How Cameco Corporation Makes Most of Its Money

How Cameco Corporation Makes Most of Its Money

At its core, Cameco Corporation (NYSE: CCJ) is in the mining industry, competing with companies like Rio Tinto plc (NYSE: RIO). The big difference is that Cameco exclusively mines uranium, which is used as a fuel in nuclear power plants. This makes it important to understand some dynamics that most other miners don't face.

So the first thing to note about how Cameco makes money is really what it doesn't do. It's a miner, so finding commodities, digging them up, processing them, and selling them is the basic business model, as with miners like Rio Tinto. But unlike Rio and most other miners, Cameco is focused exclusively on uranium. You could get exposure to uranium by owning Rio Tinto, but uranium made up only 1.3% of Rio's revenues and 0.4% of EBITDA in 2016. At Cameco, uranium and uranium-linked businesses basically make up 100% of revenues.

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Source: Fool.com