Cameco, Orano Buy Out TEPCO's Cigar Lake Stake. What It Changes

Cameco and Orano Canada agreed June 1 to buy TEPCO Resources' 5% interest in the Cigar Lake joint venture. The deal, expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, will push Cameco's ownership in the uranium mine to 57.418% and Orano's to 42.582%. TEPCO exits the project entirely.

The transaction is small in percentage terms but carries weight for the supply chain. Cigar Lake is the world's highest-grade uranium mine, producing roughly 15% of global primary uranium supply. Every percentage point of ownership there translates into real pounds of U3O8 at a time when utilities are scrambling to lock down long-term contracts. Cameco already operates the mine and markets its share of output. Adding 5% gives it more direct control over a production stream that the market already prices as a premium asset.

TEPCO's exit is the more interesting signal. The Japanese utility was a legacy partner from the pre-Fukushima era, when Japanese utilities took equity stakes in Western uranium projects to secure fuel supply. TEPCO has been unwinding those positions for years, and this sale completes the process at Cigar Lake. It suggests Japanese utilities are still not in a position to re-enter long-term uranium commitments at scale, even as global reactor restarts accelerate. That leaves a gap in the demand side that other buyers – mostly U.S. and European utilities – are filling through term contracts rather than equity stakes.

For Cameco, the deal is a clean bolt-on. No new mine development, no regulatory risk, no execution timeline. It just buys a bigger slice of an existing, permitted, operating asset. The incremental pounds will flow into Cameco's existing marketing book, which already has long-term contracts stretching into the 2030s. The company's CCJ stock page shows an Alpha Score of 50, reflecting the mixed signals in the broader uranium market: strong term-contract pricing but spot price volatility and lingering uncertainty around how quickly U.S. enrichment capacity can scale.

The bigger question is what this means for the Cigar Lake JV's remaining minority holders. Cameco and Orano now control 100% of the mine. That simplifies governance and removes the friction of managing a partner whose strategic interests – a Japanese utility's fuel-security mandate – no longer align with the operators' commercial goals. It also removes any overhang of a minority partner potentially selling its stake to a third party down the line.

Cameco did not disclose the purchase price. TEPCO Resources' 5% stake is small enough that the financial impact on Cameco's balance sheet is unlikely to move the stock on its own. The value is structural: cleaner ownership, simpler decision-making, and a slightly bigger share of the industry's best cost curve position.