Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Consolidated Uranium (TSX-V: CUR)(OTC: CURUF) CEO Philip Williams on Drilling & M&A in a Uranium Bull Market

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Consolidated Uranium, Mr. Philip Williams. Phil, how are you today?

Philip Williams: I'm well, Gerardo. Good morning. How are you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well. It's good to get you back on the line. It's been quite a bit since we chatted publicly. There's been a lot of news flow from Consolidated. You've acquired three new projects, uranium, vanadium, and rare earth projects. You've exercised options to acquire another uranium project in Australia. I know you just got back from a very important conference. I want to get your macro take on all things uranium before we talk about company-specific news. How was the conference? What's the sentiment out there, Phil?

Philip Williams: Yeah. Look, the conference was great. It's the Annual World Nuclear Association Symposium in London. It happens every year. This is the first time I've been back in person, and I think that was the case for a lot of people and the mood was tremendous. I mean, everything that's happening globally where people are getting more supportive every day for nuclear power was reflected in the conversations that we had around the conference. Whether its individual countries announcing extensions to reactors or new reactor plans or just this feeling that the overhang in the spot market from mobile inventory that's kind of been overhanging the market for about 10 years now is finally starting to dry up. It was very, very positive indications for the future of nuclear power and of course, by extension, uranium.

Gerardo Del Real: Good, good, good. I couldn't be more bullish about uranium, I just got back from the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit and outside of lithium, uranium is by far the other metal getting the most attention. Even at a place like Beaver Creek where it's obviously precious metals dominant, right? Let's talk about some of these projects that you've rolled in to the company. And then let's talk about what the next several months look like to take advantage of what I think is going to be a historic uranium bull run.

Philip Williams: Yeah, sure. So you talked about our projects that we picked up in Australia. And Australia was the first country that we really got into, and what we've done with these acquisitions, which really added projects in and around the existing projects that we have, which have historic resources. These projects have tremendous exploration potential, very interesting results that we've seen on the ground from historic work and they fit in really nicely with the portfolios we have. And we think that ultimately this is a jurisdiction that's going to see a lot of uranium development. And with these projects, we can be front and center. The other thing that these projects have, which is important as we look at a development scenario in Queensland, particularly Australia, is it has other metals like vanadium, rare earths, and phosphate. Those commodities are becoming strategically very important in Australia, and I think that having the ability to co-develop those types of minerals along with the uranium gives us a really good chance of pushing these products ahead over time.

Gerardo Del Real: Love the activity. Tell me about the next several quarters. What can shareholders expect?

Philip Williams: Yeah. Look, I think the main thing is really to continue to be actively moving our U.S. projects ahead. After the acquisition of the portfolio projects from Energy Fuels, we took a look at those projects. We took a look at where we were in the market, and we said, "We really need to advance these projects." So, we're drilling down there right now. This is in Southeastern Utah, around Energy Fuels' White Mesa Mill, where we have these three past-producing mines. The drill is at Daneros right now, it finished up at Tony M a few weeks ago, and it did half a program at Rim. And we're going to go back there. So you'll see results from all of those drill programs coming out, including the plan is to put an updated 43-101 resource out on the Tony M project mine. That's the biggest historic resource in the portfolio.

And then what we're doing is we're also doing an evaluation, a financial evaluation. Okay, what's it going to cost to bring these projects back into production? And what's the timetable and who are we going to get to help us with that. So we're working very, very closely with Energy Fuels on those plans and expect to have something concrete on that front towards the second half of the year. And really, it's all about being ready to turn these mines on when the uranium price has the kind of significant move that we expect it to have and turn them on in tandem with Energy Fuels restarting the White Mesa mill.

Gerardo Del Real: I'm a biased shareholder. Again, I love the activity. I love the bipartisan support for nuclear here in the US and abroad. We've seen governments and countries around the world do 360s and all of a sudden get very bullish on nuclear. I don't think it's a coincidence given the energy crisis that several countries and regions are facing. I can't think of a better setup for this bull market that I think is going to run for years in the uranium space. And congrats to you and the team. You've done a beautiful job positioning the company to take advantage of that. Anything else to add to that, Phil?

Philip Williams: Yeah, look, I think the one thing I would say is, and you're entirely right on that, I just highlight that utilities are increasingly looking for sources supply outside of some of the more politically difficult regions, particularly Kazakhstan, which is the number one producer of uranium. I think where we're set up really well is we have projects in very strong mining jurisdictions, very stable political jurisdictions. Jurisdictions that utilities care about Australia, Canada, the US, and Argentina. But I think what you want to keep watching with us is we're not done building out the portfolio. We're figuring out ways to creatively realize value from the projects that we have, akin to what we did with Labrador Uranium, which is up and trading now, as you well know. So I would say, watch this space. We're not done. There's lots more activity to happen. There is M&A happening in this space. I think everyone's familiar with some of that that's going on. We intend to be front and center in the next wave of that.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to it. Great work. Thanks again, Phil.

Philip Williams: Thanks Gerardo. Nice talking to you.