Uranium contract price hits 13-year high as Cameco earnings nearly triple

Uranium contract price hits 13-year high as Cameco earnings nearly triple Long-term uranium reached a 13-year high near $91.50 a pound and Cameco's earnings nearly tripled, but contracted realizations near $85-89 show the rally running ahead of producer cash. Long-term contract uranium reached US$91.50 a pound this month (2026-06-14), the highest reading since 2012, according to a 247wallst.com survey of the nuclear fuel market. Spot uranium has climbed 34% over the past year to US$88.49 a pound.⁶ The price strength is now landing in producer accounts rather than only on trader screens. Cameco's uranium segment revenue rose to US$510.46 million, sales volume climbed 13%, and adjusted net earnings nearly tripled to US$145.59 million; net income jumped 87% year over year to US$93.77 million.⁶ Washington is pushing in the same direction. The U.S. Department of Energy is offering up to US$26.5 billion in loan guarantees to rebuild the domestic fuel cycle, part of a wider push in which 38 countries have pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050 and Meta has signed agreements for up to 6.6 GWe of nuclear supply.⁶ Demand projections sit behind the move. The World Nuclear Association expects uranium demand to rise about 28% by 2030 and more than double by 2040, while the U.S. government wants to lift domestic nuclear capacity from roughly 100 gigawatts in 2024 to 400 gigawatts by 2050. Bank of America has pegged the build-out as a US$10 trillion market opportunity.² Supply is concentrated, which sharpens the price response. Cameco produced about 17% of the world's uranium in 2024, second to Kazatomprom's 21%, with Orano third at 11%.² For Cameco, the forward case rests on its order book. The company holds roughly 230 million pounds committed under long-term contracts, with average deliveries above 28 million pounds a year over the next five years, and it kept full-year 2026 guidance of US$3.13 billion to US$3.37 billion in revenue on 29 to 32 million pounds delivered at a realized price of US$85 to US$89 a pound.⁶ That realized band is the more sober part of the picture. At US$85 to US$89 a pound, Cameco's contracted deliveries still sit below the US$91.50 long-term marker and roughly in line with US$88.49 spot, so the published price has moved ahead of what producers actually bank now.⁶ Vertical integration is the other leg. Cameco owns a 49% stake in Westinghouse, and a Brookfield and U.S. government partnership is targeting at least US$80 billion in aggregate investment for AP1000 reactor deployments.^6,2 Equity markets have been less convinced than the spot tape. Centrus Energy, the U.S.-listed enricher, fell 5.4% on May 20 (2026-05-20) as spot uranium slipped to US$85.95 a pound, extending a multi-month pullback from January's highs.⁴ The reaction came even where guidance improved. Centrus dropped 11.9% on the same session (2026-05-20) despite raising its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to US$450 million; first-quarter revenue rose to US$76.7 million but net income fell to US$10.0 million and earnings per share declined year over year.³ Cameco shares show similar hesitation. The stock traded near US$101 after a sharp pullback, down more than 13% over the past month though still up 49% over the past year, as of the 247wallst.com report (2026-06-14). The Global X Uranium ETF sat at US$45.52.⁶ The macro tailwind keeps building. Goldman Sachs added small modular reactors to its global reactor tracker in mid-May (2026-05-19), and capital has rotated toward firms able to feed AI data-centre power demand.^5,1 The risk is timing. Producer realizations are locked by contracts struck before the latest spot run, so the gap between US$88.49 spot and US$85 to US$89 realized only narrows as older deliveries roll off. Whether the DOE's loan guarantees convert into actual domestic enrichment and conversion capacity, rather than announcements, is the next test for the U.S. side of the fuel cycle.⁶