, we succeeded in reducing our cash flow from operations from $2 million in the first quarter of the year to $1.3 million in the second quarter, we continue to spend the majority of our operating activities on our restoration activities from our previously mined mine sites down in South Texas, but again, the most important aspect was the ability to go from $3.8 million at the end of the first quarter to $11.4 million at the end of the second quarter in terms of our cash. At cash position at the end of July is about $12.1 million and again the significant increases there are related to just over $9 million that we raised in June from the issuance of almost 24 million shares and in the over-allotment options associated with our under written equity raise was about $1.3 million net that we received in July, which obviously does not show up in our financials for the quarter, but again a key aspect of where we are moving forward. Again, looking forward, as Don said with the utilization of these funds, it is going to be primarily for working capital, for development of our feasibility studies in New Mexico, moving forward with our joint program in New Mexico, and moving forward with any costs associated with NRC or other regulatory issues dealing with the successful licensing that we have gotten in our New Mexico properties. Don?

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thank you Tom. At this point, I believe we will open it up for any questions. Again, I have Mark Pelizza who is our Senior Vice President for Health, Safety & Environment and is managing our (inaudible) activities and other governmental matters, and Rick Van Horn, our Senior Vice President of Operations who will be conducting the Section 13 drilling as well as looking for the additional exploration locations for our Texas and New Mexico settings. With that, we will open the call up for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) Our first question is from Robert Burke [ph] with Wunderlich Securities. Please proceed with your question. Robert Burke – Wunderlich Securities: Hello gentlemen. Could you talk about the precede [ph] study, are you hiring outside consultants or it is all going to be done internally?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

This is Rick Van Horn. We are going to be evaluating what we have internally. We expect to hire outside consultants where we need professional engineer certification, and where we have engineering needs that we do not have internally. The big thing would be things like design of the bonds, stuff like that. Yes, about half of the cost of the study will probably be from outside consultants. Robert Burke – Wunderlich Securities: And what do you plan to spend on?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

It is somewhere in the range of $1.2 million to $1.5 million. Robert Burke – Wunderlich Securities: Okay, I will take the rest of my questions off-line. Thank you.

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thanks Robert.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) Our next question is from Dan Foley with Sleeping Giant Financial Services. Please proceed with your question. Dan Foley – Sleeping Giant Financial Services: Thanks for the call guys. Are you guys seeing any clarity around uranium production and the regulatory environment?

Don Ewigleben

Management

This is Don and the answer is, I believe we are. First and foremost, the decision that upheld our NRC license gives some clarity about the process itself for NRC licensing. We know that there are numerous applications pending for new nuclear reactive facilities in the US. How soon they come online is in part driven by the regulatory certainty of the process. So we are pleased to see what happened in our Appeal Court decision, and we are pleased to see that the NRC itself is very well, how to best describe – the procedures are well outlined, and the public input process is well defined. So, we know what the target is as an industry, and I believe that we will see this nuclear renaissance ultimately come down to the point of domestic uranium production as a result of a good quality program for regulatory compliance on the NRCs side. Dan Foley – Sleeping Giant Financial Services: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no questions at this time; I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thank you Melissa. Once again, we appreciate your interest in Uranium Resources. While this company has been actively mining uranium primarily through the in situ recovery method over the past 33 years, we are poised for growth, and our strategic plan outlines a number of methodologies for us to get there. It was important first and foremost that we have the necessary capital to do just that, and we appreciate the new investors who have stepped up and our old longstanding investors who stayed with us knowing full well that the uranium prices will recover. We are now seeing the benefits of more than just net capital raise, the court decisions, the movement forward in New Mexico on the development of the project, the opportunity for new leases in Texas, and generally speaking, to reach out and meet our objectives on the joint venture opportunity forefront. We were excited about what is going on in the second quarter but we are certainly more excited about what it means for us in the future upcoming quarters. So again, we appreciate your interest, and we look forward to the next time when we meet over the third quarter results, and we can tell you more about what has been happening on the ground. Thank you everyone.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.