A small thread #uranium#resources
"Macro"-economic style investing is tough. As we roll into this week's FOMC meeting, it appears as though 0.25% (a mere fraction of the 8.6% headline inflation) will govern the next 100+ pt range in $SPX. Who really knows where
The overall markets go in the near (1-6 month) term? We have crypto melting down, an unfriendly Fed, bonds not providing the reliable risk-parity hedge that can be monetized and re-invested into equities. Oil is careening up, JGBs look tenuous, the yen is slowly walking to 150,
Inflation is surprising to the upside, a WAY bloated set of private marks whose updates will probably trigger a new wave of redemptions, etc. etc. Flip side, the Fed's favourite measures have started to look grim. $LQD, $CMBS, repo markets, and $SPX which has now entered a bear
Market. The Fed put is somewhere out there, all that can be said is many of the top-callers, bottom-pickers, and "not there yet-ers" will miss it.
Resource investing, however volatile, contains within it a luxury.
Due to the factors above, the S&P may end up mired in a lost decade. #Uranium, however, must rise to meet the supply demand of coming decades. So when $URNM / $U.UN get whacked alongside the market, we at least don't necessarily fret about the many conditions that must
Align for our ideas to come to reality. Annoying, sure, that an industry impacted little by recession gets sold down in fear of a quarter point move. But insofar as the loose calculations I do to value my holdings - a lot of $PDN - we are reasonably priced for the current
Price of the metal. Absent a nuclear incident, the winds of change are blowing... As I wrote in a previous thread, as resource investors we possess the ability of markets to reprice a situation that demands it.
In times of strife, index, crypto, and dream-asset investors must question the valuation, and indeed, value, of what they own - because for them, price is narrative, and is path dependent...
So to the extent that you can wait, the question is more 'when,' and not 'if,' and therein is the luxury we are afforded...
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A chemist, neanderthal, and economist are trapped on an island. There's no food, except for an opportunistically placed can of Goya beans. They all brainstorm how to open the can so they don't starve.
The chemist says, "I can create a corrosive material out of sea water and other available ingredients. We can corrode away the top of the can and get at the beans inside."
The neanderthal grunts, "I can slam can on rock, can will open, we can eat beans."
Some Friday ramblings
Recession is here. $WMT, $COST, $TGT all prevaricated their way around shoddy earnings - it was freight! Cost inflation! Food & fuel!
In their declining sales you see the elasticity of discretionary consumption. Prices are high and going higher - the Fed will wreak havoc on financial assets but real carbon shortages (PADD 1 distillate is particularly grim) won't be tamed by 50 bps
The Fed has not been shy about their intentions. "The neutral rate might be 3.6% and we won't hesitate to hike higher" or Bill Dudley former Fed pres '18 openly waffling in BBG about how asset prices need to drop to spur an inverse wealth effect
Yes, SMRs may be a few yrs away. @NuScale_Power's first SMR will be operational in 7 years, which isn't "decades away." Conventional nuclear plants are used the world over, and if you hadn't noticed the trend, are increasingly sought after
1) cont.
The UK, Ukraine, France, Philippines, Czech Republic, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, even the US (vis a vis Diablo/SUR/current rumblings in Congress), among others, have all opened tenders, slowed closures, or are actively developing new plants for use this decade.
For views such as this I only ever work in back-of-envelope. Sustaining capex changes / cost inflation, commodity financialisation (blow off top?), mgmt decision to do CR, prognosticating about health of credit markets in '23/'24
Make it nigh impossible for a guy like me to credibly assess cost of debt/equity or unforeseen costs in LH maintenance.
So with fairly draconian cost assumptions and conservative earnings multiple this is where I see $PDN share px for different #uranium contract px's
Now px is A$0.66. "Fairly" valued for a '24 mine restart at $50 ($A0.73). Happy to accumulate here and below if we see more pain in the market (as I expect) because at #uranium U3O8 = USD$80, we may see 4x in the value of the mine. I stop at $120 (conservative by utwit standards)
Let's produce 1 kilogram of EUP. Let feed assay = 0.7% (how much of the to-be enriched material is U-235), and a tails assay of 0.1% (waste material).
Uranium for fuel is enriched to 3%-5% usually so let's use 4% as the target product assay.
1 kg of EUP needs 6.3 kg of unenriched uranium stock at our feed assay. This needs ~9 SWU, which at 60 kW/hr (reasonable amount of electricity needed to enrich uranium at a gas centrifuge plant). So 9 SWU for 60 kW/hr at $72 per 1 kg of SWU means
But they will look like magicians lol. They earn a fee for ETF AUM. In their interest to increase both inflows and value of underlying. If you wanna see where anything goes in the markets, look at the incentives…
$CCJ earnings coming up in 2 wks. We are gonna hear how MacArthur plans are going (I believe it will take longer than 2 yrs to get to 15m prod) & strength in contracting mkt. Don’t forget Duke has already tapped $PDN and a bunch of LH is promised to the Chinese already