Cameco announces 2024 results; strong performance across all segments; Westinghouse distribution; strategy centered on marketing, production, financial discipline expected to generate full-cycle value; positive outlook for nuclear energy
Cameco (TSX: CCO; NYSE: CCJ) today reported its consolidated financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2024, in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
“Our 2024 full-year financial performance benefitted from strong fourth quarter results delivered by our uranium and Westinghouse segments,” said Tim Gitzel, Cameco’s president and CEO. “Although both net earnings and adjusted net earnings in 2024 were lower than in 2023 primarily due to the impact of purchase accounting related to the Westinghouse acquisition, our other key financial metrics improved significantly. We expect our strong financial performance to continue in 2025, driven by the supportive market conditions we are seeing throughout the fuel cycle and across the nuclear sector, and through the continued benefits flowing from our investment in Westinghouse. Over the coming year, we expect to continue investing to help ensure reliability and sustainability of our existing operations, while positioning ourselves for future production flexibility and growth – growth that will be strategic, deliberate, disciplined, and with a focus on generating full-cycle value.
“It was another positive year for the nuclear industry, with support for both existing nuclear reactors and nuclear new build continuing to grow. In fact, we believe the outlook for nuclear power and nuclear fuel fundamentals is more favourable than it has been for decades. Continued global geopolitical uncertainty is bringing energy security and national security into focus, which puts nuclear in what we believe is a durable growth mode, and as we see that growth translate into demand and a cycle of replacement rate contracting, we too expect to be back in durable growth mode. We believe the risks to uranium and nuclear fuel supplies and services are greater than the risks to demand, and we expect that will create a renewed focus on ensuring long-term availability of nuclear fuel supplies.
“This past year in our uranium segment, despite relatively muted long-term contracting volumes as utilities focused first on securing enrichment and conversion services, we continued to negotiate off-market contracts and selectively add to our long-term portfolio, which now totals approximately 220 million pounds. That only represents about a quarter of our current reserve and resource base, meaning we can be strategically patient in our contracting discussions, and we are retaining exposure to the improving demand from our customers. We continue to have a large and growing pipeline of uranium business under negotiation and our focus remains on obtaining market-related pricing mechanisms that benefit from a constructive price environment, while also providing adequate downside protection. In addition, strong demand driving prices to historic highs in the conversion market is being captured in additional long-term contracts in our fuel services segment, with total contracted volumes of approximately 85 million kgU of UF6 supporting our fuel services operations for years to come.
“We have more than 35 years of experience operating across the fuel cycle, and we have designed our strategy of full-cycle value capture to be resilient. Given the nature of nuclear fuel contracting and our long-term contract book, we have good visibility into when and where we need to deliver material, allowing us to carefully plan and prudently invest in our existing and potential supply sources, well into the future. When we consider the supply tools and flexibility we have in place to self-manage risk and to work with our customers to satisfy their ongoing fuel requirements, we can be selective and opportunistic with our sourcing of supply, including spot market purchases, and we can be disciplined when considering future investments in our primary supply pipeline.
“The positive market conditions that we expect to benefit our core uranium and fuel services businesses are also presenting significant future growth opportunities for Westinghouse, which we own with our partner Brookfield. In 2024, we saw continued interest in AP1000® new build opportunities in Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Slovenia. In early 2025, Westinghouse announced a settlement agreement in its technology and export dispute with Korea Electric Power Corporation and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd., which resolves the dispute and establishes a framework for additional deployments outside of South Korea, to the mutual and material benefit of Westinghouse, KEPCO and KHNP.
“Cameco will continue to align our production with our contract portfolio and market opportunities, demonstrating that we continue to responsibly manage our supply in accordance with our customers’ needs. We will continue to look for opportunities to improve operational effectiveness, improve our safety performance and reduce our impact on the environment, including through the use of digital and automation technologies to allow us to operate our assets with more flexibility and efficiency. Thanks to our disciplined strategy, our balance sheet is strong, and we expect it will enable us to continue executing our strategy while self-managing risk, including risks related to global macro-economic uncertainty and volatility, and uncertain trade policy decisions.
“We are a responsible, commercial supplier with long-lived, tier-one assets, and a proven operating track record. We are invested across the nuclear fuel cycle and believe we have the right strategy to help achieve a secure energy future in a manner that reflects our values. Embedded in our decisions is a commitment to address the risks and opportunities that we believe will make our business sustainable over the long term.”
Summary of Q4 and 2024 results and developments:
- Annual net earnings of $172 million; adjusted net earnings of $292 million: Annual results reflected a return to our tier-one production level, with higher sales volumes and an improvement in average realized prices as market conditions continued to improve, catalyzed by security of supply concerns. In 2024, we generated $905 million in cash from operations with full year adjusted EBITDA increasing by approximately 73% to over $1.5 billion compared to $884 million in 2023. Our 2024 annual results include $483 million in adjusted EBITDA from our investment in Westinghouse. Adjusted net earnings and adjusted EBITDA are non-IFRS measures, see page 5.
- Fourth quarter net earnings of $135 million; adjusted net earnings of $157 million: Strong fourth quarter results in the uranium and Westinghouse segments contributed to the strong annual results. As expected, quarterly results were impacted by normal variations in contract deliveries and the timing of Westinghouse’s customer requirements, which were heavily weighted to the fourth quarter in 2024. Adjusted net earnings is a non-IFRS measure, see page 5.
- Strong adjusted EBITDA from Westinghouse: Westinghouse reported a full-year net loss of $218 million (our share) as expected, due to the impact of purchase accounting, which required the revaluation of its inventories based on market prices at time of acquisition, and the expensing of some other non-operating acquisition-related transition costs. The impact of these items was largely isolated to the first half of 2024 and are expected to have a smaller impact in future years, although the increased depreciation and amortization charges related to purchase accounting, will impact Westinghouse’s net earnings on an ongoing basis. Our share of adjusted EBITDA, which we view as a measure that better reflects Westinghouse’s underlying performance, was $483 million for the year. Due to normal variability in the timing of its customer requirements, and delivery and outage schedules, we saw stronger performance from the Westinghouse segment in the fourth quarter, which we expect again in the fourth quarter of 2025. See Our earnings from Westinghouse in our annual MD&A for more information.
- Westinghouse technology export: In January 2025, Westinghouse reached a resolution in its technology and export dispute with Korea Electric Power Corporation and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd., which establishes a framework for additional deployments to the mutual and material benefit of all parties.
- Westinghouse distribution: In February 2025 we received $49 million (US), which represents our share of a $100 million (US) distribution paid by Westinghouse. This is the first distribution since the acquisition closed.
- Strong uranium and conversion segment performance: In our uranium segment, we delivered 33.6 million pounds of uranium at an average realized price of $79.70 per pound. Our share of production was 23.4 million pounds in 2024, slightly higher than our expectation of about 23.1 million pounds as a result of record annual production from the Key Lake mill. In our fuel services segment, we delivered 12.1 million kgU under contract at an average realized price of $37.87 per kgU, and produced 13.5 million kgU, which was within our guidance range for 2024.
- Record production at McArthur River/Key Lake: 2024 packaged production of 20.3 million pounds sets both a new annual production record for the Key Lake mill, as well as a world record for annual production from any uranium mill. The increased run rate was made possible in part by our off-cycle investments during care and maintenance in automation, digitization and optimization projects to improve the Key Lake mill. The mill also had access to sufficient ore feed material that included the ore mined at McArthur River in 2024 (which was lower than its plan), supplemented by broken ore inventory at McArthur River and Key Lake that was carried over from prior years and is now largely depleted. See Uranium – Tier-one operations – McArthur River/Key Lake in our 2024 annual MD&A.
- Lower JV Inkai production: Production at Inkai continued to be impacted by the ongoing supply chain issues in Kazakhstan, most notably, related to the stability of sulfuric acid deliveries. As a result, total 2024 production from Inkai on a 100% basis was 7.8 million pounds (3.6 million pounds our share), 0.6 million pounds lower than in 2023. Issues at Inkai carried into 2025 when production was halted on January 1 at the direction of Kazatomprom, the controlling partner in the JV, due to the delayed submission of certain regulatory documents to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy. Production resumed on January 23, 2025. Cameco and Kazatomprom continue to work with JV Inkai to determine the impact of the production suspension on the operation’s 2025 production plans. If Inkai production and/or deliveries vary from our expectations, committed purchases may vary and we will rely on our other sources of supply. See Uranium – Tier-one operations – Inkai in our 2024 annual MD&A.
- Disciplined long-term contracting continues: As of December 31, 2024, in our uranium segment, we had commitments to deliver an average of about 28 million pounds of uranium per year from 2025 through 2029, with commitment levels higher than the average in 2025 through 2027, and lower than the average in 2028 and 2029. Our total portfolio of long-term contracts includes commitments for approximately 220 million pounds of uranium. We continue to have a large and growing pipeline of business under discussion. Our focus continues to be on obtaining market-related pricing mechanisms that benefit from a constructive price environment, while also providing adequate downside protection. In addition, with strong demand in the UF6 conversion market, we were successful in adding new long-term contracts that bring our total contracted volumes to over 85 million kgU of UF6, underpinning our fuel services operations for years to come.
- Solid 2025 financial and operational outlook: In our uranium segment, we continued to execute our strategy in 2024, ramping up our tier-one assets and continuing to optimize performance and reliability. With continuing improvement of market conditions, the long-term contract book we have put in place, and an ongoing pipeline of both on and off-market contracting discussions, our plan is to produce 18 million pounds (100% basis) at each of McArthur River/Key Lake and Cigar Lake in 2025. We are also undertaking capital projects to help ensure reliability and sustainability of our existing operations, including projects to address aging infrastructure and potential bottlenecks at the Key Lake mill and the advancement of freezing at the McArthur River mine. While no decision on changes to future production levels has been made, we will continue to position ourselves for future production flexibility. Following the halt of production in January 2025 at Inkai, production plans for 2025 and subsequent years remain uncertain, and we remain in discussions with JV Inkai and our partner, Kazatomprom, to determine our purchase obligation for 2025. In our fuel services segment, we plan to produce between 13 million and 14 million kgU in 2025 to satisfy our book of long-term business for conversion and fuel services. As a result of these plans, we expect strong financial performance in 2025, including cash flow generation. See Outlook for 2025 and Uranium – Tier-one operations in our 2024 annual MD&A.
- Maintaining financial discipline and balanced liquidity to execute on strategy:
- Strong balance sheet: As of December 31, 2024, we had $600 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $1.3 billion in total debt. We successfully refinanced $500 million senior unsecured debentures in 2024. The refinanced debt matures in 2031 with credit spreads reflective of a higher credit rating than we have currently been assigned. In addition, we have a $1.0 billion undrawn credit facility, which matures October 1, 2028. We expect strong cash flow generation in 2025.
- Focused debt reduction: Thanks to our risk-managed financial discipline and strong cash flow generation, in 2024 we made repayments of $400 million (US) on the $600 million (US) floating-rate term loan that was used to finance the acquisition of Westinghouse. In January 2025, we made the final repayment of $200 million (US), extinguishing the term loan.
- JV Inkai dividend: In 2024, we received a cash dividend from JV Inkai totaling $129 million (US), net of withholdings. JV Inkai distributes excess cash, net of working capital requirements, to the partners as dividends. See Uranium – Tier-one operations – Inkai in our 2024 annual MD&A.
- Increased annual dividend: In November, the board of directors approved an increase to the annual dividend from $0.12 per common share in 2023, to $0.16 per common share in 2024. In addition, to recognize the return to our tier-one run rate, and in line with the principles of our capital allocation framework, we have recommended to our board of directors a dividend growth plan for consideration. Based on this plan, we expect an annual increase of at least $0.04 per common share in each of 2025 and 2026 to achieve a doubling of the 2023 dividend from $0.12 per common share, to $0.24, per common share.
Source: Cameco Corp.
