Transcription
Hello everybody and welcome into Commodity Culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day.
Before we dive in, standard disclaimer, nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Today is November 20th, 2025, and my guest is the CEO of Laramide Resources, a company focused on exploring and developing high-quality uranium assets in tier 1 uranium jurisdictions. It's Mark Henderson. Great to have you on the show.
>> Yeah, thanks Jesse. Great to be here.
>> Well, let's start by diving into the uranium market as a whole because it certainly has been an interesting year for both the uranium sector and nuclear energy. So, I'm wondering what are some of the highlights that stand out to you and where do you think we stand today when it comes to the health of the uranium market?
>> Well, I think the uranium market is probably in maybe the best place it's ever been in the history of civilian nuclear power to be honest, Jesse. I mean, this is kind of the third great bull market in civilian nuclear and this one looks to be bigger and better than the previous two, given the demand we're seeing from all over the planet on nuclear. Plus, you've got new nuclear, if you will, in the terms of SMRs and what have you that people are talking about, mini nukes. And now you've kind of got this AI incremental demand that's overprinting on what was already a pretty bullish story in nuclear, really just to fuel the existing civilian nuclear power plants that are already built. Plus, there's a very aggressive growth profile in that sector driven by countries like China that have decided to go nuclear as part of their energy. So, it's really in a great, great place. The term price has been going up relentlessly now for really three or four years, and we're still at a place where a lot of the companies say, "Hey, we need higher prices to bring on supply." Demand's not the problem, supply is really the problem. And so the market looks super healthy, you know, from our standpoint out to 2040. I mean, there's an organization called the World Nuclear Association that's kind of the equivalent of the IEA that talks about the oil market, and they're supposed to be kind of the authoritative voice. And their profile out to 2040 is compounded growth at levels that most industries would die for.
>> Well, one of the big stories for uranium in 2025 has been the Trump administration's push for domestic production of uranium and for building more nuclear reactors in the country. How much of an impact have those policies had so far? And as Laramide has several projects in the US, have you seen or are you expecting any direct benefit from this push for domestic uranium production?
>> Oh, 100%. I would say we've been a big beneficiary from the administration in terms of what they're trying to do to focus on expanding domestic sources of uranium supply. I mean, they have a reactor fleet, existing reactor fleet that needs roughly 50 million pounds a year. The domestic supply piece got down to less than a million pounds. I think they're certainly trying to bring it back to where they can maybe get 40% of their needs for civilian. And then you've got to layer on top of that all the military applications, including, you know, they've got to power the subs and the aircraft carriers. And so that picture is very strong. And we got granted fast permitting status called Fast 41. We've made application, and both of our projects in the US, the latest stage development ones, are in that category and are effectively being monitored by the administration. There's super transparency there in terms of what they hope the timeline will be to get these things online, which is terrific. You know, I think a lot of countries could learn from that model in terms of transparency is pretty powerful in terms of making the bureaucracy and the permitting people do their jobs and stuff can't get bogged down. So, I think that's been a huge win. And you've seen just this week, you know, if you want evidence of how serious they are about doing everything, I mean, they just gave a giant loan to restart Three Mile Island. I mean, that may be a bit controversial given the countries that are getting the loan, you know, really they're not normally ones that you think would be crying out for government help, but they certainly are demonstrating that they're very serious about getting more nuclear up as quickly as possible.
>> And do you think we could see a strategic uranium reserve? I mean, there actually already is one in some sense. The US government did make a one-time purchase from a few different producing companies in the US, I believe that was one or two years ago, but we haven't heard anything since, as far as I'm aware, about that uranium stockpile being added to. Do you think they're going to kind of revisit that initiative and push that forward as well?
>> Uh, I think that's certainly the discussion about it is ongoing. I think it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's highly likely. I think if, you know, I'd certainly put it at no worse than 50/50 that they'll do it. This is a kind of legacy policy that goes back to sort of Trump 1.0 and when this initial call to sort of let's get focused on worrying about future sources of supply, particularly domestic security. And this is an energy security question. It's an economic vulnerability question. When they brought this up the first time around, I think it was sort of around 2018. I mean, the uranium price was in a much different place. The market was really in overcapacity at the time. You hadn't had the effect of some of the newer buildouts that have subsequently happened. I mean, since 2018, the demand profile has been boosted substantially by, you know, China just doing what it was doing all along. You had plants come on in the UAE. You had uprates of existing reactors. That's been happening kind of all over the place, all around the globe. And so the need to have that sort of inventory buffer supply, if you will, I think is way more realistic and a logical policy option now, given where we are in the market, than it was in 2018. So I'd give it a decent chance of happening. I mean, the better projects, I mean, if you've got a project that's on the lowest part of the cost curve, I mean, you really probably don't need the price certainty of trying to be able to sell into a uranium reserve. But that's kind of a similar concept that they've done with rare earth, right? Where they're trying to provide floor pricing to make sure they address economic vulnerabilities. And, you know, I think it'll be quite successful in rare earth.
>> Well, uranium equities have been on a roller coaster recently. We've seen some pretty wild up days followed by massive losses on the other side and then back again, feeling very volatile at the moment. What do you think is driving this volatility? Is this just par for the course in the uranium sector? And do you think we will eventually see less of these violent swings as the market catches on to the supply shortfall and perhaps even institutions start to step in in a bigger way?
>> Um, yeah, it's certainly possible. I mean, I think you've got some big players in there that are in the stocks indirectly in the passive flows and things like that. And so that stuff tends to be a little have a little more volatility attached to it, if you will. And as I said earlier, I think this AI thematic kind of got overprinted on what was basically an industry story that had a basic, very good supply and demand setup. And then you sort of layered that excitement around AI that's become a big trade. And so you've got people waiting in and out of that. So it's gotten a bit tied to that. I think when that sort of settles out, you'll be back to more of a stable thing. And you've also got companies like on the development side of the ledger, you've got more development companies transitioning to producers. And in let's say five years' time, seven years' time, I think you'll have a more of an industry that maybe has five or 10 production companies in it. And so it'll transition to a bit more of a market that's driven by things like earnings and cash flow.
Well, supply shortfalls have seemed to be exacerbated, particularly this year, when it comes to a number of uranium companies facing challenges in bringing production online or meeting production guidance, from the two giants, Cameco and Kazatomprom, to developers trying to ramp into production. Considering that most analysts believe we already are in a supply deficit, and I certainly believe that we are, how are these production challenges going to impact the market?
Oh, I mean, I think it's just more fodder for the need to address the supply side of the story. I mean, as I said, we don't really need any more demand, to be honest. Luckily, there aren't five more Three Mile Islands sitting around that you could boot up. They're talking about that being booted up in 18 months. I mean, when that gets booted up, it's going to need fuel. And so the demand that's already projected out is things that are, in some cases, haven't been built yet. They'll get built in the 2030s. The SMRs will come online. The supply side is screaming out for action. You've got two giant companies that have a huge share of the market. I mean, their existing project profile from those two companies that maybe supply, let's say, 50% of the market or more. I mean, they don't have visibility on where their supply is coming from. So, it just exacerbates the existing situation, really.
Well, let's talk about how Laramide Resources fits into the picture. Start by giving us an overview of the company.
>> Yes. So, we're a development company. We call it late-stage development because we have projects that are well known, well-established. You know, they have lots of reserves, enough to basically they both, they're both projects. One in the US, which is an ISR, in-situ recovery project, similar to how they produce all the uranium in Kazakhstan. And the other's a more conventional open-pit type scenario in northern Australia. And they're both, you know, 50 million pounds plus. The one in Australia supports a bigger production profile and would be a bigger capex, and would follow the first one in the United States, which is farther along in the permitting dynamic. But I think there's an advantage to having a multi-asset company being in the uranium space because I think your end customer is always going to be really the utilities. And the utilities like to see diversification of supplies, so if one operation has a hiccup. And you see this with, you know, you mentioned Cameco and people like that that have multi-mine companies and different ways to make sure they can meet commitments because it's really, it's also very much a contractual business. You know, I referenced the spot market as the term market earlier. The term market, which is really the contractual market, is really where the economics of the business get driven and where most of the pounds trade. You know, you see numbers on spot pounds, and there's some percentage of the overall, let's say you have a 200 million pound a year market, and they may be 50 million spot pounds traded, but a lot of those spot pounds are traded over and over again, like day trade in stocks. Then the real market is mostly for the utilities is what do they have under contract because, you know, you run a nuclear power plant, you've got to have certainty around getting fuel. And so we want to be a supplier of choice to those utilities, particularly we're probably looking at Western G20 country type utilities because you've got some nation-state players that have nuclear reactor fleets like China, like Russia, etc. And they tend to do other bigger things on the procurement front because if you have demand that's that big, you basically need to own some uranium mines, you need to own pieces of uranium mines. They typically rely on the contract market or even certainly not the spot market to a much lesser extent. So we're our target, our target audience, if you will, for ultimately when these projects get built, will be those sorts of utilities.
>> Great. Well, could you shed some light on the team behind Laramide? Maybe starting with yourself, your own backgrounds, and your vision for the company.
>> Yeah, I mean, I'm a business guy. I'm a resource guy. I've been involved in development, mining development stuff for decades. I mean, spent a lot of time in gold and silver, which is, you know, all these mining projects are kind of analogous. I mean, development-wise, you get it to the point where it looks very attractive, can be developed. At that point, you're either developing it or typically a bigger company says, "We need that. We've got a gap in our portfolio," or what have you, and it typically gets on sold. We're at the point we've got great talent around us to get to how far we got here. The next step in the next year will be layering in that, okay, we're really building it talent. You know, the engineering team comes in, the design team. We're probably, you know, Q2 2027, if you look at what the Fast 41 schedule that was given to us by the government, that's when they're saying we ought to have final permit status and be ready to build it. And so sometime between now and then, we're going to start to add to that team, particularly in the United States, and with people that are, you know, visibly obviously have expertise in particular in ISR, because ISR is very much different than any other kind of mining.
Well, you have a very large portfolio of projects around the world. Can you walk us through how you decide which ones to prioritize along with your strategy for advancing them?
>> Well, I mean, some of this stuff, you know, tends to be a little bit serendipitous. I mean, we were fortunate enough to get a big trophy asset in Australia that we've had for a very long time. You know, we had to weather a bear market. The politics haven't necessarily been favorable all the time. They go in and out of favor. And that project obviously is economically as ready to go as soon as the government kind of gives us the nod. We think we're very close there now, in terms of being ready to go and then permit and build it. And so, but we, you know, if we're trying to decide, and we've looked at a lot of things, and you're trying to decide to look at things, and you're in the commodity business, I mean, the number one thing to be a winner in the commodity business is to be on the lowest part of the cost curve, which sort of generally guarantees that your asset, if it firms up the way you think it's going to firm up, you're going to be able to bring it into the market and when you're going to basically take the place of people that are higher up in the cost curve. Uranium is kind of a little bit different now because we're in this market that honestly, anything on the cost curve that makes pounds that's available in the next five to seven years is going to happen. And that's really describes the development side of this business at the moment. I mean, really, you can go look at the biggest uranium mining fund, the SPUT one, and look at the names in there, and basically that's a list of who's who in the business in the pure group that essentially has projects that, frankly, the world needs, and the sooner the better. You know, and some, it's all an ordering as to how they'll come on and how they'll happen, and whether maybe some of them get swallowed up into bigger companies. But you don't have a lot of the new development companies that typically have more than one asset. So part of our whole drive was really, as I said before, just to have more than have diversity, have a couple of assets. I mean, you see this in gold too. You know, the minute you're a one-mine gold company and you build your first mine, every, the street goes, "That's fantastic. What have you done for me lately? What are you going to do next?" You know, so it's nice to have your next project that you already own it and you don't have to pay for it. Or more typically what happens in the resource business, you overpay for it. Or you get to be a big company and your reserves start declining, and then that's what happened in the gold business 10 or 15 years ago to all the big cap gold companies. And then you go through the angst on the back side of that as people swear off acquisitions and that sort of thing. So, part of it is that, but we typically, our screen is typically to go places we feel comfortable jurisdiction-wise, and that includes being able to build a project, but also, if you have a problem, can you litigate? You know, can you get a good outcome notwithstanding not only the project, but if you've got a project and you've got a contractual relationship with the utility, and this has happened many times in the uranium business, you know, because they're mostly to take or pay contracts by design, and you don't want to be in a situation where you need to get paid and they don't want to take. And if you're going to litigate it, you want to be in a place that your shareholders feel very good that you're going to get a good outcome. So, as for things like exploration in Kazakhstan and greenfield and places like that, there's probably less than 10 countries in the world that if you were going to go try and find a big new uranium project, those would be. And you asked an expert team of geologists to go, where would you go? I'm guessing that if they all had to put 10 names down on a list, there'd be an awful lot of overlap on the list. And it's a pretty short list. And so that kind of drives where you have to go, really, if you're serious about that's really the greenfield development pipeline part of a portfolio. Most companies that I find right now aren't really thinking about that. I mean, if you think about the companies that are up and running, got things up and running, by and large, they're not drilling greenfield holes at all. They're doing effectively brownfield things, trying to build up around the sites they have. Maybe they only have one site and they're worried about getting mine number two there. Other than the Athabasca Basin, I would say in terms of concentration of exploration dollars in this industry, you don't see much in the way of exploration. And that would honestly include Kazakhstan because Kazatomprom is a production company. They're not an exploration company.
>> Do you have any thoughts on the kind of soft uranium mining ban in Western Australia? From what I understand, they haven't been issuing new permits since 2017. There's been some pushback against that. I know there's some people in government who were trying to change that. What are your thoughts there? And do you expect a reversal of that policy sometime in the next few years?
>> Yeah, that's an interesting one because the so-called ban or whatever you want to call it in Australia is now down to a state-level thing. The federal government really did away with it at, really in their policy platform at large many years ago, probably 15 years ago now. Actually, it was done when the current prime minister was in the government as well. And they devolved it to the states, but it's a partisan thing where the one party, the left-of-center party, traditionally has had this anti-uranium kind of stance. It's really an ideological stance to appeal to a particular bunch of voters that they think they need in order to get power, stay in power, get enough seats. It's a parliamentary democracy. And so, and the states, you have it. Western Australia is still in that camp, and that's the reason that it is so. And it's currently got a Labor party in power with a strong majority. The wrinkle there is that the American government wants to sell nuclear submarines to the Australians, and they'll be the first one to ever get these Australians. The Australians want the nuclear submarines, and we're it's going to be an interesting situation to see if the Americans are willing to give nuclear, and they're going to be based out of Perth, Western Australia. And so they're going to have to build up capacity. They're going to have to build up the ability to service these subs. You know, eventually they're going to put their own sailors on these subs, etc. It's going to be interesting if they're going to have a situation where that policy can survive the fact that they want to buy these subs, but they're not willing to even make the fuel in their own country because, at the end of the day, you can't power these things without uranium. So, I think somehow or other in the next year or so, the whole legacy question in Australia is going to go the way of the dodo bird. But how it exactly happens, who knows? We've got a similar situation in Quebec where you had that party in power, and they were in power for a very long time. We've got a new party in power there now, and so we're expecting that that party will essentially do away with that. It's a legacy thing that's still in the permitting parts of the government. It's not a policy of that particular administration, and they just need to amend that so that we can crack on with permitting, and then that mine will go ahead fairly rapidly.
>> Let's talk about Laramide's current cash position. What is the cash position? How much runway does that give you? And what's the strategy for raising capital moving forward when needed?
>> Um, well, the last two raises were both sort of traditional equity raises. We did one in Australia, I think in late '23, and then we did one that closed in July. They were both fairly smallish. They were both done brokered but without warrants. We managed through the whole previous multi-number of years getting by capital-wise because we had done so many warrants earlier that eventually, as the market got better, all effectively all the warrant money came in. And now we basically have a scenario where there's we're probably one of the few companies without any warrant overhang, which is a nice place to be. We'd like to stay there. We probably have six or seven million dollars, I think was the number most recently reported when the quarter came out. Most of what we're doing like through next year is permitting related. So the cash burn is really not very high at the moment. We're doing a program in Kazakhstan that's been budgeted. We're waiting to get that started, but it's fairly modest. I think it's a couple million dollars for the initial round of drilling there. And then, you know, we'll be looking at trying to raise money in '26 sometime in all probability. But whether again, it's another equity thing. We really have properties in some cases that really have no royalty overhang on them. So that's a possibility. There's multiple ways to raise money. We haven't been worried about the, especially now you've got, I mean, it's a bull market in uranium. It's more not a question of can you, it's a question of what's the price, really. And we're, but we're very cautious about that. And, you know, because we're, you know, big shareholders, insiders, big shareholders. I'm a big shareholder. You know, I actually think a lot about cost of capital, dilution, things like that.
>> Great. Well, is there anything we haven't yet discussed or anything you think it's important to emphasize about Laramide Resources to potential shareholders of the company?
>> I think in terms of just, like you said at the top, do your own due diligence. I think we're part, as I said, I think we're part of a peer group. It's a fairly small peer group. You can obviously play this peer group through passives. And it's worth mentioning that we're in all the three big most passive vehicles, and they own probably, I want to say collectively maybe 15% of the company. So that's a, and that's very useful to be, you know, in a as a developer, it's very useful to have that kind of, I wouldn't say they're permanent capital, but the liquidity that that brings to the story should make people that want to get in and out of the stock a lot more comfortable that they can do that. But I would say if you want to go, one of the reasons to look at us as opposed to looking at something like that is look where we are valuation-wise versus some of those other companies that have similar attributes, and look at their valuation versus ours. I think there's, I think we have a lot of upside, particularly because we've had this Australian question hanging over us for a long time. And if that gets resolved, I think there's sort of general consensus is that that's a pretty bullish development. We have four analysts covering us. The targets are all obviously higher. They're all in the, I want to say 130 to 150 range. But I mean, we think that's low. And if we get a re-eval on really what is what's a 5 million pound a year lowest quartile producer in a great country worth, it's worth probably more than the NAV value being ascribed to it now by the marketplace generally or the analyst community or what have you. So I think if you want to look at us, analyze us as a way to play the market, I think that's the way to, if you want to do your homework, I think that's a good place to start.
>> Well, I will go ahead and put a link to the Laramide Resources website as well as social media for people who want to follow the company. Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
>> Yeah, thanks Jesse. I'll see you again.
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