Cameco Corporation CCJ

The business

Cameco mines and processes uranium and sells it into the nuclear fuel cycle. Two segments: Uranium (mining, milling, and concentrate sales, which is the engine) and Fuel Services (conversion, refining, and CANDU fuel bundles, which is smaller and steadier). The uranium segment carries the franchise: it is the majority of revenue and essentially all of the operating leverage to the price of U3O8, with McArthur River/Key Lake and Cigar Lake in Saskatchewan as two of the highest-grade operating mines on the planet. Add a 49% stake in Westinghouse Electric (co-owned with Brookfield, acquired late 2023), which sells reactor services, fuel assemblies, and new-reactor technology and shows up through the equity-method line rather than in revenue. The customer base is nuclear utilities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, sold under long-dated contracts with a mix of fixed prices and market-referenced escalators.

The qualitative fact the financials do not yet show: Cameco's realized uranium price lags spot by two to four years because of how the contract book layers in. Spot U3O8 spent 2023 to 2025 running between $70 and $105/lb against a long-term contract price ladder that was still catching up from the $30 to $50 range struck earlier. Q1 2026 realized prices are still working through older tranches; the 2026 to 2028 delivery years re-price against the tightened market. Two other things moved in the last two quarters worth flagging: Westinghouse's contribution turned modestly negative on the non-operating line (a C$102M drag in Q4 2025 mostly ARO/impairment noise), and the operating cadence at McArthur River is running above nameplate as Cameco spends into a modest capacity expansion. Nothing has broken; the earnings are just early in the cycle.