Prices strengthen and yes, we might make a purchase at a slightly higher price, but then don’t forget we have a portfolio that reference market prices and that improves and more importantly the long-term contracting that we’re actively negotiating is now negotiating higher price measures. So the area under those later two curves is always bigger than the area under the curve of purchasing a bit of material on the front-end. And that’s just the way this market behaves and we didn’t design it this way but we always intend to capture full cycle value with the way it’s structured. So don’t think about it as spot sales to traders or spot sales into the churn, they are very much end user sales but we just might have a customer with a slightly nearer demand.
Richard Hatch: Okay, so yes, I wasn’t inferring it was into the spot market but he’s actually into – so effectively that 102 to 117 increase is really to feed your utility customers just because they’re wanting a bit more material in the near term.
Grant Isaac: Yes. Great way to think about it
Richard Hatch: Cool. Thank you for that.
Tim Gitzel: Thanks, Richard.
Operator: Our next question comes from Kip Keen of S&P Global. Please go ahead.
Kip Keen: Hi guys, thanks for taking my question and condolences for your loss of Ian Bruce.
Tim Gitzel: Thank you.
Kip Keen: Yes. I wondered if you might talk a little bit about your cash cost expectations. I think they were 47% higher in the quarter over the same period a year ago, 34% for the year-to-date higher than 2022. Do you think those, will the cash costs moderate in Q4 and into 2024 or are these sort of levels where things will stay, how are you thinking about it?
Tim Gitzel: Grant?
Grant Isaac: Yes. If – I’ve said a couple of times on the call, but maybe I’ll just reinforce it. We are still in transition. We’ve seen these markets before. We are never the company that tries to front run demand with supply. It always makes sense to let demand strengthen ahead of us making supply decisions. The consequence of that strategy, though, is that we’re still in supply discipline. We’re still transitioning to those Tier 1 cost structures, which is great news by the way. It means that the financial performance of the uranium segment is still in front of us as opposed to behind us. So when you’re thinking about kind of a longer term trend, I’d encourage you not to look at any one particular quarter, especially a quarter where we’ve had an outage at Cigar Lake for a month, for example.
And what I’d encourage you to do is turn to our AIF, our annual information form. So on an annual basis, we are required to update the life of mine operating costs of our technical reports, of our material properties. And what you’ll see in our most recent one is that, you know, McArthur is at just over $16 Canadian per pound, Cigar Lake just over $18 Canadian per pound and Inkai is below $8 Canadian per pound. So if you’re trying to kind of get a sense of where that longer term reversion is to, I would stay away from the quarterly numbers, which can be distorted by production outages or maintenance shutdowns. And I would just refer back to that AIF. It’s a much better marker for you, Kip.
Kip Keen: Okay. Yes, thanks a lot.
Tim Gitzel: Thanks, Kip, for your question.
Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tim Gitzel for any closing remarks.
Tim Gitzel: Well, thank you very much, operator, and thank you to everybody who joined us today on the call. As always, we appreciate your interest and your support. There’s a number of notable differences in the market’s evolution and prospectivity compared to past cycles. And I can tell you at Cameco, we’re certainly excited to see the positive momentum that’s building for nuclear energy. One thing that will remain consistent is our vision of energizing a cleaner world, which keeps us focused on delivering long-term value in a market where demand for safe, secure, reliable, and affordable clean nuclear energy is growing. We will continue to do what we said we would do and execute on our strategy in a manner we believe will make our business sustainable over the long term. So with that, thanks everybody and thank you for your kind wishes with respect to Mr. Bruce. Please stay safe and healthy. Thank you.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
