 Hello everyone, it's Byron King with Investor Intel and today we have the pleasure of speaking with Mark Chalmers of Energy Fuels as well as Jack Lifton. Jack is on the advisory board to Energy Fuels. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Mark, there are amazing developments going on in the field for people who aren't entirely up to speed on Energy Fuels. Give us the one minute summary of what's going on with the company. Not that there's a lot going on but see what you can do to get it down to just a brief discussion. Well again thanks Byron for doing this interview. Look at Energy Fuels is unique. Typically people invest in a uranium company or they invest in a rare earth company but I don't know of any other investment they can make in both and that's what Energy Fuels is. We have a long history of producing uranium going back 40 years. I've been in the business for over 40 years and produced uranium all over the world including vanadium but recently and we're just coming up on our two-year anniversary that we announced we're getting into rare earth space primarily focused on monazite sands or other hard rock monazite type deposits that have uranium and these significant distributions of the rare earths both the lights and the heavies which is an area that we are so excited about because we think our focus on critical elements as a whole uranium, vanadium and the rare earths could be the gigafactory of critical minerals in the United States of America. That's a great introduction. I hold in my hand here a crystal of monazite. This is a beautiful crystal from a pegmatite you would not want to throw this in the crusher because you could sell it for a couple hundred bucks at the Tucson Gem and Mineral show but this monazite contains rare earth elements as you mentioned but again one of the problems is there's low levels of uranium and thorium so what you're saying sir is that you have the ability because of your nuclear processing side that you can safely handle within regulatory limits the uranium and thorium that come out of this product. Correct and that's the secret ingredient is we can safely handle and monetize the uranium and potentially monetize the thorium and the other radionucleides so everybody else is focusing on we don't have radionucleides in our rare earth feeds or its low levels and we're saying bring it on the more the better and the reason that we have approval from the state of Utah to process monazite sands is because the grade of uranium in monazite sands is about equal to the grade of the uranium ores that we typically process so it is a uranium ore for us. So what's the status of your program right now are you are you receiving material right now and processing it you know from the dump truck to some final level or where do you stand on that? Yeah well right now the only source of monazite we have monazite sands comes from Kimors and Georgia. They are shipping us relatively small quantities around a thousand tons and so even though it's relatively small quantities it is small commercial I call and we receive the monazite sands they're around 50 to 60 percent rare earth oxides contained in that monazite. We're processing it at the white mason mill. We can make a clean rare earth carbonate that is free of the radionucleides and shipping it to Estonia to Silmet with NEO and our relationship with Constantine Curianopolis. So we're more advanced than any other company in North America with the ability to chemically process monazite sands recover the uranium and the thorium and ship of a clean concentrate carbonate to Silmet. So you've demonstrated you can do it and do you have the ability to scale it up to a to a higher size or a much greater volume? We can scale it up to sizes equivalent to potentially line us and do course so this is material this is material that what we can do at the mill. We are also doing separations at lab scale and soon to be commercial scale small commercial at the mill as well. So when people think if the people think we're just going to be a rare earth carbonate producer that's not the case at all. We are advancing very very rapidly and we have the ability to pilot and operate at commercial levels that nobody else has because of the significant infrastructure we have at the white mason mill. Well thank you Jack Lifton you've been covering rare earths for you know many many years I won't I won't even attach a number to it because I don't want to embarrass anybody here but you know you know plenty you're on the advisory board and what's your what's your view of of how things have evolved with energy fuels? Energy fuels is an actual commercial producer of the critical materials uranium vanadium and the rare earths and that's I think what people need need to understand. Energy fuels produces a mixed clean mixed rare earth carbonate of the of the rare earths and sells it to a commercial customer. Now no one has done that in North America in the 21st century other than energy fuels and I think people don't really understand that that energy fuels is the only commercial producer of downstream rare earth products today actually in North America these are commercial products they're in commercial quantities and they're sold in the in the in the world markets so it's the same with uranium and vanadium so energy fuels is isn't a producer it's not a junior in any way and I think that a lot of people make the mistake of looking at energy fuels as some kind of junior rare earth venture it is not it's a producer a commercial rare earth venture and it can only grow now my understanding is that energy fuels has a plan to vertically integrate quite a ways down the supply chain I believe the plan and Mark is a better discussed proponent of this than I am but I believe the plan is to is to produce rare earth metals and magnet alloys ultimately and I'd like to ask mark the question if I may by Mark how are you progressing on your on your overall model your business model of being being a producer of commercial rare earth metals and alloys what's your timetable well our timetable is the number one thing that holds us back okay is to supply a monazite if we had truckloads additional truckloads of monazite showing up the mill today we could process that at significant scale like if we're currently producing somewhere in the order of um can uh thousand tons of um uh monazite sand from kimours per year we could scale that up to somewhere in the order of 10 000 tons without any other investment okay so um so that'd be about 5000 reo we're certainly not limited on our ability to process carbon in in in time as we as we scale up I mentioned the piling of the rare earth um separations which has been going on for a couple months and and I don't think anybody really fully appreciates the advances we've made on that front demonstrating how we can do that in potentially starting commercially at at least the first stage uh in the not too distant future but also we assigned the agreement with nanoscale powders for the metal component of a patented technology to advance as well so we are going to get there when we get uh and we're we're we're looking all around the world for additional monazite sands there are many companies probably around a half a dozen companies talking to us seriously right now because they appreciate the fact that there is an alternative to china when it comes to the monazite plant china is processing monazite and has been for the last several years or the last few years at least uh at scale and we're catching up with them we're catching up with them um just providing an alternative to china it's not competing with china or trying to do any harm to china it's just about providing an alternative in the united states of america operating at at world class standards to deal with the radio nuclei in advance our monazite plan in the united states that's it that's a very uh exciting plan i i would just add that in my own you know studies of the rare earth industry chinese have been going around the world literally buying up monazite sand deposits in places like colombia bolivia brazil uh you know part part you know nigeria uh other other areas and so they're scarfing up everything they can't but but here you are able to offer you know a a a regulated service you know but from you know from the from the sand deposit on the beach to a nuclear certified uh output that is that's controlled and that's always seemed to have been the the issue with a lot of people they don't want to they don't want to sell monazite and then have some sort of nuclear liability come back to them but if you are able to handle that safely that really puts you you know quite a leg quite a leg above uh let me mark just uh give us give the viewers out there a quick overview of the the financial status of of energy fuels how are you doing in terms of uh you know funds available and revenues generated things like that yeah well we um we have a market cap of about one billion u.s dollars um we are debt free uh we have a substantial balance sheet uh we have you know in or depending on how you add it up uh with uh cash uh inventories uh tradeable securities we have sort of in the order of a hundred and fifty million dollars plus uh of working capital at current prices of of the commodities for uranium and vanadium uh so we are very very well funded uh we have um you know minor um uh cash flow right now i mean we we're securing some revenue certainly from the selling of the carbonate to neo uh we have other uh opportunities when it comes to alternate feed processing and everything but but look when you look at uh the the the the the plan going forward we've got an improving uranium market prices are going up we've got an improving vanadium market the prices are recovering again you have an improving rare earth market prices are improving and you have demand for all of those products there is absolutely no reason if we can fully integrate and add the addition of separations of the rare earth oxides that energy fuels cannot be several hundred million dollars a year of revenue with really uh significant margins very attractive margins and because of the low strike rate on the capital required to get there and the advantage of our operating costs operating in the state of Utah with low power costs uh significant um um skilled workforce uh there's a successful outcome here uh that I believe it's just not under it's underappreciated right now and we but it's our job it's my job to go and show people how the pieces fit together so we've got a lot of work to do and uh but you know it's our goal to to catch up to the MPs and the Linus's out there uh because of the strategy that we're executing well it's fair to say and and again viewers out there may or may not know this but in the last you know 20 and 30 years the the US in general has really moved away from being self-sufficient in things like uranium and we've been importing uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan places like that and then the rare earth you know there's the china store so so here's energy fuels coming along to rebuild that industrial capability in the US from literally from the mine and the dump truck to an end product that you could sell uh jack jack do you have another another point that you wanted to I just like to say two things about what's been talked about here one I think mark went uh by very fast the fact that at the facility there were the energy fuels facility in white mason utah they are running solvent extraction separation modeling of the rare earths and they have been running solvent extraction operations to separate uranium and vanadium for example for nearly four decades down there is can anybody else in the western world say that they they've been doing that second I think it's very important to understand that mark never mentioned subsidies so so many people in this market are saying well if the government will just pay the difference with our price and the chinese price you know blah blah blah okay mark didn't mention that he's saying we can be profitable he has money in the bank I didn't hear a word about subsidies so keep in mind this is actually a real business a real commercial venture in rare earths and uh I don't know but uh let me ask mark mark are you planning to depend on subsidies in the united states federal government in order to be profitable no no we don't need subsidies we need monazite once we secure the monazite it all fits together so I think you know right now we trade as a uranium stock I mean we trade with you know all the our uranium peer group we don't trade as a rare earth stock but I think as soon as we can show we have material quantities of monazite lined up for long term to go through the mill that will change and so that's the real opportunity for investors if you know if you're interested in critical minerals you're interested in low carbon energy and electrification you know we're a one-stop shop for that kind of investment and so yeah and and I it's just unique as I said there is no comparison to us uh to others because nobody straddles the fences on both the rare earths and the the uranium and the vanadium so uh you know it's it's it's an exciting opportunity we have to put the dots together for investors I hope that we can do that this year and and really show that we're going to be a multi-being dollar company but I have to put the dots together you know is anything guaranteed nothing is 100 guaranteed but if we can't make it who else is going to make it focusing on monazites in North America now Byron I just want to make another comment on the radionucleides because of the fact that we we we've had this long history of recovering uranium at the at the mill but we have two state-of-the-art triple line uh uh tailing cells that are designed for a thousand years we have two more cells that we hope will be permitted this year for another four million tons of capacity the site is a perpetual care facility with the U.S. government okay all those are other attributes what makes us different than anybody else out there in the world a perpetual care facility for disposal of the tailings at the White Mesa mill so you know the more you peel back the the the banana here and see what we do how we do it uh and the the skill sets of our staff uh it's a remarkable story and uh you know maybe I'm biased yes I've been in this business at least uranium is for 40 years so I I think I have the right to say I can be biased if I know what we can do and how we can do things so anyways I don't know what else to say Byron but it's uh it's a very unique uh spot to be in Constantine Karyonopolis uh say it could be the missing link to the rare earth business not just in North America but the world well you've summed it up beautifully I have nothing else to add to the viewers out there who are watching this the name is energy fuels and we just told you all about it it's all about monazite and and this this is this this humble looking little crystal is the future for a lot of things in this world and with that I thank you jack and I thank you mark and I wish you well with personally and with your company and to viewers out there I wish you well with your investing and remember monazite this is how you get it this is how you do it thank you very much thank you Byron thank you