Skip to main content

Justin Huhn – Part 6 Of Nuclear Fuels Demand/Supply Factors- Pro Tips On Investing In Uranium Stocks

The KE Report Jun 24, 2026 46:31

Summary

Uranium demand growth is confirmed by operating reactors and life extensions, but utilities are mostly uncovered beyond two years.

The fuel cycle bottleneck has shifted back to raw uranium as conversion and enrichment capacity is already secured.

Producers keep missing guidance while new supply slips past 2030, leaving a gap the guest calls severe in the early 2030s.

Secondary demand from financial vehicles, sovereign stockpiles, SMRs and military buyers is barely modeled by consensus.

Sector leadership has tracked liquidity and market cap, leaving exploration and development stocks largely orphaned.

Justin Huhn's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The guest's central argument is that primary demand alone — roughly 440 operating reactors plus life extensions, restarts and 35 to 36 reactors under construction in China — is already de-risked, and that even with every named new supply project ramping to full output the market still moves into a large deficit around 2032–33 that widens steeply into the mid-to-late 2030s.
  • He says the bottleneck is shifting back to the uranium front end, since utilities that locked up conversion and enrichment capacity still lack the yellow cake to feed it; roughly 150 million of long-term contracting was signed over about the last ten months, and the term price as of June 2026 sits at $94 a pound, up about $14 in a year.
  • He treats secondary demand as the under-modelled upside: about 6.5 million pounds from the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust year to date in 2026 alone, plus sovereign stockpiling, hyperscaler and SMR demand he models from 2031, military demand, and utility restocking above burn rate.
  • On supply he names the specific limits to the bull case — Kazatomprom's decline rates arriving before 2032, Cameco's Cigar Lake finishing in 2036 and MacArthur River in 2041, and Aero's output ranging anywhere from 5 million to 29 million pounds a year entirely at the company's discretion.
  • He says a quiet sector is his favourite kind of market and that both of his portfolios hold a large cash position into it, expecting another four to six weeks of softness before a bottom ahead of the WNA conference in September, with procurement activity and prices firming through Q3–Q4.

Shad Markowitz's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The host frames the setup as a quiet market rather than a broken thesis: spot has sat in the mid-$80s for three months after a January spike, uranium has no buzz at the conferences he attends where everyone is talking copper, and he notes the screens show a run of lower highs and lower lows that could mean more risk-off drift.
  • He puts the cycle in historical view — the 2011 Fukushima peak, uranium in the $17 to $18 range where he thought $60 to $70 was the break-even, the 2021 post-pandemic run when equities went up 3x, 5x and 10x, then the sideways 2023 to 2025 corrective period — to argue the current pullback repeats a known pattern.