Cameco Stock Falls 10% on a Q3 Loss, Higher Costs and a Capped Price
Cameco’s Q3 earnings landed before the open on Friday, October 30, 2026, and on the basis the street models, they were a complete miss. Cameco stock was down 10.40% at $104.50 by 9:48 a.m. Eastern, against Thursday’s close of $116.63. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $2 million, or nil adjusted diluted earnings per share, against a $0.27 consensus from 13 analysts. Revenue of $619 million came in against a $753.9 million consensus from seven analysts, a shortfall of 17.9% on our arithmetic. Consensus figures are Yahoo Finance street data.
The reported numbers read differently, and that is worth getting straight first. Net earnings attributable to equity holders were $43 million and reported diluted EPS $0.10, both up from nil a year earlier. The $0.27 analysts carried in is an adjusted-EPS consensus, so nil is the comparable figure, and Cameco’s own reconciliation explains the split: the two largest items bridging $43 million of net earnings down to the $2 million adjusted loss are a $26 million adjustment to other income and a $28 million adjustment on other operating expense. The first is a bargain purchase gain of $25.7 million under IFRS 3, recognised when Cameco acquired its pro-rata share of TEPCO’s 5% participating interest in the Cigar Lake Joint Venture, and the company strips it out “since it is non-cash, non-operating and outside of the normal course of our business”. Reported earnings were flattered by a non-cash gain on buying more of Cigar Lake, which our guide to how to read an annual report and Canadian filings walks through.
Three third quarters, three times the street modelled a quarter of a dollar
This is the third consecutive third quarter in which the street modelled roughly a quarter of a dollar and Cameco delivered next to nothing. Q3 2024: $0.25 expected, a $0.01 loss delivered. Q3 2025: $0.27 against $0.07. This morning: $0.27 against nil. Consensus sat within two cents of $0.27 all three times.
Cameco’s explanation for this quarter is the Key Lake maintenance outage, which began in the third quarter this year against the second quarter of 2025. The spread going in was wide on its own terms, from $0.08 to $0.38, and it is set out in our Cameco earnings preview published the day before the print.
Fewer pounds through the mill
Cameco produced 3.5 million pounds of uranium, down 20% from 4.4 million, with the Key Lake mill shut for annual maintenance. CEO Tim Gitzel, in Cameco’s third-quarter news release: “as we expected, that outage, which began during the third quarter, resulted in lower production volume and higher costs this quarter.”
Sales volume fell 8% to 5.6 million pounds, which Cameco attributes to “normal quarterly variations in deliveries” and lower planned 2026 delivery volumes “resulting from our contracting discipline”. Segment revenue was $518 million, down 1%, and gross profit $111 million against $158 million.
A 58% jump in production cost, and the measure that nets against the price
Fewer pounds through the same cost base shows up per pound. Total production cost rose 58% to $57.40 from $36.36, the cash component up 62% to $40.73. Cameco’s caveat matters: those figures exclude care and maintenance, maintenance and operational outage costs, royalties, transportation and commissions, so they are not a margin and cannot be netted against the realized price.
Cameco publishes a measure that does net against the price, and it is the one its guidance uses. Average unit cost of sales including depreciation and amortization was $72.17 a pound, up 21% from $59.54, against the realized $91.76, and the segment’s gross margin was 21% against 30% a year earlier. Over nine months the same measure runs $66.36 against $58.28, up 14%. The $57.40 is what it cost to make a pound at the mines; the $72.17 is what a pound sold actually cost, purchased material and depreciation included.
Spot rose 16%, and Cameco realized US$65.78
That realized price is the constrained number. Average spot for the quarter was US$88.56, up 16%, and the long-term price indicator US$96.17, up 18%, while Cameco realized US$65.78, up 6% in US dollars and 8% in Canadian. Over nine months spot rose 22% in US dollars and the realized price 10%, “reflecting the impact of ceiling prices on market-priced contracts, which limited the average realized price”.
Cameco publishes how capped, holding the contract portfolio as it stood on September 30, 2026 and running spot across it:
| Spot price (US$/lb) | $40 | $60 | $80 | $100 | $120 | $140 | $160 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 63 | 65 | 67 | 68 | 68 | 69 | 69 |
| 2027 | 47 | 58 | 68 | 73 | 74 | 76 | 77 |
| 2028 | 50 | 60 | 72 | 80 | 83 | 87 | 90 |
Expected realized uranium price sensitivity under various spot price assumptions at September 30, 2026, US dollars per pound. Source: Cameco, 2026 Q3 MD&A, FS & Notes, p.24.
Quadruple spot from US$40 to US$160 and the 2026 realized price moves from US$63 to US$69. Later years are more sensitive, 2028 running from US$50 to US$90. Cameco’s footnote ties the softer high-price estimates for those later years, against last quarter’s version of the table, to a methodology correction under one contract that it calls immaterial. Its caution travels with the table: “It is important to note that the table is not a forecast of prices we expect to receive. The prices we actually realize will be different from the prices shown in the table.”
The price Cameco realizes rises far more slowly than the market price, by contract design, which is why a 21% cost increase bites harder here than at a producer selling into spot. For how a volume-and-cost story sits against the sector, the comparable names are lined up in our rundown of the best Canadian mining stocks across gold, copper and uranium.
Five guidance changes, and the per-pound gap narrowed by $3.25
Cameco revised five items in its 2026 outlook, all in its third-quarter MD&A.
| 2026 guidance | Now | Previously |
|---|---|---|
| Uranium production, Cameco’s share | 19.5 to 20.5M lb | 19.5 to 21.5M lb |
| Uranium sales volume | 29.5 to 30.5M lb | 29 to 32M lb |
| Unit cost of sales, incl. D&A | $67.00 to $70.00/lb | $63.00 to $67.50/lb |
| Direct administration | $260M to $280M | $245M to $260M |
| Capital expenditures | $440M to $490M | $490M to $540M |
The cost line is the consequential one. At the midpoints of Cameco’s own ranges the company now expects to realize $93.50 a pound and spend $68.50 on cost of sales, a gap of $25.00, against $28.25 on the same midpoints before this morning. The per-pound gap narrowed by $3.25, or 11.5% (our arithmetic on the company’s ranges). The price range Cameco carries is unchanged in this disclosure: the MD&A tags each revision with a “previously” figure, five lines of them, and average realized price is not among them.
Cameco attributes the cost change “to reflect the narrowed production guidance and the effect of inflation on production costs”. The assumptions behind it put a number on the rest. The range is built on the purchases still to come landing “at an anticipated average purchase price of about $110 per pound”, above the $91.00 to $96.00 the company guides for what it will realize. The 1.8 million pounds bought in the quarter came in at $83.78, while the uranium already in inventory now averages $58.37 a pound, down from $61.85 at December 31, 2025.
The production cut came off one place. McArthur River/Key Lake was narrowed to 10.0 to 10.5 million pounds from 10.0 to 11.5 million, so the million pounds that left consolidated guidance came off the top of the range at the mill that was down for maintenance.
What the fourth quarter has to deliver
Every input here is Cameco’s and the subtraction is ours. Delivery guidance of 29.5 to 30.5 million pounds against 20.5 million delivered leaves 9.0 to 10.0 million pounds for the fourth quarter, roughly a third of the full-year range, and revenue guidance against $2,278 million booked implies $1,042 million to $1,292 million.
That midpoint, about $1,167 million, is roughly 3% below the $1,201 million Cameco booked in Q4 2025 and a little under the $1,183 million in Q4 2024, and Q4 2025 was 34.5% of that year’s $3,482 million of revenue. So the year does not need a heroic quarter but a normal Cameco fourth quarter, and deliveries land there because customers choose when in the year to receive them.
Narrowing both ranges is Cameco saying it has “greater certainty in the timing of uranium production and deliveries”, while the MD&A still ties 2026 cash generation to sourcing the material required to meet deliveries as planned. Whether a mill still in outage delivers it is the live question. The Key Lake outage “began in the third quarter and has carried over into the fourth quarter”, the planned shutdown is longer than in previous years, and “there is a risk that production may be impacted if there are restart challenges or delays in commissioning new equipment”.
Cameco earned adjusted EPS of $0.50 in Q4 2025 and $0.36 in Q4 2024. The street’s Q4 estimate going in was $0.56 from nine analysts, set before this morning’s revision.
Operating cash of $3 million, and a token dividend
Cash provided by operations was $3 million in the quarter against $156 million, and $112 million over nine months against $731 million. Cameco points to higher income taxes paid and higher working capital requirements, plus lower earnings over the nine months, and notes that operating cash “tends to fluctuate as a result of the timing of deliveries and product purchases”. That cash arrived in the fourth quarter in each of the last two years: $677 million in Q4 2025 against $731 million across the first nine months of that year, and $530 million in Q4 2024.
The board declared a 2026 annual dividend of $0.24 a share, payable December 15, 2026 to holders of record November 30, 2026, equal to the 2026 target under the dividend growth plan announced in 2024 to double the annual dividend. On 435,532,978 common shares that is about $104.5 million, a 0.21% yield on Thursday’s close of $116.63 (our arithmetic). This morning’s fall takes that to about 0.23% on the $104.50 intraday price (our arithmetic). At September 30 the company held $860 million of cash against $1.0 billion of total debt, plus an undrawn $1.0 billion revolver.
Westinghouse improved in the quarter and is down for the year
Cameco’s share of Westinghouse was a $24 million net loss, better than the $32 million loss a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA of $143 million against $124 million. Nine months run the other way: an $80 million net loss against $32 million of net earnings in 2025, a $112 million swing on our arithmetic, with adjusted EBITDA of $427 million in Canadian dollars against $569 million. Cameco attributes the nine-month fall to a comparison effect, with Westinghouse’s work on the Dukovany project in the Czech Republic having lifted its share of 2025 second quarter revenue by approximately US$170 million.
Inkai’s pounds are moving, late
JV Inkai is on track for 10.4 million pounds on a 100% basis in 2026, of which Cameco’s purchase allocation is 4.2 million. Cameco bought 0.8 million pounds in the first nine months and none in the third quarter, and about 1.6 million pounds of its share reached Blind River after quarter end. The final shipment is in transit and expected before the end of 2026, which leaves roughly 1.8 million pounds riding on arrival by December 31 (our arithmetic). Because Cameco equity-accounts Inkai, its share books as a purchase on delivery, which is why none showed in the quarter. Hitting the target requires Inkai to manage “the availability of sulfuric acid, other procurement and supply chain issues, transportation challenges, construction delays and inflationary pressures on its production costs”, the MD&A says.
The move on Friday morning
Cameco stock traded at $104.50 on the Toronto Stock Exchange at 9:48 a.m. Eastern, down 10.40% from Thursday’s close of $116.63, and at $103.70 and down 11.09% twelve minutes before that. Those are intraday readings on an open market rather than a close. The quotes are Yahoo Finance data. The New York listing moved with it, CCJ at US$74.90 and down 10.29% at the same moment, which puts the repricing in the security rather than in one Toronto print, while the S&P/TSX Composite sat at 35,779.13 and down 1.30%, so almost all of the move is Cameco’s own.
What Cameco put in front of the market this morning is set out above: an adjusted net loss against a $0.27 consensus, revenue of $619 million roughly flat on the $615 million of a year earlier against a street that modelled $753.9 million, unit cost of sales guidance raised to $67.00 to $70.00 a pound, production and sales volume guidance narrowed, and a realized price that contract ceilings hold near US$65 to US$69 whatever spot does.
What the last eight reports did afterwards
Across the last eight reports, from November 2024 to July 2026, four were beats and four misses on the adjusted basis the street uses. The average next-session move was negative 1.03%, positive in two of the eight, and the split runs backwards: negative 2.40% after a beat against positive 0.34% after a miss. The longer windows average the other way, positive 4.36% over 30 days and positive 15.07% over 90 days, positive in three and five of the eight respectively. That is our arithmetic on eight reports of Yahoo consensus and price data, and eight observations is eight observations: Cameco’s move after a print has had no relationship to whether it beat. Those averages rest on the eight reports before this one. This morning is one more observation, and the fifth report in a row that the stock has fallen after.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Company figures are from Cameco’s own Q3 2026 news release and its 2026 Q3 MD&A, FS and Notes, both published October 30, 2026, with the document and page cited on every figure in the article’s front matter. Consensus EPS and revenue, the analyst counts, the Q4 estimate and the eight-report surprise and next-session history are Yahoo Finance street data, credited in plain text and not linked. The share price is the Toronto listing, and Friday figures are intraday readings at the clock times stated, not closes. Percentages and ratios Cameco does not publish are labelled as our arithmetic.
