Energy Fuels Inc

AMEX:UUUU

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Kelsey, and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Energy Fuels Q3 2021 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you so much. And Mr. Chalmers, you may begin your conference.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Thank you, Kelsey, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining the Energy Fuels Q3 2021 Conference Call and Webcast today. We're always excited to discuss our achievements and -- Q3 achievements and the substantial achievements after the conclusion of the quarter. Those of you that cannot join the call today, we will have replays of this presentation available for 2 weeks on our website starting today or tomorrow. Each quarter, I say this, we are making extraordinary progress on many fronts, and this quarter is certainly no exception. Energy Fuels has and continues to emerge as the clear leader in the U.S. critical mineral production space.

Again, I realize some of you are invested in Energy Fuels for different reasons but an investment in Energy Fuels effectively provides a platform for the reduction of carbon emissions as well as advances in electrification and technology. I don't know of any other investment that can deliver this type of coverage, particularly with increasing uranium, vanadium and rare earth demand and prices as well as our emerging medical isotope sector.

We are well recognized for our long and successful history as the largest current U.S. producer of uranium with more past, current capacity, facilities, resources and experience than any other U.S.-focused uranium producer. Recently, I was in London at the Roskill Rare Earth Conference. And it was very apparent that the rare earth world is taking notice of our company's progress.

I have to say with a certain amount of envy in my opinion with our monazite-focused plants. And as I've said many times, we are looking to make a big splash in the rare earth sector as well as uranium sectors, both here in the U.S. and in the world. We continue to build on our global relationships with monazite producers, technical support groups and potential end users and the interest from these groups is staggering as well as the interest in our building emerging medical isotope initiatives.

And I have to say, we are absolutely going to develop full integration in the U.S., assuming we can secure adequate sources of monazite at White Mesa with low CapEx and low OpEx, responsibly sourced rare earth products at some of the lowest costs out there in the world, we believe. Our substantial uranium, vanadium and now we're starting to have some rare earth inventories that we produce, and I always say 'we produce' because a lot of people purchase their inventories, continue to increase in value. And at the moment, our inventories are about $18 million higher than book value, and that's an increase of about $4 million from last quarter for total, at current prices, about $47 million. And people are starting to take more -- pay more attention to our recycling and our industry-leading programs on that front.

All this taken together means that Energy Fuels is one of the best ESG stories out there. Before I begin, you will be controlling the slides in today's presentation from your own device. I will try to remember to tell you when to advance the slides. There will be questions at the end of the presentation or we'll have time for questions at the end of the presentation, and I will be supported by Dave Frydenlund, our CFO and General Counsel; Sarai Luksch, our Controller; and Curtis Moore, our VP, Marketing and Corporate Development.

So let's jump in. Next slide. This first slide shows the picture of the White Mesa Mill. And many of you have seen this before, but this is the hub of our critical minerals production. And again, we're very excited about the role that it can play in a number of the areas that I've mentioned, obviously, uranium, Rare Earth vanadium, emerging medical isotopes and recycling. Next slide, and I'm assuming you're on the forward-looking statement slide. There may be some forward-looking statements that are included at the back of the presentation.

Next slide. This is the Energy Fuel sort of the summary of the company's business plan. As I've said many, many times, we're first and foremost a uranium producer, and that is our core business, and it's not going to change. The rare earth elements are emerging very quickly, and we're currently producing carbonate at the White Mesa Mill. Vanadium is also getting increasing attention. We have the only conventional vanadium plant in the U.S. The medical isotopes is new in this quarter, and I'll talk more about that in a minute, but it is basically focusing on the recovery of medical isotopes for emerging cancer therapies, and we're very excited about that.

And also, as I've mentioned, the recycling, we have a long history of doing recycling at White Mesa. That is the key reason the White Mesa Mill still exists today. And our financial strength and 0 debt and our financial strength continues to increase and build with substantial cash and inventory balances that are increasing with increasing prices of the inventories held.

Next slide. over the course of the last year, certainly, the focus on ESG and environmental and social responsibility continues to increase. We're very excited about our first sustainability report we released in December of 2020. Very exciting in the power of our company in reducing carbon emissions and helping with electrification is staggering.

Also recently, we announced the creation of the San Juan County Clean Energy Foundation. We're very excited about that, where we are working with the San Juan County region where the White Mesa Mill is providing funds for local education, health, wellness, environmental and tribal and indigenous initiatives. We initially deposited $1 million into an account, and we also are committing to fund 1% of our annual revenues from the White Mesa Mill. So this is a very substantial initiative for us in the region, and we're really looking forward to doing a lot of good in a very poor region, one of the poorest counties in all of Utah and one of the poorest in the entire United States.

Next slide. Now this slide, you've seen many times, it shows our footprint from Wyoming all the way down to Texas. The White Mesa Mill is the blue star in the middle in the Four Corners region, and then the green stars in Wyoming is the Nichols Ranch ISR project, which is on standby and the Alta Mesa ISR project also on standby in South Texas. Most of you are aware of this, but some of you may not be, but the U.S. gets 20% of its electric power from nuclear power, and that's 55% of the carbon-free electricity from nuclear. Also very exciting with some of the emerging momentum as people are getting more excited and making more advances with the small module reactors.

The recent announcement of the small module reactor the TerraPower, which is funded by Bill Gates is planning to construct in Wyoming. Next slide. This slide just shows our proven uranium production assets. It shows a White Mesa Mill, which is currently producing and also shows Alta Mesa and the Nichols Ranch ISR facilities on the right that are on standby and also the Pinyon Plain Mine in Arizona that when that ore is mined at Pinyon Plain, it will be produced or processed at the White Mesa Mill.

Next slide. This next slide, and again, I've talked about this one for some time because I think it tells a very substantial story. Basically, 2 companies, Cameco and Energy Fuels, the 2 companies over the last 15 years have produced about 86% of all uranium produced in the United States from assets owned by Cameco Energy Fuels. Two companies, not 5 companies, 2 companies.

If you add Ur-Energy and Uranium One, which is in the sort of the blue and the red, it goes up to about 97%. So there really are just a few producers of uranium in the United States that have a long history of producing uranium. And I'd also like to note that certainly Ur-Energy and Uranium One were not producing 15 years ago so their numbers are a bit smaller than ours, but 4 companies have provided the lion's share of uranium production in the United States. And we believe that those who have a history of producing are best positioned for improved uranium markets.

Next slide. Market position, uranium. We still trade in the middle of the pack of uranium peer group. But when you look at this slide, there's a couple of things I want to point out. Number one, we are in the middle of the pack. We have 0 debt, which, about half of the companies on that list do have substantial debt remaining. We have inventories that I mentioned that we produce. And even though all of these are uranium producers, none of them in this slide or on this table have the ability to produce rare earths or vanadium or medical isotopes or have the recycling history that we have. So even though we trade as uranium stock, we're far, far more than just a uranium company.

Next slide. uranium and rare earths. Why do they fit together perfectly? Because the best rare earths contain uranium and other radio nucleides. And we believe that Energy Fuels is the missing link in the rare earth production, not just in the United States and the world. And at the Roskill Conference in London, that was very, very apparent. I was actually overwhelmed by the knowledge and the interest that people showed at that event. So we began commercial production this year. We have the ability to produce rare earth carbonate and no other company is producing a rare earth product more advanced than we are right now in North America. And so as I said, we plan to advance our strategy towards full integration in the next couple of years, and we're very excited about that.

Lastly, before we turn to the slide here, I just want to say that the -- depending on what surveys you look at and forecasts you look at, some are predicting up to a fivefold increase in demand for the magnetic rare earth oxides through 2030.

Next slide. Why monazite? Well, simple because it's a highly valuable rare earth mineral and it is currently being produced. And many, in most cases, except for China, are not processing monazite sands because they cannot deal with radio nucleide. So we're focusing on monazite sands. It's a byproduct of existing production. It's produced in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Africa and elsewhere. The main target from these heavy mineral sands producer is a zirconium, the titanium and the monazite is effectively a byproduct, very high grade, typically between 50% and 60% total rare earth oxides, in some cases, over 60%, and it is also known to contain uranium and other radionucleides that Energy Fuels can recover and that is a big differentiator.

It also has higher grades of the NDPR, which is the main magnetic elements. And it also has the heavies and higher concentrations of other rare earth feeds. So it is a very valuable, high-grade material to produce and White Mesa is ideally placed to process this material at the lowest cost possible because of our unique advantage with using existing permits and infrastructure and these higher grades combined moving forward to separation at White Mesa.

So at this point in time, while we're not planning to mine monazite, we plan to produce rare earth materials from monazite in due course and move down the supply chain and those value adds.

Next slide. unique capabilities of White Mesa Mill. As I said, the missing link came from Constantine Karayannopoulos which many of you will know, is probably the most successful guy in the rare earth business in the world and also the CEO of Neo that we have a very strong relationship with. We are the only facility in North America currently licensed and capable of processing monazite sands to recover the rare earths. And we also believe that we can have a value add with the recovery -- we know we can recover the uranium and thorium are major value adds, which are impediments for others.

So we're really excited about that differentiator in itself. Highly scalable, ample capacity. The mill is licensed to produce 720,000 tons of ore per year and the quantities we're talking about with our current processing and the goal of advancing to 15,000, 20,000, 30,000 tons of monazite sands or greater in due course is just a fraction of 1% or 2%. So anyways, next slide.

So when you look at our short-term business plan, which is now what we're doing right now, we've reestablished the U.S. European Union supply chain. We're purchasing monazite from Chemours in Georgia. We are seeking to produce -- to purchase or secure other sources of monazite from around the world globally, and I believe we're making some major strides in that regard because people are watching our speed and the focus that we have on monazite sands, and I think it is really impressing people and how we're moving. We're producing the rare earth carbonate at the mill. And we're also currently shipping and delivering to Neo Performance Materials. That's a company that Constantine is the CEO in Estonia.

So again, we're able to establish a U.S. European supply chain through our relationship with Neo in Europe. Long term, we absolutely are planning for full integration to have a U.S.-centric supply chain, continuing with our relationship with Neo, which have been very productive. You really have to have integration to develop the rare earth supply chain and get full value out of it. We also have a collaboration with Carester in France who have extensive experience with recovering and separating rare earths from monazite using solvent extraction and White Mesa has over a 40-year history with dealing with recovery of uranium and vanadium using SX technology.

Next slide. Now this slide shows how we are rebuilding the U.S. and European supply chains and the top line shows is what we currently have done, and this is done with ourselves working with Chemours, also with Neo in Europe and some of Neo's value adds as you move down the chain. What we're planning to do is the next tier down, secure larger sources of monazite from North America, South Africa, Australia, South America and elsewhere, moving on to separated oxides in the U.S. and including in Europe or Neo and then look at the various value chains as we advance beyond separated oxides. So this is, again, a very rapidly unfolding story. And as I said, at the Rare Earth Conference, I was staggered by the reception to it.

Next slide. These are just pictures, but I just want to emphasize that you look at that top left-hand picture on the top left-hand corner, those are one-time super sacks. These are not little pouches of a kilogram or a beaker or something. This is commercial scale. There's a picture lower left-hand corner of myself, Logan Shumway, our mill manager and Constantine Karayannopoulos at our packaging equipment at the mill and then a picture of various employees who helped with this very substantial initiative.

Next slide. A few more pictures because the pictures are worth a thousand words. Some pictures inside the mill upper left-hand corner with our crack-and-leach capabilities, also the laboratory in the upper right-hand corner. And then the lower right-hand corner, and we're very, very proud of this. We are currently doing separations of rare earth oxides at the mill, and this is a picture of 48 stage lab-scale sovereign extraction unit for separated oxides. So we are rapidly advancing towards separations.

Next slide. Why will Energy Fuel succeed when others have struggled? Number one, and this is very, very important. We have the licenses and capabilities to handle the radionucleides in monazite. Second, monocyte sands have higher relative value than other rare earth mineral feeds. I mentioned that the feeds that we're securing from Chemours and we're looking around the world are in that 50% to 60% total rare earth range.

Monazite is already mined in the U.S. and around the world in large quantities. The processing of monazite is more straightforward than some of the other rare earth minerals. It is low cost in terms of capital and operating costs because of the high grades and the mineralogy. We have a long history, as I mentioned, with solvent extraction, processing technologies for uranium and vanadium. And we are mainly, at this point in time, focusing on proven rare earth separation using SX. And lastly, and this is a great differentiator. Utah is a great place to do business.

Next slide, market position. Now this is a market position versus other producers. You can look at Mountain Pass, $6 billion; Lynas, $5 billion; Iluka, nearly $3 billion; and Energy Fuels, about $1.3 billion; and then Neo Performance Materials, about $600 million.

I also want to point out that when you look at the monazite -- now Lynas mines monazite out of hard rock deposits. It's not monazite sands but look at the difference in the basket value of the monazite deposits versus the bastnäsite deposits. There's a material difference. The monazite is higher value. So our goal is to break from the uranium pack as people understand that we are moving up the chain with rare earths and become a multibillion-dollar company. That is our goal. I don't come with a warranty. But I'm telling you, we plan to be a multibillion-dollar company when people realize that we are going to get there with rare earth assuming we get enough feed, which we believe we will secure in due course, but we'd rather secure the feed and move forward with full integration.

Next slide, Vanadium. And it's interesting because vanadium is also a critical mineral and it is starting to come up the chain, particularly with the renewable energy storage. And -- but it's mainly used for high-strength alloys. That's the traditional use, but we do get inbound calls with regard to the vanadium redox battery. We still have substantial inventories of vanadium high purity. We have the ability to go back in the vanadium production quite quickly, low capital cost. We are the largest producer in just a couple of years ago in 2019.

Next slide. Now this one I talked about in some of my presentations to investors, but it was new in the new quarter. This is the medical isotopes from thorium, and we've advanced and have an agreement with RadTran on the recovery of isotopes needed for new cancer therapies. We signed an agreement back at July 29. It is mainly focused on recovery of isotopes from Energy Fuel's existing uranium and rare earth processing streams. It is also mainly focused on TAT, which are targeted alpha therapies for cancer therapeutics. So it's early days here but the alpha-emitting isotopes are in short supply. And we believe that this is a great opportunity to utilize the mill in a more complete way, securing this material from the sources of radionuclides that we have. We're excited because I don't believe any other -- certainly, nothing in North America is focusing on these isotopes like we are from our processing facility like White Mesa.

So we think this will have substantial benefits to Energy Fuels and RadTran because of the fact that it's a holistic and recycling approach to where we're able to recover more from less. And it is an example of our very unique and highly specialized capabilities.

Next slide. We continue to focus even at a lesser scale than our front line, which is the uranium, vanadium and rare earth. On the uranium recycling, we have a long history there. I've mentioned that the recycled uranium from the White Mesa has recycled about 6 million pounds at the equivalent to a coal train from L.A. to New York and almost all the way back to L.A. And it really is the reason the mill has survived the test of time. And also the vanadium we recycled would be the equivalent to build nearly 5 Golden Gate Bridges. So no other uranium or rare earth company can tout that kind of impact -- successful impact in recycling programs that I know of.

Next slide. We're still continuing to try to advance the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines in the region, particularly on the Navajo Nation. These are abandoned mines. These are the red dots you can see in that little graphic in the Four Corners region. They were mined primarily in the 50s and 60s, largely subsidized by the U.S. government through their buying schedules. The U.S. government has collected $1.7 billion to clean up these mines. We're in the absolute box seat to do this. Unfortunately, it does have some political ramifications because people don't actually want us to participate because they don't want us to benefit in any way.

But we are already doing it with a private project with Rio Grande Resources and Green Star down by between Albuquerque and Grants. And we've already transported -- they have transported about 50,000 tons of material to our site thus far to clean up the old Mount Taylor mine.

So next slide. accretive disposition -- disposal. We just recently closed just in October 27, just a few days ago, the sale of our noncore assets to Consolidated Uranium, a TSX-listed company. We sold the Tony M, the Daneros and the Rim mine and some DOE leases. These are high-quality assets fully licensed and in many cases, fully developed, in some cases, partially development. Total consideration was up to nearly $40 million largely in shares. So we'll be the largest shareholder of CUR. And so it was a substantial transaction for us. We'll be working very close with CUR as they plan to open some of those mines, we think in the not-too-distant future, and it reduces our holding costs. We have a management agreement. It will secure additional feed for the mill through a toll milling agreement, the only one out there, and I will serve on the Board of CUR to help them with those initiatives.

Next slide. Looking at our financial strength and flexibility, quarter end, Q3 end, we had $131 million of cash securities or inventories, a substantial amount of uranium and vanadium of -- that we produced. I take you over to the right-hand side there in the table when I talked on the books and that $18 million delta is the delta between the value on the books and the current prices.

Uranium has gone up 81% from that value on the books and vanadium has gone up about 57%. So that 131 is really, in my opinion, very conservative because it also doesn't include the working capital through the sale of the noncore assets, even though we're not planning to sell our shares and CUR any time in the near future, it's very conservative. So we have a very strong balance sheet with 0 debt and we believe that puts us in an outstanding position to exercise every one of our business plan elements with current funds available.

So next slide. Our last slide, and then I'll open it up for questions. uranium. And again, I want to say there really is no peer to Energy Fuels. If you go to that peer group analysis on the uranium sector and then the peer group analysis in the rare earth sector included in the presentation, we do both and nobody else does. So on uranium, we have unmatched ability to quickly increase low-cost uranium production and the price of uranium going up substantially. We're looking at a number of our assets right now and taking steps to go back into uranium production. Rare earths, I talked about, extremely excited about this.

We believe that Energy Fuels is one of the most, if not the most, exciting rare earth emerging opportunities in the entire world. We still have a lot of work to do but we're very excited about that. And if any of you were at the conference in London, I think you would have come away with the same feeling.

Vanadium, I talked about that, the medical isotopes, emerging quickly, but also getting a lot of interest there, the recycling and the financial strength that I said, which is, I believe, has reported very conservative. We are in excellent position, in an excellent position to really burn rubber here with assets and opportunities that nobody else out there, in my opinion, that I know of has. Thank you very much and open for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question does come from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Congratulations on a pretty amazing quarter for the firm and just your team as a whole. I mean we started at just over $5 a share, well done.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Thank you, Heiko.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

On Page 4 of your presentation, you mentioned White has 691,000 pounds of uranium inventory by the end of the year. It's obviously a huge, huge figure well done. I mean but just thinking out loud, given the strength in the market throughout this year, is there a price where you'd be willing to sell off any of these pounds? Or is this more a mental time frame that you think you're going to -- like in other words, we're going to hold us for x time. Anything -- any thoughts that you can maybe share in the public domain?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Well, Heiko, we're going to be flexible on what presents. I mean having that inventory helps us also with potential contracts that are coming up. So we may mix and match inventory versus new production. Certainly, you've got rising uranium prices. We'll look at everything on a case-by-case basis. But certainly, the prices are increasing in the right direction. We think that it's U.S. origin, which is worth more than produced or purchased uranium from Kazakhstan and Russians or wherever, in our opinion. So it's unobligated material in most cases. So yes, I mean that's -- currently, our plan is to be open for opportunities as they present. Curtis or Dave, do you want to add anything to that?

[Curtis Moore, executive]

Nothing from me.

[David Frydenlund, executive]

Nothing from me.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

But as I said, our inventories went up $4 million in a quarter. So that's real value that's being created by holding it a bit.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

No, I concur. And I think if the question didn't sound complimentary enough, it was certainly supposed to be...

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. No, Heiko. It's a fair question. We get that question from our Board members. When are you going to sell some of this stuff?

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Now with the monazite factoid that you threw into the presentation that 60,000 tons of monazite contains 50% of current U.S. RE demand, I heard you talk about this before, and I still find this figure to be quite staggering given that mind you all, that I look at mines that produced that many tons per month or day or whatever.

Anyway, dream with me a little bit. Can you quantify -- and maybe just look out a little bit, how much product do you think your asset base could eventually produce in a year in say, 5 years or 10 years? And I'm just thinking out loud. I know there's not going to be a scientific answer to those questions.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Well, look, Heiko, I say we want to be a world-scale producer. We have to secure the monazite. You're right. It's really small qualities. When you look at that 50% to 60%, I mean, the tons are basically nothing compared to a traditional mining operation. But we think that what we've seen around the world that we have the ability to be eventually in time, to achieve scales of -- in the order of Lynas or even MP in time. So but yes, we don't have enough information right now to get out on any hard numbers, but we're planning to, as I said, make a big splash here.

And we kind of are focusing on probably initially somewhere in the order of around 10,000 tons REO, if that's possible. So that would be about half of Lynas right there, but we've got to secure the monazite. So we are not looking to produce a small amount of rare earths. We're looking to produce a large amount of rare earth materials in due course. How long and how quickly can we get there? We'll just have to see as it unfolds.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question does come from Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

Kind of following on what Heiko just tried to touch on a bit. Given what you know now, you have one supplier of monazite. What is the trajectory of either tons or revenue kind of look like? And at what point does the gross margin start to grow? And then kind of what's your target gross margin for these offtake agreements?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Again, loaded question. Look, we really have to have full integration at least to be able to separate from oxides to get any real material margins here, Joe. But we hope that in the coming months that we can start rolling out other relationships in addition to Chemours and Hyperion, which we've already got relationships with that shows that we're building the book on monazite supply in a material way.

When it comes to margins, it depends on what it costs to secure the monazite. We're looking at some creative ways to secure monazite at -- in a way that provides a very robust margin, okay? Now again, I'm not going to get out there on the limb but I can say that our models show that we believe we can be world competitive because of all the attributes I already mentioned: the low capital cost, almost nothing for cracking leach, very small. It's not nothing, but almost nothing. The fact that we're in Utah, the fact we're dealing with the grade, the current rare earth prices, we think it will be very robust. But we still have to show that we've got the units coming in to get there and also have the separation. But this is a very exciting opportunity and the models are very robust.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

Okay. Fair enough. I won't press for specific numbers any further. Moving over to uranium. Can you give us any commentary about what you're seeing in the market? Are the utilities starting to send out RFPs? Are they starting to loosen up the purse strings a little bit and talk about the future? Or is it still the same situation has been for the last few years with them mostly buying in the spot market to fill whatever short they have in supply?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Well, look, I think certainly, the spot and Kazatomprom and others buying uranium has stirred the pot quite a bit. And look, I believe that the utilities are starting to get a bit nervous. I think they're quite annoyed with this buying that's going on. I would say, I think that the activity level is -- appears to be picking up from a utility perspective. And Curtis, I don't know if you want to add anything further than that.

[Curtis Moore, executive]

Yes. Yes, sure. So yes, we're starting to see a little bit of an uptick in the utility activity. I think a lot of us are kind of trying to wait and see just how sustainable this price increase is. Just like we're not going to run out and start up our mines in production based on a very short-term spike in prices. We hope it's sustained, and there's a lot of reasons to believe it will be. But I think there's a lot of wait and see out there. And if you're a utility, I think you have a similar perspective.

And remember, there's -- they don't have a whole lot of uncovered requirements in the short term. So I think they can't afford to still kind of sit back and wait, but yes, I do think that, like Mark said, I mean, we're all watching this closely, the producers and the utilities. And I mean, we're pretty optimistic that there's going to be contracting opportunities soon.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

Okay. Just one follow-up then on one of the items you mentioned not rushing to restart the mines. Is there a price and contract size if you can disclose it or maybe do you guys at least have one internally that you're looking for from these utilities if somebody were to bring it to you, you could take it and then start a mine? Like if you can talk in ranges even that would be helpful.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Well, look, we still want north of 50. And really, the world needs north of 60, all right? But north of 50 starts getting interesting. One of the advantages of kind of our portfolio is it's modular. You can kind of bolt it together depending on what quantities you need. I mean you probably need save for the ISR projects, you need probably 300,000 to 500,000 pounds or something in that range to restart one of those mines. When you look at like Pinyon Plain, we need somewhere in the order of, say, 500,000, 600,000, 700,000 pounds to start it up. So we can mix and match to get whatever quantities we need to contract for.

So yes, we'd like 700,000 pounds a year, north of 50 and we'll mix and match between our existing production facilities and inventory to try to get the right combination for us. But we're only going to do things that make sense for us. We're out there to make money, and we're not going to mine for nothing. And so the market really needs north of 60, but north of 50, it gets interesting.

[Operator]

And there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Chalmers, you may proceed.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Well, in closing, thank you for your interest in Energy Fuels. Many of you that are on this call probably know me personally, you can always reach out to me or Curtis or any person on our team. I've said this many times, this is probably one of the most exciting times in my entire career on the various things that we're doing, the various exciting things that we're doing. So watch this space. I think, as I said, we trade as a uranium stock. I think as soon as people realize that we are going to be, in my opinion, a serious rare earth producer, I think we're going to get an upgrade. But again, as I said, I don't come with a warranty. I might be a little bit biased as the CEO, but we are being very aggressive, but not reckless on how we go forward, strong balance sheet, 0 debt.

We've got improving market fundamentals in just about everything we're touching right now. So I hope that continues and just watch this space. And as I said, there is no investment like Energy Fuels out there because we cover a broad range of opportunities that others do not. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for today. We thank you very much for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.