Cameco reaps $55M profit after 5 quarters of losses

After losing money for five consecutive quarters, a period its chief executive has called one of the toughest in company history, Cameco Corp. is reporting a $55 million profit in the first three months of the year.

The Saskatoon-based uranium miner attributed its gains — booked on revenues totalling $439 million — to the restructuring of its Kazakh joint venture, as well as higher uranium sales and prices.

“We remain cautiously more optimistic than we were a year ago,” Tim Gitzel, the company’s president and CEO, told reporters and industry analysts on a conference call after the announcement Friday.

“The uranium price still starts with a ‘2,’ which as I’ve said before is both the source of our caution and our optimism,” he added, noting that an effective moratorium on new production should drive up prices as reactor construction fuels demand.

Cameco has struggled in the face of persistently weak prices, which have plunged about 70 per cent since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster drastically reduced global demand for nuclear fuel. The company responded by cutting costs — including temporarily closing two mines and a mill in northern Saskatchewan, resulting in hundreds of layoffs — but until recently continued to lose money.

Cameco reported an annual loss of $205 million in 2017. In the first quarter of that year it booked an $18-million loss on revenues totally $393 million — leading Gitzel to describe it as one of the most difficult years in company history.

Gitzel said that Cameco has not made any decision about when its McArthur River mine and Key Lake mill will restart. The term, or contract, price of uranium needs to be higher for that to happen, he said.