Uranium Miners ETF Report | October 2024

Uranium ETF Key Takeaways

The uranium spot price has regained momentum from its support around $79 per pound, ending September at $81.95 for a 3.78% gain. The gain starts to rectify the desynchronized nuclear fuel markets where the spot price is down -10.04% year-to-date, but the term price is at a 16-year high and conversion and enrichment are at all-time highs. Uranium miners rose significantly in September as the seasonal slowdown dissipated, Big Tech and Big Banks supported the nuclear energy thesis, and economic concerns faded into the background.

Emerging from the typical summer doldrums, the activity in the uranium market kicked off with the annual World Nuclear Association Symposium. The symposium brought together participants from all nuclear energy-related sectors: fuel supply, mining, conversion, enrichment, government, research and more. With the theme of “Turning momentum into energy,” the industry members discussed how to deliver on last year’s pledge to triple nuclear generation by 2050. Though the market remained subdued immediately after the conference, it awakened after Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced a 20-year power purchase agreement that would support the reopening of the Three Mile Island I nuclear power plant, which has been shuttered for 5 years. Microsoft is in search of clean, firm power for its electricity-hungry AI data centers. Other Big Tech companies followed suit with their own nuclear energy announcements, which we believe represent another important inflection point for nuclear energy.

Firstly, it provides much-needed capital at a time when government energy policy is trying to “crowd-in” private capital to revitalize a dormant industry. Secondly, it raises awareness and helps to validate the value of nuclear energy across a broad range of investors. These positive news developments reignited interest in the sector, with the Uranium ETF rebounding with an 11.26% gain.

Over the longer term, physical uranium and uranium miners have demonstrated significant outperformance against broad asset classes, particularly other commodities. For the five years ended September 30, 2024, the U3O8 spot price has risen a cumulative 220.04% compared to 29.01% for the broader commodities index (BCOM).

Constellation Energy, the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the U.S., announced that it would restart a reactor at Three Mile Island, keeping it online for decades, and sell the power to Microsoft. The deal represents Constellation’s largest-ever power purchase agreement with Microsoft for 835 MW of carbon-free energy. Under the agreement, Microsoft will purchase electricity to match the energy its relevant data centers consume.

Ambitious artificial intelligence plans and their demanding energy needs have not been a new phenomenon. Google had announced earlier this year a 13% rise in greenhouse gas emissions for 2023, driven by energy-intensive artificial intelligence.

As Big Tech companies, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet, have various decarbonization goals and have all planned to be net-zero emitters by 2040, clean energy sources are required to power the future of AI. To that end, Microsoft and Brookfield signed a 10.5 GW deal earlier this year to build more than $10 billion in renewable energy capacity. While renewable energy is clean, its intermittent nature is not the ideal match for data centers’ more consistent energy requirements. Therefore, the underpinning deal with Microsoft to buy 100% of the electricity from the reactor to power data centers (and other infrastructure) stood out as a significant proof point of AI and nuclear power’s symbiotic relationship.

As AI capabilities expand, there is a growing need for stable power sources in data centers that manage large volumes of data and complex computations. The Big Tech firms are in a race to lead the development and deployment of artificial intelligence technologies. The rapid advancement of these technologies and their potential revolutionary future stands out for its potentially immense economic and even geopolitical considerations. To that end, big technology firms are at full speed in their developments, including building out their energy supply. As such, we believe they will not wait for the notoriously slow electricity grid buildout. For context, for the last 23 years, electricity generation has grown by 0.5% in the U.S. and 0.1% in the European Union (annualized). This is in stark contrast to the forecasted 258% forecasted electricity demand increase from 2023 to 2030 for global data centers, increasing from 1.2% of global electricity supply to 4.1%.

In the artificial intelligence race, Big Tech firms released multiple more announcements recognizing nuclear’s role. Google announced that they are signing the world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) to be developed by Karios Power. Targeting to bring the first SMR online by 2030 and additional deployments thereafter through 2035, the deal encompasses 500 MW of carbon-free power to U.S. electricity grids.

SMRs represent a cutting-edge evolution in nuclear technology and have the potential to amplify nuclear energy’s role and boost uranium demand. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) characterizes “small” reactors as those with a capacity of up to 300 MW(e) per unit — roughly a third of conventional nuclear reactors’ size. The modular design of SMRs means components can be prefabricated in factories and transported for on-site assembly, reducing costs and construction time. This adaptability positions SMRs to deliver clean energy to areas previously out of reach for conventional nuclear plants and offers a promising approach to decarbonizing industrial processes.

SMRs represent a burgeoning technology, with various innovative designs in development worldwide. The heightened uranium demand from SMRs is anticipated to manifest toward the end of the decade and intensify into the 2030s. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) projected last year that SMRs might constitute up to 5% of the global nuclear capacity by 2040. However, given the infancy of the SMR industry, predictions differ. For instance, a forecast by BMO suggests a potential of 9%.

Four days later, Amazon announced that they signed three new agreements to support the development of SMRs. They signed an agreement with Energy Northwest in Washington for the development of four advanced SMRs with roughly 320 MW of capacity to begin in the early 2030s. They also made an investment in X-energy, which includes manufacturing capacity to develop the SMR equipment to support more than five gigawatts of new nuclear energy projects. Finally, they signed an agreement with Dominion Energy to explore the development of an SMR near the existing North Anna nuclear power station for at least 300 MW. These mark a continuation of Amazon’s nuclear strategy where it had announced earlier this year that it would buy a nuclear-powered data center from Talen Energy for $650 million.

Google’s “first-ever” agreement and Amazon’s agreement help the industry advance down the learning curve and, by positioning itself in the development phase, increase the likelihood of its acceleration. Further strengthening this claim was Oracle’s announcement, the third largest software company in the world by revenue, in September that it is designing a data center that would be powered by three SMRs. Notably, these SMRs have further government support, with the U.S. passing the Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act (ADVANCE Act) in June, which allocated a $900 MM funding opportunity for SMRs and intends to relax legislation to accelerate the deployment of the technology.

Next-generation nuclear and artificial intelligence-backed nuclear power plant restarts join an increasing overall nuclear build-out. In the U.S., the Three Mile Island restart is actually projected to be the second-ever restart, behind the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. On September 30, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a $1.52 B loan for the first-ever U.S. nuclear plant decommissioning. Restarts like Three Mile Island and the Palisade Nuclear Plant provide additional, more immediate uranium demand as utilities generally contract for uranium in the term market years before the fuel is needed.

Announcements to this effect also occurred more globally. A quintessential example is Japan, which has restarted 12 reactors since 2011. The country has another 13 reactors in the process of restart approval and is nearing the restart of the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Japan is one of many countries that have engaged in a U-turn in its nuclear energy policy, where after Fukushima, they had planned to greatly reduce their reliance on nuclear energy, but current leadership says the country needs to maximize the use of existing nuclear power plants. South Korea and Belgium are other examples of countries that have engaged in U-turns in their nuclear energy policy. More recently, Italy was reported in September to be moving towards reversing its nuclear energy ban.

Electricity demand is increasing not only due to artificial intelligence but also due to the reshoring of energy-intensive industries (given increasing geopolitical tensions), the energy transition and the urbanization and industrialization of developing countries. Similarly, nuclear supply is increasing not only due to these restarts, extensions and SMRs. Uranium demand remains ever-present, with nuclear reactor buildouts in full force. For example, in September South Korea approved the construction of two nuclear reactors, reviving a project that was scrapped under its previous anti-nuclear regime. China is also a standout in this regard. Recently, they made a $31 B nuclear push by approving 11 reactors. China leads the world in reactors under construction and planned. Globally, there are 439 nuclear reactors in operation, 67 under construction, 87 planned and 344 proposed.

There is not currently enough mined supply of uranium for the world’s nuclear reactors’ requirements, and further reactor restarts increase this disparity. Mine supply, with 2024 forecasted production of 157 million pounds, is still well short of the world’s uranium reactor requirements, with 176 million pounds forecasted for 2024, and forces the industry to rely on secondary sources of supply, predominantly existing commercial inventories. Further, given the increasing global recognition of the importance of nuclear energy to energy security and decarbonization, the demand for uranium is forecasted at 338 million pounds in 2040. To meet these 2040 projections, the uranium mine supply needs to more than double by then, but the supply response thus far has proven to be more challenging to ramp up than anticipated. Western uranium enrichment capacity is already under strain, given that Russia controls 44% of global enrichment capacity and that Russia is contemplating a retaliatory uranium export ban. Orano USA has announced that it will build a multi-billion-dollar enrichment facility in Tennessee and this also follows Western enricher’s announcements of capacity expansions, but all of this additional capacity will likely not come online for 2-3 years. As such, the Western enrichment industry’s lack of excess capacity may likely need to be accounted for with a shift from underfeeding to overfeeding (using more UF6 as feedstock to produce more enriched uranium). The scale of this shift is not insignificant, given that underfeeding had created the largest equivalent uranium mine in the world.

Macro Outlook

We believe the current price movement is a step in the right direction, but as the spot price is still down year-to-date and from the highs earlier this year, this may represent an attractive entry point in the ongoing bull market. A longstanding primary supply deficit and renewed interest in nuclear energy highlight the real challenges to bring the market back into balance. With no meaningful new supply on the horizon for three to five years, we believe this bull market has further room to run. While last year’s multi-year record in long-term uranium contracting was celebrated, the overall numbers disguise a bifurcated market. Some utilities are well covered, while others have ignored the powerful market signals and failed to adapt their procurement strategies to the new market realities.

With global uranium mine production well short of the world’s uranium reactor requirements, the supply deficit building over the next decade, and near-term supply inhibited by long lead times and capital intensity, we believe that restarts and new mines in development are critical. The uranium price target as an incentive level for further restarts and greenfield development is a moving target, and we believe that we will need higher uranium prices to incentivize enough production to meet forecasted deficits. Over the long term, increased demand in the face of an uncertain uranium supply may likely continue supporting a sustained bull market.

Source of all performance data: Bloomberg / HANetf as of 30.09.2024. Additional sources available upon request. All performance figures are showing net data. Past performance is not indicative of future performance and when you invest in ETFs your capital is at risk.

Uranium ETF Performance
As of 30/09/2024

URNM (Fund)URNMXA (Index)
1M16.49%16.67%
3M-3.36%-3.24%
6M-16.90%-16.66%
YTD10.99%11.48%
12M23.98%24.85%
3Y78.86%81.65%
Since Inception (03/05/2022)85.82%90.87%

Please note that all performance figures are showing net data. Source: Bloomberg / HANetf. Data as of 30/09/2024

Performance before inception is based on back-tested data. Backtesting is the process of evaluating an investment strategy by applying it to historical data to simulate what the performance of such a strategy would have been. Back-tested data does not represent actual performance and should not be interpreted as an indication of actual or future performance. Past performance for the index is in USD. Past performance is not an indicator for future results and should not be the sole factor of consideration when selecting a product. Investors should read the prospectus of the Issuer (“Prospectus”) before investing and should refer to the section of the Prospectus entitled ‘Risk Factors’ for further details of risks associated with an investment in this product. When you invest in ETFs and ETCs, your capital is at risk.

Performance for the Sprott Junior Uranium Miners UCITS ETF is not yet available due to the age of the fund.

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