Third-Degree Burn

"I wouldn't advise anyone to invest one nickel in any uranium stock simply because my name has been associated with it. I would hate to see anyone get burned."

So said Financier Floyd B. Odium when his Atlas Corp. (total assets: $109,621,643) bought Vernon A. Pick's Delta uranium mine in southeastern Utah for the record price of more than $9,000,000 (TIME, Sept. 6, 1954). Last week, in Atlas Corp.'s latest financial report," Floyd Odium disclosed that he himself had been badly burned. Instead of having nearly 600,000 tons of ore worth about $25 a ton, Delta turned out to have only about 100,000 tons worth mining, valued at about $20 a ton. The mine will probably close down in another two or three months when the last of the 100,000 tons has been taken out.

Though the bad news came as a shock to stockholders, Odium had hinted at it a year ago at a Securities and Exchange Commission hearing, held to pass on a merger of five companies into Atlas. Even if Delta did not pan out as expected, said Odium at that time, it was worth $6,120,000 as a tax loss to offset Atlas profits. Thanks to its interest in such other uranium properties as the Hidden Splendor Mining Co. (claimed value: $26 million) and the Lisbon Uranium Corp. (claimed value: $15.5 million), Atlas owns about 5% of total known U.S. uranium deposits. On them, and its other interests, Atlas earned $2,991,036 nontaxable in 1956 because of losses other than in Delta.

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