Uranium Week: Buyers’ Strike

The spot uranium price fell sharply last week as sellers became more agitated.

-Uranium spot price falls -US$7/lb
-Kazatomprom warns of lack of inventory
-Still no news on Russian uranium sanctions

By Greg Peel

Industry consultant TradeTech’s weekly uranium spot price indicator last week fell -US$7.00 to US$86.00/lb and is now down -19% from its US$107/lb peak earlier this year.

The price remains at a 16-year high and is up 72% year on year, and 385% above the decade-low seen in 2016.

The recent price fall is attributed to two main factors, TradeTech notes, and they are both related to the psychological impact of triple digits.

When the spot price crossed the US$100/lb mark, utilities, who are not major spot market participants at the best of times, declined to buy at such prices. Speculative entities, now holding vast amounts of physical material, saw triple digits as a good place to take profits, having spent years amassing their inventories.

But even as prices fell back into the nineties, and speculative volumes were cleared, utilities showed little interest, and sellers, mostly intermediaries, became frustrated and started lowering prices. Five transactions were reported last week at prices between US$90 and US$84/lb.

Kazatomprom

Kazakhstan’s mostly state-owned uranium producer Kazatomprom, which represents some 40% of global U3O8 supply, released its 2023 earnings result last week. Ahead of the release, Citi was expecting a 2025 U3O8 production target downgrade and/or lower inventory levels, citing constrained sulphuric acid availability and ramp-up challenges that make Kazatomprom’s current 2025 production target unlikely.

Read the full article here: https://fnarena.com/index.php/2024/03/19/uranium-week-buyers-strike/