Energy Fuels Inc. (EFR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2022 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Energy Fuels Inc. My name is Birks Bovaird. I'm speaking to you from Lakewood, Colorado. I'm the Chair of the Board of the company, and I will act as Chair of this meeting. The Corporate Secretary of the company, David Frydenlund, will act as secretary of the meeting. Also with us today are Mark Chalmers, President and CEO; Curtis Moore, Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development; and Sarai Luksch, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller of the company. This is Mark Chalmers, President and CEO of Energy Fuels. We welcome each of you to this year's meeting, which we are pleased to host virtually for the third year in a row, thereby allowing us to host shareholders and guests from around the world and from the convenience of your own homes and offices. We are pleased to share with you the many exciting new developments of the company in my presentation following the official business today, and we welcome your participation throughout the meeting.

This is David Frydenlund, CFO, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Energy Fuels. This meeting is held in accordance with the Ontario Business Corporations Act which permits shareholders meetings by electronic means and is deemed to be held in Toronto, Ontario. Please look to the left side of your screen at this time for instructions and asking questions. And for those of you who are eligible to vote at the meeting, you may do so by clicking on the proxy voting site link on the left side of your screen. Only shareholders and proxy holders who have been provided an 11-digit control number located on the form of proxy you have received are entitled to vote at this meeting. If you've already voted your shares and do not wish to change your vote, no action is required at this time.

The 2022 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Energy Fuels will now come to order. To make the best use of our time, certain shareholders have been asked to move and second the resolutions, which we will consider here today and which are set out in the notice of meeting. This will allow more time for voting as well as any questions and comments later in the meeting. We welcome both shareholders and meeting guests to submit questions as they arise. Though we may address them at a later point in the meeting, depending on the subject matter. We will pause periodically throughout the meeting to review any questions directly relating -- related to proposals during which you may experience brief periods of silence. Subject to any time constraints, General questions relating to the company's business and operations will be addressed after the CEO's presentation following the meeting. Duplicate or similar questions may be consolidated and paraphrased when read aloud in order to minimize repeat answers. We will conduct the votes on the matters before us by poll. In this format, every shareholder entitled to a vote on the matter that is every shareholder or proxy holder who has been provided an 11-digit control number has 1 vote in respect of each share entitled to be voted on the matter and held by that shareholder. If you've previously voted by proxy, please note that voting in the poll will avoid your previously cast votes, and any votes submitted here will govern. We note that the proxies received to date indicate that the company has sufficient votes to pass all matters in accordance with the recommendations of management. The poll will be open for all resolutions at the same time. This will allow you to vote either on each resolution immediately or wait until the conclusion of discussions on all resolutions prior to casting your vote on any of the resolutions. Your votes may be changed until voting is closed just prior to the termination of the meeting. American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC, will act as the virtual scrutineer of this meeting to report on the shareholders present virtually and the number of securities represented virtually. And by proxy at this meeting and any adjournment fair to thereof, to compute the votes cast by proxy and by the poll conducted at this meeting or any adjournment thereof and to report to me on these matters. The notice of Internet availability of proxy materials was mailed to all registered shareholders and was also mailed or notice was delivered in accordance with the notice and access requirements to all nonregistered shareholders in accordance with Rule 14a-16 of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Accordingly, the company is also in compliance with the Canadian National Instrument 52-102, sub-part 9.1.5, which allows "compliance with the SEC notice and access rules." The affidavit of mailing has been duly filed, and I direct that the affidavit would be attached to the minutes of this meeting as is scheduled. If you are entitled to vote at the meeting, you may address the meeting when there is a call to discuss a motion before the meeting. Should a shareholder or proxy holder entitled to vote at the meeting like to address the chair or other speaker on any motion, please type in your question or comment in the message section provided on your screen. Subject to timing constraints and applicability to the matters being discussed, the secretary or other speaker may read the question aloud and provide a response during the course of the meeting. And as previously noted, duplicate or similar questions may be consolidated and paraphrased when read aloud in order to minimize repeat answers. A quorum for the transaction of business at a meeting of shareholders is at least 2 persons present. In this case, virtually, each being a shareholder entitled to vote at the meeting or a duly appointed proxy holder or representative for an absent shareholder so entitled. I will now ask the secretary to report on attendance at the meeting.

Mr. Chair, we are pleased to report that there are 1,240 shareholders holding 65,745,474 common shares represented in person or by proxy at this meeting. This represents 41.82% of the [ 157,268 ] issued and outstanding common shares.

Thank you, Mr. Freda. I declare that the requisite quorum of shareholders is present and that the meeting is properly constituted for the transaction of business. I direct that the final scrutineers' report on attendance be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as is scheduled. The first item of business is the presentation of financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, together with the auditor's report thereon. Copies of the financial statements have been publicly filed and mailed to all shareholders who requested them. Are there any questions concerning the financial statements?

This is Curtis Moore, Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development. There are no questions at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Moore. As there are no questions, receipt and presentation of the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021, is hereby acknowledged. The next item of business is the election of directors. It's proposed that the 10 directors -- that 10 directors be elected at this meeting. As described in our proxy statement, the company has adopted a majority voting policy that provides for individual director voting by shareholders. Under the policy, if any nominee director receives a greater number of votes withheld than votes for election, such nominee director will tender his or her resignation for consideration by the Board of Directors following the meeting. In addition, in 2014, the Board and the shareholders of the company approved an amendment to the company's bylaws, which requires that the shareholders submit a notice of director nominations at least 35 days and not more than 65 days prior to the annual meeting. No notices of nominations were received by the company within a specified time period. May I have a motion to nominate the individuals recommended by the Board of Directors?

This is Mark Chalmers. I nominate for election as directors of the company for the ensuing year, the following 10 persons whose nominations have been authorized by the Board of Directors: Birks Bovaird; Mark Chalmers; Ben Eshleman III; Ivy Estabrooke; Barb Filas, Bruce Hansen, Jaqueline Herrera, Dennis Higgs, Robert Kirkwood and Alexander Morrison.

As there are no other nomination -- as no other nominations were received by the company in accordance with the advanced notice provisions of the company's bylaws, I now declare the nominations closed. All of the nominees have signified their consent to act as directors of the company. May I have a motion in respect to the election of the nominees as directors?

This is Mark Chalmers. I move that the individuals I have nominated be elected as directors of the company to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed.

This is David Frydenlund. I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion on this motion?

This is Curtis Moore. There are no questions at this time.

Thank you. As there are no questions, I now call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. All persons eligible to vote may enter their votes by clicking on proxy voting site link on the left side of your screen at this time. You may cast or change your vote until the poll for all proposals is closed just prior to the termination of the meeting. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors. As described in our proxy statement, management is proposing that KPMG LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm located in Denver, Colorado, be reappointed as auditors of the company. I now ask someone to make a motion.

This is Mark Chalmers. I move that KPMG LLP of Denver, Colorado, an independent registered public accounting firm, be appointed as auditors of the company until the next annual meeting of the company at such remuneration as shall be fixed by the Board of Directors.

This is David Frydenlund. I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion on this motion?

This is Curtis Moore. There are no questions at this time.

As there are no questions, I now call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. All persons eligible to vote may enter their votes by clicking on proxy voting site link on the left side of your screen at this time. If you have not yet cast your vote on any of the matters to be voted on at this meeting, you must now cast your votes. I will pause for about 30 seconds to allow time for all votes to be cast. [Voting]

Based on the preliminary scrutineer's report, proxies were received from a sufficient number of shares relative to the total number of votes cast at the meeting such that I declare the following. With respect to the election of directors, I declare the motion carried and confirm that all of the nominees have been elected as directors of the company to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of the shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed. Each of the nominees for director received more votes for than the number of votes withheld. And accordingly, each of the directors has been duly elected, and none of the directors is required to tender his or her resignation under the majority voting policy. With respect to the appointment of KPMG LLP of Denver, Colorado, an independent registered public accounting firm as auditors of the company until the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders at such time as shall be fixed by the Board of Directors. I declare the motion carried. I hereby direct that a copy of the scrutineers' final voting results be annexed to the minutes of the meeting. That a report on voting results be filed on SEDAR in accordance with Section 11.3 of National Instrument 51-102 continuous disclosure obligations. And that the Form 8-K in accordance with Item 5.07 be filed on EDGAR pursuant to the filing requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. That concludes the scheduled business of this meeting. Is there any other business that anyone entitled to vote at this meeting wishes to bring to the attention of the meeting?

This is Curtis Moore. There is no further business to be brought before the meeting.

As there is no business -- no further business to declare, I declare the meeting terminated. The formal part of the annual meeting of shareholders is now adjourned. I invite you to stay online for a presentation on the company's activities to be given by Mark Chalmers, President and Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome everybody to our AGM. And at the same time, it is always my pleasure to provide an update on the remarkable progress that our company is making on a number of fronts. Next slide. I may be making some forward-looking statements. Those are included at the back of this presentation. Next slide. The kind of the key strategy for Energy Fuels is different than any other company that you might be invested in because energy fuels offer so much diversity when it comes to focus on reducing carbon emissions and electrification. Everything that we're doing has 1 common denominator. Uranium and radio nuclei. So even though this slide here gets a little busy, they all fit together perfectly because of our ability to recover uranium and the radio nucleides and these other elements that are absolutely essential for modern civilization going forward. Uranium has always been and will continue to be our core business. And I'm happy to report that as of yesterday, we have signed a total of 3 long-term contracts going from 2023 to 2030 for up to 4.2 million pounds. So the future on uranium front for our company is very bright. Rare earth elements, and I'll talk about this in a fair amount of detail in this presentation is so exciting for us. And many of you will know that we recently got binding agreements on a very large land position in Brazil, which I think will be company changing over time. Vanadium. Vanadium is not nearly as prominent as uranium and rare earths, but we have the only vanadium plant in the United States that can process conventional vanadium ores. Medical isotopes, if we're processing uranium and rare earth and vanadium, we are going to have medical isotopes floating around in our process solution that also potentially can be recovered and monetized to watch this space. And recycling, we have been recycling uranium and vanadium for decades, and that is the reason the White Mesa Mill is still here today. And with regard to our financial strength and 0 debt, we have a very, very strong balance sheet to execute all our plans going forward. Next slide. Now everyone in the world, particularly in the developed world, needs to be focused on ESG. It is absolutely front and center and you cannot just give lip service to ESG. In September, some of you -- many of you will know that we established the San Juan County Clean Energy Foundation as the biggest step we've ever made as a company in this regard. It's focused on the region around the White Mesa Mill, one of the poorest counties in Utah and one of the poorest counties in United States, and it's focused on local education, wellness, for both the communities and the indigenous populations as well. We made a $1 million cash contribution. And we also have committed to 1% of the annual revenues of the mill going forward. So we're very excited about this. And we just recently made a donation to buy 2 buses for the American Indian services for an initiative there. And I think I'll talk about that more a little bit later. We also published our first sustainability report back in December of 2020, and it is so powerful when you look at what we can do when it comes to producing uranium, the rare earth, the isotopes. And at the same time, reducing carbon emissions and improving electrification responsibly. So if you haven't looked at that before, feel free to do that. It's on our website. Next slide. This slide, again, many of you have seen this before, but we have a very large footprint from Wyoming all the way down to Texas and focus around the Four Corners region. We have 3 fully permitted and operable sites, both the 2 ISR sites or the green stars and the Blue Star is the White Mesa Mill, and we have a number of deposits that surround these production sites that can feed those sites as the prices and market justify. And now, as I said, with contracts, it puts us in a really enviable position in my opinion, that we can start looking at these sites and advancing them into production in the near term. When you look at the United States, United States is the largest consumer of uranium in the entire world. And what's really shocking is how we've lost our ability to produce the nuclear products that we are so desperately in need for, particularly with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. So we are in an ideal position to advance this, particularly with the assets that we have and also with these long-term contracts to provide the foundation of our restart. Next slide. Well, again, just more information on White Mesa Mill. On the left, White Mesa is our flagship asset, where we can produce uranium, the vanadium and the rare earths and do the recycling. The ISR assets, both in Texas and Wyoming are also fundamental to the company and have the -- they're currently on standby the ability to respond as prices increase. And then the Pinyon Plain Mine in the lower left-hand corner which I actually built in 1988, which is the highest grade, underground conventional uranium project in the United States of America with a shaft sunk to where we are about 10 feet from the ore body. Next slide. This slide tells a very significant story. When you look at 15 years and you look at this slide, you can see 2 things. One, Cameco has produced about 50% of the uranium in the United States over the last 15 years. And they're in that kind of light, bluish gray, 25 million pounds. But second to that, in the dark blue is Energy Fuels at 15.6 million pounds. And if you combine the production from Cameco and Energy Fuels, 86% of the uranium produced in the United States over 15 years came from 2 companies. And I think that is absolutely one of the reasons that we've been able to secure these long-term contracts because our proven history to produce the way we do business. And so we know how to produce uranium. And a number of others have been producing small quantities but nothing in the order of Energy Fuels. If you combine number 3 and number 2 on that list, we still have produced 5x more than that. Next slide. Now where do we fit in with our peers. When you look at our peer group, we're right in the middle. But as I mentioned in the last slide, we have produced more uranium than just about everybody on that list. We have a strong cash position and working capital position. I want to point out we have 0 debt, and we also have U.S. produced uranium that we produce ourselves. Now a number of companies on that list have purchased uranium. Most of it has been Russian or Kaza origin and our products are U.S. origin. Now everyone on that list has a green tick for uranium production. But no one except for Energy Fuels has a green tick for rare earth, no one on that list has a green tick for vanadium production or medical isotopes or recycling. So there really is no peer group for energy fuels with others because we do so much more. Next slide. As many of you will know, we entered the rare earth space just a little over 2 years ago. And I have to say it was a bold move by the company. But I also want to say that we have a history of being aggressive, but not reckless. Rare earth and uranium go together absolutely perfectly and particularly with our permits in our facilities at White Mesa in Utah. The demand for rare earth magnet oxides is expected to increase up to fivefold over the next 8 years to 2030. So the demand is absolutely staggering. So energy fuels, we believe -- and this has been confirmed by our my close friend Constantine Karayannopoulos, could be the missing link in rare earth production, not just in the United States, but in the world. So we are currently more advanced in the United States when it comes to producing rare earth products, which we're making rapid pace on and going forward very quickly. And we started small-scale but commercial separation of some rare earth at the White Mesa Mill just a couple of months ago. And then you add on top of this, that energy fuels just last week, announced that we secured a major land position in Brazil, which I believe, again, is a very, very material cornerstone to our rare earth focus going forward. And lastly, we plan to be in a position to be commercially producing large quantities of both the lights and heavies in the next few years. Next slide. Our focus at White Mesa Mill is on monazite sands because we have the ability to recover the uranium from the monazite. Matter of fact, the contained uranium in the monazite that we secure currently from Chemours is about the same grade of the mines we have in the region that we would mine just for the uranium. Monazite sand is currently produced as a byproduct from the heavy mineral sand business globally. The project that we secured in Brazil is a heavy mineral sand deposit that contains monazite. It is mined around the world in U.S., Australia, Brazil, Africa and elsewhere. And the main target on that heavy mineral sands is zirconium, the titanium minerals with monazite as a byproduct. It is very high grade when it's upgraded with the heavy mineral sand process. And the feeds that we get from Chemours around 53% total rare earth oxides. So grade is king. So the other thing is, it has outstanding distributions of NdPr, which is the main value contained in the monazite sands is around 60% or 70%, but also the heavies. And the basket value of a ton of monazite sand when it's delivered to the White Mesa Mill when you're able to crack and leach it and separate into the oxides. Currently, at current prices, it's about $25,000 per ton. Now you compare it to basanite, and basanite is also a good source of rare earths. But it is much lower grade when it comes to NdPr, and it is almost absent of the heavies. And the basket value of a typical ton to be processed is around $10,000 a ton. So again, grade is king. Next slide. So again, picture of the White Mesa Mill. And again, because we have the permits, because we have the infrastructure, we believe, as I said earlier, as Constantine and our close relationship with Neo, the missing link in the U.S. rare earth supply chain. It is the only facility in North America currently licensed and capable of processing monazite ores to recover the rare earth. And as I said, the uranium, and we believe the thorium, the uranium and the thorium are typically problems for other companies but they are a value add for our company. Our plans are highly scalable. The mill has huge capacity at over 700,000 tons of uranium ore per year. And if we reach our ultimate goal of being one of the largest producers of rare earths in the world, it will only take up probably between 5% to 10% of the mill's capacity. Next slide. So the Bahia project that we announced last week, I was down in Brazil and I had the opportunity to get COVID while we were trying to get this signed up. But it actually turned out to be a blessing because I was in Brazil for 10 days with COVID, and I got the deal signed up a few hours before I was able to leave when I got my first negative test in about 1 week. So we still have a lot of work to do, but we believe that it has the potential. This project was very large to provide monazite to the White Mesa Mill for decades. We -- our current estimates show that it has the potential to produce between 30 -- or 3,000 to 10,000 tons of monazite concentrate per year which would be in the order of 1,500 to 5,000 tons of REO production per year as well, nearly 60 square miles. 17 concessions, we're looking at adding to that. It has -- it's very well defined. It has mineralization from the surface. There is around 3,300 historic drill holes. And we know it has very material quantities of the HMS and the monazite, but we have more work to do to better quantify that. So several of the concessions have exploration licenses and mining permits in place. So we think we can move this forward very quickly, subject to completion of our diligence. So watch this space, but we believe, as I said, when people have criticized this over the last couple of years, they say, Energy Fuels doesn't have a mine. Well, guess what? We now have a very substantial deposit, which we believe will become a major mine for feeding the White Mesa Mill and producing these heavy mineral sands that can be monetized by others, ultimately. Next slide. So again, many of you have seen this slide before. But we were able to bolt together a short-term plan very quickly for full integration to the United States and Europe, where we were able to secure monazite from Chemours out of Georgia. And as I said, in this Bahia acquisition is an example of securing other sources of monazite. So we've got Chemours, we've got Bahia, we have a relationship with Hyperion X in Tennessee to potentially supply and time, and we're talking to many others around the world. We are looking for world scale here, world scale. Now we have been producing the carbonate at the mill for almost coming up on like nearly a year. And we've been able to do this first smaller-scale separation of lanthanum using the existing infrastructure at the mill, and we have been shipping a very, very pure product, nearly 35% NdPr to Neo Performance Materials at their Silmet facility in Europe. But we're absolutely focused long term on a U.S.-centric supply chain with our strong relationship with Neo, which has been an excellent relationship. So we are looking at expanding the feed of monazite, being able to do the full supply chain in time, focusing on securing the material, the monazite doing the crack in the leach, separated into the heavies, light and heavy oxides and moving forward with metals and who knows ultimately perhaps to magnets. Now the White Mesa Mill, a lot of people talk about the complications of separating oxides using solvent extraction. Well, White Mesa Mill has a long history of dealing with solvent extraction. And that has served us so well with the rapid progress that we've been having over the last couple of years. Next slide. So this is a graphic that pretty much shows what I just talked about in words graphically. So you can see that existing line where we secure the material from Chemours. Now we have Bahia. We've got the Hyperion X or Hyperion out of Tinnessee. We can do the crack and leach in at the mill. We're currently shipping to Estonia with Neo, and then they have the ability to do the value adds through the end of the supply chain. But the U.S.-centric focus that we have where we're going to build the feed a monazite just similar to like the Chinese, but we're going to do it with our own methodology, which we think is going to be appealing for a number of companies that would rather deal with us than the Chinese in a developed country setting. So we plan to feed the monazite. We plan to increase the crack and leach. In our first phase, we're talking in the order of about 5,000 tons of REO, which is about 10,000 tons of monazite feed. So -- excuse me, my back up. My goal for Phase 1 is 20,000 tons of monazite feed for 10,000 tons of REO, excuse me. But we'll take it in steps. But to put that into context, that Lynas currently produces about 16,000 tons of REO. So Phase 1 of our plan is to try to get to be about 60% of Lynas with a view there could be a second phase and perhaps a third phase. So we move to separated oxides in this first phase, we have the ability to phase it up. And then we move to metals and alloys, we have an agreement with Nanoscale Powders for a patented technology to perhaps do that better than the traditional route and then you move on to magnets. Next slide. So this slide is quite interesting in the fact that many companies talk about, they've had huge success when they can fill [indiscernible] upper right -- left-hand -- right-hand corner, you see those beakers. When they can fill a beaker with rare earth products that declare victory. Well, we declare victory when we see trucks leaving the site at a commercial scale. So I think a lot of people get confused the difference between lab scale and commercial scale. Lots of things can be done at lab scale that cannot be pulled off commercially. So the 2 pictures at the bottom going inside the Kraken leach in the mill. And then on the right-hand side, the multi-stage separations that we're doing on a continuous basis at the White Mesa Mill and producing 99.8% peer, if I'm not mistaken, NdPr right now. Next slide. Just some more pictures of the mill and our great team at the mill. We have great people at White Mesa. And then the company as a whole but they've done some remarkable things. The lower left-hand slide, showing a picture myself and Logan Shumway and Constantine Karayannopoulos. And Constantine said, when he was in that picture just before we took the picture, he said, "Mark, Energy Fuels has done more in -- with $2 million of capital refurbishment than the Molycorp did at Mountain Pass with $2 billion." Next slide. So I mentioned the metal side of things, and we have this collaboration with Nanoscale Powders, where we're going to fund up to $10 million to advance this patented approach to metal-making technologies. Again, we believe it is more environmentally friendly than conventional route. And we're still just early on in that agreement, but we're very in that initiative, and we're very excited about it. Next slide. So why will Energy Fuels succeed when others have struggled or failed is, number one, we're focused on unlocking the value of monazite that others have not been able to do because of the radionuclides. We have the license, the permits to treat the monazite. It's a high-value product, as I said, it's mined around the world. It's low-cost byproduct. Now we have a mine that we're looking at developing hopefully, after we go through the due diligence period. It's straightforward to process. If you have the ability to handle the radionuclides. We believe it's going to be very low cost, both from an operating cost and a capital cost perspective because of the way we're approaching it. And as I said, world scale, low cost. So we can't be more excited. We're focused on solvent extraction, which we have a long history with. We're very comfortable with. And we're also in the state of Utah. Utah is a great place to do business. And it's a lot better and a lot more cost effective than dealing in places like Australia and California, and we have a very, very supportive regulatory environment that is really pro business in terms of responsible development and the types of things that we do And as I said, we just think we have a lot of things going for us that are very positive. Next slide. So where do we fit in with our peers in the rare earth areas. And again, we're kind of in the middle of the pack. But I want to emphasize a couple of things. When you look at the value of the monazite, it is great, it's king. And Iluka in Australia has announced that they're going to start advancing their plans to do separate oxides and heavy -- lights and heavies focused on monazite, but they are not going to monetize the uranium or the thorium. So we think that puts us at a distinct advantage as it is also working in United States. So we're trying to chase the Lynas' and the MPs in the world. So with the market cap of $1 billion we believe there's substantial upside as we can show we can get to those world material scales for the rare earth oxides and the other steps in the value chain. Next slide. Vanadium. And I'll just touch on this quickly. As I said, it's really third, fourth in our priorities when it comes to the company's strategy, but it's an important one. It is a critical element. And it is used for steel hardening, and it is also getting increased interest for vanadium flow batteries for renewable energy storage. We have almost 1.5 million pounds still in inventory. We have sold some vanadium this year, but we still have around $15 million of finished goods at the mill. And we're selectively selling when the prices accommodate what we -- when we can secure price that we want. And so they have prices that vanadium have increased since January 2021 by nearly 100%. So we are looking at potentially going and recovering additional vanadium from our tailings solution in the next year or 2. And we can do that quite efficiently, quite quickly and replenish some of the vanadium that we sell. Next slide. Medical isotopes. As I said, when you're processing uranium and you're processing the rare earth, you saw your [indiscernible] uranium or the thorium -- uranium, the thorium and radium. And so we're looking at ways with our relationship with RadTran on how to recover, particularly the radium and the thorium, and we're very excited about that, focused on emerging targeted alpha therapy cancer therapies. Basically focused on these short-lived alpha-emitting isotopes that are in short supply around the world. We are talking to probably half a dozen companies in this regard. The interest is really quite remarkable. So watch this space, it's still early days. But if we have the ability to monetize things that are a problem for others, why not? Next slide. Uranium recycling, as I said, it's the only reason the mail has stood the test of time, and we have recycled over 6 million pounds of uranium which would be the equivalent of a cold train from L.A. to New York and almost back to L.A., reducing the carbon emissions that would have been emitted from that coal. But we also recovered a material amount of vanadium when we did the tailings pond recycling program back in 2019. So it is an important part of our business plan, and it is very important, particularly in periods of low metal prices. Next slide. Just our financial strength. Last quarter, $135 million of cash securities or inventory. That's actually quite conservative because those inventories are valued at the prices in that table on the upper right-hand corner, uranium at $23.79 and vanadium at $5.36. And when current prices around $50 for uranium and vanadium at $10.75. You can probably add about $20 million at current metal prices to that. And it also doesn't include the value of the shares with our significant shareholding in CUR. Next slide. So this is my last and final slide. As I said, there is no peer group to Energy Fuels. You typically invest in a uranium only focused company or a rare earth focused company or even a medical isotope focused company or vanadium. But uranium, very bright. I mentioned the contract. Very excited about that. I hope to be restarting uranium production at 1 or 2 of our sites hopefully this year. And I think it will be this year. The rare earth look for good news flow on rare earth securing more monazite, advancing our ability to do the separations, metals and alloys, I want to chase those other companies that have market caps of $5 billion or $6 billion. Vanadium, we'll probably go back and produce some vanadium here when the timing is right. Watch these medical isotopes, it's very exciting recycling and our strong financial strength to carry out all our plans over the next year or 2. We are in a great position everybody. And again, thank you for your interest in Energy Fuels. And as I said, I could not be more excited about this opportunity and for our shareholders. Thank you. Any questions. Feel free to ask any questions, we'll answer.

This is Curtis Moore. There are no further questions at this time.

Well, you've still got a chance to ask a question. I don't think I answered all of them, but we'll give you another shot here. Well, if there's no questions, I'd like to again thank everybody for their interest in Energy Fuels. Thank you for our shareholders. I know it's been quite a volatile period for the shares of energy fuels and lots of companies. So we haven't been immune to that, but we're in a very outstanding position with our balance sheet, the assets, the team we have in our plans going forward. So watch for some really material news flow as we advance our objectives, as I said, aggressive, but not recklessly. So that concludes our 2020 Annual Meeting of the shareholders and look forward to talking to you next year. But also in the meantime, we'll be making announcements and I do a number of videos and presentations at various conferences through the course of the year. So thank you very much, and have a great day.