UR Energy at H.C. Wainwright: Strategic Expansion in Uranium Mining

On Monday, 08 September 2025, UR Energy (NASDAQ:ESPR) presented at the H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference. Matthew Gilley, the new President, outlined the company’s strategic direction, highlighting its position as one of only three U.S. uranium producers. While emphasizing growth and financial strength, Gilley also addressed challenges like market fluctuations and geopolitical risks.

Key Takeaways

• UR Energy is one of three companies currently producing and selling uranium in the U.S.
• The company is expanding its production capabilities with projects like Lost Creek and Shirley Basin.
• A hybrid pricing model for uranium contracts is being adopted to manage market risks.
• UR Energy is financially strong with $49.1 million in cash and long-term contracts in place.
• The company focuses on in-situ recovery (ISR) mining, recycling 99.3% of its water.

Financial Results

• Cash reserves stood at $49.1 million as of the end of July.
• Second quarter operating costs were $42.83 per pound.
• The average contract price for 2025 is projected at $61.56 per pound.
• Total sales for 2025 are expected to reach 440,000 pounds.
• 45% of production through 2023 is already contracted.

Operational Updates

• Lost Creek has produced approximately 3 million pounds since 2013, with over 200,000 pounds produced in the first half of 2025.
• Lost Creek’s full production capacity is 1.2 million pounds per year.
• Shirley Basin holds 8.8 million pounds of uranium in the measured and indicated category, with a full capacity of 1 million pounds per year.
• Production at Shirley Basin is slated to start in early 2026, with five drill rigs currently on-site.

Future Outlook

• Exploration programs will focus on Lost Soldier, North Hatsell, and Lost Creek South in 2025.
• Long-term contracts are shifting to hybrid pricing models, blending fixed and market-related prices.
• The company expects to increase earnings per share by boosting production and benefiting from rising uranium prices.
• A potential premium on US-produced uranium is anticipated due to geopolitical risks and a focus on domestic supply.

Q&A Highlights

• Contracts signed in 2022 and 2023 featured fixed prices in the high forties and low fifties with escalators.
• New contracts are moving towards a hybrid model with fixed prices around the low seventies and market-related pricing.
• Analysts generally have an accurate understanding of UR Energy’s focus on ISR mining, plant capacity, and cost dynamics.

For a more detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript of the conference call.

Full transcript - H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference:

Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the H. C. Wainwright twenty seventh Annual Global Investment Conference. I’d like to welcome this session speaker, Matt Gilly, president of UR Energy. Take it away, Matt.

Thank you very much. So, alright, good afternoon, everyone. You know, I’m

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: the I’m Matthew Gilley. I’m the newly appointed president of UR Energy, and it is a great pleasure to be speaking with you this afternoon. Alright. Who is UR Energy? Okay.

UR Energy is a US based producer, developer, and explorer for uranium based in Wyoming, listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. We’re one of only three companies that are currently producing and selling uranium in The United States, and our production is expanding rapidly. The first property I’d like to discuss with you today is Lost Creek. Lost Creek has produced approximately 3,000,000 pounds since production started in 2013. The uranium resources at the site are over 12,000,000 pounds in the measured and indicated category and over 6,000,000 pounds in the inferred category with thirteen years of remaining mine life.

The property was placed in care and maintenance during a period of low uranium prices by by UR Energy, and we’ve now restarted the operations. 2025 year to date through the second quarter, we’ve produced just over 200,000 pounds of u three zero eight. The mine capacity at full production is 1,200,000 pounds per year. Second quarter operating costs totaled $42.83 per pound, and our average contract price for 2025 is $61.56 per pound with our 2025 total sales projected at 440,000 pounds. And our Shirley Basin project, we’re well advanced in the construction of this mine with production startup targeted for early twenty twenty six.

Shirley Basin has 8,800,000 pounds of uranium all in the measured and indicated category. Full capacity at this property is 1,000,000 pounds production per year. As stated, construction at Shirley Basin is well advanced. Historically, previous miners had produced over 51,000,000 pounds from this basin from 1960 to 1992. Historical buildings on-site have been refurbished for our use.

Five drill rigs are on-site, currently drilling out the well field for the first mining unit, and a contractor for the processing plant has poured the foundations and is starting to install equipment. So Scott showed this picture in the previous presentation. This is what a in situ uranium mine looks like. Those brown drums you see right there are the tops of the wellheads. And so in in situ mining, what we do is we we extract uranium from the ground without needing conventional underground or open pit mining.

Oxygenated water is pumped underground. The uranium dissolves in this oxygenated water, and then we pump the solution back into our processing plant for conversion to u three zero eight. The next three slides are about supply and demand, and I’m not gonna go through them in a lot of detail. If you’re if you’re in this meeting, you’ve probably already done your analysis, and you’re probably already sold on the supply constraints and the demand surge. So currently, The U in The US, nuclear supply is 20% of the electricity consumed.

Worldwide, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation with another 66 in construction, all indicators for growing demand. On supply side, it’s really a story of geopolitical risk. Russia currently supplies 20% of the enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. Kazakhstan produces approximately 46% of the global supply of u three zero eight, the same product that we produce at our Wyoming operations. And then very specifically for The US, the support for nuclear is growing.

The president has signed four executive orders supporting the rapid expansion of The US nuclear industry in the consolidated budget, allocated 2,700,000,000.0 to carry out the nuclear fuel security act, which is designed to enhance the domestic fuel supply in The US. This is Lost Creek property. I’m gonna go into a little bit more detail. Currently, we have thirteen years of mine life, and all the resources on the property can be piped and treated in our centralized plant on-site. Another key attribute for Lost Creek is our royalty environment.

So our total royalty burden is less than 1%, and currently, we’re in a zero royalty regime. We’ll we’ll get into a 1% royalty sometime in years three through six. Again, I just keep drawing there’s some more detail on the properties. What I really wanna draw to your attention is that photo in the bottom right. That is a drum of yellow cake.

That is what we produce and sell. We sell it by shipping it to a a conversion facility in Illinois where the title is transferred to the customer. It’s benign. I mean, it it it’s uranium, but it’s in it’s in a metal drum. It goes on a truck.

We ship it to Illinois. At this stage, we’re all dealing with things that are, you know, relatively easy to manage and very safe. Scott touched on this. This this is what an ion exchange column looks like. It looks just like a big water softener in your house.

Same process happens. In your water softener, the ion exchange is to is between calcium, magnesium. In the ion exchange column for here, it’s with uranium. And this is what developing a well field looks like. This is a different property than Lost Creek.

Lost Creek is in the Great Divide Basin. This is in the Shirley Basin. It’s about two hour drive away from from Great Great Divide Basin. Both of them Casper is central to both. Little different topography here.

You see the windmills in the background. It’s an it’s an energy basin. But with that in mind, this is what it looks like to develop a well field. The in ISR mining, the mining is the well drilling. So we treat all of the well drilling as an operating cost as we would with stripping in an open pit mine or doing development in an underground mine.

So when you look at our our cash costs, our cash costs include drilling all of these wells as a cash cost, not as a capitalized cost. That is one of our technicians doing a doing a piezometer reading. We’re kinda we’re kinda living in the the set of Yellowstone here. This is what header houses look like. So, when you have you have a cluster of your wells, those wells feed into the header houses.

The header houses then manage the flow between the the fluid you’re injecting in the injection wells and the fluid that you’re pumping out of the production wells. The fluid coming out of the production wells gets routed into the plant for ion exchange. And then once the ion exchange has occurred, the water is returned is returned back to the header houses, oxygenated at the header houses, and goes back underground. So the third part of our our strategy, we talked about it here. Lost Creek is in production.

Shirley Basin is in construction going into production. Here’s our exploration programs. Lost Soldier, North Hatsell, and Lost Creek South are the properties that our exploration activities are focused on in 2025. Lost Soldier and North Hatsell are approximately 10 miles north of Lost Creek Complex, and that’s easily serviceable as a satellite facility. Lost Soldier does have a pre previously completed resource done for open pit mining, and that is a resource of many million pounds.

That resource is not applicable to to in situ mining. So we’re doing the data collection on the hydrology right now so we can see how if and how much of that resource will be applicable into our ISR mining process. Oh, so UR Energy leading the green revolution. We are a a a current producer and seller of uranium into the, international uranium market. We’re based out of Casper, Wyoming.

We use in situ technology to extract uranium from the ground. And in that process, we recycle 99.3% of our water. The the usual suspects on our, in both of our investors and our analyst coverage, solid growth story in strengthening the uranium market. We’re well financed. We closed the year we closed July, pardon me, with $49,100,000.

We have, we do have long term, contracts. You see from the quarterly press release, about 45% of our production through 2023 is contracted already. Those contracts have occurred at different points in time. So each point in time, there’s a different terms for those contracts. The nature of the contracts are changing.

They’re they’re much less focused on fixed price and more focused on having a a a relationship to the market with the floor and ceilings in place. And the ramp up our ramp up to commercial production is well underway. We are staffed up at Lost Creek. We are staffing up at Shirley Basin. The problems that we we encountered last year with getting drill rigs and drill drillers in place have been believed, and now we’re moving into making precipitate.

That’s my presentation. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

Unidentified speaker: Clarify, Lost Soldier. Are you referring to the oil and gas company or the field?

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: The field. The where we’re Lost Soldier is the name that we call that property. It’s this it’s this property right here.

Unidentified speaker: So is that South Of Jeffrey City?

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: Yeah. So Jeffrey City, I think, is oh, is is it’s South Of Jeffrey City, but Jeffrey City is more to the West as well. It’s in the Great Divide Basin, though. This is so it’s South Of Green Mountain. Yes, sir.

Unidentified speaker: The additional production, maybe the slide after this.

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Walk through it. So the additional production that’s coming on, can you talk about some of the supply agreements, the quality, the material, any changes in pricing, how you’re looking at that? Is there a pricing floors in these contracts? Maybe it kinda gives

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: us

Unidentified speaker: a sense on your disability.

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: 100%. Okay. So I’m and I’m talking in vague terms here. We we have disclosed our average selling price for 2025, but we haven’t disclosed it going forward. Those contracts that we are delivering to right now were signed in 2022 and 2023.

Those contracts were largely fixed price, and that fixed price at the time was in the high forties, low fifties. There’s an escalation that’s built in. So so in those days, the contracts were very focused on fixed pricing with an escalator. What you’re seeing is tie between that time and now and and and if I was listening to a presentation in Casper at the, at the SME event there. In 2021, the fixed the the term price was about 40.

K? Right now, the fixed price the term price last year was about 60, and now this the the the, the spot price is at the high 70. So you’re seeing this this increase in the price. K? The contracts that are going out now, the RFPs, we we get an RFP from a utility, generally a utility, and they ask for pounds delivered in the future, usually three to five years out in the future.

And they ask us to propose what are the terms going to be. Generally speaking, right now, the ourselves and our peers in the industry are doing a mix of fixed price and market related price. Let’s say, could be $50.50. Fixed price and market related price. The fixed price seems to be in the low seventies right now with an escalator, and the, the market related price is the market is related to the market, of course, and then they put in usually, you agree to some sort of floor and ceiling just to cover your your risk on both ends.

So that’s that you’re seeing that that move towards we call it a hybrid, and it it you least your energy, we call it a hybrid. It’s not it’s not fixed, but it’s it’s not all market related. It’s a it’s a blend of the two. All terms are negotiable. This is this is very much a site by site, customer by customer negotiation.

From our standpoint, we’re producing. We we we needed to lock in those contracts to ensure that we were gonna be able to sell, you know, our pounds at at a cash positive position. That’s the strategy that we took.

Unidentified speaker: So what you’re what you’re saying is is that these prices are a lot lower than where the fixed price is gonna be in future.

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: Exactly. Because these were writ these these contracts were signed in 2223. You can see even more color if you go into our quarterly, quarterly presentation. It talks about the details of when those contracts were signed, what the term what the what the term price was at the time of those contracts being signed. So it’s yeah.

If you’re if the price if the spot price is going up and you’re in our position where you’ve you’ve made commitments to sell, you’re gonna be you’re gonna be selling it, but probably less than spot for that portion that you fixed. Well, no. I mean, it depends. I I wouldn’t say that at all. I mean, I wouldn’t say that I I’m making generalities about what you’re seeing a lot in the market right now with regards to contracts.

Unidentified speaker: K. And then lastly, the the, the fourth the analyst forecast, do you think that they’re inaccurately flapping the current environment and the strategy of the company in terms of pricing?

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: You mean the analyst specifically for UR Energy? I I think they are. I mean, I think the the analysts do a good job of of, understanding the UR Energy story. Let’s be fair. The in in simple terms, the UR Energy story is pretty simple.

We we focus on ISR mining in Wyoming. We’ve got three properties, one in production, one in construction, and one in exploration. We have, right now, an existing plant capacity of 2,200,000 pounds a year is the upper level for our plant. All of our material that we produce right now goes through the centralized plant, and lost soldier, if it if and when it comes into production, will feed into that centralized plant as well. So I think they do a good under you know, when when you have that model there, then it’s pretty much just how much does it cost per pound to produce uranium and what then is going to be, the selling price for uranium.

That’s where I let the analysts do their math. We do our own internal math, but the rest of it’s the rest of it’s coming straight out of our our public reports. Yes, sir.

Unidentified speaker: When when you you made mention earlier as I was talking, you just joined the company.

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: I did.

Unidentified speaker: K. So going through your decision process

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: When you look at the valuation of the stock now versus the opportunity, how does that cost? Say?

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: So so a 100% a 100% on my side, I see a company. One, one, it’s a group of people that I’m really proud to be associated with. I like what they’re doing. I mean, they they from an inch as an engineer, it just makes so much sense to be mining uranium and producing electricity with uranium. It’s versus, you know, my my brother’s in coal, and he’s a fantastic coal miner.

You’re trucking giant, you know, millions of tons of coal across America. That’s good. From our side, we’re we’re transporting relatively small amounts of a substance across the world, and it’s able to produce a lot of energy. So I see that as as an engineer, that’s just logical. The so I see the vision.

I see the world is starting to appreciate that you can very simply create power from nuclear safely. I see that vision. What I also see is the supply. Right? So who else is who else is coming online right now?

And and the geopolitical risk is there. The world is getting a little more messy. Right now, The United States and Canada and Australia are kind of the the allied producers, and there’s not a whole lot of new production coming online right now. At the same time, I see that there’s a lot of emphasis on US production of uranium. So I would look forward to a time when there’s a slight premium applied to The US production of uranium.

That’s just a projection. That’s just a a thought. I’m not I’m not forecasting forward on that.

Unidentified speaker: But if you’re if you with that thought in mind, where do you see the stock price and have you bag in the stock price? We’re making yours.

Matthew Gilley, President, UR Energy: Look. When I’m making my decision, I I always go to earnings per share. I mean, in the end, it’s always about earnings per share. So when I look into the earnings per I think the the I think this this should the appreciation of the share price is gonna come from us demonstrating our reliable ability to produce more poundage. And with our operating costs remaining, I I’m very comfortable with where our operating costs are going, and I see price increasing.

So I I just I I put those three things together, and I just see a increase in our earnings per share.

Unidentified speaker: Don’t stop cost.

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