Ur Energy Inc Common Shares (Canada)

Thank you for joining UR Energy's year-end 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you have joined via the webcast and you wish to submit a question, please use the Ask Question button on your viewer window. If you have dialed in, please press star 1 to enter the Q&A queue at any time. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Alex Ritchie, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of UR Energy.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We don't undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Slide two contains disclaimers that relate to forward-looking statements, risk factors, and projections, and cautionary notes to investors. Please consider these carefully, along with the risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K that was filed on March 10, 2026. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gilley.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Slide one. As many of you know, I joined Eeyore Energy midway through 2025. From my perspective, it was a year of strong execution and meaningful progress. Across our operations, development pipeline, and financial position, we delivered tangible improvements that positioned the company for production growth in 2026. Slide two, disclaimer. As Alex mentioned, we will likely make forward-looking statements today. Please read the disclaimer at your leisure.

On to Lost Creek, slide three.

At Lost Creek, our focus on operational execution translated into significant year-over-year gains. We ended the year with 406,000 pounds of product in the inventory, an increase of 21% over 2024. We increased pounds drummed in 2025 by 65% over 2024. We also improved well-filled flow rates, increased pounds captured by 40%, and increased our profit per pound sold by more than $12. Our average cash cost per pound sold, including severance and ad valorem taxes, was $42.89.

These results reflect stronger well-filled performance, improved plant throughput, and disciplined operating focus. Slide four. Ongoing drilling at Lost Creek continues to create value.

As detailed in our updated SK1300 technical report, the measured and indicated resource is now estimated at 11.9 million pounds, and the inferred resource is at 10.4 million pounds. The estimated mine life at Lost Creek was extended by nearly three years, and the post-tax net cash flow increased to $442 million. roughly 45% more than the previous estimate. The NPV with an 8% discount rate is now estimated at $244 million with an internal rate of return of almost 66%. Slide five. We've still only drilled a portion of the more than 35,000 contiguous acres at the Lost Creek property. As our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Steve Haddon, Said in yesterday's press release, every time we drill at Lost Creek, we've been fortunate to increase the resource base. This underscores Lost Creek's scale, longevity, and long-term growth potential.

On to slide six in Shirley Basin.

At our Shirley Basin project, we made substantial progress towards bringing our second ISR production facility online. The initial processing plant construction is nearing completion. with all ion exchange columns installed and key tanks in place. To support start of operation, we've drilled 469 injection and production wells. And mine unit one, header house one, is ready to begin initial injection and recovery from the well field pending approval from the state environmental department. They began their pre-operational inspections in late February and are looking at our well field data package, so that process is underway. The March 2024 technical report for Shirley Basin estimated a nine-year mine life and 8.8 million pounds of resource in the measured and indicated categories. The estimated post-tax net cash flow is $119 million. The NPV, with an 8% discount rate, is $83 million, with an internal rate of return of 69%. The estimated all-in cost is $50 per pound. During 2025, we grew our UR Energy workforce by 55% and welcomed 56 new team members. The majority of those were added to support Shirley Basin, but we also strengthened our operational, technical, and corporate teams across the company. We are proud of the team we're building. Slide seven. From a financial perspective, we ended the year with $123.9 million in cash. driven largely by the successful closing of our 4.75% convertible senior notes. Our cash position as of March 4, 2026, was $115.3 million. That doesn't include $18.5 million that we will receive this month for 24.7 million warrants that were exercised last month for about 12.3 million of our common shares. All of our outstanding warrants were exercised over the last few months

except for an insignificant number that expired.

The strength of our balance sheet gives us the flexibility to fund Shirley Basin commissioning, continue ramp up at Lost Creek, and disciplined resource growth. And while we're not taking any victory laps just yet, it's worth pointing out that we finished the year with a positive gross profit of $74,000, a modest number, but an encouraging milestone as operations and production continues to improve. On slide eight, in our Lost Soldier project, we installed 18 aquifer test wells in late 2025 to support the evaluation of the potential for ISR development. Aquifer testing will begin this month, followed by baseline environmental studies for permitting, for petition permits, pardon me. Lost Soldier is just 17 miles from the Lost Creek Processing Plant, which could mean an opportunity to develop it as a satellite operation using our existing infrastructure. We've also started work on a technical report for the project that we expect to complete by the end of this year. At our North Hassell project in the Great Divide Basin, drilling continues to deliver very encouraging early results. Through the end of February, we drilled 32 wide-spaced holes totaling 33,000 feet. Seven of those intersected significant uranium mineralization, including 13 intercepts exceeding our Lost Creek cutoff grade. These results suggest multiple stacked roll front horizons with grade and thicknesses comparable to Lost Creek, supporting the potential for future ISR development. The results include two standout holes about 1.5 miles apart that intersected significant stacked mineralization at similar depths, giving us some early confidence in the potential scale of the system. And North Atsil is only 18 miles from Lost Creek. Once we wrap up the 50-hole program at North Tassel, we'll move the rigs over to our Lost Creek South project this summer. Lost Creek is located adjacent to Lost Creek, and we're planning 120-hole drill programs there this year. These exploration programs are critical to expanding our development pipeline, growing our resource base, and diversifying potential future production across multiple projects.

Slide 9, wrapping up.

As we enter 2026, we continue to optimize our operations in Lost Creek, while our second ISR facility is surely based and is making significant progress towards startup. Our combined estimated mineral resource totals 21 million pounds in the measured and indicated categories and 10.4 million pounds in the inferred category as of December 31st, 2025, providing a strong resource base for our production. We have contracted for sales of 1.3 million pounds in 2026. We plan to cover those sales with pounds in inventory and new pounds that we produced at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. And on March 4th, we had 379,000 pounds in conversion facility inventory. With our growing resource base and strong balance sheet, we believe your energy is well positioned to benefit from positive uranium market fundamentals and increase demand for secure U.S. uranium supply. And with that, I'll turn it back to the operator and open it up for questions and answers. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you have joined via the webcast and you wish to submit a question, please use the Ask Question button on your viewer window. If you have dialed in, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue, and you may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. And the first question today is coming from Sundariya Iyer from B Reilly Securities. Sundariya, your line is live.

Thank you. Hi, Matt. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the quarter. I just have two questions. So starting with the 1.5 million commitments, including the 250,000 loan repayment, with current inventory levels, can you help us understand, like, what gives the confidence in meeting these deliveries and increasing utilization from the current levels to that 50, 60% range?

Certainly, Zendari, and thanks for the question. So, look, when you talk about what gives us that confidence, it's what we're seeing now with the current ramp-up of operations at Lost Creek combined with the positive progress on construction at Shirley Basin. So we do our mine planning. We do our analysis of risks and opportunities. As we go through this year, our plan, which is a very solid plan that we've gone through very carefully, because we were able to make our deliveries of $1.3 million contractual sales for the year from the existing inventory as well as the new production that we will be bringing on during the year. There's a lot of different parts there. I mean, what we're seeing is a continued ramp-up of operations at Lost Creek. We're seeing the well fields continue to produce high-quality uranium and solution. The improvements in the plant are really taking shape. The team at the Lost Creek plant is expanding. We've got a very strong business improvement program in place there. We brought on key individuals, as well as we're going to be adding sand filters to the front of the Lost Creek plant over the next several months. So these are the parts from Lost Creek that give us the confidence. Shirley Basin is the positive construction. We're on track to be able to start moving solution through the plant this month. and we're on track for the begin shipping resin deliveries in the second quarter. So that's all coming together nicely. We still require pending environmental approval from the state of Wyoming. Those are all on track, and they seem clear. We can't always predict when we'll get those, but everything seems on track, and we're very confident in our ability to ship.

Thank you, Matt. Thank you for that update. I'll turn it over.

Okay, thanks, Andrea. Thank you. The next question will be from Anthony Taglieri from Canaccord Genuity. Anthony, your line is live.

Good afternoon, Matt and team. Thanks for taking my questions. Just curious on the product loans that you have outstanding. Given your cash balance, when should we expect that this might get repaid? Would it be sort of by the deadline in November? Would you settle it earlier? And then maybe on the settlement, does it have to be settled by replacing the physical or could it be cash settled as well? Thanks.

All right, Anthony, good questions. So we have a £250,000 loan with a trading entity that is due in November of this year. As you kind of pointed out in your question, Anthony, we have multiple options on how and when we repay this loan. We could always, with our cash balance, we could always have the opportunity to pay back that loan by buying pounds on the spot. Regarding the payment of the loan, the loan is to be repaid in physicals. Not necessarily our physicals, but the loan is to be repaid in physicals. So I'm not going to pin down exactly how we're looking at that. What we are doing, Anthony, is we're looking at our opportunity. If we were to see a short-term decrease in spot price, that could give us an opportunity to just get that loan off of our books at a very favorable price. Other than that, we look at other opportunities. So we haven't pinned down, and we're not projecting a certain path on that. We do know that loan is outstanding. It's due in November, and we have the contingency plans in place to fulfill that loan.

Great. Thanks. That's very clear. Maybe just as a follow-up, how should we think about the cadence of realized prices through 2026? Do you expect sort of, you know, a ramp in prices, you know, to stay fairly consistent? How should we be thinking about that?

Well, look, we haven't given specifically a price per pound for 2026, but you can see in our 10K the detail there that shows that We are contracted to deliver 1.3 million pounds for proceeds of up to $82 million. Those contracts are all different stages and different prices throughout the year. So there's not like a ramp up through the year. Those were all contracts that were signed multiple years ago for delivery in 2026. You can do the math and come out with the average price per pound. And you should think of it as an average because of the way that the contracts come in and the way that we deliver onto those contracts. It's not a ramp up, but it is a series of different prices at different blocks.

Thanks, Matt. I will pass it on.

Thank you. The next question will be from Jeff Gramp from Northland. Jeff, your line is live.

Good afternoon, Matt. Thanks for the time. Hey, Jeff. I was curious at Lost Creek, given we're a couple months plus into the quarter, any commentary you can share on how production has trended thus far in Q1 relative to Q4 levels and maybe how you're expecting that asset to ramp throughout the year?

Thanks. Yeah, good question again. I'm going to be hesitant to be too specific because I want to keep everything nice and tight as far as disclosures. Certainly the ramp-up continues at Lost Creek. I will say in December, we had a significant weather event of 11 days of power disruption from a windstorm that came through Wyoming with winds well over 100 miles an hour. We recovered. The plant delivered beautifully through December, and the teams responded to that power outage and really, really did a fantastic job of stripping resin and drumming resin, drumming uranium, pardon me. We will, you know, January's rough as we reloaded the resin. We're back on track for February. March looks on track for very positive. So the ramp up continues, Jeff. I'm being very coy in giving you real specifics yet, but you'll get those numbers as soon as they're available. Well, look, we're on, we see the steady path for ramp up at Lost Creek and its ability with Shirley Basin to deliver into that 1.3 million pounds. That's kind of our, our standard answer there, Jeff, and that's what we're committed to. Fair enough.

We'll stay tuned. For my follow-up on the cost side of the equation, any thoughts on kind of where cash costs go in 26? Should we expect as Lost Creek kind of ramps up, we see some downward pressure on the cost side, and how might the introduction of Shirley Basin pounds impact some of that arithmetic?

Sure. So we're not giving cost guidance, but I will tell you that in an ISR operation, your costs are incredibly fixed. So it's really a function of pounds drummed, or I guess pounds sold. So the more pounds you sell, the lower your cost per pound. It really is incredibly fixed cost structure. The wells are the wells, the electricity is electricity. The same number of people are there regardless of how many pounds you drum. And the cost of the luxiviance is really just oxygen and carbon dioxide, and they're relatively minor in the big scheme of things. So it is quite a linear relationship there between drummed and sold and cost per pound.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. I'll turn it back. Thank you.

The next question will be from Joseph Rager. from Roth Capital. Joseph, your line is live.

Hey, Matt. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess most of them have been answered, but on the regulatory front, some of your peers have kind of noted that because there's this rush to get production up across the industry that there's been regulatory processing delays. Is that kind of what you're dealing with at Shirley Basin? And then on that note, Do you guys have a timeline on when you'll get regulatory approval there to get started with production?

Yes. Okay. Joe, thanks for the question. I'll start off with the answer. Then I'm going to hand over to Ryan. He's our VP for regulatory affairs. I'm going to start off with the comment. I think the commentary you're hearing about the delays in the process from the increase in activity is fairly focused on Texas, but nonetheless, there is a growing amount of activity across the industry, and that does impact everyone. With regards to the timing of the regulatory approvals, we certainly anticipate those to be approved in this month, but I'm going to pass this over to Ryan for some more color. Ryan, do you mind answering Joe's question?

Absolutely. So, the one thing that I would just add is UR Energy is We have an excellent working relationship with our regulators in the state of Wyoming. We work very closely with them in partnership to come to those approvals. As Matt said, all indications are that we are under timely review for those well-filled data packages and approvals to start Shirley Basin. So there's nothing that causes us or points us to likely delays. We are working with the state and they are, but a concern that you have mentioned is as there's more activity, those resources at the state do get stretched and we are aware of those and we monitor those and we work with the state as we try to overcome those delays. But as far as Shirley Basin is concerned, we don't, everything is on track. We are working closely with the regulators and anticipate receiving those approvals soon.

Okay. And then just as a quick follow-up, if you guys had the regulatory approval in normal course, when would have that header house started production? I realize it's ready now, but how long ago was it ready?

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to mislead you in my commentary, Joseph. We're building the plan. We're on track. So we have the well house ready for for production on schedule. We have it ahead of schedule of the production plant, just because that's good planning. We will be mechanically ready for the plant to receive solution on Monday of next week, and that's when we're going to be loading the first resin tank, and then that will be when any delays pass then would be due to waiting for regulatory.

Okay. All right. Thanks for the clarity on that and the color in general. I'll turn it over

Thank you. The next question will be from Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald. Mike, your line is live.

Good afternoon, Matt. Thanks for hosting the call. It's been a while since you guys have done an earnings call, so I appreciate it. Most of my questions have been answered already. I had one kind of housekeeping type one left, though. I noticed there was a large discrepancy between pounds drummed and pounds captured at Lost Creek and Q4, much wider than any other quarter I can recall. Could you just give some detail on what drove that in Q4 and should I just expect that to kind of mean revert in Q1? Thanks.

Okay. Good question. Mr. Steve Hatton, this is a COO question. Sure. How's it going, Mike? This is Steve Hatton. The biggest difference is you heard Matt talk about issues we had with not environmental but with the environmental. where we had some power down. And at these facilities, we run the plant on generator power, and the well field is all online power. So if we have a major power outage, that can affect the production that we see coming in versus what we can do in the plant. So any variance For instance, if you see production lagging coming in from the well field, that gives the plant a chance to distill process material and vice versa. If the plant is doing maintenance for whatever reason, you'll see the well field captured come up versus the plant go down.

Okay, that makes sense. That's very helpful. I appreciate it, Steve and Matt. I'll revert back and best of luck on the Shirley Basin ramp up this year. All right. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you've dialed in and wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone at any time. The next question will be from Justin Chan from SCP Finance. Justin, your line is live.

Hi. Thanks, operator. Thanks, Matt, for hosting the call. My first one's just on maybe getting a sense of milestones through the year. In terms of ramping up towards that 1.3 million pounds delivered, and let's leave aside moving the loan around for a sec, what would you like to see at each operation, I guess, when we speak at this time next quarter? At Lost Creek, maybe to get a bit more granular in terms of mine units and header houses, and at Shirley Creek, if you could provide some more detail, that'd be really helpful.

All right. Thank you, Justin. Thank you for the question. The first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to answer you and say, look, I'm going to answer general, and I'm going to turn it over to Steve to give you some more color on the number of header houses and very granular details there, Justin. So when we talk about milestones for the year, we're looking for the continuing ramp up of Lost Creek and fairly linear for the entire – the Lost Creek ramp up for this year is fairly linear – The Shirley Basin, the milestones there you're seeing that we're looking for is the delivery of solution into the plant in March, and then the loading of resin and the shipping of resin to initiate in the second quarter to the Lost Creek facility. So the mine unit at Lost Creek, the ramp-up is fairly linear. The plant itself is going to have a lot more loaded resin delivered to it, and so we're anticipating the plant in Lost Creek to have a ramp up that's not linear, but that really peaks in the third quarter. So we get initial deliveries coming in in the second quarter, and then you see a large jump in the third and fourth quarters for the amount of pounds that are drummed at the Lost Creek facility. Steve, did you want to give any clarity on header houses? Sure. One of the big things is, and as you were very aware, This is stepwise production at any ISR facility. So you've got to get the drilling ahead first, and then that focuses on so much of ore determination and pattern layouts, and then we get those patterns installed, then they go into surface construction, and then that turns into flow into the plant. So one of the things is that we have really stretched ourselves out on over the last year or so is to develop those new areas so we are out actively developing mine unit five getting that monitor ring going there so we can get it tested and be in production later this year on that but mine unit one phase two is uh has been very productive from a construction standpoint the rigs spent a lot of last year and are focused heavily this year on getting that done so we have already seen header house 14 come on header house 15 is in research mode to bring grade up and 16 is in the is in the pipeline next and that continues on throughout the course of this year as matt said in a linear fashion to bring up both production flow and grade okay the two components that that make up production so all of those are the main components for the header houses and i think matt hit it spot on on shirley We have our targets for initial lexiviant movement in the well field in the month of March, and then we expect in the second quarter to bring that into realized capture, true significant capture on resin. That means shipping over to Lost Creek and getting that turned into drum production. Does that help?

Yeah, that's really helpful. And maybe just for each operation, what is a good deployment rate of bringing new header houses or mine units online through this year? Like maybe on a monthly basis or quarterly basis?

I'm going to continue answering, and then Matt can stop me if he wants to. What we like to see at Lost Creek – You're typically at a million pound a year production rate. You're looking at about 8 to 10 header houses a year for construction, drilling construction readiness. And it surely, as you have seen in our previous press releases, we are anticipating much higher flow rates there. And so we will determine how that plays out during the first year of operations. So we're going to go pretty heavy there initially and try and get six to eight header houses on this year. And then depending on how that production grade curve goes and the flow comes in from each area, then I think you're going to see us possibly, that's one of those forward-looking statements, but possibly scaling back to six, maybe eight header houses a year over there. What we have seen over there initially from our first drilling is it's been very, very good for us. We've been very happy with the pounds that are showing up under pattern there, but that's still early on. Justin, does that give you the color you're looking for?

Yeah, that was fantastic. Thanks, Matt and Steve. Maybe just one last one. I led the witness a little bit on the question, but I guess to hit your target's maybe more holistically, is it a case of deployment of, you know, wellfield development and header houses, or is it also on the plant side of things? Are there improvements you'd like to see there in order to hit those numbers? I guess, what are the keys to hitting those targets this year?

The key business improvement initiatives right now are focused on the plant. The Lost Creek wellfield just delivers And we're well ahead on the drilling there. We've deployed a lot of drills at Lost Creek over the last two years, and we're well advanced on the drilling of header houses and patterns at Lost Creek. Surely based in the same mode, the well field there is well developed, and it's on track, it's on schedule, and that's going well. So the key business improvements for this year are focused on plants, and if you then drive down into a subset of that, it's on fines management and what we're doing there to improve, to remove fines coming into the plant so that it reduces just the complications that fines in the plant cause with the resident tax. And that's where the key focus is on right now. You'll see in our 10-K that we are dedicating some fairly significant capital towards upgrading the water treatment at Lost Creek and that is both on the front end with the fine sand filters in front of the plant as well as on the back end with with the reverse osmosis and water treatment for delivery of the water back into the shallow aquifer and or surface discharge.

Thanks Pat and that is that more of an IX issue going into the IX plants or

Just to clarify.

The fines in the IX columns just cause the inefficiencies, right? So it's about keeping the fines out of the resin columns. The resin columns act as a sand filter. They're essentially a sand filter. If you put fines into them, then you create a fines layer on top of the resin. And it just makes it inefficient. You have to clean that out. And so that's what we're working on is improving that part of the system. Understood clearly. So it's essentially fines clog it up. Yeah, fines are bad. Now, it's a good, it's a great, fines are actually, they're kind of actually good for us in that a significant portion of our uranium is in the fine. So fines are making uranium, but how about this, removing fines from the solution before it enters the plant. That's the real deal.

Understood. Thanks a lot. That was really useful, Collier. I'll free up the line.

Thank you. And the next question is coming from Matthew Key from Texas Capital Securities.

Matthew, your line is live. Matthew, your line is live.

Please check your mute button.

Sorry about that. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to ask a little bit about future sales commitments and whether you guys are working on or if it's possible to fold in some incremental commitments in 27, 2028, or are talks at this point mostly for, you know, 2029 and out at this point?

Hey, Matthew, thanks for the question. Our talks right now are mostly for 2029 and beyond. That's really where we're focusing. We're comfortable with our sales book right now. As many of our peers have done, we're not looking – we don't see the necessity to have our book completely committed several years in advance. We're looking for opportunity. And, of course, we are. We're a uranium miner. But we're very optimistic and bullish on the uranium price. And we like the idea of having some pounds in inventory that we can – in place opportunistically when the time is right.

Got it. That makes sense. And just a broad one for me, most of my questions are asked, but just how are you thinking about M&A in the current environment? Any targets out there that could potentially be compelling or do you see the need for mergers in this space right now?

And when you say the need for M&A, we don't necessarily say there's a need for M&A. What we do say is that adding more resource base to your energy will have a very valuable contribution to the company. We recognize that more resource is going to help this company a lot. This can provide us with what we need to continue to advance. How we get those extra pounds, you've heard us talk this morning, we're very focused on exploration, both in the Great Divide Basin in general, as well as immediately adjacent to Lost Creek. Lost Creek has a lot of open, on almost all sites, it's open for expansion and exploration. So we're not going to, when it comes to M&A specifically, we're going to always answer like every corporation answers when they're asked that question. What I can also say is that part of the catalyst for the convert issue at the end of last year was so that we would have funding available such that an opportunity were to arise, we could act on that opportunity. And so that was part of the catalyst of why we went for that convert raise and that those funds are available for our use in a very prudent and disciplined manner.

Got it. That's very clear. I appreciate all the color and best of luck.

Thank you. The next question will be from Heiko Ehle from HC Wainwright. Heiko, your line is live.

Hey, there. Thanks for taking my questions.

Hey, Heiko.

Just following up on Matt O'Keefe's question a little bit there, can you just walk me through what you're seeing with the demand for longer-term pricing as opposed to spot how desperate are the buyers and just maybe a bit of are they pushing towards longer-term contracts and what kind of pricing structures are they guiding towards?

All right, Heiko, thanks for the question. I was wondering who was going to ask that question. I'm not going to use the adjective desperate, but I am going to say that the interest in securing uranium supplies for use in the nuclear industry is growing and is vibrant. So we get a lot of requests for proposals. We are careful in what we look at. And again, we kind of touched on before, we're not interested in over-obligating in the near term. And we kind of have a curve going in front of us of our commitments. We have a kind of a model that we've built on what we're looking for committing of our forecasted production in every year ahead of us. And it kind of peters out after six years. And then, of course, each year the wave moves forward. From the standpoint, because, okay, so if you've gotten a lot of RFPs coming in, you know how that affects price. seeing right now is that pricing certainly has a market-related component. That market-related component is becoming more meaningful in the majority of the way that pounds are being sold going forward. I don't think I'm telling you anything unique to your energy at all. That's certainly the same commentary you're hearing from from other producers, but the industry is moving more towards market-related contracts and less certainly de-emphasizing a term with escalation.

And what are you seeing with geopolitical demand factors as things are progressing here, especially given what happened the last couple of weeks?

Yeah, on the geopolitical standpoint, Aiko, From the U308 standpoint, geopolitical doesn't come in as much as you would think. Kazakhstan is still the world's major producer and still feeds into the market. You see a lot of geopolitical coming from the enriched side. But from our standpoint in producing U308, we don't see the geopolitical as far as the world market. What we are seeing, and we've seen significant over the last couple months, is the idea of U.S.-based production. Not U.S. legal production, but U.S.-based production. We feel, this is a very forward-looking statement, but we feel like there is growing potential for U.S.-based production to see a meaningful premium compared to U.S. legal production. And so that's part of the reason that we're being careful with the deployment of contracts. We want to be able to keep some material available for opportunistic placement in contracts that have a premium for U.S.-based production.

That's so helpful. I'll get back to you. Thank you.

Thank you. There were no other questions from the phone lines at this time. I would now like to hand the call over to Valerie Kimball, IR Director, at UR Energy for webcast questions. Valerie?

Thank you, Paul. Our next question is regulatory in nature. How confident are you in your abilities to navigate regulations that might be reinstated down the road?

Thank you, Valerie. Okay, how confident are we in being in regulations that may be reinstated down the road? I'm not necessarily sure. I'm going to ask Ryan, do you have an idea of the basis of that question, Ryan?

So what I would say, I don't know if I entirely have a basis, but I would say we are actively monitoring all rulemakings, and we are actively participating in those purposes. So as part of our management of our business, we are aware of those, and we keep pretty good track of any changes to regulations, or policies, and are responding and working with regulators appropriately to minimize risk to our operations?

Sure. Yeah, thanks, Ryan. I mean, I know – do you think – that question might be pointed towards some work that's being done on the ISR mining regulations. And, Ryan, you just want to summarize your involvement and you as a representative for your energy in that rulemaking?

Absolutely. So as you know, there is major changes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, much of which was directed by Executive Order 14300. In response to that, the NRC will be issuing draft rules in the coming months on ISR. We are very much involved in that process. We have been involved with NRC commissioners, national groups, National Mining Association, Wyoming Mining Association, Nuclear Energy Institute, a number of different groups that are all watching that and we are all participating as much as we can to ensure we understand how that will affect our business and ensure that it is appropriate for the business that's been established over the last 50 years or so. I could go in more detail on why the RSR rulemaking is needed, but at this point, I'll just leave it at that, Matt, unless you want me to expand further.

I think that's a great summary. Thank you very much, Ryan. Valerie, do you feel like the question is answered?

Yes. Our next question concerns new technology. Do you have any plans to work with new technologies of uranium productivity, for example, light bridge fuels? or some other company looking to up the efficiency of uranium power?

All right, so thanks, Valerie, for that question. I'm going to look. I'm relying heavily on Ryan today in this call. Ryan, so we, as your energy, we are quite active, and I'm very proud of this. We are very active in the advancements in the uranium industry. First, I'm going to ask Ryan to explain give a quick summary on what we're doing with the DOE labs for initiatives in advancing uranium.

For sure. So I think overall in our culture as a company, we are always looking to advance and to increase efficiencies and look at new technologies. That is something that we have always participated in. And to give a flavor of what Matt was talking about, we have partnered with national laboratories to look at a number of different issues. We, in essence, partnered with those laboratories to say, here's some struggles that we may have or that could use some efficiencies, and they are working very closely with us. It's exciting to see. And these are national labs across the United States. It's not just a single national lab, but this is all with the Department of Energy. So we have some exciting things that we're looking at. But as far as your question, as far as fuel and new fuels and things of that nature, while, yes, we may be a provider of the source material for those fuels, we are not actively engaging in those fuel fabrications like you mentioned Lightbridge. Does that make sense, Matt?

Yeah, that makes sense. I will also stress that the recent commitment of over $2 billion towards the advancement of the enrichments capacity of the U.S. We are involved in discussions involved with all of those parties with regards to the potential to supply them with U-308 as they're doing their testing and as they're doing their ramp up of their facilities and build those out. So we're very much involved. Look, we're a major U.S. producer. If you're involved in

nuclear industry in the United States, you're involved with us. That's it, Valerie. Okay.

There are no more questions. I'll hand it back over to you for closing remarks.

All right. Well, thanks, everybody. I was thrilled with the interaction, the number of questions, the interest in UR Energy. I'm thrilled to be here. Couldn't be more proud of the operations and our teams. Thanks, everybody, for being in this call. This was a great restart of the quarterly earnings calls, and I'm very excited about being able to talk to you in the next three months. Thank you.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.