Uranium American Resources Inc. (OTC:TNGL) earlier this week said it has secured $3.5 million in funding to advance its planned acquisition and development of uranium assets in the western United States.
CEO William Hunter told investors that the financing will support the completion of an $8.5 million transaction to acquire JAG Minerals. The assets include projects in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado.
Proactive: Give people a bit of background on the company itself. It's a company that's really moving forward here.
William Hunter: Yeah, absolutely. Uranium American Resources is a shell that we took over a couple of years ago. What we've been working on is really addressing the US uranium market. As you well know, over the last 20 years, the US has seen a decline in uranium production. We had gotten an agreement to purchase three assets, which I think we'll probably talk about a little bit later, in the Western United States, to be one of the next producers of uranium going forward.
Yeah, we'll talk about those in a second. But to do that, you needed to raise some capital, and you announced that you've done that with some institutional investment—$3.5 million in total. Tell me a little bit about the process of finally getting to this point.
Yeah, it's been a good process. We went out about three or four months ago to really start looking for investment. We started talking to one investor after a conference we went to, and it's been fantastic. They are big believers in US uranium as well as just US production. Given where our assets are, they were big believers in the area. They basically said, hey, let's get on board with the company and go from there.
This now gives you the capital to complete the acquisition of JAG Minerals, and that's the key part of this. As you mentioned, those are the assets you're looking at. Tell me what you're able to complete here and really what the future holds.
Yeah, so we're really pleased. We announced the transaction a little over a year ago. It's an $8.5 million acquisition of three assets in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. The $8.5 million is made up of $6.5 million of stock that the selling shareholders are taking and $2 million in cash. This $3.5 million will really allow us to get that transaction closed, reset the company, and start drilling at the first asset, which is State Line. This really gives us the ability to take that forward.
Let's talk about it right now. What are you looking at drilling-wise? Where are you looking on the project, and really what stage is this project at?
These are exploration-stage assets. Although I will say they're less exploration-stage than many. All of these assets have either had production or had resource estimates in the past. The main asset, Marysvale, was what was most exciting because it had a three million pound resource on it back in the 2000s. It was a big open-pitable asset. But once we got looking at State Line—which we call State Line because it's on the state line of Colorado and Utah—there were 19 previously producing assets. They were small producers. They have slope access, which has been great. We've been able to get into that slope access. They previously produced uranium in grades that were not only acceptable but pretty good, as well as having greater than 1% vanadium. When we started looking at State Line, we said what we need to do is get underground and start drilling at those 19 assets, then progress them towards production.
Is the importance of uranium and especially having a North American supply really the speed factor here in trying to get yourself to a place where you can start producing as quickly as possible?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure everybody out there has seen a number of the announcements. The large tech firms are really getting into the nuclear field because they need additional electricity for data centers, for cryptocurrency, for all these things. But there's no real reliable supply of uranium—large, reliable supply—in the United States. That's really been the focus. The administration was in Pittsburgh today talking to the tech companies as well as the energy companies around this very topic. The biggest example is Three Mile Island. They're going to resume the second reactor because Microsoft is going to end up taking 100% of that power. It's a fantastic time to be in the industry. The need is there.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity