With Two Key Acquisitions, ATHA Energy Corp. Emerges As A Premier Uranium Exploration Company

ATHA Energy Corp. acquires Latitude Uranium and 92 Energy, making them Canada’s biggest player in uranium exploration—all as a bull market for uranium continues.

Uranium is in. With climate concerns rising and global conflict driving tension in the fossil fuels industry, nuclear energy represents the clear future for energy worldwide. At the last UN Climate Change Conference, 22 countries committed to “triple their nuclear power capacity by 2050,” contributing to a bullish start to the year for uranium.

Canada currently ranks as the 2nd largest producer of uranium worldwide. As the world seeks more clean and sustainable nuclear energy, Canada’s uranium industry has been handed a golden opportunity to be the source of the materials needed to power the clean energy revolution. To capitalize on this, uranium exploration needs to be a top-of-mind focus moving forward. Fortunately, ATHA Energy Corp. has already answered the call.

ATHA boasts the largest prospective land package in Canada’s most prominent uranium exploration and mining jurisdictions: the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan and Thelon Basin in Nunavut. These regions are home to the highest-grade uranium deposits and mines globally. In December 2023, ATHA announced two major acquisitions, Latitude Uranium and 92 Energy, creating the premier uranium exploration company in Canada. 

Latitude Uranium and 92 Energy, both instrumental industry leaders in their own right, were acquired by ATHA in December 2023. Shortly after, the company closed over C$23 million in financing, with funds coming from CFT shares on the federal and Saskatchewan provincial level, and through Subscription Receipts. These funds contribute towards ATHA’s significant cash balance, projected to be C$65 million post transaction.

ATHA Energy brings improved access to capital and a robust pipeline of prospective uranium exploration projects. Furthermore, ATHA has the backing of senior players in the uranium space, as IsoEnergy and Mega Energy participated in the December 2023 financing. The acquisition of Latitude comes with the Angilak Deposit, situated in Canada’s Thelon Basin. Angilak is one of the largest and highest-grade uranium deposits outside of the Athabasca Basin with a historic 43 million lbs resource averaging 0.69% U3O8. With the 92E acquisition, ATHA gains access to the Gemini project, a recent high-grade basement-hosted uranium discovery, located within the Athabasca Basin.  

The acquisitions further bolster ATHA’s land package in the Athabasca and Thelon Basins, as well as the Central Mineral Belt (CMB) in Newfoundland & Labrador, which span 3.8 million, 2.9 million, and 360 thousand acres respectively. All in all, the company’s assets total over 7.1 million acres. 

Post-closing of the two transactions, ATHA will boast the largest prospective land package in all three of Canada’s most prominent uranium exploration and mining jurisdictions. Importantly, ATHA has the largest land package in the Athabasca Basin, home to the highest-grade uranium deposits and mines globally (Cameco’s Cigar Lake Mine has a production grade of 16% U3O8). Additionally, ATHA  holds the largest prospective uranium land package in the Thelon Basin, home to the largest, high-grade uranium deposits outside of the Athabasca Basin. 

The Thelon Basin has similar geological settings as the Athabasca Basin since at one time the two Basins were in fact one massive in-land sea. Many of the top experts in the uranium sector theorize that due to these similar settings, and the abundance of uranium mineralization that’s been discovered, the Thelon Basin has the potential to host even higher-grade deposits, similar to the Athabasca Basin.

Both jurisdictions are extremely mining-friendly, however, In contrast to the Athabasca Basin, the Thelon has been drastically under-explored, but ATHA intends to change that in the very near future. Lastly, the CMB in Labrador is another great addition to the ATHA portfolio. The project has historic uranium resources and is also located in another mining-friendly jurisdiction, Newfoundland and Labrador are ranked 4th globally for mining investment.

If one thing is certain, it’s this: ATHA is in the right place at the right time—and this level of exploration exposure has never been seen before.

The joy of mineral exploration is that one discovery often leads to another. This was seen with 92E’s recent Gemini Discovery in the Athabasca Basin, where a shallow basement-hosted discovery was made at a depth of 57 meters, leading to multiple other high-grade lenses being discovered. As ATHA takes on the project, they will follow up on the Gemini discovery and recent indications that parallel structures within the same corridor also host uranium mineralization. Other players in the region have already made additional discoveries on the same corridor. So this new mineralized corridor is showing some great promise for more discoveries as ATHA executes its exploration plans. All one needs to consider is the Patterson Lake Corridor that was under-explored in the last uranium bull run. Over the last 15 years, the Patterson corridor went from nothing to having some of the most important uranium discoveries, such as NexGen’s Arrow Deposit and Fission’s Triple R Deposit.

To execute on the massive opportunities before them, ATHA is leveraging all of the resources, expertise, and capital brought in from the acquisitions of Latitude and 92E. Historical resources (at Angilak and CMB), multiple post-discovery corridor expansion opportunities (like with Gemini), greenfield exploration, and the carried interest upside on key NexGen and IsoEnergy exploration projects. All of these factors contribute to ATHA’s positioning as Canada’s premier uranium exploration company.

ATHA belongs to an industry that combines the nuances of capital markets with the multi-disciplinary science of uranium exploration and mine development. As the leadership of ATHA, Latitude, and 92E consolidate their expertise, with CEO Troy Boisjoli at the helm, the company has unmatched exploration torque needed to feed the world’s growing hunger for the discovery of the next generation of uranium assets.

To move forward, ATHA will lean on its Dual Track Exploration Strategy, which balances the development of existing discoveries with greenfields exploration, reducing risk and increasing the probability of discovery. To achieve the former, the team will evaluate, expand, and advance its uranium deposits and showings using decades of exploration and development expertise. For the latter, ATHA will continue to deploy the latest in exploration techniques and technologies, along with analysis of historically available data sets, increasing their probability of additional discoveries.   

Following the acquisition, ATHA now works on key expansions in the GMZ and Angilak corridor—in addition to generative projects promising to define drill-ready targets in the Athabasca Basin. 

If the race for uranium exploration is now on, ATHA Energy Corp. has the keys to the fastest car on the track.

To learn more about ATHA Energy Corp.’s position as Canada’s premier uranium exploration company, read their latest investor presentation.

This post was authored by an external contributor and does not represent Benzinga's opinions and has not been edited for content. This contains sponsored content and is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice. Benzinga does not make any recommendation to buy or sell any security or any representation about the financial condition of any company.