Earnings call transcript: Paladin Energy’s Q1 2025 production surge and stock jump

Paladin Energy Ltd (PDN), with a market capitalization of $358.34 million, reported a record quarterly uranium production of 1.07 million pounds in its Q1 2025 earnings call, marking a significant milestone. Despite the production success, the company’s revenue fell short of expectations, with an actual revenue of $36 million against a forecast of $133 million, resulting in a 72.93% miss. This earnings miss did not deter investors, as Paladin’s stock surged by 9.57% following the announcement, closing at $9.62, up from its previous close of $8.78. According to InvestingPro, the company has shown impressive momentum with a 23% return over the past six months.

Key Takeaways

• Record uranium production of 1.07 million pounds this quarter.
• Revenue miss with a 72.93% shortfall from forecasts.
• Stock price increased by 9.57% post-announcement.
• Strong market fundamentals and investor support.
• Completion of a $300 million equity raising.

Company Performance

Paladin Energy showcased strong operational performance with a record uranium production, reflecting its strategic focus on ramping up the Langer Heinrich Mine. The company’s production efficiency was highlighted by a significant increase in material mined, up 63% from the previous quarter. This operational success positions Paladin well within the growing uranium market, despite the revenue miss. InvestingPro analysis reveals that while the company maintains good financial health with liquid assets exceeding short-term obligations, it currently operates with moderate debt levels. Subscribers can access 14 additional ProTips and comprehensive financial metrics through the Pro Research Report.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $36 million, significantly below the forecast.
• Uranium production: 1.07 million pounds, a record for the company.
• Average uranium price: $67.40 per pound.
• Production costs: $41.60 per pound.
• Equity raising: Completed a $300 million fully underwritten initiative.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Paladin’s revenue of $36 million fell short of the $133 million forecast, representing a 72.93% miss. This significant discrepancy underscores the challenges in aligning production output with financial expectations. Historically, such a miss would negatively impact stock performance, but Paladin’s strong operational results and market position appeared to mitigate investor concerns.

Market Reaction

Despite the revenue miss, Paladin’s stock rose by 9.57%, closing at $9.62. This positive market reaction may be attributed to the record production figures and robust market fundamentals in the uranium sector. Trading near $40.53, the stock is just 0.96% below its 52-week high of $41.91, indicating strong investor confidence. InvestingPro data shows the stock has delivered a 31.19% return year-to-date, with analysts anticipating continued sales growth and profitability this year.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Paladin aims to achieve a production rate of 4 to 4.4 million pounds by FY2026, with the Langer Heinrich Mine ramp-up expected to complete by the end of that fiscal year. The company anticipates a stronger second half of FY2026 and robust performance in FY2027, driven by ongoing project developments and a favorable market environment.

Executive Commentary

CEO Paul Hemburrow expressed satisfaction with the quarterly results, stating, "We’re really pleased with the results for the quarter, and our performance is in line with our expectations." Chief Commercial Officer Alex Rybak highlighted the company’s sales strategy, noting, "All of that material that’s produced is in months for sale. It’s really about getting it from site to point of sale."

Risks and Challenges

• Revenue forecasting: Significant miss this quarter raises concerns.
• Production costs: Managing costs to maintain profitability.
• Market volatility: Uranium market fluctuations could impact future earnings.
• Regulatory compliance: Ongoing engagement with Indigenous nations and regulators.
• Supply chain disruptions: Potential impacts on production and sales.

Paladin Energy’s Q1 2025 earnings call highlighted the company’s operational prowess and strategic focus, despite falling short on revenue expectations. The positive stock market reaction indicates investor confidence in Paladin’s future prospects, driven by strong production performance and a favorable market outlook. For detailed valuation analysis and comprehensive insights, investors can access Paladin’s full Fair Value assessment and financial health metrics through InvestingPro’s exclusive Research Report, part of its coverage of over 1,400 US equities.

Full transcript - Paladin Energy Ltd (PDN) Q1 2026:

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Paladin Energy’s September 2025 quarterly investor conference call. With me today are Anna Sudlow, Chief Financial Officer, Alex Rybak, Chief Commercial Officer, and Paola Raffo, our Head of Investor Relations. We had a solid start in the first quarter of the financial year at Langer Heinrich with mining activities increasing significantly and the overall ramp-up progressing steadily in line with our plan. I’d like to note some highlights achieved at Langer Heinrich during the quarter. Record quarterly production of 1.07 million pounds of uranium, the highest since the mine restart. Total material mined was up 63% from the previous quarter. The mine average realized price increased to $67.40 per pound while unit production costs were $41.60 per pound. Total recordable injury frequency rate of 3.2 per million hours worked on a 12-month moving average basis, better than the company’s safety targets.

There were no serious environmental irradiation incidents or breaches of environmental compliance requirements during the period. Importantly for Paladin’s future growth, we have made significant progress at Patterson Lake South Project with completion of a comprehensive review during the quarter confirming robustness of the project and de-risking its development and operation. The strong economics support our unwavering commitment to bring the PLS Project into production by early next decade while continuing to de-risk the development through speed and conducting further exploration to identify future expansion opportunities. An important step moving forward with the development of PLS was the appointment of Dale Huffman as President, Paladin Canada. Dale will be joining the company on the 20th of October. Additionally, the team in Canada continues to progress permitting activity including the final Environmental Impact Statement.

We have also been progressing consultation with Indigenous nations and local communities while continuing engagement with provincial and federal regulators. As the newly appointed MD and CEO, I was personally pleased to see the strength of investor and market support throughout our fully underwritten $300 million equity raising completed in September, which provides the balance sheet flexibility to support both the PLS development and the LHM ramp-up to full mining and processing plant operations planned for FY 2027. Looking ahead, our focus remains on completing the Langer Heinrich ramp-up by the end of FY 2026 and advancing the development of the PLS Project. I’ll now open the call to questions.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press Star one and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press Star two. If you’re on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Raoul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi team. Thanks for the call and good morning. Just wanted to test a bit of the cost base, really good cost performance at least versus my numbers. Just wanted to test how we should think about the fixed cost variable splits going forward. Obviously, you step into the main part of the mine next year and wanted to understand what type of cost performance we can expect going forward. That’s the first one and I’ll come back with a second. Thanks.

Alex Rybak, Chief Commercial Officer, Paladin Energy: Yeah, look, thanks for the call. We haven’t guided on the split, but I think you can probably assume that the fixed-variable split’s probably 20 to 30% fixed with the remainder variable. If you look at one of the key costs being the reagents, they’re a key contributor to that mix.

Got it. Okay. I guess any sort of clarity into what’s going to change in terms of the fixed cost base going into next year. I would think that you probably get a bit more fixed component in your cost base as you kind of ramp up the mine more as opposed to stockpiles. Is that the right way to think about it or are you there or thereabouts in terms of your fixed cost base?

I think if you look at next year, you know, we’ll be into.

More.

Mining than we currently are. I don’t see really, you know, and the majority of that mining cost is going to be a variable cost.

Right.

I think overall the balance is probably going to remain, you know, pretty much as it is.

Got it.

Okay, that’s very helpful. For the second one, obviously a new uranium sales contract and also sales volumes a bit weaker than us in consensus. There’s a bit of variability in terms of how you achieve those. Is there any further color you can provide as to how the analyst community in general can kind of forecast the sales a bit better and maybe a bit of an update on that new contract and how you’re seeing the market. Thanks.

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: On you.

Anna Sudlow, Chief Financial Officer, Paladin Energy: Yes, thanks. Obviously, you know, we’ve talked about it at length. Our sales are quite lumpy and they can be anywhere between $2 million and $500,000. For any particular sale in this particular quarter, we had a customer, we had a shipping delay which meant that a customer delivery got pushed out from the September quarter into the current quarter, and that was the main reason for that lower sales number. However, you would have seen we’ve built up quite a significant inventory balance of 1.8 million pounds and all of that is earmarked for customer deliveries. Of that, about a million pounds is currently in transit on the water, and in fact we’ve received cash for close to half of that 1 million pounds that’s in transit already.

Uranium does have quite a long working capital cycle as we’ve previously discussed, but what it means is that it’s a timing issue and these sales will come through in this quarter. That’s on your first question. In terms of the additional sale agreement that we executed in the quarter, relatively small sale agreement, but with a very high quality counterparty which we’ve been targeting for quite some time. We’re very pleased to have secured that offtake agreement. It doesn’t materially move our pounds under contract from 24.1 to 24.5 million pounds on the contract to 31 December 2030. Within that amount, obviously we maintain a market related price bias, but we also have quite a significant base-escalated protection in our contract book, which is, I think, not unexpected in quite a high volatile environment.

We are seeing very strong fundamentals in the pricing at the moment with TradeTech and UxC have increased their term pricing, spot pricing has strengthened, which is great news for us because our book does remain tilted towards market related pricing and we do expect to realize the benefit of that.

Got it. That’s very helpful. Thank you, Tim. I’ll pass it on.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Alistair Rankin from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning Paul, Anna, Alex and Paola. Thanks for the update and taking my questions. Just the first one, that total material moved of 5.27 million tonnes was really solid. Given you’ve still only got about 50% of the fleet commissioned at the moment, you must be very pleased with the team on that. Is this strong performance giving you a bit of a buffer in terms of the GPIT stripping schedule for FY2026 or were you expecting to hit this level of material moved over this quarter?

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: Yeah, thanks for the question, Alistair. We are really pleased with the results. We’re seeing really good levels of availability and utilization of the 100 tonne fleet, and it was in line with our expectations for the quarter, a very pleasing result.

Okay, that’s great then. Just also on your primary non low grade ore, I just noticed that you had about 430 kilotons mined over this quarter. Was all of that fed into the processing plant over this quarter, or did some of it go into stockpile?

Yeah, we do a bit of rehandle, alstron and stockpile, and we blend to make sure we get the best throughput that we possibly can. There is a bit of stockpile movement, with some drawdown of the MG3 and some of the fresh mined ore onto the stockpile.

Okay, I guess in the next quarter for December, given you’re still going to be doing quite a bit of G pit stripping, do you have a plan to access a similar volume of primary ore in the next quarter so you can keep those feed grades around where they are?

Yeah, we haven’t guided on a quarter-by-quarter basis, but the expectation that we set when we delivered the guidance is that the first half of this financial year would be in line with what we saw in the last quarter. I think that’s what we’ve delivered in this quarter. My expectation is that the remainder of this half will be in line with what we’ve seen in quarter one.

Yep, understood. Maybe just lastly, could I just get a reminder on the current sequencing for which pits you’re planning to mine? Obviously you’re doing the G pit at the moment. You mentioned that you’ve done a little bit of work on the F pit and I think in your guidance for FY2026 you mentioned the J pit as well. Could you just give us a quick refresher on what the plans are on the sequencing of the pits that you’re going to mine?

Yeah, most of our work is focused on GNF at the moment and we may move into the J as well. We’ve got quite a well-developed 12-week schedule and we’re doing some re-optimization on the basis of the new fleet we’re getting. We’ll talk more about that as we get through the year. Fundamentally focused on GNF.

Okay, understood. Now that’s clear. Thanks very much for that.

Thank you.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Regan Burrows from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Good morning, guys. Congratulations on a good quarter in line with what you said. Just following on from Alex’s questions before on total material moved at full capacity in the second half, what sort of run rate will you be targeting there?

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: We provided guidance for the full year, 4.4, and we absolutely stand behind that. You know, Regan, it actually depends on how quickly we’re able to commission a new fleet. We’ve got to go through the receival of that or mobilisation of the fleet, recruitment, training, commissioning. There’s a few ifs, but by and large we expect to stand behind the guidance at a 4 to 4.4 million pound rate for the full financial year.

Sorry, just on as in if we sort of had a look at the material moved on a million tonnes per annum, annualized basis, what’s 100% operating capacity for that fleet that you’re looking at?

Yeah, we haven’t guided on that, Regan.

That’s all right.

Okay.

In terms of mill performance over the quarter, can you give us a bit more of a breakdown on that blending strategy and what was fed into the mill?

Were you sort of 50/50?

Guess with the stockpile and fresh, or how did that sort of shape out?

Yeah, the blend strategy varies as we go. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve typically got four types of feed that goes into the crusher: dry and wet, coarse and dry and wet, fine clay material. We blend on the basis of what gives us the best throughput numbers. As we progress through the MG3 stockpile and find different types of materials, our blend strategy is adjusted accordingly. We don’t actually have a fixed blend strategy. It also depends on the material coming out of the pit, and that of course depends on how it presents itself. That blend strategy has varied quite significantly over the quarter. Interestingly, it’s produced the same 477 ppm this quarter as it did last quarter.

If I could just squeeze one in there. You mentioned water availability over the quarter was managed well. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Were there any issues with water availability coming out of the desal plant or your allocation?

Yeah.

In terms of our infrastructure on site, we’ve got our two bladders, we’re pretty much operating two bladders at full capacity. The NamWater system is able to supply at or above our contracted rate. There have been some challenges in the Orano diesel system, but by and large we’ve been unaffected by that with utilization of our on-site capacity. We’ve also improved our unit consumption rates on site as well. We’re progressively having fewer and fewer impacts even considering the system variation from the Orano diesel and the NamWater system. It’s going exceptionally well on the waterfront.

Great, thanks for that.

I’ll leave it there.

Congratulations.

Thanks, Ricky.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Milan Tomic from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Please go ahead.

Hi Paul and team, thanks for the call. Just a question on the sustaining CapEx was quite low compared to the previous quarter. Is this just a function of the movement in the stockpile law, and is the expectation for the next quarter expected to be broadly in line with this quarter?

I’ll come back with the next one.

Alex Rybak, Chief Commercial Officer, Paladin Energy: Yeah, look, I think the main reason the number’s just low this quarter is really just a function of the timing. We’re still standing behind the guidance of the kind of 26 to 32 for the full year. It’s not to do with the low grade stockpile or capitalized stripping. They weren’t included in that guidance. We’ve also got some kind of chunky capital numbers in there around, you know, in drilling and exploration. You know that capital is not going to be evenly allocated over the year.

Yep, understood. Just going touching on the previous question regarding the water management strategy, can you just remind me how many days of water buffer do you have on site?

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: Yeah, about eight or nine days. It depends on our, on our.

Water.

Consumption per cubic meter of feed into the crusher, it’s about eight or nine days.

Yeah.

Has that issue with NAM water.

Been resolved, or are you still relying?

On the capacity you have on site to provide water to the mill?

Yeah, we don’t have any outstanding issues with NAM water.

Thank you very much.

That’s it.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, please go ahead.

Morning, Paul. Paul, can I just clarify, I think one of the questions or the answers to one of the earlier questions, just when you look at the costs obviously lower in the quarter, is it fair just to simply assume that you’ve got your guidance and as we move into the second half, you’ll basically be starting to process what you mine as opposed to capitalizing it? It’s really just that that drives the cost higher, or is there some opportunity maybe to do better than your guidance?

Alex Rybak, Chief Commercial Officer, Paladin Energy: Yeah, Clint, I think you’re right. I think, you know, we will be ramping up mining, and as you would imagine, the actual cost will increase because we are using that medium grade stockpile now. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the costs are going to increase as the mining fleet comes on and there’s greater proportion of mine material.

Okay.

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: Paul, just.

I know you’ve been mining a lot more waste than ore during the quarter, but just how’s the pit shaping up? I mean, obviously clay presence, etc. Is it sort of, are you seeing what you expected to see as you mine through the pits in these early days?

Yeah, the G pit is absolutely in line with expectations. We don’t have a lot of claim material in that area, so it’s actually shaping up very, very well. Probably slightly lower weight than anticipated, but it’s looking good. I’m very excited about next quarter and particularly the second half of the year.

Yeah, if I could just squeeze the third one in quickly. I mean, everyone now globally is talking about support for critical minerals. I’m sort of unclear where uranium falls a little bit in that, but does what we’re seeing, has it provided any more impetus for discussions with local governments here in Western Australia or Queensland to maybe overturn mining? Or are you not really in any active discussions at the moment? Thanks.

I think we’ve got plenty to keep us occupied at the moment, particularly finishing the ramp-up this year at Langer Heinrich and pushing forward with PLS. We’re not really in the space where we’re actively engaged in pushing forward Western Australia or Queensland at this time.

All right, that’s great.

Thanks, Paul.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Dim Ariyasinghe from UBS Investment Bank. Please go ahead.

Thanks, guys. Just a couple of quick ones from me. Number one, on the plant and maybe recoveries, noted it trended lower over last few quarters. Wondering if there’s anything to read into that as you ramp up. I presume it’s all within range, but yeah, just any clarity on that?

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: Yeah, thanks for the question. Typically our target range is 85% to 90%, and we’re within that range in most plants like this. It’s very, very dependent on your plant stability, particularly with respect in this circumstance to feed grade with the stockpile ore and blend strategy that we use to focus on throughput. We do get a bit of feed grade variability, which does drive variability in the overall recovery rate. As long as it performs within the 85% to 90% target range, we’re pretty happy.

Yeah. Okay, cool. The other one, obviously a bit of focus on the fleet pickup just in terms of what you can put through the plant. You put, you know, that was kind of unchanged, quarter on quarter. Can you, I guess, what’s the bottleneck there to start wetting the plant more even as you’re continuing to process stockpiles? Can you go into a bit more detail there, please?

Oh yeah, I can go into heaps of detail on this one. There’s a couple of different bottlenecks, and of course it depends on what type of feed you’re putting into the plant. If you put wet clay materials, then the crusher is going to be the bottleneck. What we found is if we put dry coarse material in, then we can increase our plant throughput and that doesn’t become the bottleneck. Similarly, at the CCD, if we have low-density feed, then we have low settling rate and that becomes a bottleneck in the plant. The leaching circuit is not a bottleneck, classification is not a bottleneck, and the final recovery and packaging facility is not a bottleneck in the plant. It really depends on the type of feed as to where the bottleneck appears.

I’m assuming, sorry, just kind of.

Hard to hear a little bit.

As you get into the fresh or that bottleneck lifts effectively, is that the way to dumb it down?

Yeah, again it depends on the type of material that we feed into that plant. If the feed grade or the lithology is heavily clay and wet, then it’s going to be more difficult to process. That means we adopt a blend strategy that optimizes our crusher throughput. Although fresh ore largely will be very helpful for us.

Okay, cool. Thank you.

Cheers.

Work on the result. Thank you. Thank you.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Josh Barr Jones from Canaccord Genuity Corp. Please go ahead.

Morning Paul and team. Congrats on the result and thanks for the call. In the last two updates you’ve mentioned how the mine plan has been optimized to now deliver medium and high grade ore to the processing plant while stockpiling the lower grade ore. I was just wondering if you could provide some context around this change and maybe add some color on what this could mean for production during the initial mining phase.

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: What we’ve been doing is we’ve done several optimizations of the mine, but every time we get a change in new price, for example, we can do some reoptimization to see if we can increase the pit shell as well as doing infill. Drilling around the fringes of the existing pit gives us a few more opportunities. We continue to run optimization strategies to determine our feed to the pit. That’ll be an ongoing process over the life of mine.

Thanks for that. The inventory level obviously appears quite strong at 1.8 million pounds. I was just wondering if there’s an optimal level that you target moving forward as a buffer against any potential challenges.

Alex Rybak, Chief Commercial Officer, Paladin Energy: Yeah, I think the inventory level is not a deliberate strategy. It’s really just a function of shipping availability and the working capital cycle. As Alex said on the earlier Q and A, all of that material that’s produced is in months for sale. It’s really about getting it from site to point of sale. That drives that balance. We don’t have a deliberate strategy around inventory other than I’d like it to be as low as possible, but it’s a function of the shipping schedule.

Ultimately, that’s understood.

Thanks, Dan.

Thanks, Charles.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Milan Tomic from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Please go ahead.

Hi. Yes, thanks for the follow-up. Just wanted to ask more of a high-level question. How is the performance of the pit performing versus the restart plan?

I guess, do you still see chances?

Of getting to $6 million and maybe if anything else has changed relative to that study?

Thanks.

Yeah.

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: I think what you will see, or what we are seeing, is that the performance is exactly what we thought it would be. We guided on that 4 to 4.4 million pound full production rate for this financial year, and GPIT is performing exactly how we thought it would. My expectation as we progress through the year is a slightly stronger second half than first half. When we get to July, we’ll be in a position to provide you with guidance for FY2027. At this point in time, I expect FY2027 to be very strong.

Got it. Thank you.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’ll now hand back to Mr. Hemburrow for closing remarks.

Paul Hemburrow, Managing Director and CEO, Paladin Energy: In closing, we’re really pleased with the results for the quarter, and our performance is in line with our expectations. We appreciate the support from investors through the fundraiser. We’re excited about the rest of the year and achieving the guidance that we’ve set. Thank you very much for joining us on the call today.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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