Boom in Uranium Stocks Fizzles as Ukraine Ceasefire Talks Build

(Bloomberg) -- Once-booming uranium stocks have been veering toward bust mode to start 2025.

Escalating trade tensions between the US and Canada, one of the world’s key producers of the nuclear fuel, are playing a major part. Lately, so are talks toward a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, which raise the prospect of looser sanctions on Russian production of the radioactive metal and the potential for more supply.

The price of uranium is now down more than a third from early 2024, and has slumped roughly 11% this year alone. The widely followed $2.9 billion Global X Uranium ETF, which mostly tracks mining shares, has declined about 5% in 2025. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corp., the largest uranium miner in North America, has dropped 11%, following five years of gains.

It was just a little more than a year ago that uranium was booming after roughly a decade in the doldrums. More countries were moving to re-open nuclear reactors, and electricity demand was expected to surge with the growth of artificial intelligence and data centers. Russia’s early 2022 invasion of its neighbor only tightened supplies.

But for weeks now, the headwinds have been mounting. Investors are reluctant to bet that the stability seen in the shares in recent days will last until they get a better picture of what will happen in Ukraine. Meanwhile, questions around President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals have caused utilities to delay signing long-term purchase agreements for the metal, says John Ciampaglia at Sprott Asset Management. 

“They’re just blowing so much smoke at the market and nobody knows what’s what,” said Ciampaglia, CEO of the firm, which offers natural resource-focused ETFs. “It just creates so much uncertainty that it’s paralyzing people making decisions.” Investors, in the meantime, have “just stepped to the sidelines.”

On Monday, uranium shares rallied as part of a broad advance in the stock market on signs that US tariffs will be more targeted than anticipated, lifting the mood around the economic outlook, at least briefly. 

There’s been some other supportive news lately as well. Uranium shares and the commodity price got a lift last week when the world’s largest miner, Kazakhstan’s NAC Kazatomprom JSC, said it was experiencing supply-chain issues that were making it hard to access the sulfuric acid needed to produce the nuclear fuel. 

However, that development didn’t appear to be enough to sweep away all the doubts that have been building.

Another drag on shares of uranium producers lately has come from China, where companies have produced approaches to training AI models that may require less energy, possibly diminishing the push for more nuclear power. In January, the emergence of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek sparked a selloff in energy stocks. Now comes news that Jack Ma’s Ant Group had developed its own AI model using Chinese-sourced chips that would cut costs.

“There are going to be more DeepSeeks coming along,” said Brooke Thackray, a research analyst at Global X, an ETF division of Mirae Asset Financial Group. That offering “changed the backdrop” for expected power demand, Thackray said. 

Add it all together and “everybody is kind of in wait-and-see mode,” said Sprott’s Ciampaglia. 

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