The Conversation (0)
Fission Uranium has continued to make waves in the uranium space this year. To get some more insight into the company, Resource Investing News spoke with Dev Randhawa, chairman and CEO of Fission, about what milestones the company is hoping to reach this year and whether Fission is looking at selling.
Most recently, Fission reported positive step-out results 550 meters west of Triple R, and while further drilling is necessary to see whether that mineralization is connected to the main deposit, the news certainly bodes well for the project.
To get some more insight into the company, Resource Investing News spoke with Dev Randhawa, chairman and CEO of Fission, about what milestones the company is hoping to reach this year and whether Fission is looking at selling. Randhawa also spoke about his views on the uranium market in general and about what’s kept him bullish on the metal for so long.
RIN: Following the release of Fission’s better-than-expected initial resource estimate, David Talbot said that the Rs in Triple R should stand for “real big, rich grades and ripe for the picking.” Is Fission entertaining the idea of selling?
DR: I can’t comment on when someone will try to buy us because it’s not something we can control. Our role as management is to monetize shareholder wealth. With the success we’ve seen in the last two years, my feeling is we have earned the right to keep developing the project for a while yet, but like I said, we but we can’t control when someone will try to buy the company.
RIN: Any other milestones investors might be on the lookout for this year?
DR: We [are] aiming to have a preliminary economic assessment( PEA) complete by the end of the summer. This is going to put some numbers to the project in terms of what it would take to put it into production. We think the grade, size, basement rock geology and the close proximity to surface place the Triple R deposit in the top band of economic deposits, but there’s a process you need to go through to prove it and a preliminary PEA is the first step. Of course, this is going to further de-risk the project, so that’s a good thing for our investors.
We’re going to keep growing the R780 zone — the largest mineralized zone in the Triple R deposit — but we’re also looking for other zones. A great example is the R600W zone. We first encountered mineralization there in 2013, but we just had so many great targets that we didn’t follow up on it until March 2015. That follow up has resulted in a fast-growing, high-grade zone that has the same geology and shallow depth as the Triple R deposit, yet is over half a kilometer from the deposit. We don’t know if they’re all part of the same mineralized trend or if we’ve discovered something altogether new. We need to do more drilling to find that out, but the R600W zone shows that PLS continues add value to shareholders.
RIN: Fission recently acquired 12 percent of Fission 3.0, which was originally spun out from Fission Uranium. I know you’ve stated that it was due to your bullish outlook on uranium, but why spin out a third company only to reacquire some of it?
DR: Well first let me say that we never wanted to spin out a third company. It happened when we were negotiating the takeover of our former joint venture partner, Alpha Minerals, to obtain 100-percent control of the PLS project. Due to the constraints involved in getting the deal done, it’s what we needed to do to deliver the most value for our shareholders. My job as a CEO is to create value for shareholders, so we spun out the rest of our portfolio, along with the patent-pending airborne survey we developed with Special Projects, and that became Fission 3.0.
Today, Fission 3.0 has one of the most prospective uranium exploration portfolios in the uranium sector. We’ve used our airborne survey and our intimate knowledge of the basin to stake land that we believe may host mineralization similar to the style we’ve found at PLS: high grade, near surface and hosted in basement rock. So we’ve got this great project generator that we feel strongly is undervalued because of the depressed uranium market. From a spot price low of around $28 in 2014, it’s now just under $40 and continues to climb. At some point share prices are going to start following suit, so we felt that given the prospects for Fission 3.0 there was an opportunity to add some value for the shareholders of both companies before prices rise.
RIN: What is it about the portfolio of properties that Fission 3.0 has that should catch investors’ attention, even if it is early on?
DR: Our properties have the same earmarks as PLS: shallow, basement rock and on-surface radioactive anomalies. PLS has been a wake-up call that shallow is possible. We’ve developed some techniques and optimized our skills with geophysics, radiometrics and radon surveys to help us identify the right signatures required to find high-grade, shallow deposits.
RIN: You’ve been bullish on uranium for many years. What keeps you bullish and what do you tell disheartened investors?
DR: No commodity is ever priced correctly. It’s either overbought or oversold depending on whether greed or fear is driving sentiment. Uranium is oversold right now. The price is too low for many producers to make any money, which is why we’ve seen even near-term production projects stalled or halted. On top of that we’ve seen technical difficulties in Africa, labor disputes in North America and politics in Eastern Europe adversely affecting supply.
So I stay bullish because the supply side is under increasing pressure and the supply overhang that analysts were talking about last year is disappearing. While supply is struggling, demand is going the other way. Perhaps if China wasn’t growing its nuclear capacity at the pace it is then I might be more cautious, but I think it’s really just a matter of time before the market improves.
RIN: Thank you for joining me today.
DR: Thank you.
Securities Disclosure: I, Teresa Matich, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Editorial Disclosure: The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in the interviews it conducts. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.
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