Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ)
Q4 2016 Earnings Conference Call
February 10, 2017 11:00 AM ET
Executives
Rachelle Girard - Director, IR
Tim Gitzel - President and CEO
Grant Isaac - SVP and CFO
Bob Stein - SVP and COO
Analysts
Orest Wowkodaw - Scotiabank
Greg Barnes - TD Securities
Chelsea Laskowski - MBC Radio
Daniel Horner - Nuclear Intelligence Weekly
David Snow - Energy Equity
Fai Lee - Odlum Brown
PT Luther - Bank of America
Anang Majmudar - General American Investors
Operator
Welcome to the Cameco Corporation 2016 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the call over to Rachelle Girard, Director Investor Relations. Please go ahead Ms. Girard.
Rachelle Girard
Thank you, operator and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Cameco's conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and 2016 financial results. With us today on the call are Tim Gitzel, President and CEO; Grant Isaac, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Bob Stein, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Alice Wong, Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Officer; and Sean Quinn, Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary.
Tim will begin with comments on our results and the industry, followed by Grant, who will discuss the change made to the outlook we provided for 2017 to help investors better understand our business and improve the alignment of expectations. Then we'll open it up for your questions. If you joined the call conference call through our website event page, you will notice there will be slides displayed during the remarks portion of this call. These slides are also available for download in a PDF file called Conference Call Slides through the conference call link at Cameco.com.
Today's conference call is open to all members of the investment community, including the media. During the Q&A session, please limit yourself to two questions and then return to the queue. For those on the webcast if you have questions please select submit a question feature to submit your questions by email and we will follow-up after the call. Please note that this conference call will include forward-looking information which is based on a number of assumptions and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our Annual Information Form and MD&A for more information about the factors that could cause these different results and the assumptions we have made.
With that, I will turn it over to Tim.
Tim Gitzel
Thank you, Rachelle and welcome to everyone on the call today. As usual we will start this morning with some brief remarks and after that we will be happy to take your questions. We've been saying for some time that uranium prices are neither rational nor sustainable. Current prices are failing to incent the investment decisions required to ensure reliable supply is available to meet growing demand out into the future. Indeed, I would have to say that market conditions in 2016 were as tough as I have seen them in 30 years. In response to these tough conditions, Cameco led the way in terms of supply discipline. We curtailed our Rabbit Lake and US mining operations and reduced our production at McArthur River. Now the world's largest uranium producing country with almost 40% of world supply Kazakhstan has announced that it intends to cut its 2017 production by 10%. In addition [indiscernible] has announced cuts to better align its UF6 production capacity with customer demand. These announcements certainly represent positive developments around the supply performance signpost that we've been watching.