Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Consolidated Uranium (TSX-V: CUR)(OTC: CURUF) Chairman Philip Williams on Game Changing Merger Creating Leading Uranium Company

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the chairman and executive officer of Consolidated Uranium, Mr. Philip Williams. Phil, it's great to have you on. How have you been, sir?

Phil Williams: I've been very well, Gerardo. Really good to speak to you. Been busy, but it's a great time to be busy in the uranium sector, that's for sure.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it. I congratulated you off-air. I'll congratulate you again on-air. We definitely have a uranium market, the uranium market that I think a lot of us have been waiting for. And true to form, you're taking advantage of it and making sure that shareholders are positioned to maximize this part of the cycle.

You just announced a merger with IsoEnergy, creating a really diversified uranium company that's, I think with the multiple jurisdictions, it's going to allow you to take advantage of the market that's here. Can you speak to the transaction? And again, congratulations.

Phil Williams: Yeah, look, and thank you again, Gerardo. It's really just the culmination of the business plan that we put together for Consolidated, and when I say culmination, we're not done, but getting here. And you've been following our company from the very beginning, and it really was about creating this diversified portfolio project in the best jurisdictions in the world for uranium.

And we've been obviously very busy in the first three years. We've got 20 projects in four jurisdictions, near term production, development projects, exploration projects. But what we hadn't had was exposure to the Basin. And it's obviously a coveted place. The best assets in the world are there, greatest uranium mining jurisdiction. And doing this transaction with Iso puts us in rarefied air. The Hurricane asset is unquestionably one of the best projects in the world. Great team, great exploration, land package on top of that. Could not be happier to be partnering up with Iso on this transaction.

Gerardo Del Real: Talk to me a bit about why this made sense for you right now.

Phil Williams: Yeah, look, and in the M&A now, you can't always do the things now so we've been thinking about ideas like this for a long time. And it all came together through some conversations earlier in the year. And really, the now is right because of where the market is. So the market needs this kind of company. There's amazing investor attention. I think one of the things that we're seeing in the market, there's a little bit of a bifurcation, so market's great for uranium. All of the names are getting some love, but particularly, the bigger names are getting the bigger fund flows. So for us, getting bigger is critical into this rising market. And again, with M&A, you got to find the right idea at a time when the counterparties are ready to transact. And I think we've shown that we know how to do that. But in this case, the timing was now, and I think it just really does dovetail perfectly with the market that we're in for uranium.

Gerardo Del Real: What does the future look like, Phil? What comes next?

Phil Williams: Okay, so we have to close the transaction. So we announced the concurrent financing. It was upsized to $35 million. That will close mid to late of this month, now October. And then the transaction looks like it will close early December. We're going to spend obviously a lot of time working on the projects in the portfolio. This is, again, really about creating a multi-asset, multi-jurisdiction producer. We've got the near term production in our Utah assets. We're going to spend a lot of energy continuing to advance those and getting them ready to push the button on production. And I think we're going to see the price get to the point where that's going to happen in the not too distant future.

We're going to continue to work on the Iso portfolio, so Hurricane obviously needs to advance and show pathway towards production. And we're working on it, and there'll be more plans articulated around that.

And then the exploration in the Basin. One of the things that I think people probably don't understand, and we're going to increasingly tell them this, is that this portfolio of exploration ground is, and Iso's extremely large, and it was put together years ago before the Johnny-come-latelys came into the Basin and started taking up all the, basically the entire Basin now. And these were strategically picked and kept. And the team that's there has some very exciting ideas around how to make the next discovery. So we're going to be busy on that.

And then, I think it goes without saying that as we're looking to build this multi-asset, multi-jurisdiction producer, there are other assets that make sense in the portfolio, and we're going to continue to pursue some of those as we go.

Gerardo Del Real: Phil, it's going to be an exciting couple of years. I think we end this year with a bang. It's definitely picking up. Thoughts on the overall market? Just a bit of your macro take on the uranium space and what you're seeing and hearing out there.

Phil Williams: I think it's as good as everybody's saying. It is very, very hard to get material right now. And so that is definitely leading to the upward pressure on prices because I also think that the buyers are starting to look around and realize that it's going to be harder for longer to get their hands on material. So prices will have to go up, and there are some people that are moving quickly, faster here to try to secure those pounds, but it's going to continue to be difficult to get those pounds. And so companies like ourselves, I think, are going to be increasingly interesting to utilities to talk to about securing pounds under contract.

And I really do think that we're entering, I think we're making kind of a new base for prices and a base that will be sustained for a long time. And of course, along the way, there'll be volatility, potentially spikes up, maybe some downward pressure, but overall, we're in this range to stay for much longer in my opinion.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to closing out the year, as I mentioned, in strong fashion. And most definitely looking forward to having you on and talking about the many catalysts the company has. Congrats against, sir. And we'll chat again soon, Phil.

Phil Williams: Yeah, thanks Gerardo. Look forward to it.