Westwater Resources, Inc.
Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 11 May 2009

[Operator:]

Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the first quarter 2009 financial results for Uranium Resources. (Operator Instructions). It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Deborah Pawlowski, IR for Uranium Resources. Thank you, you may begin.

[Deborah Pawlowski:]

Thanks, Jen and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your time today and your interest in Uranium Resources. On the call today is President and CEO, Dave Clark; Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Rick Van Horn; and Tom Ehrlich, the Chief Financial Officer. Dave is going to provide some comments regarding the company and today's release as well as the outlook, and Tom will then do a brief review of the financials. After that, we will open it up for Q&A. If you don't have the news release, it can be found on our website, which is uraniumresources.com. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during the formal presentation and the Q&A portion of this teleconference. Those statements apply to future events, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from where we are today. These factors are outlined in the news release as well as in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can find those in our website, where we regularly post information as well as the SEC's website, which is sec.gov. So please review our forward-looking statements in conjunction with these precautionary factors. With that, let me turn it over to Dave to begin the discussion. Dave?

[Dave Clark:]

Thanks, Debbie. Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you’re enjoying a nice spring day, it’s definitely one here in the east. On the March call, which was only a couple of months ago, I made the statement that I think that 2009 has the chance to be a very good year. Even though that was only a couple of months ago, there is now lot of positive developments, which at least for me, reinforces that confidence that indeed this can be a very good year. I really view this as an extension of that conversation. I’m not going to go back and revisit anything or very much of it. So what we discussed is basically our overall strategic plan, which has been for the last couple of years become a 10 million pound producer. We talked about the need to really focus on our Crownpoint uranium project, which is a NRC-licensed project to produce up to 3 million pounds per year and then we want to build our reserve base to 200 million pounds to 300 million pounds overall to [see through] that plant. It's also obviously a time of stressed economy and uranium market is under a lot of pressure. What I want to do over the next couple of minutes is really add clarity to that plan, talk about how we plan to increase that reserve base and how we plan to resolve the issues that really brings New Mexico into production. I will talk about that in three areas

[Tom Ehrlich:]

Thanks Dave. Our production in the first quarter of 2009 totaled 31,600 pounds. Since October of last year, our sole production source has been from our Kingsville Dome project. As we previously announced, we had shutdown our Rosita and our Vasquez sites. So our production costs for the quarter came in at $25.23 a pound, and these are made up of operating costs of just over $20 a pound and our DD&A cost of just over $5 a pound. Our DD&A costs are down dramatically from prior production year's as a result of the write-downs of uranium properties we saw in the third and fourth quarters of last year, taking those costs and running through the income statement last year, eliminated the base for which we use for a depletion base for our production. At the end of the first quarter, we had just over 40,000 pounds of uranium inventory, which was produced at an average cost of $22.64 a pound. We utilized inventory by making uranium sale at the end of April of about 36,600 pounds. The average price of the deliveries, again made at the end of April, were $48.85, resulting in revenues of approximately $1.8 million, which will be recorded in the second quarter of this year. Our sales revenues in the first quarter of '09 were $1.4 million. We sold 27,600 pounds, with an average sales price of $51.51 a pound. Looking at our costs of produced uranium sales for the quarter, the direct costs of uranium sold for Q1 '09 was $1.1 million or just under $40 a pound. The direct operating cost-to-sales were $31.50 a pound, and the depletion and depreciation cost-of-sales for the quarter came in at $8.38 a pound. Our royalties and commissions expense for the quarter was about a $140,000 or $5.03 a pound, representing about 9.75% of our sales for the quarter. Our cost-of-sales also included $182,000 of impairment provision related to the write-down of the carrying value of the company's uranium properties during the first quarter. Our corporate expenses, including general administrative costs were $1.5 million for the first quarter, representing a $1.3 million reduction from the same quarter last year. As, we've announced, we've implemented significant cost cutting measures that began in the fourth quarter of 2008, which have been realized in reducing our G&A costs this year when compared to last year. Moving on to our sources and uses of cash, our cash balance at the end of March was $10.1 million. During the quarter we used $1.6 million of cash in operations. Our uranium sale in January brought an operating cash in the beginning of the quarter. And for the balance of the quarter our operating activities include the building of inventory and more towards restoration and reclamation activities in our South Texas projects which consumed about a $0.5 worth of cash. Our first quarter of 2009 CapEx for uranium property, plant and equipment was significantly reduced from what it was last year. We spent about $200,000, down from the $4.8 million in the first quarter of 2008. The reduced level of capital costs incurred for uranium projects again corresponds with our decision in the fourth quarter of 2008 to defer future wellfield development at both our Kingsville and our Rosita projects. During the quarter we also increased our restricted cash by $43,000 to back the collateral for South Texas financial surety obligations and we also paid $42,000 in financing and capital leases during the quarter. Our operating cash, as I said, at the end of the quarter was $10.1 million. At the end of April 30, our operating cash was about $9.4 million. Since at the end of the quarter, we've again, continued with our production activities and we expect to do so provided that our production rates continue at or above our breakeven targets. As I noted earlier, our uranium sale at the end of April generated $1.8 million in receivable, which will be converted to cash in the second quarter. Upon the cessation of our production activities, our monthly expenditures are currently projected in the $500,000 range. We are continuing to review additional cost reductions, as well as revenue generating strategies, as David mentioned, in order to minimize our monthly net cash outflows. The only other thing is, during the month, we had mailed out to all of our shareholders the proxy statements for our Annual General Meeting, to be held on June 3. We encourage everybody to get their votes in, and call-in if there are any questions on those.

[Operator:]

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of [Charles Smith with SG Management].

[Charles Smith:]

I have a few questions that are related to the Tenth Circuit decision. Considering that the Supreme Court only takes about 1% of all cases that are applied for, for review from the lower court, is there a reason why you are not going to apply for the EPA permit right away?

[David Clark:]

As I said, we are going to proceed in the manner that we'll get that permit as quickly as we can, and that's certainly not out of the question. There is a consideration that if you apply for the permit, you may be standing in the court case, but we are evaluating, and again, the best manner to move forward, with a lot of consideration at the moment.

[Charles Smith:]

How expensive is it to apply for an EPA permit and what's the duration of time that the EPA generally takes in order to resolve these issues?

[David Clark:]

It is a one to two year process. We have actually filed; filled out the application and filed for Section 17 and we are pretty much in position to do that for Section 8 as well at Church Rock before the court ruled last time in 2007. This part of the process is not time consuming to file the permit application, the EPA will then go through to ask questions to verifying that everything in the application is quite correct, and then you enter public process which is where it gets more expensive.

[Charles Smith:]

So, basically you'll wait till the judicial process is done, the application to the Supreme Court and everything else and then at that point apply to the EPA?

[David Clark:]

No, I'm saying that at all. What I am saying is, we'll proceed in the manner that's as we think that will get us the UIC permit in a shorter period of time. So, I am not ruling out anything at this point in time. Again, part of what we are trying to do is, build a relationship with Navajo so to communicate with them. We have till told June 1, to make a decision on whether to apply for en banc on that. The initial comment was that the Supreme Court only takes 1%, that is correct, but they tend to take a higher percentage of Indian country issues. And this is a part of the reason for carrying an en banc, in the opinion itself, if you read the defense. The other Circuit Courts disagree with the Tenth Circuit ruling on this and in other cases and when you have a disagreement between Circuit Court, that's certainly an area where the Supreme Court gets involved.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of David Snow. Please proceed with your question.

[David Snow:]

Could you bring us up-to-date on what you are seeing for the outlook for the uranium price?

[David Clark:]

Again, I think we're in a bottoming process, David. Yes, that's been pronounced in the way we buy chemical and (inaudible) AS I think prices are moving higher, I think that's certainly a possibility. What we are facing in 2009, not just from liquidation and the fall of investor physical inventory. We've got the Lehman Brother panel out there as well now. But you had a time period where US utilities and foreign utilities were pretty much covered for 2009 and 2010. While we're moving through 2009, we see, as I said, a $40 increased producer interest in buying pounds. But I think you can certainly continue to move up from here. It is still a thin market. It wouldn’t take a lot of demand to drive it higher, but that's just the state. Let's say, it can do anything.

[David Snow:]

Okay. I guess you said that this decision affects only Section 8?

[David Clark:]

Again, Section 8 is land that we privately own. Is it a question of it being Indian country or not. If it is Indian country, then the US government EPA issues the permit. If it is not an Indian country then the State of the Mexico issues it. It's simply a jurisdictional dispute. Section 17, at Church Rock, was one where the company had to give up the fight on whether that was Indian country or not several years ago. So, that's deemed to be Indian country. So, that would come under the EPA with Section 8. If we win the case in the end, it would come under the state.

[David Snow:]

So, you are really trying to fast track a lot of the in-situ development. I guess the two years that you spent in doing the study, what percentage of our potential pounds out there are amenable at this point do you think to ISR?

[David Clark:]

Good question. When you get to the west side of the district, most of it is ISR. And certainly Church Rock, Crownpoint, one where we had license of 27 million pounds. We don't have the lease because of the BIA recognizes the Indian or the Navajo ban. So everything to the western side tends to be ISR amenable, everything to the eastern side, when you get over to (inaudible) tends to be conventional mining.

[David Snow:]

So, the western is about half of the total?

[David Clark:]

I have to get a breakdown on that. West Largo, which is west of Roca Honda, appears to be ISR amenable, and certainly anything you can conventional mine. So, half is probably a good number or more.

[David Snow:]

Okay. So, you think that you can bring the Indians onboard with this ISR technology, I guess is what I am hearing you say and jointly pursue that as a way to move the logjam forward?

[David Clark:]

We're not saying we can conventional mine as well and again there is no regulation when conventional mining was mostly done in the 50s and 60s and even the early 70s. EPA wasn't formed till 1971, but it's an education process. Uranium mining in the future is a lot different than it was in the past. Certainly, when you look at the environmental footprint and effect of ISR mining, you don't end up with tailings piles and part of that is a concern once you bring it to the surface and its there then you have to safeguard it for period of time. There are issues with old conventional tailings as well, but it is all about safety and demonstrating the Navajo's future mining can be done safely be it ISR, be it conventional mining. We have the NRC license for ISR, so that's why we are pursuing a (inaudible) project, as well as Churchrock.

[Deborah Pawlowski:]

Operator let's go on to the Paul Stouse.

[Operator:]

We've Paul Stouse from Rice Voelker.

[Paul Stouse:]

I just had one quick question on the work that you guys are doing at the Kenedy Ranch. I think you said some of it, but I think, you said, that you guys are testing some wells there to see if there is sufficient uranium there. I want to know, how long that would take to test those wells and who's paying for that testing. Is that something you guys are doing for your own account or is that sort of contract work?

[Dave Clark:]

What we proposed at the Kenedy Ranch, again as I said in the last call, if you had uranium in your ground water, you want to know it. So they have never done that survey. Is it safe or is it not? If it certainly has a lot of uranium in it, and its economic (inaudible) then they need to know about it. What we proposed at the Kenedy Ranch was we'll go in there, we'll pay for the survey. So basically what you are doing is you are testing for uranium, the best indicator of uranium ore is radon, so you test the radon, which has the halfway between (inaudible), so the results are pretty quickly known as far as how you are doing this. Again, it's a very inexpensive way to get a survey of that Ranch, to see if there is uranium close to the wells. It hasn't been done before. So, that's the first way that you would do exploration, so it's very cost effective versus drilling.

[Operator:]

[Lynn Hedagart], your line is now live.

[Lynn Hedagart:]

Yes. I'd like to know if you have any idea how much inventory is left in the Lehman Holdings.

[David Clark:]

I probably know as much as you do. The public statement was its 500,000 pound hold for market recovery. And I have noticed in the past, when things like that are out there that if the target people know about it, if the market is weak, it can overhang the market, but it certainly a size that can be swept off of the market just like Iraq material was swept off a year ago by Cameco, so it won't overhang.

[Lynn Hedagart:]

How do we know when it's sold?

[David Clark:]

They are in bankruptcy, so it’s a question of the court and getting court permissions to sell the assets.

[Operator:]

(Operator instructions) It appears there are no further questions at this time.

[David Clark:]

Okay. Thank you everybody for taking the time out today. I hope that you have a great understanding of what our strategic plan is, which is, how we plan to increase our reserve base to 200 million, 300 million pounds and how intend to resolve the problems. Hopefully, it gives you a little bit better view of the big picture for developments as they come as we move through the year. Again, thank you very much and have a good one. Thanks.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.