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.

Brett:

Focusing on the supply and demand fundamentals, I think I caught that first part, understanding the nuances of where the need is and where the markets going. Investing, perhaps with folks like yourself who are doing this on a very intimate focus level, I think is so far what I've gleaned from that. Why is it? I mean, maybe it's not. But it seems like something like this is not as well known to let's say, the average investor or the real estate investor, or the entrepreneur, business owner, perhaps the person is not as familiar or as comfortable in the stock market. Like, could you kind of just talk a little bit about how Uranium and what you guys are doing and how it fits into perhaps a good balanced portfolio?

Scott:

Well, I think, Uranium is probably the best, the biggest untold story around in that, in the United States, today, we get 20% of our electricity from nuclear power, but it is a full 55% of our carbon-free energy. That's twice the contribution of wind and solar. We've always known that of nuclear energy and its resilience. For example, nuclear energy is clean in terms of, emissions is wind and solar. It's as safe as wind and solar, which is surprising. But if you look at the hard data, over the last 60 years, nuclear energy is perhaps the safest form of energy generating we differ from renewables in that we produce energy 95% of the time, renewables only run its best 25 to 35% of the time. You're going to have to figure as a society, how you're going to get that other 70% of your energy supplies and if policymakers are making it very difficult on oil and gas, gas and coal, we really have few options to turn to.

That's what we're seeing is Nuclear energy is really into the headlines. It helps cop 26, the big climate change conference in Glasgow, where the climate change community is almost an elective into the realization that they've been doing this for 26 years, and basically have nothing to show for it in terms of carbon emissions, I think worldwide coal will use will be at a relevance around the world. When people look at nuclear power in that light, in that context, resilient, 24/7 power really is coming more widely. Now investors, whether they're retail, l, investors or Institute and especially those investing in clean energy, sustainable investments, ESG investments, nuclear is now becoming very quickly accepted alongside investments in wind, solar and battery type investments. that's a very new, new situation, I would say, just in the last five years, that nuclear has been considered clean and sustainable, even though the facts have been it's always been. I think we're seeing a lot of investor interest, and both institutional and retail coming into the space these days.

Brett:

Those are some staggering stats, 50% of all the carbon-free energy is coming from it sounds like nuclear power. Yet, it's only it only, we're only using me, it's only 20% of the total amount,? And so in other words, if we can exponentially increase that 20%, to say, even 30, or 40, or 50, or 60. We're gonna see leaps and bounds of exponential carbon-free energy. Is that a fair summary so far on that piece?

Scott:

We're now seeing the next generation of small modular reactors. These are not the 1600 megawatt massive reactors that are going up around the world. These are the 100 200 megawatt reactors that can be built in factories shipped on site. If people are familiar with the nuclear navy or aircraft carriers, and submarines, they all run on small modular reactors and have done so safely since the 1950s. Well, now those are being sited in places like Idaho or Wyoming, or in the UK, where Rolls Royce is rolling out 16 small modular reactors throughout the UK as a scalable, clean energy way to provide electricity to the grid. Again, the growth is not just the reactors that are already operating in the United States, or even under construction around the world, another 51 are under construction presently, we're seeing this next generation.

If you need to get some more information on that look at what Bill Gates is doing with TerraPower in the state of Wyoming, where Warren Buffett's electric utility company is buying one of these modular reactors to replace a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Wyoming near Kemmerer. A great example of how this energy transition can be done in a positive way because impact this is a very traumatic transition to a greener energy economy.no one ever said being green is easy.it's not. And, if we, though can replace some of those last coal-fired jobs in the nuclear energy and Uranium industry in Wyoming, that's a better solution than just saying, well, they can make solar panels or make windmills which, frankly, are all made in other countries like China. We have a great story to tell. The Uranium market is undersupplied because of the low prices which have now only begun to increase we've reached nine-year highs in the Uranium market. Again, spurred on by some of the speculative investment in the commodity itself by Sprott physical Uranium trust, and the need for utilities electric utility companies have been quite complacent about low Uranium prices and haven't been contracting.

These would be companies like Duke Power, epsilon Entergy, Dominion, which may be your local power company that has a nuclear power plant. They've been quite content to buy cheap Uranium off of the spot in the near term market but new cycles emerging where they're gonna have to sign new long term contracts. The problem challenge is that there hasn't been a lot of incentive for Uranium mining companies to get that capacity position and in place to meet the demand. Again, advice on investing in Uranium is to look for those companies that have the resources in good jurisdictions that have the management teams that know how to mine and develop Uranium and have the customer relationships and get these mines into production. With Uranium prices that are really on the move as we speak.

Brett:

That's very fascinating and thought-provoking on so many levels. I do want to focus now on an investor who's listening to this, they can be a high net worth investor on Earth, they need to be an accredited investor. These are the steps to be able to take they say, I like what he's saying, I see the future for the new healer and for the need for it. I feel like I'd want to put in an investment. What would be the steps? Are they working with their financial advisor? Are they going to UraniumRoyalty.com? Scott, kind of work us through how someone might actually invest into what you're talking about?

Scott:

Uranium Royalty, we are. We listed we launched publicly two years ago on the Toronto Stock Exchange. But a really significant development for us was to list on the NASDAQ earlier this year. We're the only pure Uranium company listed on the NASDAQ today. We're a publicly traded equity. Its ticker symbol is UROY on the NASDAQ UEC, our sister company in Uranium mining and development is trading under UEC on the New York Stock Exchange, and these are companies like UEC is one of the highest has the greatest liquidity and trading volume in the Uranium space, trading about seven 8 million shares a day on a company that's now worth about a billion dollars and then who you are sees reached a market cap of about 400 million in a very short two year period.

These are companies that you can invest in the difference between Uranium royalty is if you want a diversified, sort of ETF approach where we are, we're Uranium experts, we spent our entire careers in Uranium we're going out and doing the due diligence on potential offers and miners of brainiac Securing royalties on their minds and allowing investors to benefit from that portfolio. Uranium Energy Corp has the direct leverage to the Uranium story as a producer, developer miner of Uranium into the best jurisdictions in the world, in Wyoming.South Texas. Were in the news recently, in that we acquired the Wyoming Uranium assets of Uranium One, the famous Russian company that was lit and foundation and that chapter in that company's history goodnesses we bought it back out of Russia hands into American ownership and developing on two platforms. But these are two publicly traded companies in the space and give really excellent exposure to Uranium and nuclear energy storage.