Westwater Resources Inc (WWR) 2007 Q2 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Good morning. My name is Judith, and I will be your conference operator today At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Uranium Resources, Inc., second quarter 2007 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS).

  • Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Ms. Deborah Pawlowski. Ma'am, you may begin your conference.

  • - IR

  • Thank you, Judith, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest in Uranium Resources. Before I get started, I just want to mention if you've had trouble logging in on the website, you need to hit the refresh button and try one more time. Also, it's listed as August 9th, the name may not have gotten refreshed yet. But it is on there, and an alternative is to go to viavid.net. We're listed there. You can listen in from that point.

  • With that, let me introduce who I have on the call with me today. I have the company's Chairman, Paul Willmott; President and CEO, Dave Clark; Tom Erhlich, Chief Financial Officer; and also Rick Van Horn, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Dave and Tom are going to review the second quarter results, as well as go into the strategy and outlook for the company, and then follow the discussion with Q and A. I'm going to introduce first Paul, however, so that he can make introductory remarks.

  • If you don't have the press release discussing our financial results, you can find it on our website at uraniumresources.com. We also have information available at sec.gov. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during the formal presentation and the Q and A portion of the teleconference. Statements apply to future events, which are subject to risks and uncertainties as well as other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from where we are today. These factors are outlined in our earnings release as well as in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can find them at our website or the SEC's website so please review our forward-looking statements in conjunction with these precautionary factors. So with that, let me turn it over to Paul to begin the discussion. Paul?

  • - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Deb. It was a little over a year ago that we announced the implementation of our strategic plan under the guidance of Dave Clark, who had agreed to join the company as President and Chief Operating Officer. Since that time, we have further announced our objectives of becoming a 10 million pound producer, 2014. The profitability of our South Texas operations being the financial and operational bridge through our extensive resources and future in New Mexico. So as recent quarterly earnings can attest, we are well on the way to the achievement of these goals.

  • We continue to find ourselves surrounded by emerging opportunities within the business. It has been apparent for some time that we've needed to expand the roles so our executive team to take full advantage of these opportunities, therefore a pleasure to announce Dave Clark becoming the Chief Executive Officer. It is with great personal pleasure for me to announce that Rick Van Horn would assume the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Rick and I have worked together for over 30 years. Started with our days at Union Carbide. In his ten years with me at Uranium Resources, Rick has proven a valuable personal confidant, a partner, and an effective leader as we position the company that emerged from the early dark days of the uranium market. I look forward to Rick's continued valuable contribution to the corporation as we now march into the future.

  • With that, I will turn the teleconference over to Dave to discuss our second quarter performance. Dave?

  • - CEO, President

  • Thank you, Paul. I'd like to make a comment on that as well before I get into results. For the last 12 years, Paul has been Chairman, President, CEO, and COO of the company. And he saw us through some very tough times, even to the point of being down to one employee in the year 2000. The fact is, this company would never survive without Paul's leadership, and passion, and his belief in this company, this industry, and these people.

  • We would not be in the position we are now to implement the strategic plan if it hadn't been for Paul. He was the one who acquired the majority of the property in New Mexico. He's the one who built this great management team. The fact is, it's now reached the point where it takes three people to do what only a year ago Paul was doing alone, and I think that's a really good sign that we're serious about what we're trying to do in implementing our plan. I look forward to working with Paul and Rick in the future. I think it's a strong team.

  • Given we had the webcast from New York and the annual meeting only four weeks ago, I'm just going to give you updates since then and not get into further discussion. In the first half of the year, we produced 245,000 pounds. We sold 194,000 pounds. And at the end of June, we had 90,000 pounds in inventory that had not been sold. That was primarily a result of the dryer problems we had in the second quarter, and the ability to work off the inventory by the end of the quarter and then ship it out for sales in the third quarter. Since the annual meeting four weeks ago, we had start-up new well field on July 19th, well field 14. It's the continuation, same ore body as well field 13 and well field 13 has been a great ore body. We already have 80% recovery from that. And well field 14 looks very similar. We think this together is going to be able to reach our objective this year, which is produce 4 to 500,000 pounds a year.

  • The objective moving forward as I said in the past is produce profits, not pounds. There are logistical considerations on how we [bremel well fields] such as Kingsville dome, on the timing and startup of Rosita. Again, it's important to realize that the reserves in the ground are precious things, and we want to get them out as promptly as possible, and to do that, we think the range of 4 to 500,000 pounds a year is [well considered.] we also announced in the release that we had extended the decision date PID, preliminary investment decision with Itochu. Originally under our contract, it was supposed to be made by April 1st, and that was extended to August 1st, and now we've extended another six months. Both companies are interested in bringing this project on as quickly as possible, and resolve the Indian country issue back in the 10th Circuit Court. There's important strategic considerations on extending this decision the way we are doing it. And given the issue is in court there's no reason to do that.

  • I'd add that Itochu is a very valuable partner, given their position, not only as being one of the 500 largest companies in the world, but they're well entrenched in New Mexico. They have a great relationship with the state government in New Mexico, and we see them as a great strategic partner in helping us implement our aggressive strategic plan which is to produce 10 million pounds a year by 2014 , which 80 to 90% of that will be coming from New Mexico. To get that plan implemented, it's obviously going to take a lot of massing up from our part, and we see Itochu as a key strategic partner in doing that. We are discussing issues across the board, not only Church Rock but non-Indian development in New Mexico and other projects in Texas. So moving forward, Itochu is a very important part for us.

  • I would like to close with just some observations on the uranium market, which has obviously been moving downhill lately. I think I made the comment, possibly at the annual meeting, that it could be a nasty fraction. I don't think anything has changed as far as long-term fundamentals in this market. We're still in the process of making the renaissance into a reality, and I still believe that's going to happen. And I think what's going on now is just a health-restoring correction. We were at a point where it was an extreme sellers market where producers and sellers were almost afraid to sell material and going up because they thought they would get lower prices in the market at the time of delivery. It's no longer an extreme seller's market. At this point, it may even be a buyer's market. I don't know that that's a bad thing.

  • My own perspective, over the last several years we've seen a lot of money thrown into this industry, most of it in speculation. A lot of it wasn't going to advance the nuclear industry as a whole or the uranium industry in particular. I think the higher prices started to give concerns to utilities, because price is a measure of scarcity, and if the price keeps going higher and we hear these projections of the price going to 200 or $300 a pound, the question is, will you have the renaissance if there's not enough fuel to fuel it. So as a market, we're back to where we were in 1960. Is there enough uranium to build these reactors, if utilities they think there are problems, they won't build the reactors, and we won't have strong markets. So I think the end -- unending upward spiral in the short-term prices is related to utilities. I think that's a good thing. Reinforce their belief that the uranium will be there. And I think that's what we need to do as an industry, is we need to make sure that happens.

  • Once they order these reactors they're going to order the first cores, so that will bring demands not six years or seven years forward but they will be buying and processing their first cores immediately, and that will add to the demand in the marketplace. As a drop in price I think helps support demand, and growing demand, and the renaissance. I think it also raises the question on the supply side. We've had all these projects ever escalating, a lot of interest in uranium. The fact is if there's a question in price it could put some of these projects on hold and I don't think that's a bad thing for existing producers like URI. So from a general market perspective, I believe the renaissance is still in place. Short term price weakness I think is a healthy correction. It will help bring this demand to the market. It could limit supply and I think that's a good thing.

  • As far as where the uranium price could go, who knows. I've been in the business of forecasting uranium prices for a long time. Markets have a funny way of reversing themselves, kind of like the stock market right now, where the price goes down, you say, I'll wait until it turns, all of a sudden it turns, then you rush back to buy in. There's still a lot of speculative demand in this market. People aim to buy when they still a bottom, there's still a lot of utilities with demand, there's producers with demand, and it's simply a question now where's the bottom where, do you see that, and what happens afterwards. That's when the music stops and people who may have waited too long rush in to buy, and that's when you get the next leg up.

  • So with that I will turn it over to Tom Erhlich for a review of the second quarter and first six months of financials. Tom.

  • - CFO

  • Thank you, Dave.

  • What I'm going to do is go over and summarize and highlight some of the financial results that we've achieved for the first quarter -- I'm sorry, the second quarter. We're really excited about some of the numbers that are in here. Just want to cover first off our sales during the quarter, about 114,400 pounds. Our average price was just under $70 a pound, creating revenues just under $8 million. We saw increases in the second quarter of '07 compared to the first quarter of about 35,000 pounds in sales. Our sales price was up over $12 a pound, and our revenues came in higher of about $3.4 million.

  • Our current sales price going into the first full month of the third quarter , as well as the early part of August, we realized a sales price of about $84 a pound. So we're continuing to see some upward pressures with the spot price turning over a little bit recently we may not be able to sustain that high level, but at the current spot price and the current long-term price, we would be realizing just under $80 a pound if prices held constant of where they are currently today. In the cost of sales category, on those 114,000, roughly, pounds, our cost of sales were $29.44 a pound, compared to just over $41 a pound in the previous quarter. Our royalties, cost of royalties during the quarter was $982,000. And compared to $439,000 in the previous quarter.

  • As Dave mentioned earlier, we had about almost 90,000 pounds of inventory that was accumulated by the end of the second quarter. He mentioned some of the reasons for that. During the first -- the first month of the quarter in July and early August, we had had sold about 64% of that year -- of that quarter-end inventory. So it's not like we're holding on to the inventory. We are turning it over and getting it out the door. Our production numbers had about [technical issues] thousand pounds per quarter, average cost of production was just under $28 at $27.78. First quarter's production was 109,000 pounds, and our average production cost there was about $34 a pound.

  • Moving down into a significant cost that we had during the quarter is our general administrative expense. Second quarter was about $2.5 million compared to about $2.2 million during the second quarter. A big piece of that I know each of those quarters [technical issues].,

  • - IR

  • Tom, we're getting some static from your line.

  • - CFO

  • Is that better?

  • - IR

  • Yes.

  • - CFO

  • Sorry about that. Stock compensation expense makes up a big piece of that in each of the first and second quarters, about $780,000 for each one.

  • Our net cash balance at the end of June was $16.5 million, which compares right on target with where we were at the end of March, $16.6 million. The other major factor that I want to point out is on the cash flow statement, cash flow from operations during the second quarter was about $4 million, compared to the same number for the first quarter, which was about $730,000. We continue to expend capital for our projects. During the second quarter, we had increase at Kingsville Dome roughly $2.5 million. We continue to spend money for the drill-out program in south Texas. About $1 million. But again, we'll continue to see the results of those drill-out programs once that's completed.

  • That concludes my piece of it. Dave, I'll turn it back to you.

  • - CEO, President

  • I think we're ready for questions and answers.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q-and-A roster. Your first question is coming from [Peter Homans of Parkman].

  • - Analyst

  • Hi, Dave. Just one observation on your comments on price before a question. The consultants I've spoken to they say a very important part of the weakness in spot is the fact that most utilities have sort of walking around money which they can spend without discretion, so they've participants at auctions which sometimes have two-week lead times. They've run through those discretionary, sort of walking around money dollars, but they still have -- they plan to buy uranium for the rest of the year. It's just that they can't appear at an auction that requires a one-week response. So several consultants I've spoken to have said that it is the observation of speculators when they go ton a auction and they see five buyers where there were 20 the previous time, that that must indicate a lack of demand. What it indicates in their mind is just the utility buyers having to operate in a different fashion. For what it's worth.

  • But I was wondering, there's also a -- some confusion that I keep on hearing about in the marketplace regarding the reserves you all report and you have stated several months ago you have -- in New Mexico 92 million pounds of reserves, and that's using the FTC method, which is far more conservative than the method that all the Canadian companies use. How many -- and the inference people are drawing, which I think personally is incorrect, and you can comment, is that if that's all you have reported, that's all you have, but I wondered if you'd comment on how many acres of the 180,000 acre position that you own in New Mexico does that 92-million pound reserve comprise, and is it not true that if you thought that the other acreage was not promising, in terms of possession reserves you wouldn't be holding it?

  • - CEO, President

  • I'll let Rick answer the percentage of what is on reserves and what is land, but I'll comment first on -- let me take your first comment as far as utility buying at auctions. I think that I've heard those same things. There's also talk, which has been true, from my experience of the last thirty years, is seasonal weakness, because most utilities, particularly in Europe, go on vacation from June through August. So when there is weakness in the market, it's been in the third quarter generally. As far as reserves itself, the 92 million pounds, as you said, is SEC does not include inferred reserves. And for those who aren't up on that, there's measured, indicated, and inferred. It's a subject of measure by the third-party source, as to what comprises measured, indicated, and inferred.

  • Outside the U.S. you can talk about inferred. We can't. So the 92 million pounds is not all that we would have if we were including inferred. It also does not include the pounds we have been finding on the Checkerboard Santa Fe land. In some cases, one or two million pounds on this. The focus has been to look at Ambrosia Lake area because it appears to be ISR amenable, and it's not on Indian country land, so our geologists have been focusing on that area to look at these ore bodies. The 92,000 pounds does not include those numbers either, so there's additional pounds there. I'll turn it over to Rick as far as the bigger picture and the reserve base on the 183,000 acres. Rick.

  • - EVP, COO

  • The 92 million pounds is contained in our major ore areas. [Locahonda], Ex Largo, Nose Rock, Church Rock, and Crownpoint. Of the 180,000 acres, approximately 60 to 70% of that 180,000 acres are on trend. In other words, there could be uranium there, but no drilling has been done on it, and we have no data on it, but it was picked up because it was on trend that filled in the holes between ore bodies. And some day we may do some exploration on it, but right now it has no data on it whatsoever.

  • - Analyst

  • So the inference that a lot of investors have drawn because the company has a long and storied history with reports going back into pre-SEC days, I keep on hearing numbers like 200 million pounds, 300 million pounds. And when you say 92 million pounds, the inference that people draw is hey, that's all they've got. But the reality is, you have two kinds of land. You have 40 to 50%, if I did the math right.

  • - IR

  • 30 to 40.

  • - Analyst

  • 30 to 40% of the land is land where you, in addition to owning the land, you acquired the investigative geological data from the original owner, so you developed the 92 million pound reserve number from mining that data, not drilling new holes. But you have a whole other 60 to 70% of the land that you have, which I presume, given you didn't have much cash a couple years ago, you would have sold if you didn't think it had prospects, which -- about which you can say we are holding it because we think it has promise, but we simply haven't done the exploration to do it, and to assume that the 92 million pounds is it, because that's all you can talk about, is, in my opinion, and confirm this if you agree, in my opinion, a dubious inference.

  • - CEO, President

  • I'd say that's a yes. The old numbers, that we talked about earlier, the company picked up a lot of properties in 1997 from Santa Fe and turned a lot of those back. Other properties were turned back. A lot of those were picked up by other companies in New Mexico that these properties were formally owned and the companies had to make choices in the bear market and didn't have the financial resources to hold on to all these things. So the pounds that were quoted before, that was the company before.

  • - Analyst

  • But still you do have 60 to 70% of the acreage that is on trend, and there's no reason to assume, for any reason, to assume that if it's on trend, and you own it, that exploration could produce additions to reserves.

  • - CEO, President

  • Correct. It was properties that were never drilled.

  • - Analyst

  • Exactly. Right. So you don't know -- like Rumsfeld said, you don't know what you don't know.

  • - CEO, President

  • Right.

  • - Analyst

  • Thanks a lot. Great quarter.

  • - CEO, President

  • Thanks, Peter.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. Your next question is coming from William Vogel of Harbor View Asset Management.

  • - Analyst

  • Yes, I wanted to just see if you could give us an update on the data investigation that you discussed a couple of weeks ago in New York, when you think that study is going to be completed? And then I have a follow-up.

  • - CEO, President

  • You want to take that, Rick?

  • - EVP, COO

  • Yes. When we estimated originally that we'd be done at the end of the the second quarter, it's turning out to be a much bigger job than we had had thought, and we are proceeding with the scanning of logs, and the digitizing of maps and the -- including the ore reserve reports and anything else that we had. Right now it looks like we are going to be complete with this by the end of the year. This is based on the number of logs we're scanning per day. We're scanning about 80 logs a day, sometimes 100 a day. And right now we're sitting at about 36, 3,700 logs complete, and contrast. In other words, we have verified they are of quality enough so that we can do the automatic digitizing of computers. So again, we're looking at the data, making our first pass through the data, the first complete pass through the data by the end of the year.

  • - Analyst

  • So how does that data organization exercise relate to the 91 -- or the 92 million pounds of reserve that were discussed by the last caller?

  • - EVP, COO

  • The 92 million pounds of reserves, we've already gone through the data on that, and that's how we -- that's how we are able to report the 92 million pounds. What we're doing now, as Dave commented on, we're going through, especially through Ambrosia Lake, and we're looking at that small individual sections of land, which is what we have. We have a checkerboard of land through that area. To see if there are small ore bodies that can be exploited using the in situ recovery method. We have found several of these and our geologists are working on these right now, and that's the main thing we're doing with this data mining right now is trying to identify the deposits in non-Indian country so we can proceed with ISR mining.

  • - Analyst

  • So the short answer is they would represent incremental targets.

  • - EVP, COO

  • That is correct.

  • - Analyst

  • Great. Thank you so much, and good quarter.

  • - CEO, President

  • Thank you, and that will be on top of the 92 million pounds.

  • - Analyst

  • One other follow-up. Regarding -- you mentioned something about average price realizations might be in the high 80s. Could you add a little color to how you arrived at that?

  • - CFO

  • The price realizations I refer to are the actual sales prices, and again, the sales prices were directly the result of the amounts that were billed for the sales that were made during the month of July.

  • - Analyst

  • Oh, I'm sorry, maybe I misheard it, so you didn't say anything about prospective price realizations?

  • - CFO

  • what I did say, if you took the current spot price and the current long-term price, and assume no changes to that, we would be realizing a price just under $80 a pound.

  • - CEO, President

  • The contracts have up to a two-month put back. So assuming the price stays the same for two months, and that's what the price would be.

  • - CFO

  • Correct.

  • - Analyst

  • Got it. Thank you very much.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. Your next question is coming from [Al Zann of Greenwood Partners.]

  • - Analyst

  • Good morning and congratulations. My first question has already been answered. My secondary question would be -- I think we all know that CANOCO is having some difficulties. My question would be, how does this affect you and your bottom line? Thank you.

  • - CEO, President

  • Good question. CANOCO had its initial problem with Cigar Lake last October. They were expecting to come on line in 2008. That's now been pushed back to 2010 with guidance that that may slip to 2011 or possibly further. So you're removing 18 million pounds of supply from the market, which would have been here, so it has a material impact I guess on everybody in the industry, and was the prime cause of the price moving up, and there was additional flooding problems with a typhoon in Australia on Ranger.

  • Then start up problems from new producers. Production is not an easy thing in uranium. If the problems that start up are the norm, not the exception. The fact that CANOCO keeps 18 million pounds off the market, it does keep us stronger. When I got back into this market a year ago, the feeling was that the market might top out in 2009, 2010, weaken through 2013 when the Russian HQ agreement expired, and then improve after that. The fact with Cigar Lake going down you basically removed a similar quantity that the Russians are supplying now, at least through 2010, so it had a major effect.

  • - Analyst

  • Your stock price move in the last couple of days, in a very volatile market, shows you that the market is taking that in to considerations congratulations, guys. You've done a great job.

  • - CEO, President

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Your next question is coming from David Snow of Energy Equities.

  • - Analyst

  • Yes, hi. In New York, I believe Rick had said at Church Rock or presumably Crownpoint also, we can build a plant at Church Rock, we just can't mine it right now. My question is, why not put your additional mill at Church Rock or Crownpoint and under that NRC license, and mine from that off non-Indian lands.

  • - EVP, COO

  • That is exactly what we're planning on doing, by looking at these small ore bodies in Ambrosia Lake. We would -- if these prove to be amenable to in situ, we would then build the plant which we are licensed to build, and then mine the non-Indian ground.

  • - Analyst

  • how long would it take for that to happen?

  • - EVP, COO

  • Well, you have to permit the ground. I'd say 18 months to two years, something like that, after we prove that we have the in situ reachable material in the ground, and that's going to take some drilling.

  • - Analyst

  • So by the end of the year you will do your data mining, and when would you start drilling?

  • - EVP, COO

  • Well, these things, to the extent we find these small ore bodies and we identify them, we then have to get drilling permits, we have to permit the property, we then verify that the metallurgy is acceptable for in situ reach. These are parallel paths we go down. We don't have to do all of the data mining before we start this program.

  • - Analyst

  • You might start drilling late this years, early next year?

  • - EVP, COO

  • There's a possibility, but I cannot commit to that. It depends on how the rest of the data comes out as far as these individual small ore bodies. We're currently looking at two of them.

  • - Analyst

  • My real question was, why not build a conventional mill under that NRC license. Does it extend to a conventional mill in the's not mill-specific, type of mill, is it?

  • - EVP, COO

  • Yes, it is. The NRC license we have is for an in situ recovery plant.

  • - Analyst

  • In Nose Rock, you own 18 but not 14 mine shaft, is that right? And who owns 14?

  • - EVP, COO

  • I don't understand the question with 18 and 14. We have an 18-foot diameter shaft and a 14-foot diameter shaft on section 31. We own both of those. We own both of those.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay. Those are the foot diameter.

  • - EVP, COO

  • Yes.

  • - Analyst

  • And Dave Clark had said that I think certainly with this -- within this year, you will see the mill question resolved. Dave what do you have in mind?

  • - CEO, President

  • I continue to make that statement. I think you'll see advancing on the mill question by the end of the year.

  • - Analyst

  • I'm just wondering what you have in mind, how that will happen.

  • - CEO, President

  • There's a lot of things going on, and there is a BC plant up for sale, there's an industry group working on it. I would just stay with the statement that by the end of the year, you will see something that will advance the mill question.

  • - Analyst

  • Then in Texas you have almost no reserves, whereas a year ago you had targeted 45 million pounds. And I think you had about 30 of those not owned and 16 were targeted. Can you bring us up to date on your thinking about whether your plans have changed or the reserves are harder to get, or are you still expecting to get them all over time or what?

  • - CEO, President

  • When the company made the offering in May of last year, a lot of the --what was discussed was properties that could be picked up after the offering, after the company had the financial wherewithal to acquire these properties. We acquired one of them. We're in the process of acquiring a second. We acquired a third property that was not in discussion at that point in time. The big lands down there are the big ranchers, the King and Kennedy ranchers. There's been no movement or leasing on those at this point in time. Certainly we and other people are interested in that.

  • When you talk about 45 million pounds, whatever the number was, I don't recall what it was, those were perspective lands where we think there's land. There's a lot of exploration potential in Texas. We are still in the drill-out program. We have enough pounds to do 4 to 500,000 pounds per year through 2009. In that respect, though, nothing has changed in the last four weeks, other than we now have some additional properties to drill, and we'll be doing that.

  • - Analyst

  • Is there any progress being made on acquiring those additional targets? The bigger ones, or is that just something you can't talk about --

  • - CEO, President

  • That's been a competitive environment. I'd rather not comment.

  • - Analyst

  • okay. You said that -- this is Rick Horn again. You said in New York you sit right on top of the Mount Taylor mine which is in section 24. You are actually next to it, not on top of it, are you?

  • - EVP, COO

  • We're north of it. North and contiguous.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay. So it would lend itself to a joint operation, I guess.

  • - EVP, COO

  • It's a possibility.

  • - Analyst

  • Are you in the same section of ore?

  • - EVP, COO

  • Yes.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay. All right. And where is the BHP Billiton plant that you're talking about? Is that the Mount Taylor area or what?

  • - EVP, COO

  • It's about 12 miles -- about 10 miles to the south and west.

  • - Analyst

  • That would be a good central plant, I guess.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). You have a follow-up question coming from Peter Homans of Parkman.

  • - Analyst

  • Two quickies. Where are you on providing scientific data on in situ, which I gather you had historic, then you also had some people from New Mexico come down and visit Texas. Where are you on that project because that relates to the Navajo negotiations, and secondly, I had another question which has now completely escaped my mind so I won't ask it.

  • - CEO, President

  • I've said often in the past I think we believe the science is on our side as far as ISR mining being environmentally safe. We need to demonstrate that to the public and certainly to the Navajo. We have the team, the services of BW Turner in New Mexico to help us on the whole communication side. That is in process. Something we've been working on for the last couple months. That will be a major initiative for the company, which is education and demonstration.

  • - Analyst

  • The other question, where are you on the EPA filing at Church Rock?

  • - CEO, President

  • As far as the --

  • - Analyst

  • As far as process. I gather you have the EPA, when they ruled on Indian country, didn't say you shouldn't apply, they just said it's Indian country. So I presume you replied.

  • - CEO, President

  • What we have done to this point is, section 8, which is the section that is being contested at the 10th circuit, and there's section 17, which has been declared Indian country, but we went ahead and submitted the permit for section 17 to see what the BCA response would be.

  • - Analyst

  • I know this kind of stuff is impossible to handicap, but do you have any professional guess as to how long it takes -- it might take the EPA to process your request?

  • - CEO, President

  • Any guess I would make would not be professional.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay. That's what I figured. I just -- I'd take a shot.

  • - CEO, President

  • When you talk about permits, generally takes a year, but again, you just never know.

  • - Analyst

  • Right. Okay. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. We have time for one more question. You have a follow-up question coming from David Snow of Energy Equities.

  • - Analyst

  • BHP Billiton, are they the ones that own that plant or is it owned by someone else now?

  • - CEO, President

  • They own it. They acquired -- correct me if I'm wrong, Rick or Paul -- they acquired [Radioalgam] and the mill site with that.

  • - Analyst

  • Was that originally a Kerr-McGee plant or Rio Lagos.

  • - CEO, President

  • It was Kerr-McGee.

  • - Analyst

  • Is there a group effort to acquire that plant or what?

  • - CEO, President

  • Is there a group effort?

  • - IR

  • David, we're not going to go into that.

  • - Analyst

  • I hear you. Okay. Well, terrific. Keep up all the good work.

  • - CEO, President

  • Thank you very much.

  • - IR

  • Operator?

  • Operator

  • Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back over to your host for any closing remarks.

  • - IR

  • Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Again, the webcast with Q and A will be available on the archived website, archived on the website, at uraniumresources.com. And if you're on our outreach list, we do push out the transcript once we've received it back and everything. So if you have any questions, feel free to call us. Our numbers are on the press release. And thank you once again for your interest in Uranium Resources.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. This concludes today's Uranium Resources, Inc., second quarter 2007 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.