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Westwater Resources, Inc. (WWR)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Fri, May 12, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Uranium Resources' First Quarter 2017 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only-mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Jones, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Christopher Jones

Analyst

Thank you. And welcome everyone to Uranium Resources' first quarter 2017 financial results and business update conference call. I'm Chris Jones, Chief Executive Officer for Uranium Resources. You'll find our company listed as URRE on the NASDAQ and as URI on the ASX. This call is being webcast on our website at www.uraniumresources.com where we have posted slides to accompany our remarks. Telephonic replay of the call will be available from our website for three weeks followings today's call. We will be discussing some forward-looking information today and we caution our audience that such statements involve risk and uncertainties that could actual results to differ materially from our projections. Please review our cautionary statements and notes about foreign reserves on Slide 2 to 4. In addition, there are risk factors including some that are specific to our industry, described in our latest annual and quarterly financial reports filed with the U.S. SEC and the ASX. We have a brief presentation before the question-and-answer portion of today's call. Jeff Vigil, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance, joins me on the call today. Let's turn to Slide 5, yesterday evening we filed our financial results on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of fiscal year 2017 and reported profits for the quarter and an improved balance sheet. Jeff will address the specific results in a few moment but first I would like to provide a general business update. Since the second half of 2016, we have enhanced the investment thesis for our shareholders and investors by expanding our energy metals focus to the robust lithium industry, specifically through our staking and acquisition of two highly perspective lithium brine projects in Nevada and Utah. At the same time we continue to retain optionality to the future uranium price recovery with our…

Jeff Vigil

Analyst

Thanks, Chris, good day to everyone. We'll take a look at our capital structure on Slide 6. At the recent share price of $1.63 and with approximately 24.5 million shares outstanding, our market capitalization stands at $39.9 million. During the first quarter, our stock performance remained steady and strong. Our share price is up from $1.37 at December 31, and our daily trading liquidity or volume for the trailing three months of average over 1.2 million shares per day. Our cash position at May 5, 2017 was approximately $8.2 million and importantly, we have zero long-term debt which I'll discuss further on the next slide. Now turning to the Q1 financial summary on Slide 7; we want to highlight the improved financial condition of URI. At March 31 we have a much improved balance sheet. Our current cash balance was approximately $8.2 million as expected to fund our business activities into the first quarter of 2018. Most importantly, our working capital is now positive at over $11.4 million versus a debt set up $4.2 million at December 31, 2016. This is a significant turnaround. We retired the $8 million convertible note due to our major shareholder resource capital funds or RCF in two steps. In December 2016, we entered into an exchange agreement with the Esousa Holdings of New York City whereby Esousa purchased 2.5 million of convertible notes from RCF and then we exchanged 2.5 million shares of URRE common stock to retire the convertible note held by Esousa. Due to second step on February 9, 2017, after we elected not to convene a special shareholders meeting scheduled for February 8, 2017, where we were seeking approval of the remainder of the debt exchange with Esousa, we terminated the exchange agreement and our Board of Directors unanimously need to…

Christopher Jones

Analyst

Thanks Jeff. Shown on Slide 8, our energy metal strategy takes full advantage of both the short and long-term market fundamentals for lithium and uranium. But first, why lithium. This growth story revolves around lithium ion batteries. ERU International estimates the global lithium demand shown as lithium carbonate equivalent, but why is it an average of over 6% per year to 2025. This growth is driven by rapidly increasing demand for transportation batteries which currently account for 35% of demand and are expected to expand to over 60% of total demand by 2025. While many of the headlines go to Tesla for this growth, battery makers all over the world such as BYD, Panasonic and others need lithium to service larger markets as well. Lithium market commentators site that present supply is dominated by five major companies worldwide controlling 90% of current production are inadequate to serve this demand growth. There is also the China factor; mid-year report site that China has exceeded the United States in electric vehicle sales in 2016. China has committed to a target of 3 million electric cars on the road by 2025 with green car subsidies for the transportation sector. China's entire line of lithium battery production reportedly tripled in terms of gigawatt hours in 2015 over 2014. Our strategy is to capitalize on our existing base of expertise and developing old pass lithium brine deposits. And mining and processing cost of lithium from brines are in the lowest cash cost quartile ranging from $2,500 to $3,000 per metric ton. Lithium carbonate prices were in the $12,000 to $14,000 range in the past year. The other pillar of our energy metal strategy is uranium, continuing growth in number of nuclear power plants worldwide from approximately 408 operating profits units now to a projected 631…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Joseph Reagor with ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Good morning, Chris and the rest of the team. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess the first thing regarding the Nevada based lithium assets, there has been a lot of news around Albemarle try to I guess essentially protect its investment. Can you add some color as far as your location, if you guys are part of the target group for them to try to block order rights and how your voter [ph] rights are winding up?

Christopher Jones

Analyst

Sure Joe, and thanks for the question. With regard to Albemarle, they operate in the Clayton Valley; and the rates in the Clayton Valley are already allocated. So for those people that are attempting to operate in that same location, that maybe a problem for them but we've yet to see. We're about 25 miles away in another basin and have applied for water rights; so the way to think about is there is so much water in the basin and you can allocate so much to each kind of a project; ours is a run allocated at this point so we've made application to the state to go ahead and do that where Albemarle and others have been working with the Nevada State legislature to change the permitting for exploration activities. You know, that could present a problem for some other of the organizations, in our case not so much.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Okay, that's good to hear. And then think about the whole company; you're kind of leaning towards being a lithium company. You know, but you guys plus seem to trade a bit with the uranium price. I know a lot of companies in a situation like that would consider strategic name changes. Any conversation come up between you guys and the board on a topic like that?

Christopher Jones

Analyst

We really can't comment on any perspective name change but as we've expanded this business to include energy metals, you're right, uranium resources might be a little bit of a narrow name for us to work with. By the same token, you know, we've been listed on the NASDAQ for 40 [ph] years and it's no small task.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

Okay, fair enough. And then one final one, on the cost front; could you guys give us a little bit more detail what other initiatives you guys have to reduce G&A costs and what a good assumption would be at the G&A line going forward?

Christopher Jones

Analyst

Well, as you all know Joe, you've covered us for quite a while. We kind of overall spend from - call it $37 million a year down to something on the order of $11 million or $11.5 million. And what we've done to do that is everything. We've cut our managed cost down on a structural basis in every single piece of our business from land cost, to legal, to basic G&A, to what have you; and without any specific initiatives around specific cost reductions, know that - as Jeff related earlier in his part of the presentation, you know, year-on-year we cut $800,000 alone in interest payments. And you should expect to see that kind of activity going on, we've been in a business where business is like this for quite a while and cost reduction as a process and you should count on us to do more of that.

Joseph Reagor

Analyst

That's good to hear. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Chris Jones for any closing remarks.

Christopher Jones

Analyst

Thanks a lot operator. Ladies and gentlemen, we want to thank you for allowing us to provide you with an update on Uranium Resources. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.