Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us for this Energy Fuels Inc. Q1 2026 Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants will have an opportunity to ask questions. As a reminder, today's session is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to President and CEO, Ross R. Bhappu. Welcome, sir.
Ross R. Bhappu: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate the intro. And thank you, everybody, for participating today. I want to start by thanking Mark S. Chalmers. Mark recently retired from Energy Fuels Inc. after almost ten years with the firm. Mark has done a fabulous job putting together a great group of assets and a great team, and as I look forward to my new tenure here as the CEO of the company, I am thrilled to be taking the helm and moving the company into the next generation. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and as I start my tenure in the company, I am focused on a few things. One is executing on our business strategy. It is ensuring that we have the right team in place and it is ensuring that we all operate safely within this organization. That is a key area of responsibility. The other heavy focus of mine is being a good neighbor in the communities where we operate. We want to operate at very high environmental standards and be a truly good partner wherever we go. My focus as I look forward is to position the company for long-term growth and build stability and shareholder value. With that, I would like to turn our attention to the next slide, which is our forward-looking notice and forward-looking statements. We will be making—I will be making—forward-looking statements today. These statements reflect our current expectations and assumptions and certainly involve some uncertainties. I would refer you to our 10-Q filing, our latest 10-K, and other SEC and SEDAR+ filings for the risk factors. Looking at our next page, the first-quarter highlights: we had a fantastic first quarter by every measure, and I am excited to tell you about some of these accomplishments. First, from an operational perspective, we mined 425 thousand pounds of uranium and we produced nearly 800 thousand pounds in our mill. We ended the quarter with 2.25 million pounds in our inventory, and we released a very positive Varamata feasibility study with a $1.8 billion NPV, and that includes over $500 million per year of expected EBITDA. When you think about that and put that into perspective, that takes Energy Fuels Inc. to a whole new level. We also completed our White Mesa Mill Phase 2 bankable feasibility study, and that came in with a fantastic, lower-than-expected capital cost at $410 million. We expect $311 million of annual EBITDA when that facility is up and running on a standalone basis. We also announced the ASM (Australian Strategic Materials) acquisition, which I am going to talk about later. It really moves us into a new league and gives us the ability to produce metals and alloys, and we will talk about that later. Also during the quarter, we produced our first terbium. Terbium is one of those exotic heavy rare earth minerals that everybody is seeking in their magnets, and it really puts us into a different league. We have gained, as a result of those announcements, substantial interest from off-takers. From a financial perspective, we have a robust balance sheet of over $950 million of liquidity. We generated $8 million of EBITDA, and we had sales and revenue from both a combination of contract and spot sales in the uranium business. In addition, we are continuing to work on expanding our Phase 1 facilities. Recall Phase 1 is our uranium processing line that we recently converted to process rare earth minerals. We are expanding our current capabilities in Phase 1—what we are calling Phase 1B—which will allow us to produce commercial quantities of terbium and dysprosium. And then we are adding Phase 1C, which will allow us to process MREC material. MREC is mixed rare earth carbonates, and that puts us into a different league. The fantastic aspect of that is we will be able to process rare earth minerals and uranium simultaneously with Phase 1C. Finally, in the quarter, right at the very end of the—
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator. Please remain connected. Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate your patience. Please remain online. We are attempting to reestablish connection with our speakers. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator once again. We thank you for your patience. Please remain online as we try to reestablish connection with our presenters. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jim, your operator, once again thanking you for your patience as we reconnect with our speakers. Thank you all. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your operator. I thank you for your—
Ross R. Bhappu: Patience.
Operator: I believe we have Mr. Bhappu reconnected. Thank you all.
Ross R. Bhappu: Thank you, Jim. And ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for that mishap. I am not exactly sure what happened, but I hope you can hear me now. I would like to go back and start—I do not know where we cut off—so I am going to start back on our first-quarter highlights. By any measure, Q1 2026 was a very good quarter for Energy Fuels Inc., and I am excited to tell you about it. From an operational perspective, we mined 425 thousand pounds of uranium and produced nearly 800 thousand pounds through the mill. At the end of the quarter, we ended with 2.25 million pounds in inventory, and we released a very positive Varamata feasibility study. That study showed an NPV of $1.8 billion, and we are anticipating over $500 million per year of expected annual EBITDA. This takes Energy Fuels Inc. to a new level by any measure and is a game changer for us. We also released the White Mesa Mill Phase 2 feasibility study. We were pleasantly surprised that our CapEx came in lower than anticipated at $410 million. Economics of that project are robust and provide for a $1.9 billion NPV. The IRR on that project is about a 33% rate of return. We expect EBITDA from Phase 2 to be about $311 million, and that is on a standalone basis, not including taking into account our Varamata feed as well as other feed. We produced our first terbium this quarter, which again is a game changer. It is being done at a pilot-plant scale. We are producing about a kilogram per week, and we have gained incredible interest from all those announcements across the board. The other announcement, of course, was the announcement of the ASM acquisition, Australian Strategic Materials. ASM is a rare earth metal and alloy producer, and that is a game changer. It helps open a choke point that exists in our sector for rare earths. From a financial perspective, we have a robust balance sheet. We have $950 million of liquidity. We generated $8 million of operating cash flows last quarter—in Q1. We have sales revenue from a combination of both contract and spot sales, and we would like to keep a balance of both contract and spot sales, and that has worked well for us in the past. In addition, we are working on a number of exciting opportunities—at least we started working on them in Q1. The first one is Phase 1B. Recall that Phase 1 of our mill is our uranium facility that we converted to process rare earths. Today, we can only process either uranium or rare earths. We cannot do them simultaneously. But we are trying to fix that, and we are adding Phase 1B, which will allow us to produce heavies, both dysprosium and terbium. We will also be able to produce other heavies like samarium, europium, gadolinium, and possibly yttrium depending on market conditions. Phase 1C will allow us to process MREC material. MREC is a product coming from ionic clays, and that will allow us to process both uranium ores as well as rare earth ores simultaneously, which we cannot do today. Also, I would like to highlight that at the end of the quarter, we published our sustainability report. It is a strong demonstration of what we are doing in sustainability, and I encourage you to take the time to have a look at that report. It is on our website. For those of you who are new to Energy Fuels Inc., I would like to give a bit of background on our capabilities. Energy Fuels Inc. started its life as a uranium company. We have been in the uranium business for over 45 years in various forms, and we built that uranium capability through mining and processing at our White Mesa Mill. Given that expertise, we carried that over to rare earth minerals. Recall that all rare earth minerals contain some level of either uranium or thorium—they are all radioactive to some extent. Our knowledge and expertise in the uranium business has allowed us to be a leader in the processing of those rare earth minerals. The mineral of choice for us is monazite. Monazite is a byproduct from heavy mineral sands, and that has allowed us to get into the heavy mineral sands business and we now own three heavy mineral sands operations plus another mining operation called Dubbo with the ASM acquisition. I will talk about monazite and why it is our mineral of choice here in a few minutes. While the three areas—those three sectors—look quite disparate, they actually flow quite well together. The thing they have in common is that they all contain radioactive components, and that really defines Energy Fuels Inc. today. Looking at a global footprint of where we are, on the far left side the dark blue dots and highlights represent our uranium business. In the middle on the left side, the yellow box is our White Mesa Mill that really brings everything together and allows us to do everything else that we are doing. Across the bottom of the page, the red boxes represent our heavy mineral sands opportunities and projects. Those will not only produce titanium and zirconium products, but they will also provide us the monazite that we will feed into the facility at White Mesa, our mill in Utah. With the addition of ASM, we now have an operating metallization facility located in Korea. We are planning to replicate that facility with an American metals plant here in the United States. So it is very much a global footprint, very much a growth story, and very much an exciting story for critical minerals here in the U.S. Carrying this over now to our uranium highlights: recall that Energy Fuels Inc. is the largest producer of uranium in the U.S. We mined 425 thousand pounds from both La Sal and Pinyon Plain last quarter. Last year, we produced 1.7 million pounds from those two mines. The White Mesa Mill produced about 800 thousand pounds in Q1, and to date we are about 1.2 million pounds of uranium from the White Mesa Mill. We continue to build a strategic base of uranium, and we sell opportunistically into the spot market, but we also have a set of long-term contracts. The U.S. is heavily reliant on imports of uranium, and we are trying to help solve that problem. It still amazes me that we are taking uranium material from Russia. I know that is going to end soon, but we would like to be a part of solving that. When we look at the market trend for uranium, you cannot help but be excited about what is happening in the nuclear energy space and the need for more uranium. We will continue to offer uranium on both the balance of contract and spot sales. The older contracts are set to expire over the next few years. Recall those are lower-priced contracts, but those allowed us to restart our uranium operations a few years ago. The new contracts will continue to have price floors and ceilings. We are excited about the opportunities there. Moving to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah: the White Mesa Mill really makes everything possible for us at Energy Fuels Inc. It is truly a national treasure by any measure. It is 45 years old and is using state-of-the-art technology and equipment for processing not only uranium but rare earth minerals. We are often asked what it would take to replicate that facility. It is hard to put a price tag on it because it is not easily replicable, mainly due to permitting challenges, and the time to replicate that facility would be very extensive. The dual-commodity processing of both rare earths and uranium is unmatched in the Western world. Our history of uranium processing provides us with an incredible track record for processing not only uranium but also rare earth feedstock. We are the only facility in the United States that can commercially process monazite at that mill. On our rare earth highlights: we are building a fully integrated mine-to-alloy chain for critical minerals. Through the acquisition of ASM, we plan to capture value across the supply chain, and we are not beholden to any other part of the chain by having this self-reliance of vertical integration. We have a fabulous team at the White Mesa Mill. We are actively producing heavy rare earths at the pilot plant that we have been sending out for validation. As mentioned previously, we are preparing to expand Phase 1, and that includes Phase 1B, which will allow us to process terbium and dysprosium. Phase 1C will allow us to produce and process MREC. MREC, as I mentioned, comes from ionic clays, and it is a valuable source of rare earth minerals that will enable us to produce both uranium and rare earths simultaneously. Then we have Phase 2. For Phase 2, we are in the permitting process, and we hope to have those permits by the end of next year. When fully commissioned, we will be able to produce over 6 thousand tons per year of NdPr. We will truly be a substantial supplier of rare earths. The question we often get is: why monazite? Monazite offers a number of benefits. First, it is a very high-grade source of rare earth minerals. It typically contains 50% to 60% total rare earths, and it is high in neodymium and praseodymium, and equally high in dysprosium and terbium—very attractive. In addition, it also contains uranium, which we recover and sell as a byproduct of the rare earth processing. Monazite has a lot of benefits. Another benefit is, as a byproduct of heavy mineral sands, the production cost can be shared across a number of different commodities. Again, the White Mesa Mill is the only facility in the U.S. that can process monazite commercially. We announced the acquisition on January 20 of Australian Strategic Materials (ASM). ASM really provides a unique opportunity for Energy Fuels Inc. Outside of China, there are very few rare earth metallization factories, and ASM has a commercial operating facility in Korea. The vertical integration from mine to alloys provides a tremendous competitive advantage, including expanded margins and greater market share, and it has resulted in very positive feedback from our off-takers. The acquisition is progressing very well. We recently obtained our FIRB approval—FIRB is the Foreign Investment Review Board, equivalent to CFIUS in the U.S.—and that approval was an important part of the process. We are targeting closing that transaction in early July, and it is progressing quite well. On the heavy mineral sands side of the business, heavy mineral sands are very important. They allow us to obtain the monazite as a byproduct, and they also contain titanium and zirconium minerals used across a wide range of industrial applications, including pigments, metals, ceramics, chemicals, refractories, foundries, and nuclear applications. Energy Fuels Inc. has three heavy mineral sands projects, and with the ASM acquisition, we will hold an important polymetallic operation as well. The Varamata project is our project in Madagascar. We are advancing that. We are working towards obtaining a government stability agreement, also called an investment agreement. That work has been underway for some time, but with the change in government recently, we have had a bit of a delay getting that investment agreement signed. We continue to have very good engagement with the government of Madagascar, and we are looking forward to progressing that through the balance of this year. The Donald project, in Australia, is where we are earning a 49% joint-venture ownership. Donald is shovel-ready. It has obtained all of its permits. We are looking to make a final investment decision in the next few months. The one thing holding us back is finalizing our financing and offtake agreements. We are making very good progress and hope to be able to announce that FID fairly soon. The Bahia project is a 100%-owned project in the state of Bahia in Brazil. We are conducting drilling there, and we hope to have a scoping study or a PFS done later this year. Finally, we have the Dubbo project, which comes from the ASM acquisition. Dubbo is not a heavy mineral sands project—it is a polymetallic project—but it has very high critical minerals grades, and we hope for that to provide further feedstock to the White Mesa Mill in the future. The next slide is interesting because it shows just how global we are, especially in delivering rare earth minerals to the White Mesa Mill. Our three heavy mineral sands projects supply monazite—one in Australia, one in Brazil, and one in Madagascar. Those supply the monazite feedstock to the White Mesa Mill. White Mesa Mill will process those rare earth minerals and produce oxides. The oxides will then go either to Korea or, once we build our facility in the U.S. for metallization, to the U.S. for processing. From there, it gets sold to magnet manufacturers and end producers. We truly are a global company and excited about our opportunities. With that, I would like to hand this off to Nathan Bennett, our CFO. He is going to talk about the financials for the quarter.
Nathan Bennett: Yes. Thank you, Ross, and good morning, everyone. As we look at the financial updates for Q1 2026, we continue to maintain a strong financial position as we prepare to develop our long-term projects. We finished with $957 million in working capital and $1.4 billion in total assets. This working capital continues to reflect the $621 million in net proceeds received from our convertible note offering that we completed last year in the fourth quarter that we have yet to draw down on. The working capital also includes 2.2 million pounds of uranium, about half in finished inventories and the other half in process or in ore pile. This liquidity gives us the financial flexibility to advance our strategic projects, be opportunistic as the market evolves, and deliver on our guidance. Looking at the P&L, we continue to see improvement in our net loss, with a net loss of $11 million in Q1 2026. This compares to a net loss of $26 million in Q1 2025 and a net loss of $21 million in Q4 2025. This improvement is due to the increase in our uranium revenue and sales, and also an increase in income from our marketable securities from invested cash. This is partially offset by higher operating costs and transaction costs, as you see in the P&L, as we progress our global strategy. Now, noting our guidance, we do anticipate uranium sales to continue throughout the year to help offset our burn rate as we progress our projects and our strategy. Looking at our segment footnote—footnote 19 of the 10-Q—we noted that our uranium segment has shown promising results as we begin to be profitable, and we expect this trend towards profitability to continue in our uranium segment. As we look at our revenue and our sales, we took advantage of spot price increases during the quarter. We sold 100 thousand pounds at an average price of $95.88. Looking at our long-term utility contracts, as forecasted, we sold 110 thousand pounds at just under $64 per pound. We expected these sales at this price as it relates to some of our initial long-term agreements entered into back in 2022 and 2023. We entered into these agreements when uranium prices were beginning to increase, and these contracts really supported the decision to go forward with mining at Pinyon Plain and our La Sal Complex. Now looking at our uranium production and moving forward throughout the year, for Pinyon Plain, we mined 375 thousand pounds with an average grade of 1.12%, which was from a lower-ore-grade area as our mining moves between high-grade zones. These ore grade fluctuations are expected as we mine different segments of the ore deposit, and we expect these ore grades to increase throughout 2026. These fluctuations were contemplated in our mining production guidance. At the mill, in accordance with our guidance, we continued processing Pinyon Plain and La Sal ore through Q1. We processed over 800 thousand pounds through March, as Ross noted, and we reached the 1 million-pound milestone for the year during April. These are exciting results, as the last two quarters have shown the mill’s capabilities above expectations, having not run at these levels in many years. Our all-in cost for mining, transportation, and processing continues to be within our expected range of $23 to $30 per pound, and we expect this to continue throughout the rest of the year. We also expect processing at the mill to continue throughout 2026, but we note that we will pause processing for planned maintenance downtime scheduled at the end of Q2 and the beginning of Q3. As the mill processes ore at a faster rate than we can mine, the downtime will allow mine production to catch up and replenish our ore piles at the mill. We expect our mill processing to continue to be within our guidance of 1.5 million to 2.5 million pounds for the year. Looking at our inventory and cost, we continue to see a decline in our inventory costs as we produce low-cost Pinyon Plain pounds, decreasing to $36 per pound at the end of the quarter. This decrease is expected, and we expect it to continue as we mine throughout the rest of the year at Pinyon Plain. We note our cost of goods sold is expected to decrease closer to $30 per pound throughout 2026 as we sell through inventory and add low-cost Pinyon Plain production. This will help improve our gross margins and our profitability in our uranium segment. We finished with 1.1 million pounds at $36 per pound, with another 1.1 million pounds in process and ready to be processed. This gives us sufficient inventory to meet our processing and sales guidance and to meet our long-term utility contract commitments for the remainder of 2026 and 2027. Updating guidance: we continue to anticipate being within our guidance ranges. Starting with mining, we mined 425 thousand pounds between our Pinyon Plain and La Sal Complex. We will continue to mine during the downtime at the mill to replenish the ore piles. We expect ore grades and pounds at Pinyon Plain to increase as we move into higher-grade zones. At the mill, as noted, we hit our processing milestone of over 1 million pounds during April, and we are starting to near the bottom end of the range by the end of Q2. We expect to be within the range anticipated even with the planned maintenance downtime. For sales, we sold 510 thousand pounds during Q1. We expect sales to continue and to be in line with our guidance, with both sales under our long-term contracts and spot sales depending on market conditions. With that, I will turn it back over to Ross for some final thoughts on our 2026 activity.
Ross R. Bhappu: Thank you, Nathan. I would like to finish our presentation by talking about some of our objectives for the balance of 2026. For me, it is all about execution. We have an incredible asset base, incredible mines to develop, and an incredible facility at White Mesa. Now it is all about execution. We are going to focus on Phase 2 permitting. We are going to focus on Phase 1B and 1C—get that construction going and finalized. We hope to be operational on Phase 1B and 1C late in 2027. We hope to make our Donald FID very soon; we are very focused on that. We are going to continue to advance our Varamata project both on the engineering side and on the investment agreement and government relations side. We have a big social outreach program and a big focus on the communities there that will continue. We are going to continue advancing our drilling and engineering work at the Bahia project. Finally, a big focus of mine is for our company to operate safely and in a sustainable way. I encourage you to have a look at our sustainability report that we just released. I think you will find it very impressive. I am really proud of what this team has accomplished in the first quarter. I am excited to be taking the helm of the company and moving it forward through the rest of 2026 and beyond, and I am very excited for what we have going forward. With that, I would like to end our formal presentation and turn it back over to Jim for questions and answers.
Operator: We will now open the call for questions. Thank you. To our audience joining today over the phones, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star and one on your telephone keypad. Pressing star and one will place your line into a queue, and I will open your lines one at a time. We will hear first from Anthony Taglieri at Canaccord Genuity.
Anthony Taglieri: Thanks, and good morning. Maybe just starting with the uranium side of things. How much finished inventory are you maintaining? We saw you sell 100 thousand pounds in Q1 on the spot market, close to $100 per pound. Should we expect you to sell up to the high end of the sales guidance range if prices came back to around those levels?
Ross R. Bhappu: First, we have to maintain sufficient inventory to meet our contractual obligations. That is a driver. We also want to maintain optionality where we can switch the mill over from uranium to processing rare earths depending on market conditions. It is a bit of a balance. When you look at our guidance, we have relatively wide ranges of uranium sales largely because of that—maintaining enough inventory to meet contractual obligations, having some available for the spot market, and preserving flexibility to transfer the mill operations from uranium to rare earths at any point in time. We will continue to process uranium as heavily as we can. When we see prices going over $100, as they did earlier this year, we will certainly take advantage of that. Longer term, we see uranium prices escalating, and we want to maintain optionality around that. It is a bit of a balance, and I would say it is a bit of an art, but that is why we are going the direction we are.
Anthony Taglieri: Great, thanks. As a follow-up: in the first quarter, you sold about half of your long-term sales commitments for the year, it seems. Should we expect the remaining portion of that to come in the second quarter, or will it be staged differently throughout the year?
Ross R. Bhappu: I think it will be staged throughout the year. We have big contractual obligations in the first quarter, and we will be meeting those through the balance of the year. There were some pretty big sales that came as a result of one of our big contracts, but I anticipate we will smooth that out through the balance of the year.
Operator: Thanks. Our next question will come from B. Riley Securities.
Analyst: Thank you, team, and congratulations on the quarter. My first question: rare earth companies that are standalone are trading meaningfully at higher multiples than diversified miners. As the rare earth business scales—when Donald, ASM, Varamata all come together—do you think about spinning the business out and operating as two distinct businesses, rare earths and uranium?
Ross R. Bhappu: It is an interesting issue. Rare earth companies trade at higher multiples; uranium companies a bit lower; heavy mineral sands companies even lower. Our view is that we want to be integrated across those three sectors. It is vitally important technically and commercially that we control our own feedstocks. If we are going to be a monazite processing company and an MREC processing company, we want to control our own molecules. Spinning out the heavy mineral sands side is something we might consider in the future, but right now it is so important as a source of feedstock for us, and we want to be in control of it. I will leave it to you and other analysts to figure out how to value us, but I believe the bulk of our revenue, as I look forward, will come from rare earths. We will have continuing revenue from uranium and will be ramping up revenue from heavy mineral sands. We will live with how you weight those, but I would be hesitant to give up control over the feedstock going into our mill.
Analyst: That is very clear, Ross. On another line, how are you reading the uranium market right now? Prices have been strong and holding above the $80 per pound threshold. Are you seeing any utility customers signaling urgency to lock in domestic supply, or is the contracting still moving slowly?
Ross R. Bhappu: You see headlines from companies in the SMR business with amazing future projections. The only way they are going to feed those SMRs is with uranium. We have not seen the utilities ramping up their buying schedules yet. I fully expect we will see that. I am confident there will be more focus on ensuring supplies of uranium going forward. To the best of my knowledge, we have not seen a huge increase in demand or discussions from the utilities to date, but I expect that will change. Every research group that studies uranium and the nuclear industry shows the supply and demand balance is going to come out of alignment in the next few years. You are just going to need more uranium. I remain very bullish on uranium personally, and we talk about it internally quite a lot.
Operator: Our next question will come from Brian Lee at Goldman Sachs.
Brian Lee: Hey, thanks for taking the questions. On Varamata, a little bit of a delay there. Can you elaborate on how much of a delay, what needs to happen to get that back on track, and any milestones through the year that might improve visibility?
Ross R. Bhappu: The change in government that happened in September/October really slowed the process down. We were very close to signing an investment agreement around that time, but the change in government slowed things. We have been spending considerable time in-country in Madagascar. I am joined here by Nathan Longenecker, our General Counsel, who has been spending a lot of time in Madagascar. Let me let him add to that.
Nathan Longenecker: We continue to push it forward. The government is relatively new, but we have been meeting fairly regularly with the highest levels, and our discussions have been met with a fair bit of support. The government has been supportive of the project. There are a number of things we need to get in place. The document itself has many aspects and takes time to finalize. That is generally where we are—working with the government.
Brian Lee: Fair enough. Related to that, any updated thoughts around sourcing monazite in the open market as you are waiting for upstream assets to reach FID and move to production? Monazite pricing has come down a decent amount recently. Any thoughts around using that more as a bridge?
Ross R. Bhappu: We will need to source monazite. We have three sources internally of monazite. We also have an agreement with Chemours to source monazite from them. To keep Phase 2 at White Mesa full, we will need additional sources—a small amount, but additional nonetheless. We have a very active business development and partnerships group in discussions with a host of suppliers. Groups in production today are selling their monazite almost exclusively into China, and Western companies doing that are looking for alternative outlets. We have many discussions ongoing, and we will have additional sources of monazite to feed our mill.
Operator: Next, we will hear from Justin Chan at SCP Resource Finance.
Justin Chan: Hi, Ross and team. Thanks for hosting the call. On uranium processing, you could run a longer processing campaign, etc. What is your current thinking in terms of how long you intend to process uranium for?
Ross R. Bhappu: The mill operates at a higher rate than our mines produce ore, so the mill will outrun the mines, at least for now. We will be able to process ore for probably another four to six weeks, then we are going to shut down for maintenance and do some modifications to the mill. That will allow us to build our uranium stockpiles. Then we will have to choose whether we restart with uranium or with rare earths, and a lot depends on market conditions. We are over 1 million pounds processed so far this year. We will get through the next month to month and a half, shut down for probably a couple of months for maintenance, and then decide whether to start back up with rare earths or uranium depending on market conditions.
Justin Chan: If nothing changes from now, how would that influence your thinking?
Ross R. Bhappu: If nothing changes, we would probably start back up with uranium processing and continue uranium processing through the balance of the year.
Justin Chan: Thanks, that is clear. You mentioned Phase 1C will give you optionality to process rare earth minerals alongside uranium. Will you be receiving MREC from third parties, or could you make your own MREC stockpiles?
Ross R. Bhappu: It would be primarily sourced from ionic clays via third parties. Early on, when we ran the mill, we produced an MREC material at our own facility from monazite, but we do not anticipate doing that going forward. There are a number of third parties looking for a home for their MREC, and we think we can help fill that void.
Justin Chan: When you have your own dedicated rare earth processing lines and are processing monazite, would you still retain capacity to receive additional MREC or does that create a blending issue?
Ross R. Bhappu: No blending issue. The separate facility we are building—Phase 1C—will allow us to continue to process MREC in addition to processing monazite through Phase 2. We will maintain the capability to process MREC along with monazite.
Justin Chan: With that capacity, does that change your strategic thinking about having your own potential upstream ionic clay feed?
Ross R. Bhappu: We are always going to be opportunistic. If there is an opportunity to acquire an ionic clay and an MREC producer, we would certainly consider that if it made sense.
Operator: Next, we will hear from Noel Parks at Tuohy Brothers.
Noel Augustus Parks: Good morning. On Donald, could you give a sense of what remains on finalizing the offtake agreements, which in turn will help get to the FID?
Ross R. Bhappu: Good to talk to you, Noel. Donald will produce a heavy mineral concentrate as well as monazite. There are two separate offtake agreements we need to finalize—one on heavy mineral concentrate and another on various rare earth products. Coordinating offtake agreements across different commodities is time-consuming, and it has taken longer than anticipated. Once you get those locked in, that impacts your financing, so they go hand in hand. We are having discussions with various financing parties as well as offtake parties, and they are different groups you must coordinate between, which creates complexity. That is also compounded by having a joint-venture partner—Astron—so financing and offtake agreements must also be agreeable to our JV partner. What from the outside looks straightforward is actually complex and time-consuming, and it has delayed us making the FID more quickly. We are very focused on getting the FID as quickly as possible and getting that mine up and running.
Noel Augustus Parks: Thanks. On rare earths, in the past you mentioned how what the market wants has been evolving and that has informed your decisions about which products you pursue and in what order at the mill. Could you update us on how you see demand shifting for particular elements going forward?
Ross R. Bhappu: Demand signals often reflect what producers can actually make. We continue to see very strong demand for dysprosium and terbium. Not everybody can produce those heavies. Magnet manufacturers are trying to design magnets that reduce reliance on dysprosium and terbium, but they have not solved that yet. There remains big demand for Dy and Tb in magnets, and I think that continues for the foreseeable future. At the mill, we want the ability to produce the full suite of heavies—not just dysprosium and terbium, but also samarium, gadolinium, europium, and yttrium—because there is demand for those. Yttrium demand in the aerospace industry, for example, is very strong. The heavies allow motors to operate at very high temperatures, and alternatives without heavy rare earths have not been proven at scale. There is some wishful thinking out there, and perhaps that will happen in the future, but we are seeing a lot of requests from potential off-takers for Dy and Tb.
Operator: Next, we will hear from Matthew Key at Texas Capital.
Matthew Key: Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. What market indications would you need to see to move ahead with some of the medium-term uranium projects? As you mentioned, mined ore is the main bottleneck. Would it be economic at current spot pricing to bring a couple of those online?
Ross R. Bhappu: Timely question—we just had a meeting on prioritizing our pipeline. At current prices, you start to consider bringing some of those online. One question is where pricing will go. If we see prices well over $100 per pound, which we anticipate at some point, that brings a lot of the pipeline into a real opportunity. At these prices, we are happy with what we have operating—La Sal and Pinyon Plain—and we have Nichols Ranch on standby. We will continue to permit and advance development projects and be ready to put them into production as soon as we feel there is a long-term sustainable price above a project-specific threshold. Thresholds vary by project. We think about this every day, even if I cannot give you a hard number.
Matthew Key: Got it. Would you ever consider selling Nichols Ranch as an ISR project, given it is different than the conventional portfolio? Could that generate incremental liquidity, or is the plan to eventually develop it?
Ross R. Bhappu: If you are making an offer, we will certainly think about it. We are excited about Nichols Ranch. We like that it is ready and on standby. We could get it up and running in probably four to six months if we pull the trigger. We like that optionality. That does not mean we would not consider a great offer, but we like the optionality today.
Matthew Key: Understood. One more on the Dubbo project. If the ASM transaction closes, could Dubbo be used as feedstock for White Mesa, or would it operate more as a standalone project?
Ross R. Bhappu: Great question. It is not a heavy mineral sands project—it is polymetallic with high critical mineral credits like niobium, as well as rare earths. The current plan from ASM is to use heap leach and semi-processing to produce a rare earth hydroxide that would then come to the White Mesa Mill for treatment—much like an MREC material. That approach was driven largely by capital cost considerations versus building a mill and producing more of a concentrate on-site. After we close, we want to review the engineering to make sure we agree with ASM’s path or consider alternatives to extract the best value, including for products like niobium. Right now, the plan is to produce a hydroxide that we would then process at White Mesa.
Operator: We have no further questions from our audience this morning. Mr. Bhappu, I am happy to turn the floor back over to you for any closing remarks.
Ross R. Bhappu: Thank you to everybody for participating. This is my first earnings call as the new CEO, and I am excited to be in this role and to take the company forward. Please keep a watch on our company because we have a lot of exciting things happening. Thank you.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s Energy Fuels Inc. Q1 2026 conference call. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great day.