Cameco Corporation — CCJ
[~] I THE BUSINESS what they sell, how it earns, who pays
[ ] II THE MOAT pricing power, and the clock on it
[ ] III OWNER EARNINGS what it really earns, and where the cash goes
[ ] IV INVERT what kills it — ranked and dated
[ ] V THE LADDER the cycle this name is standing on
[ ] VI THE PRICE what you pay against what you getResume at Chapter I, beat 5 — who pays, and how concentrated they are. Beats 1, 2 and 4 are done; beat 3 is half done, the "supplier not a utility" half, and still owes the customer-budget question.
IDENTITY
Name Cameco Corporation
Mines and mills uranium in northern Saskatchewan and,
through a joint venture, in Kazakhstan; refines, converts
and fabricates it into reactor fuel in Ontario; and owns
49% of Westinghouse, which designs, builds and services
nuclear reactors. Sells to nuclear utilities, mostly under
long-term contracts.
Three reportable segments — uranium · fuel services ·
Westinghouse. Westinghouse is equity-accounted: its revenue
appears in the segment table and is then removed again in
an "Adjustments" column, so consolidated revenue is uranium
and fuel services only. [^1]
Ticker CCJ (NYSE) · CCO (Toronto Stock Exchange)
★ Reports in Canadian dollars, under IFRS — while the share trades in
US dollars in New York. Every financial figure below is
marked C$ or US$ for that reason.
Form Canadian federal corporation under the Canada Business
Corporations Act. The NYSE line is the ordinary common
share cross-listed, not a depositary receipt.
Filed in Canada, federal [^2]
Capped no non-resident may hold more than 15% of the common
shares, and non-residents may vote no more than 25% in
total; offices must be maintained in Saskatchewan [^3]
HQ 2121 11th Street West, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
S7M 1J3 — head office, registered office and principal
place of business [^2]
Founded incorporated 1987-06-19; operations began with the 1988
merger of two privatized Crown corporations, Saskatchewan
Mining Development Corporation and Eldorado Nuclear
Limited [^2]
Listed Toronto and Montreal, July 1991, 10.4M shares at C$12.50,
about 20% of the company; New York from 1996 [^4]
Fiscal year fixed year end, December 31 every year
Q1 Jan–Mar · Q2 Apr–Jun · Q3 Jul–Sep · Q4 Oct–Dec
FY2025 ended 2025-12-31 · last reported Q2 to 2026-06-30
Earnings 2026-10-30 estimated [C] — Q3 FY2026, July–September
2026 [^5]
Bought 2022-05 an additional 4.522 percentage points of the Cigar
Lake mine, taking Cameco to 54.547%
2023-11-07 49% of Westinghouse Electric Company — the
reactor OEM and fuel-cycle servicer — alongside
Brookfield at 51%; equity-accounted, and part-funded by
a share issue thirteen months earlier
2026-07 TEPCO's share of Cigar Lake, purchased jointly
with Orano, taking Cameco to 57.4% [^6]
Employees 3,082 at 2025-12-31 [F]
Industry Energy · Uranium [^7]
Runs it Tim Gitzel, Chief Executive Officer
(62, serving 19 years) [^8]
Grant Isaac, President & Chief Operating Officer
(?, serving 17 years) [^8]
Heidi Shockey, Senior VP & Chief Financial Officer
(?, serving 21 years) [^8]
Catherine Gignac, Chair of the board
(?, serving 12 years) [^8]
Ownership 0.14% insiders · 70% institutions · 30% retail [F] 2026-09-01THE NUMBERS
The opening snapshot — all [F] 2026-09-01 unless tagged otherwise.
Scale revenue C$3,474.6M ttm to 2026-06-30 · 435.53M shares ·
US$41.96B market cap [^9]
Growth revenue −2.7% y/y ttm [^9]
revenue FY2023 C$2,587.8M → FY2024 C$3,135.8M →
FY2025 C$3,481.9M → C$3,474.6M ttm
EPS FY2023 C$0.83 → FY2024 C$0.39 → FY2025 C$1.35 →
C$0.81 ttm [M]
Margins gross 26.9% · operating 14.8% · net 10.2% [^10]
Balance at 2026-06-30 cash C$1,112.7M · debt C$996.8M ·
net cash C$116.0M · a C$1.0B revolver, undrawn
net cash 0.2% of market cap · cap − net cash US$41.88B [M]
Capital dividend C$0.24/share, declared once a year and reviewed
each year against the cycle · 0.18% yield · 17.8% of
FY2025 EPS · C$104M paid 2025-12-16
no buyback program and none in the last three years [^11]
34,057,250 shares issued 2022-10-17 toward the
Westinghouse purchase — the count went 398.06M → 432.52M
Price US$96.35 close 2026-09-01 [^12]
1 wk −9.9% · 1 mo +11.5% · 3 mo −14.4% · 1 yr +24.8% ·
5 yr +409.5%
52-wk range US$73.00 – US$135.24 · 5-yr US$17.84 – US$135.24
EPS C$0.81 trailing [M] · US$1.87 forward [C] [^13]
P/E 164.3x trailing [M] · 51.5x forward [C] [^13]
FY2023 68.4x · FY2024 189.1x · FY2025 92.9x ·
today 164.3x [M] [^14]THE BUSINESS
The unit of sale — one pound of U₃O₈, sold years before it ships
One sale is one pound of U₃O₈ — uranium concentrate, the powder that leaves the mill. Cameco sells it to nuclear utilities, and almost always under a long-term contract signed years ahead of delivery, on a formula rather than a fixed number.
Two prices existed on 2026-06-30, both published by UxC and both quoted by Cameco in the same paragraph of its outlook:
spot US$84.75/lb a pound for delivery now
long-term indicator US$94.00/lb a pound for delivery years outCameco's 2026 outlook is an average realized price of US$91.00 to US$96.00 per pound on 19.5–21.5 million pounds of its own production. [G] [^15] That figure sits on the long-term indicator rather than on spot.
⚠ That is new. For the two years before it, the realized price came in below both published prices, because contracts signed in the cheap years were still delivering: [^23]
avg spot avg long-term realized
2024 US$85.14 US$78.88 US$58.34
2025 US$73.54 US$81.96 US$62.11
2026 [G] — — US$91–96So the lag runs both ways. The contract book that stops a price crash reaching revenue also stopped the 2024 price spike reaching it. 2026 is the first year the cheap-era contracts have rolled off.
Long-dated uranium costs more than immediate uranium — the inverse of most commodities. What the utility buys with the extra US$9.25 is supply certainty: a reactor is a thirty-year asset that cannot be idled, and running out of fuel is not a priceable option.
★ The premium is the market's, not Cameco's. US$94.00 is a published price available to any credible long-term supplier. Whether Cameco captures more than the market rate is the question Chapter II settles; qualifying for it is not the same as owning it.
The contract book is what separates the tape from the revenue
Because this year's pounds were priced in earlier years, a move in the uranium price does not reach revenue in the year it happens. It arrives as old contracts expire and new ones are signed. The 2026 outlook was raised in the Q2 MD&A on the strength of first-half prices and a weaker Canadian dollar — consolidated revenue to C$3,320–3,570M from C$3,130–3,370M — which is the mechanism running at its normal speed. [G] [^15]
Two readings this rules out:
They are not warehousing pounds to sell into a spike. Inventory at 2026-06-30 was C$767.1M against C$2,539.9M of trailing cost of sales — about 110 days, one quarter's worth, ordinary working capital. [^16]
They are not trading spot. Spot is where Cameco buys, to fill contracts its own mines cannot cover. Purchased material is a cost line, and in a rising market it works against them.
Volume is a decision, and right now it is being withheld
Trailing revenue is down 2.7% while realized prices rose in both selling segments. The company names the cause directly: "our lower planned 2026 sales deliveries resulting from our contracting discipline." [^17] Fewer pounds committed, on purpose, while the price is thought to be still climbing.
Two segments sell, one is a shareholding — and one of the two is the company
The segments split by how far along the product is when it leaves Cameco, not by what it is made of. The uranium segment sells the powder; fuel services sells the processing and the processed product. The same shipment can feed both, each booking only its own stage, and material moved internally washes out — the company's volume outlook "does not include sales between our uranium and fuel services segments." [^18]
Three months to 2026-06-30: [^19]
revenue gross profit margin
uranium C$658.7M C$158.1M 24.0%
fuel services C$151.9M C$31.4M 20.7%
other C$3.1M C$0.6M
─────────
C$813.8M = consolidated revenueUranium is 80.9% of revenue and 85.0% of the two selling segments' pre-tax earnings. The margins are four points apart, so uranium dominates on size, not on being the better business per dollar — it is four times larger.
Cameco is a uranium miner with a small processing business attached and a 49% stake in a reactor company.
Where fuel services stops, and why it exists anyway
powder (U₃O₈) → refining → UF₆ → enrichment → fuel rods
└── Cameco ──┘ └── others, for light-water reactorsCameco's fuel services hands off at UF₆ for the world's common light-water reactors; enrichment and fabrication happen elsewhere. Canada's CANDU reactors need no enrichment, so for those Cameco does build the finished fuel bundles, at Cameco Fuel Manufacturing in Ontario.
Cameco holds about 18% of world UF₆ primary conversion capacity and states it competes with "a small number of primary commercial suppliers." [^20] The segment's purpose is given in the company's own words: "strategically important because it helps support the growth of the uranium segment." [^20] Offering pounds and processing in one contract wins uranium business. It is not built to stand alone, and its 15% share of segment profit is not the reason it is kept.
Cameco sells no electricity
★ It is a supplier, not a utility. Nothing it owns generates power. Its revenue is set by what utilities budget for fuel, which is a small line inside their costs, not by the price of electricity.
U₃O₈ triuranium octoxide — uranium concentrate, the
powder a mill produces. The unit of sale.
spot price for a pound delivered now
long-term UxC's published indicator for a pound delivered
indicator years out; the price Cameco's contracts read
realized price what Cameco actually received per pound, after its
contract formulas ran. Not a market price.
contracting choosing when to commit pounds, and on which
discipline formula. Cameco's word for withholding supply.
UF₆ uranium hexafluoride — the gas form uranium must be
in before it can be enriched. Fuel services' main
output, sold as a service, or bundled with pounds.
UO₂ uranium dioxide — the ceramic form, used directly in
CANDU reactors, which need no enrichment.
conversion turning U₃O₈ into UF₆. A separately priced service;
the utility may supply its own pounds.
100% basis the whole mine's output, whoever owns it
our share Cameco's entitlement out of that. The only one of
the two that reaches revenue.
packaged production that has been dried and drummed —
finished concentrate, not ore mined
tier-one Cameco's term for its own long-life, low-cost,
licensed operating assets⚠ Every production number comes twice — 100% basis and "our share"
Cameco operates through joint ventures, so it prints the whole mine's output and its own entitlement side by side. Only the second reaches revenue. Three months to 2026-06-30: [^22]
McArthur River / Key Lake 3.3M lb 2.3M lb our share
Cigar Lake 2.9M lb 1.6M lb our shareA headline will take whichever number is larger. The sentence always carries both.
★ JV Inkai breaks the pattern. Cameco holds 40% and equity-accounts it, so Inkai's pounds are not Cameco production at all — its share arrives as a purchase. Three routes a pound takes to the revenue line, and two of them are costs first:
mined, consolidated McArthur River · Cigar Lake "our share"
purchased from a JV Inkai a purchase
bought on the market to cover contracts a purchaseDuring the Inkai ramp-up Cameco is entitled to purchase 57.5% of the first 5.2 million pounds and 22.5% of anything above that — an entitlement that does not equal its 40% ownership. [^22]
FY2024 — the mines had a good year and the earnings still halved
Diluted EPS went C$0.83 to C$0.39 while revenue rose 21% and gross profit rose 39%. Cameco's own bridge from C$361M of net earnings in 2023 to C$172M in 2024, in C$M: [^24]
uranium gross profit +235 volume +22 · realized price +390 ·
FX on realized price +26 · costs −203
fuel services −18
──────
the operating business +217
gains/losses on derivatives −221 a C$183M loss in 2024 on FX
positions, as the C$ weakened
equity-accounted investees −165 first full year of Westinghouse
finance income −91
finance costs −31 the US term loan raised to buy
Westinghouse
reclamation provisions +30
income tax +41
admin · exploration · other −25
──────
below the operating line −406Not one line of the damage is uranium. Finance costs fell back to C$115M in 2025 as that term loan was repaid, and derivatives swung to a C$95M gain on a stronger Canadian dollar.
★ The derivative line is a hedging artifact, not a result. Cameco sells in US dollars and reports in Canadian ones, so it holds FX positions against that revenue. When the C$ weakens, the positions mark down while the underlying revenue marks up — and the two land on different lines. Read them together or neither.
The multiple's bottom half is what moves it
The P/E history on this sheet swings from 68.4x to 189.1x to 92.9x without the business changing. FY2024 is the worked case: price rose 30% and diluted EPS fell 53%, C$0.83 → C$0.39.
price alone 68.4x → 88.8x C$73.74 / C$0.83
earnings alone 88.8x → 189.1x C$73.74 / C$0.39The earnings fall did roughly three times the work the price rise did. 189x was a bad year, not an excited market; 68.4x the year before was not cheapness.
So 164.3x today is not by itself evidence the stock is expensive. Two measures that do not depend on where in the swing the denominator sits:
against the best year ever C$58.3B cap / C$589.6M FY2025 net = 98.9x [M]
what the price underwrites US$0.58 trailing → US$1.87 forward [C]
earnings roughly triplingFY2025 is Cameco's record net earnings by a wide margin — the prior peak in the ten years to 2025 was C$360.8M in 2023, and four of those ten years were losses. [^21]
The drawdown already delivered, for reference against any "wait for it to fall" plan: the 52-week high of US$135.24 to the low of US$73.00 is −46%, and US$96.35 is 28.8% below that high.
[^1]: Segment structure and the elimination are stated in note 18 of the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the quarter ended 2026-06-30. In that quarter Westinghouse showed C$863.2M of revenue in the segment table and C$863.2M in the Adjustments column; consolidated revenue was C$813.8M, of which uranium was C$658.7M, fuel services C$151.9M and other C$3.1M.
[^2]: SEC EDGAR entity record, CIK 0001009001, and the 2025 Annual Information Form filed with the 40-F on 2026-03-19. EDGAR carries no stateOfIncorporation for Cameco because it is a foreign private issuer filing under the multijurisdictional disclosure system; the incorporation date and statute come from the AIF.
[^3]: The caps sit in Cameco's own articles, which implement the Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization and Divestiture Act (Canada) and The Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation Reorganization Act. The limits were last widened in 2002, from 5% to 15% on individual non-resident ownership and from 20% to 25% on non-resident voting. The province of Saskatchewan holds a single class B share that receives no dividends and exists to police the articles.
[^4]: The AIF confirms the dual listing and the symbols but gives no listing dates. The July 1991 IPO terms and the 1996 NYSE start are from published company histories; the earliest NYSE daily bar in this project's series is 1996-03-14, which is consistent. Government ownership ended in February 2002.
[^5]: Cameco had not announced a Q3 2026 date as of 2026-09-01 — it issues a "date for results" release a few weeks ahead, and none has been filed. 2026-10-30 is a vendor estimate. The two prior third quarters landed on 2025-11-05 and 2024-11-07, so the estimate is probably a week early.
[^6]: The Cigar Lake step-up to 57.4% closed in July 2026 — after the quarter end, so it is in the Q2 MD&A as a subsequent event, not in the 2026-06-30 balance sheet. Cameco's share of 2026 expected production was left unchanged by it. Westinghouse closed 2023-11-07; Cameco does not control it and states so as a risk factor.
[^7]: The vendor classification. SEC assigns SIC 1090, Miscellaneous Metal Ores, which files Cameco as a miner and says nothing about the fuel-services or Westinghouse halves.
[^8]: Roles and role start dates from the officers table in the 2025 AIF. Company tenure is not in that table and is not in the price feed; it comes from Cameco's own executive biographies — Gitzel joined January 2007 as SVP & COO and became CEO 2011-07-01; Isaac joined July 2009 as SVP corporate services, was CFO from July 2011, and became President & COO 2025-09-01; Shockey joined in 2005 and became CFO 2025-09-01. Gignac has been a director since 2014 and Chair since November 2023. Only Gitzel's age is carried by the feed; the other three are written ? rather than estimated.
[^9]: Trailing twelve months is built as FY2025 plus the six months to 2026-06-30 less the six months to 2025-06-30, from the audited FY2025 statements and the two interim filings: revenue 3,481.9 − 1,666.4 + 1,659.1 = C$3,474.6M. The comparison period is built the same way, 3,135.8 − 1,232.0 + 1,666.4 = C$3,570.2M, so 3,474.6 / 3,570.2 − 1 = −2.7%. Market cap is 435.53M × US$96.35 = US$41,963M; the share count is the weighted basic average for the June 2026 quarter, against 435,457,978 outstanding at 2025-12-31.
[^10]: Same trailing-twelve construction. Gross profit 970.3 − 527.2 + 491.7 = C$934.8M, 26.9% of revenue; earnings from operations 618.1 − 351.8 + 248.0 = C$514.4M, 14.8%; net earnings attributable to equity holders 589.6 − 390.7 + 156.0 = C$354.9M, 10.2%. Reading the ladder downward, trailing pretax earnings of C$471.0M sit below operating earnings of C$514.4M — C$43.4M of net non-operating cost, principally finance costs and derivative losses against equity earnings and foreign exchange gains. No single outsized item; the divergence is ordinary.
[^11]: Searched the 2025 AIF and the Q2 2026 MD&A for a normal course issuer bid or any repurchase: none. The XBRL facts carry no repurchase tag, and the share count has risen every year since 2015.
[^12]: The settled daily close from the project's bar series. All return windows and both ranges are computed from those bars in US dollars on the NYSE, taking the last session on or before the same day of the month. The ranges are intraday high and low, not closes. Five years of bars exist, so the 5-yr figures are a full window.
[^13]: The forward figure is the vendor's consensus, and it is on a US dollar basis: the vendor's own forward multiple, 51.4x on its US$96.26 price, only reconciles against US$1.87. The vendor does not say which fiscal year it belongs to, and the half-year actual makes FY2026 unlikely — H1 2026 delivered C$0.36, so a FY2026 total of US$1.87 (C$2.60) would need C$2.24 in the back half. Treat it as "some year ahead," not as FY2026.
[^14]: Price and earnings are put in the same currency before dividing: the fiscal-year-end NYSE close in US dollars, converted at the Bank of Canada USD/CAD rate for that same day, over that fiscal year's IFRS diluted EPS in Canadian dollars. FY2023 US$42.90 × 1.3226 = C$56.74 / C$0.83 = 68.4x · FY2024 US$51.25 × 1.4389 = C$73.74 / C$0.39 = 189.1x · FY2025 US$91.49 × 1.3706 = C$125.40 / C$1.35 = 92.9x · today US$96.35 × 1.3896 = C$133.89 / C$0.81 = 164.3x. The trailing yield and payout use the same C$133.89.
[^15]: The 2026 outlook as revised in the Q2 2026 MD&A, filed 2026-07-31. Uranium revenue C$2,700–2,910M, fuel services C$610–650M, consolidated C$3,320–3,570M, on an assumed exchange rate of 1.35 USDCAD. The spot and long-term figures are UxC's, as of 2026-06-30, and are the inputs Cameco names for that outlook. Both are guidance inputs, not results.
[^16]: Inventories C$767,114 thousand at 2026-06-30, per the balance sheet. Trailing cost of sales is trailing revenue less trailing gross profit, 3,474.6 − 934.8 = C$2,539.9M, so 767.1 / 2,539.9 × 365 = 110 days.
[^17]: Second quarter 2026 news release, 2026-07-31, under Consolidated performance.
[^18]: Note 18, condensed consolidated interim financial statements to 2026-06-30, and the outlook assumptions in the Q2 2026 MD&A. The segment table carries no inter-segment elimination line: uranium plus fuel services plus other equals consolidated revenue exactly.
[^19]: Note 18, three months ended 2026-06-30. Segment pre-tax earnings were uranium C$170.1M and fuel services C$30.1M, so uranium is 170.1 / 200.2 = 85.0% against 658.7 / 813.8 = 80.9% of revenue. Uranium's pre-tax earnings exceed its own gross profit because the segment also carries C$29.9M of equity earnings from JV Inkai. Westinghouse showed a C$4.8M pre-tax loss in the same quarter, and a C$10M net loss on Cameco's share, against C$126M of earnings a year earlier — its contribution is lumpy because it turns on large construction projects.
[^20]: 2025 Annual Information Form, under Fuel services and under Conversion services. The 18% figure is Cameco's own statement of its share of world UF₆ primary conversion capacity.
[^21]: Market cap converted at the same 2026-09-01 rate used elsewhere, US$41,963M × 1.3896 = C$58,312M; ÷ C$589.577M = 98.9x. Both the 98.9x and the "against the best year ever" framing are chosen measures, hence [M]. Net earnings attributable to owners, 2016 through 2025, from the IFRS XBRL facts filed with the 40-Fs: −61.6 · −204.9 · 166.3 · 74.0 · −53.2 · −102.6 · 89.4 · 360.8 · 171.9 · 589.6, all C$M. The forward comparison converts trailing C$0.8149 at the same rate to US$0.586, against the US$1.87 vendor consensus, so 1.87 / 0.586 = 3.2x — see [^13] on which fiscal year that consensus belongs to.
[^22]: Production figures from the second quarter 2026 news release, 2026-07-31, under Operational highlights. The Inkai ownership, equity accounting and the purchase entitlements are from the 2025 Annual Information Form; the 57.5% / 22.5% split dates from the December 2017 restructuring that took Cameco from 60% to 40% and Kazatomprom from 40% to 60%, effective 2018-01-01.
[^23]: Uranium segment table, FY2025 MD&A filed 2026-02-13 with the 40-F. Average spot and average long-term are the year's averages of UxC's indicators; average realized price is what Cameco actually received across its book. The 2026 figure is the revised outlook in the Q2 2026 MD&A and is guidance, not a result.
[^24]: "What contributed to the change in net earnings," FY2025 MD&A. The column read here is the 2024 one — the change from 2023 to 2024. The bridge closes: 361 + 235 − 18 − 406 = 172. Derivative and finance figures are from the same MD&A's Finance costs, Finance income and Gains and losses on derivatives sections.
A worksheet is my study notes on one company, not advice. I am not a financial adviser and hold no licenses; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold anything. Every figure is as of the day I wrote it down and none of them are maintained — a number true last month may be wrong now, and the tier tags say which are the company’s and which are mine. Any position described is what I held when I wrote it; the record is the only current answer, and the full legal terms are on the front page.