NexGen Energy Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the NextGen Energy fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session at the end. To join the queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Lee Currier, Chief Executive Officer and Director with NextGen Energy Limited. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rafa. Good morning, and thank you for joining NextGen's year-end and Q4 2025 financial results and investor conference call. My name is Lee Currier, and I am the Chief Executive Officer. Today, I am joined by Travis McPherson, Chief Commercial Officer, Ben Salter, Chief Financial Officer, and Stacey Goluckin, Manager, Investor Resources, Australasia. During the call, I will highlight NextGen's milestone achievements over the fourth quarter of 2025, provide an update on recent milestones, exploration and development activities, and speak to the strategy and future plans for NextGen Energy. At the conclusion of this presentation, we'll move to the Q&A portion of the call, where you have the opportunity to ask Travis, Ben and myself any questions you may have. Throughout the course of today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements, so please visit our website for all the relevant disclaimers. Before we begin, I would like to thank our investors, community partners and all stakeholders for their long-standing support for NextGen's unique and fit-for-purpose approach to resource development. which is setting a new standard. 2025 was a defining year for NextGen, marked by significant infrastructure investments at site, regulatory advancements, commercial offtake agreements, exploration success at PCE, approximately one billion equity raise, and team expansion, all highlighting NextGen's unparalleled leverage to the future price of uranium. balance sheet optimisation and exploration milestones that further solidify our leadership in the global clean energy landscape. Our progress reflects disciplined execution, continuous improvement and an unwavering commitment from our team to our core values of honesty, respect, resilience and accountability. Stepping back for the first time in many decades, we are witnessing a genuine and structural shift in global energy demand that materially benefits the nuclear energy industry. Previous years were defined by ambitious pledges and isolated demands. However, what we are seeing now is assertive and immediate action and implementation. Public policy and capital are now fully aligned to support nuclear growth for existing baseload requirements as well as AI and other high-growth technology advancements. In the United States of America, we're seeing reform to advance nuclear in a manner which hasn't been seen in the West in all of history. We're witnessing both the acknowledgement of the fragility of the supply chain, as well as the actions to support and encourage activation of allied sources of nuclear fuel. This includes the recently proposed multi-billion dollar Project Vault Reserve, aimed at securing critical minerals and uranium supply. Importantly, these policies are designed to accelerate downstream, midstream and upstream activities. This is critical, as the down and midstream build-out as it relates to nuclear fuel is significantly less of a challenge to solve. It takes money and permitting, both of which are in the control of the governments. Upstream activities, though, take regulatory support, but also significant investment over a significant time, And although this is more of a focus of policy in the industry, it is going to take a significant time to solve and trigger a new Western world diversified multi-source of uranium supply. In fact, it is likely that it will take decades for mined uranium supply to meet existing demand, let alone the significant growth anticipated. The US alone is anticipating electrical growth of between 8% to 10% through to 2030. This is partly in response to China over the last 10 years, increasing its electrical production by more than half of the rest of the world combined. China now has double the electrical power capacity at half the kilowatt price of the USA, a fact largely driven through the adoption of nuclear energy. Governments and industry are being tested on their ability to expand and restart facilities, advance fuel cycle initiatives and increase uranium production to meet accelerating demand. As an example, Canada just delivered the Darlinghurst refurbishment project ahead of schedule and under budget. AI is rapidly becoming a material contributor to the global electricity growth and subsequently a new major structural driver of demand. The clear focus of the hyperscalers and big tech to nuclear is producing meaningful support for the expansion of the nuclear ecosystem. The US Department of Energy has allocated $2.7 billion to nuclear fuel companies such as Centris, while states like Iowa are forming nuclear power task forces to accelerate development. At the same time, large technology companies are aggressively securing long-term power supply amid intensifying competition in AI. Big tech is increasingly underwriting new nuclear capacity. Meta, for example, signed a multi-gigawatt deal with Oklog, TerraPower and Vistra to power its AI data centres. While we acknowledge the benefits to the sector from increased hyperscale activity, Strategic critical mineral initiatives in the US and continued capital flows into the uranium sector, it is important to stress that the prior underlying market fundamentals stand on their own. Even without these very persistent tailwinds, the uranium market remains structurally undersupplied, with the deficit winding every year for the forecast periods out to 2050 and beyond. Despite uranium prices moving from $17 a pound in 2017 to $90 a pound today, there has been no material supply response. The past 12 months alone have delivered several downgrades in production levels. Legacy operators are facing execution challenges and key uranium mining jurisdictions remain constrained. Utilities globally are beginning to acknowledge there simply isn't enough supply available. Demand clearly supports significant contracting. The fragility of supply is even more evident in the spot market, which has had a strong start to the year in 2026. In 2025, approximately 56 million pounds traded on spot, representing approximately 40% of mine supply and 27% of total consumption. Far from a peripheral venue, It is the market's true price discoverer and is what underpins the pricing in every contract signed or under negotiation. That dynamic is increasingly felt by utilities themselves. Spot purchases by utilities have surged 85% year over year, accounting for one quarter of all spot volumes. The reality is direct purchases on the spot market were made by utilities in 2025. The majority of the rest of the spot market activity is still ultimately bought and consumed by utilities through traders and other intermediaries in the market. Meanwhile, producers are selling less into spot market. Uranium producers sold just 4.6 million pounds on spot in 2025, down sharply from 10.9 million pounds in 2022. The reason is structural. Producers are at capacity, cautious about future output and heavily committed on forward sales for the next seven plus years. There is very little buffer in the system in the form of inventories held by utilities and producers or new supply to market. Consequently, these factors together with the technical simplicity and low economic cost of future production requirements have informed and will continue to design our marketing strategy to offtake contracts whereby pricing will be heavily dependent on market prices at the time of delivery, hence optimising next-gen status as the world's most levered company to the future price of uranium. The fundamentals remain increasingly compelling. As the structural supply deficit widens, the window to make meaningful new discoveries is now, and NextGen is operating in the most valuable postcode in uranium globally. While the jurisdiction of Saskatchewan Canada is world-class, our results are a function of extremely favourable geology, a disciplined strategy, combined with proven technical capability and steadfast persistence. Every drill campaign reinforces the potential for another Tier 1 discovery within our land position in the southwest Athabasca Basin. Our basement-hosted Patterson Corridor East discovery continued to deliver highly encouraging results throughout 2025. Multiple high-grade assay results, including the company's highest-grade discovery phase intercept to date, inclusive of those discovered during the development of Arrow. And the mineralised system continues to expand at PCE, with each exploration program driving exciting results that continue to validate PCE and demonstrate the substantial exploration potential beyond the Arrow deposit. On permitting, NextGen has now completed the two-part Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearings on November 19, 2025 and February 9-12 of 2026, marking the completion of the final stage of the federal approvals process. The depth, capability and professionalism of our team were evident throughout, with CNSC staff acknowledging the exceptional quality and rigour of our submission. Indigenous community support was both strong and unequivocal, with positive interveners emphasising the importance of a timely approval. We are extremely proud to have the formal and public support of our four Indigenous nations within the local priority area, who have continuously advocated for the project and next-gen stewardship of the RUC1 project. The province of Saskatchewan continues to champion RUC1 as a priority project, and the CNSC staff have formally recommended approval of the project to the CNSC Commission. This alignment across Indigenous and community partners, provincial leadership, the federal regulators is a testament to the strength and authenticity of our partnership-driven development model. and reflects more than a decade of disciplined technical work, meaningful Indigenous and community engagement, and a rigorous regulatory process. Our world-class team stands ready to seamlessly advance development into construction upon receipt of final federal approval. I would like to also take the opportunity to commend Denison Mines led by David Cates on the recently received approval for the Wheeler River project. NextGen and Denison represent the future of uranium mining in Canada with both advancing world-class projects. It is time for Canada to take centre stage in the supply of critical nuclear fuel and to do it in a way that stewards the industry successfully into the future. We've continued to strengthen and scale our organisation. NextGen is fortunate to have exceptional talent across every level of the business with over 50% of the team residents of the north of Saskatchewan. We're building on that foundation as we prepare for the next phase of growth. We have had over 4,000 applicants across 65 advertised roles over the last year and 586 applicants for 13 roles advertised in just the last month. This is an endorsement of the culture we've built, the quality of our team and the magnitude of the opportunity that lies ahead. With regard to our contracting activities, multiple offtake negotiations are progressing with utilities across the world, including the US, Europe and Asia. We expect to announce additional contracts in 2026, optimising the value of each and every pound we produce. At the same time, we've deliberately maintained full strategic optionality with a strong cash position of over $1.1 billion at year end. We have access to multiple highly accretive financing alternatives. As always, we will optimise these alternatives with discipline and with the current cash on hand, we'll continue to evaluate. Our production flexibility profile, combined with the technical setting of our project, are designed to maximise the value of every pound we produce. We'll always optimise our exposure to uranium prices at the time of delivery, and any funding structure we pursue will incorporate that optionality. Following our successful $950 million Canadian capital raise, including $600 million from Australian investors, NextGen was officially included on the S&P ASX 200 Index on 22 December 2025. This transaction materially increased our market capitalisation, liquidity, Australian institutional ownership and free float, enabling us to meet the ASX 200 eligibility. This inclusion is reflective of the strength of investor confidence in NextGen and represents an important step in broadening our capital market presence and increasing liquidity as we advance through construction and into operation. Turning to site activities, since 2013, NextGen has safely and successfully advanced Route 1 across exploration, engineering, procurement, development and supporting infrastructure, representing a cumulative investment of approximately $786 million in Saskatchewan. During Q4, site exploration programs progressed on schedule and on budget. We will be significantly expanding on-site capacity to support exploration at scale, increasing camp accommodation from approximately 220 beds to just under 600, while nearing completion of the temporary exploration airstrip and existing site access road improvements. On the project side, detailed engineering is progressing in line with the project schedule and procurement is advancing. With 28 packages having gone to RFP in 2025, critical path items have been secured to allow immediate mobilisation following final federal approval. The convergence of government policy, big tech demand, grid reliability challenges and accelerating global nuclear deployment continues to underpin uranium as one of the most critical pillars of the future energy system, setting the stage for sustained demand growth. In 2026, NextGen is positioned to capture this next phase of value creation, underpinned by a de-risked development pathway, robust market fundamentals, and growing global recognition of nuclear energy's role in the energy security and decarbonisation initiative. We are not positioning to meet short-term market tightness. We are developing a platform capable of addressing structural global supply deficits for decades to come. This is our differentiator. Through the disciplined advancement of the ROOC 1 and continued exploration success, we are building both immediate and material production capacity, as well as longer-term growth. Our immediate focus is to transition efficiently into construction of Rook One, following the final federal approval. We will execute with the same discipline and integrity that has defined our approach to date, upholding the elite standards NextGen is known for, while creating enduring value for our Indigenous partners, governments of Saskatchewan and Canada, shareholders and the global clean energy future. We are prepared with the team, the asset and the timing and the capital to execute our next phase. Thank you and I look forward to updating you on our progress throughout this transformative year in 2026. Now I'll open the call to questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue and while we prepare the Q&A roster. And our first question today comes from Ralph Profitti with Stifel Financial.