NexGen Energy Ltd. (NXE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Ludy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NexGen Energy Limited Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. [Operator Instructions] Mr. McFadden, you may begin your conference.

Thank you very much. The meeting will now come to order. Good afternoon. My name is Christopher McFadden, I am a Director and Chairman of the Board of NextGen Energy. I'm pleased to welcome you to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of NexGen Energy. I will act as Chair of this meeting and I shall ask Ryan Podrasky, CFO of NextGen Energy, to act as the Secretary of this meeting. With the consent of this meeting, I appoint Mita Garcia of Computershare Investor Services as scrutineer of this meeting. The Secretary has tabled for inspection by any shareholder or proxy holder a declaration that the notice calling this Annual General and Special Meeting was mailed to shareholders in accordance with applicable law. I will dispense with calling for a reading of the notice of meeting and direct that a copy of the declaration be kept by the secretary with the records of the meeting. The scrutineer has submitted a report on attendance to the Secretary. The Secretary will now read the scrutineer's report.

Thanks, Chris. The scrutineer's report reads as follows: there's 148 shareholders present in person or by proxy representing approximately 459 million shares. The total issued and outstanding shares as of the record date is 661,909,421. The percentage of outstanding shares represented at the meeting is 69.34%.

Thank you. I adopt the scrutineer's report and declare subject to the special rights and restrictions attached to the shares of any class or series of shares. The quorum for the transaction of business at a meeting of shareholders is 2 persons who are or represent by proxy shareholders holding in aggregate at least 5% of the issued shares entitled to be voted at the meeting. Proper notice having been given and a quorum present, I declare this meeting to be properly constituted for the transaction of business. As a matter of procedure, I ask that shareholders present in person and wishing to speak at the meeting please identify themselves by name and indicate that they are a registered shareholder, or if a proxy holder identify themselves and the name of the registered shareholder they represent by proxy. The last annual general and special meeting of NextGen Energy Limited was held on June 17, 2025. The Secretary has the minutes of the last meeting of shareholders of the corporation, which can be made available upon request and confirm that the minutes taken to be verified as correct. I will dispense with the reading of the minutes of such meeting. Voting today will be by a show of hands unless either a ballot is requested or more than 5% of the votes eligible to be cast by proxies are voted against the resolution. Closing for the elect directors will proceed by way of ballot. The corporation's articles under Section 11.15 provide that as Chairman, I may propose a motion and that no motions need to be seconded. In the interest of expediting the business of the meeting, I will proceed on that basis. The financial statements of the corporation for the year ended December 31, 2025, and the report of the auditors were delivered to the shareholders prior to this meeting and are available on SEDAR+ and EDGAR, and I hereby place them before the meeting. Now in order to determine the number of seats on the Board of Directors, I ask the Secretary to read the proposed motion.

Be it resolved that the number of seats on the Board of Directors of the corporation be set at 9.

Is there any discussion on this motion? All those in favor of this motion, please signify by raising your right hand? [Voting]

Against? [Voting]

I declare this motion duly carried. We will proceed with the election of directors. The number of directors for the corporation has been set and it is anticipated that 9 directors will be elected. In accordance with the corporation's advanced notice policy contained in Section 26.1 of the corporation's articles, June 1, 2026, was the deadline for nominations for directors for this meeting. No nominations have been received by the corporation prior to the deadline other than those submitted by management. Accordingly, no further nominations for directors for the ensuing year will be accepted. I now ask the Secretary to read the names of the persons nominated by management.

The names of the persons nominated for directors for the ensuing year are: Mr. Leigh Curyer; Mr. Christopher McFadden; Mr. Richard Patricio; Ms. Sharon Birkett, Mr. Warren Gilman, Ms. Sybil Veenman; Ms. Karri Howlett, Mr. Bradley Wall; and Mr. Ivan Mullani.

I declare the nominations closed and call for a motion to elect the directors. I now ask the Secretary to read the proposed motion.

The Management Information Circular contains a list and biographical profile of the 9 nominees recommended for election to serve as the directors of the corporation to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting or until their successors are duly elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and bylaws of the corporation.

Shareholders are entitled to vote in favor of or withheld from voting separately for each director nominee. As it is necessary to ensure that the number of shares voted in favor of or withheld from voting for each individual director is recorded, I direct that a poll will be taken. The scrutineers have distributed ballots at the beginning of the meeting, if you are a registered shareholder or a proxy holder and you do not have a ballot, would you please raise your hand. Please mark an X in the appropriate spaces on the ballots before turning them to the scrutineer. With respect to the motion to elect the director nominees, I am advised that a majority of the votes have been cast in favor of the election of each of the directors nominated. As a result, I declare that Leigh Curyer; Christopher McFadden; Richard Patricio; Sharon Birkett, Warren Gilman, Sybil Veenman; Karri Howlett, Bradley Wall; and Ivan Mullani be elected as Directors of the corporation to hold office into the close of business of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the corporation or until their successors are elected or appointed. The copy of the final scrutineers' report on this motion will be kept by the Secretary along with the recorded minutes of this meeting. We will now proceed with the appointment of auditors. I now ask the Secretary to read the proposed motion.

Be it resolved that PricewaterhouseCoopers be appointed as the auditors of the corporate at a fee to be fixed by the directors to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting of the corporation.

Is there any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please signify by raising your right hand? [Voting]

Against? [Voting]

I declare this motion duly carried. The last item of business is related to the continuation of the Shareholder Rights Plan. I now ask the Secretary to read the proposed motion.

Be it resolved that the continuation, amendment and the restatement of the corporation Shareholder Rights Plan with the full text of the resolution being set forth on Page 60 of the Management Information Circular.

The Board believes that the Rights Plan is in the best interest of the corporation and its shareholders. The Rights Plan is intended to ensure that all shareholders are treated fairly in connection with any takeover bid and to provide the Board with sufficient time to evaluate and respond to any proposal that may arise. The Rights Plan is not being proposed in response to or in anticipation of any specific transaction, and is not intended to prevent a takeover of the corporation. Rather, it is designed to protect shareholder interest by promoting the fair treatment of all shareholders. All those in favor, please signify by raising your right hand? [Voting]

Against? [Voting]

Accordingly, I declare that the resolution is carried, that the corporation's shareholder rights plan be amended and restated and we continued for a further term of 3 years. A copy of the resolution and the final scrutineers' report on this motion will be kept by the secretary along with the recorded minutes of this meeting. I now propose a motion concluding the formal portion of the meeting. Is there any discussion on this motion? All those in favor of this motion, please signify by raising your right hand. [Voting]

Against? [Voting]

I declare this resolution duly carried and the formal meeting is to be concluded. I'd now like to open the meeting to questions from shareholders. Please identify yourself by name and if you are a proxy holder, please indicate the shareholder you represent.

[ Susan Pierce ]. I'm a shareholder. Just curious as to what's the benefit are to NexGen to have sponsors?

Yes. The biggest one is on -- this is Travis McPherson, Chief Commercial Officer. They're really designed to support us in getting our approval, ultimately. So some people have said, post getting our approval like, how do you have such vote? Because in the second part of the hearing, I don't know if you had a chance to watch it, but it was public. And so you got to see the very long-standing support that we have from all of the indigenous stations in the local area, like they were -- it's unprecedented in the support that we've had from them in the trust built. That's not done with just words. That's something with action. And so like we use the [ Kunuks ] as an example. We take 20 kids every year. They come down to Vancouver, they get mentored by the whole organization. It's not really about hockey, it's about mentorship. So showing them food and beverage service, showing them hockey operations, showing them marketing, all that is a 2-day thing. That might seem like an innocuous simple thing, but for a lot of those kids they've never even left Northern Saskatchewan before. So that's just one example. And then the Kunuks go up into the wash into the community and run these various programs up there with a lot of Kunuks. You see the inspiration that it creates and it creates something that actually trends in just those 2 days or 3 days a year, where the kids that got to go on it, and they're chosen based on not just academic performance or kind of leadership qualities they show in their communities and how involved they are in being young leaders in the community. Those kids come back, explain what an amazing event it was and everything, the experience, then you get all these other kids wanting to get on the trip next year. So it creates this kind of flywheel effect really that happens. So yes, that's pretty much why we do a lot of those things. Just got some rough riders this year.

My name is [ Bob Pecan ]. I'm a retail shareholder. I'm just curious if the activities are happening in [indiscernible] schedule will be presented?

Yes. So it's under construction as we speak now.

Such as?

Well, like the camp just got commissioned. So we've got about 800 beds up there now, road upgrade, the airstrip will be completed in the next couple of weeks. And then there's a lot of civil and earthworks. So really everything preparing for the shafts to be sunk to commence sinking. And in terms of more details around the plan and schedule and all that, we have obviously disclosed that, but we're going to do in the next few weeks, put on an investor webinar and will go through it in a lot more detail what we're doing, how it's going to be done, who's going to be doing what, and you'll be able to meet a lot of the team because we've built the best team in the business. But not everyone got to see them all the time. We get to see them all the time but not everyone gets to seem them as because they're busy doing what they need to be doing. So yes.

Like the construction period as I said, well, approximately 48 months.

4 years ago.

When has day 1 started? It just started?

No. Yes, it started. Exactly.

One final question. Construction, when do you start the temporary freezing of the 2 shafts?

It's in about 12 months from now.

I know you have the equipment.

We have the equipment, yes.

But when do they start the actual process?

Yes. So basically, we have to start excavating all of the area near the shafts building the area where the temporary freeze plant will go and hooking it all up and then commencing the freezing. So there's a bit of work that needs to be done to do all of that. But you're exactly right. And it's true for all of our procurement, where we haven't waited to get permitted to basically say, okay, now we'll start buying equipment and signing contracts and everything because we're confident we're going to get approved. We just didn't know exactly when, obviously, but we knew we were approved. So the shafts -- sorry, the freeze plant is a classic example of that where we're we got way ahead of that. That's obviously a critical piece of equipment. We have to have that to start the shaft-sinking process. And so we just got off the critical path by buying it a lot earlier than we otherwise would have. It's about -- we freeze down to about 200 meters. It's about 100 meters of overburden that we need to get through, but then you get into the basin rock, and then you key into that. Yes.

Just one more.

Yes. [ John Birrenbach ]. The processing plant, do you plan to first have you guys going to put up the plant? I think the plant has not been transported elsewhere? Or is it going to be used [indiscernible]?

Yes. So our plan is to build our own processing facility on site. And yes, to be determined whether there's total agreements in the future or whatever, but we're designing and building our own processing plant for the Arrow deposits and potentially in the future.

Any more questions?

What progress are you making on financing?

Short answer, a lot of good progress. We've got $1 billion in the balance sheet. So we did that raise in October of last year to really -- part of it was to enable us to run a lot of these processes for the balance of funding through with the right level of patience and be able to do it the right way because there's a number of revenues, some of which are just where you're more of a price or like you go in the market and you raise money like you option the conditions that are in the market at a time, but there's only so much you can do and those can be acted very quickly. But a lot of the ones that we're working on are more strategic in nature where you're negotiating bilateral agreements with a counterparty that in a lot of cases, you need to have a lot of confidence on, you need to do your own new diligence, it's going to be a good partner. Are they going to deliver what they say they're going to do? Are they going to -- do they understand what the big picture is here and all that sort of stuff? So that's the kind of avenue that we're in now. But over the next 12 months, we will finalize the balance of funding because we have about 18 months' worth of all of the construction spending on the balance sheet today.

But since the approval of March 5th, there's really been nothing relating to Arrows which I think the market is waiting for?

Well, that's what this investor webinar will do. It's all on Arrow. It's all on the detailed plan around exactly...

When is the webinar?

It's going to be in the next couple of weeks, maybe some final tweaks to a lot of the animations and everything. But yes, it will be over the next couple of weeks, but there'll be an announcement on when the date of it will, soon. Yes.

Okay. Any more questions, anybody? Okay. Thank you, operator.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your attendance.

This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.