Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Gitzel: Yes. Thanks for that, Lawson. I’m going to pass it over to Sean Quinn, who is all over that question. So John.

Sean Quinn: Sure. Thanks, Lawson. I’ll start with just a general overview of the regulatory approval process. To date, we haven’t seen any showstoppers. We’re working on our merger control, cost competition law approvals and various nuclear regulatory type control approval. And just for investment approvals, they all take time, of course, but we haven’t seen any showstoppers, and we still think we’re on track for the second half of this year. In terms of China itself, we have submitted what’s called a simplified application. Don’t have any feedback yet, but we are quite confident at this point that we’ll be fine in China, but we don’t have any feedback from the actual regulatory authorities there.

Tim Gitzel: Probably fair to say, Sean, that with respect to China, nothing will really have changed from a competitive supply point of view. Recall, Lawson, that what the Chinese have always wanted from Cameco is yellow cake. They’re interested in doing all the fuel processing themselves, and that’s what they would continue to get from Cameco. From Westinghouse, obviously, there were some initial reactor builds, but now China has its own version of the AP1000, which they build. And so Westinghouse’s Wave two business is really around reactor services and some fabrication. So really, there’s no change from a supply point of view. Cameco will be doing what it did before. Westinghouse will be doing what it did before. And there isn’t any overlap. So we feel pretty confident about our position there.

Lawson Winder: Got it. Thank you very much.

Tim Gitzel: Thanks, Lawson.

Operator: Our next question comes from Alex MacPherson of allSaskatchewan. Please go ahead.

Alex MacPherson: Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking for taking my question.

Tim Gitzel: Alex, we saw your article already in allSaskatchewan this morning, well done. Thank you.

Alex MacPherson: Thank you. I wanted to ask about the plans to increase the ramp-up at McArthur and sort of what that means on the ground in Saskatchewan in terms of workforce and capital both to get to 18 million pounds and then potentially to the full 25?

Tim Gitzel: Well, we’re in good shape now. We started our ramp up over a year ago now. And so we’re still working on a few of the kinks at the mill. But at the mine, they’re in good shape. I think they’ve got something like 120 million or 122 million pounds behind freeze curtain, which is important for us for our mining. We’ve – we’ve ramped up the team there. We’ve hired hundreds of people, as you know, over the last year. So it’s really a question of first getting to 15 and McArthur and Key and then into ’18 and 2024. And as Grant said earlier, if we see the business, if we see the contracts come, then we’ll think about dialing it up a little further. And as I said earlier, there’s a bit of capital that has to go in not a whole lot. And maybe a few more people here and there. But we’re – it’s incremental, if you like, Alex. It’s not a big push for us.

Alex MacPherson: Great. Thank you very much.

Tim Gitzel: Yes. Nice to talk to you.