Centrus Energy Corp. (AMEX:LEU) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Robert Brown: Yes, that’s great. Thank you. And if I could just ask one more about the purchase price kind of activity in the margins at this point, what are the sort of dynamics on the purchase prices in the contracts at this point? Do you expect gross margins, I guess, to stay kind of stable where they’re at? Or do you see any trend changes in the gross margin going forward?

Amir Vexler: Okay, so I’m assuming that you’re asking about the LEU business?

Robert Brown: Yes, correct.

Amir Vexler: Okay, so the question is, I’m going to rephrase it, make sure I understand it. You’re asking how are the current market prices going to affect margins going forward?

Robert Brown: Yes, it’s really about gross margins going forward, either market prices or contracted prices or the purchase prices on the material you’re buying.

Amir Vexler: Yes, so as you probably know, we have a supply type contract and we have contracts in which we sell the material. Both of them have certain parts of the contract that is tied to market. And the market pricing does affect, on one hand, it affects the supply in one way and the other way it affects the sale on the other way as well. Although I’m not able to provide any forward-looking guidance, I’m kind of trying to paint the picture of how things work. So on one hand, your supplied material is affected by market, but you also sell at prices that are affected by market. So unfortunately, I can’t give you any specific forward-looking statements, but I hope I gave you enough information here.

Operator: Our next question is from Joseph Reagor with Roth MKM. Please proceed.

Joseph Reagor: Hey guys, thanks for taking the question and welcome here to the team. Thank you. I know that we’re not going to get a guidance answer here, but maybe a different question. As you look at your contracts that you had in 2023 that led to the revenue you generated, were there any additional contracts that were added that’ll be for 2024 without quantifying how much that is? And were there any contracts in 2023 that roll off in 2024? Just so we kind of have an idea that puts in place of kind of the total number of contracts out there?

Kevin Harrill: Yes, thanks for the question, Joe. Unfortunately, that type of detail we don’t typically provide. The one thing that I would highlight is that we consistently have a robust order book, sales order book of a billion dollars, and we’ve had that trending at that number for multiple years. And I would also highlight the fact that we had 189 million of new sales. And so as we’ve articulated in the past, we do have a high level of visibility going out through 2030 with regards to our sales order book, but we couldn’t get it into any specifics as it relates to how those would matriculate over the next coming years, either for 2024 sales or ones in the past.

Joseph Reagor: Okay, fair enough. And then on the question of the prior college, that’s about on margins. I think historically there was some expectation that you had some contracts that were a much higher margin that had been locked in and you had a one-time reset option. And those contracts were expected to roll off. I can’t remember if it was 2023, 2024, 2025, and that therefore there would be some kind of natural decline in margins, but it hasn’t really shown up. So is that a demonstration you guys have done a really good job of locking in new higher margin contracts or is that that there has been a slight decline, but that’s it? That’s all we can expect?

Kevin Harrill: No, from the margin perspective and specifically touching upon the legacy-based contracts that you referenced, I would know we still have about $282.6 million of deferred revenue on our books. And those are predominantly legacy-based contracts with higher priced SWU terms as well as margins. So we will anticipate those to continue to roll off in the future. And as you noted, I mean, and Amir earlier, as we contract with customers, we do get favorable conditions based upon where market prices are today. So margins have been favorable based upon where market conditions are in the current year and also on the market commodity pricing curve that currently exists that reflects those higher pricing mechanisms as well. I would anticipate that to your point that we will see higher margins for some of the recent sales as well as the legacy ones still rolling off in future years.

Joseph Reagor: Okay. Is it possible to ask one additional question before I turn it over?

Kevin Harrill: Yes, absolutely.

Joseph Reagor: So in the fourth quarter, you guys had some of this, the lumpy uranium sales, right? And historically, the expectation on those would be that they’d be very low margin. But is it fair to assume that the margins were a little better than historically in Q4, given the run-up in uranium prices during the quarter?

Kevin Harrill: That would be an accurate assessment. Yes.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Okay. With no further questions in the queue, I would like to turn the conference back over to Lindsay for closing remarks.

Lindsey Geisler: Thank you, Operator. This will conclude our investment investor call for the fourth quarter and full year 2023. As always, I want to extend a thank you to our listeners online and our investors who called in. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator: Thank you. This will conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.

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