Categories: Energy / Mining Stocks
Topics: General Energy / Uranium Stocks

Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH)(OTC: SYHBF) CEO Jordan Trimble on a Catalyst Rich 2025 in a Uranium Bull Market

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Skyharbour Resources (TSX-V: SYH)(OTC: SYHBF), Mr. Jordan Trimble. Jordan, great to have you back on. Uranium is perking back up. Perfect timing. How are you, sir?

Jordan Trimble: Doing good. Yeah, great to be back on, and yeah, it's been a reprieve in the uranium market after what seemed like a long time and a harder sell-off than I think most were anticipating, certainly with the equities, but we're finally seeing a reversal in that trend, in the spot market at least, and we're starting to see that spot price tick back up. I mean, I don't need to tell you as we've talked at length that that's not the only price in the uranium space to pay attention to. The long-term price has continued to hold in there, and $80 a pound. But as we know, the equities and a lot of investors typically do track the spot price day to day or week to week, and we're now trading above $70 a pound. So some life back in the market there. We can talk a bit more about that later in the interview, but lots to cover off on Skyharbour.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, Skyharbour is I think one of the better exploration speculations in the uranium space. The market cap has pulled back pretty significantly during this consolidation. You're sitting at about a $64 million market cap, and you have catalysts for the rest of 2025 and, frankly, 2026. Let's get into the most recent bit of news which you published this morning, is Skyharbour and your JV partner commencing extensive summer 2025 drilling program at the Preston Uranium Project. I would love for you to provide the context of that because it's an important program, and one that has the potential to cause a pretty fun re-rating for the company if it works out.

Jordan Trimble: Yeah no, look, it’s the most significant single drill program outside of obviously our main focus at our Russell and More Lake projects where we're currently completing a 17 to 18,000 meter multi-phased drill campaign throughout this year. But outside of that as a part of our prospect generator business, this drill campaign program that's being operated by a strategic partner of ours, Orano at Preston, is a significant potential catalyst for us and our shareholders. So it was a pleasant surprise when we heard from them that they were planning this kind of, a sizable drill program. In fact, this will be basically doubling the meterage drilled historically at the project, to give some perspective on how large this program is relative to the rest of the work that's been done historically. And it's very exciting because the project itself, it's an earlier stage exploration property, they've completed the earn in, and we are a minority interest holder owning just over 25% of the project.

We are going to participate as a minority interest holder in the project. We like the prospects there. We like the discovery potential, and it's relatively shallow drilling. It's basement hosted targets as it's outside of the sandstone cover. Really what, collectively, we're looking for at the project is mineralization, high-grade uranium on these northeast-southwest trending corridors, and a number of them that we're testing actually trend right onto NextGen's project, which is adjacent to ours, a little bit further to the southwest, or sorry, southeast of Arrow. But you'll see NextGen's project. Basically it's a big block of land that stretches right from west to east, and a number of the primary targets that Orano and us will be testing are these conductive corridors that trend from NextGen's ground onto the Preston project.

So they did a lot of work, Orano did a lot of work on the project field, work on the project last year, yielded some very interesting results in drill targets. So this is really the first year they're going to be going in there with a notable budget and program, and we're very excited. Again, one drill hole can completely change things for us and for our shareholders. And again, the bulk of this program being financed by Orano, it's relatively low-risk drilling for us in that sense, but we're happy to be participating as a minority interest partner. And it'll provide news flow and catalysts through the year. They'll complete this drill program this summer with results to follow.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't be more excited about being able to pick up uranium equities at the current valuations. I joked off-air that I feel it's like robbing the bank that you could buy some of these companies including Skyharbour at current prices. Can you walk me through what the rest of the year looks like for yourself?

Jordan Trimble: Yeah, well, like I said, we've got this Orano program at Preston is one of several partner funded programs as a part of our prospect generator business. We have Terra Clean Energy, which just completed a few thousand meters of drilling at the South Falcon East Project, Assays are pending for that. Very, very happy with what they've seen there. They're already planning for a summer program, late summer, early fall program this year. So they've got another drill campaign that'll be starting up. Ura X at our South Dufferin project as well, they're earning in there. They're planning a drill program this summer, and North Shore Uranium at the Falcon Project, they're gearing up for some drilling this year. In addition to some of the other partner companies, we've got nine partner companies potentially spending over 70 million in combined project consideration. And a number of those partner companies will be drilling while some will be carrying out pre-drilling activities and field work like geophysics and ground prospecting and geochemical sampling.

So a lot of news flow and catalysts from the various partner companies, in fact, probably expect around 15 to 16,000 meters of combined drilling between all of those partner companies across a handful of those projects. But the big catalyst for us, as we've talked about in previous interviews, is the drilling that we're funding, that we're carrying out at our Russell and Moore Lake co-flagship projects, and it's going incredibly well. We're in that first phase of drilling a five to 6,000 meter initial phase of drilling at our Russell Lake project, currently following up on the high grade discovery hole at the New Fork zone target, which last year, as you may recall, we intersected multi-percent, up to 3% U308 over a half a meter, relatively shallow sandstone hosted mineralization just a few kilometers away from the Phoenix deposit, which Denison's currently developing. So this drilling is pivotal for us this year.

We're carrying out this initial phase, which we'll complete. We're then planning to drill 5 to 7,000 meters this summer at our adjacent Moore Lake project. Again, following up on high grade results that we announced last year at that project. As you know, that project has a small high grade, several small high grade zones of uranium mineralization, relatively shallow, very interesting, potentially down the road looking at it through the lens of either Saver or ISR to surface mining methods. So we're doing some more drilling to prove up additional pounds there, as well as some exploratory drilling on strike on that Maverick corridor. We think our new VP of Exploration, Serdar Donmez, who joined us late last year, has identified some new targets along strike, which are of keen interest to us. So we'll be continuing to expand those high grade zones, known high grade zones, while also carrying out some exploratory drilling to the southwest of those high grade zones at Moore Lake.

And then later this year we'll wrap up with a third and final phase of drilling back at Russell, another five to 6,000 meters of drilling there. So combined 17 to 18,000 meters of drilling at our two main co-flagship projects. It's relatively inexpensive drilling as well with road access, power lines and an exploration camp there. So that's the big catalyst for us this year, is the drilling at our two main assets, which are strategically located in the south of the MacArthur River Mine, northeast of the mill. And of course Russell essentially encircles Denison's Wheeler River Project to the north, to the east, and to the south. So yeah, a lot going on. In total, you're looking at, between us and our partner companies, well over 30,000 meters of combined drilling across half a dozen projects, and we're fully funded for all of that. And then the partners are obviously responsible for funding their portion of those meters.

So lots to look forward to. And yeah, look, with the market, as we talked about, the spot price is starting to tick higher, which is great to see the long-term prices has remained strong at $80 a pound. What's interesting right now is, one, we've talked at length about the fundamentals. There's still this major structural supply deficit. We're starting to see those conditions move the market higher. I think traders, speculators, and now utilities as we're seeing even in the spot market, they're coming in, they recognize that you can only sit on the sidelines for so long. A lot of the uncertainty too, whether it was elections, whether it was tariffs. Some of that's obviously more subdued now. And so these reasons for the utilities in particular to wait on the sidelines, those are dissipating. And we're seeing, again, new buying interest come into the market, which is helping to initially drive prices higher.

And we just continue to see good headline after good headline. And last week, for example, out of the US, serious talks of deregulation, getting rid of this red tape that's really stifled the nuclear industry and new builds in the development of the industry in the United States for the better part of the last 50 years. There were some talks of quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050 in the US. And these are major news headlines that I think will just continue to add, continue to improve the sentiment and drive new buying. And so I think we're really at that kind of tipping point where, yes, there's been the pullback, it's been across the board. I mean, it's not just Skyharbour, we've seen pretty much every company pull back from the highs a year and a half ago, but it looks like we're coming out of that.

What's interesting too is we have seen some redemptions in the ETFs, a lot of that, I think, as a result of the market volatility back in March and April. So that, I think has been a bit of an overhang on some of the equities at least more recently. But again, everything's starting to trade higher, so that could flip here, and we could see buying coming into the market. But you and I talked offline too, it's important to get new generalist money into the sector. And I think that that's something too, that nuclear energy is really, compared to where we were five or six years ago, it's no longer a dirty word. We see it day-to-day talking with investors. And I just think there's going to be a new wave of generalist money that comes into this space in the coming months and coming years that's going to lead to this next leg up, which I think is going to be the biggest one yet.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I think if you're a contrarian, and you're looking to buy at or near the bottom, you'd be hard, hard fought to pick a better sector than the uranium space right now. The one exception possibly being lithium, the difference being, I think for uranium, the time is now, and I think for lithium, it's probably in the next six months. Right? Though I've been wrong about that for most of the past nine months. So we'll see how that turns out.

Jordan Trimble: Yeah, and one final note too on that, I mean it's an interesting comparison. One of the other reasons we're starting to see the market move higher and the spot price tick up is if you look at the new production, uranium production, that near-term producers and developers that were coming online in the last year or in the next few years, I mean, it's been pretty noteworthy how many production guidance downgrades there have been or delays there have been. It's not easy building uranium mines and operating uranium mines. And I think that the hard reality of that for utilities that are expecting supply to come on seamlessly, that's starting to dawn on them, that there may not be this new supply coming on as quickly as they were expecting.

And so that CapEx cycle and development cycle for uranium, it can take a long time. Right? And usually it doesn't go according to plan. And so a lot of utilities that rely on information that we will say, hey, look, there's new production coming on in 2028, 2029, 2030, whenever it may be, if that gets delayed, that can really change things, and can force utilities into the market sooner than later.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't agree with you more. Interesting times, I think it's going to be a fun rest of the year. I think it's going to be a heck of a 2026 as well. I know that's very forward-looking. I like to position, in the words of Mr. Jim Dines, the late great Mr. Jim Dines, I'd like to position ahead of the herd. And so I think, again, uranium is a heck of a place to be. If you could bear with the market for just a little bit and let this next leg up kick in. Anything else to add to that, Jordan?

Jordan Trimble: No, I think we've covered it all. And yeah, keep an eye out for news flow over the coming months. And yeah, big year ahead.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Thanks again for your time. Appreciate it as always.

Jordan Trimble: Thank you.

 

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