Cameco Corporation

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Cameco Corporation third quarter 2026 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. Following the introductory remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing star and 0. Webcast participants are asked to wait until the Q&A session before submitting their questions, as the information they are looking for may be provided during the presentation. The Q&A session will conclude at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Cory Kos, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Cameco's third quarter 2026 conference call. I'd like to acknowledge that we are speaking from our corporate office in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, which is on Treaty 6 territory, the traditional territory of the Cree people and the homeland of the Métis. With us on today's call are Tim Gitzel, Chief Executive Officer, Grant Isaac, President and Chief Operating Officer, Heidi Shockey, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Rachelle Girard, Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Officer. Tim will provide some commentary to start the call, as we do, and we will then open it up for your questions. Today's call will be approximately one hour, concluding at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Our goal is to be open and transparent with our communications. So if we do not have time to get to your questions during this call, or if you would like to get into detailed financial modeling questions about our quarterly results, we would be happy to respond to any follow-up inquiries. There are a few ways to contact us with additional questions. You can reach out to the contacts provided in our news release, you can submit a question through the send us a message link in the invest section of our website, or you can use the ask a question form at the bottom of the webcast screen and we'll be happy to follow up after the call. If you join this conference call through our website events page, There are slides available which will be displayed during the call. For your reference, our quarterly investor handout is also available for download on our website at Cameco.com. Today's conference call is open to all members of the investment community, including the media. During the Q&A session, please limit yourself to two questions and then return to the queue. Please note that this conference call will include forward-looking information which is based on our current assumptions and actual results could turn out differently. You should not rely too heavily on forward-looking statements, and we do not plan to update them after this call, except as required by law. For more details on the assumptions we've made and the risk factors involved, please see our most recent Annual Information Forum and MD&A. I will now turn it over to our CEO, Tim Gitzel. Tim?

Well, thank you, Cory, and good morning, everyone. Well, Halloween isn't until tomorrow, but here in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, we've already had our first little scare of the season. with winter showing up with some snow on the ground this week. I suppose those of us who have lived here our entire lives shouldn't be surprised. It happens every year, but somehow we get surprised. Fortunately, there were fewer surprises in our third quarter results. They were largely in line with what we expected, reflecting the planned activities and outlook we've discussed throughout the year. So let me begin with a brief look at our third quarter and nine month results. I'll then place that performance in the context of the improving fundamentals for nuclear energy and the discipline strategy that continues to guide our decisions. Results for the quarter and for the first nine months of 2026 were lower than the same period last year, which was expected. Few significant items affected the year over year comparisons for the quarter and year to date, including the longer planned maintenance outage at the Key Lake Mill. As we've indicated throughout 2026, the work at Key Lake included several larger projects designed to support the flexibility of the asset and sustainable long-term operations. As anticipated, the outage resulted in lower production volumes for the quarter and year to date, along with higher costs this quarter. Last year, Westinghouse also received a significant payment related to the Korean Duchovany nuclear project in the Czech Republic, impacting the comparison of financial results for the first nine months. As with most, if not all, industries, we also continue to experience and manage through the inflationary pressures seen globally. A few other items of note to highlight in the results. As we get closer to the end of the year, we've adjusted the range for some of our guidance metrics. We've narrowed our expectation for our share of uranium production from Cigar and MacArthur Key to between 19.5 million and 20.5 million pounds. We've tightened the expected range of annual uranium deliveries to between 29.5 million and 30.5 million pounds. With the operational guidance adjustments comes a fine tuning of financial guidance, including increased direct admin costs and higher average unit costs of sales. We also lowered expected CAPEX spend for the year due to certain mining and fuel services projects and work being pushed beyond the end of the 2026 calendar year. You'll note in our Q3 MD&A that we again included some longer-term modeling details pertaining to the Westinghouse segment. Information in that section of the report is substantially similar to what we provided in Q2 with a few immaterial updates. However, we decided to include the information again this quarter as we noted in conversations over the summer that those important incremental disclosures may not have been thoroughly absorbed by our stakeholders. Finally, in 2024, we had set out a three-year dividend growth plan to recognize the return to a tier one production rate. Under that plan by 2026, we expected to double the 12 cent dividend paid in 2023. We achieved that doubled dividend a year early. Paying out $0.24 per share last year in 2025, thanks in part to the payment Westinghouse received for the Korean New Build in the Czech Republic. For 2026, in line with the principles of our capital allocation framework and that plan set out in 2024, our Board of Directors declared a 2026 annual dividend of $0.24 per common share. As I said, our performance and outlook continue to be guided by the same discipline strategy and the strength of our diversified nuclear energy platform. So let's move on and put those results in the context of the current and future demand environment to highlight why we believe Cameco is exceptionally well positioned. We've seen considerable volatility across markets. Thank you very much. and New Nuclear has moved too far ahead of execution. That's a reasonable distinction to make. Not every announcement becomes a project and not every forecast becomes firm demand. But we can't confuse volatility in thematic equities with a change in nuclear fundamentals. Capital can easily rotate out of a theme in a day or in a week. It takes much longer to replace a depleted uranium reserve, to build, license, and commission a fuel cycle facility, to establish a Western nuclear supply chain, or to bring a new reactor into service. And as an industry, those are the big opportunities that we need investors managing the capital we require to appreciate and support. The nuclear story is underpinned by the existing reactor fleet, Long-term utility fuel requirements, tight western fuel cycle capacity, energy security priorities, and the need to replace depleting and geopolitically constrained supply. Reactors continue to consume fuel every day, regardless of equity flows or short-term spot price movements. Life extensions, restarts, uprates, and new reactors already under construction add requirements on top of that established demand base. Artificial intelligence and data centers can provide meaningful upside, but they are not the foundation of the nuclear investment thesis, nor are they a load-bearing assumption in our strategy. The technology sector is projecting a need for very large amounts of reliable around-the-clock electricity, and nuclear is well suited to those requirements. But forecasts for AI related electricity demand vary considerably and outcomes will depend on the pace of development. Data centers under construction today will need power sooner than most new large reactors can be delivered. So in the near term, some of that load growth will be met through gas, renewable storage, grid upgrades, and nuclear upgrades and life extensions. We nevertheless remain confident that demand from the technology sector is coming and we're excited about it. After all, AI and data centers represent meaningful upside across uranium, fuel services, reactor services, and new build. But Cameco's base case remains grounded in the reactors, contracts, and fuel requirements that exist today. Underpinned by those life extensions, restarts and upgrades along with electrification, onshoring of manufacturing and decarbonization. We already have an incentive to focus on fuel security requirements and the need for disciplined execution in replacing declining supply. When it comes to adjusting for the risks, investors must separate volatile headlines from the work required to execute. To serve that demand, the supply response remains slow, capital intensive, and exposed to risks that go well beyond traditional mining. When building a new reactor, the announcements matter, but value is created through contracting, construction, fuel supply operation, and decades of service. It's no different on the supply side. Permitting and development at the front end are immediate challenges, but technical complexity, financing, inflation, supply chain capacity and geopolitics all matter when putting the value in context. Strong policy support and higher demand forecasts help advance projects, but they do not eliminate execution risk. Put plainly, announcing production is not the same as having licensed, financed and operating productive capacity and Atamiko, we have that capacity. Improving nuclear demand creates opportunities for uranium conversion, fabrication and enrichment and for the nuclear technology needed to support the existing and future reactor fleet. There's real scarcity value in proven assets, decades of operating experience, established customer relationships and the demonstrated ability to execute. Cameco is not a portfolio of undeveloped concepts or a single project. We operate established businesses serving the global nuclear industry, and we've been doing it successfully for decades. That gives Cameco a defensive foundation with disciplined exposure to the upside as nuclear deployment advances. As we highlight time and time again, our position spans the nuclear ecosystem. Tier 1 long-life uranium assets with established mining and milling infrastructure, refining, conversion and fuel fabrication capacity, a substantial portfolio of long-term customer commitments supported by multiple supply levers, long-term enrichment exposure through global laser enrichment, meaningful exposure to reactor services and new build opportunities through Westinghouse, and disciplined financial management reinforcing the entire platform. Our growth opportunities are concentrated around proven assets, brownfield capacity, established businesses and technologies customers already rely on. We don't ask investors to underwrite full greenfield permitting, construction, financing and ramp up risk across the portfolio. Our exploration portfolio provides visibility to future resource replacement and lets us invest through the cycle rather than reactively acquiring at the top of a market. Our mining and milling businesses combine scarce, high-quality assets with infrastructure and operating knowledge. Our refining, conversion, and fabrication operations provide exposure to strategic bottlenecks in the Western fuel cycle and support customers seeking reliable, integrated and geopolitically secure supply. Our investment in GLE provides disciplined future exposure to enrichment, a critical and constrained part of the fuel cycle. And Westinghouse provides recurring exposure to reactors operating today through fuel, parts, engineering, maintenance, upgrades and life extension work, as well as long-term upside from new builds. Each new AP1000 expands an installed base that requires decades of fuel, services and maintenance with follow on demand across chemicals, uranium and fuel services businesses. That's the advantage of the ground to grid platform that we've built. Our strength is not merely that we participate in several parts of the nuclear industry. It's that our businesses reinforce one another. Improving fundamentals and differentiated assets create opportunity, but strategy determines how that opportunity is converted into durable value. We do not build or produce uranium based on a forecast. Our contract portfolio and signals from customers inform our supply decisions, helping ensure we don't create an overhang or send a mixed message to the market. We commit capital in productive capacity when market signals, customer commitments, and expected full cycle returns support the decision. Reliability, contract-based decisions, full cycle economics, and flexibility provided by multiple supply levers are central to how we operate. Our discipline is sometimes described simply as holding back supply, but it's much more sophisticated than that. We must preserve long-term value without encouraging uneconomic supply or risking leaving customers uncovered over the long term. We strike that balance through contracting, operational reliability, financial discipline, and supply flexibility. A strong market does not excuse poor execution or weak discipline. It makes discipline more valuable. That's why we protect the base, contract selectively, preserve supply and capital flexibility, and retain upside to successful nuclear deployment. It's a strategy that allows Cameco to remain investable without requiring perfect timing or speculative assumptions. It positions us to support customers today while preserving the ability to respond to additional demand as it becomes durable, contracted, and economically attractive. And as I said, we're also building out our own demand. Westinghouse remains strategically important to Cameco and our focus remains on supporting its long-term success. Last quarter, we acknowledged the S-1 draft registration statement that Westinghouse filed. Under securities rules, we are limited on what we can say about that process. Speaking generally about all of the investments we make, we expect them to benefit our owners over the long term. As we have said consistently, our responsibility is to consider every scenario that maximizes those benefits while working to preserve Cameco's role as a strategic partner in support of the long-term health of our businesses and the industry. Looking at Westinghouse more broadly, recent announcements from the United States and the Republic of Korea demonstrate the scale of interest in nuclear deployment. As those opportunities advance, definitive agreements, site planning, financing, risk allocation, and long lead procurement will be required. Korean engineering, construction, and manufacturing capability can complement Westinghouse AP1000 technology and improve execution. Here in Canada, several provinces are also considering new or expanded nuclear generation. Cameco is ready to support that opportunity with an AP1000 design that is licensed, construction ready and operating today. We've been Cameco and exclusively focused on the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear energy since 1988. We've managed a nuclear focused business through strong markets and through difficult ones. We didn't jump into nuclear new build with a PowerPoint concept only once the theme created opportunity. Canada's nuclear strength doesn't need to be confined to one technology or one market segment. With established heavy water expertise, emerging SMR leadership and ownership in the AP1000 platform, Canada has an opportunity to participate across a much broader global nuclear market. So when investors consider Cameco, we want them to remember what they own today. Operating businesses across the nuclear fuel cycle, exposure to the existing global reactor fleet, disciplined exposure to new build growth, a contract portfolio that informs supply decisions, Brownfield and strategic growth options, multiple supply levers, an experienced team operating technically complex assets, and a strategy that does not require perfect timing or speculative assumptions. The nuclear industry does not need more aspiration and speculation. It needs supply, execution, and experience. Cameco has those capabilities today. We have a resilient foundation to operate through volatile markets, and we have built in meaningful upside as the nuclear opportunity continues to expand. So thank you for your continued interest and support. Before moving to questions, I would like to highlight the change to our executive team that we announced today. Our Chief Financial Officer, Heidi Shockey, has announced her intention to retire at the end of the first quarter of 2027. Heidi has been an exceptional individual to work with during her career, spanning over 20 years at Cameco, holding senior positions and responsibilities in financial reporting, financial planning and analysis, tax, treasury, and risk. On behalf of the board and the management team, I would like to thank Heidi for her significant contributions to Cameco and for bringing her strategic thinking and deep financial expertise to our business every single day. We wish her the best in her retirement. Beginning January 1st, 2027, Heidi will assume the role of Executive Advisor in Finance until her retirement date of March 31st, 2027. Leah Hipperson, currently Vice President and Treasurer, has been with Cameco for over 15 years. She will be appointed Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer effective January 1st, 2027. I'm pleased to welcome Leah to the Senior Executive Team with her well-recognized leadership, as well as the broad experience she brings spanning investor relations, corporate strategy, risk management, and tax and treasury. I look forward to working with her during these exciting times in the nuclear industry. Jill Johnson, who has been with Cameco since 2012 and is currently Senior Director of Tax and Treasury, will be appointed as Vice President and Treasurer. So thank you all for joining us today and operator, we are now ready to take questions.