Fission 3.0 (TSX-V: FUU)(OTC: FISOF) CEO Dev Randhawa on Navigating Greed & Fear in a Uranium Bull Market



Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Fission 3.0, Mr. Dev Randhawa. Dev, how are you? It's been a bit. It's great to have you back on.

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Well, it's great to have you, and you pronounce my name properly every time, so that's always encouraging.

Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: Mine always gets butchered, so I try to do the best. Listen, we talked a bit off air, and then I actually stopped the conversation, because I wanted to get it on the record. We were having a dialogue about how we've waited for so many years for the uranium spot price to get in a clear up-trend, and I firmly believe that we're in the very early stages of that right now. We're just starting to see the uranium spot price really cooperate the way we all knew that it would.

The opposite has happened with the related equities. We had that surge higher, and that initial rush in. We had the excitement, and then it seems like we're in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of trend right now. And I thought that presented a pretty compelling opportunity, especially with the recent pullback across the sector. I wanted to get your take, first on the uranium sector, and then second, let's talk Fission 3.0 and why it's an opportunity.

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Sure. First of all, thanks for having me on. Yeah, it is fascinating. I don't think I've seen such a dramatic change in the uranium market. I've been kicking around this industry since 1996, when the first meeting I had with Rick Rule and trying to understand how the world of uranium worked. And so I've been watching this for a long time. I've never such as a vicious turn on the upside as we did last middle of August, when the commodity spiked up so significantly. And it spiked up because Peter Grosskopf saw all this money out there. And people were trying to find ways. The big fund men were trying to find ways to take advantage of fact that nuclear was now seeing a very positive response. In fact, the first time in history, the Democrats were pro-nuclear, and even yesterday, I think the Biden administration has put six billion dollars aside to help the nuclear industry.

So between that and other governments realizing that they're going to reach any of their lofty goals of zero emissions or less, nuclear power has to be part of it. And sure enough it has. So the last six, seven months we've seen a dramatic for the first time in my career is that we are seeing we're not going to reach those goals without nuclear. Because the problem with wind and sun, which I've often said is the intermittent availability of it. We as humans can't control the sun or the wind. And so we can't always have it on and if it is going and then when it's not on you know what, there's no batteries. A lot of places, a lot of these solar panels and stuff, really literally have only four or five minutes of storage facility.

So if they're not using it it's gone. So there are a lot of problems with it. So finally we saw this positive push from nuclear powers like green energy. And then through that… I remember for the first time talking to Mr. Grosskopf, 300 million comes in 1.2 there. So that drove, he went and bought 40 million pounds. So it took the price up. So every stock went up crazy. We went from, 10, 11 cents all the way to almost 30. And that commodity was only 45, 50. Now we got the opposite. You've got commodity over 60 and the stocks are almost like it's never happened. We're seeing some were up 50%, but before we were up, 200%. So it's weird that those stock prices are lagging. The commodity's still going ahead. There's nothing but every day… whether it's, Britain's getting closer to getting an SMR or going to the Chinese are the small reactors.

So it's really odd that we're in this timeframe. Yet the companies are well funded. You know, we have 13 million in the bank for Fission Uranium. We did a bunch of drilling. We got some good news on PLN we've... and I can't talk about Traction yet our joint venture with them. So companies are funded, but these stock prices, whether it's profit taking, although I think some of the macro markets are certainly a big problem with the war going on, well the invasion is not... it's a one way war. And so that, it's just frustrating I think for a lot of shareholders and we're getting calls… why is your stock down and the commodities is up? And then having Hayward put out a good piece on that? And same thing, there's a disconnect. So I think there's too much concern about inflation, the Russian invasion to overall… sentiment’s not positive like it was before.

But nuclear, I think Sprott CEO said we're in the second inning of this whole uranium with long ways to go. When you look at the demand for energy to electricity alone, where is it going to come from? And with people really pushing for clean energy, the future for uranium is very, very strong. So like everybody who's frustrated just got to be patient. And it's a great opportunity.

Like Rick Rule always said, if you love your stocks, the ones you're in and they go down in value, you buy more. So it's a huge buying opportunity for people who watched that massive run up and said, okay, I'm going to stay out of that storm wait for the thing to settle down. Now they have, and the stocks are up 50% from their original lows, but they're way off their high. So this is a great opportunity for a lot of investors who took some profits or have never been in the space because I can sit there for the next hour and tell you how positive the future is for nuclear power. And I encourage everybody to see what happened to Germany. They're the poster child of silliness, where Merkel goes to power and tells everybody, you know what, we're going to go and we're going to connect all the, what we're going to do, we're going to spend a trillion dollars we're going to connect all of our nodes. So we can have wind and solar.

Well, and they're going to spend 3,900 kilometers of circuits, 3,900 for a trillion. Well, they spent about 850 billion and they built 39 kilometers. They built 1% of what they were going to build. And sure enough, now coal from Russia. So they have promised to bring emissions down, they have not gone down. Pollution’s up 25% in Germany because they're using coal, right? Because to stay in power, as you know, over there she to stay in power to win five, seven, eight percent from extreme left, they want nuclear power gone. But the reality is that you and I would never sell a car till we've got another one, right? Well, Germany did the opposite. They jumped into the renewables without doing their homework. And now the country is suffering. The tax payers wasted a trillion dollars and then they have higher pollution than ever. So that's supposed to show the why nuclear power has a tremendous future going ahead.

Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned Rick Rule, he's got that great line. "You're either a contrarian or a victim," right? I absolutely love buying on pullbacks. I love buying early. I love getting ahead of mega trends where I know the trend is my friend, a lot of cliches there, but tell me why Fission 3.0 is a great contrarian player right now for someone that's looking to either add or initiate exposure to that violent upside that the uranium equities always produce. When we have a clear bull market like we have right now.

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Well, it's, first of all, all uranium stocks are going to go up. If we see another rush in the stocks, you'll see every uranium stock go up a little bit. Obviously some will go higher than others. But the advantage of being in an exploration stock is that someone hits a hole, the stock will double and triple. You can't do that… like no matter what NextGen or Fission Uranium does their stock will never double and triple. They'll go up. There's a duality to an exploration uranium stock. It'll go up anyways, because it's in uranium, right. More money will flow to it. But the other one is it can, if it, and there's a great chart on one of our, on our website that shows that. So one, every stock will go up I'm with you. But the other thing is, and in real estate it’s location, location, location.

In our business is management, management, management. Exploration is very, very difficult and it's rare to make a discovery. I mean you got how many 2 to 300 companies out there and how many of those guys have made it? Well our team led by Ray Ashley and our board Ross McElroy. You're talking about guys who have made two very significant discoveries. We were there together. You and me when we made the discovery of Waterbury next to Hathaway.

And we were able to sell that. And we put a hundred grand in, they put in 15 million, the Koreans. And after that we're 50 50. Well we sold that for 128 million through Lucas Lundin and Dennison. And then we went over the other side and we made another discovery. And those are two different discoveries by the way.

The Waterbury discovery in the J Zone, as we called it. It was a, what they call the unconformity model, which is a traditional model, Cigar Lake and MacArthur, where you got a sandstone on top of hard rock. Where they touch it's called the unconformity. So they call it the unconformity model, that's a different versus what we found out here. We found something with no sandstone on it. It was strictly a hard rock and you were there too. So, it's not easy to find somebody who has done it twice, let alone once. So you bet on people who can raise money, can make a discovery and sell it. Those are the three key pieces in the life of an exploration company. Be able to raise money, make a discovery and be able to do business type deals with joint ventures and stuff like that.

So that's why I think Fission 3 at 15, 16 cents is a steal, I put in money at 22 cents and I bought more stocks. So, I haven't sold a single share in all the years I've owned it. I think I'm the largest shareholder and I'll continue to support it because it's hard for retail investors. They need guys more like you to help them filter through the fear and the greed, right? And that's where guys like Nick and you guys are good at giving people perspective. But these are great opportunities in a lot of these uranium stocks. But I think Fission 3, it should be part of your portfolio. I'm sure you want a, maybe a chemical and like, and a development stock, but you want an exploration stock in there to give you that big bump when it happens. And if you're going to do what you got to with the management team that's done it before, at least once. And we're lucky to have done it twice.

Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: You have the experience you're cashed up. Tell me about drilling. What comes next?

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Well, we had finished the winter as you... way up north when you are, it's on a lake, you drill in the winter, because it's cheaper. You can use a tractor to drag your drills around versus choppers in the summer on the lake. So we try to do our land drilling in the summers and then we do in the winter. So seasonality is the... so for risk sakes, you don't drill when it starts to melt and that's what we've... it started to melt up there. So we're going to demobilize our rigs and think about the summer. You can, in the summer, you drill typically July and August. You prep through June because the roads, there's that time in there where the lake starts to melt. So you've got to wait for it all to melt. And also you need the roads to stop becoming so muddy, right, it’s called breakup.

So that's what needs to happen. So this summer we're going to drill PLN, which is our future project. It's closest to the Arrow deposit, the Triple R project. And it's with this winter, we found a very cool corridor, all uranium in the basins, it always comes up through graphitic conductors. But not all conductors have high grade uranium. So we found the conductor, we have some lower activity, so we think we're getting close. So we're going to drill that this summer. And then also we're going to go after Lazy Edward out there and we'll do a lot more work. Like I said, we're well funded, $13 million. And so we're in good shape financially to continue through it. And I believe that if we get any smells we'll get more money coming in. So that's our plans is to keep drilling. Like we're spending almost 12 and a half million dollars this year in the ground. That's a lot of money. And so we were given a lot of money, so we're drilling it all.

Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: 12 and a half million dollars worth of potential lottery tickets and shots on goal. That's what we do this for.

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Exactly. You miss a 100% of the shots you don't take. And so Michael Jordan says, "I've always missed all those." So we've got, we got about $9.8 million of our money. And then our joined venture partners putting up two and a half and they’re good people, Lester and gang have done a super job raising money at Traction Uranium. And they are our partners and we're looking forward to drilling Lazy Edward this summer with them.

Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real: Dev it's great catching up. Let's do it again soon. Thank you so much for your time. It's always appreciated.

Dev Randhawa

Dev Randhawa: Thank you for having me.

Click here to see more from F3 Uranium