Where Will Cameco Stock Be in 3 Years? | The Motley Fool

Cameco (CCJ -0.39%), one of the world’s top uranium miners, usually isn’t a high-growth stock. But over the past three years, its price surged about 250% and now hovers near its all-time high. The S&P 500 only rose 60% during the same period.

Let’s see why Cameco’s stock crushed the market, and if it can keep climbing over the next three years.

A look back at Cameco’s lost decade

Cameco, which is based in Canada, owns uranium mines and mills across Canada, the U.S., and Kazakhstan. It mined roughly 17% of the world’s uranium in 2024, making it the second largest uranium miner after Kazatomprom (NATK.Y -4.66%), Kazakhstan’s national mining company.

From 2011 to 2021, Cameco’s annual revenue dropped from $2.41 billion to $1.18 billion (in U.S. dollars) without a single year of revenue growth. That decline started after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, which triggered a global collapse in uranium prices as many countries cautiously reined in their nuclear energy plans.

Uranium’s spot price plunged from more than $70 per pound before the Fukushima disaster to less than $20 in 2017, and Cameco was forced to suspend work at its biggest mines and throttle back its production to conserve its cash. Before the uranium market could recover, the COVID pandemic disrupted the market again and forced the company to temporarily shut down more of its mines.

The weak Canadian dollar exacerbated that decline because the miner sold its uranium in U.S. dollars.

What happened over the past three years?

But from 2021 to 2024, Cameco’s revenue had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% in Canadian dollar terms. Its gross margins also expanded to the double digits over the past two years.

Data source: Cameco (all figures in Canadian dollar terms).

That robust recovery was driven by uranium’s spot prices, which soared from $29.63 in January 2021 to $78.50 this June. That rally prompted Cameco to restart its mining operations at McArthur River in Australia and Key Lake in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in 2022 after being suspended in 2018.

It also partnered with Brookfield Asset Management to acquire the nuclear power plant designer and builder Westinghouse Electric in late 2023. Its new 49% stake in Westinghouse should offset the volatility of its core mining business and make it the top uranium supplier for those plants.

Several catalysts drove uranium’s price higher over the past few years. The global supply shrank as Cameco and Kazatomprom curbed their production, but the demand rose as more countries initiated new nuclear energy plans and resumed their idled projects.

Other global challenges are keeping uranium prices elevated. Russia, which was a major exporter of enriched uranium products and services to the U.S. and Europe, was hit by sanctions and export bans after its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Kazatomprom’s supply chain issues and a coup in Niger (another key producer of uranium) in 2023 further reduced the global supply while driving more nuclear energy companies to buy their uranium from Cameco.

What will happen to Cameco over the next three years?

The bulls expect uranium’s price to soar even higher as the market’s demand continues to outstrip its available supply. The rapid growth of the cloud and AI data center markets — which are driving more companies to consider using next-gen nuclear energy solutions like small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors — could amplify those gains.

Looking ahead, Cameco’s 49% stake in Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) — its uranium enrichment joint venture with Silex — could transform it into a one-stop shop for nuclear power as it integrates those uranium enrichment capabilities into its core mining and conversion businesses. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expects the world’s nuclear capacity to expand by up to 2.5 times from 2024 to 2050, so Cameco could still have plenty of room to grow over the next few decades.

From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect Cameco’s revenue to have a CAGR of 8% (in Canadian dollar terms) as its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) have a CAGR of 16%. Its growth should cool off as it laps the big spike in uranium spot prices, the restarting of its mines, and its investment in Westinghouse Electric, but it still looks reasonably valued at 25 times this year’s adjusted EBITDA. So even though Cameco’s stock is trading near its all-time high, it could rise even higher over the next three years.