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Uranium Energy Corp CEO on his outlook for uranium as countries prioritize green energy agendas

Amir Adnani, Uranium Energy Corp CEO, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss his outlook for Uranium and the clean energy movement.

Video transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, as we head to the closing bell, we are watching a sell off here on Wall Street. We're going to keep an eye on this. We've still got roughly 60, 70 minutes until the closing bell, but the Dow has been off as much as 900-plus points, and we want to-- we do want to keep an eye on that.

We want to also keep an eye on shares of Uranium-- of Uranium Energy Corporation. Their CEO, Amir Adnani, is joining us right now. And you can enter this stock in a couple of different ways. You could actually purchase the stock directly, but there's also your new kind of ETF. And I want to talk to you about how those of us who believe that energy-- green-energy revolution can be propelled by nuclear energy can take advantage of this because Bill Gates, Warren Buffett seem to think at least it's the temporary future.

So walk us into what we're witnessing in uranium. I mean, prices have gone up dramatically, correct?

AMIR ADNANI: Prices are up 50% just over the last month. The uranium price is now at a nine-year high. It's the best-performing commodity out there. And, of course, today's selloff, which is somewhat of kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I would argue, doesn't really reflect the very positive fundamentals for the uranium market that have taken shape here, which, frankly, have been years and years in the making. We've got a very long-- decade-long bear market in uranium. And really in the last few years as the global megatrends of decarbonization and electrification are setting in, there's greater dependency and need for nuclear power to play a role alongside renewables. And that's placing increasing demand for nuclear energy, which is emission free and is clean, and it's needed in a world that wants to decarbonize and meet these net-zero targets that countries and companies are setting.

But at the same time, you know, we need that baseload capabilities that nuclear has that can generate a lot of energy. 1 in every 5 homes in America is powered by nuclear.

And then you have this recent kind of financial phenomenon that's taking place with the entry of the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, which has introduced some acceleration in the fundamentals that we have in the market.

SEANA SMITH: Amir, there certainly is a case here to be made for investing in uranium, but we also have to bring up the fact that it's been a very popular talked-about topic, a very popular interest here amongst a lot of retail investors. It's been trending on Wall Street.

But as the CEO of a public company in this space, I guess how do you look at this, and what does this potentially mean, do you think, for the industry going forward?

AMIR ADNANI: Again, I would put it in perspective. I've been the founder and CEO of Uranium Energy for almost 17 years now. We had a decade-long bear market where uranium was somewhat hated. No one was talking about it anywhere. In that context of a decade-long bear market, the fact that over the last four weeks there's now more interest around it seems positive to me. I'm excited to see that.

But I wouldn't necessarily think that we've even scratched the surface of what this all means. One of the least value-- least expensive sectors in the whole world right now, even with the selloff in the market today, is the uranium sector. This sector, again, has been in the doldrums and has been in a bear market for a very long time, longest than any commodity.

And then you compare what's happening right now to the physical uranium market to even what happened to Bitcoin over a couple of years ago in terms of what the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust did to the market in terms of soaking up the float that was available and how that really created this upward pressure in the price. That's what's happening in the uranium market right now. This broad physical uranium trust that has--

ADAM SHAPIRO: But you face--

AMIR ADNANI: --been launched over the last-- go ahead.

ADAM SHAPIRO: You know, today it's off, and today's an anomaly because of what we're all witness. But--

AMIR ADNANI: That's right.

ADAM SHAPIRO: --how do you convince people that uranium is the way and nuclear power is the way to get us to the clean-energy future because the half-life of radioactive waste is such that people are terrified of this stuff? I mean, the last time we talked about this was are we really sending it to Yucca Flats in Nevada?

AMIR ADNANI: Listen, I would say let's look at the same reason that Bill Gates, for example, or Elon Musk are talking about nuclear power. Why are they talking about it? Bill Gates describes the human casualty and the environmental damage that burning hydrocarbons to meet our electricity needs is-- basically what it means in terms of greenhouse gases, in terms of millions of premature deaths on an annual basis that has to do with carbon pollutants.

You look on the flip side of that with the casualties or issues that we've had with nuclear power. As a result of, let's say, Fukushima a decade ago, no one actually died. Nuclear power has, in fact, proven to be a fairly safe and reliable way of generating electricity.

So I would say that, at the end of the day, it's supply-demand, and it's about the issues that we face in the world. We need more electricity. The planet-- our planet is hungry for more electricity. More and more vehicles are going to be relying on electricity as a way of being powered. And so in that context, we simply consume more uranium than will be mined. We consume almost 200 million pounds per year, and we only mine about 130 million pounds per year. It's classic commodity supply-demand fundamentals. And if we consume more of any commodity than one we-- if we consume more of what we produce, then at some point we have to see an adjustment for the commodity price, and that's what's happening in the uranium market right now. There's a fundamental shift and acceptance of nuclear energy.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yes. Yes, we hear you.

AMIR ADNANI: And that's what's going on with the uranium price in terms of moving here.

ADAM SHAPIRO: You know, I covered Fukushima during the tsunami, and one of the big problems there was actually they had put the backup generators at sea level. So when the tsunami came in, it knocked out power to keep the reactor cool. It was not a nuclear issue. It was a poor-design issue.

Unfortunately, we're out of time right now to discuss more of this. Amir Adnani is Uranium Energy Corporation CEO. We appreciate your being--