Our holiday gift guide - 2025 edition
Snow already showed up this year, so we figured, "Why
wait for Black Friday?". We’re unwrapping our favourite EdgePointer gift
picks early because good ideas shouldn’t sit in storage.
This week in charts
Consumer spending gaps
Wage and salary growth
Content authors – Human vs. A.I.
Revenue and capital expenditure comparison – Generative A.I. vs. cloud
2024 stock-based compensation by sector
Japan inflation rate
Chinese overseas loans by income group
High-tech facility construction
Capital expenditure comparison
Auto insurance premiums
India gold ETF flows
Source of systemic credit events – BofA Global Fund Manager Survey
‘Uranium
prices have skyrocketed’: Canada at core of uranium squeeze
A global rush to lock in nuclear fuel is putting fresh
pressure on Canada, the world’s second largest producer of uranium.
Prices for the critical mineral are surging as utilities in
the U.S., Europe, and Asia rush to secure long-term supply to fuel power
plants, which is increasingly seen as a solution to climate change and power
for data centres.
With sanctions on Russian uranium and the world’s top
producer Kazakhstan facing its own mining challenges, Canada sits at the centre
of the uranium squeeze with high grade deposits in Saskatchewan. But can it
meet the world’s demand?
Actually, it’s in “great shape to step up to the ball,”
Brooke Thackray, research analyst at Global X, told BNN Bloomberg. “There
really are not a lot of places to get uranium.”
“The U.S. is extremely dependent on Canada, and it’s going
to become more dependent on Canada,” said Thackray.
Canada produces 13 per cent of the world’s uranium according
to Natural Resources Canada, and it knows it stands to benefit.
Is Canada ramping up?
Even with soaring demand, Cameco, a leading uranium
producer, does not plan to ramp up its production aggressively unless it locks
in more contracts.
The company said it is sitting on “tier-one uranium mining
assets that are licensed, permitted, long-lived, and proven, with capacity to
expand,” but stressed that it does “not produce speculative pounds of uranium
based on demand estimates.”
In fact, Cameco announced it is reducing its forecasted
output in its McArthur River/Key Lake operation from 18 million pounds of
concentrate to approximately 15 million because of operational delays.
Canada has the mineral, the companies, and government
support. But the reality is, scaling output is slow, expensive and constrained
by labour and permitting, said Charlton.
A ‘funny, funny market’
Unlike oil or copper, uranium demand is mostly hard wired
into long term reactor fleets.
“Uranium is a funny, funny market. It’s totally unique,”
said Thackray.
He said while companies know what the supply and demand is,
the price of the mineral still moves around and the industry is well aware of a
looming uranium deficit in 2035.
“So there’s a game of chicken going on,” said Thackray
“Because we know we’re going to go into the deficit, and we need more nuclear
power.”
He said the AI industry’s biggest bottleneck right now is
energy, which it is trying to fill with natural gas.
Another supercycle?
Thackray says today’s environment feels a lot like the
period leading into the last supercycle in the 90s to the early 2000s, when
tech dominated market attention until a shock revealed shortages in copper,
uranium and oil.
He cautions the path won’t be smooth and uranium equities
can drop sharply, but argues the long-term setup is strong because “we don’t
have enough uranium.”
He also says large caps like Cameco tend to benefit first,
but smaller players such as NexGen Energy tend to perform better later in the
cycle.
Cameco’s $80 billion deal with the U.S. government to build
nuclear reactors, and its refining capacity gives it an even stronger footing
as demand grow, he said.
Utilities with “multi-billion dollar fixed cost” reactors
must buy fuel regardless of price, while producers gain from selling more at
higher levels."
“Ultimately, high uranium prices help the nuclear industry,”
he said.
Small modular reactors and AI centres
Right now, Canada has five operating uranium mines in
Northern Saskatchewan and three proposed mining projects.
“Prices were very depressed for most of the last decade.
Everyone was expecting it to turn around. It took longer to turn around than
people thought it would,” said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining
Association of Canada.
Gratton pointed to China’s nuclear build out as a key
driver.
“Reactors take forever to build, but it’s now starting to
kick in and uranium prices have skyrocketed,” said Gratton.
He said the next demand will be driven by small modular
reactors, or SMRs, as provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta look for
non-emitting alternatives to coal and gas.
Both Thackray and Gratton point to a second wave behind
that: data centres and artificial intelligence.
By 2040, Thackray said, “they’re going to need double the
amount of nuclear fuel for the reactors.”
This week’s fun finds
The office is beginning to warm up for the holidays. There’s
so much to celebrate working among such wonderful partners!
62
Modern Tree Houses Climb to Architectural Heights
The arboreal designs featured in TASCHEN’s new book aren’t
your dad’s Home Depot box variety. Uniquely stunning, all 62 structures in
Modern Tree Houses respond to the surrounding environment, whether a tiny,
winterized pod for escaping the snow or a split-level playground complete with
climbing ropes and nests. Built by architects and amateurs alike, each dwelling
is varied in material, layout, purpose, and aesthetic, although all thrive
because of their proximity to nature’s beauty.
