The Opportunity of Investing in Uranium with Scott Melbye
Scott Melbye is a 37-year veteran of the nuclear energy industry having held leadership positions in major Uranium mining companies and various industry organizations. He also currently serves as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Uranium Royalty Corp., and as Advisor to the Nuclear Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines. He recently served as Vice President Commercial for Uranium Participation Corporation (now Sprott Physical Uranium Trust), and Advisor to the CEO of Kazatomprom, the world’s largest Uranium producer in Kazakhstan. Through June 2014, Scott Melbye was Executive Vice President, Marketing for Uranium One, responsible for global Uranium sales activities.
Prior to this, he spent 22 years with the Cameco Group of companies, both in the Saskatoon head office and with their U.S. subsidiaries. He most recently served as President of Cameco Inc., the subsidiary responsible for global marketing and trading activities with annual sales exceeding 30 million pounds U3O8. Scott Melbye is President of the Uranium Producers of America and a past Chair of the Board of Governors of the World Nuclear Fuel Market. Scott received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with specialization in International Business from Arizona State University in 1984.
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Brett:
I'm excited about our next guest. He is the chief executive officer and President and Director of Uranium Royalty Corp. He's been a director of the company since 2017. has been also the chief executive officer since October 2019. He has over 37 years of experience in the nuclear energy industry and has held leadership positions as held leadership positions in various Uranium mining companies and industry organizations, and so much more, please welcome to show with me, Scott Melbye. Scott, how are you doing?
Scott:
Brett, it's great to be here with your viewer’s listeners and talk about nuclear energy and how it fits in in the global energy mix today.
Brett:
Beautiful and for our listeners to get to know you for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Scott:
I've been very fortunate to have spent my entire career 37 years today in the nuclear energy and Uranium industry. Everything from brokering and trading Uranium to procuring Uranium fuel for nuclear power plants in Arizona. But the bulk of my career has been with your own companies including three of the four largest Uranium mining companies in the world chemical Corporation and Canada. Kazatomprom, the Kazakh national Uranium company and Uranium One the famous Uranium nuclear fuel cycle company. But lately, in the last six, seven years, I've really been focused on two entrepreneurial endeavours that have been growing Uranium Energy Corp, which is a major investor in Uranium Royalty Corp. One is a mining development and mining company out of Texas, with operations in Texas and Wyoming. Uranium Royalty Corp. is a global royalty and streaming company, which is much more like an ETF that invests in other people's mind developments and provides that multi-exposure to investors. Both are pure plays in the Uranium story, just two different ways to get there.
Brett:
It's gonna be really fascinating topic, I love bringing on industry experts like yourself, especially something that's a little bit not as mainstream. We're gonna be diving all things today about the opportunity of investing in Uranium. But before we go there, Scott, I do want to take one other step back, and I want you to go back maybe to your university days, or your college days. I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life, and they've been given to us to be a blessing and help to others. Some people call them strengths, some people call them superpowers. I'm curious, what are those one or two things or gifts that you believe you were given? How does that help how you help and bless people today?
Scott:
I think it's a blessing, really, for anyone in, in there, in their careers to passion about something and really be able to focus on that. Some people will find these passions early in life, some people find them late as really getting into the resource business. At the time, I didn't know if that would be in gold, or silver, copper, oil and gas, or Uranium, but I just knew I wanted to be in an industry like that, and focused, all of my sort of educational background and experiences around that.it's really kind of gratifying now to look 37 years later and to have really had a fulfilling career in the Uranium industry of all industries. Not exactly a mainstream career, but again, I would just encourage people, to really follow those passions, whatever it is, and focus all their energy on it, nothing comes easy. The rewards go to those who really work hard and make it happen. Again, it's been an interesting time, but I have to say these are probably the most exciting times that I've had in my career for a number of reasons, which I'm sure will we'll discuss.
Brett:
Some passion and focus. The ability to be very passionate about what you do and the education behind it, and then very focused on that industry absolutely love it. Let's dive right into the topic. What's the biggest secret Scott, in regards to investing in Uranium?
Scott:
The key to investing in Uranium is very similar to investing in mineral commodities and resources. It's really focusing on the supply and demand fundamentals. It's one of the things that I like about the resource industries, you can actually look at the demand for whether it's copper, gold, Uranium, you could also look into the mind production and the secondary sources of supply and really come up with a thoughtful forecast of where the commodity is heading. Uranium is probably in one of the most ideal situations right now. In that, we went through a very difficult period after Fukushima, which impacted both supply and demand. On the demand side, we saw Germany move away from nuclear power.
We saw Japan shut down reactors and now slowly restarting them. But something amazing has happened since those times where this whole drive to carbon-free, clean energy has really favoured nuclear power in a way that I haven't seen in my career. So we're seeing growth in nuclear power, about two and a half 3% annual growth. We've had 58 reactors online around the world in the last eight years. Now a new generation of small modular and advanced reactors like Bill Gates is building and Wyoming is really, really hitting this growth story for nuclear energy today. Then on the supply side, because we went through a difficult market with low Uranium prices, Uranium production has lagged Uranium consumption globally, by about 60 million pounds a year, we use about 190 million pounds of Uranium to generate electricity and nuclear power plants around the world.
Production has been coming in well below that for the last four or five years. We have a commodity squeeze going on right now and some other developments in the near term market where we've seen speculative investments like the Sprott Physical Uranium trust coming in and buying upwards of $3.4 billion of Uranium off the open market if you're old enough to remember the bunker hunt in their attempt to corner the silver market. Well, this is much more thought, deep, deeper pockets, attempt to do to really not Uranium market, but really providing them with the physical Uranium commodity. That is, in turn, driving wonderful returns in the Uranium equities. We have just an all-around great story in the Uranium thesis.
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