Cameco Corporation is reporting a 41 per cent drop in net earnings for 2012 due to some uncertainty in uranium markets and a $168 million write down on its Kintyre project in Australia.
Fourth quarter results also show an 83 per cent drop in net earnings and 84 per cent drop in per share price earnings for the uranium company.
In spite of the poor numbers for 2012, Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel says things look brighter for the company in 2013 and the years ahead.
“With 64 reactors under construction today and uranium demand growing on average at three per cent per year to 2022, it’s clear that there is strong long term growth for our industry,” he says. “To put it in perspective, we haven’s seen this kind of growth since the 1970’s when countries like France, countries in Western Europe, Japan and the United States were all building reactors.”
Gitzel says future uranium world demand will be driven by new nuclear reactors coming online in China, reactors coming back online in Japan and the end of Russia’s highly enriched uranium agreement in 2013.