Paladin Energy Ltd

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Paladin Energy Limited December 2025 quarterly results call. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question you need to press the start key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Paul Hemborough, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today. With me is Anna Fudlow, our Chief Financial Officer, Alex Ryback, Chief Commercial Officer, Melanie Williams, Chief Legal Officer, Scott Barber, Chief Operating Officer, and of course, Paula Raffo, Head of Investor Relations. I'll provide a brief overview of our Q2 performance, focusing on Lange Heinrich, our progress in Canada, and specifically at Perth and Lake South Development, and our financial position before opening for questions. Let me begin by saying it was a very strong quarter for Paladin, and we couldn't be more pleased with the result. At Langeheine, we produced 1.23 million pounds of E3O8, a 16% increase in the prior quarter, as ramp-up continues to build momentum. We delivered sales of 1.43 million pounds at an average realized price of $71.80 per pound, reflecting the quality of our contract book and the improving uranium market conditions. Based on the strength of performance in the first half of the year, recognising it is a ramp-up year and we have yet to commission the new fleet, we continue to expect full-year production to trend towards the upper end of our £4 million to £4.4 million guidance range. Safety and environmental performance remain strong. Over the trailing 12 months, we recorded an average total recordable injury frequency of 2.9 and we had no serious environmental or radiation incidents during the quarter. Operationally, mining activity continued to ramp up with increased ore availability feeding directly into higher grades and stronger plant performance. The average ore feed grade increased to 524 parts per million and plant recovery reached 91% underpinning the step up in production. Half of the new fleet arrived prior to Christmas and the remaining mining fleet is due to arrive onsite very soon. keeping us on track to complete the ramp-up by the end of FY2026 and transition to full mining operations in FY2027. Costs trended positively as volumes increased. The cost of production reduced to $39.70 per pound. On the south side, quarterly volumes and pricing reflect contract delivery schedules and customer nominations, and the average realised price of $7.80 per pound highlights the strength of our contract book. In Canada, we continue to advance the high-quality PLS project. At Paterson Lake South, winter drilling mobilisation was complete and drilling commenced in January. The program is focused on resource conversion, extension of RRR and regional exploration, supporting long-term development opportunities there. We also continue constructive engagement with the regulators and Indigenous partners regarding the EIS and remain confident of a timely outcome. Following the completion of the shared purchase plan and debt facility restructure, we ended the quarter with $278 million of cash and investment and a fully undrawn US $70 million revolving credit facility. This provides Paladin with substantial flexibility to advance PLA towards FIDs and support the final phase of the Langer Heinrich ramp-up. We also strengthened our leadership team during the period with Dale Huffman appointed as President of Paladin Canada and of course Scott Barber commencing as Chief Operating Officer earlier this month. In summary, the first half of FY2026 demonstrates Paladin Energy's capability to execute. Langer Heinrich is performing strongly. Production is building towards the top end of guidance in preparation for full mining and production capacity by the end of FY2026. Our contract book is delivering solid pricing outcomes Our balance sheet positions us to execute on a multi-decade uranium production strategy. I appreciate your time today and I'm happy to hand over to any questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and leave your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Henry Meyer from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning, team. Thanks for the update. It's been another strong quarter for cost performance below guidance, though mining still to come, of course. I hope you could add some colour on expectations for Unicast coming in the second half. If costs remain within guidance overall and we produce 4.4 million downs, we might be looking to the low 50s in the second half. Is that sort of the run rate you're expecting going forward and into FY27?

Thanks for the question, Henry. We're still maintaining our guidance on cost. You're right in that we've had a really good quarter this quarter. There will be an increase in cost of production next quarter as a result of mining. It's obviously a function of volumes as well. But at this point, we're maintaining our position on the guidance range on cost of production.

Great. Thank you. And on production then in the second half, run rating above the top end of guidance now. Could you maybe just step through some of the key assumptions as you ramp up production of a Q3 and Q4 that would maybe limit you from exceeding guidance?

Look, Henry, there's a couple of things there. Thanks for the question. First of all, it is a ramp-up year and the goal of this year is really get us to full production for FY2027. Yes, we've had a very strong quarter. underpinned by an uplift in tons processed, the ore seed grade increased up to 524 and in fact recovery is above our target range of 85 to 90. Our expectation is now that we start commissioning the new fleet, we've got some fleet optimisation to do. It's six months to go. It's probably a bit early to call the full year but the goal really is to drive a level of consistency in our performance to deliver that full production rate by the end of this financial year.

Great. Thank you.

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

Good morning, Paul and Alex and Scott, and congrats on the strong results. First question, just following on from your last comment about recovery rates, they improved by about 5%, the highest level, I think, since the restart. So is there anything specific you can point to that drove that improvement?

Well, one of the things that I think is a real feature of Langer-Heineck is when it has very consistent feeds, you're able to tune the process to make sure that our recovery rates are stabilised. And I think since we introduced mining, we've been able to improve the consistency of feed in terms of material type and grade, and the team has done a terrific job dialling in recovery. My expectation is that we continue to recover in that 85 to 90 range, but they've just done an extraordinary job in the last quarter, hitting the 91. Understood.

And then just a second one on your cash flow costs. So looking at slide six, it looks like your total costs were around $62 million when you include the stockpile build and also the stripping. So in FY27, what do you think that will sit at roughly once your mining activity is ramped up materially, maybe on a per quarter basis?

So I think the intent is to provide guidance in July this year on FY27. As was described, we are in ramp up this year and the intent is to get to full production by the end of this year, which will inform our FY27 guidance.

I might just add to that, Alastair. We've got a bit of optimisation to do, particularly around the mining fleet. Also some mine plan optimisation. That'll lead us into the budget program and... and shortly thereafter we'll be able to provide full year guidance on FY27.

Yep, no problem at all.

Thanks.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Roden from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hello guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just following up on the quarter, obviously had the higher ore and lower waste. You know, it seems like relative to your expectations, David. I just wondered, like, what was the, I guess, delta there? Was that a reconciliation issue in the pit? Like, obviously a positive reversion, but how do you think about that going into the next few quarters? It seems like it's, you know, do you have a catch-up waste volumes that you're targeting in second half? You know, is there a high strip that we need to be modelling in and factoring and thinking about? Like, yeah, how do we think about that?

Yeah, you're a bit difficult to hear there, Daniel, but let me sort of answer and I think answer the question. So you're right. We probably mined a little bit out of sequence, but total mine material is absolutely spot on. No material difference in the last two quarters. Waste is probably a tad lower and a little bit higher on low grade. the medium grade ore was pretty much spot on. So, you know, slight difference in sequencing, no overall material difference. And we'll continue to follow the mine plan. Now, one of the big differences, of course, for the second half is bringing in the new fleet, 140-tonne trucks. That gives us significantly more stripping capability and haulage capability. You know, we're currently at 49% of the mining fleet. That'll shift to something like 110%. early or later this quarter, and we'll pull that back to 100% of our capacity through an optimisation. So we'll continue to follow the mine plan, and our expectation is that'll bring us in at the top end of that guidance range.

Yeah, I guess one reason for asking is, you know, I guess my assumption is that, you know, looking at it, MG3, the medium, low-grade stockpiles are largely complete. You know, the total material volume was, you know, a little bit up, but not materially up. So when that fleece is commissioned, that increase in volume, you should be expecting, I guess, an equivalent increase in medium-grade delivered to the mill. would that be the right way of thinking about it? And, yeah, I guess from that, you know, the mill feed is consistent, you know, quarter on quarter, and the grade is relatively consistent from the current quarter, and you transpose that out. Again, like, you know, what's giving you... What's the lack of confidence in increasing guidance?

Yeah, the answer to the first half of your question is yes, you're about right. In terms of the second half, it's still a ramp up year and commissioning the fleet pretty much means recruiting, training. We've still got an excavator to arrive on site and building the excavator. There's a fair bit of work to do to actually pull it all together. We've got 10 60-tonne ADCs. We'll need to optimise those and take some of that capacity out. We've got a 100-tonne fleet, three fleets operating really well. But Daniel, it's an outdoor sport and anything can happen. So we're going to follow the plan and we're sticking to guidance but the main game is delivering full production by the end of this financial year, making sure that we roll into FY27 with 100% capability in the mine, 100% capability in the plan to deliver in FY27.

Yeah, okay. Noted. And if I could slip just an accounting line in here, if I look at your cash flow waterfall, you've got 60 mil of production costs out in the quarter. And if I back calculate the 39.7 per pound, that gives me 48 mil. What's my delta between those two figures?

So that production cost has got your low-grade stockpile in it, Daniel. I'm not sure if you're taking that into account. But if you want to talk through that, we can check that offline post the call.

Yeah, okay, might do. Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Regan Burrows from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.

Hi, Paul and Ten. Congratulations on a good result. Just the first question I had was around the grade coming out of the pits, whether it's sort of in line with what you expected and I guess how that blend strategy is going and went during the quarter. Did you sort of find that you were feeding in more fresh ore into the mill or is it still sort of a blending process going forward? Yeah, good question, Regan. The mine, and like most mines, will have some sort of blend strategy based on both the grade and the ore type that's delivered, and laying a hindrance is no different. If we were to feed 100% fines, then we'd probably slow production and throughput. If we were to feed 100% coarse material, then we would increase our recirculating load and throttle throughput. So a blend is always necessary. Blending for grade is one of our primary objectives, but blending for throughput is the key secondary objective. In the last quarter, we did have a blend of MG3 stockpile. We saw the grade slightly uplift in the lower benches of that old stockpile, and grade coming from the pit was as per the mine plan. For the remainder of the year, we'll continue to deplete that stockpile. It's probably going to reduce faster than we expected as we ramp up through this final phase with the new fleet. Great, thanks. And just in terms, obviously, the pricing surprised the upside a bit. Perhaps one to Alex just to talk through the market and the contracting. Obviously, Grant Isaac was talking about ceilings and floors. in the 70 to 150 range. Is that what you're seeing at the moment and how does the book sort of transform over the next three months, six months as we see sort of increased pricing going forward? Yeah, Regan, we're very pleased with the sales results, both on the volumes and the realised prices. On the volumes, I think some of that is a function of catching up with the sales from previous quarter. And on the realised pricing, you know, a lot of that depends on which contracts we deliver in the quarter. So this quarter would benefit probably from a higher... into the market-related contracts and obviously from the strengthening uranium price environment, which we've seen as a result of a lot of positive macro developments. And I think it really highlights two things for me. One is that we are a producer and we benefit from the current environment through, you know, through realised pricing and through cash flow. But also it's, you know, it's... It really is a positive uranium market environment with a lot of factors driving strengthening pricing. We're seeing – to your second point on the floors and ceilings and the relative – relevant prices, we are seeing a lot of strong inquiry from our utility customers. for material on a longer-term basis. So, to me, that is a really interesting development when utility customers come to you and they ask for material in the 2030s rather than the next year or two. That, to me, says that utilities are seeing this structural supply-demand deficit. Their internal departments are now turning their mind to contracting that longer-term supply. We're not really in a rush to contract more longer-term volumes. We're pretty happy with the way our book looks currently. It's very strong. It's delivered strong performance this quarter. It'll fluctuate from quarter to quarter, but it does retain a market-related balance with some price protection. So, you know, we're very, very happy with the way the book is performing, and we are probably taking a strategic pause a little bit in terms of Lange Eindrich contracting. But we're very active in the market talking to utility customers and positioning for further contracting cycles ahead. Great. Thank you very much. I'll leave it there. Congratulations and a good quarter.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alain Tomek from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, Tim. Thanks for the call. I'm just interested in the sales over the next two quarters. Are you expecting them to be relatively evenly distributed, or should we kind of expect them to be skewed towards one quarter versus another? Yeah, look, I think, again, sales will be a function of customer delivery nomination timing, as well as shipping schedules, so they will fluctuate. But But I think, you know, with higher production trending towards the upper end of the guidance range, we'd probably expect the sales to also trend towards the upper end of the range. But, you know, there will be that variability in the timing and realised pricing. Yep, thanks very much. And maybe just on the grades of the current pit that you're mining at, can you just remind me, what's the actual sequencing plan there for the next year? And just if you can remind us of what the average mine grades that you're expecting out of those pits are. Yeah, we're not guiding on that level of detail. But, you know, what I will say is, you know, we're absolutely on track to reach that upper end of guidance and... But we do have more work to do on optimisation of the mine plan to make sure that we're delivering the best value out of Balvang Island. Great. Thanks very much. I'll leave it there.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Dim from UBS. Please go ahead.

I'm really sorry Tim, I couldn't hear your question. Sorry, it might be my AirPods. So, yeah, if I could ask that previous question. Yeah, AirPods. If I could ask that previous question just a little bit differently. Can you refresh us on levels of inventory? Are you happy? I think, you know, you've got three months of inventory based on nameplate. Is that the sort of level you want to maintain? Can we see that? Yeah, Jim, the level of inventories fluctuates With the sales and the timing of deliveries as well as shipping schedules obviously, the inventories have come down a little bit from 1.8 to 1.6 this quarter and they will fluctuate. But this is sort of probably a normal level of inventories at this point in time. Obviously as we ramp up, that level is expected to increase. how inventories are probably around, on average, if you have a look, is about four months of production, and that's quite favourable relative to other major producers who run probably at around five to six months of production. On average, so we manage our inventory very tightly and all of our inventories are earmarked for customer deliveries. So we don't sort of hold inventories for trading purposes. We deliver material into our contract book. Yeah, awesome. And maybe just expand on a previous point you made about maybe not being in a hurry with subsequent contracting. Like is that more a, yeah, if you can expand on that, like is that just more strategic in terms of letting the market come to you or is it just giving yourself a bit of buffer on future production or your expectations for future production? Yeah, I think it's a function of a few things. First of all, obviously, in the early stage of the ramp-up, we produced slightly less than we expected. So our contracted position, you know, as a result has increased and was probably higher than we initially anticipated. So we've got a little bit of catch up there. But we do have flexibility in our booking and our off days to flex some deliveries up and down. So we've managed that. But then it's a strategic question, as you said. We are seeing stronger price levels and we've always layered contracts into our portfolio, so we'd like to see a higher price level before we pursue further contracts into the longer term, particularly into the 30s where we are seeing strong demand. You know, we're not really seeing additional incremental production coming from the market. We sort of struggle to see how the market is going to meet that level of demand. I think one interesting observation I'll make that was made to me with one of the niche brokers in the UK, Oceanball, is on the 1st of January, the new MET regime in Kazanprom in Kazakhstan has come in. And, you know, that really, if you have a look at the details of it, that really disincentivizes Kazatomprom to increase production, particularly at high uranium prices. So, you know, a lot of the concerns in the market last year was that Kazatomprom was going to increase production if prices increased. I think this MET regime, you know, largely puts those concerns to bed. So that's quite interesting. We just don't see how the market on the supply side is going to meet the forecast demand in the 2030s. So we do see, you know, further price cycle, higher price environment, and we want to leave some production uncontracted to place into that strong environment. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Glenn Lorlock from Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Paul.

Just looking at the last few quarters, the plant throughput's been running around 4.8 million tonnes annualised. how's that compared to where you think you can finally get it to? Is that just, like, is it not ramping up because you just don't have the feed for it at the moment? Because, I mean, you've obviously got stockpiles as well. Just how should I think about that and the outlook? Thanks. Yeah, Glenn, we're consistently optimising. Let me sort of just go back to the project. When we refurbished the plant, One of the key bottlenecks prior to that time was failure of the plants to consistently process material that went through it. So it had lots of blockages. It couldn't handle coarse material. And what we did during the upgrade was change the design of the chute, increase the capacity of the apron feed motors. And we pretty much run completely free of blockages and delays at the crushing circuit. We installed the pre-leach surge tanks to provide additional surge capacity in the case of an outage in the beneficiation circuit and all of that is working exceptionally well. What's left to do really is to make sure that we have a consistent seed type, so optimisation of the blend between coarse and fines and progressively ramp up that material as it's uncovered from the pit. I think there's more capacity that we can squeeze out of that and it's just a matter of time and optimisation. At the moment we've got 49% of our fleet capacity which means we have to allocate it to waste. We have to allocate it to low grade and the medium grade and we have to manage the stockpile. With the new fleet coming it gives us more options and optimisation of the mine plan. It may include multiple pit sources to improve the blend strategy. but there's capacity there to improve. We've just got to do the work now, particularly over the next six months. Okay, that's great. And then maybe just, you made the comment that there was a higher proportion of mine door fed to the plant. Can you give me some sense of how much, what's the percentage split, mine versus stockpile door going through the plant, say the last couple of quarters? Like how, when you say it's changing, how material is that? Yeah, so it absolutely depends on not so much the grade but the type of ore that we're seeing. So I think, you know, we've spoken about it before. We talked about, you know, we've got wet and dry fine material and we've got wet and dry coarse material and we've got wet and dry clay material. And as that material presents itself in the benches in the mine or in fact the benches in the medium grade stockpile, we change the blend strategy accordingly. and we don't actually have a fixed blending strategy going forward. We address the lithology as it presents itself on any particular day and adjust it to make sure that we're continually trying to increase the throughput rate. So what that means is that as we finish off that NG3 stockpile, we need to make sure that we've got multiple sources in the pit so that we can continue to optimize that blend strategy. But we have no fixed blend strategy. Okay and then just a final question if I could. As you've been mining in processing, what's the grade reconciliation been like? I mean how's the mine been performing from that perspective? We've got a lot of data from the mine and we have had for a very long time and reconciliation is typically very good and we're seeing our resultant grade from the pit aligned with the mine model.

All right. That's great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from James Bullen from Chemical Eugenuity. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and thank you for taking my call. Just quickly around the water position, obviously we're coming into a period where we do sometimes see some algal blooms in Namibia. Just wondering about the buffers that you've got there and your discussions with NAMWater and how they're performing.

Thanks, James. You know, interestingly, there was an article recently in Namibia that Urano D-cell plant has actually produced more water in the last, year than any other time in history, which is really positive for the Orongo region in Namibia. Our system is fully commissioned and we have our backup supplies in the bladders, but we also have opened up an additional open water storage point as well. We're not anticipating any particular challenges. kind of halfway through the season where we would normally see an increase in demand from the townships. We're halfway through the season where we might expect to see some sulphur blooms in the bays and things are progressing well. Given our production rates, the unit water rate consumption that we've continued to improve, we've got more than enough storage capacity on site now. that will exceed any stoppage that we've seen in supply in the last couple of years. So I'm feeling reasonably positive about our capacity to manage any event that might come up in the next half year. Thanks, Paul.

And a question maybe for Alex and following on from Regan, just around, there's a pretty frenetic ink in terms of contracting in the term market last year. What did you learn from that? And what are you thinking, really, around where you could get to in terms of pricing this year?

Yeah, good question, James. I think from last year... what we've seen is we've seen low contracting volumes probably in the first nine months of the year and then volumes keeping up in the last quarter. Last number I've seen was about 115 million pounds from UFC and that number will probably be revised upwards as they get more data. You know, that's a healthy level. Some people thought volumes were subdued. We certainly saw a healthy level of interest. That number is relatively strong, but it is still below replacement levels. So what that says is that additional term contracting has to come in, which we expect this year and forward. And as I said already, we are getting strong levels of contracting inquiries from utilities that we haven't been getting previously, like the Japanese utilities, for example. The European utilities are covering some of the holes in previous production sources. The US market is very strong, particularly with some of the things that are going on there. The AI and the data centres are consuming a lot of, or expected to consume a lot of electricity, and some of these players are entering into significant electricity supply contracts with utilities. We've seen META signed contracts with Constellation, Vistra, Oklo, TerraPower. So these are really significant volumes of electricity supply which require significant nuclear energy generation. So, you know, all that is, to me, is very positive on the demand side across the world. You know, obviously, Japan is restarting reactors. You know, the Koreans still need to fill their requirements from last year. So there's a lot of, you know, positive factors there. The volumes themselves may not reflect the kind of the strength of the term contracting activity, but definitely we're seeing very strong levels of inquiry and strong term prices.

Yeah, thanks for that. I guess the Koreans make their RFPs public, so it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate it. Thanks, James.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, Tim. Thanks for the call. Look, most of my questions have been answered, but one thing that I would really appreciate help on is in terms of, you know, your plan to obviously move more mining to the pit and what you define as basically 100% completion of that project. Within that scope, how many mining areas are you looking to open up within the pit? That's my only question. If you can shed a bit of light on that because it will help us kind of understand what type of variability we can expect going forward. Well, that's an interesting question. We don't plan on guiding on that level of detail. What we will do is undertake a range of optimisations that deliver what we think is the best result, and that may be a number of excavators in a single large pit, or it could be opening up several pits in parallel. So we'll continue to work through our optimisation, particularly as we get the new fleet on board and commission that fleet, And, you know, we'll end up providing guidance on that around July. Okay. That's all from me. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 and let your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Branko Stokic from EMP. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, guys. Thanks for your time.

It sounds like there was a slight delay in the contractor fleet delivery and then the eventual commissioning there. So I just wanted to understand, I guess, what drives this and did this prevent you guys from formally lifting the production guidance target above that £4.4 million number? No, there's no delay. Typically in Namibia, we know around Christmas, I think I said a couple of weeks before, we actually have an embargo on moving heavy fleets. That's pretty normal, which is also why the remainder of the fleet is actually at Wilderness Bay and it needs to wait for the embargo to be lifted to move it to site. We always anticipated that commissioning of that fleet will occur in the first half of this calendar year. No specific delays, no issues and absolutely on track to deliver at the upper end of our guidance range at this point in time. Okay, I appreciate that one. And then just a point of clarification, there is no comment about loan material outstanding in the quarterly. I believe it was about 450,000 pounds as of last quarter. So just want to confirm if it's still the same number as of today. Yeah, that's right, Frank. It hasn't changed. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Hanborough for any closing remarks.

You know, just in closing, a very strong quarter for Paladin. Really appreciate the team on site working incredibly hard, delivering outstanding results. The focus from here is to deliver a level of consistency that enables us to execute at 100% of our mining capacity, 100% of our processing capacity, ready for an absolutely stellar FY27. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and thank you for your support.

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