Centrus Energy Q1 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript
Centrus Energy (AMEX:LEU) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
Centrus Energy reported Q1 2026 revenue of $76.7 million, gross profit of $31.5 million, and net income of $10 million, with adjusted net income of $23.5 million.
The company has a significant commercial backlog of $3.9 billion, with plans to expand its uranium enrichment capabilities, including a $900 million Hailu Enrichment Award from the US Department of Energy.
Centrus Energy is raising its 2026 revenue guidance to $450-$500 million and increasing workforce additions at its Piketon facility, supported by strategic partnerships with companies like Palantir and Fluor to reduce costs and accelerate timelines.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Centrus Energy Q1 2026 earnings call conference call. At this time all lines are in listen only mode and following the presentation we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Neil Nagarajan. Please go ahead.
Neil Nagarajan (Operator)
Good morning. Welcome and thank you to all of our callers as well as those listening to our webcast. Today's call will cover the Results for the first quarter 2026 ended March 31st. Today we have Amir Vechsler, President and Chief Executive Officer and Todd Tonelli, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. This conference call follows our earnings news release issued yesterday. We have filed our report for the first quarter on Form 10-Q earlier today. All of our news releases and SEC filings, including our 10-K, 10-Qs and 8Ks are available on our website. A replay of this call will be also available later this morning on the Centrus website. I would like to remind everyone that certain information we may discuss on this call today may be considered forward looking information that involves risks and uncertainty, including assumptions about the future performance of Centris. Our actual results may differ materially from those in our forward looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in our forward looking statements is contained in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-K. The forward looking information provided today is time sensitive and accurate only as of today May 6, 2026. Unless otherwise noted. Please note that we report results using non GAAP financial measures which we believe provide investors with additional understanding of the company's financial performance as well as its strategic financial planning analysis and period to period comparability. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measurements. It is included in the financial results section of our earnings release. This call is the property of Centriss Energy. Any transcription, redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of the call in any form without the express written consent of Centrus is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your participation and I'll now turn the call over to Amir. Amir thank you Neil and thank you to everyone on the call. Today the first quarter of 2026 began our historic undertaking to return the United States to domestic commercial uranium enrichment and was marked by numerous wins and great operational progress. Centris remains the only company with a proven American technology that can meet the growing demand from the commercial LEU and HALEU markets as well as the national security market. Our centrifuge manufacturing program and expansion efforts are enormously significant for the company and the country. A once in a generation opportunity to reclaim American leadership in uranium enrichment with American technology built by American workers. As a reminder, our initial buildout will address our substantial commercial LEU enrichment backlog of more than $2.4 billion and 12 metric tons of HALEU. Furthermore, our base case buildout is expected to be sufficient to reach our nth of a kind cost. Further additions to our buildout will be progressive tied to securing additional firm customer orders and capital resources. This quarter's highlights include progress across the milestones set forth in our 2026 guidance, new external partnerships that bring best in class expertise and allow us to maintain our hyper focus on reducing costs as well as bringing in timelines and progress with the US government, including winning a $900 million HALEU Enrichment Award from the US Department of Energy. But first let me turn to the quarter's results. As many of you know, there can be a significant amount of variability quarter to quarter due to the nature of our business and as such we believe our annual results are more indicative of our LEU and CTS businesses Progress. In the first quarter we achieved $76.7 million in revenue, a gross profit of $31.5 million, an operating income of $0.8 million, net income of $10 million and diluted earnings per share of 45 cents. An adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share were $23.5 million and $1.05 per share respectively. Since we've begun our HALEU operations contract, we have contractually produced over 1.6 metric tons of HALEU UF6 for the government. Todd will discuss the results and their respective drivers in more depth shortly. Turning to our commercial backlog, we finished the first quarter with 3.9 billion of backlog that extends through 2040. This is comprised of 3.1 billion in our LEU segment and 0.8 billion in our technical solutions segments. The LEU segments backlog is broken down between 700 million of broker dealer backlog and 2.4 billion in contingent LEU enrichment sales that are all under definitive agreement. As for our U.S. government opportunities, we are limited in what we can say as we are in a procurement cycle. However, as previously noted, in January we won a $900 million HALEU enrichment award that has the potential to exceed $1 billion and still needs to be finalized through negotiations. The award provides another pool of low cost capital and helps support the 12 metric tons of HALEU capacity we are building regarding national security. Recall that we were notified by the National Nuclear Security Administration of its intent to sole source certain enrichment activities from Centris while we are in procurement. We can confirm that we have submitted our response to their request and we stand ready to support our national security mission. In late January, we launched a $560 million investment in our Oak Ridge centrifuge manufacturing plant, an investment aimed at expanding and accelerating our historic centrifuge manufacturing program, and we have thus far signed three important partners to support our build out. We have repeatedly said that our day one focus is to reduce costs and bring in lead times. Centris Energy will maintain control over design, engineering and manufacturing know how of our centrifuges while partners bring operational excellence and best in class capabilities. First we signed Fluor Best in class EPC with extensive experience in launching and supporting large scale complex industrial buildouts. Fluor will perform design, engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning for the expansion. We also signed Palantir as a strategic partner here. Centris intends to leverage Palantir's foundry and artificial intelligence platform to integrate distinct systems across classified and unclassified environments and utilize AI to to optimize our build out. Since late January we have identified approximately $300 million in potential cost savings and additional improvements expected to reduce manufacturing lead times and accelerate our timetable. This is just the beginning of our continuous improvement efforts and most recently we added Geiger Brothers to lead the on the ground construction work in Ohio. Geiger Brothers previously served as a key construction partner in the deployment of our existing Halo cascade as well as our 2013 LEU demonstration cascade. We believe this structure generates efficiencies and may mitigate some project costs. These partnerships underscore our vigilance and commitment to decreasing costs and bringing in lead times while maintaining operational excellence. We also announced that we are exploring a joint venture with OKLO focused on deconversion services for halo, which currently does not exist commercially and will strengthen our position in the HALEU market. This demonstrates our commitment to leading the domestic fuel cycle and we look forward to updating the market when we have more to share. Operationally, we made strong progress in our workforce additions in both Piketon and Oak Ridge. These jobs span engineers, assembly technicians, maintenance technicians, enrichment operators, lab technicians, project management and project controls. Our Senior Vice President of Field Operations Patrick Brown and team have also made great progress on our other operational targets. In the first quarter we finalized contracts with approximately one third of the partners we deemed critical while the team entered into the conceptual engineering design phase of the first CFC package. Therefore, we are reaffirming our 2026 annual guidance for finalizing contracts with 100% of the partners we deem critical total capital spend in the range of 350 to 500 million dollars, release of a Certified for Construction package and at least 100 net new employee hires at our Oak Ridge facility. Simultaneously, given the strength of our first quarter and commercial progress, including conversations around potential new enrichment off the contracts, we are raising our 2026 annual guidance for revenue to a range of 450 to $500 million from 425 to $475 million and our Python workforce additions from over 50 net new employees to over 100 net new employees. This was a very successful quarter for the company across all fronts. I will now turn the call over to Todd and return with some final thoughts and comments.
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Todd, thank you Amir and good morning to Everett on today's call. Let me first walk you through our results before providing more details on some of what Amir discussed. Our results were in line with our internal projections and reflected not only the typical quarter over quarter shift in contractual mix but also the beginning of spend for our manufacturing program. As noted on last quarter's call, I will be presenting financials on a quarterly and trailing twelve month basis. Furthermore, we are introducing adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share to our reported financials to better reflect and differentiate the ongoing business results from our cost of expansion. Total Revenue for the first quarter was 76.7 million, an increase of 3.6 million or 5% versus the same period last year. TTM revenue was 452.3 million. The LEU segment generated 44.6 million in the first quarter, a 13% decrease versus the previous period. Last year. SWOO revenue in the quarter decreased by 9.7 million due to a 47% decrease in volume of SWU sold, partially offset by a 52% increase in the average price of SWOOS sold. Centris also had 3 million of uranium sales in Q1. The Technical Solutions segment delivered revenue of 32.1 million in the third quarter, a 10.3 million or 47% increase over the previous period due primary to a 9.8 million increase in revenue from the HALEU operations contract. Centrus generated gross profit of $31.5 million and $116.1 million for the first quarter in TTM respectively, compared to a gross profit of $32.9 million in Q1 2025, the LU segment's first quarter cost of sales decreased by 17% or $3.4 million due to the 47% decrease in SWU volume, partially offset by a 45% increase in the average cost of SWU sold versus Q1 2025 technical solutions. Cost of sales increased 8.4 million or 42% from Q1 2025, primarily attributable to the HALEU operations contract. The company generated net income of $10 million and 23.5 million of adjusted net income in the first quarter compared to net income of 27.2 and adjusted net income of 28.6 million respectively in Q1 2025. On a fully diluted basis, this equates to first quarter 2026 earnings per share of $0.45 per unit and an adjusted earnings per share of $1.05 respectively, compared to $1.60 and $1.68 respectively for Q1 2025. On a TTM basis, Centris generated net income of $60.6 million and adjusted net income of 87.8 million respectively. The first quarter net income decrease was primarily attributed to a 15.9 million increase in advanced technology costs and in Q1 2026 and a gain from an 11.8 million non reoccurring extinguishment of long term debt in Q1 2025. This was partially offset by a 9.7 million increase in investment income and 5.5 million decrease in income tax expense for Q1 2026. First quarter adjusted net income excludes 17 million of growth expenses in our advance and 400,000 in stock based compensation costs which combined and tax adjusted equates to 13.5 million. The advanced technology costs are short term non capitalizable costs related to the expansion of our operations in Python and Oak Ridge that cannot be capitalized as they are associated with manufacturer readiness and security training ahead of the buildout. Please refer to the financial Results section of our earnings release issued yesterday for a reconciliation of net income and adjusted net income. Going forward, we can expect to have a certain level of these types of expenses flow through our income statement as we prepare for our build out. Turning to our capitalization and capital spend recall, we previously noted that capital spend for this project will include capex and non CAPEX spending. The latter is attributable to cost and investments such as prepayments to suppliers or growth costs associated with our manufacturing pre preparedness. In the first quarter we had a total of capital spend of 45.2 million with 23.2 million coming from capex and 22 million classified as non capex. That 22 million is comprised of the aforementioned 17 million of gross cost and 5 million related to prepayments for Palantir agreement. Going forward, we can expect the pace of our CAPEX and non CAPEX spend to accelerate throughout the year. We finished the first quarter with 1.9 billion in unrestricted cash and did not access our EPM program. We continue to feel confident in our existing cash balance and we believe we are sufficiently funded to meet our near term capital requirements. As Amir noted, our commercial and operational progress to date have allowed us to raise our 2026 annual guidance for revenue to $450 million to $500 million, from $425 million to $475 million workforce additions in Piketon, Ohio to 100 plus, up from 50 plus. We are simultaneously reaffirming the rest of our financial and operational guidance for fiscal year 2026. With that, I will turn the call back to Amir. Amir thank you Todd. We made great progress across our operations and continue to have meaningful conversations with future commercial and government partners for LEU and HALEU offtake. This includes our conversations with the advanced reactor and hyperscaler communities, conversations that have continued to pick up in pace since we announced our build out that includes 12 metric tons of HALEU. While these first of a kind conversations take time, we are excited by their increased tenor and we continue to explore other adjacent areas in the nuclear fuel cycle where we can further strengthen our offerings to the market, including our announcement this quarter with OKLO to explore HALEU deconversion. On a macro level, we continue to see strong progress from the United States and the rest of the world doubling down on nuclear power. Reactor developers and their customers, from big tech to the US Military are rolling out ambitious plans to deploy reactors on a large scale and at potentially faster rates. Moreover, the US Government is reducing regulatory hurdles for new reactor designs. We're also seeing new use cases including space propulsion. Furthermore, global conflicts and rising tensions continue to highlight the need for governments to diversify away from fossil fuels and strengthen their domestic power sources to drive future sustainable economic growth. Nuclear stands to be a key player in this drive to energy independence. We look forward to sharing more with you on our upcoming calls. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator.
OPERATOR
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the two. We want to remind participants to please stick to asking one question. If there is a follow up you would like to ask, you can queue up by pressing Star1. If you are using a speakerphone, please hit the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. And your first question comes from Ryan Finks from B. Riley. Please go ahead.
Ryan Finks (Equity Analyst at B. Riley)
Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my question on guidance. You touched on it a bit in the prepared remarks, but can you give more detail on what's driving the increase in expected revenue for this year?
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Ryan for the question. And you know, the remarks on this quarter we see continue to be active in the market and we've seen both near term and line of sight to long-term offtake. And that has allowed us to increase our guidance marginally to what we believe will potentially be the outcome of the year and you know, move us up about $25 million within the range. Thanks.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question comes from Rob Brown from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Rob Brown (Equity Analyst at Lake Street Capital Markets)
Good morning. Congratulations on all the progress. Could you give us a sense of the pricing and margin trends in the backlog? It seems like things on the swoo side, it's things are moving up. Just what's the sort of average pricing trend in the backlog?
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Good morning, Rob, good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. Although I can't specifically address contractual pricing as we stated in the past before, I will say to you that the trend is continuing to look like it has in the last few years where you have constricted supply, you have increasing demand both from the existing fleet and from the new reactors that are either in demo state or reactors that are planning to be started up soon. I mean people are starting think about fuel and start putting their fuel orders. That puts pressure on the market. So what you're seeing overall from a macro level, you're seeing pressure on the price through the demand side of it. And so we're seeing a lot of favorability there. So once again, I cannot comment specifically about prices, but we certainly are seeing favorability in the short mid term and the long run in terms of contractual activity. All right, thanks for the color.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question comes from Joseph Rager from Ross Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Joseph Rager (Equity Analyst at Ross Capital Partners)
Hey Amir and team, thanks for taking the questions. I guess just kind of a follow on to one of the previous questions. The additional 25 million that you guys have Added Was any of that in Q1 or is it all future looking just so we can understand kind of how things progress? Good morning, Joseph. Thanks for the question. We would look at it more as obviously our business and I described this in the call, it's wise to look at our business on a TTM basis. As shipments and deliveries can move from quarter to quarter. It's difficult to comment to say exactly which quarter it took place. We do have comments within our MD and A section. What I would say is we're in line with our expectations for the first quarter and the future quarters. I would say, you know, would be rateable to comparable periods in the past and to always adjust based on a TTM view, which gives us the best 12 month period to look at total revenue, net income and performance of the company. Okay, thanks.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question comes from Nick Amicuri from Amicor isi. Please go ahead.
Nick Amicuri (Equity Analyst at Amicor isi)
Hey Amir and Todd, good morning. A couple of quick ones for me. I just wanted to kind of dig into the Palantir partnership a little bit. So you guys have outlined that you identified opportunities to reduce manufacturing lead times. Should we be thinking about that in the realm of the first cascade within the 42-month timeframe or kind of across the board and then as we think about just the cost for the full build out. Right. $1.9 billion worth of cash on the balance sheet. You're in a strong position now, but if we could just kind of provide some color on the initial build and then at what point you get to, I guess, for lack of a better term, proof of concept, where then you can entertain other financing options like maybe project financing, the cascade, or something to that nature. Hey, good morning Nick. Good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. So let me address the first part of your question and then maybe I'll let Todd weigh in on the second part around the capital. So I'm glad you're mentioning this partnership with Palantir because it is transformative for us really. The relationship here and the value that we're seeing lasts much, much longer than the first cascade, the first centrifuge. I mean we're viewing this as sort of a business altering type structure in terms of our unit cost and our ability to meet our lead times to market and beyond. So layering Palantir's AI platform really provides us with real time data and empowers our team, the centrist team, to take more meaningful role in the project management. It allows us to add efficiencies across our work streams, which obviously can lead to to additional cost mitigations and will allow us to bring in lead times. So for example, these efficiencies can help us reduce fuel supply chain risk and could, as I mentioned earlier, reduced execution time and costs. I'll turn it over to Todd to weigh in on the capital question.
Todd Tonelli (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Yeah, thanks Nick. So just as a reminder, correct, we have 1.9 billion on the balance sheet that we can deploy, but we also have the $900 million HALEU award that will be ratably come into us based on milestones payments. So essentially the way we look at it is we have about $2.8 billion currently. Our focus is to always look at many pools of low cost of capital. This may involve the nnsa, third party investment, foreign direct investment, and then also continuing to be opportunistic in the market when we see fit. We don't feel any pressure to be actively out there raising capital in the down market. We did not participate in the At-The-Market program in the first quarter even though we have one that is open and that was that. We just didn't feel it provided the right shareholder value. And we believe there are better low cost of capital options out there which we're continuing to explore to fund the full build out. Great, thanks so much guys.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question comes from Mark Suter, from William Blair. Please go ahead.
Mark Suter (Equity Analyst at William Blair)
Hey gentlemen, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on all the progress this quarter. What we're seeing is advanced reactor companies are pushing through the markets also with the DOE and NRC licensing and a lot of them are using HALO and triso. So I'm just wondering if you could update us on where you see the most SWU value in LEU or hailu and is anything change how you're looking at that strategically?
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Good morning. Good to hear from you and Mark. Actually I'm glad you brought this topic up. This is a great strategic question about our general market and it's something that we spend a great deal of time discussing internally and paying very close attention to as to where the market is going. As you know, we are preparing expansion of both LEU and hailu. We are dealing with both sides of the house in terms of customers in addition to national security as well. So we have a pretty broad perspective of the market. So you are correct, the market is actually starting to mature. Now on the advanced reactor side, if you and I had this conversation a couple years ago or even, I don't know, eight months ago, I would have said that a lot of the advanced reactors are not fully thinking or focused on fuel just yet. Their attention is more to the administrative side of the licensing, through the executive orders, through some of the emergency type activities that have been put by the Department of Energy and quite frankly by the entire administration into nuclear. I would like to think also fueled by some of the crisis we're seeing in generally energy markets, we're now seeing a lot of the reactors get to a phase where they are starting to seriously procure and commit to fuel. Now, that's a big step. That is a significant purchase for all of them. Obviously, we're in participation with the vast majority of them. The fact that the Department of Energy has selected Centris for the HALO award puts us really in the front position, in the most credible position. The fact that we have a cascade operating cements that position. And to your specific question about where would the majority of the value be derived from HALEU or LEU? As I read your question, just from a physics perspective, when a company plants their initial core, they would be thinking about feed and they would be thinking about HAILU feed, in most cases would come in an LEU form. And just from a physics perspective, there is a significant amount of LEU feed that would be required, required to create a single unit of Hailu. So from a volume perspective, the value comes from LEU because LEU drives a lot of the volume, I believe from just generally margin and market being ahead of everybody else. Hailu has a lot of the advantages for us. So deriving value from both is really the answer in different ways. But the good news, and just to end it on the sentiment, the good news is we're seeing almost across the board, all the reactors that were in different states of development are now actually moving towards significant and serious committed fuel procurements.
Mark Suter (Equity Analyst at William Blair)
That's great. I appreciate all the detail. Amir, talking about your ongoing conversations with SWU offtakes, I'm wondering if you can give us an update on the engagement with hyperscalers or traditional utilities and ipps. Has one been more aggressive recently than the other? And I'm also wondering if how the war in Iran and the constrained oil markets have factored in. Has that put any more urgency into the type of conversations? Thanks.
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Good question. Who is more aggressive from our perspective? Look, I'll tell you this. The reactors that are operating have very seasoned fuel buyers. They have been through many markets. They have been through up markets, down markets. They know how to buy fuel. Not to say that others don't. They've been through these cycles before and you can't always tell as to what's driving their buy. Is it a strategic buy? Is it sort of a desperate need? We don't know and we don't really get into these types of questions. Every utility has their own strategy and usually they execute very well on it. And we're kind of seeing a steady flow of requests for pricing, requests for quotations on that kind of business. And as I mentioned earlier, we're still seeing the prices trend up, whether it's for midterm or long term swooze in that market. So I would not classify this as aggressive behavior, but definitely strategic behavior because all of these utilities want to cover their bases and they will not take any undue risk in procuring fuel. I think price is important to them, but obviously it is secondary to security of supply. On the other hand, the hyperscalers are getting into this market now. They're informed. I think they're hiring people or consultants that help them decide on how they want to handle strategically fuel purchases. And I think they do a good job at it. And the earlier comment that I made is it is true. I mean, we're seeing fuel buying activities and a lot of attention being put to those activities. I would give the upper hand to hyperscalers when it comes to trying to go faster and stronger. Just because fuel represents, in my view, a fairly small significant question mark and uncertainty about their reactors, they want to cover that risk as early and as thoroughly as possible, especially as they progress through funding and capital raising for their projects. This is not a risk they should have on their books and they don't want to have it on their books. And we fully understand it and work very closely with them to make sure it is not so. So we're seeing them becoming more interested and more importantly more able to commit. Your question about the global conflict. I mean this on a macro level, it highlights the need for governments to diversify away from fossil fuel. I mean, we know it still is an important source of energy and will continue to be an important source of energy. But just like history showed us many times before, diversifying to nuclear gives you a huge lever in conflicts like this, whether it's politically or whether it's economically. So we are seeing it being a very helpful parameter for decision making for new nuclear build.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question comes from Eric Stein from Craig Holland. Please go ahead.
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Good morning. So you mentioned the we know the NSA had notified you of intent to award and you responded to it. So I'm just curious. I mean, now, what would next steps be? I mean, maybe it's something that's very difficult to answer, but expectations on kind of how that plays out. And then can you just remind me what the potential amount of that funding source would be? Good morning, Eric. Good to hear from you. Thank you. For the question starting with just a general statement. We are in a procurement cycle and therefore we're very limited by what we can say. You know, as I mentioned on the call, we can confirm that we have submitted our response to the National Nuclear Security Administration's request. And again, as a general statement, we stand ready to support our national security mission in any way required. I mean, we know the requirement demand is real and there's not a whole lot more that I can say about that. We're going to let the National Nuclear Security Administration and the government drive the announcements and the information released to the public on this. To your question about quantities and things of that sort, again, this is not something that we have disclosed. I'm going to let the National Nuclear Security Administration and the government drive that information to the public. Okay, thank you.
OPERATOR
And your next question comes from Bill Peterson from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, hi, good morning. And thanks for taking the question you mentioned in the prepared remarks in earlier press release in March about a JV or potential JV with OKLO for deconversion. Can you discuss your strategy around deconversion more broadly? Are you looking for additional kind of commercial partnerships or arrangements? You know, what is the market look? What does the market look like today for you? And what would give you confidence in centrist taking a role in deconversion in the coming years? Yeah. Well, good morning, Bill. Thank you for the question and good to hear from you. Let's maybe start from just some of the very basics so that listeners can understand understand what's driving us to think the way we do. First of all, just from a market perspective, there is a hole in the fuel cycle right now when it comes to advanced reactors and particularly sort of Hailu type fuels, the conversion of uranium hexafluoride or UF6 to whether it's an oxide form or a metal form, more predominantly metal form, that process does not exist commercially. And so this is the reason why, obviously the Department of Energy is getting ready to make an award and they have all the drivers and all the intention to help industries stand up that part of the fuel cycle, which again is critical to standing up the entire fuel chain supply for advanced reactors. But we also are taking very proactive role because we see an opportunity, we see A commercial opportunity. And the commercial opportunity is really highlighted by this partnership with Oklo. OKLO is not only a potential participant in here, but they also are a large off taker and customer. I mean, this is the fuel form that they will be using. This, the fuel form that they require. Most importantly in the strategy is if you were to have a blank sheet of paper type design and you were to ask yourself where and how does it make most sense for me to construct my deconversion facility? You will automatically arrive at a conclusion for many parameters and many factors. You will arrive at a conclusion that it makes the most sense to put my deconversion together with enrichment. Now, it's a lengthy conversation why that is. And there's many important factors that feed into it. Efficiency is one of them. Security is another one. But we believe that we're driving towards something that will provide great efficiencies to the market. From our perspective, it allows us for potential verticals integration and further differentiation of our enrichment of halo. Thanks for that.
OPERATOR
And your next question comes from Lawson Winder from Bank of America securities. Please go ahead.
Lawson Winder (Equity Analyst at Bank of America Securities)
Thank you, operator. And good morning, Amira. Todd, thank you for today's update. I would take it positively that you see the ability to hire in 2026 at a higher rate than previously expected. Expected. Would you describe the additional hiring more as a need for greater resources than previously anticipated to do the same work? Or is this a need stemming from the required work just going faster than expected? And then, and then if I, if I could kind of sneak in a follow up on that, taking an early look at 2027, do you foresee hiring needs being similar, lesser or greater than 2026?
Todd Tonelli (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Good morning and thank you for the question. What I would say is by hiring in today's world, there's a number of components that we have to look at. One is, can we source employees from the local community and area? Do we have to look nationwide? So how quickly can we bring those employees on board? How quickly can we get them? As a reminder, at our facilities, you have to be a cleared individual. So you have to go through security, which is part of our uncapitalized cost. And then because we do one of a kind work, we have to train these individuals. The rate at which we were able to source employees in both Oak Ridge and in Piketon and in the local communities was actually stronger than we anticipated, which allowed us to accelerate our hiring curve. And that allows us to move quicker than we anticipated. If we have a strong workforce, then we're able to not have any delays. Obviously human capital is critical to our build out. So we see this as a very strong positive. And the sooner we get people cleared, trained and working towards our project, it allows us to move swiftly. But obviously we want to be cautious in our approach. We want to make sure that we have critical execution throughout the project. And so what I would say going forward is look, where we are finding people now is unions, local shops, where we're going down to universities, all different areas to build up our workforce. And the rate at which we hire will dictate how quickly we can get those people on board. I would say that for 2027, our growth is always going to be tied or we have our base case, but we can accelerate based on additional potential offtake that we see or in customer demand will increase our rate. That would require additional human capital.
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Lawson, this is Amir. I want to add something to Todd's comment. I think this is a really important topic. As you know, we are doing something here that historic, which is not only building the first enrichment facility, but we're also building the first centrifuge manufacturing facility that's American owned, American technology, which is a great milestone for us as a nation and obviously for the industry as well. A lot of what's driving this project, we're actually driven to intersect the demand curve that up until now has been trending to increase in size and is always moving in. And so as we evaluate the project, project span and how fast we go, it is always driven by the need to meet this demand that we're seeing that is real. Some of it is already signed into contract, some of it is in discussions. But to my earlier comments, to some of the analysts questions, this is a developing and fast moving, you know, changes in how we view the project. Thank you both very much.
OPERATOR
Your next question comes from Jeff Gramp from Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Jeff Gramp (Equity Analyst at Northland Capital Markets)
Good morning. Circling back on the Palantir partnership, I was curious, Amir, the $300 million in savings that you guys have identified thus far, can you give us a sense for what are the main factors driving those cost savings? Is it particular components or just any other commentary you can provide to give
Amir Vechsler (President and Chief Executive Officer)
us a sense for where those are coming from specifically? Thanks. Sure. Well, good morning and thanks for the question. And you know, I know we talked a little bit about it, but I think that I would like to talk about it a lot more if I can because I think it is really a critically important item for us. So what I mentioned earlier is when you stand up A manufacturing facility like we're doing, there's a lot of challenges in doing that. Obviously there's the technological aspect of it. You have the suppliers that you need to line up as part of your supply chain. But what really holds everything together and lines up the efficiencies is the informational system and our ability to make decisions quickly and with high fidelity. What Palantir does and what their AI platform allows us to do is it actually provides us with real time data, which is critically important for a company like ours that is standing up a manufacturing facility and handles hundreds of suppliers. I mean, that is a critically important aspect of it. And we're seeing huge and meaningful reduction in cost in project management. It allows us to shorten our lead times and cycle times. I mean, so far we've already declared $300 million in cost savings. And as I said on previous calls, I mean, we're not stopping there. We're continuing to push and expect more. And I believe we will see further developments on this front. So I guess the quick answer without getting into a lot of detail is it allows us to manage information, allows us to make decisions and really introduces efficiencies at that level. Understood. Pursue the details.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your last question comes from Samir Jozi, from HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Samir Jozi (Equity Analyst at HC Wainwright)
Hey, good morning, Amir. Todd, thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the progress and thanks for all the color you are providing.
Todd Tonelli (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Just a quick one on. In the prepared remarks, I think I heard that the SWU prices were up around 52% at the same time, swoo costs were also up around 45%. So that clearly gives you a gross margin boost a little bit year over year. Should we expect gross margins from SWU increasingly positive going forward? Yeah. So the rate at which swoop prices move, obviously it has to do with our contractual mix and we can't comment on our actual contracts and the margin associated with that, but depending on when shipments take place, as to when we record revenue, when we record, when we have shipments come in and the cost. So what I would always point to is look at this on an average basis over several quarters. That's why we continue to emphasize that we want to talk about this on a ttm. We have seen positive movement in SWU prices that provides additional options within the market. We have a contractual mix that allows us some flexibility on our supply sourcing and some of that has to do with our increased revenue guidance that we've for 2026 and also it allows us to have better line of sight for additional offtake with swoop pricing in the outer years.
Samir Jozi (Equity Analyst at HC Wainwright)
Understood. Thanks for that. And Todd, thanks for doing the 12 month pre 12 month metrics. That helps us understand better the general health of the company on that line. Just a follow up should we expect uranium sales in the second quarter?
Todd Tonelli (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
In the recent history at least, they have tended to concentrate in the second and fourth quarter. So given that you're providing TTM highlighting TTM metrics, should we expect 2Q to have uranium sales? We can't provide any guidance on specific sales. What I would say is uranium sales are optimistic in the market. They can happen occasionally throughout the year, but right now we can't make any comment as to when those sales are going to take place or if they are going to take place, you know, in any future periods. Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking my questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Neil Nagarajan. Please continue.
Neil Nagarajan (Operator)
Thank you, Kelsey. This concludes our investor call for the first quarter of 2026. As an aside, please note that we are introducing a summary slide deck to our earnings materials which can be found on our investor relations website under the Presentations tab. As always, I want to thank you and our listeners and our analysts who called in. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great day.
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