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Westwater Resources, Inc. (WWR)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 15, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Uranium Resources Inc. 2010 year-end update. (Operator Instructions). It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Ms. Deborah Pawlowski, IR for Uranium Resources Inc. Thank you Ms. Pawlowski. You may begin.

Deborah Pawlowski

Management

Thank you, [Christine] and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your time today and your interest in Uranium Resources. On the call I have with me President and CEO, Don Ewigleben, who will discuss recent events over the last year and what the outlook and strategic initiatives for the company are as we move forward. He will be joined by Tom Ehrlich, Chief Financial Officer and Rick Van Horn, Senior Vice President of Operation Exploration, as well as Mark Poliza, Senior Vice President of Environment Safety and Public Affairs. We will conclude the call with an opportunity for questions and answers. If you don't have today's news release it can be found on our website at www.uraniumresources.com. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during the formal presentation and the Q-and-A portion of this teleconference. Tthose statements apply to future events which 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 Security and Exchange Commission. You can find those on our website, where we regularly post information about the company, as well as on the SEC's website, sec.gov. So please review our forward-looking statements in conjunction with these precautionary factors. With that, let me turn the call over to Don to begin the discussion. Don?

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thank you Debbie. Well, first, I hope that everyone listening today has a wonderful Valentines Day and it's warmer wherever you are then it was a week or two ago. If you have a chance, spend a few moments today with your friends and your family and your loved ones on this special day enjoy the fact that we have some warmth in this country once again. Secondly, we do appreciate you taking the time to listen to our brief review of URI's activities from last year and what was a very exciting year for us. The outlook for the company in 2011 is equally strong. I will begin by reviewing what we believe were the significant accomplishments in 2010 and then we will discuss our plans for 2011 and beyond. Under that heading of significant accomplishments over the last year, you have to start with what we started with and that was a 2010 revised strategic plan that set a course for basically a recovery of stability for URI. All of our corporate objectives were met for the year in 2010. It included maintenance of a very important aspect of our business. We maintained the previous record of having zero violations of safety or environmental regulations; something we're very proud of in this company. We implemented a financing plan to ensure that URI had a solid footing and a very strong runway for future growth. There were two successful offerings raising a total of $19.4 million for the year. This enabled the company to continue to pursue our strategy toward building the asset base in both Texas and New Mexico, while advancing our properties in New Mexico towards production. I will start with Texas. We obtained a very large uranium lease. We announced a letter of intent with Cameco…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Peter Homans - Parkman.

Peter Homans

Analyst

The press release, lots of stuff going on. Can I ask you three or four questions which are related -- if you can write them down, so I don't ask them one-by-one. The Kenedy property, do you have from some studies or from knowledge of the surrounding geology as the probably or possible recovery from that area -- so the Kenedy property, what should that be in total? Second, in Section 13 in New Mexico, one [client in Santa Crest], that's Ambrosia Lake. Is that right?

Don Ewigleben

Management

Correct

Peter Homans

Analyst

Which I gather is fairly large. Theoretically from [inaudible] it's a fairly large potential resource. How did not only the [amountability] to ISO but the quantities of mineralized uranium that you found in those two logs equate with your expectation and do you have an estimate of what that area -- even though it's not your first priority -- to produce. In the Kenedy section, do you have a sense of what your -- since you won't be burdened by low-cost contracts, do you also have any sense of what the probable production costs are? Then, finally, have you been having conversations with the Navajos, [and that] necessarily is either gone or in the wind, so to speak? They have 75 million pounds on their property and were turned down in getting a coal production operation going, which is certainly environmentally as bad or worse than uranium. Do you have any sense of where your conversations are in terms of you're being the producer or miller or processor or whatever with the Indians? So Kenedy, the New Mexico Section 13, quantities, etc cetera, and then the Indians.

Don Ewigleben

Management

The property in Kenedy County -- and I should have been a bit more forthcoming in one regard -- we've actually just named the project [Los Pinados]. It's a historic reference to the Spanish land grant for that particular location. We've not got any new logos out or anything of that nature. But the project in Kenedy County, in our initial studies looking at three 1000-acre parcels, gave us an initial belief of an estimate of somewhere in the 3 million to 5 million pounds. But since that time in going to a 53,000 plus acre large-scale ranch with our partners, we would likely believe there is something stronger than that. That's one of the reasons to bring in a larger mining house. We'll look to see whether there's a way to accelerate some of our plans and aspirations so we can further define this quicker. But certainly there is an expectation that will be beyond those three 1000-acre target areas within the three-year expiration period. Staying with that topic, we don't have a cost estimate at this time of what those potential pounds will cost us. What we do have is a guess based on other similarly-graded areas. Recall that, while we're at the very tail end having already produced 8 million pounds of our prior existing asset base. Let's just put it where it is. The low-hanging fruit was already gone. That's why we had a $48 cost in 2008 for those pounds. But this is a dream-filled expiration play that should be sub-$30 per pound in production costs but it's too early to tell. The number that we had -- .

Peter Homans

Analyst

Is it part of the same trend?

Don Ewigleben

Management

It is in the same trend and recall that many of our pounds were produced in the keep in that trend. So it's too early to say. That is one of the reasons that we would hope to have some extra technical advice and support from our partner. So while we are the operator on the project for the initial period of years, we'll be looking to optimize that expiration plan to answer those questions as early as possible. I'm going to switch to New Mexico. Before we talk about Section 13 -- and I'll hand that to Rick -- let me address the question that you raised about the Navajo. I think everyone is aware that Ben Shelly was elected as president of the Navajo nation back in November of last year. He has been putting his cabinet together and I will say that I am extremely pleased with the opportunity that the uranium mining industry has to talk to the Navajo openly about our technologies, our plans, our long-term view of the district and, someday, the question about whether or not they would be willing to have a viable partner come in and look at their uranium assets. What do we know at the moment? The so-called uranium ban, which actually was never a uranium ban, it said there would be no uranium mine on Indian lands or native lands of the Navajo unless a set of criteria was acceptable to the Navajo community. What we are hoping to do is, through our Church Rock and Crownpoint property, get it in construction, get it in production, show the restoration capability. We will be the closest entity. We'll be the only entity, at this time, that has the appropriate licenses and we're very close by so that we could open up this dialogue over the course of the next few years with the new president, his newly-named council and look towards this discussion of how to create a scientifically-approved set of criteria to allow uranium mining, particularly ISR technology, on native lands.

Peter Homans

Analyst

Does he seem much more open minded than Shirley was?

Don Ewigleben

Management

I wouldn't want to characterize what his open-mindendness is. I will say from what he's demonstrated they have been willing to have an opening conversation and I'm very pleased to say that they allowed us to begin a discussion by telling them what our plans were in New Mexico and why we believe our technology was safe. It also does include the conversation about their historic concerns, both on the ground and to their people. We believe the industry has already stepped up to the plate, so to speak, on legislative matters in the past and we're willing to look at that again as an industry. So we think the dialogue is now open and we'll be able to have a good conversation in the very near term with the new president and his staff. So we've very pleased. I'll turn it over to Rick now to speak on the Section 13 drill results.

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

Peter, the Ambrosia Lake district has been a prolific producer. It produced a significant amount of the 350 million pounds that have been produced in the past out of the [Grass] Mineral bill. We hold four separate properties where we have known reserves on them. Section 13 is one of them. About 160 drill holes on it and we show a reserve of about just over 800,000 pounds in place. We were looking for an alternative when we were mired in the court cases on Church Rock, to Church Rock, someplace where we could use ISR. This, along with other properties in the trend owned by us and by competitors, looks like it might be a good candidate. So we applied for it and got a drilling permit. We drilled three holes last year. We took -- we pulled core on those. We got some 70 feet out of 95 foot total core and that core was sent up to Hazen Research in Golden, Colorado, where it was microscopically analyzed using an electron microscope and then we took sections of the core. We quartered the core, took sections of the core and actually did chemical analysis on it. What the chemical analysis showed us was that we had low carbon values. That's one thing that had concerned us to start with. The core is very, very dark to look at it. It looks like the reflects of carbon in it. When we actually ran the chemistry on the cores, we had low, organic carbon levels that were in some cases, in most cases, under a tenth of a percent. Why is this significant? It's significant because carbon will preferentially act with the oxygen and give us very low recoveries using the oxygen base we think that we can use. So what we found was that, yes, there was no carbon. It looks like it probably is reachable. The uranium occurs in and amongst the sand grain, so we can probably contact it but there's a lot more work that needs to be done on this. When you look at what we need to do on this versus what we have with Church Rock, that fact that we have licensed properties at Church Rock, that puts this on the back burner and that's where it is right now.

Peter Homans

Analyst

Cameco, if I understand it correctly, as have Rio Tinto and a number of the other players, over sold their production, which is one of the reasons the spot has gone up because the producers are actually in the [spot] markets. If you were to find in this Kenedy property, say, 8 million pounds, 70% of 8 million is 5.6 million pounds, which, frankly, is not going to do a whole lot for Cameco in terms of their strategic shortfalls. However, shouldn't one presume that their real interest in -- or isn't it reasonable to presume, without putting words into [Ray Grandy]'s mouth -- isn't it reasonable to presume that the principle reason for them partnering with you in Texas is to get your feet on the ground and see if you can move together into New Mexico because only 100 million pounds there would really have any serious affect on their reserves? Given that they're the largest in the world, the most experienced by several orders of magnitude, is there any reason why, if things go well in Texas, why you'd be looking for other kinds of partners because pretty small group and they have 25% of the market?

Don Ewigleben

Management

Well, Peter, it would be silly for me to try to speculate as to what their intentions are as to why they wanted to be in a joint venture with us. If it had anything beyond Texas -- it presently only involves Texas and the good news is it does allow for us to participate up to 40% on projects other than the [Los Pinados] project if they should acquire them and it allows us to bring them in. Yes, on that particular property, after they earn in the full potential -- and this is standard for Form 5 joint venture in the US -- they would have 70% and we would have 30%. But if we look at that and try to speculate is that a stepping stone to New Mexico, I'd have to say no. They were very, very serious about looking at the potential of South Texas. They have people who spent some time there in the past. They have people who came there and looked very diligently at the potential that was left. When we talk about these large ranches, we do have to understand that several of them are untapped resources still within the district. So our belief is that they joined forces with us because we were on the ground, we offered an experiential level that they didn't have people to do on the ground and then, secondarily, they must have believed that this potential is far greater than what we originally thought it would be in that 3 million to 5 million range. If it turns out to be something more than that, we're always open for discussion, as I've said. We certainly are happy to be their partner in Texas. We don't have, at present, any discussions underway about a partnership on Crownpoint and Church Rock because, frankly, we have the financial wherewithal to build it, to operate it and to close it all on our own. A 15-year mine life project of that nature, it's just a great project for URI. We'll see whether or not it would make sense if some point in time in it whether or not it brings value to our shareholders if we do it in a joint venture setting. But for now, the joint venture is just Texas and we'll keep moving forward on that 100 million pounds in New Mexico.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of David Snow - Energy Equities.

David Snow

Analyst

I'm just wondering if you can give us some ballpark of a timeline on the New Mexico ISR, which areas would you do in what quantity and what time? You would obviously start with Section 8 in mid 13, I guess, and how does it go from there?

Don Ewigleben

Management

As I have stated, our number one objective at the moment is to get Section 8 up and running. But let me turn to Rick and ask if he could speak to how he sees that feasibility study defining that pipeline going forward as to what might be the next steps. Rick?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

The feasibility study should be complete by the end of March. It's going to be on Section 8, Section 8 only because it's our licensed facility and we'll be going towards that. Assuming that the feasibility study says that this is economic and we want to proceed with it, we would start work on the ground the first of 2012 or a startup projection sometime mid-2013. There are 6.5 million pounds on that section. We will get about 4 million pounds, 4.5 million pounds out of that. It'll operate for five years and then we will move to the south of Section 17. Remember that we are staying by our license and that we have to demonstrate commercial restoration somewhere within the first 3 million pounds and that's obviously one of the things we're looking out in the feasibility study. We would, after that commercial restoration has been demonstrated, we are then free to increase from the 1 million pounds a year that we are limited to at Church Rock to utilize our full license amount of 3 million pounds a year and after we're done with Church Rock we could then move to other properties on the license and the next one would then be Crownpoint.

David Snow

Analyst

Do you feel that you could do the 3 million in the full license 3 million pounds before you move out of the -- I mean, what, internally, timing would you see in getting up to the 3 million pounds?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

David, we could go increase -- you're talking about increasing the Church Rock, right?

David Snow

Analyst

Well, yes, anyplace to get to the 3 million pounds -- .

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

We could but we'd have to put more remote IX plants in because the original IX plant's going to be sized for 1 million pounds a year. If we feel like we want to increase that, fine. But I think it might be better -- and this will be subject of other feasibility -- but it might be better to take that money and put another plant at another site someplace.

David Snow

Analyst

Well, when would you have the license ability to go to 3 million pounds?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

We have the license ability to go to 3 million pounds as soon as we demonstrate commercial restoration. That has to be sometime within the first three years.

David Snow

Analyst

So when would that be likely?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

That'll be likely probably somewhere after year two.

David Snow

Analyst

You're looking at the Texas -- if you looked at that entire trend, it just would dwarf the ability to explore it in three years, wouldn't it, or will you high-grade it and have you looked at all the well water along it and have some high grading? How could you get your hands around that in a three-year timeframe?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

There are a lot of targets on the Texas trend that certainly haven't been mined out. No, we haven't looked at all the water. Yes, it's something we can look at. There's no way we're going to mine it out in three years. All we're looking at in mining -- and I assume you're talking about what we plan on mining if we go forward -- are what we currently have, that we currently own. If we go past what we currently own and acquire new leases, that's going to increase that out past three years.

David Snow

Analyst

I was thinking about the Kenedy [Ranch], the Kenedy County, if it's 3500 acres.

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

The Kenedy County would probably be -- we're limited in Kingsville to 1 million pounds a year if we put another dryer in. So we would -- it depends on the size of the orebody. It would be mined out in three, five, 10 years, depending on whether we've got 3 million, 5 million, 10 million pounds there.

David Snow

Analyst

I'm not asking the question right. How can you explore the potential of the 53,500 acres in a three-year period?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

First thing we're going to do is we're going to drill it on a mile-by-mile grid looking for [redox] fronts, oxidation reduction fronts, that show us where the uranium could be if it's going to be there at all. We would then close in on that and drill it on about a 2000 by 2000 foot grid. That's at phase two. Then at phase three, we close in on that, drill the targets on about a 500 by 500 grid or even a 200 by 200 grid. So we're not going to drill the whole 54,000 acres. What we're going to do is we're going to find areas of interest at the end of phase one. Concentrate on those in phase two. Find areas of interest there and then in phase three we would close it up even more. Then at the end of the three-year exploration period we would then pick the 1000 acre minimum sites that we would want to take to license.

David Snow

Analyst

So you're limited to how much to a 1000 acre minimum sites? Can you take as many of those as you want?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

Yes, sir.

David Snow

Analyst

Would you have to do additional closer space drilling before you actually went into production?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

Yes.

David Snow

Analyst

So all you got to do is really pick your sites. You don't have to really have it all keyed up for production.

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

That's correct.

Don Ewigleben

Management

David, it's important to note that those numbers that I said earlier are the requirements of the existing exploration lease for 100 holes, for example, or $1 million expenditure in the first year. That's a minimum. So depending upon how we work with our partner here and develop a budget, there could be accelerated exploration activity on that property to draw some conclusions sooner about the size and the nature of that exploration play.

David Snow

Analyst

Do you have the wherewithal to go to the acceleration when you're also trying to move forward as fast as you are in New Mexico, though?

Don Ewigleben

Management

Well, as you can imagine, joint ventures are structured such that you've got some people on the ground doing the activities and then you've got people trying to earn in. So the majority of those expenditures in the Texas exploration play would be made by our joint venture partner.

David Snow

Analyst

Would you make a profit on the total milling?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

The answer is yes.

David Snow

Analyst

How about on the operating roll?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

Well, while we're operating we get a [inaudible] for operating.

David Snow

Analyst

You get a what?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

We get an add-on percentage for operating.

Don Ewigleben

Management

It's an essential management fee like most joint ventures.

David Snow

Analyst

Would that cover costs approximately operating?

Rick Van Horn

Analyst

Yes, because it's a cost loss, yes.

Operator

Operator

Mr. Ewigleben, there are no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Don Ewigleben

Management

Thank you, [Christine]. Well, thank you all for your time, for your interest and, particularly, for the continued investment in Uranium Resources, Inc. I hope that you come away from this call as excited as I am about our future. We've had tremendous growth in 2010 and it would seem it would be hard to top the progress that was made. But the reality is that we are poised for equally strong year in 2011. There's very, very much to be done but, looking back on what this strong management team that I inherited when I joined in late 2009, what they accomplished in 2010, I believe that we've got the people, we now have the resources and we've got the appropriate plans in place to successfully implement the strategic plan and bring significant value to shareholders by growth in URI. I look forward to speaking with you all again in the near future. As always, you can contact KEI Advisors through Debbie Pawlowski or myself or Rick or any of the management team at any time and get questions answered. We will always be open to your questions and try to learn from what you ask of us. Thank you very much for the call today.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.