Paladin Canada Inc. (PDN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Paladin Energy Limited Investor Update. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ian Purdy, Chief Executive. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for your time today. With me today is Anna Sudlow, our Chief Financial Officer; and we're very pleased to announce that we've received clearance under the Investment Canada Act for our acquisition of the Fission Uranium Corp. This is our last substantial hurdle and from here, we will move to closing and listing on the TSX through a mechanical process, which we expect will be completed in several weeks. This draws to a close the process by which we went through the substance of the acquisition. We announced it back in June and whilst it has taken a little bit longer than we were hoping for, we're pleased to have received clearance within the prescribed time frame of the Canadian government. We also notes that we've previously achieved successful shareholder approval. The scheme has been ratified by the courts. So now we really are just moving through the mechanical part of the process. I'd just like to take a minute to say thank you to the whole Paladin team, who have put in a massive amount of work over the last 6 months to get the deal completed. And I'd just like to acknowledge Alex Rybak, our Chief Commercial Officer, who initiated this process almost 3 years ago when we started planning for this transaction, and Alex has led the transaction from start to finish. We're also pleased in our announcement to give a summary of undertakings, which we've agreed with the appropriate Canadian ministers, which support us in our acquisition. I note that the Canadian government had a very thorough and comprehensive review process. As you'd expect, governments are very cautious in particular about who controls and owns their critical minerals with uranium being particularly sensitive. And we're very pleased to have received final clearance, and we note the thoroughness and the professionalism of the Canadian government in executing their due diligence on us. And we're also very pleased to be in a position to work with the government going forward as we bring the development of PLS through the commercial production. I'm going to leave it there and move straight into Q&A. So please if I can hand over to any questions on the call.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Cameron Taylor from Bank of America.

Congratulations on the announcement. I guess the first question here is, I know that you're looking for completion due early January. Is there any risk at all remaining outside of the customary closing conditions, things being floated around. Just wondering if there's any other risks to that being derailed?

Thanks, Cameron, for the question. There is no risk. It's purely administrative from here and out and all approvals and all preconditions have been cleared.

Fantastic. And I guess another one would be around CGN mining. So they obviously had a vote against the acquisition, there's reports out there that they had an agreement to purchase 20% of Fission's annual production of uranium for the life of mine. How this relationship between Paladin and CGN at the moment? And is those sorts of offtakes still in negotiations? Or you look to complete the deal before you further progress discussions with CGN?

Yes, Cameron. Firstly, there isn't a relationship between CGN and Paladin at this stage. CGN have a relationship with Fission. So pre our acquisition, CGN had an 11% equity ownership in Fission, a director on the Fission Board and the life of mine offtake with PLS. As a result of the acquisition, CGN's influence over Fission will be greatly reduced. Their equity interest will be diluted down to approximately 2% of Paladin, their governance rights have been extinguished. Their board seat eliminated, and their life-of-mine offtake agreement will be truncated to 3 years. So CGN will be a customer of PLS when it is in production, but only for 3 years.

Right. So I mean, you'd probably prefer a life of mine contract, I guess, similar to what you have with Langer Heinrich. Would that be a preference for Paladin or is 3 years more desirable for you?

We're very comfortable having CGN as a customer for 3 years. We're also very excited by the opportunity to be able to build a contract book ahead of commitment to restart PLS. We're seeing great demand through our Langer Heinrich operation, not only in the U.S. and North America, but also across Europe and other parts of Asia. So we're very comfortable with CGN as the initial customer, but we're also extremely positive that we'll have plenty of support across those other jurisdictions to support a project like PLS in the future.

Yes, fantastic. And I guess just a last one. I note that the Fission we're looking to get sort of a provincial review decision from EIS sort of Q4 2024. Do you have any sort of update on EIS? Or do you leave that to Fission to announce and wait until you've completed before, you can comment on that?

Yes, Cameron, our focus at the moment is completing. We're very excited to be able to get our hands on the project and get started. So we're looking forward to working with the Fission team to drive this asset forward. It's a great project, as you know. But at this stage, our focus is just on completion in our TSX listing. And then I think we could say after that, we'll get under the hood, and we'll get going. So it's an exciting time for us.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Dim Ariyasinghe from UBS.

Congrats. Sorry, I actually just joined the call. Also just apologies if this has already been asked. Maybe can you refresh us on the sort of approvals now that you need at mine or like that Fission needs to get the mine permitted and what that looks like, please?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Yes, Fission has got a program of approvals, which I've laid out pretty clearly. They're looking for their, I'd call it, their primary environmental approval is the next major milestone. It's a provincial government approval within Saskatchewan, and that's the one they're currently working on. Once that is achieved, there's been a series of permits required under the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for construction and operations, which they've got a program over the next several years. So the key one that we're looking to at the moment is the provincial environmental approval.

Yes. And does that change likelihood foreseeing that, has that changed at all with how NexGen has been going with their project or those completely separate? I mean, I guess, is there any [indiscernible], I guess?

No. Completely separate projects and completely separate programs. I believe NexGen is looking federal approval, our program is at a provincial level, but no, they're completely separate.

Yes. Yes. I might sneak one last one in there and maybe a bit cheeky because you've got Fission. Can you tell us anything -- any purview on how things are going at Langer Heinrich, any update on NamWater, anything you can give us ahead of the quarterly, please? If not, that's fine.

Yes. Look, happy to give you a quick update. We'll be hosting an investor call on or about the 22nd of January to give everyone a full debrief of our quarterly results; and Paul Hemburrow, our Chief Operating Officer, will be on that call. So we'll certainly be going into a lot of detail about the progress we're making at Langer Heinrich. As you would have seen announced, we did complete our shutdown successfully on time, on budget, which was good. We're very pleased with the results of the shutdown and all the works were completed safely. We managed to increase our water reserves on site. So we're able to utilize our water infrastructure. And I must say we're pleased with the early results in December. We've seen some good results. I won't give any particular numbers or comments because it really is more prudent to wait for a period of time and give you a more meaningful trend. But the operation is going well. I was over there week before last with Paul, and we're very pleased with the progress we're making. I'll remind everyone that the goal is to have full production levels by the end of next calendar year. So it's still early days. But everything is tracking along quite nicely, and we're hopeful of a really nice finish to the year. And why that's important to us, it gives us the platform to really take a step forward in the second half of the year. So we look forward to giving everyone a full update on or about the 22nd of January. I just -- I've had one question come in via my e-mail, which I'll ask Anna to share. People have asked what does the acquisition mean to our liquidity cash position? Anna [indiscernible] your thoughts on that?

Yes. Thanks, Ian. Look, at the end of the quarter, Fission had, I think, CAD 44 million and quite a lot of funds on investment, about $90 million. So our cash position at the end of same quarter was USD 55 million. So at the end of December we'll be in a very, very strong liquidity position. We've got a number of customer [ sites ] coming in during this quarter. So between our own cash position and the consolidated Fission position we'll be in a very robust position.

Thanks Anna. Look, that's all the questions we've got this morning. I think the announcement gives us a great catalyst to go into next year with some real momentum. We're really pleased with where we've got to, but we recognize that the real work is just starting, and we can't wait to get into it. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for your support. I wish everyone a good holiday right, if you're having it right, and we look forward to building momentum and giving you some really good news early next year. Thank you again for your time.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.