Atomic Eagle Secures the Return of the High Grade Madaouela Uranium Project

• Atomic Eagle has negotiated the return of its Madaouela Uranium Project in Niger, expropriated from subsidiary GoviEx in 2024.
• The 116.5 million pound resource at 1,282ppm is twice the size and four times the grade of Muntanga, its Zambian flagship.
• Atomic Eagle takes 60% ownership and full operational control for $10 million US in staged payments over two years.
• Management says the Niger deal won't distract from Muntanga's own growth, which continues under a separate dedicated team.
• Formal signing of the mining convention is imminent. Atomic Eagle targets JORC resource conversion in late 2026.

Atomic Eagle Limited has struck a deal to bring its Madaouela Uranium Project in Niger back under company control, just over a year after the asset was expropriated from its subsidiary GoviEx Uranium. The agreement, negotiated over seven months rather than pursued through international arbitration, gives the ASX-listed developer a second advanced uranium project to sit alongside its flagship Muntanga Project in Zambia - and, if the numbers hold up, a meaningfully larger resource base to work with heading into a tightening uranium market.

Atomic Eagle listed on the ASX in November 2025 via a reverse takeover of the former GoviEx Uranium Inc, a company that had focused primarily on Madaouela, with Muntanga treated as a secondary asset at the time. From the outset, the company's senior leadership - including current Chairman Grant Davey, who brings substantial uranium sector experience from founding two other listed uranium producers - had prioritised Muntanga as the near-term focus, even as optionality on Niger contributed to the share price without requiring significant capital or management time. That changed in January 2026, when CEO Phil Hoskins met Niger's Minister of Mines at the Future Minerals Forum in Saudi Arabia and found a government newly willing to negotiate the project's return rather than face a costly, drawn-out arbitration process.

Sizing the Prize: Grade & Scale

The scale of Madaouela is the headline number. Historical work totalling more than $160 million and 600,000 metres of drilling underpins a resource of 116.5 million pounds of U3O8 at 1,282 parts per million - roughly twice the size of Muntanga and around four times its grade. At a long-term uranium price of $95 a pound, Hoskins put the contained value of that resource at approximately $130 million, with the project's net present value estimated at around $650 million US at current prices - a figure the company says increases by roughly $100 million for every $5 rise in the uranium price. Notably, that resource was originally estimated at a uranium price of just $70 a pound, meaning the current contained-value figures already sit on a conservative base rather than a spot-price assumption.

Of the 116.5 million pounds, 96 million pounds fall in the higher-confidence measured and indicated categories, with the remaining 20 million pounds classified as inferred and excluded from the project's previous Canadian-standard feasibility study - representing further upside once incorporated into an updated study. Hoskins also flagged the mining method as an area for improvement: the existing plan mixes open-pit and underground room-and-pillar mining, similar to the approach used at neighbouring mines operated by French group Orano, a method he said leaves a meaningful proportion of uranium unextracted at depth. Optimising extraction rates and potentially running underground mining alongside the open pit are both being examined as ways to lift production and capture more of the resource's inherent price leverage.

The Terms: Ownership, Payments & Governance

Under the new mining convention, Atomic Eagle holds 60% of a newly established Nigerien entity, with the government retaining 40% - 15% as a standard free-carried interest under Niger's mining law, and up to 25% as a contributory interest that dilutes if the government doesn't fund its share of capital as the project advances. Atomic Eagle has also offered to carry the government for up to $40 million of its eventual equity contribution, at no cash cost and with no tax implications. Upfront cash commitments are modest by comparison: $5 million US within a month of signing, and a second $5 million US at the start of construction. Resolving offtake rights was, in Hoskins's telling, one of the most important elements of the negotiation.

Niger's mining law grants the government three separate offtake-related rights that, read together, could have entitled it to as much as 90% of production, despite having no strategic interest in holding a long-term uranium position. The convention narrows this substantially: Atomic Eagle has near-unfettered rights over its 60% share, subject to government review, while any offtake deal covering the government's 40% stake is subject to a right of pre-emption, under which the government can only step in on the same arm's-length terms already negotiated. Governance sits across three interlocking documents - the entity's constitution, the mining convention, and a signed shareholders' agreement - which Hoskins said were deliberately aligned to avoid the kind of documentation gaps that have caused disputes elsewhere in Africa. Atomic Eagle reviewed all previously signed Niger mining conventions before finalising its own, and management believes the terms are strong enough that the government intends to use this agreement as a template for future negotiations with other companies.

Funding the Next Two Years

The company has a two-year window to update historical feasibility studies, reapply for environmental approvals, and convert the existing NI 43-101 foreign resource estimate into a JORC-compliant one, expected in the second half of 2026. Atomic Eagle held $13.8 million in cash at 30 June 2026, and management estimates roughly 50 million options and warrants - held by strategic shareholders including a Zambian pension fund, current director Govind Friedland and former director Eric Krafft - could bring in a further $16 million if exercised early. Hoskins pointed to a January 2026 meeting with the US Development Finance Corporation at the Future Minerals Forum, where officials indicated that regulatory considerations were not the main obstacle to financing Niger uranium assets - the DFC was instead working through export-related solutions on a separate project, the Dasa uranium project owned by Global Atomic, which is already progressing toward debt financing from similar sources.

Hoskins sees that as instructive for Madaouela: strategically motivated financing, from export credit agencies or state-backed entities with a direct interest in securing uranium supply, may increasingly be favoured over traditional debt-and-equity structures reliant purely on project cash flows and conventional offtake. He drew a distinction between how Western strategic investors and Chinese state-linked companies are likely to value an asset like Madaouela, suggesting the latter may weigh geopolitical and supply-security considerations more heavily than the NPV and IRR metrics typically used by retail and institutional investors.

Interview with Phil Hoskins, CEO of Atomic Eagle

Muntanga Still in the Driver's Seat

Hoskins was keen to stress that Madaouela isn't crowding out the company's Zambian project. Muntanga's resource sits close to 60 million pounds and continuing to grow, with a dedicated team and a separate study group now standing up specifically for Madaouela. The company's stated view is that Muntanga remains the right development asset for a junior - simple acid heap leach processing, high recoveries, low acid consumption - while Madaouela's scale and grade bring strategic optionality that could attract larger players down the track. The quarter's activity supports that framing. Exploration drilling at the Chisebuka target during the June quarter expanded the south-west higher-grade zone to approximately 830 metres by 400 metres and the northern higher-grade zone to roughly 900 metres by 600 metres, with results demonstrating continuity between the newly drilled zones and the existing resource area.

The company also received both Environmental and Social Impact Assessment approval from Zambia's Environmental Management Agency and "no objection" approval of its Resettlement Action Plan during the quarter - key permits required before construction can begin. Separately, Atomic Eagle signed a binding option to acquire 100% of the Sitwe Uranium Project, a 429 square kilometre licence in north-eastern Zambia that expands the company's tenement holdings there by 38%, for an initial exploration commitment of US$200,000 and an exercise price of US$400,000. The board was also strengthened during the quarter with the appointment of Muna Hantuba, a Zambian business leader and former chairman of the country's Securities and Exchange Commission, underlining the company's continued in-country focus even as management attention extends to Niger.

What the Market Should Pay For It

Hoskins pointed to African uranium developers trading at around $3 a pound in the current market as a reference point, which on Atomic Eagle's 60% attributable share of the Madaouela resource implies roughly $210 million Australian in additional value - before accounting for the premium strategic buyers might place on a project of this grade.

"I think if you're tripling the resource base under our control, simplistically, I would be disappointed if we couldn't at least double our share price."

Asked whether investors should treat the opportunity in binary terms - it either proceeds or it doesn't - rather than debating whether the market should apply $1, $2 or $3 a pound to the resource, Hoskins argued the real distinction now is between political risk and execution risk. He said it would be unusual for a government to negotiate an outcome in good faith over several months and then reverse course shortly afterwards, unless one side had failed to honour its commitments, and that Atomic Eagle intends to meet every undertaking it has made on studies, approvals and financing. That leaves optimisation and delivery, not sovereign risk, as the main variable investors should watch. He also cautioned that re-rating won't happen automatically: signing of the formal mining convention is imminent, and the market's response to the deal will itself shape how easily the company can run a financing or partnering process from here.

The Investment Thesis for Atomic Eagle

• Madaouela adds a second advanced, high-grade uranium asset (116.5Mlb at 1,282ppm) at a fraction of its historical $160 million-plus development spend, on a two-year permitting and study timeline.
• Ownership terms (60/40, with a dilution mechanism protecting Atomic Eagle's position and a capped $40 million equity carry for the government) reduce near-term cash outlay to $10 million US in staged payments.
• Operational control is unambiguous - no special majority or unanimous consent required from the government partner on budgets or work programmes.
• Cash position of $13.8 million plus potential early option exercises (~$16 million) appears sufficient to fund the studies and approvals phase without an immediate raise.
• Muntanga in Zambia remains fully resourced and on its own growth trajectory, reducing the risk that Madaouela becomes a distraction.
• Monitor the JORC resource conversion (H2 2026) and formal mining convention signing as the next hard catalysts.
• Strategic interest from larger groups (management referenced both US and Chinese parties) could accelerate a financing or partnering process, but timing and terms remain unconfirmed.

Macro Thematic Analysis

Niger's uranium sector has been in flux since the 2024 expropriation wave, and the market's near-total discounting of Madaouela reflected genuine uncertainty about whether operators could get projects back at all. Atomic Eagle's experience - a mining convention negotiated in seven months, versus Hoskins's own prior experience of a four-year process in Tanzania - suggests the Nigerien government's posture toward existing uranium holders may be more pragmatic than headline political risk implies, even as its relationship with other foreign players, including Orano, remains more complicated. The region's uranium endowment extends well beyond Madaouela itself, spanning assets held by Orano and by Chinese companies within the same district, and Hoskins reads the government's intent as wanting these mines to collectively contribute to the next wave of national uranium production - positioning the country's mineral wealth as central to its economic development rather than treating individual projects in isolation.

"I believe it's less about political risk. Very rarely does a company in a country spend the time to come together with an outcome in mind and then very quickly do a U-turn down the track, unless one of the parties absolutely doesn't do what they said."

That reasoning sits alongside a broader shift management is watching: traditional debt-and-offtake financing routes may increasingly give way to strategically backed transactions, as governments and importers with a direct interest in secure uranium supply look past standard project-finance economics. Hoskins was candid that a jurisdiction with Niger's recent political history is unlikely to be led by a company the size of Atomic Eagle alone, suggesting a larger, better-capitalised group could ultimately end up driving the broader strategic outcome for the country's uranium sector - with Atomic Eagle positioned to benefit from any resulting consolidation or partnership activity given its early-mover position in re-securing Madaouela. For investors, the read-through is that Niger's uranium sector may attract capital motivated by more than IRR alone, a dynamic that has already drawn preliminary interest from the White House and major Chinese uranium companies, according to Hoskins.

TL;DR

Atomic Eagle has negotiated the return of its Madaouela uranium project in Niger - a 116.5 million pound, 1,282ppm resource - just over a year after it was expropriated. The company takes 60% ownership, retains full operational control, and commits $10 million US in staged payments over the next two years while updating studies and permits. CEO Phil Hoskins says the deal shouldn't distract from Zambia's Muntanga project, which continues growing in parallel, and expects formal signing soon.

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