Commodities | Apr 09 2013
By Andrew Nelson
Last week was a quiet and uneventful week as far as the uranium market goes. Industry consultant TradeTech reports just three deals were done and accounted for only 400,000 pound of uranium changing hands.
As one can tell by last week’s numbers, the spot market is near dead at the moment and what little demand there is, is either speculative or long-dated. The good news here is in the resolve of sellers. Over the past couple of years, a month of flat prices would have lead to some sort of inflexion point, normally followed by another leg down in the spot price.
Yet this time around it seems that sellers are holding firm, unwilling to drop prices to get the deal flow going again. TradeTech sees a little seller support arising from the upcoming World Nuclear Fuel Cycle conference, which kicks off in Singapore this week. Fingers crossed, but the right sort of news could well lead to a pickup in demand. The problem is what a bad news could lead to.
In the lead up, the uranium market is dead, with market activity stalled out and prices remaining flat. On Friday, TradeTech’s Weekly U308 Spot Price Indicator was still US$42.25 per pound, the same as the Friday prior and the one before that as well.
The term uranium market was even deader, with no deals reported at all once again. TradeTech does note that there are several utilities getting ready to join the term market in coming weeks. TradeTech’s Mid-Term U3O8 Price Indicator was unchanged at US$46.00/lb, while the Long-Term Price Indicator remained at US$57.00/lb.
There is a bit of minor, speculative demand out there for longer term deliveries, it’s just not feeding through to sales. One non-US utility is looking at offers for around 2 million pounds for delivery between 2014 and 2020. Another non-US utility is looking for 1 million pounds over five years, while a third one is out for 750,000 pounds from 2014 -2018. An actual US utility is evaluating offers for about 1.2 million pounds, while another wants an undisclosed amount beginning in 2017.
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