Royal Gold, Inc. Aktie

Hello, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in San Francisco and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development.

The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate by using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. That being said, I will now hand it over to Alistair.

Thanks very much, Noella. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. Had a very busy time at Royal Gold over the past year. And I think it's still, we haven't seen recognition in the market for a lot of what we've done. So I think it's very timely to give you an update today.

So I will be making forward-looking statements during this presentation. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent form 10-K filing with the SEC.

So during this presentation, I'm going to give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. We are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals. We are not a mining company. The presentation is divided into the various pieces that are really the key attributes of Royal Gold in our business model. So I'll start talking about our focus on precious metals, which really gold is where we focus most of our time. I'll talk about our high-margin business. We have a long -- also a longstanding commitment to dividend growth within that business. I'll talk about our portfolio, which is the most diversified amongst our peers in terms of assets, operators and jurisdictions. We'll talk about our business model, which has limited operating risks with steady margins and no direct exposure to capital and operating cost risks.

We'll talk about our size. We think we're the optimal size for a relatively small sector and we have enough scale to be able to compete for the largest transactions yet still show growth by doing the transactions that are kind of the bread and butter in our sector.

And then finally, I'll talk about the optionality within our portfolio. And the fact that we don't need to pay to get additional organic growth from within the portfolio once we have assets inside the company.

So 2025 for us was a pretty transformative year, I should say. We've completed a number of transactions, but the biggest was the Sandstorm and Horizon corporate transaction which we closed late in October. This allowed us to really change the face of our portfolio. We added significant growth and diversification to our portfolio with this corporate transaction. We also did a couple of other transactions that were the normal course for us, which is single asset transactions. We did a gold stream on Kansanshi mine in Zambia, which provides immediate cash flow on a very high-quality, long-life asset. We also did a stream and royalty on the Warintza project in Ecuador. This is something that gives us exposure to an emerging Tier 1 operation in a new jurisdiction.

And we didn't just do transactions last year to help us show growth. We saw some very interesting optionality that was surfaced from within the portfolio and 2 of those are Mount Milligan. We saw an extension of the mine life to 2045, which is a significant achievement for Centerra and for us as a holder of a gold and copper stream on that asset. And then we saw Barrick advance the Fourmile project in Nevada, which is by Barrick's account one of the best and most interesting gold discoveries that we've seen in the -- globally in the last few decades. So we have full exposure on the Fourmile project. But we've also done a lot of things within the company, aside from adding those things to the portfolio.

We released our first quarter results in May, in early May. So just over a month ago, and we had record revenue, cash flow and earnings, and our EBITDA on an adjusted basis was almost $400 million. So that was the first clean quarter we've had since we did all of those transactions last year that represents the full ability of the company to generate cash flow. We've also -- since October 20th, we repaid $800 million of debt, which is really pretty incredible if you think about that just over a few short months. That shows the cash flow generation potential of our business. We also, last year, with all the work that we did, we -- and the changes to the portfolio, we increased the reserve life of our portfolio, the duration of our portfolio on average to about 18 years. So that's about a 25% increase over where we stood this time last year. That's significant. And that does not include resource growth or the potential that could come from additional or adds to reserves.

We also -- we've done a number of transactions to clean up some of the things that were in the Sandstorm portfolio that the market didn't like and we were very clear when we announced the transaction that we're going to focus on those. So we did a lot of that. Raised some money that helped us to repay our debt. And so we feel much better about the simplicity of our portfolio. And then finally, we raised our dividend in November for the 25th year in a row running that is unmatched in our sector.

So we did a lot. We added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio, but we did not change our strategy, and I'll talk to that in the coming slides. So in this section of the presentation, I'll talk about our gold focus. And we are -- we've been around since the mid-1980s. We've got 45 years of history on the NASDAQ as a listed company. So we're one of the grandparents on the NASDAQ, if you will. But our strategy hasn't changed over that time, over that 45 years. It's been very consistent. We're very focused on gold revenue from good assets and good jurisdictions, operated by the best counterparties. And as you can see on this slide, our revenue has grown consistently over the past several years, but the metal mix has not changed.

So we aim to give our shareholders gold exposure in a conservatively managed vehicle. And you can see how we've performed over the long term when you look at our stock price against other metrics that we compare ourselves against. And this hopefully shows you why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to a very volatile commodity. On the left-hand side, you can see our beta to the gold price is 1.6. So we do have a strong correlation or leverage to the gold price. On the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance over the long term. This goes back to when the GDX index was formed in 2006. And since that period, which is almost 20 years, we've beaten the gold price, we've beaten the GDX, and we've beaten the S&P 500. So this hopefully gives you the proof that we are a very good long-term investment in a volatile commodity.

I'll talk in this next section about our margins and our dividend growth, and we do have a very high operating margin in Royal Gold. Our business model is unique. It's by virtue of what we do is a high-margin business, but it's also very scalable. We had -- in 2025, our EBITDA margin was 82%, and our cash G&A was about 4% of total revenue. So our costs are low and they're fixed, which means that the cost inflation should not be something that causes significant risk to our margins. And our business model is very efficient. Our head count is low for the size of the company we are. We have 39 employees with Royal Gold today. Our market cap is almost $20 billion. So you can compare us to any company in any sector and we compare very well when you think about us on a per employee basis.

Return of capital, as I said before in my opening comments is really a very important thing for us. It's a key strategic objective and it's something that makes us unique when you think about other gold investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every year since 2001, despite ups and downs of the gold price. And you can see that on this slide. You see the gold price in periods where it's come down. We have not cut or kept our dividend flat. We've actually raised it. And we've raised our dividend for 25 years in a row, and we've paid out well over $1 billion in dividends to our shareholders.

We're the only company in the GDX index that's paid an increasing dividend since the index was formed in 2006, and we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High-Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that sets us apart from all of our peers and everybody else in the precious metals sector.

Now we have a very diversified portfolio in Royal Gold. And you can see on this map, it's a global portfolio. It's weighted towards lower risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions. The portfolio, it spans various stages of project development. We have over 360 assets in the portfolio, 80 produce revenue today, 30 assets are in development. And then the remaining 250 or 260 would be at various stages of earlier exploration or evaluation. And organic growth comes to us from developments and exploration stage assets that advance through the pipeline to production. And the diversified portfolio, it reduces single asset and counterparty risks.

Our commodity focus is gold, as you can see on the left-hand side, and we have the highest gold revenue percentage of our large-cap peers. But we do also have significant silver and copper contributions from within the portfolio. Geographically, we are diverse, but we're very much a North American-focused company in terms of the revenue weighting on a quarterly basis. And we are diversified when you think about assets and operators. And on a net asset value basis on the left-hand side, we have the most diversified asset portfolio in our sector. And 8 of the top 10 assets that we identify as being the highest net asset value within the portfolio are in production today. They're producing revenue. But we also have expansion and extension projects underway at 5 of those. So 5 of those producing assets. So a very interesting portfolio mix.

Our operators are best-in-class. And if you look at the names on this list, we've got large, well-capitalized and experienced companies on the other side of our contracts. And we've recently added First Quantum, Rio Tinto and Glencore. So we think that we've got a pretty world-class portfolio and operated by some of the best in the business. It's important when you think about the portfolio, the diversification of the business like ours because it reduces our exposure to single asset operator and jurisdiction risks. And that's important for generalist investors who really don't want to spend the time understanding the assets in our portfolio. We've got a diverse slate of portfolio or assets that contribute revenue. So if one of those does -- if it underperforms, hopefully, something will counteract that within the portfolio or if we do have underperformance of one asset, hopefully it doesn't impact the value of our business, which is really important when you think about our business model.

Now our business model does have limited operating risk. And I want to talk about that and some of the advantages of the Royalty model. What we provide to our investors is gold exposure with reduced risk and there are many different ways you can invest in gold, but this slide shows how we are positioned. Our business is designed to provide exposure to gold and optionality to the mining projects that are in our portfolio and we provide a dividend to our shareholders while reducing the downside risk by holding a diverse portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating and capital costs.

There are many other ways you can invest in the gold sector. You can -- if you want to be very conservative, you can buy physical gold. But if you buy an ounce today, that ounce will never grow. It's always going to be an ounce. It won't give you any upside and it won't give you a dividend, and it's probably going to cost you to store that ounce. You can be more aggressive and you can buy equities in mining companies or exploration companies or single asset developers. But with those, you're also going to get exposure to operating and capital costs risks. And in today's environment, when people are talking about inflation, that is a real risk.

There's a perception that our business doesn't provide good leverage to gold. But I think if you look at our financial results, that addresses that misperception. We have very good leverage to the gold price. And you can see on this slide how that works. I mean we have very different cost structure, a very different cost structure than operating companies. Our costs are low, and they're fixed. So margins should expand as metal prices increase whereas operator costs are subject to inflation risks. So margins may not expand or expand as quickly if gold prices increase when costs also increase. And you can see that in this next slide where we look at the different cost structure between us and the average operator. Producers are exposed to inflation in the input costs that they use to run the assets or run the mines that they have in their portfolio. So things like labor, energy, costs for consumables, so they need to buy to run the assets that they operate. Many of those actually, they increase when you see a rising commodity price environment.

So you may see the gold price increase, but you also get increases in steel price or oil or something like that, that actually will mean that margins don't expand because while our top line is increasing, your cost line is also increasing. If you look at our costs on the other hand, it's mostly G&A, which are -- they're mostly steady costs. So things like salaries, services, office rents, these things don't move in a short-term nature. And they're not subject to these wild swings in the short term. It's important because anything that impacts cost impacts margins. And in the first quarter of this year, you didn't see many mining companies talking about the impact of the higher energy prices as a result of the Iran War. Those had not shown up in the first quarter of this year, but I think we will likely start to see that in the next couple of quarters. We're going to see some cost inflation coming through on the operator side because energy has been very volatile, and you see that increase pretty significantly since the middle of March.

Now we are a pretty well-sized company in our sector. And we were large enough to compete, but we're also small enough to show growth. And our sector is built on small transactions. Most transactions in the sector, if you look back over history, they would be smaller than $300 million. And the average transaction size is just over $100 million. We sit in a pretty interesting position because we're big enough, we have the cash flow, we have the scale to compete for the largest transactions. And you can see that last year, we did the Kansanshi stream with First Quantum, is a $1 billion transaction. We won that transaction.

Yet, we're also small enough to be able to show growth. So small transactions for us can actually be meaningful when you look at the results of those small transactions. And something like Warintza is a good example. We did that last year as well, $200 million transaction, and we think that is going to be something that actually shows up nicely in our results when that asset starts producing. We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector. That's not helpful. I don't -- we don't think it's -- we want to be the best in our sector. We're going to be able to get the best returns and have the highest valuation and we think this goldilocks position that we're in, if you want to call it that, is a great platform to continue executing on our strategy of growth in gold.

Now I'm going to talk a little bit now about growth and optionality. And I'll start with a discussion of capital allocation and capital allocation priorities. Our growth really does depend on our ability to successfully allocate capital. And the strategy remains simple and very consistent. First, we always look to reinvest in our business when we can, and we try to reinvest using nondilutive sources of financing. Second, we want to maintain a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity. We need to do that because opportunities come up quickly. We always want to make sure we're funded and can participate.

And then thirdly, we're always looking to return capital to shareholders using our dividend. And so as I said before, the dividends growing in a sustainable way. We want that to continue into the future. And we have a framework that we announced when we did our Investor Day at the end of March, we have to be flexible when we think about these uses of capital on these allocations, the allocation mix for our capital. We have to be flexible because market conditions change all the time. But our framework is really to target double-digit returns on new investments and thereby provide per share growth to our shareholders. We want to repay debt quickly, keep a very strong balance sheet, liquidity on hand. And we also want to continue growing the dividend. So that's the framework.

Now we added 2 new tools, which we announced with our first quarter results just over a month ago, 2 new tools to help us allocate capital. And the first is, we added a $600 million accordion to the revolving credit facility, which should give us additional liquidity to be able to go out and target and execute on other transactions. And the second is our Board authorized a share buyback. And so that's not something we've had in place before, but we thought it was a prudent time to put it in place because if we see opportunities that are perhaps better valued by buying our own stock versus what's in the market or what have you, then it makes sense to have that at our disposal. We didn't intend for either of those to be used in the near term, but we thought we would set them up when we have the time. We set them up. They're in our toolbox. And now we can use them if we see the right conditions for those to be used.

So when we talk about capital allocation, it's really helpful to look at our record. And you can see on this slide, how have we done over the last 25 years. And you can see since 2000, our revenue and cash flow growth, they've been pretty significant. But there are several -- 3 aspects of this growth that I really want to highlight. First is our G&A has not grown at the same speed or at the same rate as that growth in revenue and cash flow. We don't need to add new people. I mean you add -- when we add new assets to the portfolio. Our business is very scalable, which is it goes to that point about it being high margin and also keeping costs down. It's a scalable business. We can add and grow without growing our G&A significantly.

The second is our revenue growth is not dependent only on metal prices. Metal prices are important. They're a great tailwind when we've got it, but we've added volume to our portfolio. And we've seen organic growth as well from the portfolio. So that's an important consideration when you think about the optionality that when you buy a Royal Gold share, what are you getting?

And then thirdly, we've financed our growth mostly from internal sources without a significant rise in our share count. We did issue 19 million shares last year from the Sandstorm transaction, but that was the first time we issued equity since 2012. And even with those new shares on the register, we have 84.5 million shares outstanding. We still have the lowest share count to the GDX, and we were around when the GDX was formed in 2006. So hopefully, that gives you a good sense of how we've been able to steward our share count carefully. We do want to avoid shareholder dilution and providing per share growth to our shareholders is one of our strategic objectives.

Now when we look at the assets we've added to the portfolio, we aim for double-digit IRRs, as I said, when we're talking about the capital allocation framework, but we have to be patient. We're in a patient business. Exploration and production upside is very important when we look at new investment opportunities, but sometimes it takes time for the growth to show up in the assets that we invest in. We do extensive due diligence of new opportunities, and we take a bottoms-up fundamental approach to asset reviews. And sometimes when the Street, they put out their notes talking about the assets that we've acquired. They don't have the benefit of that work. Streets -- the Street estimates, their returns on announcement may often undershoot pretty significantly. And it takes time for the upside to become visible.

Now we'll see that upside when we do our due diligence, but we're often subject to confidentiality provisions and other things that make it difficult for us to talk about some of those upsides. We have to wait and be patient for the Street to see that. But over time, we've got a very good record of investing in assets where returns have grown significantly over time. And this slide, this does illustrate that point. So as time has passed on, expected returns have increased with production expansions and mine life extensions. And that's all driven by reserve and resource growth without having to fund further capital or investing further to get exposure to that growth.

And the next slide here shows the same concept but in a slightly different way. As time passes, we recover our investments and any value added to the asset by the operators also increases the future value of our interests. And so that's the top line on this slide. Hopefully, the top line is going to be a multiple of the bottom line, which is what we put into those assets to get those regional exposures. So over time, what we're aiming for is a multiple of the investment that we put in. And the way this works is through a multiplier effect that really creates optionality. And the extension to mine life provides a double benefit to us. First of all, if a mine life is extended, it just means more volume is produced, which means more revenue to us. But it also means that you're exposing yourself to a volatile metal price over a longer time. So there's a tremendous amount of value in that additional exposure, that additional time that the operations are running.

Operators are always looking to extend asset life. It makes sense. They've invested capital. They want to make a return on that capital. So they're always looking for that incremental revenue that they can grow their returns from and we saw last year in 2025, 2 million meters of drilling have been done at the assets within our portfolio. So that's an example of how operators are trying to push things forward. We get exposure to that. We don't have to fund capital or invest further to get any exposure to this upside. So this is growth that we don't have to pay for. And the optionality is really one of the most important features of our business model.

And when we think about the -- our portfolio and the optionality that's embedded in it, this slide shows the key catalysts that we see in some of the new assets that we expect this to provide some growth to us over the next several years. We have a pretty significant organic growth pipeline, and there are catalysts, we think, that are extending into the next decade. So we've got very near-term Back River continuing to ramp up. They started commercial production late last year. Platreef, exactly the same thing that's continuing to ramp up. That's a staged project development. So we would expect to see revenue growth from that over the next year. But then we've got brand new production from Robertson expected in 2027, new production from Hod Maden, Great Bear and Warintza later in the decade. And then beyond that, after the turn of the decade, we're expecting to see new revenue from the Moro project in Argentina, Fourmile in Nevada.

So we feel very comfortable about the growth that's in our portfolio today. And this doesn't include some of the existing assets where you're seeing expansions. So I mentioned the Mount Milligan mine life extension, an additional 10 years of mine life there, which really adds to the value of what we own. But in assets like Khoemacau, there's a doubling of the production levels there that should see our silver increase by about 35%. So that's growth that we didn't expect to see when we made those original investments. Is -- we have, we think, one of the best organic pipelines in the industry, and that's reflected in the 5-year outlook that we gave in March.

Now I'll make a comment that this isn't -- this growth isn't -- is not reliant on 1 or 2 big assets. It's a multitude of assets. So it's probably lower risk growth than perhaps those who can point to 1 or 2 things that are going to drive their production higher. So we feel very comfortable that this is a very good quality growth outlook.

Now I'm going to end on this slide here, which is an opportunity, I think. It's -- we are trading at pretty attractive multiples today. The business is performing very well. We've got strong cash flow, very good organic growth. We're executing on all the priorities that we set for ourselves and we told the market when we announced the Sandstorm transaction last year. But the share price still isn't reflecting all of that. It's not reflecting the growth of the portfolio. It's not reflecting the risk mitigation by having that large portfolio. Our net asset value and cash flow multiples are lagging relative to our peer group. Now I think the biggest reason for that is because we did a lot last year, and the market still hasn't quite recognized that. And when we released our first quarter results, that first clean quarter, as I mentioned, that was in early May, which is really when the precious metals market was under a lot of pressure. I don't think the market has really paid attention yet to some of the benefits that we've added to the company.

So we are working hard to close this gap. So how are we doing that? We gave long-term guidance when we did our Investor Day in March. We did the Investor Day to daylight the value in the portfolio and make sure that people understand the assets that are in the portfolio. We did an asset handbook. It's available on our website. It's got a description of every single asset that underpins the value of the company. And we're just working hard to make sure that we're on the road, talking to investors all the time about the scale and the growth in the company and the potential of the portfolio.

So in closing, I think we've done a very -- we've done a lot to really strengthen our position and strengthen our position for hopefully a sustained and continued strong gold market. We've added scale, diversification, growth to the portfolio. We've got a strong balance sheet, we have got significant cash flow. And we are a patient company. We're conservative and patient, and we think that our patient approach and our commitment to our long-term strategy, the strategy that's proven to work, should be rewarded by the market, but it will take some time for that to happen.

So with that, Noella, I have come to the end of the prepared presentation. I'll be happy to turn it back to you for a Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. We'll now take some questions. The first question is, can you give an update on Mercedes and Cerro Moro Mines? There is possibility on future life of mine expansion on surface included in the royalties or will we cease to see ounces pulling from them in the near term?

Those are both relatively small assets in our portfolio. So I can't really offer too much in terms of detail because to be completely honest with you, I don't -- haven't focused on those that much. I'm more focused on the bigger value drivers within the portfolio. Mercedes and Cerro Moro are pretty small when it comes to the revenue potential and the growth potential -- the 1 thing we did do with the Sandstorm transactions, we restructured our investment at Mercedes. If you remember, that was owned by Bear Creek. Sandstorm had a number of equity and debt investments at Bear Creek, which we streamlined and we now have -- we had a stream of Mercedes. We now have a royalty, which we think puts the asset in a better position to be able to extend its production profile because it will be less of a burden on the asset.

So I think that's really all I can offer at this point. Obviously, any asset that's in the portfolio regardless of whether it's big or small, does have optionality associated with it. And I think those 2 assets are probably ones that will -- you'll likely see some additional growth for them over the longer term. But really to our accounts, they are relatively small, just given the size of the investment for us.

Your next question, if Seabridge finds the JV for KSM, taking into consideration the big CapEx it will require, are you willing to increase the royalty if a possibility arises? How probable do you see it?

Well, Seabridge is something we're -- and the KSM that we're very excited about. We have these options in our portfolio right now to -- for very low dollars to be able to receive NSR royalties. And I think if they're able to find a joint venture partner, then that unlocks the development of the asset. I think those options can be worth a tremendous amount. So we'll have to see. I mean we've heard a lot of speculation about a joint venture partner there, and we'll have to see what happens. But we are obviously quite pleased to have those in the portfolio and they could add some significant value.

Now if there's an opportunity for us to make additional investments there, I think, would always be open to having a conversation with the operator to see what they need and see if it makes sense and lines up with our criteria. One of the best places for us to get new business opportunities is for people who we have relationships with. And because they're in our portfolio. We've got that relationship with Seabridge as a counterparty, then I think it would be natural for us to think about opportunities to create new business development opportunities at that asset. But I think there's a lot that needs to happen before I can say with any certainty, but certainly, we would try and have that conversation if it looked like they need more funding, yes.

Appreciate you commenting on that. Next, somebody was asking, can you summarize in plain terms why the restructuring of Hod Maden preserves value for shareholders compared with keeping the priority equity position?

Yes, because our business model doesn't -- we don't get value by holding direct equity stakes and assets. The biggest value in our portfolio is holding that top line exposure. So if we own streams or royalties that gives us top line exposure. When you own direct stakes what you're getting is exposure to operating capital cost risks. And I think that's something that is valued differently in the marketplace. So when we announced the restructuring of the Hod Maden joint venture, really, it was -- it was in line with something we said when we announced the Sandstorm transaction almost 1 year ago today. When we said -- we think Hod Maden is a great project. There's no doubt. It's very high grade. It's simple project, very high returning projects.

We like the exposure, but we didn't like the structure of the exposure. We didn't like that 30% joint venture interest because it just exposes us to risks on things that we don't want to have exposure to. So when we restructured the investment, what we did was we took that 30% direct ownership, reduced it to 15% and took back a royalty. And we now have other rights on the SSR royalties that were granted at the same time. And so that's more in line with our business model. So we would expect that over time as the asset moves through development and into production, we'll get a higher multiple on the royalty interest that we will on the direct ownership interests.

So that was the reason why we did it. And as we talk to a lot of our largest institutional shareholders, I think they were quite pleased to see that. I think it would be consistent with our prior messaging if we got that direct interest down to zero and took back further royalties. But just given the deal dynamics and given the situation that we're dealing with at the time, we weren't able to make that go from 30% to 0 in 1 transaction. So we'll probably end up holding this 15% direct stake for a period of time, and we'll look for opportunities to reduce it as those opportunities come up.

Thank you for clarifying that. This next question also relates to Hod Maden. The question is, how do you think the cash flow payback for the new NSR Hod Maden compares with other recent royalty additions in the portfolio?

Well, I think it's -- the royalty is quite valuable. I think it will be a similar kind of payback in terms of the economics around the royalty, but it's not -- what's the word I'm looking for, it's not -- we would rather have the royalty than we would that direct exposure to the asset. Just because, as I mentioned before, in the previous comments, is how the multiple will be applied to that royalty interest in the marketplace. We'd rather have that and no exposure to the costs.

So if Hod Maden came to us today as a stand-alone entity, and it was an opportunity for us to invest either stream royalty. We'd be very interested in it because it is, like I said, it's a high-margin project. It's high grade, simple, it's a very robust project given the technical work that's been done on it. It's an excellent project. So we would very seriously look at it. It just wasn't quite the right structure in our portfolio. So holding that royalty will give us the exposure that we want to this project. So hopefully, that answers the question.

That was a great answer. Thanks, Alistair. Your next question is several major growth projects such as Mara, Oyu Tolgoi, Fourmile and Horne 5 are excluded from the current 5-year outlook. What probability weighting, does management internally assigned to each of these projects entering production on schedule.

Well, they're not in our 5-year outlook simply because the operators have said the -- they expect to see production beyond that 5-year outlook. And so what we've done is we've added those to what we say is the 5-year plus. And we think when you look at Mara, Glencore has done a lot to advance that project, and they came out in December with their Capital Markets Day and put parameters on production levels and timing. And they applied for the RIGI process or the taxability process in Argentina in August. And so that project is moving forward. We have very strong confidence that Glencore will execute that project on the time line that they talked about.

Fourmile is a similar kind of thing. It's -- Barrick has -- they're spending $150-or-so million this year on exploration and studies, they're really pushing that project hard. And so that, again, is a very high-quality project, and I think they want to get that into production as soon as they possibly can, just it will help their returns. So whether that occurs beyond that 5-year outlook that we've already provided or maybe it starts producing a little bit earlier, I don't know. It will depend on a lot of work that Barrick still needs to get done. But we are very confident that those 2 projects will move forward.

Oyu Tolgoi operated by Rio Tinto. Again, it's -- that's a very serious operator. They know how to operate mines. They know how to do things. So we think there's high probability that's going to come into the plan as well. The problem with longer-dated assets though is that you're always subject to those risks that may cause time lines to shift a little bit. May have permitting delays or you may have something like that, that is very difficult to predict today. That's why we put those things in that beyond 5-year period because we think there is they're relatively early stage compared to some of the other things within our portfolio. So it probably makes sense that they are beyond that 5-year window.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Your next question, does management believe the industry is entering a period where royalty and streaming companies may earn lower returns on invested capital because of increased competition for assets?

No, I don't think so. I mean we do track returns. Our -- the way that we bid on things and the way that our peers bid on things as well. And we don't see a big change. And we haven't seen a big change in the level of competition either. You do see smaller royalty companies starting up every so often, but those are usually so small that they don't necessarily hunt in the same grounds that we do. Our competitors have always been the big Franco and Wheaton have been there for a long period of time. We always compete against other sources of financing, so equity and debt. Those have been around for decades. And so it's -- the competitive landscape as far as we're concerned and where we're situated. I don't think it's really changed all that much. And we're not seeing that returns are changing either.

I think sometimes though when you see Street estimates of returns, and this goes back to a point I made during the presentation. The Street may look at returns, and they may give low returns -- they may estimate lower returns on new transactions. But it's -- it may not be indicative of what the ultimate return is going to be. And when we make an investment in something the Street may say, well, it's a 3% return, that's not very good. But we're certainly not investing for a 3% return. We would hope that we're going to get a multiple of that. So that's the kind of thing that on paper, it may look like returns are declining over time. But our view is that if we do transactions on the right assets that have the right amount of optionality, and they've got the good operators with financial resources to be able to develop that optionality, our return should grow over time. So we're not seeing a big change.

Thank you for that response. Next, somebody was asking as copper becomes a larger contributor through Kansanshi Mount Milligan and future development projects, how does management view the balance between precious metals exposure and base metals exposure over the next decade?

So just clarifying in case it's misunderstood, the Kansanshi stream is a gold stream on a copper asset. So it's -- we look at gold revenue there. We haven't done anything to change our metal focus with respect to that, except it is a copper asset that we're -- we've taken a stream on the gold byproduct production.

We're not out looking for copper. We like copper, we understand it by virtue of the fact that we are in a number of copper assets, we're taking the gold byproduct at Kansanshi, obviously, and then Andacollo is another good example of a large copper asset where we're taking the gold. We're not out looking, though, for new copper opportunities. We will look at copper and certain other base metals if they come to us and they're good opportunities.

Cactus, for example, we bought a royalty there in late 2024. That's a copper development project in Arizona. It's near a population center. It's got good infrastructure. It's got a good management team. We knew the management team from prior business. And so a lot of things lined up and it was a good returning royalty for us. And so we did buy that $55 million. But it wasn't a huge allocation of capital. We just thought it was a nice opportunistic thing to add to the portfolio. That's the kind of thing that -- when we think about other metals that aren't precious. That's how we think about them is if they come to us and they're attractive on their own merits. And yes, we'll certainly look at them. But we're not out there looking to diversify our exposure into other metals. Our focus is very much precious and gold is our preference.

Thank you for response. Your next question, has Lidya provided Royal Gold with an updated development time line since assuming operatorship of Hod Maden?

Well, we're on the -- we're a member of the joint venture by virtue of the fact that we have that 15% ownership. We are in discussions with Lidya and they are -- they have as you correctly mentioned, they've just taken over operatorship. It's been just a handful of weeks now. So they're getting themselves prepared and positioned to move the project forward. When we have something to talk about with respect to the development and time lines, we certainly will disclose that. I expect that Royal Gold will become the source of information for developments at Hod Maden, simply because we're the only publicly traded company that's now a partner there. Lidya is a privately held entity and they probably won't be putting too much into the public domain. So I think what you need to do is just follow our quarterly results from this point forward, and we'll be making comments on the developments at Hod Maden as they warrant.

I appreciate you clarifying that. Next, do you expect to exercise the option to acquire half of the SSR royalty?

Well, I think we'll wait and see. I mean the option doesn't expire for a number of years. So we have some time to evaluate. I think, at this point, it's probably unlikely because the asset needs to be derisked. We need to see the asset get into production, at that point that royalty is probably going to be worth a lot more. So I think I'll defer the answer to that question until we're getting closer to production at the asset. But certainly, we think there's a lot of value in that option, and we certainly are happy to have it.

Great. Looking forward to an update in the near future. The next question is looking towards 2030, which is more likely to drive shareholder value, additional acquisitions, organic growth from existing assets or commodity price appreciation?

That's a very good question. I think we -- I think we'll probably see all 3. And it's hard for me to handicap which is going to give us the best, but they're all somewhat related because we're going to see -- if metal prices continue to do well, then what you'll see is more growth from the assets within the portfolio because operators of those assets will want to try and take advantage of higher metal prices. And if you see metal prices do well, it also means that the acquisition pipeline is probably going to be pretty solid for us as well because you're going to see other companies that need to raise financing for their own projects will likely be looking for us to help them.

So I think you may see all of those contribute. I think if we couldn't do any more acquisitions, we do feel very comfortable. We've got a nice growing portfolio, and we've got lots of growth from within the portfolio. So we're not relying on acquisitions to continue that growth. When we gave our guidance, I mean, we're -- obviously, that's based on what we have within the portfolio today. We've got a nice growth trajectory. So we're not expecting that acquisitions will be the source of growth. We don't need acquisitions, but we're always looking for acquisitions because that's probably the best way for us to add value.

If we take our cash flow and we're able to reinvest it in high-performing or high optionality assets, then we'll get a premium in the marketplace for what we've just invested. That's how we think we'll get the maximum value from our cash flow. But it's really going to be a combination of those things. So you've got price, the optionality within the portfolio and new acquisitions.

Thank you for clarifying. Your next question, considering your assets as they stand today, what is the life of your overall portfolio?

So the life of the overall portfolio on reserves only, and we did -- there's a slide in our Investor Day is in the appendix to the investor presentation that I just walked through a few minutes ago. We have it's about 18 years of average duration in our portfolio. That's weighted by NAV. And over the last year, we've grown that by about 25%. But the important thing to note is -- if you look at the histogram of mine lives and the buckets of value. We've actually pushed the mine lives out to the right-hand side to a much longer duration assets. So the 20- plus year assets, which is really where that shift has occurred, which is a very good thing to have in our portfolio. It just means that we don't need to be panicked about adding to the portfolio because we have that -- those long life duration assets. So we'll be able to continue adding cash flow that we'll be able to harvest and reinvest in the business.

So that's what we're really pleased to see that additional growth in asset duration. Now I will make one point here is that when we provide that number, it's based on reserves only. We have not included resource conversion. So if you believe that resources will get converted into reserves and then obviously, that impacts mine life, you may see that go out even beyond 18 years. But we haven't done that analysis. We've only looked at reserves for that number.

I appreciate that response, Alistair. We're coming up to your last 2 questions for today. The first one is, are you considering a stock split?

Stock split. No. We have considered it in the past lately. I think from the perspective of retail shareholders, perhaps it would be more attractive to have a stock that's got a much lower per share value to it. But the institutional shareholders who own us it doesn't impact how they think about things. And there are a lot of companies in the markets today that have share prices well over $100 or $200 and it doesn't seem to impact how people value those stocks. And I think in the old days, there used to be this perception that lower dollar value stocks had higher liquidity and there was a valuation impact or benefit to having that.

I don't think that holds anymore. I haven't seen any research that would indicate that's the case. We don't get many people asking us about splitting the stock. So it's not something that we have considered. If we see a valuation reason for doing it, if we thought that we could get additional value from doing it, then that would be a different story, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

Thank you for offering some clarity on that. And then your last question for today is, if Royal Gold were being built from scratch today, would management construct the portfolio differently than it exists today?

That's a really interesting question. I think the -- it would be very difficult to reconstruct Royal Gold today, if you started from scratch. And the reason is because we started at Cortez, which was a foundational asset. And you look at the biggest companies in our sector, they've all started with one big foundational asset. We got that asset as a result of a change in business strategy way, way back in the 1980s. And it was a very fortunate and very wise change in our business focus. And having that interest at Cortez was really the engine that gave us the ability to grow our cash flow, consolidate further royalties, which allowed us to grow our cash flow further. And then we got involved in the streaming and finance business. And is that cash flow is really important.

I think if we were to start the company today, it would be very difficult because the largest, most interesting assets are the ones that people really compete over. So it's unlikely that a brand-new Royal Gold would be able to compete for the largest and best kind of foundational asset that could be available. I think -- so it would be practically difficult. But I think when we think about our portfolio, we're quite pleased with it. I think we've got a very high-margin portfolio. It's very gold focused. As I just talked about, the duration is long. It's got a very -- it's diversified, it's got very good counterparties on the other side. So we don't see anything in our portfolio that we think is a detriment. We don't see anything that really holds us back.

So we're very pleased with the portfolio as it is today. I think with the benefit of hindsight, there are certain things that maybe we could have bid more on and won them and have those in the portfolio. I think -- I mean that's a question that I think everybody in our sector can talk to is that they wish they had won certain things that maybe our competitor has won, but that would be the only thing I would say would be the thing that we would -- if we could rewind the clock, maybe we would just have been a little bit more aggressive on certain very high-quality assets that we saw our competitors win instead of us. So -- and apart from that, I think we feel pretty comfortable with where we stand today.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Alistair, for all of your insight today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you do not get a chance to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn back the floor to Alistair for final remarks.

Well, thanks, everyone. I appreciate your questions, some very good questions in there. And if I didn't answer anything right, please get back to Renmark and they'll let me know and I'll be happy to take it up with you in person if there's anything you'd like to discuss further. So thanks very much. Hopefully, it's a good summer for everybody and look forward to connecting again soon.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in San Francisco and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after this presentation under the VNDR library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.

Hello, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander Young, Virtual Event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Dallas and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD.

Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

That being said, I will now hand the floor over to Alistair.

Well, thanks very much, Noella, for the introduction. Thanks for the invitation to present today. We've had lots of good news at Royal Gold over the past year or so, and it's also been a very interesting time for the gold market and the gold environment. So it's timely to give you an update.

So I will make forward-looking statements during the course of this presentation. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC.

So during the course of this presentation, I will give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. We are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals, but we're not a mining company. This presentation will -- is divided into sections that cover the key attributes of Royal Gold as we see them. And the first is gold exposure. We're very focused on gold. Precious metals is where we like to spend our time in gold, in particular, is where we focus.

Second is our model, which is high margin and return to capital -- return of capital to shareholders is very important. We have a consistent EBITDA margin over the last several years, it's in the '80s, and we've got a 25-year history of dividend growth. I'll talk about the portfolio, which is the most diversified amongst our peers in terms of assets, operations and jurisdictions, and that should provide consistency in financial performance. I'll talk about our business model, which has got limited operating risks.

Our margins are steady, and we don't have a direct exposure to operating and capital cost risks. And I'll talk about our size. We're a large-cap company, but we are, what we think, is an ideal size for our sector. Small transactions to us can still be quite meaningful, yet we can compete for the largest transactions out there. And then finally, I'll talk about optionality within our portfolio. We don't have to pay for organic growth that comes to the surface and provides that optionality. So that's a very unique feature of our business and our business model.

So I'll start before I get into the presentation, I'll just start making a comment -- with a comment on 2025. It was a transformative year for Royal Gold. We completed a number of transactions during the year that were really important to our business. The first would be the Sandstorm Horizon acquisition, which we closed in late October last year. This is a transaction that allowed us to add significant growth and diversification to the portfolio with 1 transaction. We did add a couple of other assets to the portfolio as well, and I certainly don't want to underplay their importance. The Kansanshi stream on First Quantum's mine in Zambia is a significant gold stream. It provided immediate cash flow to us right after closing that transaction.

And then the second was Warintza. There is some earlier-stage copper, gold, molybdenum project approved in Ecuador. And it provides us exposure to an emerging Tier 1 asset in an emerging jurisdiction. And not only did we see positive news on the transaction acquisition side, but we also saw some very positive news from within the portfolio, this optionality surfaced throughout the year. We saw at Mount Milligan a significant extension to the mine life, which has now been extended to the mid-2040s. And the Fourmile project that Barrick is working on in Nevada and the Cortez, a complex, some extremely exciting exploration results there, and that looks like that will be a keystone of our portfolio in the next decade or so as it starts producing.

We also -- we released our Q1 results last week. And you can see the benefits of all these transactions in those results. We had an excellent start to the year. We had record revenue, cash flow and earnings. And if you look at what we produced in the first quarter of this year versus a year ago, first quarter, significant increases in all of those, well over 100% increases in all of those metrics. So we added a lot of scale, diversification and growth to the business in 2025. But the important thing to note is, we did not change our strategy.

So with that, I will start into the meat of the presentation. I'm going to start talking about our gold focus, which is obviously a big part of our strategy. We've had 40 -- over 40 years of history in our business and very much focused on gold. The company started in the mid-1980s, and we will -- the summer we're approaching the 45th anniversary of our listing on the NASDAQ Exchange. And our strategy has been consistent throughout the entire period we've been listed. We are very focused on gold revenue from good assets in good jurisdictions.

Our revenues, it's been pretty consistent in terms of mix over time. And that metal mix has not changed. You can see gold is really the focus of our business. And we aim to provide our shareholders gold exposure in a conservatively managed vehicle. And our historic share price performance shows why we think we are a good alternative for those shareholders who are looking for gold exposure in a conservative way.

On the left-hand side, you can see our beta to the gold price of 1.6%. It provides excellent leverage. The gold price from the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance over time. We've beaten the -- over a long period of time, we've beaten the gold price, we've beaten the GDX index, since it was formed in 2006. We've also beaten the S&P 500 index. So we are a good. We've certainly proven that over that period of time, we're a good long-term investment in a volatile commodity.

I'm going to talk about our high margin and dividend growth history. Our business is very high margin. It's a unique business model. It's scalable as well as being high margin. And we've had an 80-plus percent EBITDA margin for the past several years in 2025, it was an 82% EBITDA margin.

Our cash G&A was about 4% of revenue. Our costs, they're low and they're fixed. So cost inflation should not be something that gives or provides risk to our margins. Our business model is also very efficient. We have 39 employees in the company today. It's a pretty low headcount when you think about the size of our business, we're a $21 billion market cap business. So on a per employee basis, we compare very well to large companies in any business in any sector.

And throughout this period, return of capital has been a very important strategic objective for us. And it's something that makes us unique when you look at other gold investments. We paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every year since 2001, despite volatility in the gold price. And last year, in November, we announced the 25th consecutive annual increase to our dividend. We've now paid out well over $1 billion in dividends to our shareholders. We're the only company in the GDX that's paid an increasing dividend since the index was formed in 2006. We're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that is a very important differentiator.

Now we have a highly diversified portfolio that underpins our financial performance. The portfolio is global. And it's weighted towards lower risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions. And the portfolio spans the various stages of mining project development. We have over 360 assets in the portfolio, and over 80 of those are producing revenue today and about 30 are in development and over 250 are in the earlier stages of either exploration or evaluation. And organic growth from within the portfolio comes as development and exploration stage assets move forward, and we move through the pipeline to revenue production.

Now having a diversified portfolio is very important because it reduces single asset and counterparty risks. Our commodity focus is gold, as I said at the beginning of the presentation, we have the highest gold revenue percentage of our large-cap peers, but we also have meaningful silver and copper revenue. But geographically, we're very diverse, but we have a North America focus. So that is kind of the center of gravity of our operations. And in terms of the diversification within the portfolio on a NAV basis, net asset value basis, we have the most diversified asset portfolio in the sector.

Eight of our 10 largest assets are producing revenue today, and there are expansion and extension projects underway at five of those assets. Our operators are best-in-class. We have large, well-capitalized experienced companies operating the assets where we have interests in the last year or so, we've added First Quantum, Rio Tinto and Glencore and other Tier 1 operators to our counterparty mix. This portfolio diversification is very important. It reduces our exposure to single asset or operator or jurisdictional risk.

That's important for generalist investors who don't necessarily want to spend the time looking at individual assets. So they can invest in us and have comfort that there's a broadly diversified portfolio. So if there's an asset underperformance of one asset, hopefully, it's offset by overperformance at something else within the portfolio.

I'm going to talk to this next section about the business model in a bit more detail and limited operating risk is the focus. There are many ways you can invest in gold. And our model, our business model provides gold exposure with reduced risk. This slide shows you the different ways you can invest in gold. We provide exposure to gold and optionality and a dividend while reducing downside risk through holding a diversified portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating and capital cost risks.

Now you can be super conservative if you want to invest in gold, and you can buy physical gold, but physical gold won't provide you any upside, an ounce you buy today will always be an ounce. And you won't get a dividend from it. In fact, it will cost you to store that ounce. You can be more aggressive, and you can buy equities and mining companies or exploration companies, but with that, you'll also get exposure to operating and cost risks. And you can actually see inflation in those costs, you can erode margins. There's a perception in the broader market that our business model doesn't provide great leverage to the gold price. And I think if you look at our financial results over the past couple of years during this period of higher gold prices, you'll see that that's absolutely incorrect. We have a business model that provides excellent leverage to the gold price.

Now royalty streamer margins are a little bit different from what an operating mining company margin looks like. We have very different cost structures. Our costs are low and they're fixed. So margins, as the gold price rises, our margins should expand. And that's what you've seen over the past couple of years. However, operating companies, their costs are subject to inflation. So their margins may not expand as quickly. And in fact, in some cases, you may actually see margins compress as costs rise. And if you look at the cost structure of us compared to an operating company, producers' costs are exposed to inflation and input costs.

So labor, energy, consumables or anything that a best site needs to continue operation, often those are subject to inflationary pressures. And often, those increase when commodity prices increase, so you can see the gold price rise, it may be in a bullish commodity price environment, which may actually increase the costs at some of those operators.

If you look at our G&A costs, and they're pretty steady. So things like salaries, services, office rents, they don't typically move in a short-term way. They're more stable over time. And so anything that impacts costs also impacts margins. We haven't seen it yet across the broader mining sector, but you will start to see, I think, within the next quarter or 2, you'll start to see pretty significant cost increases from the mining companies because. The Iran war is obviously pressuring energy prices. Those will flow through to operator costs, and that may start to compress margins. We're not exposed to that. We don't have any direct exposure to the operating cost inflation.

Now I'll shift gears a bit and talk about our size, which we think is pretty optimal for the size of the sector that we're in. We are -- we'd like to say that we're large enough to compete, but we're small enough to show growth. And our businesses -- our sector is really -- is built on small transactions. Most transactions are less than $300 million in size and the average size within our history of transactions across the sector is just over $100 million. We sit in a very interesting position. We're large enough to compete for the largest transactions. We have significant cash flow from the portfolio.

We have access to low-cost capital. And so things like the Kansanshi transaction last year. It was a $1 billion transaction. We were able to compete against our largest peers. We've won that transaction. So we can compete for the largest transactions. Yes, we're also small enough to show growth. Small transaction can add meaningful value to Royal Gold. So last year, when we did the Warintza transaction, it's a $200 million investment. And that is something we expect will show up when that mine starts producing. We expect that will produce some significant results that you'll actually be able to see in our financials. We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector. We would prefer to be the best. And we think this Goldilocks position really does provide us a great platform to execute on our strategy of our growth in gold.

I'll talk in the next section about embedded growth and optionality. And I'll start with a short discussion of capital allocation and our priorities. Our growth, to be successful and grow in our sector, you need to be good at allocating capital. And our strategy has remained simple and consistent really since day 1. It's the first place we want to reinvest our capital is in our business. We want to be able to invest in good assets using nondilutive financing. And second is we want to maintain a strong balance sheet and good access to liquidity. So we're always able to act on new transactions.

And thirdly, we want to continue reducing -- returning capital to shareholders. And we have to be flexible as market conditions change, but our framework is to target. We target double-digit returns on new investments, so we can show per-share growth to our shareholders. We target quick repayment of debt. We always have had the liquidity on hand to be able to act on new transactions that may come in the door. And thirdly, we want to continue growing our dividend. Now we added a couple of new tools to our toolbox, if you will.

Over the last quarter, we announced them last week with our Q1 results. We've added a new accordion feature to our revolving credit facility, a $600 million uncommitted feature, which will provide additional liquidity. If we go back to our syndicated lending bank's request to use that facility, that's another $600 million is available to us. The second thing was the authorization by the Board of Directors of a $500 million share buyback program. This is intended to be used in those periods where there's a pretty severe valuation disconnect in our share price compared to peers.

And so setting it up now, we don't have intentions to use it right away, but we want to set it up to be able to be able to act when we see those opportunities. They don't happen very often when they happen, they often happen quickly. So we are now prepared for that circumstance. Now if we look at how we've done over the past 25 years, as shown on this slide here, how we've actually allocated our capital and how successful we've been. Since 2000, you can see our revenue and our operating cash flow growth have both been pretty -- they've grown incredibly, but there are 3 aspects of this growth that I just -- I would like to highlight and make sure that I drive home properly.

The first is our G&A costs and expenses have not grown the same way that our revenue and cash flow have grown. Our revenue growth far exceeds our increase in G&A expense. So we don't need to add people when we add new assets. Our business is scalable, as I mentioned before. The second is our revenue growth is not dependent solely on metal prices. We've had, and we've enjoyed the gold price increase over the past few years. It's been a great tailwind to our business, but we're not relying on the gold price to help us deliver good financial results.

We've also seen the opportunity to be able to add good volume to our portfolio. We see organic growth come up through the portfolio as well from those assets where we have invested. And the third thing is we financed most of our growth internally without a significant increase in the share count. We did issue shares last year for Sandstorm and Horizon, almost 19 million shares, but that was the first time we had issued equity since 2012. And even with those new shares counted as part of our register, we have the lowest share count in the GDX index.

We really do want to provide -- we want to avoid per share or shareholder dilution. We want to be able to show per-share growth to our shareholders. We think we've done a good job over the past 25 years of doing that as this slide shows. Now, as we think about assets and the kinds of assets we want to invest in, we're always aiming for, obviously, a return. So we want to target double-digit IRRs, but we have to be patient for those returns to be evident in the marketplace. Exploration and production upside is very important when we look at new assets and new investment opportunities.

And sometimes it takes time for those features or attributes of an investment to show up in the investments that we make. We do a lot of due diligence on new opportunities. We take a bottoms-up technical fundamental approach to new assets. And oftentimes, analysts who cover us and they write the research reports, they don't have the benefit of that same due diligence, that extensive due diligence that we do. And so sometimes when you see street announcements or announcements by the sell side on the transactions that we do, their returns are often fairly low, their estimated returns because they don't have that benefit of understanding where the upsides in the assets that we're investing where those upsides may be.

And it may take -- in some cases, it may take years for that to become evident to the Street. And this slide really illustrates that point. As time has passed, expected returns have increased with production increases or mine life extensions of the different assets. And those are really driven by reserve and resource growth without us having to fund further investments. And a different way to show the same concept is this slide. It shows the same story in a slightly different way. As time passes, we recover our investment. That's the cash flow that we receive and any value that's added to the assets by the operators, also accrues to our account, and that's reflected by the NAV portion of this -- the graph on this slide.

You see that, that adds to the future value of our interest, which is obviously something that Street looks at very carefully. So if you combine the cash flow that we received to date plus the NAV of the future assets and compare that to what we've invested, hopefully, you'll see something that's -- there's a big difference there to the positive. All of that is really as a result of this. What I'd like to say is that there is a multiplier effect that creates optionality. Any extension to mine life provides a double benefit to us.

First of all, you've got an extended mine life provides more production, provides more revenue. So that's a benefit. But the second benefit is the longer mine life means that you're exposed over a longer period of time to the gold price and volatility, and that volatility can be quite valuable. Operators are always looking to extend asset lives. They invest capital in their mines and their extent -- they're looking to extend those as long as they possibly can to take advantage of that capital investments they've made, they're always looking to capture incremental revenue.

And in 2025, we saw across our portfolio, about 2 million meters of exploration drilling was done across the portfolio, which is really astounding when you think about it. We benefit from this because we don't have to fund the capital or invest further to get exposure to any upside. So this is growth that we don't have to pay for. And this optionality is probably one of the most important features of our business model.

Now as we talk about our pipeline and our portfolio, we see a lot of very positive catalysts ahead of us. And this slide summarizes some of these from new assets, where we expect to see new production. We have a pretty significant organic growth pipeline. We have catalysts that extend from now until the next -- through the next decade. We just saw first production at Back River last year. That mine is ramping up. Platreef started milling ore in the fourth quarter of last year. That is ramping up as well. Robertson, in the Cortez complex in Nevada there is talking about first production in 2027. And then at Hod Maden, Great Bear, Warintza, we're expecting to see first production later this decade. And beyond the start of the decade, we expect to see first production from MARA and Fourmile. And this is a pretty attractive growth pipeline, but it does not include some of the growth assets, we're already receiving revenue today.

So things like the Mount Milligan mine life extension or the expansion at Khoemacau, they're not included in this slide. We think we have one of the most organic growth pipelines in the industry, and that's reflected in the guidance that we gave our 5-year guidance, or 5-year outlook that we gave at the end of March in -- during our Investor Day.

So with all of that said, I'm going to end on this slide, just looking at our trading multiple. Our business is performing very well. We've got very strong cash flow. We've got very good organic growth within the portfolio. We're executing on our priorities, but we still believe the share price is not reflecting what we think are the fundamentals of our business. There was a strong gold price environment, and we have a much larger portfolio, but if you look at us on a multiple basis, whether that be NAV or cash flow, we're still lagging our peers. And we're working very hard to closing -- to close this gap.

One of the things that we did at the end of March, we did an Investor Day, where we talked about the assets in the portfolio and the development pipeline that we can see ahead of the company. We also provided our 5-year outlook for production, at that same Investor Day. And we're doing our best to make sure the market understands the scale and growth potential of the portfolio. So as I said, we've really strengthened Royal Gold's position. It's a strong gold price environment and a market that we think is going to be strong for the foreseeable future. We've added scale, diversification and growth.

We have a very strong balance sheet. We have significant cash flow and the liquidity to continue growing. And our patient approach and commitment to a long-term strategy is something that we've had for many years. And hopefully, we'll start to get rewarded by the market sooner rather than later before taking that approach. So Noella, with that, I've come to the end of the formal part of the presentation. I'll be happy to pass it back to you for the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. We'll now begin the Q&A. Your first question is some investors argue royalty companies are entering a new growth cycle because miners increasingly need alternative financing. Does management believe competition among royalty/streaming companies could compress future returns despite strong demand for mine financing?

I think what -- I would agree with the statement that there is a lot more opportunity today than we've seen. I think our product is becoming a lot more mainstream. You're seeing a lot of the large mining companies in the world using royalty streaming financing as a way to extract value from their assets. So we are getting involved in a lot more opportunities than we have in the past. I don't know if competition is necessarily driving down returns. I think we're still seeing a healthy level of competition, but there seems to be fairly good discipline amongst us and our peers. When we look at, we tend to see that returns are relatively stable over time in terms of what people are paying for assets upfront. So I would say, yes, it's competitive, but we're also seeing a lot of opportunities. And I think the competitive environment really hasn't changed much, if not at all over the past couple of years.

Your next question Peñasquito Newmont warned about lower gold production during the transition between mining phases until higher grades return in 2028. How significant could this temporary production dip into Royal Gold's revenue profile over the next 2 years?

Well, I think the -- what's happening at Peñasquito. Is there are two pits at Peñasquito, and they transition operations from one pit to the other. There are stripping phases that may be occurring in one pit before they both -- before they can mine more ore in that pit, so they focus on another pit and they do that back and forth and kind of shift from one pit to the other.

I think for us, we have a royalty at Peñasquito that it's all metal. So there's gold, silver, lead and zinc produced at Peñasquito. And so you may see that gold revenue may shrink. But what happens is in one of the pits, there's higher gold and the other pit, there's lower gold and higher base metals. So for us, as a royalty holder, you don't see that dramatic of a swing because we have exposure to all of the metals that are produced there. So when they're mining, they're producing all the metals, it's just a portion as time goes on, that's just part of the mine plan. So we don't see that as being a major issue for us. It's just part of the operations in Peñasquito and we're very accustomed to seeing that.

Next, I was wondering how much of the year-over-year Q1 revenue growth came from metal prices versus portfolio growth?

It's -- portfolio growth will definitely be the biggest part of that because we've added so much to the portfolio. But obviously, the metal price environment has been helpful as well. Our revenue last quarter, about 20% came from the new assets we added from Sandstorm. So metal price growth has really helped because we're getting higher metal prices on that portfolio as well. So it's really hard to separate the two. But if you look at where we are on a GEO production level basis, are significantly higher. So that maybe gives you a sense of where we saw that growth. But it's really from both of those things. It's the volume within the portfolio, which has grown significantly, but it's also the metal price environment, which has been strong as well.

Next question, several future growth projects, including Platreef, Great Bear, Robertson and Corani still require substantial capital and execution by operators. Do any of these projects have a high execution risk today?

I think there's always execution risk of projects. I think the one is Platreef is in production. It's got expansion potential ahead of it. So there's I would say that's a very derisked project because it's already in production and it's -- as they operate more, they understand the ore body more and they take a lot of the risks out of the plan that 2 years ago was on paper and now they're actually executing it. So I think that one is -- that's much more derisked than a greenfield project.

I think Great Bear, for example, is a project that is earlier stage and it is a greenfield project. So there is a lot more risk there as the operator executes on the development. I think in the case of Great Bear, though, it's Kinross is a major company, and they've got a very strong balance sheet. They've got the resources to be able to execute.

We don't see any risks really that are out of the ordinary in any of those projects. I mean at different stages in the development cycle, you're going to have different risks. But as time progresses, as development advances, those risks tend to fall away as the project advances. I think when you look at the counterparties that are operating these assets, they're all very well experienced. And in most cases, they've got very strong balance sheets as well. So we don't see that as being to development of those projects.

Next, if you were asking, what is the plan for Hod Maden mine in Turkey?

So when we -- I'll go back to the beginning of Sandstorm and when we announced that transaction, we said one -- for the benefit of those of you who don't know what Hod Maden is, it's a development project in Turkey. It is very unusual in our ownership. The structure of the ownership is very unusual in our portfolio. We actually have a 30% direct equity interest in the joint venture company that's developing that asset. That's not something that we really like. We prefer to have royalty or stream investments and not direct asset ownership interest. This came from Sandstorm.

And when we acquired the Sandstorm and when we announced the acquisition of Sandstorm last July, we were very clear that what we were going to do was try and restructure that ownership. So we converted from a direct equity ownership to something that's more in line with our core business of a royalty or stream. And it's something that we're working on in 2026. It's a high priority for us. We don't have any news to really divulge at this point, but we are working on that restructuring. And as soon as we have something that's ready for us to announce to the market, we'll announce it.

Next, while certainly not complaining, has the rise in metal prices at all affected how you look at evolving the dividend policy?

The rising metal price environment, obviously, is very helpful when we look forward in our portfolio to see what kind of cash flow we're going to generate. And the dividend, we look at towards the end of the year, it's typically in November. We will go to the Board with a recommendation for what we think the dividends should be for the following year. And a higher metal price environment just gives us better confidence in the future. So that's -- it's obviously part of that analysis.

We look forward, and we say, what do we think of production going to be on the portfolio, where do we think pricing is going to be? What do you think -- what do we think the cash flow is going to be? So we do an analysis of all of that metal prices as a big part of it.

When we set our dividend, what we tend to do is we like to be able to show that we've done for the last 25 years, like to show consecutive increases to the dividend. So if we raise the dividend for the coming year, we want to have a pretty good idea that we're going to be able to continue raising from that point.

So we'll look multiple years into the portfolio and a big part of that analysis is metal prices, but obviously, with the gold price being where it is today, it's a great price, certainly much better than it was 2 or 3 years ago. It just gives us additional confidence that we'll be able to continue raising the dividend. So this is a big factor in our analysis.

Next up, if you reset several key assets are expected to have production weighted towards the second half of the year. How much execution risk does that create for achieving 2026 guidance?

We don't think there's an undue risk in our -- in what we've set forward for 2026. And last week, we announced with our Q1 results that we expect to be where we said would be with respect to 2026 guidance. The one thing that's actually a bit of a positive is our copper volumes were much higher than we expected in Q1, and that was simply because some of the assets in that portfolio and the copper side of the portfolio have done very, very well.

So we don't expect there to be any risk beyond the normal risks. But with a larger, more diversified portfolio, what we hope to see is if there is anything that doesn't go well at a particular asset will be made up by an asset that outperforms. So that's one of the advantages of having a large, well-diversified portfolio is that you don't suffer from that single asset underperformance in the same way that you do when you've got a large asset that contributes the majority of your revenue.

Next, the question is, does the reestablished accordion feature under the revolver suggest you're seeing larger transaction opportunities in the market?

I would say it doesn't necessarily indicate that we see larger opportunities. I think what we have seen over the past several years is our opportunities are getting bigger generally. And so we just -- we wanted to be prepared. We have a $1.4 billion revolving credit facility today, and we thought it made sense to add more capacity to that in case we come across larger transactions. Until recently, the largest transaction that we've done in our sector was just over $1 billion and $1.5 billion, I think, will be the top end of that. But then we saw at the beginning of this year, there was a $4.4 billion transaction done, and that was a huge change in the quantum of transaction size. It doesn't mean that we're seeing those large opportunities all the time. It just means opportunities are getting bigger. So we just thought it was sensible to make sure that we have that firepower at our disposal if we need it. And we still need to go through a process with our banking syndicate to release those funds if we require them.

But so far, the banking syndicate has been very supportive of our business and supportive of our efforts to grow our business, and we don't expect that, that would be an issue if we're deploying the capital in the transaction with the banking syndicate that does make sense. So that's why we decided to raise or add that according to feature, which just to be prepared in the case that we see something that may be attractive to.

Next question. In the Q1 results, Royal Gold still had $97 million in marketable securities on the balance sheet after the sale of the Bear Creek equity and debt. Is the remaining $97 million made up of American Gold and Silver and OMI Gold Mines that Sandstorm once invested, are there other share Royal Gold own? ? Is there a plan to finish divesting these shares?

Yes. So the majority of that position would be the Entrée Resources block of shares, which is about 25% of Entrée Resources. And the remainder of the position of that number would be much smaller equity positions in various different bits and pieces. We don't like to have equity positions on our balance sheet. We prefer, if we can, to keep our balance sheet as clean as possible. We have to mark-to-market any changes in equity values from quarter-to-quarter.

So we prefer to have limited equity holdings on our balance sheet. So we are -- and we have done over the past several months. We sold down a number of the noncore equity positions that we have -- we inherited through Sandstorm. The one exception, I think, would be Entrée Resources. We -- it's still not a core position for us to own equity in a company like that. But because Entrée is a joint venture partner at the Oyu Tolgoi mine with Rio Tinto, Entrée and the government of Mongolia, there's a plan there to integrate assets and so an interest at Oyu Tolgoi.

And we think that the 25% that we own in Entrée is a pretty strategic piece that will give us a seat at the table to hopefully be part of that -- whenever that does occur, we want to be part of it. And so we see that as being a -- it's noncore, but it's also important and strategically valuable. So for the time being, we're intending to keep that block.

Your next question, what are the main reasons for activating the share buyback program now?

So we haven't activated it. What we did was we received approval or authorization from the Board to put it in place. So the reason we did that now is because it does take time to establish a share buyback. And if we see dislocations in our market value in the future, often, as I said during the formal portion of the presentation, we often see those occur very quickly. And in the past, when we've seen opportunities to do a buyback, they've occurred so quickly, and they tend to correct themselves quickly as well.

We just don't -- we haven't had time to put a buyback in place. So what we decided to do was put a buyback in place. It's there. It's ready to use if we need it. We don't see an immediate need to use it today. We're not intending to use it right away, but we expect there may be opportunities in the future where we'll want to use it, and we have it ready. It's at our disposal. We got time to get it set up today. We thought it was prudent to do it today while we have the ability to do it calmly. And who knows at this point whether we will actually use it, but it's a tool that we have at our disposal.

We're coming up on your last 2 questions here. The first one is, generally speaking, do you see the need for more consolidation in the royalty space? Or are we in a better environment in terms of saturation?

Well I think at the top end, I don't think consolidation is not -- is really necessary. I mean we've got -- we've existed in this sector for a long time with the same large competitors. So Franco-Nevada have been large competitors of ours for many years, including Triple Flag and OR Royalties. So we've managed to -- each of us has been able to grow and continue growing, and we've seen each other across various situations over the past several years. I don't think consolidation at the top end is really going to change the competitive dynamic. You've got a couple of large, well-capitalized companies.

There will be competition regardless of whether it's 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. I think where consolidation may make a little bit more sense is at the lower end of the spectrum where you've got companies that have much smaller market cap. They don't have significant cash flow in the portfolios. And for them to grow, it's that much more difficult because us as a large company, we will look at small opportunities, and we'll go down market and we'll buy things that we think are really attractive. So we're taking away some of their opportunities to grow.

I think it may make sense for some of the smaller companies to consolidate and to grow bigger so they can actually be more competitive, but we haven't really seen much of that consolidation yet to date and who knows whether it will occur.

And your last question for today is, why should I invest in Royal Gold and not in one of the other royalty and streaming companies like Wheaton Precious Metals and Franco-Nevada?

Well, I mean, obviously, it's a very personal judgment you have to make. I'm obviously very biased. I think we have a portfolio that is really -- it's very well diversified. It's more diversified than the portfolios of those companies. That's very focused as well. We don't have other metals and cobalt in our portfolio. We don't have oil and gas in the portfolio. We're very gold focused. I think one of the things that is the most attractive today is you look at our growth from the assets within the portfolio, we've got catalysts that extend for a number of years that we expect to see adding growth to the portfolio.

And then the final thing, which I ended the formal part of the presentation was valuation Royal Gold versus our large-cap peers. You can see there's a real -- there's a disconnect there against how our large cap peers are valued, and we're actually valued at the same levels that our smaller cap peers are. And I think if you think about the scale of our business, how much cash we generate, you think about the diversification in the portfolio, and you think of the growth in the portfolio, it doesn't make sense that we trade at relatively low valuations. We should be trading at a higher valuation. So I think when you want to step back and say, well, I want gold exposure, I want it in a conservative vehicle that's got lots of risk mitigants, hopefully, that will point you to our -- in direction of Royal Gold.

But then on top of that, you potentially have this valuation disconnect, which if that corrects, then you may actually get an additional -- some additional appreciation in the share price. So we're doing our very best to make sure people understand that and make sure the market understands that we do have growth in the portfolio, and it's from very high-quality assets. And hopefully, that disconnect will disappear over time, but I think that may be the opportunity today.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for all of your responses today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your questions, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn back the floor to Alistair for final remarks.

Well, thanks, Noella, and thanks, everybody, for attention -- for your attention today and your questions. If there's anything that I didn't answer quite right, please get a hold of Renmark, and they'll ask me and perhaps we can have a conversation off-line directly. Thanks very much. I appreciate it, and I'll look forward to giving you an update next time.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Dallas and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after this presentation under the VMDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Royal Gold, Inc.'s 2026 First Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Business Development. [Technical Difficulty].

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our discussion of Royal Gold's First Quarter 2026 results. This event is being webcast live, and a replay of this call will be available on our website. Speaking on the call today are Bill Heissenbuttel, President and CEO; Paul Libner, Senior Vice President and CFO; and Martin Raffield, Senior Vice President of Operations. Other members of the management team are also available for questions.

During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements about our projections and expectations for the future. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in yesterday's press release and our filings with the SEC.

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted net income per share, adjusted EBITDA and cash G&A. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in yesterday's press release, which can be found on our website.

Bill will start with an overview of the quarter. Martin will provide portfolio commentary, and Paul will give a financial update.

After the formal remarks, we'll open the lines for a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Bill.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. I'll begin on Slide 4. 2025 was a transformational year for Royal Gold and the benefits of last year's activity are clearly seen in this quarter's results with materially higher records for revenue, operating cash flow and earnings.

Quarterly revenue was $469 million, operating cash flow was $294 million and earnings were $281 million. These were increases of 143%, 115% and 148%, respectively, over the first quarter of last year. After adjusting for unusual items, net income was a record $233 million or $2.72 per share, an 80% increase over last year. Gold contributed 71% of total revenue for the quarter. This is lower than what we've seen over the past few quarters, but it was driven by very strong silver prices during the quarter and not weakness in gold revenue.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin remained high at 83% for the quarter, reflecting our low and stable cash G&A. We paid dividends of $40 million to shareholders in the quarter at our new annual rate of $1.90 per share. And we repaid $300 million on the revolver during the quarter, raising our total available liquidity to $1.1 billion.

During the quarter, we also completed the restructuring of the Bear Creek debt and equity investments. In keeping with our strategy, we plan to rationalize noncore assets acquired through the Sandstorm transaction and where possible, convert those into holdings that are more consistent with our royalty and streaming business.

The Bear Creek restructuring was a multistep transaction, and we were successful in converting those interests into cash, Highlander Silver shares and royalties on the Corani Project and Mercedes Mine. We sold the Highlander shares during the quarter, leaving us with the royalty interest only, which is in line with our core business.

With respect to capital allocation, we provided an overview of our framework during our Investor Day in March, which is to reinvest in our business, maintain a strong balance sheet and liquidity and pay a growing and sustainable dividend. We believe our outlook remains strong with healthy metal prices and good growth within the portfolio, but we also believe in being flexible and prepared for changing market conditions.

With that in mind, we have added 2 new tools to keep us positioned to continue growing our per share metrics depending on circumstances. The first is a new $600 million accordion feature under our revolver. If exercised, this effectively increases the total revolver capacity to $2 billion. We don't see a need to use this today, but we are in a healthy business development environment and this additional source of nondilutive capital may be helpful if more large transactions come to market.

The second is the authorization by the Board for a $500 million share repurchase program. At times, we believe Royal Gold shares trade at a discount to what we perceive to be a fair value and putting this program in place now will allow us to act quickly if we see a significant disconnect between the market value of Royal Gold shares and our view of that intrinsic value.

I want to be clear that we view these tools that will be used separately and in different circumstances, and we do not plan to use expanded revolver capacity to buy back shares. We are putting both in place today to make sure we are positioned to respond to opportunities quickly and help us continue to execute our capital allocation strategy and grow per share value in any market environment.

I'll now turn the call over to Martin to discuss portfolio performance in the quarter.

Thanks, Bill. Turning to Slide 5. Portfolio performance was solid for the quarter. Volume was 96,300 GEOs with record revenue of $469 million, which included the first full quarter from the Sandstorm Horizon interests. Royalty revenue was up by 120% from the prior year quarter to $156 million. We saw very strong revenue from Peñasquito and at Cortez from both the legacy zone and the CC Zone.

Stream revenue was also up strongly by 155% from the prior year to $313 million. We saw higher contributions from all our stream interests with materially higher sales year-over-year from Pueblo Viejo, Xavantina, Rainy River, Mount Milligan, Andacollo, Khoemacau and Wassa and a strong contribution from Kansanshi.

Metal sales are tracking well at this point compared to our 2026 guidance, although Q1 copper revenue was better than expected. This was led by strong performance at Antamina due to higher grade and lower deductions and from Caserones and Chapada due to generally strong operating performance.

I'll now turn to Slide 6 and give some high-level commentary on notable developments within the portfolio. I gave detailed updates on several assets during the Investor Day at the end of March, so I'll limit my comments to more recent developments.

At Mount Milligan, Centerra reported that Q1 gold and copper production was in line with the PFS mine plan and is on track to meet full year guidance. At Peñasquito, first quarter revenue was strong, but Newmont expects that the ramp down of mining at Peñasco Phase 7 will lead to lower production of gold, lead and zinc and higher silver in 2026 compared to last year. Newmont expects to increase processing of stockpiles during the transition from Phase I to Phase 8 with higher grades expected to begin in 2028.

At Greenstone, Equinox completed an updated technical report, which targets average gold production of 320,000 ounces per year over the next decade based on a sustained milling capacity of 27,000 tons per day. Equinox believes there is scope to further optimize production and increase throughput towards 30,000 tons per day and to incorporate higher-grade underground resources into the mine plan.

At Voisey's Bay, Vale reported record production in Q1 at the Long Harbour refinery, supported by stable operations at the new underground mines. At Xavantina, Ero expects gold production to be weighted towards the second half of the year as upgrades to ventilation and cooling infrastructure become fully operational. Ero also expects gold concentrate sales to be higher over the remainder of the year with dry conditions following the end of the rainy season.

At Kansanshi, First Quantum confirmed 2026 production guidance and reported that S3 throughput increased steadily during the quarter, driven by higher operating time, strong utilization and milling rates stabilizing approximately 25% above the design capacity.

At Khoemacau, MMG reported that the expansion to 130,000 tons of copper per year remains on track for concentrate production in the first half of 2028, and work started on a PFS for the next expansion phase up to 200,000 tonnes of copper per year.

At Wassa, Chifeng announced a strategic investment agreement with a subsidiary of Zijin Mining. Zijin Gold will invest approximately $1.2 billion of new capital and take operating control. Approximately half of this amount is earmarked for investment in Chifeng's overseas operations, including Wassa. Projects at Wassa identified for investment include infill drilling, expansion and upgrade of the existing processing plant and further development outside Wassa mine, including construction of a decline at the Father Brown deposit, open pit development at Benso and a new processing plant in the southern area. All of these are covered by our stream agreement.

Zijin is one of the world's largest mining companies, and we think this investment agreement is a positive development for the future of Wassa.

At Platreef, Ivanhoe reported continued progress towards expanded production with Shaft 3 construction completed on schedule and the Phase 2 concentrator on track for completion at the end of the year. We expect to see our first revenue from Platreef in the current quarter.

At Hod Maden, SSR reported on Tuesday that the strategic review of its Hod Maden joint venture ownership is continuing, and it intends to incur minimal capital costs at the project while that review is ongoing. We will continue to fund our 30% of project costs through this period, but we expect these to be relatively low and not significant compared to our expected cash flow.

And finally, with respect to development projects, Solaris received technical approval of the Warintza EIA in April and is targeting receipt of full permits by the end of 2026 and a final investment decision in 2027. I'll now turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Martin. I'll turn to Slide 7 and give an overview of the financial results for the quarter. For the discussion on Slide 7 and 8, I'll be comparing the quarter ending March 31, 2026, to the prior year quarter. Revenue for the quarter was up strongly by 143% to $469 million, which is a new record. The strong increase was driven by higher volumes from some of our largest legacy interest, new contributions from our latest portfolio additions and increased metal prices.

Metal price increases were significant with gold up 70%, silver up 165% and copper up 38% over the prior year. Gold remains our dominant revenue driver, but given the significantly higher increase in the silver price during the quarter, the split of our gold revenue decreased to 71% and silver rose to 16% as compared to the prior year contributions of 75% and 12%, respectively. Copper revenue was approximately 10% and in line with the last year.

Turning to Slide 8, I'll provide more detail on certain financial line items for the quarter. G&A expense was $17.5 million, which is approximately $6.5 million higher than the prior year. The higher expense this period was mostly due to higher corporate costs. These corporate costs included employee-related costs, legal, audit and other minor costs that were attributable to the 2025 transactions, but with the service or expense recognized in the first quarter. We expect that first quarter G&A costs, which includes noncash compensation expense, will be the highest for the year, and our total G&A expense for the year will finish near the high end of the $50 million to $60 million range we provided on our last call.

Our DD&A expense increased to $91 million from $33 million in the prior year. On a unit basis, this expense was $944 per GEO for the quarter compared to $488 per GEO last year. The overall expense is in line with our guidance and is mainly driven by the higher carrying values of the Kansanshi Gold Stream and the Sandstorm Horizon interest we acquired in 2025. These increases were partially offset by lower gold sales and depletion rates at Mount Milligan. We recognized a $14 million gain on the sale of marketable securities during the quarter, most of which was due to the sale of the Highlander Silver shares that Bill mentioned in his remarks.

We have made substantial progress on divesting the equity positions we inherited from Sandstorm, and most of the remaining position is the block of Entree Resources. As we said during our Investor Day, we don't see this position as a core investment, but it may have some strategic value, and we are happy to hold it until there is more clarity on what may happen at Oyu Tolgoi between the Government of Mongolia, Rio Tinto and Entree.

Interest and other expense increased to $13.2 million from $1.2 million, primarily due to higher average amounts outstanding on the revolving credit facility in the current quarter. Tax expense for the quarter was $25 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 8% compared to a tax expense of $10 million in the prior year. We recognized a $33.7 million discrete benefit during the quarter. And excluding this benefit, our effective tax rate was approximately 19.5%.

We continue to expect our effective tax rate for the full year will range between 17% and 22%. Net income for the quarter was $281 million or $3.30 per share, which compares to $113 million or $1.72 per share in the prior year. The increase in net income was largely due to higher revenue and gains from the sale of marketable securities, offset by the higher cost of sales, DD&A, interest and income tax expense. After adjusting for the fair value changes in equity securities, the gain on sale of equity securities and the discrete tax benefit, adjusted net income was a record $233 million or $2.72 per share.

Finally, our operating cash flow this quarter was a record $294 million, up significantly from $136 million in the prior year. The increase was primarily due to higher stream and royalty revenue, offset by higher income tax payments, cash G&A costs and interest payments.

In summary, it was a very strong financial quarter that reflects a significant increase in the scale of our business. On that note, and recognizing the challenge of accurately estimating the quarterly performance of our larger portfolio, we will make a change to our disclosure heading into quarterly results.

Starting with the next quarter and sometime during the third full week after each quarter end, we expect to issue a press release that will provide more detail on notable financial items, including revenue estimates from both our Stream and Royalty segments. We hope this provides further transparency to the market in the weeks leading up to the release of our full quarterly results.

I am on Slide 9 and summarize our financial position. We have quickly rebuilt our liquidity. At the end of March, we had total available liquidity of $1.1 billion between the available amounts on the revolver and $295 million of working capital. After quarter end, we continued our focus on debt servicing. In April, we made a $75 million repayment, and we intend to make an additional $100 million repayment next week.

Upon NEXI's payment, we will have $425 million outstanding and $975 million available under the credit facility. As I said during our Investor Day, we expect to fully repay the outstanding balance by sometime in the fourth quarter based on current metal prices and absent further significant acquisitions.

With respect to financial commitments, at the end of March, we had $100 million of funding outstanding for the Warintza acquisition. We made a $50 million payment in April upon technical approval of the EIA and expect to fund the remaining $50 million on the anniversary of the transaction closing date in May, subject to the satisfaction of outstanding conditions. The only other financial commitment is the funding of our share of any Hod Maden project costs during the year in order to maintain our 30% ownership interest. That concludes my comments on our financial performance for the quarter, and I'll now turn the call back to Bill for closing comments.

Thanks, Paul. I wanted to close with a brief overview of our thoughts on our post-acquisition progress, changes in our business development environment and capital allocation. At our Investor Day in March, we attempted to provide the market with both a sense for the scale, cash flow generating ability of our expanded company as well as the diversification and growth prospects of the company.

In the first quarter, we achieved record revenue, earnings and cash flow and no one asset contributed more than 12.5% of total revenue. While it is only 1 quarter of results, I think we're off to a good start. We are encouraged by events in our sector's investment opportunities. Larger scale investments like Kansanshi as well as the opening of new potential markets like Australia bode well for our business.

Our reestablished accordion feature under our revolving credit facility positions us well to take advantage of attractive opportunities. And while we are now in the 25th year of paying a higher dividend to our shareholders, we have added another capital allocation tool in our share repurchase program that allows us to act opportunistically in the event we see a valuation dislocation in our share price.

Finally, at our Investor Day, we spoke of an investment in Royal Gold as being one through all cycles. And I believe this is a time for our sector to be of interest to investors. We are not directly exposed to the price of diesel to tariffs or to inflation in general. The flight to the shares of operating companies in a rising gold price environment within the last year always came with the downside risk of compressing margins, and the operators may start seeing margin compression in the coming quarters with higher energy costs.

I hope our stable cost structure against the backdrop of gold price volatility highlights the strength of our business model and attractiveness as a gold investment.

Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Larry Liu with CIBC.

I guess my first question, I'll start out by asking about the guidance. I noticed within the press release, you compared 2026 Q1 results to the full year guidance, but there was no really mentioning of the 5-year or the long-term guidance. Is that considered as a reiteration? Or how should we look at it?

Yes, Larry, thanks for the question. And updating for the annual guidance is something we've done for a number of years, and we'll continue to do throughout this fiscal year. When we gave the 5-year guidance at our Investor Day, the one thing that we were very clear about was that we were giving it on that day, but we would not be updating it through the year or really at any point and the next time that we're going to talk about a longer-term guidance number, it will be when we give 5-year guidance for 2031 at some point next year. So the fact that we didn't mention the 2030 guidance was on purpose. It was intentional, and it just reflects our view that we're not going to update those figures.

Yes. No, for sure, Bill. That makes sense. And I think it leads well to my next question. I know within your guidance, you mentioned that the deferred silver ounces potentially at Pueblo Viejo is not included within your guidance. So can you remind us kind of a 3-part question here. What's the outstanding balance at this point? And what are some of the criteria that under the agreement that needs to be hit before these deliveries will contribute to Royal Gold?

Yes. I mean the criteria is recovery. And what we need is for recovery. I think the number is like 52.5% recovery has to go above 52.5% for us to start clawing back some of those deferred ounces. As you may have seen in the technical report from PV, they're not expecting that for a number of years. And to just go on tabulating the figure from quarter-to-quarter, when we -- right now, there's no expectation that we're going to see it any time in the near term, it just wasn't deemed to be, if you will, material.

Now if that turns around and the recovery goes up and we get some deferred ounces back, we'll update the market on the balance. But at this point, I would -- we're just going to let that number sort of sit there and grow over time. There just doesn't seem any need to be talking about it.

Yes. No, for sure. Sounds good. I guess moving on to another asset. Hod Maden, Bill, I know your commentary mentioned earlier that's considered one of the financial commitments still outstanding at this point. But I realize from your financial statements, there has been a cash call under the equity investment of $14.7 million or $15 million this quarter. What kind of additional commitments do you have outstanding for the remainder of the year? And how should we look at it from a model perspective that way?

Well, maybe what I'll do is I'll turn it over to Paul to sort of take you through the accounting first, and then maybe I'll come back and talk about expectations. Paul, is that okay?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Eric, for the question. Yes, high level, you're right, the accounting for that Hod Maden joint venture is done under the equity method. Items with this Hod Maden accounting each quarter. And the first is kind of what you already pointed out is the cash call for our portion of the ongoing development cost at Hod Maden. And you're right, this quarter, we had a $14 million cash call. And so the equity method investment on our balance sheet would increase by that amount. And then the offset then obviously is the cash. And that cash for your benefit goes through the investing activity on the statement of cash flow.

The second piece to the accounting each quarter is our 30% pickup of any losses in our equity investment in Atman. And this quarter, Atman, I believe, had losses -- our portion of losses was approximately -- it was just over $1 million. I think it was $1.3 million. And that does go through our P&L each quarter. So this quarter, $1.3 million went through the nonoperating income section of our income statement, and I believe it was in interest and other expense.

And then the offset to that goes is a decrease to that equity investment that I mentioned on our balance sheet. So if you are interested in some further light reading, I know our 10-Q and K go and give a little bit more information on that, but that's really the high level for the accounting.

And then just for the question of what the number might be, I would say, give us a little time. As you know, SSR has announced that they're trying to rationalize the investment. The spending is not going to be that high in the immediate term while the partners try to figure out the way forward there. I think they announced the strategic review in early March. So you would have had a couple of months where there was really an effort to -- SSR was sort of engaged in bringing this thing forward. And now I think things are just a little bit quieter. So once this gets rationalized, I think we'll be able to give you a better sense for what the spending is going to be this year.

Perfect. Sounds good, Bill. I'm glad I'm a CPA, so I understand everything that Paul just mentioned earlier. I promise I have one last question. It's not as technical. It's more focused on the revolving credit facility. I know, as you mentioned earlier as well, it increased by about $600 million this quarter. And just drawing historical records as well, the last time you increased it is when -- right before you did the Kansanshi stream as well as the Sandstorm Gold and Horizon Copper acquisition. What is the kind of read-through here? And you've done $1 billion deals in the past. Is that time to see more $1 billion dollar deals coming from Royal Gold again?

Yes, I wouldn't read through anything. I know we established -- we had the accordion and then we actually exercised it in very short order, but I wouldn't read anything into it. I think it's just a reflection. And you've seen some large transactions in our sector. There seem to be more of them, more opportunities. And we love the revolving credit. We think our business is great in terms of being able to service that. It's nondilutive. And we just want to be ready. As I've said before, even though gold has come off, it's still at a level where every GEO you buy is probably more expensive than it was 5 years ago. So it's just being prepared. That's the only read-through I'd ask you to take from it.

Our next question comes from Daniel Major with UBS.

The first question is just on the buyback option and how we should think about that relative to the balance sheet. Is there a kind of level of net cash or net debt that we should be thinking about that increases the probability of buybacks? And is the emphasis of the buyback to ultimately kind of normalize the share count from the Sandstorm deal?

No, it's not to try to normalize the share count relative to the Sandstorm deal. And I wouldn't take it as sort of a net cash. If we've got excess liquidity, that's something we're going to turn to. This is about what we see as a value dislocation. And I'll really -- I'll take you back to November, December of last year, where I think the view amongst everybody and our management team was we just shouldn't be trading at these levels. We are very undervalued. And I quite frankly, wish we'd had the program in place back then. And this is kind of a reaction to that where if from a valuation multiple perspective, and that's where it starts, we think there is a dislocation, we may very well use the program.

But at the same time, you have to understand we have other priorities as well, we have to balance with that. Number one, we still have debt outstanding. We'd love to pay off the debt. That may remain a priority. And again, to the extent the business development pipeline looks healthy, we may want to retain that liquidity. So it's not -- we're not looking at it going, okay, for this valuation multiple, we're automatically going to go out and use the buyback program. It's really -- it's a balance of priorities and it's what we would view as a real dislocation in value.

Okay. So it's sort of option that -- yes, an option in the capital allocation sort of tool chest.

Yes.

Okay. Just second question, just a slight specific one. When would you expect to make the second payment I think it's 11,100 ounces or be -- sorry, received the second payment from the Mount Milligan cost support program, where that fall?

That's a good question. I can't answer it. Dan, do you recall when we expect Greenstone to hit the next target? Is it later this year?

Yes, Bill. Daniel, thanks for the question. And we were just looking at the results from Equinox overnight. And based on what we're seeing from their production and guidance, it looks like it will be sometime in Q3 of this year.

Okay. Perfect. That's useful. And then just last question, just a general one on the pipeline and what you're seeing in terms of potential opportunities out there. We've seen some consolidation in precious metal pricing, but as you say, still at a good level. Any high-level insights on what you're seeing in the pipeline?

Dan Breeze, I might have you keep going and cover that subject.

Yes, happy to, Bill. Yes. Look, I think, Daniel, we certainly like what we see in the pipeline right now. And I think as we look at the market, the volatility, the geopolitical risk that we're seeing across the board right now, it doesn't seem to be slowing interest from counterparties to consider deals, at least currently. And obviously, we've seen a number of deals already this year. So it looks pretty good to us and very much like previous quarters.

I think the deals that we've seen announced this year are kind of like what we see in the pipeline right now. So those arbitrage opportunities, the base metal producers looking to sell into a good market with the noncore precious metals that they hold, I think there's more interest now given the Antamina Wheaton deal that we saw. I think that's stimulated interest from base metal companies to consider monetizing those byproducts. And certainly in our deal flow last year, we saw that from First Quantum and Solaris over their assets that we were able to stream as well. So we like that.

The third-party royalty market looks pretty healthy as well. And then new project development, all of it looks pretty good. And again, we're still in that $300 million, $400 million size. I think that's still a good range to think about for deals.

Our next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek with Scotiabank.

Paul, I'm not an accountant, so I'm going to start with that. I just want to simplistically understand how I should be thinking of it. So there's really 2 components to this Hod Maden that I need to understand. One is something that will go through the income statement, which seems to be something in the $1.5 million expense per quarter.

And then there's the second component, which is the capital call that goes through the cash flow, and that depends on the capital outlay that's required from the joint venture and your 30% interest. Is that how I should think of it?

That's correct, Tanya. Yes, thanks for the question. And I'm happy to give you a bit more color there, too, on the pickup of the losses in the joint venture, the 30% pickup. I'll just tell you that over the -- probably average over the last 4 or 5 quarters, those losses have ranged really between about $600,000 and $700,000. So if that's also another guide for you, yes, this quarter was $1.3 million. But if you factor that in, I'd say, over the last 4, 5 quarters, it's been $600,000 to $700,000. And you're correct. That does go through the P&L, and that will both show up in the nonoperating section, and I believe we include it within interest and other expense.

Okay. And then what was [indiscernible] a month, then of that will go through the cash flow statement?

Correct. As an investing activity, so not operating cash flow. And then yes, and the offset to that is the increase of that equity investment on the balance sheet.

Yes. Okay. All right. That's clear. And we will wait -- I think the guidance had been about $15 million a month. Is that what you're thinking within your projections until otherwise noted?

Yes. I don't even know if it will be that. Again, as I -- in my response to the other question, just give us a bit of time to sort out the strategic review by SSR.

All right. So then my second question, I want to take this one, but I think maybe Paul again, you mentioned that we are going to -- I think second or third week after the quarter, I forget what you mentioned, we will be getting some additional information ahead of the full financial. You mentioned revenue. Did I hear streams both from the royalties and streams themselves broken up in GEOs. Is that what we're going to get? I didn't understand what exactly we're getting.

Yes. So you may recall that we previously had provided the metals stream sales release shortly after the quarter end. So really, you're going to get a bolt-on to that. So it will include the stream sales information, but we'll also provide a dollar range of the royalty segment as well. As you may appreciate, we do have to estimate some of these. And so this release will hopefully tie all this together for you from both segment standpoint.

Okay. So GEOs from the stream and then the Royalty segment?

Correct.

Okay. Got it. And with that, I know we had initially spoken 48, 52 first half, second half performance. But I think guidance had been originally that we were supposed to have a Q1 similar to Q4, which had been about 91,000 GEOs and you came in at 97,000. Should I be thinking that we're probably more equal for the next 3 quarters?

Paul, do you want to take that one?

Yes. I think as of right now, yes, I think it's still -- that 4,852, I think is still what we're guiding to. Yes, we did have a few royalties this quarter and streams that had better-than-expected production, but I think you can expect the 4,852 for the rest of the year and maintaining that guidance that we provided earlier as well.

Okay. And if someone wants to take on the share buyback, and maybe, Bill, this is for you, if I could, and then someone to take my final question on the transaction environment. But just on the buyback, you mentioned a few times where you see a valuation disconnect with the market. When you think of the valuation disconnect, are you looking at it let's say, your NAV versus where you see your NAV versus where the share price is trading? Like how -- like what valuation metrics are you using to see that clarifying that discount?

Yes. I think you're going down the right road. It starts with PNAV and price to cash flow and looking at others in our sector. That I think is where the analysis starts. But again, as I mentioned, that's not an automatic trigger to either do something or not do something. There are other priorities that we've got to manage in that process. But it's definitely valuation multiples where we will start the analysis.

Okay. So you -- I'm saying that because I'm trying to understand whether your price to NAV or price to cash flow is a certain spread versus peers where you look at it and say, okay, this disconnect and if we have the cash flow -- if we have the cash, let's buy back shares?

Yes, that's where it starts. But it's also do we have debt to pay down? Do we have new investments that can be for.

Yes. For sure. If we have the cash, all else being equal.

Yes.

Okay. And then just my last question, and you gave us a little bit of a flavor for what you're seeing out there the $300 million to $400 million range is what you were looking at, and maybe someone can confirm that I heard. I'm just trying to understand a couple of others have said there's a couple of very large deals still out there, potential syndication. Would that be something that you would consider syndicated deals as well?

Yes. I mean I'll answer the syndication part of the question. Sure, I'd love to syndicate. I would love to be part of it. We would love to lead it. The thing I just caution people is if you want a transaction, you want a transaction for a reason, which means that maybe your structure is different than everybody else's, maybe your pricing is more competitive than everybody else's.

So you would have to find somebody else willing to do the transaction that they potentially lost to. And so it's not something that we syndicate ahead of time. You have to close the deal and then syndicate it, but we're totally open to the concept. That makes the whole diversification side of what we were talking about at the Investor Day even better. So that's the syndication side. Dan Breeze, is there anything else you want to add on the market in general?

Yes, Tanya, I would just say, and I did mention $300 million to $400 million, and there's always a range in there even up to $500 million, let's say, in that range. But the third-party royalties that we see in the pipeline, they tend to be smaller, as you know, sort of $100 million plus or minus type sizes. But I think the range we always give you, Tanya, it still holds.

Okay. And Dan, then are you seeing more silver opportunities?

Yes. I think the answer, Tanya, is very similar to what I shared with you in Zurich last month at the Mining Forum, which is we're kind of seeing a bit of everything right now. It is silver. Maybe it's a bit more silver than we've seen, say, a year ago, but it's still a mix of silver and gold across the board and producing assets and development assets and whatnot. So it's really hard to say that there's one type of opportunity that's kind of outweighing the rest. It's pretty broad, at least from our pipeline's perspective.

Our next question comes from Derick Ma with TD Cowen.

I want to thank the team in advance for the future disclosure on preliminary numbers for Royalties and Streams. I think that's going to be quite helpful for the investment community. In terms of SSR and Hod Maden, are there opportunities to work collaboratively there to achieve your own stated goals of disclosing or converting your 30% interest? And are you having those type of conversations right now?

When you say collaboratively, I mean, any rationalization of our ownership was going to involve the partners one way or the other. If it was -- you were either going to sell to them or you were going to sell to a third party, but with their consent effectively. So that's always been the approach. I don't think -- as I said at the Investor Day, I think SSR strategic review complicates what we're trying to do here. It's not a step that we envisioned when we set that goal. It's still our goal, but it's only going to be done with the partners, working with the partners.

What can investors expect in terms of timing and then ultimate outcome, I guess, from the situation then?

I think you're going to see an answer in the near term. I don't want to put months on that, but I think you're going to -- because something is going to happen, I think, relatively soon because, again, I think SSR actually put a time frame on it over the next few months. So I would sort of stick with that. This is not going to be a long drawn out, I don't think a long drawn out process.

And a complete disposal? Or do you think some partial conversion is still possible here?

Don't know. Don't know.

And then just finally on the share repurchase program, I know you touched on it a lot already, but it sounds like the plan is to self-administer the program and not have it automated via broker. Is that correct?

Well, it's not going to be automated in the sense that we took a price and sell it. I mean we've got to figure out how we're going to implement it because we do want discretion as to when -- if and when the program gets utilized. So I don't imagine giving a bank 6 months at a price and just exercise if it hits that price. There's going to be more to it than that.

Our next question comes from Joshua Wolfson with RBC Capital Markets.

I figured it would only be appropriate if I also ask on the buyback as I've done historically. So I mean, we've seen a lot of volatility historically with shares. And in some of those prior calls, there has been justification to not proceed with the buyback just due to the stock trading at a premium. I'm wondering what's changed or how is the company looking at things or potential scenarios that could justify this now being something that's pursued versus historical context?

Well, again, Josh, I think I go back to -- again, I'll take you back to November, December. I think we were trading at a PNAV less than 1.4x for a little while. And what we have to do is say, okay, if you can buy back your shares at 1.4x and investments in the sector are being priced at 1.7x, we should know our assets better than anything new we're going to add to the portfolio.

So is that a better -- if we're going to use capital, is that a better use of capital because the buyback really came from that period of time when I just have to say, kind of wish we had to buyback because now is the time to buy shares. And we also saw -- almost 10 years ago, when Thompson Creek was having financial difficulties and people weren't sure the Mount Milligan stream was going to survive, we felt very comfortable that it was, but there was a very significant value disconnect. And again, at that time, if we had a program, I think we probably would have done something under that program.

Got it. Okay. And then maybe getting into some of the asset specifics. Cortez had a pretty good quarter. I know there's not a lot of visibility on the asset quarter-to-quarter, and there is -- because the differences in percentages, what Barrick reports versus what you report can vary. I'm just wondering if the company can provide a bit more understanding of Q1 and then if it's available, what the expectation is over the course of the year?

Josh, I'm going to turn that to Martin. I'll just caution you. I think Barrick usually comes out before us, which makes it a little bit easier for us to talk about the assets. So I'm not sure what we can share. But Martin, is there any comment you could make about what we thought Cortez in the first quarter?

I think I would say, Bill, that we should just wait for Barrick to come out on Monday. I wouldn't like to front run anything that they're going to say at this stage.

Got it. All right. And then just on Khoemacau, some of the challenges in the first quarter and then kind of looking at the impact of Zone 5 and understanding the differences there. How should we be thinking about how the proportion of that Zone is processed and what the outlook is for Royal in that context?

Martin, do you want to take a shot at that?

Yes. So yes, look, they've -- I mean, they had some issues last year as they switched over their mining contractor, moving to the Chinese contractor. I think any time that you've got a big contractor change at an underground mine, it's going to have an impact. They do seem to have been stabilizing fairly well as we move towards the end of last year and move through this year.

Obviously, their focus at the moment is on building the expansion, building the new processing plant, finishing the design for that and getting into construction, building an underground backfill plant so that they can start backfilling, reduce the amount of pillars that they leave behind, improve the recovery of the resource. So that seems to be going pretty well at the moment.

But as to Zone 5 North and Mango and the other pieces of the puzzle put together, that's still in development at the moment. So we will -- the new plant is going to process mainly Zone 5 material, and we have a good strong understanding that, that's going to improve our throughput and our silver recovery.

Okay. And maybe just to clarify for Zone 5 North specifically, has the mining from that area been accelerated versus what the prior plan was? Is the text maybe I'm misinterpreting things?

They haven't started mining Zone 5 North yet, Josh. They're mining Zone 5 main with the 3 declines. Zone 5 North Mango and the others are part of the expansion that they're going to be starting to develop over the year.

Our final question comes from Brian MacArthur with Raymond James.

Sorry, most of my questions have been answered, but I know this is difficult. But just following up on Josh's asset, Antamina had $13 million this quarter. You commented about grade. But just ballpark, I realize NPIs are difficult. Is that a reasonable number going forward at these commodity prices? Or was there capital allocation or something that made that number different than what you might think would be going forward? I mean it's the first quarter we've really got a look at this.

Yes. I'll offer you one thing real quick. And I think $13 million was more than the annual revenue received in certain years in the past. So I agree with you, NPIs are impossible. Estimate, Martin, is there anything you would say that makes the first quarter unique or a signal of things to come?

No. I mean it was essentially low deductions and it was high prices. So we can't really project what is to come. We're not changing our outlook in terms of what we expect for the year. But yes, it's capital allocation and deductions, and we have almost no visibility into that, Brian.

Fair enough. And just a second question while I have you. One asset that's sitting around that's been there for years, but obviously, we're a higher price environment. Is anything happening? I don't know if I remember how to say it, at Ilovica, the Euromax asset in New Macedonia because that has the potential to be a decent size going forward, too.

Yes, Brian, I don't think there's anything to report there. The last we really look into it, I think they were still working on consolidating mining licenses and just the government changed 10 years ago, and it's been an uphill battle for us. So I don't have anything to update you on.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Bill Heissenbuttel for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. We certainly appreciate your interest, and we look forward to updating you on our progress during our next quarterly call. Take care.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

Hello, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal road show. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, Virtual Event Moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Chicago and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate in by using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Alistair.

Well, hi, everyone, and thanks, Noella, for that introduction, and thank you for your attention today. It has been a very busy year for us at Royal Gold over the past 12 months or even last 16 -- it's also been a very good time for the gold environment generally. So it's pretty timely to give you an update. So I'll start by making some comments about forward-looking statements. I will be making forward-looking statements during the course of this presentation. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements.

All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC. So during this presentation, I'm going to give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. And we are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals. We're not a mining company. So that's an important distinction. And during the presentation, I will cover the key attributes of Royal Gold and our business model. First is, I'll talk about our gold exposure. Our focus is gold, precious metals, but gold is definitely the very top focus.

Second is, we are a high-margin business that returns capital to shareholders. We've a very long history of doing both. We have a very diversified portfolio that provides consistency in our financial performance. Our model has limited operating risks, so our margins are steady and not necessarily impacted directly by inflation, where the right size in a small sector, so we can show growth. We can compete for large transactions, but we can show growth by doing small transactions. And finally, I'll talk about some of the optionality in our portfolio, which is really important when you think about our business because we have optionality within the portfolio that we don't have to spend money on to realize.

It's an important feature that you need to understand when you think about a company like Royal Gold. In 2025, it has been a very busy few quarters for Royal Gold, and 2025 was really a transformational year for the company. We did a number of things, and probably the biggest was the acquisition of Sandstorm and Horizon, two corporate acquisitions that closed simultaneously in late October. And with those transactions, we added a significant amount of growth and diversification to our portfolio.

But we also did some other things during the year. We acquired gold streams on Kansanshi and Warintza, which are two assets that are very important, and we expect will be very important for Royal Gold in the future. At Kansanshi, this is a very large copper asset in Zambia operated by First Quantum, we have immediate cash flow from that stream. We started receiving stream deliveries almost immediately after closing that transaction in August. And then at Warintza in Ecuador, this is an emerging Tier-1 copper-molybdenum project, we have a nice gold stream and royalty on this asset, and this is something we expect will bring a lot of value to Royal Gold shareholders over the coming years.

And we didn't just have acquisition success as well. We also had some very positive developments from within the portfolio and some optionality that surfaced and two good examples of those would be Mount Milligan. We saw an extension of the mine life there by Centerra, the operator. So that now is probably we're talking about 2045 is the current plan, but then potential to go beyond that by a number of years. And then finally, the next thing we saw that was a really big development for us was Barrick's exploration success at the Fourmile project in Nevada, the Cortez Complex. So, two very good examples of optionality within the portfolio that surfaced during the course of 2025.

And if you take 2025, and you look at the acquisitions, the embedded optionality that we've seen surfaced. We've added a lot of scale, diversification, and growth to our business, but it's very important to note that we did not change our strategy to realize any of this. Now I'm going to talk in this first section, just about our gold focus. And we are a company, we've been around for -- this will be our 45th year on the NASDAQ. So, we've been around for a long time.

We have a long record, but what is unchanged about the company over that entire period is our strategy. It's been very consistent. We've always been focused on gold revenue on good assets in good jurisdictions. And our revenue, as you can see on this slide, has grown consistently, but the metal mix has not. It's been pretty consistent, very much a gold focus. We aim to provide gold exposure and a conservatively managed vehicle.

And our historic performance, as you see on this slide, shows our share price. We have been, over the long term, a good alternative for those who are looking to get conservative exposure to the gold price. You can see that we do offer good leverage to the gold price. We've a beta to the gold price of about 1.6. On the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance. We've actually beaten the gold price. We've beaten the GDX Index, so the GDX was formed in 2006 and we've also beaten the S&P 500. History shows that we have been a good long-term investment in a very volatile commodity.

Our business model is unique; it's high-margin and we have dividend growth as well. And on the margin point, our margin is very high and it's a very scalable business. We had an 82% EBITDA margin in 2025. Our cash G&A was about 4% of revenue and cash G&A is really what it costs us to run this business. Our costs are -- they're low and they're fixed. So, we don't see cost inflation as being something that really impacts our margins. And the business model is very efficient. And if you look at us compared to any other company, in any other sector, a very low headcount.

We have 39 employees in our business. If you look at our -- the scale of our business, we're a $22.5 billion company, that's a pretty impressive ratio of value-per-employee. So compare us on a per-employee basis than any company anywhere; I challenge you to find someone who's got a more efficient business model that we do. Return of capital is a very important strategic objective for us at Royal Gold, and it's something that makes us unique when you think about other gold investments. We have paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every year since 2001, and that's despite volatility in the gold price.

In November last year, we raised our dividend for the 25th consecutive annual year of raises. We've now paid out over $1 billion of dividends to our shareholders. We're the only company in the GDX Index that has paid an increase in dividend since the Index was formed in 2006, we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High-Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index, that sets us apart from all other precious metal investments. We have a very diversified portfolio, and that's an important thing to consider when you're thinking about our business and one of the attributes that makes us unique. We have a global portfolio. We're weighted towards lower risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions, and our portfolio spans the various stages of mining project development.

Our total portfolio is over 360 interests and assets. And we have over 80 assets that are producing revenue today. We have about 30 that are in the development stage. So that means there's a window to first production from those assets. We have a bunch of other -- about 250 other earlier-stage assets, and those would be exploration or evaluation stage assets. And organic growth within the portfolio comes from development, comes from those assets that move through the exploration cycle into evaluation, into development, and then start producing revenue. And because we have such a large number of earlier-stage assets, we expect there to be some additional organic growth from those assets over the next several years as operators try and take advantage of higher metal prices and get operations into production.

Having a diversified portfolio is very important because it really does reduce single-asset risk and counterparty risk, jurisdictional risk. And our commodity focus is gold, but we do have some diversification by having meaningful silver and copper. Now we do have the highest revenue percentage of all our large cap peers, but we do have some meaningful copper and silver as well in the portfolio. And geographically, you can see that our focus is very much North America, and that's where the biggest chunk of our value is in North American assets.

On a net asset value basis, you can also see that we've got a pretty diversified, very well-diversified portfolio. And it's the most -- we believe it's the most diversified mining asset portfolio in the business. And 8 of the 10 -- top 10 assets in our portfolio are producing revenue. So these are assets that are actually contributing to the portfolio. There are expansion and extension projects underway at about 5 of these producing assets. So there's good growth at the top end of the portfolio. And as I said before, we have lots of earlier-stage things that should provide, hopefully will provide, some organic growth in the future.

But near-term growth from within the assets of the portfolio that are producing revenue, we see a number of opportunities there as well. Our operators are best in class and we're very proud to have a number of operating counterparties who are some of the world's leading mining companies. These are companies -- they're large, they're well capitalized. They're experienced. We've recently added to our portfolio of counterparties by adding First Quantum, Rio Tinto, Glencore. These are some of the biggest and best names in the mining business, and they are additions to some of the other companies that we've been doing business with for many, many years.

And when you think about the portfolio diversification, it really does, as I said, it reduces our exposure to single asset or operator or jurisdictional risks by having that diversification and it's an important point for the generalist investor who doesn't really want to spend that much time looking at the details of what's in our portfolio. You can invest in a mining company. They generally have a smaller portfolio, it is more concentrated, and you really do need to understand the risks at each of the assets because if something happens along those assets, it can really impact the value of the company.

Whereas you look at us, we've got a very diversified portfolio. Hopefully, if there is a single-asset risk, it's compensated somehow by some of the other assets in the portfolio actually doing better than expected. So there's a smoothing and mitigation impact as a result of having a larger portfolio. Our business model has limited operating risk. And when I say that, you can look at the different ways to invest in precious metals, as you can see on the slide here, what we offer is gold exposure with risk mitigation. And there are many different ways you can invest in gold.

But what we try to provide to our shareholders is exposure to gold price itself, but also optionality to the assets where we have investments and a dividend. So, and we also reduce the downside risk of holding a diversified portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating capital costs. Now there are different ways to invest in gold and you can be very conservative and you can invest in the physical metal, you can buy an ounce of gold. But that ounce of gold will always be an ounce. You won't get upside aside from price appreciation, that ounce will always be what you bought. It's never going to pay you a dividend either, and it's probably going to cost you to hold it.

You can be more -- if you want to be more risk-tolerant, you can invest in mining companies or exploration companies. But with those, you're also getting direct exposure to operating and capital cost risks. And with those cost risks, you also get that inflation that could impact or erode margins. There's a perception amongst many investors that our model doesn't provide us good leverage to gold. But I think that's clearly discounted when you think about how we have done in a rising gold price environment. Our financial results definitely show the opposite.

With that, we do have leverage to gold -- now, a unique feature of our business model is that our margins actually expand with a rising gold price. And when you look at a Producer and Royal Gold, we have a very different cost structure. Our costs are low and fixed -- largely fixed. So our margins expand as the gold price rises. So every $10 increase to the gold price is a $10 increase to our margins. Whereas operator costs are often subject to inflation. So their margins may not expand as quickly. And in fact, they may actually contract depending on what's happening to some of their costs.

And you can see that more clearly on this slide. Producers are exposed to inflation and input costs. So that could be labor, fuel, consumables, other site costs, or it could be energy. Energy is a big component of mining asset costs. And obviously, today, with the war in Iran, you've got this increase in energy prices. And that may actually very much impact margins from operating companies. Our G&A costs are pretty steady. We would pay salaries. We pay services, office rents. These are things that don't tend to move short-term, per se. And so that means that our margins are pretty steady, whereas operators, they actually see margin compression as input costs rise faster than the gold price.

Now we are -- in terms of size, we like to think that we're at the optimal size for our sector. And we are -- we'd like to think we're in a Goldilocks position where we're large enough to compete for the largest transactions but we're also small enough to be able to show growth. And our sector is actually built on relatively small transactions. Occasionally, you see large transactions that come up. We did $1 billion stream transaction last year, and that is a large transaction. But most transactions are smaller than about $300 million. In fact, the average transaction is just over $100 million in size.

And so given our size and given our cash flow, we actually do sit in a very interesting position because we're large enough to be able to compete for the largest transactions. We have the cash flow. We have the access to low-cost capital. So we can compete against the largest peers, but we're also small enough to be able to show growth. And a small transaction can actually add meaningful value. So when you think about something like Kansanshi, $1 billion stream, or Warintza, which is a $200 million investment. Both of those are meaningful to Royal Gold. And both of them are -- because we sit in that interesting spot, we're able to compete and effectively win, large and smaller transactions.

We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector, but we do want to be the best and the highest value. And so that Goldilocks position, it really does provide a great platform for our strategy of continued growth in gold. I'm going to talk in this next section about a very important feature of our model, which is embedded growth and optionality and I'll start talking a little bit about capital allocation and how we think about successfully deploying capital. And our growth really does depend on being able to allocate capital to the right places at the right time.

Our strategy with respect to capital allocation has been consistent since the beginning of the company. It's really -- firstly, we'll look to invest -- reinvest in our business and use non-dilutive ways to do that investment. Secondly, we're always looking at maintaining a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity for those opportunities that come up quickly. And then thirdly, we look at returning capital to shareholders. And this is something, as I said, is a key strategic objective for us.

We have to be flexible with our approach to capital allocation because market conditions change all the time. But generally speaking, our framework is to target, for those new investments, we target double-digit returns. That's where we see the biggest bang for our buck. And that's where our shareholders hopefully see that per share growth. If we can invest in and the best opportunities without diluting our shareholders, then we should be able to provide shareholders without per share growth. We also need to repay debt quickly. When we fund something, we fund it using nondilutive sources of capital, what I'm referring to is using our revolving credit facility -- that's debt.

We'd like to repay that quickly because what that does is it obviously reduces debt service charges, but it also allows us to rebuild liquidity to be able to reinvest. But then we also want to make sure that we have capital set aside to continue increasing and growing our dividend, which, as I said, is definitely a key part of our business and our strategy. So how have we done over the past 25 years, and this is one of my favorite slides when I talk about Royal Gold, it's really an illustration of exactly that point.

We have, since 2000, it was a 25-year history of what we've done. We've seen significant revenue and cash flow growth from the company -- within the company. But there are 3 aspects of this growth that are very important to note. First is our G&A has not grown at the same rate as our revenue and capital growth. Our revenue growth has far exceeded that G&A growth. And that is because we don't need to add people when we grow our business. We can add a new asset to the portfolio. There's a lot of work at the outset when we look at the transaction.

But once we have that asset within the portfolio, it's a very simple monitoring of that asset. We don't need to add a new workforce or new people when we add new assets to the portfolio. Our business is very scalable. The second point is that our revenue growth is not dependent only on metal prices. We've seen a lot of good tailwind from the gold price over the past several years, but we've also been able to add volume to our business. And we've also seen organic growth from within the portfolio that helps us take advantage of that tailwind that the gold price is providing.

So our revenue growth is not just dependent on the gold price. We're able to add volume and see growth from within the portfolio. And then finally, the other point -- the final point is that most of our growth has been financed internally without a significant rise in our share account. We did issue shares last year to complete the Sandstorm transaction in late October. We issued about 19 million shares, but that was the first time we've issued equity since 2012. And even with those new shares we issued, we still have the lowest share count in the GDX Index. We want to avoid shareholder dilution. And if we can provide -- if we grow our business without diluting shareholders, that results in per share growth in the metrics that are important to us.

Now when we think about returns, if we invest in the right assets, then we should be able to see returns to grow over time. And we intend -- when we make an investment in something, we're always aiming for double-digit IRRs. But we have to be patient for those double-digit IRRs to become visible to the marketplace. But when we look at a new transaction, any transaction, we always look at the exploration, and the production upside because that's where that growth in return comes from.

And sometimes it takes time for that growth to show up in the assets where we invest. When we do our due diligence on new opportunities, we always take a bottoms-up technical approach to asset reviews, and in many cases, the Street who judges our transactions that they -- the analysts who look at transactions and write notes on what we do, they don't have access to the same information that we do. They haven't spent 4 or 5 months going through technical information and forming a technical view on what potential could be.

So the Street analysis or Street estimates of announcements of new transactions on day 1, they're often pretty low. And sometimes it takes several years for the upside to become evident. And this graph -- these graphs on this slide really show that as time has passed, expected returns have increased as upside has become more visible to the marketplace, and that's as a result of production increases or mine life extensions or what have you. They're really driven by reserve growth and resource additions without us having to make further investments.

And this next slide shows the same concept, but looking at it in a little bit different way. When we make our investments, in an asset, obviously, we start to recover our interest in that investment over time. And what we're hoping to do is see that we recover our investment, but the value ahead of us always continues to grow as the operators who operate these assets, continue to reinvest in those assets to extend mine life. And you can see in this graph that in several cases, we've actually recovered our initial investment. We're in the return harvesting stage, but there's a lot of additional value ahead of us. So those returns should continue to grow over time.

And it's really as a result of this multiplier effect, as you can see on this little cartoon slide. The -- any extension to mine life has a double benefit to Royal Gold. The first is that an extension to production really does mean more revenue to us. So as mine life extends, our interests are also extended. But what you get on top of that is exposure -- further exposure to the gold price is volatile. So that additional volatility over a longer period of time has a lot of value.

We find that the operators of our assets like any mining asset, they're always looking to extend asset lives. They invest a lot of capital to build mines, and they want to see that a return on that capital. So any incremental opportunity they have to grow asset lives is something they'll take. And we piggyback on that, and we get -- we got exposure to that growth without having to pay for it. The operators are paying for that growth. We are not. And that's where the optionality in our business comes from, and it's a very important feature of our business model and something that you really need to understand as a shareholder.

And to bring that down from conceptual to actual, the slide shows some of the important catalysts that we see that some of the assets, some of the new assets that we expect to provide organic growth potential to us over the next several years. We have a very -- we have a significant organic growth pipeline. These are assets that are in the portfolio -- and we see catalysts from some new assets coming into production almost on an annual basis over the next decade.

And as we go through this, I'll briefly mention, we saw a brand-new production at Back River, they started commercial production in October. That's in Northern Canada. Platreef put first ore through the mill in the fourth quarter of last year. We have yet to see our first revenue from that asset. We're expecting it shortly. Robertson and the Cortez Complex in Nevada, First Production is expected in 2027. And then we've got Hod Maden, Great Bear, Warintza later this decade. And then after the turn of the decade, we've got the MARA project in Argentina. We've got Fourmile in the early 2030s. So, this is all stuff that we don't need to pay any additional -- to get exposure to this growth.

And this does not include other assets in the portfolio that are seeing -- they're producing that are seeing extensions or expansion. Mine-life extension is not included in this graph, the Khoemacau production expansion is not included in this slide either. And we have one of the best organic growth profiles, we think, in the industry, which is reflected in our 5-year outlook, which we published several weeks ago with our Investor Day at the end of March.

Now I'll finish off the presentation just talking about where we are relative to our peers on a valuation basis. We have been performing very well, and it's been a great year for us. We've had a strong cash flow, good organic growth. We're executing on our strategic priorities. But I think the -- and the share price has done well. I mean there's no doubt our share price has done well. It's reflected the strong gold price and I think it's starting to reflect the recognition of our deeper and more growthy portfolio.

But we're still lagging. If you look at us on a price to net asset value basis or a price-to-cash-flow basis compared to our peers, we are still lagging. We're doing a lot to try and close this gap. And one of the first things that we did -- probably one of the most important things we did was issue longer-term guidance a few weeks ago. We had never done that before. We've never given a longer-term view of our portfolio, but we've done that now.

And so that was an important part of our Investor Day, and it's really an important part of giving the Street confidence. The same confidence we feel, but expressing that to the Street. So the Street understands our growth potential. We also did an investor -- in our Investor Day, we spent a lot of time talking about the specifics of our portfolio. So some of the assets where we see some of the growth, duration improvements in our portfolio. We spent a lot of time talking which is really underpins that longer-term guidance.

And we have been spending a lot of time with our disclosure and talking to investors going to conferences, trying to market and make sure people understand the scale and growth potential of our portfolio as a whole. So we hope that this valuation gap will start to close as the Street understands the growth within the portfolio. So, I think in summary, I'll turn it back to you in a moment, Noella, for Q&A, but we have strengthened Royal Gold significantly over the past year. As I said, it's been a transformational year for us, 2025, when I say transformational years, that was the year of a lot growth for us. We've added scale, diversification, growth to the portfolio.

We have a very strong balance sheet, significant cash flow -- we think our patient approach and our commitment to our long-term strategy, it should be rewarded by the market. And we think we're seeing green shoots in that respect, [indiscernible] when we talk about valuation gap is starting to close. So with that, I will turn it back to you, Noella, and I'll be happy to start the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. As you said, we'll start the Q&A. The first question is, seems to be a few more players in the royalty/streaming space. How do you look at increased competition in the precious metal royalty sector.

So yes, competition has always been something we've had to deal with in our sector. I think I don't know if it's increased recently or stay consistent. It doesn't really matter. We have a couple of competitors out there. We're all looking at the same kinds of things and we're all competing against each other. So, we have to keep our pencils sharp, and that is something that we've always been able to do one of the things that we try to do to differentiate ourselves against our peers is think about we put ourselves in the shoes of our counterparty. And we think carefully about what our counterparties are looking for.

And we're quite happy to be flexible and creative when it comes to offering our counterparties what they need to do, what they're looking for. And so that's something that I think that we have shown. If you look at some of the transactions that we've done, we have been creative in terms of structure. We have been creative in terms of other aspects that make us more appealing to a counterparty than perhaps one of our peers. It's not just about keeping your pencils sharp, although at the end of the day, most opportunities are won by putting the highest number forward.

But there are other aspects to our business that we are -- we think about very carefully, and that is really how to be -- how to meet the needs of the counterparty to continue being able to win transactions. And we do see a lot of growth in the market ahead of us today. We are looking at a number of opportunities. And so hopefully, we'll be able to continue adding assets to the portfolio in such a way that we're mitigating the risks, but also getting exposure to that longer-term upside that I talked about.

Next question, Pueblo Viejo silver recovery is below the threshold for deliveries. Is this a temporary metallurgical issue or a structural impairment?

So it is -- I would characterize it as temporary, but it's not a -- I think it's more a medium-term temporary. The silver recovery at Pueblo Viejo has been a -- it's been complicated. And if you rewind the clock a couple of years, what Barrick did was a -- they did an expansion to the plant. It's a very complicated plant. The process is very complicated. And they've added a bunch of new components to the plants. And they are working on trying to get everything working together, and it hasn't quite happened yet. They've had recovery impacts in gold. They've also had very heavy recovery impacts in silver. They have a number of strategies in place to deal with this to be able to get everything working together and improve gold as well as silver recoveries. But there are a number of things that they need to do.

Some of them are constructing new pieces of equipment within plant -- there's also some other things that they need to do to optimize the ore feed into the plant. They do have plans to address these issues, are working through these plans now. But I think with the more recent technical report that Barrick issued several weeks ago, it's become evident that the silver recovery is likely take a little bit longer than perhaps we were hoping a year ago is probably something that's going to take a handful of years, and we've -- I think we've been pretty clear to the market that it's probably going to be in the 2030 range before that silver recovery starts to rise to a level where we start seeing recovery of those deferred ounces that have been deferred during this period of low recovery. So, it is something that I would say is temporary, but not a near-term, more of a medium-term temporary issue.

Next question is -- what were the internal discussions on starting 5-Year Guidance? Why now?

Well, I think we've talked about it for a number of years. And why now, I think, is really -- we finally got comfort with the idea of giving longer-term guidance. We do have -- we're a bit unique in our positioning against peers. We're the only U.S. domiciled company in our sector, all of our peers are Canadian. The regulatory rules are a little bit different. And so we are a little bit more sensitive about giving longer-term production projections and estimates than our Canadian peers because it's just a different regulatory environment.

I think what we saw though with 2025 was we did a lot to add to the portfolio. We added a lot of growth, added a lot of scale, and we didn't think the market had really absorbed it all. And so when we thought about how do we make sure people understand what the growth potential is. What does the future look like for Royal Gold. The only way to do it effectively is to put out longer-term guidance and show what we think that growth potential could be because we've grown our portfolio to the point where it's almost -- it's a really difficult thing for people to model.

We have 360 assets in the portfolio. So modeling 360 assets is a tremendous task. I think the market was looking for us to simplify and really point them in a direction that would help get confidence that what we've added, it does add a lot of value to the portfolio. So it was really a way for us to get people there faster to make sure they understand that there is a lot of growth within the company. And by putting numbers out there that talk about our 5-Year Outlook, hopefully, we've convinced the market that growth is -- we're very excited about it and we're very confidence in it.

And hopefully, the market will start to appreciate that growth. When we talk about our discount relative to our peers, I think one of the issues that we had was our peers all -- they all give longer-term guidance, and we were the only company that didn't. And so that was a bit of a disconnect. And I think -- if you're a generalist investor and you're looking at different alternatives, you may look at a company that gives longer-term guidance and have more confidence in their outlook than a company that doesn't. And as a result, that company will get a premium. And a company doesn't have a long-term guidance will not trade at that premium. So hopefully, we've closed -- we've given the tools to the market to help close that gap.

Appreciate that response. Your next question is, you've expanded your copper exposure via recent deals. Is this a strategic pivot towards energy-transition metals, or simply opportunistic diversification?

I would say it's just been opportunistic. We are not changing our strategy, as I said during the presentation, our strategy remains very much to be gold focused. We think about precious metals as being what we want to focus our energy on and the preference within precious metals is gold. Now, if silver or platinum group metal opportunities come up, we will look at those absolutely. We don't look for copper. We're not out there proactively trying to grow in copper.

But if good copper opportunities come our way, then we'll absolutely look at them. We had a very good opportunity with the Cactus project in Arizona in late 2024, we were approached by a holder of a royalty on that project. They were looking to sell, they needed to raise capital. And so we looked at that because we like the project. It's a very good project. It's in a great jurisdiction in Arizona right next to a town. So it's got all of the attributes that a lot of remote mines don't have. So -- that's a very positive thing.

And then finally, the management team, we know the CEO of that company well. We've dealt with him. He's very credible person. So that helped us look at that opportunity and say, this is too good to pass up. So we actually did execute on that, but we didn't go looking for it. So we'll think about things in that way. We're also precious-focused, but we have to respond to certain things that come to us that are very good. Now that said, we're not going to look at things that are completely out of our comfort zone.

We're not interested in things like some of the more esoteric battery metals. We just don't understand those markets very well. We don't understand the metallurgical processes, things like that. But we are very comfortable with precious metals and copper assets. We have a number of investments in copper assets where we take the gold by-product or the silver by-product. So we understand copper quite well. We're happy to look at copper.

Next, what do you see as your biggest risk: Gold price, mine life or competition for assets?

That's good question. I don't know if I really thought about it in terms of ranking the risks. But I think the gold price absolutely has the biggest impact on our value. If the gold price, we will do well or do poorly our stock price based on the gold price. So, we've seen the gold price do very well recently. And obviously, our stock price has done well also. So that is an important consideration. It's completely out of our control, though we cannot control it.

What we can control is our portfolio. We can make investments in longer duration assets. I don't see that as being a big risk for us. I think we have a nice long duration portfolio. We've got a number of assets that are coming on that will be multi-decade producers. We don't feel any real need to change the portfolio dynamic. I think we've got a very good portfolio. So I'd say that's a lower risk. But absolutely, the gold price is something that we will do well if the gold price does well and conversely, if the gold prices -- if it doesn't do well, then that will impact our stock price.

I think the underlying business, though, I think will -- given the fact that we take top-line revenue, we've got such big margins, I think even if the gold price did fall. I mean our business isn't going to be necessarily unhealthy, but it does impact the value of our stock price for sure.

Your next question is -- your P/E ratio is approximately 40 plus, significantly above the industry median, approximately 23. What justifies this premium valuation today, and what downside risks exist if growth under-delivers?

I think -- so price-to-earnings is an important metric, and I think many companies in many sectors are judged on price-to-earnings. We find in our business, price-to-cash flow is the metric that is more widely used from a valuation perspective. That would be the metric that we encourage you to look at when you're comparing us against our peers. We have a slide and we showed it during the presentation that shows that historical price-to-cash-flow multiple over time. And you'll see that we are trading at the lower end of our peers when it comes to cash flow.

We and our -- most of our institutional investors, they don't focus on earnings so much, and that's just a part of the gold mining or the gold sector. It's more cash flow and net asset value would be the metrics that we are judged on. Most analysts use those metrics to set target prices. And most investors look at how we trade on those metrics when they think about value.

Thank you for going into detail on that. Next, a viewer is asking. At this scale, does acquiring royalty companies outright become more attractive than one-off streams or royalties for moving the needle on geos?

I wouldn't say -- no, I don't think that's the case necessarily. I mean, obviously, if you buy a corporate, another corporate, when you buy their portfolio, they can have a material impact. We saw that last year with Sandstorm. But we do -- we don't look at corporate transactions as the only way to grow. I mean obviously, we keep an eye on our smaller competitors, and we're always looking at opportunities, but we find the best value is generally where we can look at an asset in detail and acquire an asset after doing a lot of due diligence. So Kansanshi is a good example. That was a large transaction has meaningful growth for Royal Gold, but we were able to very much focus our efforts on that one asset. If you buy a portfolio, what you're doing is you're paying for everything.

And sometimes a portfolio, you'll have a bunch of things that you really want, but then you may have some things that you don't really want, but you've got to pay for it all. You also have to pay a premium on top of that. So it's very difficult to make math work. I think we were able to make it work with Sandstorm. And it was as a result of very specific circumstance, but that was a very good transaction for us. The other thing that is something to keep in mind is -- you may have a strategy to go out and roll up and acquire more competitors or smaller companies in the sector.

But the reality is you need management teams on the other side of those transactions to actually want to sell. And it doesn't often happen in our sector. Many of the companies in our sector are run by relatively young management teams. They haven't been around that long. They want to grow their businesses to a certain point and they're still on that journey, and they're not willing to sell. In the case of Sandstorm, we actually had -- that company decided that they had taken the company as far as they could and it made more sense to vend their company into another entity and participate as part of that entity.

And that's one of the reasons why the Sandstorm transaction was all-share, because the management team of Sandstorm wanted to have continued exposure to Royal Gold as part of a larger entity. So -- that dynamic is really important. You need to have a willing seller. You need to have the right value needs to be there as well. And so it's very difficult to see those things line up. But in the case of Sandstorm it did, but it doesn't often happen.

Thank you for breaking that down for us. Next viewer comments. As probably the best dividend recorded and yearly increases in the space, is that more important to manage versus share buybacks?

So we -- the dividend is something that we started doing obviously, 2.5 decades ago, and we've got a very long record of doing it. And we want to continue raising our dividend because some of our shareholders, some of our generalist institutional investors really like the dividend because it shows discipline with respect to capital allocation. We have had such a long record of paying a dividend and it's part of what our investors expect. I think we'll continue with the dividend as a strategic priority. Share buybacks are a difference -- different question. We haven't had the opportunity, we think, on a sustained basis to buy back shares. It really does depend on value.

And we've seen issues with our share price in the past as maybe we've had individual assets not perform particularly well or maybe there's been a market dislocation or what have you. But those tend -- those opportunities tend to be pretty short-lived. And we've also -- we haven't had the excess capital available to buy back shares during those periods. We do like to have, and we do think the best way for us to deploy capital is to reinvest in our business and buy new assets that get -- if we buy things close to net asset value and then we get our trading multiple on top of that, we're creating value for shareholders.

Whereas if you're buying back shares, it's a little bit of a different calculus. Now, I would say that we're not against buying back shares. We just haven't had the right opportunities to present themselves to us. If we were -- were we rewind the clock and maybe go back 25 years, to the point where we started paying a dividend. Maybe if we consider share buybacks at that time as being the way to return capital to shareholders and maybe we'd have a different story today. But for the time being, we're going to continue with the dividend because it is such a long record. It's something that we're very proud of. A lot of our shareholders like it, and it's a pretty well recognized way to return capital to shareholders.

Thank you, Alistair. This next question is a two-parter. The first part is: Do all of your Principal Properties have 10 years of mine-life? And what development projects are you most excited about?

So, most of our Principal Properties, we have 5, 10 years of mine life. The only one that would be shorter based on what the operator has said, would be Andacollo in Chile. And that's -- it's a copper asset, relatively low-grade. It does have higher costs than some of the other assets in our portfolio. And that is something that the mine life goes to 2032, if my memory serves correctly. So -- that is a shorter mine life. Everything else in the Principal Property list is not multi-decade life, but that is shorter. So, I think, though, with a higher copper price, there's always a potential for that to increase and Teck, as the operator, I clearly talked about permits, work that needs to be done to extend that mine life.

So I think over the next several years, what you often see with assets that have shorter mine lives is there's work going on behind the scenes by the operators to go through permitting, to go through the exploration, to go through other things that extend mine lives because for them, it's incremental return. If they can grow the mine lives, they've already paid for all the infrastructure and all the capital has been sunk in the assets. It's very -- it's obviously very accretive for them to extend mine lives. And hopefully, that will happen at Andacollo as well.

But the remainder of the assets and Cortez is a multi-decade PV, Pueblo Viejo is multi-decade, Mount Milligan is multi-decade, Kansanshi is multi-decade. So those would be -- those are the real drivers of the portfolio, and hopefully, Andacollo will catch up to that as well over the next several years. I guess the second question was development projects. We have a number of very exciting development projects in the portfolio. I think a couple that I would mention would be MARA. In Argentina, Glencore is operating this asset -- this is the Agua Rica deposit, which has been unitized with the old Alumbrera mine. And what Glencore is doing is a reopening of Alumbrera to use the Alumbrera infrastructure to help process ore from Agua Rica.

And it's a fairly simple capital project. They have to build a conveyor from the Agua Rica deposit down to the Alumbrera mill site and infrastructure, and they're in the process of going through all the regulatory approvals and so on. In Argentina, they filed for the RIGI application in August last year, which provides tax stability and the comfort that you need for longer-term investments. And that's something that whenever Glencore has said should start producing to our account sometime in the early -- in 2031. And -- that will be a pretty significant producer for us, again, a multi-decade life from that asset. So we're very pleased and excited to see that.

Another one, I would call out would be Fourmile. I think this is -- as Barrick has said, it's probably one of the best gold deposits, best gold discoveries in recent history and probably one of the best in the world ever. It's very high-grade, it's very large, and Barrick is talking about a 25-plus year mine life here with production of the 600,000 to 750,000 ounces a year is pretty preliminary at this point, but Barrick is continuing to do work to scope out the asset, one of the encouraging things is they're continuing to do exploration. So the numbers that I just quoted, they're preliminary from Barrick, but they have scope to grow.

And we're hoping that, that will grow over time as well. And this is -- I mean it's a fantastic location. It's in the Cortez Complex in Nevada. So, it's a place where you can find labor, a lot of people know what they're doing in Nevada when it comes to gold mining. So, a very good place to find a workforce. It's obviously a supportive regulatory environment in Nevada for gold mining. It's part of the Cortez Complex, which is an operation, so it's kind of a brownfield project next to a bunch of operating mines. So, it's got a lot of things going for it. And we have a complete exposure, complete coverage of that asset. We have 1.6% effective gross royalty on that asset. So, we're very excited to see what's happening in Fourmile, and we think it will add a lot of value to Royal Gold in the coming decades.

And we're coming up on your last 2 questions for today. The first one is a while back, people were thinking Bitcoin would replace gold. Is that theory completely debunked now?

I don't know if it's been debunked. I think what has become clear though is that Bitcoin trades very differently from gold; Bitcoin is a different asset class. I think all of these cryptocurrencies are a different asset class from gold. Gold has a many 1000-year history in human history; it's been around for a long time. It's been a store of value, and it's just got that longevity. And people understand what gold is. I think Bitcoin is a different kind of store of value, but it's -- if you look at the way Bitcoin trades, it seems to trade more in line with tech -- it doesn't have same characteristics as gold as an asset class. It's a lot more volatile.

We think people have -- during periods of time that they said, well, gold is no longer relevant. It's not an asset class you should invest in. But I think history would show -- a recent history would be spot on. The gold price and gold is still extremely relevant. It's probably one of the most liquid asset classes in the world, it's actually grown in value over the past not just the past several thousand years, but in the past few years, has been that much more important. And you think about central banks in the way that they position their reserves and what's in their reserves. Gold has become a much bigger part of a lot of central bank reserves recently. And it's really because it's got that store of value aspect to it that is absolutely unique. You don't see a lot of Bitcoin in Central Bank reserves as far as, I'm aware, but you do see a lot of gold. So, I think it's -- they're different asset classes. I don't think gold has been replaced by Bitcoin.

And the last question is -- following a year of major consolidation, what does Royal Gold look like in 5 years, a disciplined cash-flow machine or a growth-focused consolidator?

Well, I think we're both -- I don't -- I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're going to be a consolidator, but we will look at consolidation opportunities if they make sense, as I said earlier. But I think we are -- we like to think of ourselves as being a disciplined cash flow machine that also has lots of growth potential. So, a bit of the best of both worlds. So, our portfolio is large, producing revenue. It produces that cash flow. We can return some of it to shareholders in the form of a dividend, but we can also reinvest in our business and create that growth.

So, I would say it will be, hopefully, both of those 2 things together. I won't promise that there's going to be further consolidation. But I think what we are always looking to is grow our portfolio and if we can do that in such a way that adds value, then we'll do that. And whether it's through consolidation of the sector or whether it's through single-asset transactions, it really depends on the opportunity ahead of us. But certainly, growth is a big part of how we think about the future.

Well, thank you very much, Alistair, for all of your responses today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your questions, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn back the floor to Alistair for final remarks.

Well, thanks again, everybody, for attending. I really appreciate the questions. Some very good questions in there. If there was anything that I didn't answer to your satisfaction, reach out to Renmark, and they'll contact me directly, and we can resolve that. But -- thanks very much again, and very much looking forward to giving you an update next time we speak. So thanks a lot.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Chicago and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after this presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.

Next up, we have Dan Breeze, Senior VP, Corporate Development at Royal Gold. Morning, Dan. I've heard about higher royalties and not really complaining, but the producers are talking about higher royalties, and we have now Royal Gold, the recipient of some of these royalties, so.

Okay. Thanks for that context, Cosmos. Good to see you. Yes. Thanks for hosting this session again. Good morning, everybody. We certainly appreciate the invitation from the Denver Gold Group to be here, and thank you for your interest. I'm really pleased to update you on the Royal Gold story. The last year has been the most defining period in the history of the company. We're going to go through a few of the key items that we want to cover off for you.

Just bear with me for a moment, I will be making forward-looking statements during this presentation. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. These details are in our most recent 10-K that was filed with the SEC.

This is a high-level presentation and we'll get into a little bit of detail as we go through it. But I want to start with a summary of why we think Royal Gold is a compelling investment. We are a mine finance and portfolio management company. We are focused on making perpetual investments in royalties and streams, primarily in gold. And in fact, we lead the sector in terms of gold exposure as a percentage of our revenue.

We are a high-margin business. It's supported by a 25-year track record of dividend growth. It's unparalleled in the industry. We have the most diversified portfolio in the sector with over 360 investments, and they're weighted more towards lower risk jurisdictions. Our model limits exposure to capital and operating costs. We are very uniquely positioned. We're the only streaming and royalty company domiciled in the U.S. In terms of the size, we sit between our 2 larger peers and everybody else in the sector, and we believe that is the optimal size to grow. Finally, our broad portfolio provides embedded growth that has been bought and paid for. We recently put out 5-year guidance, and that really shows that we have confidence in our growth profile going forward.

2025 was a transformative year for the company. We deployed $5.3 billion of capital really within a 6-month period. We acquired Sandstorm Gold and Horizon Copper. That was the largest corporate acquisition in the history of the sector. We acquired a $1 billion gold stream that's operated by First Quantum in the Kansanshi mine in Zambia, that's one of the largest streams to ever transact, and we invested in the Warintza copper project in Ecuador really just to extend out the long-term optionality.

Let's take a closer look at some of the key attributes of Royal Gold. Let me use this as sort of a road map. We'll come back to this and cover off these points. So I think the case for gold is well understood, certainly well understood by this audience. I mentioned that Royal Gold has the highest gold revenue weighting in the sector. And when silver is added, almost 90% of last year's revenue came from precious metals. We've remained very disciplined and we focused on what we know. We haven't chased trends in the industry, and that consistency has really positioned us well for the gold price environment that we've seen, and it's resulted in a record $1 billion of revenue for last year for the company.

Our share price has outperformed gold, the GDX Index and the broad market going back to 2006, that's when the GDX Index was created. We offer very strong leverage for specialist investors. You can see that with a beta of 1.6 to gold. At the same time, the lower beta versus the broad market offers diversification for generalist investors as well. So we can appeal to both types of investor sets.

We look a little bit more now at margins and the dividend growth in the next couple of slides. In 2025, we delivered EBITDA margins of more than 80%, and that really reflects a lean, high-margin and scalable business. Cash G&A was just 4% of revenue. It's low, it's stable and it's largely unchanged over time. Our model mitigates inflation risk and protects margins, and we're going to get into that in a little bit more detail in a couple of slides.

We love showing this chart. It's a little bit cheeky in some ways, but it underscores the efficiency and scalability of our model. And you can see when we look at enterprise value and revenue per employee, we benchmark very well against the major mining companies on the top of the chart. But we also stand out versus some of the large tech companies, and you can see what we've pulled as reference below that.

We've added some new colleagues with our transactions in the last year, but we are just still only 39 employees. We're managing hundreds of investments. We have a $22 billion U.S. market cap. It truly is a unique business when you put that all together.

So the strong margins have really allowed us to grow a very consistent dividend, and we've delivered a 15% CAGR over the last 25 years. In fact, Royal Gold has the longest track record of consecutive dividend increases in the GDX Index. We are the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. And we're sitting alongside of other very high-quality companies that you would know like Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, and so forth. While we don't target a specific payout ratio, we believe that, that dividend is going to continue to grow just based on our track record.

We look at the portfolio for a moment. It's global, it's weighted towards lower risk and mining-friendly regions. It spans all stages of development. We have roughly 80 producing properties at the moment. There are 30 more in development and then more than 250 properties behind that in earlier stages of work. And that really just provides layers and layers of optionality to look forward to in terms of long-term growth and this is all bought and paid for. There's no incremental cost for our shareholders.

Gold has always been the dominant focus by design and the 2025 acquisitions that we did really improve that weighting. Roughly 95% of consensus NAV comes from precious metals in our portfolio. We talk about gold. Gold is certainly the key driver of revenue in NAV, but we also have silver and copper exposure through high-quality assets. Geographically, 70% of the NAV here comes from the Americas, and that's primarily weighted towards North America.

Reducing portfolio risk has been an ongoing focus for us as a company. And we're pleased to say today that Royal Gold offers the industry-leading diversification, not just from an asset perspective, but also from an operator perspective. A number of our operator partners are best-in-class. These are large, well-funded experienced companies. We've recently added the likes of Glencore, Rio Tinto and First Quantum among other Tier 1 operators. Our largest asset still is Mount Milligan. It's operated by Centerra Gold. It's in British Columbia. It roughly represents 12% of the NAV, and we're very happy with that exposure. The company recently extended the mine life to 2045, and there are likely more extensions to come if you listen to the company in terms of how they talk about that asset.

So we know that investors have many ways to get exposure to gold, and we show this off, and just to provide a bit of a comparison, when we compare ourselves to physical gold, we offer exploration upside. We have production growth. We have a very broad portfolio. And when we compare ourselves to operators, we avoid the direct exposure to operating and capital cost increases. And you combine those features with a high-margin business, a growing dividend, it really creates a very differentiated product for investors to consider.

Inflation has become topical again in the mining industry, it never seems to go away. We know that producers generally see cost increase over time. And typically, the margins follow. But for our model, our cost base is relatively static, and we're able to capture the margins. And I'm going to use the next slide to make the point. The bar chart on the left-hand side shows a comparison of the cost structure of Royal Gold versus the average producing company. And I think there are 2 key takeaways to leave with you. The first is you can see the cost per ounce is materially lower than the producers. That just means an overall higher margin in our business. But the second takeaway is only a small portion of our cost, really cash G&A related to employees is subject to inflation, whereas producers, as we know, they're experiencing inflation coming from labor and more recently, energy. So to sum up, we are levered to rising prices and not to rising costs.

We believe our relative size is a differentiator versus the peer group. I'm just going to talk through this in a minute. Although the average transaction size in the industry has grown in the last few years that the large deals, the $500 million, the $1 billion deals, these are still pretty rare. It's really a collection of smaller transactions in the market. And so for us, given our relative size, a $250 million transaction is material. It will show up in our numbers. And I don't think that's necessarily the case for our larger peers. We had $1 billion of liquidity at the end of 2025. We have low cost to capital. We can compete across the entire market. We are really sitting in the sweet spot of the industry from our perspective.

We're often asked about how we prioritize capital allocation and our priorities are very clear. They're written on the left-hand side. First, we look for accretive growth from high-quality, long-dated assets. Second, we maintain a strong balance sheet. We want to be positioned to execute quickly. And third, we're returning capital to our shareholders by continuing to grow the dividend.

Our framework for capital allocation is very simple. I'm not going to go through this in a lot of detail, but we do focus on limiting equity dilution, and we do focus on showing per share growth. We do use the revolving credit facility. It's a fantastic tool to deploy in terms of growing. Our business is really well suited for debt. When you think about the high margins that we have and no sustaining capital, we're able to borrow. We deploy that money into assets that typically produce for decades, and we're able to pay off that debt in a matter of a few quarters just given the cash flow that we're generating as a company.

I'm just going to make the point a little bit more on equity dilution and per share growth with this chart. This shows the cumulative view of our financial results going back to the year 2000. And you can see at the top, you can see the revenue and cash flow have grown materially faster than what we've seen for our cash G&A expenses and the gold price. And we've largely financed our growth without significant increase in the share count. Even with the shares that we issued last year to acquire Sandstorm, we still have the lowest share count in the GDX by a wide margin.

Over the last 25 years, cash flow has increased 167x, and the shares outstanding have only increased 5x. So I think that's clear evidence that we are delivering accretive growth for our shareholders.

I'm going to wrap up, Cosmos. I'm not sure how much time we have. Are we okay?

We're okay for time.

Okay. I'm going to just wrap up with the last couple of slides here. I want to share with you returns. This is -- this really demonstrates how value is created in our industry, and it's somewhat misunderstood, I think. So I want to spend a little bit of time on this. This slide shows the internal rate of returns or IRR for our 6 largest investments in the portfolio. The returns shown, the estimates that we see here in the blue bars are from Scotiabank's view of what the returns were at the time of these investments when they were made. And these have been updated for January of this year, that's the gold bars. And Tanya and team, thank you for providing the data. It was very helpful for us to utilize.

What you can see here is the returns are very modest at the start and then they grow over time. And the question is, why? Why is this happening? And obviously, changes in commodity prices drive that value. However, there's a key reason that we spend so much time when we look at an opportunity. We spend months in diligence. We really look at the asset and then we go in with a transaction, but the market typically has a limited view on that information that we have. And that means that limited view translates into modest day 1 returns as assessed by the market. But as more information becomes available, maybe a study comes out and there's a mine life extension, those returns increase and the market starts to see what we've seen.

It typically takes years for investment case to be fully understood by the market. And I think a good example of that is the Cortez Royalty acquisitions that we did in 2022. These were material acquisitions for the company. I think it's fair to say the market was lukewarm when we announced those deals in terms of the returns. But you fast forward to last year, Barrick put out a preliminary PEA in the Fourmile project. We hold a 1.6% gross revenue return on that project. And those returns have increased materially, as you can see. I think today, I think most analysts would agree that those were great transactions for us and some of the best royalties that have been created in the marketplace.

This data set is just a different way to look at value in our portfolio. It covers the same 6 assets on the previous slide. The blue bars show the size of our initial investment that was made. The dark gold bar show cumulative cash received through to the end of last year. And then the light gold bars show the consensus, the current consensus NAVs for the projects, and they typically don't include resource conversion as well. So presumably, those will continue to grow in time.

On a cash in, cash out basis, we've recovered our initial investments at Andacollo, at Pueblo Viejo and Mount Milligan. You can see the market still sees lots of more value to come on those projects. So I think the takeaway is our model requires time and excess returns do emerge over time if you're patient. We do invest in long-term assets. That's why we're very focused on that. And this value can be realized in our model because they are perpetual investments, and there is 0 sustaining capital, so we can really capture the value from that perspective.

I'm going to pause there. Lots of things to be excited about in the portfolio going forward with projects moving forward and catalysts and all that. But Cosmos, I'm happy to take any questions.

Great. Any questions coming from the audience? Limit to one question, please. While you get the mic, I'll ask the question.

So Dan, you've now had some time with the Sandstorm portfolio. And during the Investor Day in New York City, which I attended, we had talked about the different assets that you've acquired. Could you maybe, in about 1 minute or 2 minutes, summarize any surprises that you found in that Sandstorm portfolio, how that added to your production base or your sales base? And thanks again for giving us 5-year guidance, and maybe touch on that quickly as well.

Yes. Maybe I'll just give you a broad comment about that transaction and how it fit with Royal Gold. When you look at our, call it, the pre-acquisition portfolio, we were heavily weighted towards producing assets. And we didn't have a lot of -- we had a lot, but not as many as Sandstorm. We didn't have a lot of the longer-dated options and that optionality that Sandstorm has in their portfolio. And then you look at their portfolio, they have that, but not a lot of near-term production.

And so putting the 2 portfolios together solved both issues, if you will. And out of that came a number of assets that we're looking forward to. I don't think there are any necessarily, like any surprises per se, Cosmos. But as you can see here, a number of the assets that we acquired have catalysts upcoming over the next 5 years and they feed into our guidance as a result.

Great. Question?

Dan, it's Tanya. I just wanted to ask, when you look at the opportunities in the market right now, are you seeing more in silver or gold? And in these opportunities, is it more double down on what you have? Or is it new opportunities?

Yes. It's going to be another very broad answer, Tanya. We're seeing everything right now. The market is very robust. I think the transaction that Wheaton and BHP announced really cast a spotlight on that potential area of growth in terms of minor metals in these massive deposits. Some of the more recent transactions in Australia, Australia has been a very hard market for us to break into for legacy reasons, and that's changing. And so I think there's renewed interest and focus on growth in the industry. So we're seeing silver, gold developments producing. It's a real mix right now, Tanya.

Great. Thank you, Dan.

Okay. Yes. Thanks.

Well, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us today. Welcome to Royal Gold's 2026 Investor Day. My name is Alistair Baker. I'm Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development at Royal Gold.

So to start off, I'll just make a few brief statements. We will be making forward-looking statements during the course of today's activity, including statements about our projections and expectations for the future. All of these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are all discussed with our filings with the SEC. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in the appendix to today's presentation. And on a final note, if there is a need for evacuation today during today's session, there is an emergency exit outside these two doors, double doors on the outside of the hallway. And the restrooms are also located down this corridor here.

So over the past 40 years, Royal Gold has consistently delivered on its commitments, whether they be operational, strategic or financial. And today, we want to show you not only how we've built that record, but how it sets the foundation for the next stage of our growth. There are 3 themes to today's presentation. The first is the execution of a consistent strategy. The second is the benefits of holding a large and well-diversified portfolio. And then thirdly, growth, where we see growth embedded within the portfolio and also how we think about growth when we look at things outside of the company.

And this morning, we also published two things that will help provide supporting detail to all of this that we present today. We issued a press release with our guidance, and we also published our updated asset handbook, which is available on our website. This asset handbook describes all of the assets where we have interest. We believe there's a meaningful disconnect between the intrinsic value of our business and how it's currently reflected in the market. We want to show you today why we think that gap should close by explaining some of the drivers of our performance and the path forward.

You will hear from most of our senior management today. Bill Heissenbuttel is our President and CEO. He will give an overview of Royal Gold and our strategic position; Jason Hynes is SVP of Strategy and Business Development. He will talk about the acquisitions we did in 2025 and their impact on the company; Martin Raffield is our SVP of Operations. He will talk about guidance and the highlights of the portfolio that underpin that guidance; Paul Libner, our CFO, he will talk about our approach to capital allocation, our strategy and our framework; Dan Breeze is SVP of Corporate Development. He will talk about transactions -- the transaction environment and our approach to acquisitions. I'll come back up for a few minutes and talk about some of the unique attributes of Royal Gold as an equity investment. And then Bill will close things out with some closing comments before we enter the Q&A session.

When we start the Q&A session, we'll have other members of the management team join. We have Randy Shefman, who's our SVP and General Counsel; and Allison Forrest, who is VP of Investment Stewardship here with us today. So please ask any questions that may touch on their areas of expertise. We also have two other members of the IR team here. We have Kim Bergen and Kevin Chu, and we'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody has about any aspect of our business. We want to be open and transparent during today's session.

So we expect formal remarks will run for just over 2 hours. We'll do a 10-minute break right after Martin's section, so there is a little bit of an opportunity to stretch your legs. And then at about 3:40, 3:45, we're going to go downstairs and we'll ring the closing bell for the NASDAQ. June will be our 45th anniversary of trading on the NASDAQ. We're one of the longest tenured companies on the exchange. So please join us to celebrate this milestone. After that, we will come back up here, and we'll have a cocktail reception, and that will run until 5:30 or 6.

So with that, I will turn it over to Bill to start the session.

Thanks very much, Alistair. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Royal Gold's Investor Day. I certainly appreciate your interest in our company. I hope you do find the day to be informative and interesting as we give you an update on our business. So today, as Alistair just said, we have 10 members of the Royal Gold team present, which means you have a little more than 25% of our entire company in this room. While Alistair has introduced you to those present, I would like to take the time to extend a special thanks to Alistair, Kevin and Kim for the work necessary to pull this day together and really the extraordinary work necessary to complete the asset handbook, which is now available on our website. I know these thanks are extended to our full team, but I wanted to recognize their leadership in this process.

So much of today is about telling you what is new at Royal Gold, and I'm going to start with what hasn't changed, and that is our strategy. And I think if you've heard it once, you've heard it time and again, we are focused on providing exposure to precious metals, gold in particular, through passive investing in mining properties that produce those metals. The exposure we provide, provides investors, it's not the rigid, 1 ounce will always be 1 ounce characteristic of physical gold nor do we provide exposure to the metal that is accompanied by the capital and the operating cost of a mining company. We like to think of ourselves as an investment through all cycles. And we acknowledge that the recent gold bull market that existed until a few weeks ago really brought greater interest in the operating companies. But our exposure to our company provides both upside prices, but also we think a shelter when the gold price turns as we have seen in the last few weeks.

So our goals are simple, and I think as is our execution strategy, and it all starts with finding quality assets. And think about Cortez, Pueblo Viejo, Kansanshi and Antamina. Those are just a few examples of the world-class assets that are operated by world-class operating companies. And I would say don't be surprised if Mount Milligan ends up with a mine life that extends beyond all of them.

And we seek to acquire these quality assets with as little dilution to shareholders as possible. While we did issue equity to close the Sandstorm acquisition last year, those were the first shares that this company has issued since 2012. We believe our high-margin, high cash flow generating business is ideally suited to debt finance, and we use it quite a bit to finance growth when we cannot cover those acquisitions from operating cash flow. So we're quick to use debt, and we try to be quick about repaying debt. And we usually find the timing of the investments in this sector are far enough apart that we can usually draw down and then repay debt in a period of time that allows us to rebuild the liquidity and be ready for that next quality investment.

And finally, we spent the better part of 2-plus decades focused on increasing returns to shareholders. No other precious metal company has our 25-year history of annual increases to dividends. No other precious metal company is in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. That's an index we became a member when we passed 20 years of increasing dividends.

So our Board is long in experience, if not in numbers. It's a relatively small group. Everyone on our Board has operating company experience, I guess, except for me. And the experience really covers all of the critical operating areas of our business and whether that's business development, engineering, legal and accounting and finance. And I think our Board achieves a delicate balance of both supporting management while challenging management. And I'd like to say that I'm in a better position to do my job with their assistance.

Our management team brings the same balance of expertise in key areas. I often point out that since Royal Gold became focused on precious metals in the 1980s, I'm only the third CEO in that 40-plus year time period. Our management team probably averages about 10-plus years with the company, and we all come from a variety of backgrounds, whether that's operating companies, investment banks, commercial banks, accounting firms, law firms, private equity. So -- and I would like to say it's not only one of the most professional groups I've been associated with. I have to say it's just -- it's an absolute pleasure to work with these folks.

So when I started to focus my career in the mining industry, it only took $380 an ounce -- $380 to buy an ounce of gold, and it now costs over $4,500 an ounce. And people always refer to the strength of the dollar because they compare it to other fiat currencies. But as you can see here, gold actually is the preeminent currency in the world. If you look at a U.S. dollar bill at the very top, it says Federal Reserve note, which is a debt and gold is nobody's debt.

So I've been surprised that gold has sold off since the start of the Iran war and people seem to have flocked to the currency of the country that actually initiated the event. I think the underpinnings of gold strength remain intact. I think central banks are largely still buying gold. China has now bought gold for 16 straight months. The U.S. external debt is continuing to increase in an unsustainable manner, and it's increasing on an expedited manner given the war spending. I always say, don't get me started on gold sales at Costco. You still have to be a member to buy it. Sometimes it's not in inventory, and there's still a limit as to how much you can buy at any one time.

So I remain positive about the metal. I'm actually pleased to see that the investing market has turned its attention to gold and its role in the portfolio. The amount of general investor interest that we have seen in our stock has increased significantly in the last year. And if we can just turn a small percentage of investable dollars into gold, we could really have the foundation for a long-term strength in the metal.

So if you look at the return on gold relative to other investments, it might actually be surprising that over the last 20 years, gold has achieved the same or a higher return than any other asset class. And just think of what we've been through in the last 20 years, global financial crisis, long-running conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, COVID in just the last 10 years, the doubling of the U.S. national debt and the first fiscal year where the U.S. spent more money on interest than they did on military spending.

So in the investing world, gold has weathered the tech stock phenomenon, the rise of inflation, cannabis investing, mean stocks, Bitcoin, stable coins. But gold continues to endure. Thanks in part. I think there's a countercyclical demand force for the metal. And as an example, jewelry demand in India is down because the prices are higher, but coin and bar investing in India are actually higher for the exact same reason. And I would just say gold tends to respond well to uncertainty. And I think if there's one word that I believe will continue to define the world in the short term, and that is uncertainty.

So our business model offers what I refer to as across-the-board exposure to gold. Yes, look, physical gold is the safest way to invest in gold because it's already been mined. It's already been refined. It's in salable form. But as I referred to earlier, that 1 ounce is always going to be 1 ounce, and there's no return on that investment like interest income. Our model, where you take a 10-year, 5 million-ounce mine, it may eventually become a 20-year, 12 million-ounce mine provides a leverage you're just not going to be able to find in an ETF or a physical bar. So we offer reserve and resource upside from drilling, but perhaps there's a less understood source of leverage to our business. And if companies adopt higher revenue and resource calculations, previously uneconomic material suddenly becomes or we benefit from that upside. And our business pays a dividend, so there is a return on the investment.

Our model, I think, offers excellent diversification. If you look at Newmont, largest gold company in the world, they cite 12 mines that they manage. We have 80 producing assets. And I really hope one of the things you leave here today is really the sense of diversification in our portfolio. We think it's unsurpassed in the sector like Salobo, Northparke, Malartic, great assets. But there is concentration risk in those portfolios. And I don't think anybody needs to be reminded about Cobre Panama and its impact on Franco a few years ago.

So completing the board, our exposure to portfolio assets does not come with the operating or capital cost exposure unless we contractually decide to invest that money. And I imagine operating companies today, what are they worried about? They're worried about supply lines. They're worried about the cost of diesel. They're worried about the impact of tariffs. And our only concern really is if a project is shut down by these factors or its development is significantly delayed as a result of these factors. We just -- we don't have the human and the monetary costs associated with actively managing these challenges.

And that discussion brings me to a review of our high-margin business. The operating cash and adjusted EBITDA margins here, I actually think are a little bit understated because our largest cost is the cost of sales. And these costs are contractually defined based on the metal delivered to us. These aren't costs that can be managed by finding a new supplier or substituting new raw material inputs into our product. I would say the more impressive figure is to say that adjusted EBITDA is around 95% of net revenue. Our cash G&A is only 4% of revenue. It's primarily composed of people costs, professional fees like accounting and legal and the cost of maintaining our 4 offices. Look, we're exposed to higher cost of living adjustments and professional fee increases, but these are pretty nominal relative to the scale of the business.

This is probably my favorite slide in the deck. You consider that 39 people manage a company with 360 properties, $1 billion in revenue and a $20 billion market capitalization. I think it says a lot about the people, and it says a lot about the business model. We always like to put the tech darlings up here. They're notwithstanding their size, their market influence and their publicity, we're a far more efficient business on a per employee basis.

So we have the highest percentage of gold in our revenue base than any other company in our sector, and that consistent focus has allowed us to show really strong results over the last decade. So we always have new commodity fads. We get asked about investing in things like rare earths and lithium. And I think about 7 years ago, we had an institutional investor asked why we didn't have Bitcoin on the balance sheet. But we try to stick to what we know. We know the gold market. We know the precious metal space. We have to know the base metals to the extent the underlying mines are producing the byproduct metals that form the basis for our revenue. So I don't categorically rule out other commodities. It's just not part of the core strategic focus of the business, and we have to be able to understand the markets.

So as you can see by the stat on the right, we have a higher beta to the gold price and actually a muted yet positive correlation to the market as a whole. And as we said, we're an investment for all cycles as opposed to investment for a certain part of a cycle or a countercyclical play.

I mentioned our dividend history a bit earlier, but we always like to highlight our record. We don't target a payout ratio. We don't target a yield. We just try to increase the dividend rate every year. And someone may look at the payout ratios and think, well, there's a scope for higher payments to the -- higher dividends to the shareholders. And we just -- we like to caution that when we look at one individual year's increase, we also look to see if we can maintain that record over a longer period of time. So -- and to us, that's the evidence of long-term sustainability of the business. One year's payout increase is done with an eye towards the potential to continue that in the future. And I would say, even in our large investment years of 2015 and 2025, a higher dividend rate was approved by the Board.

My final introductory comment surrounds accretive growth. The fact that we have already returned 20% of issued equity capital over the past few decades, I think is even more impressive to me when you consider it includes the equity issued for the Sandstorm transaction. You remove that piece from the equation, and that 20% is actually closer to 50%. But I think the created value comes from a number of different sources. Number one, our discipline surrounding equity issuance, of course, metal prices, accretive asset acquisitions and probably the most important, and that's the hiring and retention of really talented people.

So again, I do hope you find today to be an informative session. I will now turn the podium over to Jason Hynes to discuss our recent acquisition activity.

Thank you very much, Bill. My focus is on strategy and business development, and I'm pleased to have the opportunity to review Royal Gold's transformative 2025 and how it's positioned us for success now and in the years to come. And I believe transformative is the right term to use as 2025 was a lot more than just a busy year for the company. The actions we've taken have built a foundation for continued growth, and our timing could not have been any better as we closed several acquisitions into a strengthening commodity price environment. We concluded over $5 billion worth of transactions, a significant number in its own right and even more so in the context of our mid-2025 market cap of around $12 billion.

Together, these acquisitions gave us greater scale, longer duration and improved our growth outlook and leave us with market-leading diversification in all categories, production, development and exploration. The plan of arrangement through which we acquired Sandstorm and Horizon not only resulted in significant increase in precious metals production and cash flow, but more importantly, layered in a pipeline of high-quality, long-life development assets.

Many of these, which are key drivers of our future growth, have demonstrated positive progress sooner than we originally forecast. This corporate M&A was complemented by 2 significant asset transactions. The acquisition of $1 billion gold stream on First Quantum's flagship Kansanshi mine in Zambia, which is now one of our principal assets and a gold stream and royalty transaction on the long-life Warintza development project in Ecuador owned by Solaris Resources.

We established certain near-term goals around these transactions, including streamlining the portfolio and debt reduction while remaining committed to our capital return strategy. The Sandstorm transaction was initially underappreciated by the market, owing to a lack of institutional familiarity, and there was a certain level of complexity surrounding the cross-shareholding and cross-asset ownership between them and Horizon. There were also several equity and debt positions that are not core to the Royal Gold strategy. We have taken significant steps to simplify our holdings, and we spent a lot of time on the road meeting with our shareholders to highlight the new assets, some of which are world-class in nature. We are appreciative of the support of the sell-side research community in helping us get the word out.

In just a few months since closing, we have accomplished a lot in streamlining the portfolio to focus on our core business. The steps we've taken to date include collapsing the Horizon structure, which brought back together the Antamina royalty and the Hod Maden interests, eliminating the more complex structures that are not necessary in a business of our size. And we've also divested over $200 million in mostly illiquid equity positions. We were also able to restructure various investments in Bear Creek mining by leveraging our relationship with the Augusta Group to support Highlander Silver's acquisition of the company. As a result, we were able to convert debt and nonperforming stream investments into additional royalties over Corani, one of the largest undeveloped fully permitted silver assets in the world. We're pleased to expand our relationship with the Augusta Group that also includes Solaris Resources, and we look forward to what they have in store for both Corani and Warintza.

I won't steal Paul's thunder on the balance sheet, but noncore equity sales, portfolio performance and strong commodity prices have allowed us to repay debt taken on in these transactions faster than originally anticipated. And we continue to be committed to shareholder returns via growing sustainable dividend strategy as we have for the past quarter century.

Success in the mining sector requires patience with material progress at any given asset requiring a range of factors to align along with a supportive market backdrop. While recent developments at some of our new assets informed our acquisition strategy and were anticipated, we've been pleasantly surprised by the pace of announcements from our partners. Ivanhoe achieved first concentrate production at the Platreef mine while remaining focused on a multiphase expansion plan. At Mara, where we have a 20% gold stream option, Glencore has now put an Argent -- time line on their development plans and has applied for RIGI, which is the Argentinian incentive regime for large investments.

There's growing confidence among the major base metal producers that Argentina will be an attractive jurisdiction for multibillion-dollar multi-generation copper investments. Over in Zambia, First Quantum achieved commercial production at S3, the third sulfide processing train at Kansanshi, where our gold stream is tied to copper production. While company-specific circumstances have SSR evaluating their future in Turkiye, the updated feasibility study they produced for Hod Maden continues to demonstrate the world-class nature of this deposit, where we now hold royalty and equity interests. And just to cherry pick something on the smaller end, Lundin Gold continues to grow gold production while demonstrating the porphyry potential on its vast land package at Fruta del Norte, where we hold a precious metals royalty.

These are just select developments from our 2025 acquisitions, while there's also been meaningful news from our established portfolio. For example, Barrick's Fourmile deposit is now, without a doubt, a world-class discovery with updated resources and initial economics demonstrating its Tier 1 potential. As a reminder, we acquired a 1.6% gross royalty over Fourmile as part of our late 2022 district-wide Cortez complex add-ons. And this deposit alone could validate the entire cost. At Mount Milligan, our concentration is now reduced, although the mine still remains our largest asset by NAV and revenue. Centerra has extended the reserve life to 2045, but is exploring and permitting tailings facilities for well beyond that. Our largest asset is once again demonstrating multi-decade potential.

The last development I'll touch on here is at Khoemacau. Since MMG acquired the asset in 2024, they have been pushing ahead with their expansion plans. Now the feasibility is complete, the project has been approved and construction is underway. This is our biggest source of silver production, and it now has line of sight to a 35% increase over our pre-expansion expectations. All this against the backdrop of surging prices for the white metal.

While positive commodity tailwinds have played a role in accelerating the growth potential of our portfolio, capturing that benefit requires us to be invested in the right assets. Martin Raffield, our Head of Operations, will talk about these assets in more -- in greater detail during the next section of this presentation.

So last year's activities have materially changed the company, and our transactions report card, so to speak, reflects this, showing improvement to our portfolio across several areas. With 39 additional producing assets, we've nearly doubled our total. We've added 11 development assets, many of which are flagship growth opportunities. And I haven't even mentioned the exploration and evaluation stage assets yet. This is now all featured in a single portfolio managed by a strengthened team. We look forward to demonstrating its revenue and cash flow generation potential in 2026 and for years to come, which will allow us to continue to pursue large, high-quality growth opportunities.

Our now much larger portfolio increases our embedded growth and provides diversification benefits. Whether it comes from extensions or expansions of producing mines or from projects moving through the exploration development cycle, organic growth potential is the optionality that investors look for in high-quality royalty companies. We now have over 250 exploration and evaluation stage assets. These are proverbial irons in the fire that create value over time with very little of our shareholders' capital at risk.

Our royalties over B2Gold's Back River district in Northern Canada are a perfect example of optionality that takes time to become tangible value. We inherited our first interest here as part of a portfolio acquisition in 2008, ascribing almost no value to the 2% royalty over what was at the time an early-stage exploration project with a seemingly insurmountable lack of infrastructure. While we added to this position with a $50 million transaction in 2024, our net asset value here can now be measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. We were pleased to see B2 achieved commercial production at Goose late last year, and they continue to put out quality exploration results throughout the district.

Having such a large portfolio means that we are not dependent on the success of 1 or 2 assets to support future organic growth. And any setback, even at a principal producing asset is not highly consequential. Optionality and diversification are key traits that drive premium valuations and our portfolio contains them in spades.

Our portfolio is global, but most of our interests are in jurisdictions where mining is long established and a welcome and important part of the local economy. The life cycle of a mine is long and political wins will change, but this gives us confidence that our portfolio will be largely insulated from any negative long-term effects due to deterioration in a single jurisdiction. We monitor the global landscape in real time in order to identify changes of tone in jurisdictions, and we evaluate new ones on a case-by-case basis as investment opportunities arise. Dan will speak to this more when describing our business development process.

We believe that the best place to find a mine is next to a mine. We have clusters of investments in established mining areas, whether mining camps with smaller geographic footprints or wider regions with geology that is favorable for porphyries, for example. Along with favorable geology, supportive regulatory environments and skilled workforces developed over multiple generations mean that these regions retain an advantage in advancing projects.

Zooming into Nevada, the Cortez complex in the Battle Mountain-Eureka trend is a prime example from first production at the Cortez open pits in the late '60s through the pipeline discovery in the '90s, followed by Crossroads, Goldrush and now Fourmile. This is why we closely evaluate opportunities to grow our exposure in regions where our institutional knowledge may give us a competitive advantage. And higher commodity price environments also enhance our exposure as deposits that were once thought mined out at lower prices are given a new lease on life. Operators prefer to spend exploration dollars near existing infrastructure in order to leverage off of previous permitting efforts and capital investments.

As Bill mentioned, by design, gold has always been dominant in our portfolio and recent transactions further strengthened our precious metals exposure. While gold is the material driver of both our net asset value and our revenue, we have silver and copper exposure from high-quality assets at all stages from production down through to exploration. Geographically, the Americas represent about 70% of our NAV, with most of that in North America. Select African countries, namely Zambia, Botswana and Ghana, are also important contributors and all these jurisdictions have well-established mining industries.

As a side note, we do have several revenue-generating properties in the Australia Pacific region. However, they contribute lower NAV given, first, their smaller size; and second, the tendency for Australian operators to publish short lives for their underground mines. But they have a history of continuous extension, and so they generate revenue for us on a long-term basis.

Reducing our portfolio concentration risk has been a mission for our team for years, and we can now boast industry-leading diversification, as you can see in these charts. Our success depends on our operating partner skills in exploration, mine development and operation. And our counterparties are some of the largest and most well-capitalized companies in the mining sector. We often identify and invest in opportunities before they are on the radar of larger companies. But over time, high-quality assets tend to migrate into the hands of more established companies.

To name a few, MMG acquired Khoemacau from a private equity group after we financed the mine's construction. And returning to the Back River example, this district passed from Dundee Precious in the early 2000s to Sabina in the late -- in the 2010s before it was finally acquired, built and commissioned by B2Gold. And just very recently, Zijin Mining, one of the world's largest gold producers, announced that it had acquired operating control over Wassa in Ghana, while Hudbay announced the acquisition of Arizona Sonoran over whose Cactus copper project, we acquired a small royalty in late 2024. And sometimes it isn't a change of ownership, but instead a change in management that can breathe new life into projects. i-80 Gold's Nevada assets are a prime example. We have meaningful royalties on Granite Creek, Archimedes and Mineral Point, which we acquired over a decade ago. The relatively new team at i-80 has a track record of successful mine development, a solid plan, and they just raised $1 billion to implement it.

Reserves and resources are the foundation of the mining business, and it's no different for royalty companies. We measure our interests in attributable GEOs, essentially the net interest in the owner's gross mineral endowment represented by our royalty or stream. Our AGEOs grew significantly in 2025 through acquisitions as well as exploration and development success at existing operations. 2P reserves have increased across the spectrum of our interests, principal, producing and development, which will support our current production profile and near-term growth, while we've also seen balanced growth in exclusive M&I resources, providing confidence in the longer-term outlook.

To close off on our portfolio attributes, duration has long been a knock against Royal Gold relative to peers and one that along with diversification, we've been particularly focused on addressing. The left-hand chart is where we stood at the beginning of last year based on operator reported life, which should be noted generally does not assume resource conversion unless the project is still at a pre-reserve stage. Based on our portfolio at the end of 2024, we would have today a NAV weighted average life of mine of under 15 years, with only around 20% of our NAV coming from assets with 2 decades plus of potential. But through organic developments over the past year, such as the Milligan extension and the Fourmile PEA and through the acquisition of long-life assets such as Kansanshi, Mara, Platreef, Warintza, Oyu Tolgoi, that average mine life now stands at 18 years with over half of our NAV deriving from a diversified group of assets with greater than 20 years of operator reported life.

So how do all of these attributes set us up for positive share price performance? First, as Bill mentioned, it's important to note that we evaluate all our investment opportunities on a per share basis, and we're careful with respect to issuing shares. Prior to Sandstorm, our share count had been relatively flat since 2012. However, Sandstorm was only available as an all-share transaction, but this had the benefit of preserving our liquidity during a busy time, which allowed us to continue to advance a strong pipeline of asset opportunities. This culminated in the Kansanshi Gold Stream transaction just a few weeks later.

While consensus estimates at the time of the July Sandstorm announcement suggested only modest NAV accretion, exposure to what is now a larger, longer life portfolio has allowed us to benefit from positive developments in both our new and established assets, all against the backdrop of strong commodity prices. This has resulted in strong growth in consensus NAV per share with estimates up 70%, which is nearly twice the rate of increase compared to the gold price over the same period.

As is common with the announcement of a large all-share transaction, our share price initially underperformed. However, as soon as we closed all these transactions in the fall and our shareholder register began to stabilize, we started to see some of this value reflected in our share price with outperformance versus our peers. Q4 was noisy with several onetime items related to M&A expenses and the steps we had taken to simplify the portfolio, but that noise is now behind us, and we believe we are well positioned to continue to outperform through 2026 and beyond.

And our reasons for optimism can be seen in these charts. Our NAV multiple is heavily discounted relative to our large-cap peers and in fact, much closer to the mid-caps. And there is a major disconnect in our forward-looking cash flow multiples compared to all peers despite the fact that 2025 has increased our scale materially, and we now have a higher quality, more diversified, longer duration portfolio from which we are forecasting significant growth. We hope that once the market fully understands the changes to our business undertaken last year and we demonstrate the attributes of this larger portfolio through financial performance and development news flow that this will be reflected in our valuation.

With that, I will hand things over to Martin to talk about 2026 guidance, provide an inaugural long-term outlook and to take a closer look at some of the assets that we expect to drive our growth. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Jason. And as Jason says, I'm going to start off with a detailed view of our guidance for 2026. Then I'm going to move on to talk about our inaugural 5-year outlook, and then I'm going to step into some more detail around those assets that support the guidance and the outlook.

So as you saw in our press release this morning, 2026 is shaping up to be a year of strong growth for Royal Gold. And importantly, that growth is broad-based across metals, across assets and across operators. We expect to see meaningful increases in sales volume across all metals with gold remaining the dominant contributor, followed by silver and copper. Gold has always been the anchor of our business. And in 2026, it remains our primary driver.

The highlights of our guidance are pretty straightforward. As we think about cadence through the year, we're expecting a modest back half weighting with a 48%-52% split favoring the second half of the year, so essentially equivalent across the year. Precious metals remain the core of the business. About 90% of 2026 revenue is expected from precious metals and about 80% of the total sales from gold alone. Our outlook reflects a higher royalty rate at Cortez, moving to 3.5% to 4% overall for 2026 compared to 2.6% in 2025. The primary driver here is increased expected production from the Crossroads open pit, where we have a higher royalty rate. This is a meaningful uplift, and it demonstrates why we have continued to invest heavily in this world-class district.

Next, 2026 will be the first full year of deliveries from Kansanshi and the first full year of revenue from the Sandstorm Horizon interest that we acquired in 2025. Both add significant depth and longevity to our portfolio. We also have the first full year of production from Back River and Platreef. And while these 2 assets will not be major contributors in 2026, they're important for our longer term. Back River begins with a low royalty rate and Platreef is still relatively early in the ramp-up with a delivery schedule that does not yet produce a full year impact for us. Both of these assets, we expect to grow into meaningful contributors over time. On the downside, we do expect silver recovery at Pueblo Viejo to remain below the level required for delivery of deferred silver ounces in 2026 and for the foreseeable future.

Turning to costs. Our DD&A guidance is higher than 2025, reflecting the full year depletion from the Sandstorm and Horizon assets and from the Kansanshi streaming interest. We have included additional detail on the DD&A rates for our principal properties in the appendix to this presentation that provide insight into the underlying drivers for our overall DD&A. With respect to effective tax rate, we're expecting 17% to 22% in 2026, in line with prior years.

Finally, I want to highlight one item not included in the 2026 guidance. We expect to receive 11,000 ounces of deferred gold consideration from Centerra in the second half of the year. This gold will not be accounted towards our GEO revenue, but it is a meaningful delivery. Recall that this is a second delivery towards the 50,000 ounce deferred consideration we agreed to receive when we entered into the Mount Milligan cost support agreement. All in all, 2026 represents broad-based growth, stronger contributions from several core assets and the continued benefits of the investments we've made over the past several years.

And now moving on to the one you've all been waiting for, 5-year guidance. You've been waiting a long time for this, I guess. We recognize that 2025 was a lot for the market to digest. We heard your feedback. We wanted to give greater clarity, more transparency and a longer-term view of how the portfolio evolves. So today, for the first time, we're providing a 5-year outlook.

Let me start with the overarching message. We've always had a strong conviction in this portfolio, in the quality of the operators and in the pipeline of assets that will shape Royal Gold's future. What we're sharing today reflects that confidence. We do not intend to update this long-term outlook during the year. And next year, when we provide 2027 guidance, we expect to release a new 5-year outlook. At constant prices and using the midpoints of the ranges, we expect an approximate 17% revenue growth from 2026 through the next 5 years. This growth is driven by a number of assets that are either newly producing or expanding and by several major development projects that are now progressing towards construction decisions.

Let me highlight a few of the most important contributors in the 5-year window. Lindero and Nicaragua, where metals exploration is targeting first production at the end of this year, 2026; Robertson, which is part of the Cortez complex and expected to reach first production in 2027. Hod Maden, where our royalty is expecting to begin contributing in 2028; Great Bear, where Kinross is targeting first production around the end of 2029, and Warintza, a significant copper gold project with expected first production in 2030. Overlaying these new mines is production growth from expansions at Khoemacau Platreef, 2 assets where we have substantial exposure and strong confidence in operator capability.

I'll make one important note specific to Hod Maden. You'll see that our outlook does not include any contributions from the Hod Maden JV interest. That's intentional. We have stated that we intend to restructure that interest into a form more consistent with our business model, and we'll incorporate it into our guidance when we have a clearer view of what that structure will be.

Looking beyond 2031, the growth potential continues. We expect further contributions from the continued expansion at Platreef, new production at Agua Rica, at Glencore's Mara project, development at Fourmile, Cactus and Gualcamayo and from the build-out of Oyu Tolgoi into the Panel 1 JV area. And that's just the pipeline with defined plans. There is a substantial upside optionality in assets where operators are moving projects toward investment decisions, including the Red Chris block cave expansion, the Lawyers-Ranch project and KSM, one of the most significant underdeveloped gold assets globally.

The 5-year guidance provides the market with clarity with respect to growth in the medium term, but the long-term runway beyond 2031 is even more compelling, and we believe that Royal Gold is uniquely well positioned among our peers to benefit from these large long-life projects.

That brings me to the strength of our development pipeline. When we talk about Royal Gold's future, the message is simple. The pipeline is deep, it is diversified, and it is already moving forward. Many of these projects are owned in advanced by operators for whom the asset is a major strategic priority. These are not fringe assets. These are core development projects in the owners' portfolios. Some of the most material include the Great Bear, the flagship development project for Kinross, Fourmile, one of the most significant gold discoveries in recent decades for Barrick. Warintza, a large-scale copper project central to Solaris' growth strategy; and Mara, a major project in Glencore's future copper profile. These catalysts extend into the next decade, creating multiple layers of future optionality and revenue growth for Royal Gold.

One of the defining strengths of our business model is the multiplier effect created when operators invest in the assets where we hold interests. Every dollar our counterparties spend provide us with stronger mine plans, longer mine lives and increased exposure to metal prices, all at 0 incremental cost to Royal Gold. This is the optionality inherent in our business model. Any asset in our portfolio with potential for expansion or life extension creates direct value for us. And if mine lives are extended, we benefit not just from the additional production, but from the extended exposure to commodity prices, which enhances our initial return.

In 2025 alone, counterparties completed over 2 million meters of drilling across assets where we have exposure. That is an extraordinary amount of exploration activity entirely funded by our operators, and it provides us with free optionality on any resulting discoveries. This level of activity is why organic growth within assets is such a critical factor when we evaluate new opportunities. We are not just buying into today's cash flow or what the market may see in the short term, we are getting exposure to future expansion and upside.

Now let me move into the next section, where I'll walk through several of the assets where we have seen the most exciting developments, beginning with opportunities for expansion and mine life extension and then turning to the new production that we expect across the portfolio.

Let's begin with the Cortez complex, one of the world's greatest gold mining districts and an area where Royal Gold has been invested since the very beginning. We have full royalty coverage across this entire complex from our 10 royalty agreements. Cortez is a mature producer with a long track record of steady output. But importantly, it's also an area with significant greenfield and brownfield potential. In 2022, we expanded our exposure by acquiring the Rio Tinto and Idaho royalties, at the time, we had strong conviction in the upside potential well before the market fully appreciated the long-term value. Recent developments have validated that conviction as the world-class potential is becoming clear. We now have overlapping royalty rates that provide variable diversified leverage across the district, positioning us to benefit from existing production, development projects and future discoveries.

Barrick continues to advance a multi-decade plan for the Cortez district as Fourmile Robertson and the continued ramp-up at Goldrush each contribute to this growing pipeline. Note that Fourmile is not included in the graph as it currently resides with Barrick outside of the NGM joint venture. The production mix is expected to evolve as new deposits come online with the potential for consolidated operations extending to 2052 and beyond. Furthermore, planned conversion of resources to reserves could extend open pit operations to at least 2038.

Fourmile deserves special attention. We have full coverage of this deposit at an effective GSR of 1.6%, and Barrick has described this as one of the most significant gold discoveries of the century. This is not hyperbole. Fourmile is already shaping up to be one of the most important projects in Barrick's future production profile with preliminary estimates producing 600,000 to 750,000 ounces per year over 25 years. Barrick is moving quickly. They are spending more than $200 million this year alone on drilling studies and infrastructure. This is a foundational asset for them, something that will help them define their long-term production portfolio. We expect material production at Fourmile to begin outside of our 5-year outlook. But as outlined by Barrick, it will be a meaningful contributor through the 2030s, 2040s and beyond.

Resource growth continues at an extraordinary pace. In 2025, Barrick doubled the gold resource at Fourmile. And at the current preliminary production estimates, we see the potential for the Fourmile royalty to generate 9,500 to 12,000 ounces of royalty revenue per year for a period of roughly 25 years. There remains considerable potential for resource expansion and the potential of this project alone is an example of why we expanded our exposure to the Cortez complex in 2022.

Moving to Goldrush, the newest producing mine in the Cortez complex. Goldrush is ramping up towards 400,000 ounces per year by 2028. And we have a strong royalty footprint here as well. Most of our interest is an effective rate of 1.6% GSR with a small area to the Southeast where the rate increases to 2.3%. This is a high-quality underground mine with decades of potential ahead. Exploration drilling at Goldrush continues to identify new mineralized targets in the vicinity of the main ore body, and we are confident that the resource and reserve will continue to grow here. As these systems continue to expand, Royal Gold stands to benefit directly as our royalties continue without any step downs or caps.

Next, Robertson, this is an advanced project at Cortez and is expected to become the next producing mine in the district with potential to extend the operating life of the Cortez oxide mill in addition to providing heap leach ore feed. Unlike Fourmile and Goldrush, Robertson is a low-grade open pit mine, but it has scale and longevity that make it important. We hold an effective GSR of 2.6% here, giving us meaningful leverage once production begins.

Taken together, Goldrush, Robertson and Fourmile, together with extension potential at Cortez Hills underground, create a multilayered growth profile for Cortez over the next several years. Each of these is a major producer in its own right, and this slide shows the growth potential for the discovery for the Goldrush and Robertson discoveries only. Cortez is a multi-mine producing complex that we think has continued upside potential, and our exposure expands the entire complex.

Let me turn now to Mount Milligan. In September, Centerra announced a 10-year mine life extension to 2045. As the largest single interest in our portfolio in terms of revenue and NAV, this extension has a meaningful portfolio level impact for Royal Gold. The average annual production through 2042 is expected to be approximately 150,000 ounces of gold and 69 million pounds of copper, followed by 3 years of processing of low-grade stockpiles. A 10% expansion to mill capacity is planned for 2028. This extension adds longevity, stability and predictability to our revenue base.

Exploration is ongoing and the resource remains open to the west. Centerra is actively drilling in that direction, and the new tailings facility is being designed with potential expansion in mind. Centerra has expressed optimism that mine life could extend well beyond 2045. We're very pleased that the largest asset in our portfolio has at least 2 more decades of mine life with the potential for further growth beyond that.

Next is Khoemacau, a high-quality copper silver operation in Botswana. We hold a 100% silver stream and the mine currently has a life to at least 2040. Royal Gold helped finance the original construction when the mine was ramping up to produce 60,000 tonnes of copper and 1.8 million to 2 million ounces of silver per year. MMG has now broken ground on a major expansion at Khoemacau. The $900 million program includes a new 4.5 million tonne per year plant, raising total processing capacity to more than 8 million tonnes per year and copper production to 130,000 tonnes a year.

The throughput increase will be achieved by mining several new deposits in addition to expanding the currently operating Zone 5 mine. The new Mango deposit is within our stream AOI and both Zone 5 and Mango will be processed in the new higher capacity process plant. We expect the expansion to increase our silver deliveries by nearly 35% on a life of mine basis. Drilling results below the Zone 5 resource at 1,300 meters have confirmed ore body continuity down to 1,800 meters. And MMG is considering a further capacity increase up to a target of 200,000 tonnes of copper per year. This is another multi-decade material asset for Royal Gold, run by a well-capitalized counterparty with the resources to execute the expansion plans.

Moving to Kansanshi, one of Africa's largest copper mines and our newest principal asset. We acquired this gold stream interest in 2025, and we expect it to provide steady long-life cash flow with a mine plan that extends through at least 2049. Kansanshi is a copper mine with a relatively small portion of revenue from low-grade gold production. Our stream ties gold deliveries to copper production, which should smooth out the delivery profile as we are not exposed to gold grade or recovery risk.

The S3 expansion at Kansanshi reached commercial production in December, and we expect deliveries to Royal Gold to grow over the next several years as the plants ramp up to the full 52 million tonne per annum capacity. Based on current guidance and the technical report, we expect 35,000 to 40,000 ounces of gold per year to our account during the first 10 years. This positions Kansanshi as a major revenue driver for Royal Gold.

Let's turn now to Xavantina, a high-grade underground gold mine that we entered in 2021 through a 25% gold stream. The mine has a current life through 2032 and the operator, Ero Copper has continued to execute well. When we acquired our stream interest, we saw clear upside potential driven by a highly prospective and underexplored land package and an underutilized mill. Since then, improvements have been strong across the board with a longer mine life, higher annual production and increased reserves and resources. Ero is focused on both extending mine life and discovering new vein structures. And within the next 3 years, they are targeting an extension to a 10-year life of mine.

Like Cortez, Xavantina is an asset where we saw significant upside that wasn't immediately clear to the market. We are pleased with how Ero has continued to advance their plans in 2025. And in 2025, we increased our investment and expanded our area of interest, reflecting our continued confidence in the upside potential.

Next is Red Chris, a producing copper gold mine operated by Newmont in British Columbia's Golden Triangle. This is a long-life asset with a mine life outlined to 2050 with the introduction of underground block cave mining. The open pit is relatively modest compared to what the underground could become in the future. Newmont expects to complete the feasibility study for the block cave in the second half of 2026, and they have allocated $160 million in development capital this year. They expect to take a development proposal to the Board in the middle of this year.

Assuming a positive decision by Newmont, the project has significant support within Canada and the Canadian government has designated the project as being 1 of 5 projects of national interest. Once developed, the block cave could transform Red Chris into one of the most significant long-life copper gold projects in North America, and our royalty covers the entirety of the resource that has been defined so far.

That covers the assets where we see significant growth expansion and extension potential. I'd now like to turn to some of the assets where we expect new stream revenues in the years ahead.

Platreef is a world-class large-scale PGM asset in South Africa operated by Ivanhoe Mines. This is a multi-decade ore body with exceptional thickness and continuity and first ore was processed in December of last year. Operations are now ramping up steadily as the mine advances through its stage development plan. Royal Gold holds a gold stream. And when the mine fully ramps up, we expect contributions of 15,000 to 20,000 ounces per year into the 2040s.

Platreef is being developed through a phased expansion approach, where Phase 1 was initiated -- Phase 1 initiated first production in late 2025 and provides early revenue and establishes the initial mining infrastructure. Phase 2 is designed to increase hoisting and processing capacity meaningfully as Shaft 3 comes online and in the first half of this year, enabling throughput ramp-up to start building up to more than 4 million tonnes per year.

Phase 3 currently in planning is expected to further scale the operation with additional concentrator capacity and expanded mining areas. This phase represents a significant step change in the long-term production profile and supports the potential for Platreef to become one of the largest and most efficient PGM operations globally.

What sets Platreef apart is the thickness and geometry of the ore body. The ore body is 18 to 26 meters wide, making it suitable for fully mechanized mining. Compared to the very narrow historic mines on the Merensky Reef and UG2, the wide ore body provides significant advantages in terms of safety, efficiency, manpower requirements and cost structure. We are looking forward to receiving first revenue from Platreef within the next quarter.

MARA is one of the most material assets we acquired through the Sandstorm/Horizon transaction. Operated by Glencore, this is a large brownfield copper project in Argentina, and our interest includes a royalty that we have the option to convert into a 20% gold stream on the Agua Rica portion of the project in exchange for $225 million of payments funded during the construction period. Based on Glencore's gold production forecasts, we expect approximately 22,000 ounces per year over the 23-year mine life.

A key advantage of MARA is that the past producing Alumbrera mine will be restarted while the Agua Rica project is being constructed. The restart will focus on pushbacks on the existing Alumbrera pits, which, in addition to ore production, will enable historic highwall instability to be addressed so that the pits can be used for future tailings storage during the mining of Agua Rica. The principal infrastructure project associated with the Agua Rica deposit will be the 35-kilometer ore conveyor, which includes 5 kilometers of underground tunneling.

The restart FID for Alumbrera was approved in Q4 2025 and first production is targeted for half 1 2028. Glencore expects approval of the RIGI application in the first half of this year, a final investment for Agua Rica targeted for 2027 with first production for Agua Rica in the second half of 2031. Importantly, this asset has progressed more quickly than we expected when we acquired it through the Sandstorm transaction.

Great Bear remains the centerpiece of Kinross' development pipeline located in Red Lake, Ontario, a region of extensive deep mining experience, the PEO released in 2024 outlined 500,000 ounces per year over the first 8 years of operation. We hold a 2% NSR on the project. Kinross is focused on engineering, permitting and exploration throughout 2026. The advanced exploration underground program or AEX is progressing well and will provide exploration access at depth. AEX Construction is expected to begin this year, pending the receipt of 2 provincial permits.

Similar to Red Chris, government support for project development is strong. And the government of Ontario has included Great Bear in the One Project, One Process framework. This is intended to fast track approvals under a streamlined permitting regime.

Drilling continues to demonstrate that Great Bear is a multi-decade asset with substantial upside. We expect the potential at depth to become clearer once Kinross is able to access deeper exploration upon completion of the AEX. This is a world-class project with outstanding long-term potential.

Warintza is a significant copper molybdenum gold project located in Ecuador. We acquired a gold stream and a royalty in 2025. Shortly after we acquired our interest, Solaris released a PFS outlining a 22-year mine life with strong potential for an additional 25 to 30 years of extension based on existing resources. Our gold stream is expected to deliver 10,000 ounces per year average for the first 5 years, 8,000 ounces average for the first 15 years and the royalty delivers 3,000 GEOs over the first 5 years and 2,500 GEOs over the first 15 years, assuming that the stream and royalty rates are at full levels.

Solaris expects to achieve technical approval for the EIA shortly, where upon we will make a payment of $50 million, followed by a further $50 million in May on the 1-year anniversary of the transaction closing, bringing our total investment in the project to $200 million. Solaris expects to release a feasibility study and begin early works in the second half of 2026.

Cactus is a past-producing copper project in Arizona with a strong management team behind it. We acquired the royalty in late 2024 from a private seller who approached us. The PFS outlines a 22-year mine life with 198 million pounds of copper produced per year. A feasibility study is expected in late 2026 with a potential investment decision as early as Q4 2026.

Hudbay's recent agreement to acquire Arizona Sonoran may adjust the time line, but it also brings the strength of a larger balance sheet and the commitment of a company that has other mining interests in Arizona. Our 2% NSR covers all of Cactus East, Cactus West and parts of the Parks/Salyer ore body. At full production, we expect an average of about 4,500 GEOs per year.

There are multiple opportunities to extend the mine life through the processing of primary sulfides, Cactus East underground mining, infill drilling to upgrade inferred material and drilling of the Northeast extension. While we don't have complete royalty coverage of the Parks/Salyer pit, the mineralization plunges in this area onto our royalty ground and all of the other upsides fall within our royalty footprint.

Gualcamayo is located in San Juan, Argentina, owned and operated by a private Argentine entity. It is currently generating a small amount of revenue from oxide residual leach processing. The real value to this project lies in the Deep Carbonates Project or DCP, beneath the previously mined oxides. We have a 2.5% NSR on the DCP and a $30 million production payment when commercial production begins. The DCP is outlined as a 17-year mine life at 120,000 ounces production per year.

This was the first gold project to receive approval under Argentina's new RIGI process. A feasibility study is underway. Construction is expected in 2028 and first production is currently planned for 2030. We expect this project to contribute approximately 2,500 royalty ounces per year to our account at full production levels.

The Goose mine in the Back River district is operated by B2Gold and reached commercial production in October last year. Production at Goose is ramping up and is expected to average more than 300,000 ounces per year for the first 5 years. Royal Gold holds royalty on most of B2Gold's properties in the Back River District, which is a relatively unexplored gold belt stretching approximately 80 kilometers. Most of the exploration completed to date is in the area of the Goose and George claims, and we have full royalty coverage over these areas.

We have multiple overlapping royalties at Goose and our overall royalty rate ramps up over time from the current rate of 0.35% to 0.7%, increasing to a 2.5% GSR after 400,000 ounces of cumulative production, which we expect in 2027 and then increasing again to 3.3% GSR after 780,000 ounces of production cumulatively, which we expect in 2028. We expect Goose to become a significant contributor to Royal Gold in 2027, with a contribution of 9,000 to 10,000 ounces per year when production reaches steady state and our royalty increases to 3.3% after 2028.

B2Gold and its predecessor companies have been focused on developing the Goose project rather than further exploration. As the mine transitions into operations, B2 has recently increased its focus on exploration, including evaluating potential at depth. Last week, B2Gold outlined its 2025 exploration program for the Back River District, noting the results to date demonstrate the potential to further extend the mine life at Goose through the possible addition of the Nunavut deposit to the mine plan.

In addition to further exploration in 2026, both at Goose and regionally, B2 is also evaluating additional opportunities at Goose, including leach process expansions, plant throughput increases and improved underground productivity and cost efficiency scenarios. Back River remains early in its mine life, and we believe that there is meaningful upside ahead.

Hod Maden is widely recognized as one of the highest quality undeveloped gold copper deposits in the world. The mine design is compact and efficient with a straightforward underground layout that significantly reduces execution risk. Capital investment is already significant. About $80 million was spent in 2025, and SSR has reported plans to spend roughly $15 million per month on early works through to a final investment decision. This early work reduces uncertainty because many critical path items are already progressing, which provides clearer visibility on time lines.

This project stands out due to its high grades relative to comparable scale projects. The grades are exceptional, which drives strong margins and makes the project resilient across commodity cycles. Very few development projects offer this combination of scale, grade and simplicity.

While the current mine life is relatively short at 10 years, the exploration potential in the region is high, and there is real potential for mine life extension. A new feasibility study was released earlier this year, nearly $80 million of capital spent in 2025 to advance the project and confirm the robust production profile and other project parameters. We think Hod Maden is an excellent project. It will be a strong producer, and there is meaningful upside potential in additional resources converting to reserves.

We currently own a 2% NSR on the project as well as a 30% JV interest. As we've said previously, we intend to convert the JV interest into a structure that more closely aligns with our royalty streaming business. As such, our long-term guidance does not yet include any contribution from the conversion of the Hod Maden JV interest, which may represent additional upside not included in today's outlook.

Okay. And that takes me through the general overview. So the next 50 slides I'll present really get into the detail of each of these projects. No.

I hope this overview gives you a clear sense of the strength, depth and longevity of our portfolio. We are seeing significant progress across multiple assets with consistent investment from our operating partners and a development pipeline that extends well into the 2030s. Royal Gold is positioned for multiyear multi-asset growth with a balanced combination of near-term catalysts, midterm development and long-term optionality.

Thank you for your time and attention today.

All right. With that, we'll just take a 10-minute break, if that's all right for everybody. So please return to your seats within 10 minutes, and we'll start again, and we'll finish off and move into Q&A. Thank you.

[Break]

All right. I think everybody, we're ready to start the second half of the session today. So I'll invite Paul Libner up to the stage.

Well, first, let me just start off by saying thanks for so many of you coming. I know some long distance was traveled to be here. So I really appreciate it. It's great to see so many familiar faces here today.

Martin just provided a lot of really good information and information that we're certainly very excited about for 2026 and beyond. But in this section, I want to spend a few minutes talking about how we think about capital allocation. I'll provide a quick update on our revolver and our current liquidity as well. I'll then turn things over to Dan Breeze, who will talk about the business development market and how we consider opportunities to redeploy our capital.

Effective allocation of capital is a key component of our business. Our strategy has been consistent for many years and is driven by the overall objective of providing growth and per share metrics. As shown on the slide here, our capital allocation priorities are built on 3 pillars. The first pillar, invest in accretive growth. The second pillar, maintain strong balance sheet and liquidity, all while making sure we have the available liquidity to execute quickly on opportunities. Then the third pillar, return capital to shareholders.

Royal Gold has a strong record of executing on all 3 pillars, but I'd like to highlight 3 areas that we will always prioritize. First, we will always prioritize non-dilutive capital for new opportunities. And this is evident in our share count. Even after issuing nearly 19 million shares as part of the Sandstorm transaction back in October, we still have the lowest share count on the GDX, and we've been listed for nearly 45 years.

Second, we will use debt strategically and conservatively as opportunities allow. The operating cash flow that we generate from diversified revenue sources within our portfolio gives us comfort that we can repay our debt quickly. And as we have said in the past, we are comfortable taking our leverage ratio to 3x net debt to EBITDA if we can reduce that leverage ratio to, say, 2x or less within 12 months.

Finally, we are committed to paying a growing and sustainable dividend. Our dividend is progressive and is not tied to any mechanical targets. We don't trade on yield, but many of our investors like the consistent history of dividend growth as it demonstrates shareholder returns are priority. Then as Bill mentioned, we continue to be the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats index.

Our framework for capital allocation is simple. We have to be flexible as market conditions and the deal environment change. We think the best way for us to add value to shareholders is by adding high-quality, long-duration assets to the portfolio. We target double-digit returns over the long term. And by using cash or debt to finance these acquisitions, we limit equity dilution, and we should grow our NAV per share. While we have historically liked to use debt to finance our growth given the high-margin nature of our business, maintaining strong liquidity is very important in our business because transactions often come up quickly, and we always want to ensure we can execute timely without financing conditions or limitations. Our revolver capacity and cash provide the liquidity to reinvest in assets that provide further optionality to our shareholders.

We have a 25-year history of dividend growth, a history that is core to Royal Gold, is unique in the precious metals sector and a history we expect to continue. We typically review our dividend each November with our Board. And during this review, we consider various price and operational sensitivities going out 5-plus years. We will consider special dividends and share buybacks, but we have rarely been in a position with significant excess cash where we were not able to reinvest in high-quality assets or accretive transactions.

We also really see opportunities where it makes valuation sense for us to repurchase our shares, but we will be mindful should market conditions change or present an opportunity for further return of capital. We view cash as a strategic asset that provides optionality as it allows us to quickly act on opportunities, and we would not want to prioritize capital return at the expense of good growth assets.

How we define excess cash is subject to change depending on market conditions. And as Dan will explain, we are always looking at opportunities, and we must be mindful of liquidity in terms of a changing deal pipeline that could extend beyond a year.

Now just a few comments on our revolver and our liquidity. I view our revolving credit facility as a key strategic financing tool and a tool that is flexible and low cost. We increased our revolver capacity to $1.4 billion from $1 billion in the third quarter of last year. Our revolver has commitments from 7 banks, many of which are represented here today, and I again thank each one of you for your continued support of Royal Gold. We have a long history of drawing on our revolver to fund acquisitions and paying it back quickly from operating cash flows.

Prior to last year with the Sandstorm acquisition, we had not issued shares since 2012, and we financed high-quality acquisitions like PV, Cortez, Andacollo and Kansanshi, all from the revolver. These are multi-decade assets and the short-term interest cost of using the revolver is greatly outweighed by the long-term value of those assets that we acquired.

Since the closing of the Sandstorm transaction, we have been focused on debt servicing. Upon closing in late October, we had just over $1.2 billion of debt outstanding. While this was low from a perspective of leverage ratio, this was the highest level of debt we have ever carried here at Royal Gold. And as illustrated on the slide here, we have made significant progress in reducing our debt and rebuilding our liquidity.

Since November, we have repaid $625 million on our revolver and now have $600 million outstanding and $800 million available. At these metal prices and absent any significant acquisitions, I expect to have the remaining revolver repaid in late Q4 or early Q1 of 2027. This is about 2 quarters ahead of when we expected when we closed the Sandstorm transaction.

As Jason mentioned, we also have realized some value from the sale of some noncore assets that we acquired from Sandstorm. But more importantly, the pace of this debt repayment should provide a really good sense of the cash flow generation potential from this expanded portfolio.

As others have said before me, 2025 was indeed a transformational year for Royal Gold. And in a short period, we have returned our balance sheet to a strong position, and we have rebuilt our liquidity, ensuring we can remain active in new opportunities.

And with that, I'll now turn things over to Dan Breeze, who's going to give us an update on the current business development market.

All right. Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everybody. Over the next few minutes, I'd like to share some of our thoughts on the trends we're seeing in the streaming and royalty sector. We're going to look at the approach that we take to business development. That's where I spend most of my time with the company. And then we'll look at where we think we're unique in the markets and where we have a competitive advantage. And we'll give you some examples in the portfolio to speak to that. And we'll look at some returns of several key assets in the portfolio, really just to show how our approach has worked over the long term to deliver shareholder returns in the long term.

We were one of the first companies in the sector. We've been around for about 4 decades, and we believe that we've built an internal capacity and skill set to compete and succeed in this market. We are very much like a portfolio manager in so much as we have some of the same attributes, but we never sell our investments. We hold them in perpetuity. And that means our process is very important to us in terms of how we make these investments in the first place.

So let's start with this slide which is looking at the broad sector across a period of time of about 15 years or so. This shows the dollar value of stream royalty transactions as well as corporate M&A over that time period. And I think there are a few takeaways to highlight to you. The first is you'll notice that transactions in our sectors, they tend to be very lumpy from year-to-year. In the sector, we tend to be deal takers. At the end of the day, we are relying on external factors like what's happening in the commodity market, what's happening in the mining sector, how healthy it is. And so that's just the lay of the land in terms of how things generally work.

Secondly, there is a general trend you'll notice as we move to the right side of the chart of an increasing dollar value of transactions over time. 2025, you can see it was a record year in our industry for both royalty and stream transactions, stand-alone deals as well as M&A. Royal Gold accounted for roughly half of the transactions that were done last year. And then again, you can see on the chart, 2026, we're already at a record year for stand-alone stream and royalty deals.

The trend indicates that we are a growing sector. I think it's a really good message for the market to leave, given that there is increasing liquidity to deploy in our sector, as Paul has talked about specific to Royal Gold.

Lastly, corporate M&A is infrequent, but you can see it's picked up somewhat over the last few years. There has been some consolidation in the industry, mostly in the smaller end of the market. Certainly, we were active, as we've talked about with Jason's section with our deal with Sandstorm and Horizon Copper last year.

So continuing on with the sector with this chart, this shows 3 broad categories of peers, again, over that 15-year time span. We have the so-called big 3, that's where Royal Gold fits in, that's the gold bars; the mid-caps, the dark blue bars; and then the smaller cap names and other nontraditional players in the sector with the light blue bars.

Market share here is measured as a percentage of the total dollar value of new streams and royalties that transacted in a year. So it doesn't include third-party royalties in this data set. You can see as we move from left to right on the left side, early in the life of our sector, the larger and at that time, more established companies were the most active. And that's not surprising to see.

As we move to the middle part of the chart, the growth of the emerging mid-cap names picked up and that increased competition, and it did reduce and erode market share from the big 3, as you can see. But since the early 2020s, the major companies have reclaimed the market share that they lost. And the question is, what's happened to the market? What's driving this? There's no doubt that competition is still very, very much strong. It hasn't really changed over that time span, but deals are trending to the larger size. And what that means is the cost of capital in our industry is becoming a much more important factor when we're competing against, in this case, usually debt where we're looking at large opportunities and scale and size really make a difference in the market. So I think that's the trend that we're generally seeing at the moment in the sector.

So let's turn and look a little bit more closely at the streaming market with this slide. Streaming has really grown to be the dominant form of financing compared to royalties. And that's really due to efficiencies that both the operator and the streamer gain by using the stream products. For us, if you look back at our 2025 revenue, streaming accounted for roughly 2/3 of our revenue, just to give you a sense about how it fits in our portfolio. Although we are economically indifferent between streams and royalties, we tend to be more focused on streaming opportunities. And that's just because they tend to be larger in size, and we can write our own contracts and tailor them to what we need to protect ourselves. So that's generally how we look at things.

This slide shows the transaction size distribution and average deal size over the last 20 years. And again, I think there are a few points that we can leave with you. The first is, when we look at the pie chart, the majority of stream transactions have been less than $300 million in size. The market is generally made up of a number of smaller deals at the end of the day. But for us, Royal Gold, let's say, a $200 million deal is material to us given our relative size in the market. That's probably not the case for our larger peers. They have to put a few of those deals together to kind of make up with that materiality that we see right away.

Secondly, the average deal size has trended up in the last few years. I just mentioned that in the last slide, but you can see that on the bar chart here. And again, I think it's just a function of the market that we're seeing right now. 40% of the large deals, let's say, the $500 million-plus deals going back to 2004 have transacted in the last 6 years. So there's been an acceleration of the large deals in our market. Part of that growth is because the stream financing product has become more mainstream. And what we find is most operators now include streaming as part of their menu when they look at options in terms of how they're going to finance a project.

The final point is, although large deals, as we can see here, are quite rare in our industry, we believe that we have the experience and the creativity and liquidity to compete and win on these transactions like the $1 billion Kansanshi gold stream that Jason talked about last year. That was one of the largest stand-alone stream deals ever in the sector to trade.

Let's move on to this slide, which breaks down the sources of deals over the last 15 years, and the pie chart shows the use of proceeds. Most deals come from streams to support project development from balance sheet strengthening and what we call value arbitrage. So that's realizing the value of a noncore precious metal in a core base metal assets. As an example, we've seen some recent examples of that in the market. However, you can see that third-party royalties have been a material source of deal flow over the years. And many of these transactions involve small royalties, but there are exceptions. And our 2022 acquisitions of 2 royalties over the Cortez complex were quite large, more than $700 million in size are good examples of that.

I think what's happening is the higher commodity prices are motivating royalty holders to sell into a very strong market, lots of willing buyers, lots of liquidity. And I think that's fueling the transactions that we're seeing. 80% of the third-party royalty deals in the last 15 years have traded in the last 5 years. Again, you can see the acceleration of the market in terms of what we're seeing.

I think it's also fair to say that third-party royalties and streams, and I mentioned streams, we don't see very many third-party streams in our market. They typically come to the market quickly and not with a lot of visibility in terms of the process that generally brings them to the market. And generally, what happens is once they trade, that's it, they never trade again. So it's probably fair to say that it may not always be a robust source of deal flow given those dynamics.

So I'm going to shift now to how the business development process works at Royal Gold, and we'll use the next few slides to talk through this. Our investment criteria are simple. It's consistent and it's long-term focused. And our framework is based on what we call the 3Ps: People, projects and place.

For people, we're assessing the experience of the counterparty, their ability to finance, to execute and to manage risk responsibly over the long term. Ownership changes happen. We've seen that in our own portfolio. When an asset or a company is sold, we have to work hard to build the new relationships, but we also build in protection in our contracts and information rights and things like that, that allow a consistency from our side when there is a change in ownership.

On the project, we take a very fundamental and technically driven view. We evaluate the asset from both our perspective as well as the perspective of the operator. For example, when we look at a stream, we think about the [indiscernible] over the life of mine. How is that going to impact not only us, but the mining operation at different metal prices, and we consider that in our analysis.

A key focus for us as well is long-term resource growth, and we prioritize assets with expansion upside to increase the potential for returns over the long term. And finally, place. We also prioritize established mining jurisdictions as a general rule of thumb, given that governments can change during the life of mine. I think we've seen lots of examples of that in the world.

We also consider how an investment will fit within our existing portfolio and its impact on our strategic goals. We look at, for example, the pro forma metals mix, we want to maintain a high weighting in precious metals, in particular, gold. We look at concentration risk. What does this asset do to the NAV makeup of the overall portfolio. And then we consider whether the investment in the asset quality will ultimately upgrade the portfolio as an ultimate test.

Ideally, we prefer to identify opportunities through relationships and our own initiatives, working towards a bilateral opportunity and transaction. That's what we covered the most. But what we are seeing is more opportunities, in particular, the larger ones are ending up in adviser-led processes, and we're competing against our peers as well as other forms of capital. We may pass on an opportunity for various reasons. But if there isn't a fatal flaw, we'll continue to monitor it. Maybe there's a study that will come out that will derisk the opportunity, and we'll go back and revisit it and see if there's an opportunity for us to put some money to work.

I'm going to spend a moment looking at our evaluation and execution process with this slide. The process involves professionals from a number of fields of expertise working together typically under very tight time lines. We get Bill very active given his background. He gets involved early in business development opportunities, and then we have access to the experience of the Royal Gold Board of Directors as well. We typically look at upwards of 100 opportunities in any given year, and we may only transact on 1 or 2 or none as we're going to look at it in a moment on another slide. It just speaks to our very disciplined approach in terms of how we look at deploying capital. Through diligence, we establish a view on the asset and how the asset will perform over its life, what are the risks, what are the opportunities. A key part of the diligence process is trying to uncover that intrinsic optionality in an asset. And we want to capture that because we believe that's one of the key reasons why our shares command a premium in the marketplace.

Diligence is followed by financial evaluation where we're determining a fair value for the investment. We're looking at the risk/rewards that we identified in the diligence process. And then we need to structure the contract and protect our interests, while at the same time, trying to meet the unique requirements that might exist for a particular operator. Because these are perpetual agreements, at the end of the day, we need to show some flexibility over the life of the contract to allow the operator to run their business without unreasonable constraints. So we do consider that as well.

These steps can be completed in 2 to 3 months from an agreed term sheet to final documentation, which I think is a competitive advantage when you look at other sources of capital, in particular, debt, which could take a much longer period of time. Thereafter, the contract needs to be managed. We have regular dialogue with most of our counterparties, and we go to site regularly, certainly for our larger investments as well, again, making sure we have that baked into our contracts in terms of site visit and information rights.

So let's look at the Royal Gold transaction history with this chart. And this shows more than $5.5 billion of stand-alone acquisitions have occurred over the last 2 decades or so. We're always busy looking at opportunities. But over the long run, on average, we transact 1 or 2 times a year. So it's fairly infrequent at the end of the day. Transactions, I mentioned this already, they tend to be lumpy. You can see that very clearly with this chart. And it is hard to predict, as we discussed earlier as well. But we need to be ready to move quickly as a team. Paul talked about liquidity. We need to access liquidity efficiently to transact. We have a highly diversified portfolio, as Martin has talked about, that supports organic growth. We have that 5-year forecast now out in the market. And that really allows us to be patient and disciplined and not chase growth and not go offside in terms of our investment criteria and stay very disciplined.

We typically don't target corporate acquisitions and transactions. We do track our competitors. Maybe there's an opportunity that might fit at some point strategically. But in general, that's not what we've really focused on. We've done 2 material corporate transactions in the last 15 years. Obviously, the Sandstorm and Horizon deal and then IRC back in 2010. So again, very infrequent.

We're often asked by both investors and potential counterparties, how does Royal Gold differentiate itself versus our peer group. And we believe the answer to that is creativity. And what do we mean by creativity? We really try to listen to an operator about what considerations are most important to them, and then we develop a bespoke structure and product that works well for both parties. And to make that point, we have 4 examples shown on this slide just to demonstrate creativity and a strong approach to partnership. And I'll just run through these very quickly.

Jason and Martin covered the investment that we made last year in Kansanshi. We worked with First Quantum as the operator really to understand their needs and constraints, and we study their credit position very closely. That was a key feature of that company going back 12 months ago, as you might remember. We then developed a structure with a partial buyback or 2 partial buybacks that they can exercise when their credit profile and position materially improves. We also structured that transaction such that the gold stream was referenced to recovered copper and that aligned ourselves to the core product of that particular mine, and that allowed us to derisk our investment and give them a better cost of capital at the end of the day.

At Mount Milligan, we worked with our partner, Centerra Gold, in 2024 to provide cost support in the form of higher future cash prices for our gold and copper streams, and that gave Centerra the confidence to go ahead and move forward with mine life extension plans where we're both going to benefit over the long term.

At Xavantina, we made our initial investment with the operator, Ero Copper, in 2021. We saw the long-term geologic potential of the asset then, and we included incremental funds to support exploration and resource growth, and that's paid off very well for both parties since then. More recently, we worked with Ero to provide financing in the form of an incremental gold stream over that project, and that is supporting further growth that will continue to benefit both of us as well.

Finally, just to round things out at Khoemacau, we made our investment there in 2019. And we included an incremental stream alongside of our core stream or base stream, and then we provided a debt facility just to round out a financing package for the operator. And that was really to be used at the operator's option for supporting mine development in the case where additional capital was needed during the build, and that actually was the case. They drew down all those incremental funds as well.

Let's move to the next slide, and we'll use the next 2 slides to make a couple of points and looking at the returns in our portfolio. We'll start with this slide. This is the internal rate of return or IRR for 6 of our largest single asset investments in the portfolio. The returns shown are Scotia's estimates at the time of the investments, those are the blue bars, and then they've been updated for January 2026. That's the gold bars.

The returns shown -- we'll get to the returns in just a moment, the take away. But I think what the overall analysis demonstrates is the value that's created in our sector over the long term and just the power of the business model. And we thank Tanya and the Scotia Research team for providing the data set to us. But you'll note that the returns were moderate at the time that these deals were announced, but have increased materially since then. And the question is, what's happened? What's driving that?

Certainly, one of the reasons is commodity prices have changed. But another key reason is while we spent months assessing a project and its potential leading up to a transaction, the market generally has very limited information on these investments that we make. Limited information results in moderate day 1 returns in our view,as assessed by the market. But as more information is available to the market, let's say, there's an expansion or an extension of a particular project that comes out, the market absorbs that and the returns increase as a result. In most cases, in our experience, it takes developments that may occur over years for investment case to be fully understood by the market. And again, another good example of that is Cortez, where in 2022, the royalty transactions, the 2 deals that we did were met with a lukewarm response by the market. But fast forward to last year, Barrick released the preliminary Fourmile PEA results, and you can see the returns, the expectations have grown materially as a result. I think today, if you ask analysts, I think they would agree that these were good transactions and that we've acquired some of the best royalties ever created.

Move to the next slide, which is a different way to look at value in our portfolio, and it covers the same 6 investments. The blue bars show the size of the initial investments that we made and the dark gold bars show the cumulative cash we've received for each of these assets going through to the end of 2025. The light gold bars show the current consensus NAVs for these projects as well. And they generally don't include resource conversion. They're generally based on life of mine reserve type calculations as well. So there should be more to be added there in due course.

On a cash in, cash out basis, we have recovered our initial investments at Andacollo, at Pueblo Viejo and Mount Milligan, and you can see the market sees significant value yet to come in those assets. Our model requires time, but excess returns emerge when we invest in assets with long-term growth. And we can fully capture that these are perpetual investments with no sustaining capital. And so that really drives the model in terms of long-term returns.

I'm going to finish with a comment on our history of disciplined capital allocation as measured by impairments in our portfolio with this slide. We shared the rigorous due diligence approach that we take internally before we make an investment decision. The rigor has resulted in a very high rate of success over the long term in terms of our investment history. And to quantify that success, only 1% of the roughly $10 billion of investments we've made to date were impaired and removed from our portfolio.

As a portfolio manager that can't easily sell or never sells, as I said at the start of the presentation, our investments and certainly underperforming investments to limit losses, I think that's an excellent record to show the market. It demonstrates that our approach and diligence and execution that we've covered off has been successful in the long term.

I'm going to hand things over to Alistair now. He's going to talk about some of the unique aspects of Royal Gold.

All right. Thank you, Dan. So I'm just going to talk about some of the unique attributes of Royal Gold from the perspective of a listed equity. We are large cap and liquid, and our business model is really unique in a sector where there aren't very many quality alternatives. Our target audience is the generalist investor. And beyond our business model, we have several attributes that we think make us very investable for those generalist investors.

So we occupy a very unique position in the marketplace. We're the only U.S. domiciled company in our sector. All of our peers are Canadian. That's important because it opens us up to those funds who have U.S.-only mandates. There is a scarcity of quality precious metals equities in the U.S. that meet institutional mandates and Royal Gold is definitely one of those.

Our register is different from our peers as a result of that, though. About 85% of our register is institutional investors with a relatively small retail component. We have a much higher passive component than Canadian peers just given the membership in the U.S. indices.

We are included globally in about 250 equity indices and about 38% of our shares are held by index funds, and you can break them down into 3 categories, broadly speaking. The first and largest would be major global equity indices like the S&P 400. That's about 70%. 20% would be precious metals and mining, so funds like the GDX, and then 10% would be factored in strategic -- or strategy funds. Those are funds that track specific characteristics, so they could be sustained dividend growth over time or what have you.

Now this is important to note because sometimes we don't trade in line with our Canadian peers, certainly not on a daily basis. For example, on a bad day for the general markets, it may be a good day for gold, we may lag our Canadian peers. And the opposite may happen when the general markets are up and the gold price is flat. But over a couple of days, that difference tends to correct if valuations do get distorted.

Now the precious metals sector is a small part of the U.S. marketplace, and there seems to be a mismatch between gold's macro importance and its equity market weight in the U.S. market. Within the S&P 500, there's only one gold company that's a member, and that's Newmont and that it has a 0.2% weighting. So you can find academic papers that will say you should have 5% or 10% or 15% of your well-diversified portfolio in gold. We're not here to debate that. I think what is clear, though, is that the 0.2% is a lot lower than whatever that right weighting is. And it looks like many institutional investors are underweight gold.

Their allocations are often cyclical and reactive and they're not strategic. So if that were to change, if we saw a shift in allocations, if you assume $100 trillion of equity investments globally, a 1% weighting change would mean $1 trillion of demand. So that's 2x the entire gold sector.

We're very well positioned, we think, because there is a scarcity value or scarcity of precious metals alternatives. Market cap, liquidity, consistent performance, they all make us very investable. We're not in the S&P 500 today, but we're just included in the Bloomberg 500. So that is hopefully something we can say we're definitely one of the largest 500 in the U.S. market.

Now since closing the Sandstorm transaction, our register has continued to grow and evolve, and we've increased our institutional shareholder base. We do have a very high-quality register. Our institutional shareholdings or shareholders tend to be long-term holders of large positions. And you can see that if you look at the passives, they own about 134,000 shares on average, 21-year holding history. Actives about 64,000 shares with an 11-year holding history.

Sandstorm had a very large retail component on their register, and we believe that most of those retail holders have sold and those shares have been picked up by institutions. And that's evidenced, as you can see in the graph here, by the number of institutional holders that have -- we've got on our register since the announcement of the transaction in the middle of last year. Passives did grow their position, but you would argue that's largely because of the increased market cap. Actives have grown their positions by over 20%, and that's the target that we're trying to hit.

Now we've seen net institutional buying over the past 2 years. You can see it very clearly on this chart. Our marketing efforts have been really to get in front of generalists who -- institutions who don't know our business model well. And our market strategy is looking for those generalists who want exposure to precious metals, but they don't want to do the homework on mining assets within mining equities.

We've been pretty successful, we think, in converting some of those generalists, those introduction meetings into holders. Q3 does look a little bit unusual on this chart, but I think that was likely because of the additional shares that we issued as a result of the Sandstorm transaction. We've now returned to trend in the fourth quarter. So it does look like our message is resonating with our target audience.

Now another thing that is a unique attribute for Royal Gold for our size is trading liquidity. We've seen an increase in our liquidity over the past couple of quarters really. I think some of this is structural, and you can see this with our large cap peers shown here as well. There's just more interest generally in precious metals now than there was a year ago. But we've also issued an additional 30% or so new shares. And we're now trading consistently over 1 million shares a day, which is twice where we were this time last year.

The Amivest liquidity ratio, which is shown on this chart here, it provides a good metric. It shows you how much trading volume is required to move a stock price by 1%. And so a higher value is an indicator of higher liquidity because you need to trade that much more to be able to impact the price. We materially increased our liquidity compared to our large cap peers. And that's -- I think the largest drivers are the larger market cap and the larger share count.

Now compared to our float, which is really equivalent to our market cap because we don't have any strategic holders, we're actually more liquid than our large cap peers. And you can see this pickup in liquidity, again, is much more clear on this graph in Q3 and Q4.

And there's one other point that I want to mention is tangentially related to this and liquidity and volatility. We have the lowest share count in the GDX, which shows discipline with respect to equity issuance over a long history. We've talked about that during this presentation. However, that means that a small change in financial numbers can really impact our per share metrics. A $1 million change in our reported financials can be $0.01 change in earnings. So high-frequency traders will seize on this when you announce your earnings. If you beat or miss by $0.01, it can actually mean that you've got additional volatility as a result of that. But $1 million, I think we can all agree, is de minimis for a $20 billion company. So I think that is something that we notice. And with the addition of these additional shares from Sandstorm, that higher share count should now help reduce that volatility somewhat because we're just dividing by a larger denominator.

Peers with hundreds of millions of shares outstanding don't have the same issue, but we do. And it's something you should keep in mind. When you see our financial results on a quarterly basis, the volatility in trading may actually be driven more by our low share count than the results themselves.

Now we believe very strongly in our business. Hopefully, we've been able to illustrate that over the last couple of hours. But despite all the attributes that we put forward today, we continue to trade at a discount relative to our peers. If you agree that our portfolio is well diversified, has long life with many growth catalysts. Our margins are high and consistent. We have a strong balance sheet. We have cash flow and access to liquidity to be able to continue growing our business, and we have the market scale and the characteristics that should make us a good addition to any equity portfolio, then hopefully, you'll agree that this discount is unwarranted.

So with that, I will turn it back to Bill for some closing comments before we open the floor to questions.

Thanks, Alistair. I sort of think about what would I like you to take away from this day, and I would take you back 12 months. If we were sitting in this room 12 months ago, what criticisms would you have had about Royal Gold, and I can think of a handful of them, the concentration in the top asset, the outlook for growth and the portfolio duration.

And as I stand here today, I'm confident of the following. I genuinely believe we have the most diversified gold-focused portfolio in our sector. I think our 5-year guidance really provides evidence that we see growth in our portfolio without making any new acquisitions. And I think our portfolio duration has improved considerably with the acquisition of assets like Platreef, like MARA, Kansanshi and not to mention the organic portfolio improvements we've seen with the life of mine extension at Mount Milligan and the upside potential of the still developing Fourmile project.

So if you combine the more balanced, the larger, the stronger portfolio enhancements we've seen in the last year and you sort of marry it with a consistent strategy, a consistent approach to financing new acquisitions on a non-dilutive basis and our consistent focus on increasing returns to shareholders through higher annual dividends, I really think you do have a compelling and undervalued opportunity in the precious metal space.

So with that, I want to thank the Royal Gold team here for their efforts and contributions. I'd also like to thank the team more broadly. In a company like ours, this kind of effort touches every department, touches every person and certainly appreciate the effort. And I'd like to thank all of you, the investors and the analysts, that allocated a couple of hours of your time to listen to our story, and I certainly appreciate it.

So Alistair, with that, I think we're ready for some Q&A.

All right. So we'll invite the Royal Gold management to come and sit on one of these little [indiscernible] and we'll open the floor up to questions. I think what we'll do is we will take questions from the floor first. We have a few analysts who have dialed in by phone, and we also have a webcast. So we've already been starting to get a few questions coming in through the webcast.

While we're asking questions from within the room, please use the microphones. We have a couple of microphones on either side, just so everybody on the webcast could hear the questions that are being asked. First one.

I actually have a handful. A number of your customers have [indiscernible]. Are you entitled to any of that now that the waste is going to be processed?

Okay. There we go. Sorry. I would say it's very much dependent on the contract itself, but I will use the stream contracts as an example. Our stream contracts actually specifically say, if you reprocess material, any metal that is recovered, say, it's a gold stream, any gold that is recovered is subject to our interest.

So is that an increment? Or is that part of the original, let's say, 10,000 ounces a year?

That would be incremental. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And we actually have an example of it at Xavantina, where there was material that was at the site. And it was actually -- our team was on site and said, "Hey, have you ever assayed that? Have you ever thought about selling the concentrate?" And so what was just sitting there, it is now being sold, and we're getting -- that is subject to our stream.

And from what you can get, are these plentiful?

I think it's a little early to start figuring out if material is in a tailings storage facility, could you actually extract it and reprocess it. I think that would need to be studied more. I think the gold price where it is, to me is relatively new.

All right. The next one, are your dividends payable as part of earnings or cash flow, I forget.

It's just $1 per share.

But in your mind, do you say it's going to be a certain percentage of earnings or percentage inflow?

Yes, we don't -- it's obviously, it's cash flow.

Okay. Next, are you seeing more countries saying we want a higher royalty. There have been a few. Eventually, there should be more, maybe even in the United States. Are you starting to see that?

I think I just saw it out of Ghana. And I would expect with the gold price where it is, the countries are looking around for revenue-generating opportunities. And usually, when the gold price goes up, you tend to see gold producing countries say I want a bigger share of that.

Even Trump may say one day, hey, we hope to, we need 3% now or 5% [indiscernible] come here.

I would expect to see that.

And the final is a very broad question. I think it's the Supreme Court of BC or the National Court of Canada ruled that the Indians have a right to properties. And that would mean if I remember that it's the Supreme Court of Canada rather than a provincial Supreme Court, every house, every mine, every tree, every apartment building, every warehouse, every factory, everything is entitled to transfer to ownership to the Indians. Do I understand that correctly? Is it that crazy?

I'm not an expert in First Nations law, so I might ask somebody from Canada if they wish to comment.

I would wish not to comment.

I think that made some headlines. There was a specific one around some properties in Richmond that made some headlines, but I think the government has...

All of Vanover.

Quickly backtracked on that. So it's not a particular concern of mine as a homeowner in Vancouver right now.

You said you are concerned or not yet?

Not a concern of mine as a homeowner in Vancouver.

It's Cosmos here from CIBC. Maybe first question is on your 5-year outlook, Bill. I know it took you a lot of effort to put out your 5-year outlook, but I have to ask a few questions here. Simple one. Could you put some parameters around your 5-year guidance or 5-year outlook? Is it average? Is it -- are you trying to get to it in 5 years' time? Like what does that number represent?

Well, we've given a range. And so what the range represents, if you look to the midpoint, that is our current expectation in terms of GEOs for that particular year. If I'm understanding your...

Like in 5 years' time, you want to get to that range? Or is it within next year...

Not so much we want to get there. As we look at the portfolio we currently have, it looks like the portfolio will produce those GEOs in 2030. But the only comment -- I think Martin gave the caveat, that is the sum of operator guidance translated into our GEOs. There isn't any effort to sort of sensitize or make certain adjustments to what the operators are saying.

So in year 2030.

Yes.

Okay. Maybe a question on Hod Maden. As we know, SSR Mining is going through a strategic review of Hod Maden. And as you mentioned, ultimately, you want to change the structure to better align with what Royal Gold does. So SSR Mining's strategic review, does that impact timing of that potential conversion in any way? Anything that you can share with us? Or does that impact any current negotiations you might already have with counterparties at this point in time?

Yes. I think what has happened with SSR in Turkey, especially with Copler, the sale to Cengiz has -- it just changed the dynamic. And if you look at what they're saying, they're saying we're going to be an Americas-focused mining company and you look at the share price and where it moved when they said that, I think it's fair to say that where SSR is now with the project is probably going to delay what we might be able to achieve and it might change what we're able to achieve. I just think it's going to take a little longer until we sort of get through their strategic review of what they want to do.

Great. And then maybe one last question. In Martin's 80 pages, he kind of touched on a number of Sandstorm assets. So if I were to look at how Sandstorm looked at those assets previously compared to how Royal Gold looks at it, anything you want to point out? As you talked about, for example, MARA, that seems to be progressing earlier and faster than you had expected. You also talked about Platreef, but anything that surprised you in terms of how Sandstorm looked at it? And this is your first chance as Royal Gold to talk about some of these assets, any assets that you want to point to that kind of surprised you?

Yes. I don't think that we found any major surprises that we have -- we would change anything in a major way. Obviously, we go back and look at it in our process from a technical perspective. We look at each of those opportunities and then we make our call on when we think they're going to happen, when we think things are going to ramp up, what sort of technical challenges we have. But nothing stands out to me as, wow, that was very different from what Sandstorm/Horizon said in terms of our view of it.

Derick Ma, TD Cowen. In terms of transactions, you mentioned transactions are trending larger. So scale matters. Some of your peers are now talking about the potential for multiple billion-dollar deals over the next 3 to 5 years as some of these mega base metal projects come into development. How does that factor into what Royal Gold can do, will do given your size and strategy going forward?

Dan, do you want to take it?

I think you're referring to the BHP and Wheaton deal that we saw recently. I think our criteria, it's still the same. We're going to still apply the same approach in terms of how we look at these opportunities. We're working on liquidity right now to rebuild that, as Paul talked about. So it will be a function of how a sizable asset would fit in the portfolio, what's the concentration risk, how can we fund it? All those things will apply. But we're certainly open to looking at larger transactions as a theme. Does that answer your question? Is that...

It does. I guess how does that factor into keeping optionality in terms of the balance sheet as well, given the size of where you guys are? If there is a $2 billion or $3 billion transaction out there, that is attractive to you.

Yes. Derick, and I refer back to the Wheaton transaction as well. And with their kind of capital tower of what they use, I think you would find something similar here with Royal Gold. Yes, we have $800 million available today on the revolver. Again, looking to have that repaid by the end of this calendar year potentially. And then still also strong cash flowing beyond that. But looking at our banking group, who [indiscernible] included that good partnerships with. And if we needed to bridge on some term loan type financings or something similar to that, I think those options would certainly be on the table.

And let me ask you an asset question on Khoemacau. You mentioned the potential for M&G to look at additional expansion to 200,000 tonnes of copper per year. What would that mean in terms of silver deliveries in terms of your AOI?

Look, it's very early stages at the moment. They have just announced that they are thinking about moving to that or looking at that sort of level. Obviously, it would be an increase, but I wouldn't want to put a specific number on that. I mean we've said that with the latest expansion, there's a 35% increase. So beyond that 130,000 to 200,000 tonnes, I wouldn't ratio it up, but it's going to be an increase, and it's going to be relatively significant.

[indiscernible]

It is not. It is not. Not a further increase up to 200,000, no.

[indiscernible] from H.C.Wainwright. Very comprehensive. We've got a good part of your team sitting up on stage here today. And I assume between everyone here, you talk to dozens of investors, operators, stakeholders every day. In your opinion, given that we have a wide range of the team here, what are the 3 assets of yours that are most misunderstood or even misvalued by the market, especially given Martin's comments in one of his 4 or 5 slides that there is 2 million meters of drilling per year.

To me, the one asset that I think the market doesn't really fully, fully appreciate might be Mount Milligan. And we try very, very hard to say life of mine extension, that's great. Our top asset now has 2 decades of mine life. But when we just casually referenced the fact that they're building a tailings storage facility that's going to accommodate material well beyond that. And if you listen to Paul Tomory talk about that asset, he's talking decades beyond the 2 decades. And I just don't think that's in anybody's estimation right now. I think the other asset that everybody underestimates a little bit because there just isn't enough information right now is how big could Fourmile get. I think in your mind, you kind of think, "Oh, it's one of the greatest exploration stories ever." But do we really understand the potential of the decades of potential production that's out there.

Beyond that, I'll just pick 2 smaller ones. Because Wassa has been owned by Chifeng for the last few years, there just isn't a lot of sort of airplay for the asset. You know there aren't quarterly results. There was a technical report that was issued, I think, at this point, it's a couple of years old that showed the potential for that asset to go to 2049. Nobody really knows that unless you've seen that report. Nobody really knows that. And I think the other one that always gets underestimated is Xavantina. And you go back to '21 when we made that investment and people looked at us and said, what are you doing? It's only got a 5-year mine life. And I'd like to say the mine life when we made the investment ended in 2026. The technical report they put out at the end of last year, the first year was 2026 and the last year was 2032, and we just see the potential for that. So that to me, I don't know if anybody else wants to chime in on underestimated assets in the portfolio.

Yes, I'll say one more. And it goes back to -- I mean you mentioned Fourmile at Cortez. But I think the rest of Cortez is not that well understood within our portfolio, which is one of the reasons why we spent so much time on it today. We have -- Cortez is a complex. I mean there are multiple operating assets there. There's a lot of exploration potential. There's a lot of future potential there. And I still don't think the market really has a good understanding of what Cortez could be and what our exposure is. We've got a lot of material that we've put out, talking about the different royalties that cover certain areas. But unfortunately, Barrick doesn't break down Cortez into the bits and pieces that really provide the operating back up to be able to understand where the ounces are coming from. And I think that's still something that we struggle with is we get a lot of questions, not just from investors, but from analysts who follow Barrick and Royal Gold. How should I think about this? How should I model it better to be able to capture this value?

Sure. It sounds like overall, the feedback is longevity and growth, though. I mean that seems to be the resounding theme from everything that was just answered.

I've asked somewhat similar questions to other companies and other settings before, and I just can't help myself to do it again today. You're 53% exposed to North America. Taking out today's market action, the world has gotten substantially more geopolitically unsafe over the last few quarters. What has that done to your investment thesis? Again, we got the whole team sitting here. To your investment theories thesis related to assignable discount rates, model geopolitical risk factors and also for willingness of where you're looking to deploy capital?

Yes. Look, if we could do every transaction in the U.S., Canada and Australia, I'd love to. We have to go where the opportunities are. And I don't think anything has really changed the thesis because when we think about political risk, I mean, you look at -- we just got our money back at Pueblo Viejo, Andacollo in the last year. That was 10 years. And so when we look at political risk, we can't just look at who's in power at that particular point in time, who favors the mining industry because it's going to change, and it's probably going to change multiple times over the life of the investment. So as we talked about is understanding how important is the industry within the country? How important is it to employment? How important is it to export earnings? Because I think the one conclusion you can draw from Cobre Panama is there's no mining industry in Panama. They suddenly got in trouble and there weren't 3 different companies standing there going to the government saying you're going to ruin the mining industry because there wasn't one. It's not a foolproof way of doing political risk. But to us, it's one that has, I think, been shown to work over decades.

Carey MacRury, Canaccord Genuity. Just maybe back on Hod Maden. Since you've owned your JV interest, have you had some preliminary discussions with potential counterparties? And should we expect something to happen this year? Or is it too soon to say?

I'd like to see something happen this year, to be fair. The approach we have taken is the best -- the easiest way to do it is with the partners. And obviously, that approach, we've had a left turn with SSR on doing that. But that doesn't mean we've sort of just walked away from that approach. We certainly have had other companies reach out, but I would say that would be sort of plan B. If we just can't reach a transaction with the partners, then we may run a process. We may bring other people -- invite people to bid, but we're not there.

And then maybe just on the 2026 guidance. On your Page 34, you showed 365,000 to 410,000. Just wondering how much of those would be from the Sandstorm assets, if you have the number?

Not off the top of our head. Just one portfolio now.

All right. So if there are no further questions at the moment, anyway from the floor, we're happy to take any questions over the phone.

Certainly. And we have a question from the phone line. Our first question comes from the line of Tanya Jakusconek from Scotiabank.

Great. And Bill, thank you very much for providing the 5-year guidance. Really helpful to see directionally where the company is going. So thank you for that. Can I come back just to maybe the -- I'll start with the environment out there. And thank you for the slide showing that the deal size is getting bigger, and it looks like the concentration is really in the hands of 3 companies. I always ask on conference calls, what size are you seeing out there? And it's usually that $100 million to $300 million, maybe it goes up to $500 million. Should I be thinking now that this environment for you is in excess of $500 million in terms of what you're seeing out there and your ability to do to take you over $1 billion very easily. Should I be thinking about it that way?

Dan or Jason?

Tanya, it's Dan Breeze here. Look, I think the range that we always give you still applies, and maybe it's moved up a little bit more. We always say $100 million to $300 million, maybe it's $200 million to $400 million. We certainly see opportunities now in the $500 million even plus range. But they're not very plentiful. I think that's the way to say it. I think the bulk of them are still in the sub-$500 million range. Is your question, again, more around liquidity in terms of how we would fund a large deal?

Like if you're going to pay off $600 million by the end of the year, that's $1.4 billion available, plus cash flow. So I would assume you could do over $1 billion, maybe -- I'm assuming that's correct?

Yes, that's [indiscernible] -- Yes.

Yes. Okay. And maybe we were talking about asset concentration in terms of your portfolio when you're looking at these deals. I mean obviously, I think there's opportunities in doubling down in some of the districts that you're already in. How do you think about it from an operator concentration?

Well, I actually -- I quite like our operator concentration. I mean, you think about Barrick -- having Barrick and Newmont and then the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture. Antamina run by major copper companies, MARA being built by Glencore, Platreef, Ivanhoe Mines. I don't worry too much about having too much, say, Barrick exposure or Newmont exposure. And I couldn't see us getting into a situation where we had a very large concentration with a junior operating company. I just don't see us making a big enough investment with a company of that size to where you are really -- you're running junior company risk, probably have a thinner management team and probably don't have the same access to capital if things go wrong.

And maybe if I could just shift to my second question. We've talked about this S&P 500. We've talked about and Alistair went through the slide showing it's not really material. Where are we on that S&P 500 potential listing?

Yes. So thanks, Tanya. I'll take that. I mean we satisfy all of the requirements except for market cap. And just recently, over the past 3 or 4 weeks, we've actually not done that well just with the markets that they've come down. So that $22.7 billion threshold is still the threshold. It may come down, but we are trading a little bit below that right now. But all of the other attributes we meet.

Now there is a subjective component to inclusion in the S&P 500. There's an index inclusion committee that meets and they decide what's coming out of the S&P 500 Index and what's going in. And they will make decisions based on what they think the general market should -- how the index should reflect the general market. So because we meet all the criteria, if our market cap got above 22.7% again, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to get included. But we think we meet all the criteria. So we'll wait and see.

We'll find out when you do. There's no heads up given to companies when they're added to the index. It's a surprise to us as it is the rest of the market. So we'll just have to wait and see. I think it was very positive though that we were included in the Bloomberg 500 because that selection criteria, that subjectivity is not part of that same inclusion. So clearly, we're one of the largest companies in the U.S., one of the top 500 because we're in the Bloomberg 500. So we'll have to wait and see about the S&P 500.

No, I asked that because I've listened to you talk about and you can see the valuation difference between yourselves, the larger 2 companies and your stock. And I think Bill talked about being in the room last year, what 3 things that he had some pushback on and sort of resolved now. So my question to you is this, do you think is that the market misunderstands your story? Or is it do you think the shareholder base being different from the others is the issue or a combination of? Or maybe the question is, why do you think you trade at a discount?

Well, I think if you go back to a year ago, we were a much different company, much smaller, and we were a unique company in the U.S. marketplace. And maybe we're a little bit too small to be in the U.S. marketplace to get that real attention. But with what we did last year, we've now vaulted ourselves to a position where we shouldn't be forgotten anymore. Our size is big enough that we should be relevant in this marketplace. So the onus is really on us to make sure that people understand what's in the portfolio, where is the growth? What are the assets that underpin the portfolio, where are the risks in the portfolio. So it's around making sure people understand the diversification of the portfolio to address those questions, the growth that's in the portfolio.

So that's why we're doing today. This Investment Day was really focused on making sure people understand the long-term potential within this business. So hopefully, it's not going to happen in one day. I don't think we'll see a re-rate in 1 day. But what we would like to see is people start looking at us differently as a large cap company and probably the biggest capital market in the world saying, okay, this company has all the attributes that I need to invest in it. And so that will be a re-rating that occurs over time.

And our next question from the phone lines comes from the line of Josh Wolfson from RBC.

I'll second the accolades on the guidance 5-year as well as just additional disclosures, very much appreciated on our end. I had 2 questions. The first one is just for Kansanshi. When that deal was structured, there were 2 buydowns. This is a larger asset. The first question is just wondering, how are you thinking about long-term guidance in the context of some sort of binary decisions that could be made by the operator there and how that affects your growth outlook?

So I think our assumption is that First Quantum will probably achieve the ability to buy down at the first level. But we don't have the second one in there, right? Yes. So it's just the first slide down that we assumed between now and 2030.

And then the second question is across all the various slides on optionality, one of the assets that was not discussed is Holt. I know the company doesn't talk about this much given the current circumstances. I was recalculating the royalty rate on that asset. I think it's about 50% at current gold prices, which might not be realistic. But the operator there has outlined a plan to review the project, maybe consider spending some additional capital to restart the plant. What's Royal's thoughts there? And what's the potential pathway to seeing that royalty resume payments?

Yes, Josh. I mean, I think we probably agree with you. There probably is a different solution at Holt. It's just -- it's a little early to even talk about it. But certainly, at these prices, it's a very different gold price environment than it was when Holt closed a number of years ago.

I'm not showing any further questions from the phone lines at this time.

Okay. Thank you. We do have a few that have come in through the webcast. So Kim, if you're okay reading those, please.

Do you have an approximate target allocation for silver within the portfolio? Or are you largely agnostic between silver and gold? How do you view copper and other traditional base metals within the portfolio?

Look, silver is in the box. We don't have a target allocation for silver. If we happen to increase silver relative to gold because we made a couple of investments that we really like, that's fine. I always say if you give us 5 projects, 3 of them are gold, one is silver, one is copper, we probably look at them in that priority because we're a gold company, and that's what we're sort of selling to shareholders.

Copper, as we have said, those are one-off situations. Someone calls us up, say, I've got this royalty, would you have an interest? And if we like the asset, we might bid for it. But when Dan and Jason and the business development team are out there marketing ideas, we're not out there marketing copper streams, copper royalties or any other base metal.

What are your plans regarding the Entree equity investment?

We're going to hold that for -- I think we're going to hold it for a little while. We do think there are perhaps some corporate developments within Entree relative to the government of Mongolia that maybe we want to sort of hang around and see what happens there before we look to dispose of the shares. But just understand, it's still noncore. It's still not something that we really want to hold on to. Certainly, in our mind, not a company we want to consolidate in any way. So I think we'll eventually sell it. I just don't know when.

What percentage of NAV would KSM represent if it was finally approved and constructed? Would it be one of Royal Gold's top 10 assets?

I'm not going to try and answer in terms of NAV, but I would say if it were constructive in operating today that it would be one of our top 10. It's debatable whether it would be a principal property for us. It would be an important property from a GEO production rate over a long period of time.

Under what conditions would the company consider share buybacks?

Well, I think Paul went through the capital allocation here. First and foremost, asset acquisitions. We think that's the best way to create shareholder value. If we have debt outstanding, clearly pay down the debt. That's where we sit today. Third is the annual dividend increase. If we got to a point where we had what we consider excess liquidity, and that's a very tough concept to get your mind around when you have multibillion-dollar potential transactions out there.

I think you would look at share buybacks, look at special dividends, but it's also based on our valuation. I think when we were trading at the lows of lows last fall and you look at some of the transactions that were out there, and they were trading at 1.7x, 1.8x NAV and our shares were trading at 1.4. That's a situation where we really got to take a step back and say, should we actually be making the investment in the assets we know better than the new investments at a higher premium.

So I think that kind of thought process would go on internally. So there's no hard condition that says, if we hit this point on a valuation basis, we're going to buy back shares.

Please discuss the subtleties between the terms, royalty and streams and which holds more advantageous?

Who hasn't talked here. Jason can say it.

I think Dan mentioned, we're a bit agnostic. We look at things from a net revenue perspective. The big differences are what the contracts -- how the contracts are written, what they're used for. Streams are often more advantageous from a tax perspective for the operator to write because they're generally not a taxable disposition. If you write a new royalty on an existing mine, it's usually a sale of a capital asset and you got to pay your capital gains tax on it right upfront. There are subtleties around the tax perspective where we sit as well.

And royalties, it depends on what jurisdiction you're in. If you're in British Columbia, Ontario, most of Canada, Nevada, places like that where royalties are registered on title with mines that establishes a very, very strong sense of security around that. Whereas with streams, it's more of a contract and you need to write in your security into that contract. And if there's problems, you got to hope that it survives that the proceedings that might take place that might come by the challenges. So obviously, in writing things like that, we're a lot more careful.

With that question flows into the next one, well. How do we think about security and parent guarantees when we're doing new stream transactions?

Want me to take it? Well, I think Dan touched on it is we look at term sheets as a blank canvas every time we're putting a bid at. We don't come at this with boxes that need to be ticked. And there are ways to structure investments at an operating company without a parent guarantee. All you have to do is control the amount of money that can go up to the parent and outside of your recourse.

And First Quantum is a great example. I mean we spent quite a bit of time looking at First Quantum as a corporate credit to say, okay, if it's unsecured, what is the financial strength of this company? And what we found is even if you never let Cobre Panama open up again, even if you don't let them refinance bonds that are maturing, the company is able to actually repay that debt and become a better credit. Therefore, you don't really need to have the security at that point in time. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good to say I got security and I have a parent guarantee.

My experience in the mining industry is if you get to that point where there's a bankruptcy and you're in a workout, you're not getting $0.80 on the dollar or $0.90 on the dollar. I mean the top guys are probably going to get $0.40 on the dollar. But mining projects that go wrong tend to go wrong. They go horribly wrong. So I would just say we take, I think, a unique situation. I actually heard a competitor say, we won't do a deal unless we have security. I was like, great, that leaves the best credits out there for us. Please keep doing that. But to us, every situation is different, and I just caution people not to say, parent guarantee security, that's a good structure because it may not be what you need. And it may not protect you when things go wrong.

Now that gold prices are as high as they are, does it become more risky as there are more firms willing to take on risks? How do you assess the good deals or the more questionable ones? How many deals do you look at and reject in a year?

Dan, do you want to take the last part first?

Sure, Kim. Yes. And I think we touched on this a little bit in the presentation. We're looking at upwards, as I mentioned, upwards of 80, 90, 100 opportunities a year. Sometimes we look at them very quickly and we discard them very quickly. So it's not like we spend a lot of time on some of them. But that's generally how we go about assessing things as we run it through our screen, and we decide if it's something we want to spend time on from a commercial and technical perspective, and then we make the decision to move forward.

I just think protecting yourselves against a reduction in the gold price. I mean so many of us have been around the industry for so long, right? You see these projects that they didn't work at $2,500, they didn't work at $3,000 an ounce. They're now on their fourth name. It's about finding the quality assets because I think you can't make investments just by thinking the gold price is going to go up.

One of the questions I always ask the team is what's the breakeven price on our investment? What's the impairment price? Where is -- does the mine exist in the fourth quartile? Or is it in the first 3 quartiles because the fourth quartile is going to be the first to go if the gold price does go down. So we try to go into these investments with our eyes open as to what happens if the gold price falls, if.

All right. So I think we've exhausted the questions on the webcast. If there are no further questions by phone, I'll pause for a moment just to double check.

We have a question from the phone line. And our question comes from the line of Brian MacArthur from Raymond James.

So I left my question has been answered, but can you just comment on with the situation at SSR. You've talked about it a little bit, whether you expect to be putting money in this year as a capital call under your joint venture agreement?

Brian, we don't know what that number is, as you can imagine or you would have read SSR was silent on the spending for this year when they announced the strategic review of the project. Obviously, there's still activity going on in the site, just not development. But we will continue to contribute 30% of those costs until we get to a resolution. And I just hope at some point this year, we'll be able to give people sort of a better assessment as to what time line that project is on. I just can't answer that question right now.

Fair enough. And maybe if I could just ask one other one. There's been a little more discussion about some deals being done in Australia now. Are you starting to see more opportunities there from both the royalty and the financing or streaming financing perspective?

Brian, it's Dan here. I think we are. Alistair and I were through Australia about a year ago, we were doing some IR marketing and BD marketing. And we sensed back then that there was a subtle change in the market that operators which traditionally have not really liked our product, we're warming up to it. And I think the deal that Franco announced recently feels like that's really going to help open up the market a bit more over there. So I think in general, we have been seeing more opportunities in Australia, generally speaking, over the last, say, 12 or 18 months.

Operator, any more questions from the phone line?

I'm not showing any further questions at this time.

Great. Thank you. Any more questions from anybody who's in the audience? Cosmos, you want to follow up with a 3-parter or just 1 parter?

Can I ask about Fourmile? I guess, in addition to your GSR, we've now found out that there's an additional NPI. As Dan mentioned, you look at these royalties from your perspective, also the operator's perspective. So from the operator's perspective, does that change the economics in any way? And then part 2 is, is an NPI of interest to you, something like this, would that be of interest to you? And how should we view NPIs at this point in time given the rising gold price environment?

NPIs are always tough. there's so many assumptions. You have to figure out what is actually deductible. You probably have to build inflation in. I won't comment specifically on any one opportunity, but I would just say it's just harder to value than an NSR. But I don't think I fully understood the first part of your question. I wouldn't know how Barrick would be looking at the NPI and how it might influence if that's what you were asking.

Yes. But as Dan mentioned, you look at it from your perspective, their perspective. So any concerns that this could impact your investment, your GSR in any way?

Well, I mean, our royalty contract would not take into consideration -- I don't think it would take into consideration that particular royalty.

I think I know what you're getting at. Does all this royalty burden reduce the mine plan because of the profitability from Barrick's perspective? I think it's pretty early days on Fourmile. They got a PEA. I think everybody agrees it's going to be very -- likely very profitable. It's got the benefit of all the infrastructure at the Cortez complex. So we're not particularly concerned that this is one that's going to weigh on development decisions.

Does it weigh on the decisions around the margin about how much tonnage you do and what the mine plan looks like? Possibly, but I don't think we're going to see that flowing through to our NPI in any material way on an asset of this quality.

Great. See, Bill, the Canadian understands me. So I guess I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. One last question. Alistair, as you mentioned, S&P 500. I'm seeing that right now, Royal Gold in the S&P 400, top 10 now in terms of size. Does that impact any kind of decision that you can move into the S&P 500 in any way?

Well, I think membership of the 400 is helpful. If you've been there for a period of time and you're growing and you've got an established business and you've got earnings and you've got all the good things that come with growing a business over time. So I think it is helpful on the margin. But we really don't have any window into what the index inclusion committee looks at and how they view these things. So I can't really answer that would be speculation on our part, I think.

Any further questions? Okay. Well, thanks very much, everybody. Really appreciate you attending and all the questions we got on the webcast and the phone. We do look forward to giving you updates, obviously, as we go throughout the year and through the coming years. For those in the room, please do join us for the bell ringing ceremony. We'll be heading down there in about 20 minutes, and there are cocktails available as well. So 2 reasons to stick around. Thanks very much.

Presenting is Royal Gold, which is one of the first gold royalty companies. And in fact, it's been in business for over 40 years. As many of you know, we continue to believe that a great way to get exposure to precious metals is through the royalty streaming companies as they give you exposure to precious metals, but they mitigate some of the risks of the alternative investments. Today from the company, we're very pleased to have Bill Heissenbuttel, who is President and CEO. I'm going to turn it over to Bill to give a quick presentation on how the royalty model works, why it's such a good business, and then we'll have a fireside chat. Bill?

Great. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for your interest in Royal Gold, and thanks to Raymond James and Brian for the invitation today. I will be making forward-looking statements. They are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. These risks are discussed in our 10-K filings with the SEC. So for those of you who don't know our company, we are a royalty and streaming company. We're focused on precious metals, gold in particular. What this means is we are not an operator. We do not explore, we do not develop. We do not operate mining projects, but we are instead a passive investor with an interest in metal production or revenue. .

We've been in the royalty and streaming business for over 30 years. We have a portfolio of 360 mineral properties, of which 80 produce revenue for us. We're gold-focused. 78% of last year's revenue came from gold, and over 50% of our revenue came from projects in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. So some of you may wonder why the royalty and streaming space is really the best way to invest in gold. So on a risk basis, physical gold is the lowest risk out there. It's gold that's already been mined, it's already been processed. It's in physical saleable form, but beyond that, you really have our sector and we generate revenue based on mine revenue. Unlike investing in operating companies, we don't have direct exposure to operating costs, capital costs, royalties and taxes, labor costs, fuel costs, and they all impact metal producers. And that's why we also think we have a higher participation in the upside.

We don't have to spend any capital to benefit from mine life extensions, and we benefit from the upside in a very large portfolio of properties. Further out on the scale, you've got junior mining companies that may have a mine or 2, maybe 1 in development, and then you have exploration companies, which are really at the high end of the risk profile. Given the nature of our business, it's a very high margin business. We had an adjusted EBITDA margin of 82% in 2025. And it's a very efficient business. We have a market cap of $24 billion, and we only have 39 employees. So we like to think of our business model. It's a more comprehensive way to invest in gold. So that physical gold ounce, it is always going to be 1 ounce, and you're not going to receive dividends or interest on that investment.

We have the potential for 1 ounce to become 2 ounces or 3 ounces as mines extend their lives and they find new reserves and resources, and we pay a dividend. So we like to say that this is a sector to consider when you're ready for that baby step beyond physical gold. So now I've tried to sell you on the sector, and let's talk about Royal Gold. We have the most diversified portfolio in our sector in terms of consensus NAV estimates. And that diversification really limits the risk associated with a single asset, and the mining industry is full of examples of event risk, whether that's due to technical issues, political issues, environmental, social.

The biggest mining companies in the world don't have anywhere near 80 revenue producers, and they have to allocate capital to develop the assets that they have in their portfolio. So Royal Gold is the only precious metals company that has paid an increasing annual dividend for 25 straight years. We're the only precious metal company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. And that's really both a reflection of our high-margin business, our success over decades in finding new investments. And it's also a reflection of the discipline associated with our capital allocation and returning capital to shareholders. That concludes my intro remarks and looking forward to the conversation.

Thanks, Bill. So maybe we'll start to flesh at the business model first a little bit more because when you look at it, it's quite an amazing model where you can continue to get, as you said, margins over 80% over a year after year over year. But one of the things people push back with now is with gold prices going higher, is it harder to continue to do deals like in the past? Or does this business model only work at the bottom of the cycle?

No. I think the industry works no matter where the price is. You just -- we always think there are new investments, and it's typically -- it's balance sheet restructuring, it's project development or it's M&A. So if the price is high, you're probably going to have more project development opportunities and may actually generate interest in the sector in terms of M&A. And then if the price goes down, now you may have balance sheet restructuring opportunities where a company took on too much debt when the price was higher, it's come back down and they have to -- they need a liquidity event. So it is a model for all cycles.

And maybe just you mentioned development projects. Maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing as opportunities out there in the market right now.

Yes. I mean, right now, I would say we have a few things. We have gold development projects. Obviously, these projects are coming forward at the current price. Equity markets are open, which is good. We're not trying to finance the entire capital investment. So equity markets being open is very important to us. We also have families that own royalties that are looking at the price side. You know what, this is a really good time to get out. I can secure generations of revenue for my family. So we see that. And the thing we're really excited about, I think, are the copper projects that I hope you'll see over the next 5 to 10 years, to the extent a copper project, zinc project, they have precious metal byproducts that can really create some very large investment opportunities for us.

And maybe just as we follow up on that, maybe it's worth discussing like arbitrage you can achieve by taking those precious metals that are potentially copper or zinc projects going forward.

Yes. I mean if you think about a base metal company, what do they trade at, 6x EBITDA, 8x, 10x EBITDA, whatever that is, we trade at a multiple of that. So the precious metals that are a byproduct, as long as you're not streaming away metal that they need for their all-in sustaining costs, the value we apply to it is much higher than what the base metal company sees or experiences. And we just actually had a transaction in our sector where BHP streamed the silver out of its Antamina investment. And what they said was the value they got was actually equal to the entire joint venture interest that they had in this project that's going to go on for decades. It's just -- the metals are worth more in our portfolio than they are in a base metal portfolio.

I guess another topic before we get specifically, I mean, people say, the other thing you mentioned about here is it's a great business. There's 39 of you and you generate lots of revenue. You did it last year, but why hasn't there been more consolidation in the industry? Because if you take the view that you maybe need one more to buy somebody else or whatever the number is, doesn't it make sense to see more consolidation than we do?

It makes sense. The issue you have in our sector is the bigger companies, they trade at higher valuation multiples, the mid-tier companies that really would be the targets trade at lower multiples. And oftentimes, when you talk to those mid-tier companies, what they will always say is, yes, I trade at this multiple now, but I'm 1 or 2 catalysts away from trading at that higher multiple. And then at that higher multiple, I want you to pay a takeover premium. And that's where it doesn't make sense. What we did last year, when we had a situation where the CEO of the company just said, "Look, I think our shareholders are better off in a larger company. I'm willing to negotiate over my current valuation multiple" and in the end, we were able to do an accretive transaction for both sets of shareholders.

So I guess the other thing that's happened, I mentioned you've been around -- you were one of the pioneers in the industry, but there's lots of other people starting to get into this industry, which I guess nothing like somebody copying your business to say it's a good business. What do you see out there? How are you competitive in the market right now? Because obviously, there's more capital around chasing the same deals.

Yes. I mean you compete really 2 issues: value and structure. Value being, are you going to pay the most for that particular asset. And I would say we rarely win that end of the transaction. There's always somebody who is willing to pay more. Where we try to differentiate ourselves is the structuring. And I often tell our business development team don't sit on the opposite side of the table negotiating with the company. Imagine yourself on that side of the table, how do we structure this investment so that it works best for them. And the example I always give is a mining company has a project, but they also have a bond issue that's going to mature in 3, 4 years. Why not take the stream investment and have a lower stream payout over that period of time, allow them to have the liquidity to pay off the bond and then take the stream obligation up.

It's that there are no boxes that we have to tick when it comes to structuring these, so we say everything is a blank canvas and just use your imagination to structure good investments.

So maybe if we explore that a little bit more. I mean one of the things you've seen some people do is put step downs or caps or collars. How do you think about that? Because I think when you start the process, the objects to try and pay for what you see and get everything else for free, if I can put it that way.

Yes. I mean the industry really has changed. And just to be clear, we really try not to do caps. I don't think we've ever done a cap. These are life-of-mine contracts. We want exposure to that mine over the full extent of its life. Now step-downs are commonplace in our industry. And by that, I mean your stream rate is, say, it's at 10% until you get through what is known as the reserve and then maybe it drops to 5%. And the thought process there was we want the operator to have an interest in continuing to extend the mine life. So if you say to them, you're going to get half of this economic interest in gold or silver back, does that provide more incentive to explore and maybe expand?

And that's really the reason behind the step downs to better align us with the operators because these are life-of-mine contracts.

And just maybe not to get in too much into details, but I think one of the things that comes up is you're taking the gold and silver, say from the producer. Why don't they mine in another area if you have a big royalty on a certain area and they don't, how do you think about that when you try and structure stuff so that you are motivated again to do the same thing that's best for everybody.

Yes, it's probably -- it's one of the bigger challenges and again, example is sort of an underground mine where you may have a zone that is precious metals rich. And we look at it and say, well, we want you to mine that as soon as possible and maybe the operator says, well, the economics to me after the stream are I should mine in a different area, and that's where you have to build in covenants that basically say, you're not going to disproportionately hurt our interest. You're going to mine this mine as though you own 100% interest in all of the metal. And I think so far, those covenants have worked. We haven't had an issue where people were changing the mine plan because they didn't like the economics to us.

Unfortunately, in this sector, too, you can't move your assets. So we've seen some challenges where some companies have lost some assets for maybe governments changed a rule or something, maybe we're entering that sphere now, too. How do you think about jurisdictional risk when you structure your portfolio? And what can you maybe do to -- you can't totally get rid of it, but minimize it?

No. I mean when we're making investments in Turkey or Zambia or Ghana, I mean, the reality is we are taking political risk. And you can't just look at the current administration, the President, the Congress, whatever it is, and you say, Oh, they're mining friendly. Now it's the time to make the investment. Our investments take decades to develop. And I guarantee you're going to have 5 or 6 regime changes within a country, and some of these people are not going to like mining. So what we try to do is identify countries where mining is important. It's important to the economy. It's important to employment, important to export earnings. And the more you can find that, the better off you're going to be. I think I was commenting, Peru is on its seventh President in 6 years. I mean, in 10 years, I don't know what it is, but it doesn't matter. Peru is a mining country. And the local politics are probably more important than what's going in Lima at that time.

The one event risk that we did have was in Panama, and it wasn't in our portfolio. It was a competitor's portfolio. And if you look around and say, well, how did the Panamanian government allow this to happen. Well, there's no mining industry in Panama. There's no industry to destroy if you get in the way of 1 particular mining operation. So that's really what we look for there. So there's safety in numbers. And we're looking for the numbers.

And maybe when you start to try and do one of these deals, like what sort of targeted IRRs do you start with, and I imagine you adjust for regions and everything else. But maybe just to give people a general feel because there's lots of numbers thrown in the market about what the rate of returns are on deals.

Yes. It's funny. The only time anybody talks about returns on deals is on day 1, which is exactly the wrong time to look at our investments because you may see a 10-year reserve life and our investment, you may calculate and say, well, that's a 3% return. That's a 4% return. That doesn't make any sense. Well, the reason we did it is because our geologists looked at the upside and said, this isn't a 10-year mine life. This thing is going to go for 20 years or 25 years, and we have a demonstrated history of investing in assets that get better with time. We always say good mines get better. And so we talk about ultimate returns, and ultimate returns are often north of 10%, which in our business is very acceptable. So it's a little bit hard. There isn't an initial hurdle rate. There isn't an initial IRR that we have to have. It's all about the upside.

And maybe if I ask you, one of the questions we get from investors is in a bullish gold market, we should just buy producers and not royalty companies because they don't have as much optionality. If I ask you that, what would your rebuttal be to that?

If that's the way you want to invest in gold, go find the highest cost producer because that's where the greatest leverage is going to be. I just say, just to understand that if the gold price turns around, leverage works the other way as well. And our leverage is different, and it's longer term and maybe it's a little harder to identify when the gold price goes up, what do operators do? They tend to increase the price they use to calculate reserves and resources. So now that 15-year mine life because of those assumption changes is now 20 years or 25 years, we have an interest in all of that.

So it's a much more subtle leverage to the gold price. And we -- I mean, we have a portfolio of exploration properties. These companies are now -- some of them are able to raise equity, and they're putting it in the ground. We don't have any value on our balance sheet for those investments, but they are being advanced without us spending any money. That's leverage to gold price. It's just not the obvious one that's in EPS or cash flow per share.

And I guess the other thing that comes up is they tend to trade at higher multiples than producers. Why do you think that is? The Royalty companies in trade.

It's a very different business model. I mean, when I was talking, you look at what's going on in the world right now. Do you think operating companies are a little worried about what the price of diesel is going to be very shortly? We don't have that exposure. We don't have exposure to labor costs. I'm sure there are governments out there that are thinking of increasing royalty rates and taxes given where the metal prices are. We're not impacted by any of that -- and so I'd say, yes, we do trade at a premium, probably a premium that many generalists are not as comfortable with. But I think it's just a lower risk, high margin business that deserves a premium.

And the other thing I would say, I mean, we've been in this business for decades. It's always been this way. It's not as though you're buying into some blip in valuations. This sector has always traded at very high multiples.

Maybe moving directly then to some of your assets and stuff. I'll maybe just start. Last year, you did 2 big transactions. And one of the things you've been very -- you haven't done a lot of is issue shares. But you did for a transaction last year. I mean, I think before this, you hadn't issued a single share since 2012, which in this sector is rare. Can you maybe talk about why that was done, why you used shares and then why you did Kansanshi with debt?

Yes. So first of all, the senior management team at Sandstorm wanted shares, they wanted to participate, the transaction was accretive. So we didn't mind issuing those shares. But more importantly, when we announced Sandstorm, we knew the Kansanshi process was ongoing. There was a bidding process. We knew First Quantum, the operator, needed cash to address debt service obligations. So if we had allocated a lot of cash to the Sandstorm transaction, we would not have had the cash available to do Kansanshi and we really wanted to do both of them. I think it would have helped the market understand why we did shares if we had announced Kansanshi first, but that's not the way things work in our sector.

So it was really a function of this is what the target wants, but more importantly, we had to preserve liquidity for a transaction that then got announced less than a month later.

And I guess where we sit today now, you do have some debt on your balance sheet. Maybe you can talk about capital allocation, again, the same issue you want to keep capacity available in case you -- because you never know when these deals are going to come up. How you're looking at allocating capital now over the next year or so?

Yes. I mean look, we're still open for business. We're looking for new investments. That's where I think we can add value if we can buy an asset at a PNAV price that is below where we trade, that is going to enhance the value. But as you say, it's a really lumpy business. And there are years when we don't make an investment and with the debt on the balance sheet to the extent we have that cash, we will repay the revolving credit. Currently, there's about $725 million outstanding and we think at the current metal prices, that would be paid off in about a year. But that doesn't mean we're not looking for new investments, but that will be -- that's sort of the second step for allocation. And then the dividend that I referred to is really the third leg to the stool. We're very proud of the 25 consecutive years.

And I will say, when we increase it in a year, we're not looking at it saying, well, we can afford to pay this next year, we look at it and say, if we increase it to this level, can we continue to increase it in years 3, 4, 5, 10 and so there is a -- you might look at our dividend increases and say, well, given where the metal price is, you could have done more, and they say, well, we're trying to retain this record. And if you pay out a huge amount 1 year and you have to pull it back, that would be -- that would not be a good outcome for us.

Progressive dividend basically at the end of the day. The other thing that people will bring up is you trade maybe at a little bit of a -- I mean, we -- generally, the larger companies get much better liquidity and they get a premium in the market. But you may be trading at a discount, I would argue in a moment versus your 2 big competitors. Why do you think that is at the moment?

Well, a couple of things. They are much bigger. So I'm sure there's a liquidity factor in there. But we were so busy last year. I mean, we did almost $5 billion of investments. I can tell you that previously, the highest investment year was about $1 billion, and that was in 2015. So these years don't come around very much. And I just think there was so much going on in the portfolio, I think people had a hard time and still have a hard getting their arms around what this company looks like on a consolidated basis. We only had 1 quarter of Kansanshi. We only had 1 quarter of Sandstorm's assets.

So we'll get a full year this year. We have a couple of other projects that I expect will come in this year. But I think that's part of the discount. I think there is always with investors a show-me element. You don't always get paid for what's coming. They want to see it. And that's what I hope happens this year as we put 4 quarters together with very boring, no noise, and we can demonstrate what the company can do.

And maybe to address the other thing, when you did the Sandstorm transaction, we might just say some of the -- some of it was a little more complicated than a standard royalty model. Can you talk about what you've done to clean that up and what you may have to do going forward? And really put in perspective how big that really is in the overall portfolio now?

Yes. So I mean Sandstorm was a complicated company. They had created this affiliate Horizon Copper to house a joint venture because they didn't want the joint venture on their balance sheet. And we could have just bought Sandstorm and kept Horizon independent. But there were so many intercompany transactions, streams, loans. It was taking a lot of time. So we just -- let's just collapse the whole thing, let's get rid of all of that intercompany -- all the intercompany relationship. And so what we were really left with Sandstorm did make equity and debt investments in a number of companies, and we said that's not core to our business. let's try to get rid of them. We've done a pretty good job. We got -- we sold the Versamet shares. It's another royalty company that Sandstorm had owned about 25% of. We sold that in a block and then we restructured another debt and equity investment in a smaller mining company by supporting a merger.

So we're really down to 2, we have a 24% interest in Entree Resources, which has a joint venture in Mongolia on the outer edges of Oyu Tolgoi and we think there's going to be -- we think there's a possibility of there being a value event. They're working with the government of Mongolia on a couple of things. So we'll be a little bit patient but it's the same concept. We don't want to hold it, let's try to sell it. We know people are interested. And the other one is the Hot Maden joint venture. This is the joint venture that Sandstorm tried to get off of its balance sheet. And we are going to try to convert a joint venture interest, which has capital cost and operating cost exposure into something that looks more traditional, more familiar in our portfolio. Those discussions are early stage, but that's -- it's really a priority for us this year.

Maybe I'll stop. Are there any questions in the audience?

Given where the gold price currently is, can you talk about the contracts that you have with mines, which will come into operation if the price stays at these levels? In other words, how much sort of embedded production do you have if gold stays at the current price versus your current volume of production?

Well, I mean, I think the growth projects that we would talk about would be in production at $4,000 an ounce or $3,000 an ounce. I mean one of them is Platreef in South Africa. That's a PGM mine. So it really is not driven by the gold price, MARA in Argentina is basically a copper project that is owned by Glencore. That's not dependent on the gold price. If there are projects that move forward because the price is where it is, that's gravy. It's not even anything more we're talking about in terms of growth. I'm sure there are projects that are right on the edge and make sense here. But you can't -- the mining industry, you don't just flip a switch and a mine can come on.

There's exploration, study, permitting, it takes years, even if you wanted to, today, bring a gold mine in at $5,000 an ounce, you really can't do it. It's going to take 3, 4, 5-plus years.

But have you seen ones at say $3,000 earlier on last year, might now be progressing.

They might be, but they're probably not very large in our portfolio.

Do you have any [indiscernible].

No, I don't think so. I look at the evaluation and exploration as where we may see things blossom that we're not even talking about right now, but the chance that they are of significant value to our company, it's a little unlikely.

Though maybe it's worth -- one of the other things that was done a year ago was the Cortez stuff. It might be worth just talking about, there's a lot of chatter now about this new discovery Fourmile, I think not everybody realizes you even have a royalty on it. But that's -- to your question, that's an example where you probably bought something and you thought you'd find something, but...

We thought -- yes, we thought -- we were very confident that there was upside at Cortez. Cortez is the backbone of Royal Gold. It was -- through the '90s, it was 95% of our revenue. We've had decades of exposure to it. Three years ago, we actually expanded our footprint to include the whole complex. We did not have all of Cortez. And those transactions in 2022 actually brought us exposure to Goldrush to Cortez Hills and to Fourmile. And I think we expected something like Fourmile, but not the grade, not the scale and not in the time since the acquisition. I thought this would play out over 5 to 10 years, and here we sit 3 years later with one of the best discoveries in the industry recently.

Does that help?

Yes.

Are there any other questions? So maybe just -- we just got about 1.5 minutes left. Maybe just talk a little bit about concentration risk, too, because one of the things that used to be talked about was it's a chicken and egg thing. The best assets you want to have a lot of them. But if you have too much of them if something goes wrong, that's not so good either. Can you maybe talk about what the portfolio looks like now on a concentration risk basis because it's changed substantially after all your work last year.

Yes. The rule #1 of mining, something's going to go wrong. I promise you that. So if you were to go back 10 years. Mount Milligan, our biggest asset, probably would have been 35% of our revenue and 30% of our net asset value. And we had -- there were certain events that happened. One year, they ran out of water to run the mill and they had to shut down and our share price just really felt the impact of that. And so it's really been a strategic goal of ours to diversify the portfolio. So yes, if something bad happens at Milligan, you're going to see it, but it's not to the extent that it did then. And if you look around our sector, every one of the major companies has some sort of concentration risk, whether that's Salobo at Wheaton, you've got Cobre at Franco, Malartic [indiscernible] I mean everyone has it. And that's why I made the point up there of having the most diversified portfolio. No asset other than Milligan represents more than 10% of our NAV. And that also helps with political risk.

You say, oh, you're in Turkey, I'm nervous about Turkey. It's 4% of our NAV. Diversification to me is critical to having a quality portfolio.

Well, that's a perfect segue. And thank you very much, Bill, for going through the model and look forward to seeing the multiple catch-up to everybody else. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.

For anybody who's interested, there'll be a breakout in Cordova 6.

Okay. We are going to kick off the Royal Gold session. Royal Gold is a precious metals royalty and stream company with a portfolio of 364 properties across 30 countries at various stages of development. And joining us today from Royal Gold is President and CEO, Bill Heissenbuttel. Thanks for joining, Bill. We're going to do a fireside chat here, and feel free to send questions in the app if you want to get involved.

Bill, you described 2025 as a transformational year for the company. And rightfully so, there were several big deals, including the acquisition of Sandstorm and Horizon. How do you feel about the portfolio that you've built so far? Does it have enough growth in it? Are you happy with the duration, the maturity, the stream, royalty mix? the geographies? Or are there any areas you're still looking to optimize?

Sure. And first of all, thank you for allowing us to participate in the conference. I agree with Paul's comments that this is probably the premier investor event put on in our industry. So thank you again. Yes, last year was really busy. And we are extremely pleased with where the company sits right now. The Sandstorm, Horizon transaction really allowed us to take the strengths of both companies and put them together into one company. And by that, I mean, we had a very strong producing portfolio, whether that's Milligan, Pueblo Viejo, Cortez.

What Sandstorm brought was actually a very strong development portfolio. I think most of the value of that company was in development assets like Platreef, like MARA, like Hod Maden. And you put those assets together with our growth assets, Red Chris, Great Bear. And I would say the number of growth assets that we could point to has probably more than doubled. So we now have a slide, we're probably talking about 10 different properties on the growth side. So it was strength and strength in putting it together and making, I think, a stronger company. Diversification has been a long-term focus for us. I think if you follow the industry, everybody has a concentration, whether it's Wheaton at Salobo or it's Franco (sic) [ Franco-Nevada ] at Cobre or us at Milligan. And that subjects you to event risk, which we have seen. And so trying to reduce the biggest assets to something smaller has been a core focus. And the way we calculate the consensus NAV for assets is that Milligan is the only asset that's above 10% of our portfolio on a NAV basis. And I think that's really strong.

In terms of the rest of the issues that you raised, the number of royalties versus the number of streams, we don't really care what they are. I think when I first started as CEO, people would ask me, are you going to do more streams or royalties? And I would have said we're going to do many more streams. And I think 6 of the first 7 deals were royalties. You just -- you never know in this industry what's going to come forward, and we don't really care.

Political risk, even though we did add a number of countries, we added South Africa, we added Turkey, we added Zambia last year. But again, the diversification certainly helps that. People say, well, you're new in Turkey. Well, okay, Turkey is 4% of our NAV as it stands right now. So I think that's good. And we like the countries we're in. I would say when we look at political risk, it's really about understanding how important is this industry to the country. Does the government understand the importance? Does it produce important tax revenue? I think where mining companies get in trouble, sometimes you go into a country that does not have that culture, does not have that understanding. And so when things go wrong, you don't have the industry coming behind you to sort of support you with the government. So I think that's good.

And I think the final thing you touched on was duration. And that includes Sandstorm and Horizon, but includes Kansanshi, which is a couple of decades. And then 2 events that we really had nothing to do with, and that was the Mount Milligan life of mine extension, taking that mine life from the mid-2030s to 2045. Our biggest asset now has 2 decades of potential life in front of it. And then there was Fourmile at Cortez, and they've laid out a plan of 600,000 to 750,000 ounces over 25 years. And I'd say we've been associated with Cortez for 3.5 decades, you may see us associated with it for another 3.5 decades.

Yes. So maybe let's spend some time on some of the bigger assets that you talked about there. Mount Milligan, you mentioned, continues to work on the life extension to 2045, which is a big positive. But Centerra has also been looking to improve its understanding of recovery and throughput. So how much optimization do you think is possible there this year? Is there anywhere the market might be misunderstanding the potential of the asset?

Yes. I don't know if it's recovery so much as I think it's grade. And I think they've done a lot of infill drilling to better understand some of the grade issues that they've had. They have had issues with guidance in the last 2 years, but my understanding is the drilling that they're doing has actually helped to inform some of the life of mine plan. And so it's always when you have challenges that you learn something and you use that to make things better going forward.

I really think when it comes to Milligan, investors sort of take a show-me approach as opposed to just saying, oh, it's 2045. They want to see the results. They want to see Centerra address some of the short-term issues. The one thing I don't think people really appreciate is that if you look at the life of mine extension plan, the tailings storage facility they're building will accommodate much more material than a 2045 mine plan. And I know Paul has been talking about a longer mine plan than that. So I think there's a lot more potential at Milligan than people really appreciate.

Interesting. Another asset I was curious about Pueblo Viejo. Metallurgy has been a bit challenging there. Do you have any sense how far away the operator is from figuring out the -- I mean, the gold side of things and ultimately driving up the silver?

Yes. To be frank, PV has been disappointing recently. And I know Barrick has tried very hard to address a number of the issues on the recovery side. I think our understanding of the issue right now is the weathered nature of the stockpile is causing some of these issues. And from what we've heard, that stockpile is going to continue to be processed over the short term. So I still think we go there every year. We've actually brought metallurgists to site to talk to them. I think there's a potential solution. I just don't think it's in the short term.

Okay. Also, you touched on Kansanshi in Zambia. That was the addition of another cornerstone asset for Royal Gold. Actually, First Quantum said yesterday, biggest ever investment by a U.S. corporate in Zambia. We actually got to go see the asset late last year and met with the President. And I think it seems like a great jurisdiction where they want to grow copper. But what do you see to the upside of Kansanshi in the long term?

Yes. So we start with a 20-year mine plan, which is a great start. Our area of interest covers the entire mining license. I think it's somewhere on the order of 250 square kilometers. Our geologists have looked at it and sort of said, well, we think there's potential here, potential there. I think the other upside is I will refer to it as laterite gold, but there's -- they've been working on that concept, that idea. And people will say, well, but your stream is geared towards copper production. So if that gold production actually started, you won't see anything.

And I would say, at the time, we would have had no idea what we were buying. They would have had no idea what they were selling, but we have a relationship, we have a contract. And to the extent that opportunity comes up in the future, we are very well positioned. And I see that as a potential upside.

Interesting. Another big area of discussion in the gold sector has been Cortez in Nevada. The JV has been advancing Goldrush and Barrick's adding ounces on Fourmile. So has the magnitude of Fourmile been surprising to Royal Gold? And do you have a view on how Royal Gold's cash flow profile plays out in that district?

Yes. The only thing I think that has surprised me personally at Fourmile is the speed with which it has developed. When we did the Royalty acquisitions in 2022 and people criticized us. They said, you paid a lot of money for what you see. And our geologists, again, I go back to we've been associated with the property for 3 decades. And to criticize the transaction in 2022 would be to say, Cortez is done. There's never -- there are no new ounces. And we -- our geologists looked at the upside and said, that's not the case. So we expected a Fourmile. I didn't expect it in 3 years. I thought that would develop over time. And in my opening remarks about the potential there, Fourmile, when I say 25 to 30 years, they're going to study it for the rest of the decade. So it's probably 25 to 30 years from 2030. And so it just -- there's a long runway there ahead for us.

Interesting. Yes, we did a site visit there and one of the exploration guys said they were trying to shorten the gap between major discoveries from every decade to every 3 years. So maybe it's right on pace.

Yes.

Elsewhere in the portfolio, which of your assets have important expansion studies or ramp-ups occurring this year that the market should be aware of?

Well, I think the first thing to appreciate is the fact that Kansanshi only contributed a quarter's worth of revenue. The Sandstorm assets only contributed 70 days to our portfolio. So now we've got a full year of all of those assets. So that is one primary source of growth for 2026. I think the other one is Goose is ramping up. Now the Goose royalty that we have starts at 0.7% and over a couple of years goes up to 3.3%. So that will take a little more time, but you will see that progress.

And I think the other one I might just mention is Platreef, which, as you know, just started production in the fourth quarter of last year. Again, this is one of the Sandstorm growth assets, and we would expect to start receiving deliveries in -- sometime during this year.

I'd like to touch upon Hod Maden, one of your assets where you've got a 30% equity stake. Can you talk about the time line to deliver that project? And how can you go about customizing your exposure, maybe maintaining more conventional streamer royalty exposure to the asset?

Yes, when we talk about time to deliver, we're not trying to deliver Hod Maden as a joint venture partner. So really, our priority here, Hod Maden came with the Horizon Copper acquisition. You could have said, well, you could have just bought Sandstorm and left Horizon alone, but there were so many intercompany issues and instruments that we just said, let's just buy -- let's get both companies, get rid of all of the complexity, but we're going to have to deal with the joint venture. It's not something that is part of our strategic focus. Buying Hod Maden is not an indication that we're going off into joint ventures as an acceptable form of investment.

So the priority for this year really is to try to sell that 30% interest and convert it into something that looks a bit more normal for what we do, whether that's a royalty or a stream, you just have to get the valuation right. You have to get the structure right. I think SSR has been kind of focused on the technical study that was done towards the end of last year and then the press release that came out, and now having a dialogue with the partners about an investment decision. So there's not much to report in terms of progress there. But again, it is a priority there to try to convert what has cost overrun risk to something that doesn't have cost overrun risk.

Is there anything else in the portfolio after the acquisition of Sandstorm that you would look at as noncore or that should be rationalized? And what are the catalysts to realize value on those assets?

We've done a pretty good job so far. The Versamet block that we sold towards the end of last year and people would look at it and say, well, a big mark-to-market loss there. But you're talking about a 25% equity position in a company with no liquidity and the shares actually had trading restrictions for a period of time. So we had to get Versamet involved to be able to do it. You're just going to sell that at a discount. There's no way around it. So really pleased to generate almost USD 150 million and pay down debt with it.

There have been -- there are a number of other smaller equity positions in the portfolio that we've been chipping away at. No one's really going to notice. But again, it keeps people focused on royalties and streams as opposed to what do I do with this equity position. The other big equity position is Entrée. It's a little bit like Versamet. It's 20-plus percent. But I think with Entrée, they got to get the licenses into OT LLC to get the development of Lift 1 going. And if they can do that, there may be a valuation enhancement that goes on. So I think we might be a little more patient with that one and see what happens. Other than that, it's really the Hod Maden joint venture. The only other thing that I would say just really doesn't fit. We're not looking to sell the royalties and streams in the Sandstorm, Horizon portfolio that we inherited.

Okay. Let's move the conversation over to the deal environment. I thought it was interesting in your Q4 conference call, there was a comment, maybe the $100 million to $300 million category deal has evolved into a $200 million to $500 million deal size bracket. Is that just a function of metal price and the amount of -- the ounces that you're looking to acquire in a given transaction? What's driving the size upgrade?

Yes. We haven't set a minimum investment hurdle that we have to get to. We're not targeting specific volumes of GEOs. It's just the reality that in this gold price environment, every GEO you buy is more expensive than it was 3 years ago or 2 years ago. So the market really hasn't changed. Yes, we have seen a number of billion-dollar transactions. I don't know that, that is now the norm. I think it's still going to be the sub-$500 million. It's just those transactions are more expensive these days.

And what types of deal motivation are you seeing in the market right now, M&A, debt, project development or exploration?

There's always project development. There's always something gold at these prices, you're going to have projects move forward into development. You just have to be a little bit picky about the assets that you invest in because we all know projects that didn't work at $2,500 or $3,000 and now they work, okay, is that really the investment that you want to make. So we got to have a little bit of discipline on that front.

I think one of the greatest things, and it's really come up just in the last few days is M&A because if you go back, Milligan was actually originally an M&A transaction, primarily. Most of the money was to buy Terrane, and there was a small piece for construction of Mount Milligan. But then we went through this period where Newmont bought Goldcorp. They're going to be -- they're going to divest noncore assets. They are going to be streaming opportunities, Randgold-Barrick, exact same thing. Nothing ever happened. And so I kind of lost faith that these things would actually lead to opportunities.

Now we weren't the ones to do the transactions, but a Casa Berardi, a Porcupine, a Hemlo, it just establishes the industry as a source of financing in M&A, like I've never really seen it. And I think that's really positive. And I think you just talked to Paul about the fact that doing a big deal in Australia, fantastic. We always said we need one to get everybody else in Australia to at least listen to us. All we want is to be able to walk in the door and just pitch what we do because we think it makes sense.

And then the large Antamina transaction, if BHP is willing to do it. Okay, Rio Tinto, are you thinking of Antofagasta, Southern Copper. Every time a bigger company uses the streaming product, it potentially opens the door at least to a conversation where we can say this is why we think our product makes sense. So I feel as good about the doors being opened in this industry as I've ever been. And I've been here for 20 years, and I started -- we were the lender of last resort, right? You didn't get to see anything of the debt and the equity markets were open. And now we are part of the conversation when it comes to raising capital.

Interesting. But did you make a comment earlier that you didn't think we'd see that many above billion dollar deals?

It's just rare. I mean if you go back, I mean, you had Cobre was $1 billion. The Vale, Sudbury, Salobo transaction was above -- was $2 billion. didn't see any other ones. And all of a sudden, last year, you've got Cote $1 billion, Kansanshi $1 billion. You can throw Sandstorm at $3.5 billion in there. And now we have Antamina. So because they're more expensive, but I just think there's more opportunity.

And then the other theme in the space is consolidation, and you've been a consolidator. How do you feel about the current state of competition? And are -- you still think that we're going to see more of that in the market?

Yes. I have joked we've done our part. I would say right now, we're really focused on integrating. And as simple as this business appears, when you inherit 200-plus properties and you have due diligence, not so much before the acquisition, but when I say diligence, I mean, understand each and every asset, hire law firms and just say, does the royalty still exist? Is it registered? Should it be registered? It takes a lot of time. So I can't see us being involved in the short term.

I think if OR and Triple Flag, there were to be consolidation there, I think it would help competition a little bit. We see them in most every bidding process that we're involved in. I think the smaller guys right now, we don't really see them that much. So from a [ talent of hawks ] happen to get together, I don't think it would change the competitive landscape. But for competition, all you need is 2, 2 or 3. And as long as we've got 4 or 5, the impact on competition is going to be, I think, marginal.

Another theme that I've asked about in some other sessions is around North America getting more serious about mining, supporting the sector, streamlining permitting. You've got a big footprint in Canada and the U.S. Are you seeing any benefit of those efforts in your asset portfolio?

I'm hopeful because some of the assets that have benefited very recently. You have a federal -- in Canada, you have a federal designation associated with Red Chris. You have provincial designations of Milligan and Great Bear. And anything that is designed to advance permitting quicker is just good for our portfolio. So that's where most of the impact is. And within the U.S., we bought a royalty on the Cactus project in Arizona, copper being a critical mineral. I'm hopeful that they will also see sort of a fast track to permitting.

And then I mean, maybe in the closing moments here, just interested if there's assets in the portfolio that you think have the best long-term organic growth potential that you think might be underappreciated in the market. I'd be interested to hear your take on them.

Well, Cortez, we've talked about. I think that will always probably have the best organic growth potential. I think second, I'd probably put Xavantina. And I don't know if you recall Xavantina, we made the investment in 2021, and the mine plan at the time ended in 2026. And our geologists said, I don't really care if it's a 5-year mine plan. The potential here is substantial. And we get to 2026 at the end of -- well, the end of last year, Ero filed a technical report with a mine plan that starts in 2026 and now goes to 2032. And that's the kind of upside. That's the secret sauce. If we see that kind of upside, we -- I think we're doing our job properly.

And then we made another investment early last year, and you may say the economics didn't change all that much, but what we did is we increased the area of interest. And again, our geologists remain really, really excited about that one. I think Wassa, when Chifeng bought Golden Star, I think Wassa kind of disappeared from public view a little bit. And you go back to 2015 when we made that investment, the mine plan went out to 2022, still operating. Chifeng did an Independent Competent Person's Report a couple of years ago showing the potential to 2049. And again, when we got into the investment, that was the kind of upside we were hoping to see.

I think the last one, I'll put Milligan on that list. You're building a tailings storage facility for much more than 20 years. There's a lot of material there, and you may see that one show a lot of organic growth.

We're going to go see Xavantina with Ero in the fall. So they had this pile of gold concentrates that they've been selling. Is that something you knew about in the deal? And was it easy to put a value on it?

We didn't know about it when we did the deal, but that was our idea. We had a guy on site who said, look at all this material, have you ever thought about marketing that? So when we say we're a partner, we're not just a financing partner. We like to think of ourselves as an operating partner and the idea was a member of our team being on site and calling it to their attention.

That's great. Well, I think we covered a lot of bases there. Really appreciate the Q&A. Thanks, Bill.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call Royal Gold 2025 Full Year and Fourth Quarter Conference Call. During today's call, we will have a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alistair Baker to begin. Please go ahead when you are ready.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our discussion of Royal Gold's fourth quarter and year-end 2025 results. This event is being webcast live, and a replay of this call will be available on our website. Speaking on the call today are Bill Heissenbuttel, President and CEO; Paul Libner, Senior Vice President and CFO; and Martin Raffield, Senior Vice President of Operations. Other members of the management team are also available for questions.

During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements and other projections and expectations for the future. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in yesterday's press release and our filings with the SEC.

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted net income per share, adjusted EBITDA and cash G&A. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in yesterday's press release, which can be found on our website.

Bill will start with an overview of 2025 performance. Martin will provide portfolio commentary and Paul will give a financial update on the quarter. After the formal remarks, we'll open the lines for a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Bill.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. I'll begin on Slide 4. 2025 was a transformational year for Royal Gold. We set records for revenue, operating cash flow and earnings and completed some material acquisitions that set us up very well for the current strong gold price environment and over the longer term.

We also had developments within our portfolio that adds significant value to some of our largest assets. For the full year, revenue was $1 billion. Operating cash flow was $705 million, and earnings were $466 million. These were increases of 43%, 33% and 40%, respectively, over 2024. After adjusting for unusual items throughout the year, net income was a record $510 million a 47% increase over 2024.

We are a gold-focused company, and gold contributed 78% of total revenue for the year. The strong gold price, combined with our low and stable cash G&A allowed us to maintain an adjusted EBITDA margin of 82% for the year. During the year, we paid over $118 million to shareholders and dividends and raised our annual dividend to $1.90 per share for 2026.

This is the 25th consecutive annual dividend increase, which is an unmatched record in the precious metals industry. Since our first dividend in 2000, we have returned approximately $1.2 billion to shareholders. We were very active during the year and made several meaningful acquisitions. We acquired Sandstorm Gold and Horizon Copper, which allowed us to meaningfully grow and diversify our portfolio.

We now have the largest and most diversified portfolio of mining assets in our sector. We acquired a gold stream on the producing Kansanshi mine from First Quantum, which adds another large, long life and cash flowing assets to the portfolio. And we acquired a gold stream and royalty on the Warintza development project increased our exposure to the Xavantina mine and added a further royalty interest on the Lawyers-Ranch project.

Our portfolio performed well during the year, and we achieved full repayment of the advanced stream deposits on a Rainy River, Pueblo Viejo and Andacollo mine. We acquired these interests in 2015 and each remains an important contributor to the portfolio. We also saw some very positive news from within the portfolio with the life of mine extension at Mount Milligan, the recently approved expansion at Khoemacau, and significant exploration success of Fourmile.

And finally, we got off to a quick start on rationalizing and simplifying the Sandstorm and Horizon portfolios. The integration of these portfolios is largely complete, and we're looking forward to further daylighting the value in those portfolios. Paul will discuss the fourth quarter in more detail, but I'd like to comment that there were several unusual financial items last year and in particular, this last quarter that were onetime in nature and related to this acquisition activity.

We started 2026 with these items behind us, and we are hosting an Investor Day on March 31 to put our 2025 activity into context, provide 2026 guidance and give directions on how we see growth over the longer term.

Turning to Slide 5. We performed well in 2025 compared to guidance. Our annual guidance was issued in March 2025 based on the interest in our portfolio at that time. We didn't update guidance during the year to include the impacts of the Sandstorm, Horizon or Kansanshi acquisitions and we likewise didn't include the impacts of these acquisitions in the comparison of actual results to our guidance ranges.

Compared to the guidance ranges for the year before the new acquisitions, all categories were within the guidance range except for revenue from other metals, which exceeded the high end of that range.

I'll now turn the call over to Martin to discuss portfolio performance in the fourth quarter.

Thanks, Bill.

Turning to Slide 6. Portfolio performance was solid for the quarter. Volume was 90,800 GEOs with record revenue of $375 million, which included new revenue of $32 million from Kansanshi and $49 million from Sandstorm, Horizon. We closed the Sandstorm, Horizon transaction on October 20, so the revenue from these interest does not reflect the full quarter.

Royalty revenue was up by 42% from the prior-year quarter to $111 million. We saw very strong revenue from the quarter's CC Zone in Penasquito, partially offset by weaker revenue from the Cortez legacy zone. Revenue from our stream segment was $265 million, up over 110% from the same period last year. We saw higher contributions from all our stream interest with materially higher sales from Pueblo Viejo, Andacollo, Rainy River and Mount Milligan.

I'll now turn to Slide 7 and give some high-level commentary on notable developments within the portfolio in the last quarter. The portfolio has grown to include interest on about 80 producing and 30 development assets. And we've changed our disclosure this quarter to group our interest on a regional basis and break out the revenue for the largest interests. This should help you track our most material revenue drivers.

At Mount Milligan, Centerra reported it continues to progress engineering and studies to support permitting for the life of mine extension to 2045. At Pueblo Viejo, Barrick reported continued progress on the life of mine extension with a focus on housing and resettlement and the engineering and permitting for the new tailings facility.

Barrick also reported guidance for its share of gold production of 350,000 to 400,000 ounces in 2026. At Cortez, Barrick reported continued exploration success at Fourmile with the extension of the Dorothy zone and identification of new mineralization below the Mill Canyon stock and down to the Charlie area. Barrick also reported 2026 production guidance for the quarters complex of approximately 700,000 to 780,000 ounces on a 100% basis.

Our royalties overlap the quarters, and we expect an average blended royalty rate of 3.5% to 4% over this production in 2026 versus 2.6% in 2025.

At Xavantina, Ero filed an updated technical report showing a 4-year extension to the life of mine to 2032. Ero expects 2026 gold production to range between 40,000 and 50,000 ounces. Ero further disclosed that it sold approximately 15,000 ounces of gold and gold concentrate in the fourth quarter, and it expects concentrate sales to continue through mid-2027.

The sale of gold and gold concentrate is not included in their guidance. At Fruta del Norte, Lundin Gold reported continued exploration success and recent drilling continues to advance the understanding of the emerging porphyry belt adjacent to the mine. Lundin has identified a large intrusive complex hosting several shallow copper-gold porphyry systems within a short distance of each other, and the newest discovery extends the porphyry corridor to at least 10 kilometers in length.

At MARA, Glencore reported that feasibility study work is ongoing with a final investment decision targeted for the second half of 2027. And first production expected from the Agua Rica deposit in 2031.

At Kansanshi, we received our first stream delivery in early October, and we are now receiving regular monthly deliveries. First Quantum declared commercial production at the S3 expansion in December and 3-year copper production guidance that increases with the ramp-up of the S3 expansion feed.

Based on First Quantum's copper production guidance and production to delivery to sales timing, we expect 2026 gold sales attributable to our stream interest of 26,000 to 31,000 ounces, which rises to 38,000 to 43,000 ounces in 2028.

At Khoemacau, MMG reported that the feasibility study for the expansion was approved by the Board and production of concentrate is expected in the first half of 2028. MMG is targeting annual silver production of 4 million to 4.5 million ounces, and we expect our share to be about 60% at this level. We expect silver production to our account of 1.45 million to 1.55 million ounces in 2026.

Recall that our stream has a 90% payable factor applicable to this production. At Platreef, by Ivanhoe mines reported that development continues on schedule. The first sale of concentrate from Phase 1 was completed late in the fourth quarter and the Phase II expansion is targeted for completion in the fourth quarter of 2027.

We expect to see first revenue from Platreef in the first half of 2026. And finally, at Hod Maden, SSR announced the results of a feasibility study for a 10-year life of mine with annual average production of 159,000 ounces of gold and 21 million pounds of copper and a development capital cost of $910 million.

I'll now turn the call over to Paul.

Thanks, Martin. I'll turn to Slide 8 and give an overview of the financial results for the quarter. For the discussion on Slides 8 and 9, I'll be comparing the quarter ended December 31, 2025, to the prior year quarter. Revenue for the quarter was up strongly by 85% to $375 million.

As Martin noted, during the quarter, we saw a combined new revenue of about $82 million from the Kansanshi Gold stream and the Sandstorm Horizon interest. Metal prices were also a major driver of the revenue increase with gold up 55%, silver up 74% and copper up 21% over the prior year.

Gold remains our dominant revenue driver, making up 78% of total revenue for the quarter, followed by silver at 11% and copper at 8%. Royal Gold has the highest gold revenue percentage when compared to our large cap peers in the royalty and trimming sector, and we expect our revenue mix will remain consistent after the recent acquisitions.

To help you with your Q1 estimates, we expect first quarter 2026 GEO sales to be in line with the fourth quarter. We will provide details on 2026 revenue guidance at our Investor Day. But at this point, we expect the first quarter sales to be the lowest of the year and not reflective of the full year.

Turning to Slide 9. I'll provide more detail on certain financial items for the quarter. G&A expense was $17.6 million, which is approximately $9 million higher than the prior year. The higher G&A expense this period was mostly due to higher corporate costs related to integration activities associated with the Sandstorm and Horizon Copper acquisition.

These integration costs were nearly $4.5 million, and many of these costs are largely onetime in nature and are not expected to be recurring. Employee-related costs, which also includes noncash stock compensation, were $3 million higher during the quarter. Like the integration-related costs, much of these additional employee costs this quarter are not expected in future periods.

Moving forward, we are estimating our 2026 total G&A expense to range between $50 million and $60 million. This estimate reflects some of the cost synergy savings we expected when we announced the Sandstorm and Horizon Copper acquisition. Our DD&A expense increased to $80 million from $34 million in the prior year. On a unit basis, this expense was $881 per GEO for the quarter compared to $444 per GEO last year.

The higher overall expense was primarily due to $33 million in additional depletion attributable to the producing interest acquired from Sandstorm and $13 million in additional depletion from the new Kansanshi gold stream. Depletion expense and depletion rates for the producing Sandstorm interest are higher than historical amounts reported by Sandstorm. This is primarily due to an increase in the carrying values of these interests, which were stepped up as part of purchase accounting rules under U.S. GAAP.

Excluding the additional depletion as part of the Sandstorm interest and the new Kansanshi stream, our 2025 DD&A expense was within guidance range we provided earlier in 2025. We will provide more detail on 2026 DD&A expectations when we provide 2026 guidance at our upcoming Investor Day. Costs related to the Sandstorm Horizon Copper acquisition were $14 million for the quarter. We highlighted these costs on our last conference call, and these costs are attributable to financial advisory, legal, accounting, tax and consulting services specific to the acquisition.

Again, these costs are onetime in nature, and we do not expect much, if any, of these costs beyond this quarter. As we announced in November, we sold all the Versamet Royalties common shares that we acquired with Sandstorm. The sale resulted in a onetime loss of approximately $48 million during the quarter. The loss is due to the difference between the sale price of CAD 8.75 per share and the fair market value of the shares on the date we acquired Sandstorm, which was CAD 11.60 per share.

We view the value of this shared position at CAD 5.20 per share on the date of the Sandstorm transaction announcement in July. So while we recognize an accounting loss, we sold the position at a price that was 68% higher than our original valuation. Interest and other expense increased to $17.7 million from $1.4 million in the prior period, due primarily to higher average amounts outstanding under the revolving credit facility in the current quarter.

Tax expense for the quarter was $53 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 36% compared to tax expense of $26 million in the prior year. The higher income tax expense is primarily attributable to higher pretax income and onetime acquisition-related tax items. Absent the unusual and nonrecurring items, our effective tax rate for the quarter was approximately 22.5%. Our annual effective tax rate for 2025 was 17.8% and within the guidance range we provided earlier.

We will provide more detail on the expectations of our effective tax rate, when we give our 2026 guidance. Net income for the quarter was $94 million or $1.16 per share, which compares to $107 million or $1.63 per share in the prior year. The decrease in net income was largely due to the onetime loss on the sale of the Versamet shares and the onetime costs related to the Sandstorm Horizon Copper acquisition I just outlined.

After adjusting for these items, adjusted net income was $155 million or $1.92 per share. Finally, our operating cash flow this quarter was a record $242 million, up significantly from $141 million in the prior period. The increase was primarily due to higher stream and royalty revenue and proceeds from the first delivery of deferred gold for the Mount Milligan cost support agreement. These increases were partially offset by the higher acquisition-related costs I mentioned earlier.

In summary, it was a solid operating quarter, but with some unusual items related to the Sandstorm and Horizon Copper acquisition that impacted our financial results. As much of the Sandstorm and Horizon copper acquisition-related noise is behind us, I am anticipating that we will return to a steadier state beginning with our first quarter results.

I'll turn to Slide 10 for a summary of recent changes to our outstanding debt. As discussed in our last conference call, we drew an additional $450 million on the credit facility on October 10 for the closing of the Sandstorm and Horizon Copper transaction, which resulted in a debt balance of $1.225 billion.

Since October, we have made significant process paying down our debt. We ended the year with outstanding debt of $900 million. And with further repayments in early 2026, we have reduced our outstanding balance to $725 million and now have $675 million available under revolver. New growth within the portfolio, strong metal prices and the proceeds received from the Versamet share's sale have helped us reduce our debt faster than we originally expected.

Based on current metal prices and absent further significant acquisitions, we now expect to fully repay the balance in early 2027, earlier than our previous forecast of mid-2027. I will end on Slide 11 and summarize our financial position. At the end of December, we had total available liquidity of $757 million between the available amount on the revolver and $257 million of working capital.

With respect to further financial commitments, $200 million of funding outstanding for the warrants acquisition. We expect to fund the remaining commitment in 2 tranches of $50 million this year, with the first tranche expected in the first quarter and the second in May.

Although we will work to convert the Hod Maden joint venture entrance into another investment structure, we plan to continue to fund our share of project costs during the year in order to maintain our 30% ownership interest. That concludes my comments on our financial performance for the quarter, and I'll now turn the call back to Bill proposing comments.

Thanks, Paul. 2025 was a very active year for us, and this quarter had a lot of unusual items related to that activity and introduced significant noise into the results. These onetime items are now behind us. Our underlying portfolio is performing well and after a record year in 2025, we're starting 2026 from a position of strength.

Royal Gold has the most diversified and gold-focused portfolio amongst our large-cap peers, and we believe we're positioned as a premier company in our sector. We are looking forward to sharing our vision of the future at our upcoming Investor Day.

Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

And can you provide maybe some color on what the deal pipeline looks like right now. We're hearing from one of your competitors that because of this maybe potentially larger copper builds that are coming, there could be significant byproduct streams available as part of the financing strategy. So just curious what you think in terms of the deal pipeline and thoughts around bigger copper projects.

Yes. Thanks very much for the question. I might see, if I can get Dan Breeze on the line who runs our business development, just to give you -- he can give you a sense for what he's seeing.

Yes. Thanks, happy to give you a bit of color on what we're seeing. And obviously, 2025 was a great year for us, a great year for the industry. And I think what we're seeing is more of the same in terms of our pipeline, it looks pretty strong at the moment. I think one of the things that we've noticed is the market has been pretty volatile looking at the commodity prices, but it just doesn't seem to be slowing down the activity.

I mean, we've seen a number of deals announced this year already -- so I'd say I think the -- sort of the framework of what we're seeing in terms of actual deals is very much like what we've seen announced year-to-date. So third-party royalties, great market to sell those into -- and then to your specific comment around the base level producers and looking to surface value by selling noncore precious exposure.

I think that's fair to say. Obviously, the BHP, Wheaton deal this week. But if you look back at our transactions last year at Kansanshi and Warintza, they fit that category as well. And that's really where our product works extremely well. It works for both the seller and the buyer.

So I think that's a fair comment. I think it's a good market to consider that from a base metal producer perspective. And then we're also seeing development opportunities over projects on primary gold assets as well. So overall, it's a good -- it looks like it's going to be a good market for us going forward into 2026. Does that help you?

Yes, that's great. Yes, that's great.

Our next question comes from Cosmos Chiu from CIBC.

Bill and team. Maybe my first question is on Hod Maden as you mentioned, SSR Mining have recently put out a new technical report on the asset as the operator. Were you happy with those numbers?

And then secondly, are you happy with the time line that they kind of put out there, knowing that a construction decision has yet to be made. And when I ask SSR Mining, it sounds like they're trying to involve all parties involved to make a final decision. So on that front, is Royal Gold actively involved in terms of any discussions in terms of a go-ahead decision?

And then lastly, as a royalty company, what's your long-term strategy here at Hod Maden. Right now, you're a joint venture partner, you need to contribute CapEx into it. Ultimately, are you looking to convert that into some kind of royalty, some kind of stream -- so sorry, multipart, but I'm sure you can answer all my questions.

There are a lot of pieces to the question. Let me see, if I can cover all.

Answer the questions, that you want to answer Bill.

Were we happy with the technical study? Yes, we were. We knew when we were doing the due diligence on Sandstorm and Horizon, we knew the capital costs were higher. That was part of the due diligence. So it wasn't a surprise you look at the IRRs, it's outstanding gold project.

I mean, if we were in the business of being an operating partner, it would certainly be 1 I think we'd want to hang on to. So yes, happy with the technical report. A construction decision, I think our approach might be a little bit different than an operating company. If the construction decision gets put off a little bit that gives us a little more time before there's heavy spending to work on what we might ultimately try to convert this into.

So a delay here is not all that bad. And I think Rod was talking about 2 to 3 years until production. That's fine. We're not saying to investors, we're going to deliver Hod Maden ounces in a certain period of time.

So -- that's not an issue. But we are a joint venture partner. So yes, we are involved in discussions with SSR on the technical report, on development strategy, on spending -- right now, we're proceeding as though we are a joint venture partner, and we're taking that responsibility.

And then I think the last part of your question was the strategy, I think we've been pretty clear, we would like to turn it into something that looks a little more familiar, where we don't have the overrun risk, the operating cost risk. But that's going to take some time. And as you can well imagine, SSR has been busy with the technical report. We've been busy with the press release, working on the partners trying to move forward to a construction decision. So I think that, to the extent we're able to do it, I think it plays out over the course of the rest of this year.

That's great. Maybe moving on to another stream or option that you acquired from Sandstone MARA, it's in Argentina, certainly, Argentina is looking much better now in terms of supporting mining. This is an option to convert into a 20% gold stream eventually. So could you maybe talk about the mechanics behind that potential conversion? What needs to happen and potential timing here? And the payment that you need to make?

Yes. So I think we've got like -- we've got a very small royalty as it is and what we're able to do is -- it is basically forgo that royalty and convert it into the stream. We have to spend, I believe it's $225 million. It could be off there a little bit over the course of whatever the construction period is to earn that gold stream.

The economics of how that investment was calculated was formulaic with a cap -- and I think, if you didn't have the cap, the formula would result in a much larger investment. So economically, we have every incentive to invest that money to turn the small royalty into a meaningful gold stream.

Great. And then maybe 1 last question. Looking back, as you mentioned 2025, you hit all your different guidances for commodity, but you also exceeded in other metals. Could you maybe talk about some of the details behind how you exceed it, I think, you came in at $25 million. Guidance was $18 million to $21 million in terms of revenue. What drove that outperformance? And is that sustainable? Should we expect that to be factored into how you guide other metals in for 2026?

I may turn this over to Paul. Paul, I believe the excess was primarily due to metal price. But correct me, if I'm wrong there.

That is largely the case, Bill. And if you want more specifics, I mean, on the -- Martin, if you also have further information or details you can provide there, but largely was metal price.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Derick Ma from TD Cowen.

I wanted to ask about Pueblo Viejo, the silver stream there. Barrick seems to be making progress from the tailing situation perspective. And I recognize there isn't much detail on the silver side. But conceptually, because of the size of the silver stream and the deferred ounces, is there a lack of incentive for the operator to prioritize silver here? And what can Royal Gold do to kind of pull that forward?

A lack of incentive. I don't think so. If you just break down the math. So it's a 75% Silver Stream, but we pay a 30% cash price. So if you take 70% of 75%, you're basically splitting the economics almost in half, and it only covers 60% of the projects. So -- when you do that math, Newmont actually has a 40% interest in the silver, and we and Barrick sort of have around a 30% interest. So I don't think there's a lack of incentive to do that.

And I would also think that the entity that has 100% interest in economically in the silver is probably the DR government that gets royalties and taxes on it. So I don't think we don't get the sense. We go to site every year. I don't get the sense that Barrick is just sitting on solutions because they don't see the economic benefit as a whole.

Okay. So that's clear. And then in terms of the royalty revenue, it's a bit lower than my expectations at least for Q4. Why doesn't Royal Gold provide preliminary royalty -- sorry, royalty revenue expectations on that side of the business? Is it a matter of information right to get on some of these assets because some of your peers do you put out preliminary revenue in GEOs inclusive of the royalty assets?

Yes. And I'm actually surprised we're able to do it, to be honest with you, just given -- maybe it is just information rights. But Paul, maybe you can just walk through when we tend to get the information from the end of a quarter or a year to when we put out financials, what happens is we start to find operators reporting over a period of time, and we don't necessarily have an expectation of what it's going to be. But I don't know, Paul, can you give him a little more detail there?

Sure. Yes. So Derick, on the information rights, yes, largely a lot of the royalties that we have, we're not entitled to a lot of the information until 15 to 30 to sometimes 45 days after the respective month end or quarter end. So as you -- because of that, it's difficult for us to put together that with a good estimate there. Now I would point to you to that we have historically provided our stream sales guidance on a quarterly basis.

And if you look back at just history of the 2 segments between streams and royalties, roughly 70% is streams and 30% is royalty revenue on average. So that could be another measuring stick for you, if that's helpful. But just, yes, I think going back to just a lot of the information rights that we have, we do look at the revenue over the course of the year and kind of with expectations.

But just not having that firm kind of paper in hand to help with that, you probably wouldn't help with estimation. So I probably would point you back to that stream release that we put out and then just thinking to the 70%, 30% split.

Yes, it's -- it might be a bit of Cortez and it was a bit tricky to model that one, that kind of throws a rent in our estimates, but understood. Maybe 1 last question. Your comment on Q1, Paul, you mentioned flat sales quarter-over-quarter. That's metal sales, right, not revenue?

Correct.

Our next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek from Scotiabank.

Great. Okay. Sorry, I just want to make sure I understood. So the Q1 guidance on the GEO sales, you said that only the metals portion?

Sorry, Tanya, could you just repeat that? Are you asking if it's only on the stream side? Or we're talking about sort of total GEOs.

Okay. So you're talking total GEOs for Q1 is going to be similar to Q4 of '25, and it's going to be the lowest of your 2026 number?

That's our estimate. Yes.

Okay. Got it. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that, that it wasn't just the streaming portion of it. And then I heard metals and I'm like I wasn't sure what it was. Okay, I got it.

Maybe I could just go back to Pueblo Viejo again. Barrick indicated on their conference call that like they're not going to get to the gold recovery that they were anticipating. Never mentioned anything on silver. So I'm just kind of wondering and the new technical report will be out shortly. I guess we can wait for that as well. But how much work is being done on this silver? I mean, obviously, the focus has been on this gold and I understand that. Is there any concern that we may not get to what the silver recovery could be as well?

Yes, Tanya, what I might do is just ask Martin to hop on here and just give you a little background or a sense of where -- what they've been working on recently. Yes, just give you as much background as we have.

Yes. Thanks, Bill. Tanya. So over the past year, what we've seen is that Barrick have really focused at Pueblo Viejo along improving the throughput and they've made great strides towards that. And towards the end of the year, we saw it coming up to the levels that they were expecting, and we expect that to continue going forward.

So we think that they -- from a throughput point of view, they're going to be fairly consistent going forward. We don't, in the short term, expect any material change to silver recovery. And you pointed out that gold recovery expectations are lower long term and that they are working on those.

So really, those recovery issues are related to the type of feed that they're putting in at the moment. They're putting a lot of the old stockpile material in that stockpile is highly weathered and it's highly variable, probably more variable than they expected, when they put the expansion plan in place -- and that weathering is affecting their flotation and autoclave plants.

I'm not really able at the moment to comment specifically on silver recovery going forward. And I think as you pointed out, we'll wait for that technical report to come out in March. What I will say is that they are highly focused on both gold and silver recovery.

We spend quite a bit of time during the year outside visits, talking to the operating team on site, talking to the corporate team. And we're very happy with the amount of effort they're putting into it, in order to improve both gold and silver recovery. But the tech report comes out, and that will give us more information on the future of the operation.

No, I appreciate the stockpiles, but the stockpiles are going to be part of the ore feed for the next 5 years. So just -- they're there. So we got to deal with that. Okay. We'll wait for the technical study. Hopefully, we'll have more guidance there. Maybe I'll move on to the -- yes, the transaction environment. Appreciate you going through what's available out there. Just a couple of things I wanted to get an understanding of, #1, are you still in -- you've got about $700 million of available liquidity to use for transactions.

Are you still focused in that $100 million to $500 million range? Or what are you focused? Or what are you seeing -- or could you see yourself doing those multibillion-dollar transactions given your focus on debt reduction as well?

Well, just in terms of capital allocation, I would still always say that if we can find good investments, that's the best use of the capital. And if we stopped repaying debt or even borrowed more to fund the right transaction, that would be a priority. So we are not prioritizing debt repayment over new investments.

As far as the transaction size, I think it has reverted to what we've seen historically. I think $100 million to $500 million is a good estimate. As you can imagine, with metal prices where they are, every GEO we buy is going to be more expensive. So when we refer to $100 million to $300 million might be $200 million to $500 million at this point for the same number of GEOs, but yes, so that's really in terms of the size of investment. That's the range that we are seeing and we are still actively working.

Okay. And then my other second part of that same question is, I've seen some of your peers double down or go shopping in their own closets. -- i.e., for assets that they already own and increase exposure there. Is there opportunities for you to do the same?

We're always looking. We have a great relationship with them. I think Xavantina was a great example. We were able to put another $50 million to work at an asset that has really developed the way we thought it would, but an asset that we quite like. So again, that should be fertile ground given the relationships we have and the knowledge we have of the assets.

Now just thinking of some of these larger-sized ones? And how much...

Yes, I mean, if you look at the larger ones, if Centerra needed money, if -- I can't imagine Barrick coming to us on Pueblo Viejo. We're certainly open to that. And I think the nice thing about transactions like Antamina is, if you can get a BHP to do streaming, that just opens the market to almost every mining company, including companies that were probably resistant. So I actually see that transaction is opening the door to some other opportunities with bigger companies.

Our next question comes from Josh Wolfson from RBC.

Just looking back at that first quarter production guidance that was discussed, I guess, thinking about the fourth quarter having been a partial contribution from the Sandstorm assets, first quarter will be a full contribution and then also there's some annual payments for some of the assets that are paid in the first quarter and then the inventories that are at normal levels. I'm wondering what is causing production really not to increase quarter-on-quarter?

Yes. Thanks, Josh. I might -- I know Martin, can I ask you from a production profile perspective? Because obviously, what's happening, yes, we have things that are going up. But there's always variability quarter-to-quarter. And so Martin, I don't know, if there's any color you can add there?

Yes. I think it would -- Josh, it would be around delivery timing. Some of our bigger assets on it from a delivery point of view fluctuate quite significantly on a quarter-to-quarter basis. And I think I would put that lower estimate for Q1 down to delivery timing in general.

Okay. So there's no material mine plan changes or seasonality we're thinking about here?

No, not at all. It's all around deliveries.

Got it. Okay. And maybe just along those lines, given the portfolio is larger now, should we expect to see inventories build up from current levels? Or even with the new assets that are streaming related entities should the inventory level be stable?

Yes, John, I wouldn't -- so go ahead, Martin.

I was hoping to leave that one to you, Bill, but I'll say no. I think our inventory levels are going to be fairly stable.

Yes. The only color I was going to add to it, Josh, is our inventory is the product of our sales policy. And what we try to do is sell metal over the period of time between delivery. So if we expect the next delivery in 21 days, we'll sell the metal we just got over 21 days. There's not an inventory strategy. The inventory at the end of the quarter is just a result of what deliveries occurred and where are we in that sales cycle?

Our next question comes from Brian MacArthur from Raymond James.

To the comment made that you're going to fund Hod Maden this year to maintain your interest, which makes sense to me. Is it -- it's not significant funding this year. If I look at the way the feasibility works, the big capital tends to be a few years out. Is that right the way you look at it right now? Because, again, I think, one of the things you would probably trying to restructure this before you had to put significant capital into it because it's a different business model then.

Yes. I mean, if we can restructure this before our significant capital goes in, that -- I agree with you. That is the best outcome for us. As far as the spending this year, again, I think SSR is talking about a 2- to 3-year construction period. What we spend this year is going to be very much dependent on when the investment decision gets made, because I think what [ Rod ] talked about yesterday was spending about -- it was [ $50 million ] a month, but that would increase.

So if an investment decision is made in 2 weeks, that's different than an investment decision is made in a couple of months. And I think once we have more clarity on that, we can come back to you and say, okay, if we don't restructure this, this is what the spend will be for this year. I just don't know what that number is right now.

With that, we have no further questions in the queue at this time. So that does conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. I'll now hand back over to Bill Heissenbuttel for closing comments.

Well, thank you for taking the time to join us today. We certainly appreciate your interest, and we look forward to updating you during our upcoming Investor Day. Take care.

Thank you all for joining. That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Hello, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, Virtual Event Moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Boston and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD.

Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate using the chat box in the top right hand corner of your screen.

With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Alistair.

Well, thanks, Noella. I appreciate the invitation to present today. We've had a lot of news at Royal Gold over the past several months and the past year really. And it's also a great time to be thinking about gold as an asset class as an investment. So it's very timely for me to give you an update today.

So as I always start off with, I will be making forward-looking statements during this presentation. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC.

So during today's presentation, I am going to give you an overview of the investment thesis for Royal Gold, really the pitch, which is we are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals. And as I said at the very outset, it has been a transformative period for Royal Gold. In 2025, we did a lot we've really transformed the company.

We did a couple of corporate acquisitions, Sandstorm Gold and Horizon Copper. Those acquisitions closed in late October of 2025. We acquired a couple of new royalty and stream interests. We have a stream on the Kansanshi Gold Mine or copper mine in Zambia, and we have a stream or a royalty on the Warintza development project in Ecuador. And we saw some very positive developments at other assets inside the portfolio. So things like the Mount Milligan mine life extension, the exploration success at Fourmile, the Khoemacau expansion. So a lot of good news for us at Royal Gold over the past year or so.

Now we will be releasing our 2025 financial results in 2 weeks, 2 weeks today, actually. And so as I go through this presentation, you'll see that there are a number of things that are referenced to 2024, simply because we don't have full year 2025 numbers available yet. We will have those available in a couple of weeks. But I don't think any of the themes change. So just bear with me on that, please.

Now this presentation will go through the key attributes of Royal Gold and our business model. And I'll start talking about our gold exposure, which is obviously the focus for us, Royal Gold, it's in our name. Gold is the focus. Our model, and I'll talk about our high-margin business and the way we think about shareholders and return to shareholders. Talk about our portfolio, which is the biggest in our sector in terms of the number of assets that we have exposure to, which really does help with the consistency of our financial performance.

I'll talk about our business model and the way that we are somewhat insulated from direct operating risks. And so we have steady margins that provide nice consistency to our results. And our position in terms of market size is kind of the Goldilocks when we think about where we are relative to our large and small cap peers. And then finally, I'll talk about some of the optionality that's embedded in the portfolio with having such a large portfolio.

So to start with that, I'll focus on gold and our portfolio and its performance with respect to gold. We've been around the business for now 40-plus years. And we started in the mid-1980s with one royalty asset at Cortez mine in Nevada. We've been listed on the NASDAQ for that entire period. So we've got lots of history to look at when you try and understand what we've been doing and whether it's consistent.

But I will say that our strategy has been consistent with the founding principle since day 1. And that is really to find gold-focused revenue on good assets in good jurisdictions. Our revenue has grown consistently over time as we become a bigger company, but the metal mix has not changed significantly over time.

And the graph on this slide here, they don't show the new assets that we've added, but we expect to have a pretty consistent percentage of gold revenue compared to all metals going forward. And we really do try to provide our shareholders with gold exposure in a conservatively managed vehicle.

So if we look at our performance over time, you can see how that has manifested itself, and why we think we're a good alternative for those who want conservative exposure to a pretty volatile commodity. On the left-hand side, you can see our beta versus the gold price, 1.6. That's pretty high. On the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance going back to the beginning of the GDX index, which is almost 20 years ago now.

Over that time period, we've beaten the gold price, we've beaten the GDX index itself, but we've also beaten the S&P 500. So that shows hopefully, why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking to invest in a pretty volatile commodity, but also get good returns along the way.

Now our business is high margin, and we do pay dividends. And if you look at our margin, it is -- we have consistently over time, it's been about an 80% EBITDA margin. And our business is very unique. It is high margin, obviously, but it's also very scalable. And when you look at our 2024 EBITDA numbers, [ it was about ] 81% EBITDA margin. Our cash G&A was about 4% of revenue.

Now if you look at our last reported quarterly results in Q3, that G&A expense was about 3% of revenue. And that -- the delta is due to the gold price change. Our costs are low and fixed. So we don't see cost inflation in our business. And so our margins actually expand when metal prices rise because our cost base is pretty fixed and it is low.

And you can see that more -- you can see the efficiency of our business on this next slide here, where we do have a very efficient business, which allows us to keep our costs low. We have 39 employees in our company. Our market cap today is over $22 billion. So on a per employee basis, you can compare us against any business in any sector, and we are probably one of the most efficient on a per employee basis.

Now return of capital, as I mentioned, is something that we focus on, and it's a key strategic objective for us at Royal Gold, and it's something that makes us unique when you think about other gold investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000. We've increased the dividend every single year since, and that's despite volatility in the gold price. We increased our dividend last -- we announced in November, just a few months ago, it was a 6% increase for 2026 over our 2025 level. And that's the 25th consecutive annual increase to the dividend.

We've now paid out over $1 billion of dividends to our shareholders, and we're the only company in the GDX index that has paid an increasing dividend every year since the GDX was formed in 2006. And we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index, which is absolutely unique for Royal Gold.

I'm going to talk a bit in this next section about our diversified portfolio. We have a global portfolio and it's weighted towards lower risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions. And our portfolio spans the various stages of project developments in the mining business. So we have over 360 assets in the portfolio and about 80 of those are producing revenue today, about 30 are in development. So we expect them to start producing revenue in the near term. And then the remainder, over 250 are in earlier stages. So that could be various stages of exploration.

And organic growth comes from within the portfolio from the development and exploration assets that move forward and they get to production and they start producing revenue. So that's a really important part of our business and having a larger portfolio means that there's more of that optionality within the portfolio.

Now having a diversified portfolio also reduces single asset and counterparty risks. We have a number of very good Tier 1 operators in our counterparty list, and we think they're best-in-class. They're generally large, well-capitalized and experienced mining companies, and we've recently added to that list. So we added First Quantum, Rio Tinto and Glencore as counterparties over the past several months as we've added to the portfolio.

On an NAV basis, if you look at the value of the assets in our portfolio, we have the most diversified portfolio in our sector. And our largest asset remains in Mount Milligan mine in British Columbia, but it's about 12% of our net asset value. So that is much less than some of our peers who have their largest assets could be as high as 40% of their net asset value. Mount Milligan used to be criticized as a relatively short mine life, but recently, Centerra has extended the mine life and they're talking about 2045 with potential to go beyond that by a couple of decades. So it's the largest asset in our portfolio, but it's also a multi-decade asset in the portfolio. So that's a very important thing to note.

Our portfolio diversification reduces our exposure to single-asset operator and jurisdictional risks. And that's an important thing for a generalist investor who wants to know or doesn't want to know the details of each specific asset. They just want to know you've got consistent cash flows, if something goes wrong in an asset, it's not going to impact the company in a material way. So we think that diversification is very helpful from that respect.

Now we also have limited operating risk in our business model. So I'll talk about our model a bit in the next few slides. We -- if you think about the ways to invest in gold, we provide gold exposure with reduced risk. And on this slide, you can see the different ways you can invest in gold. What we try to provide our shareholders is exposure to gold, optionality of the projects that we invest in and the dividend, while also reducing downside risk by holding a diversified portfolio doesn't have direct exposure to operating and capital costs.

There are other ways to hold gold. If you want to be very conservative, you buy an ounce of gold. But that ounce of gold will cost you to keep it, to keep it safe somewhere, but it's also not going to pay your dividend and it's not going to grow. If you buy an ounce today, it's always going to be an ounce.

You can be more aggressive and you can buy shares in operating mining companies or even exploration companies. And if you know what you're doing, you know those assets, you can do very well. But at the same time, you can be surprised. You can be exposed to all sorts of cost risks and other factors that can impact the ability of companies to move those projects forward. So by investing in a company like ours, you're getting exposure to a myriad, a large portfolio that where if things do go wrong, they don't necessarily impact Royal Gold as a whole.

And there is a perception in the marketplace, and I'll hit this head on that our business model and the royalty streaming companies don't provide leverage to the commodity price the same way that operators do. I don't think that's true. You look at our financial results, and we've done very well as gold prices and metal prices have improved. So I think that is incorrect to say.

And on that point, I think when you look at margins in our sector, we and producers have very different cost structures. So our costs, as I said at the beginning, are low, we have 39 employees. They're relatively fixed. So our margins actually expand as metal prices increase, whereas operator costs are often subject to inflation increases and their margins may not increase as quickly or at all in some cases. And you can see that more clearly on this next slide.

Producers, and this shows our cost structure relative to the average producer. Producers are exposed to inflation and input costs. So labor, energy, consumables. As prices rise, they have higher taxes, they have higher royalty rates to pay. So there are a lot of things in their cost structures that actually increase as metal prices rise.

Our G&A costs are pretty safe. So we have salaries to pay. We have services to buy, and we have office rents to pay as well. And they're typically not things that change on a month-to-month basis. They're not really impacted by inflation in the short term. So because our margins are much less exposed to inflation pressures, we do better. We're able to pass that on to our shareholders because we're simply not exposed to the largest cost factors in the sector.

I'll talk about our strategic positioning in the sector. And we think we have the optimal size in a small sector. This shows where we are relative to our peers on a market cap basis. And you can see that we're right in the middle between the 2 big guys and then the 2 next largest players. We're kind of in that sweet spot right in the middle.

Our sector is built on small transactions. And if you look back over the years, most transactions in our sector are around that -- they're smaller than $300 million per transaction. And on average, they're actually just over $100 million per transaction. So we sit in an interesting position. We've got lots of cash flow. We've got access to low-cost capital, so we can compete against our largest peers for the largest transactions. And we just showed that last August when we announced the $1 billion gold stream on the Kansanshi mine.

Yet we're also small enough to be able to show growth. So we can do small transactions, and I always like to point to the Khoemacau silver stream, $265 million, relatively small transaction, but it actually does show up meaningfully in our results.

We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector. We think that's a bit of a [ fool's ]. We would rather be the best and have the best valuation and have the best portfolio. And so this Goldilocks position that we're in, it does provide us a good platform to be able to grow and execute our strategy of growth in gold.

So I'm going to talk now a little bit about embedded growth and optionality. And this slide shows how we have allocated our capital over the past 20-plus years. And really, what we're trying to do is provide accretive growth to our shareholders. And since 2000, we can see that our revenue and our operating cash flow have both grown significantly. And we'll provide further updates on this slide and then incorporate the Sandstorm transaction and the other things I've talked about, but this is a good snapshot to be able to tell you what we've done prior to 2020 -- prior to 2025.

Our G&A -- so we've seen massive growth in revenue and operating cash flow, but our G&A hasn't grown very much. And it's because we have that scalable business. We don't need to add people. We don't need to add additional infrastructure when we grow our business because it's fairly simple to add to our portfolio without growing our need to have additional people to help manage that portfolio. Our business is very scalable.

The second is -- the second important thing is our revenue growth is not solely dependent on metal prices. The gold price has been a great tailwind for us over the past several years, but we've also been able to add volume to our portfolio over that period. And so that allows us to capture or enjoy the benefits of rising gold prices as well if we got that additional volume that just multiplies that effect. And we also have organic growth coming from within the portfolio. So that is also very helpful.

And then finally, the final point I'd like to make is just we've been able to finance our growth mostly from internal sources, and we haven't increased our share count significantly. Now we did issue almost 19 million shares in October last year to complete the Sandstorm transaction. And that was the first equity issue we had done since 2012. So a long period of not issuing any equity.

But even with these new shares that we've issued, we have -- we remain at the lowest end of the GDX. We have the lowest share count in the GDX index. And we really do want to provide accretive growth for our shareholders and avoid shareholder dilution. So anything we add to the portfolio, you as a shareholder can benefit from directly.

Now I'm going to talk on this next slide about embedded optionality. And that really is the key to our model. It's exposure to assets that have the potential to grow reserves and resources without having us fund any of that growth within the cost of that growth.

And this shows -- this case study shows Mulatos. So it was a royalty that we acquired in 2005. It was capped. We don't like capped royalties. We want royalties and streams that have a life of mine exposure. So you get that additional optionality and upside in the future. But this one was capped. It was just a feature of the agreement when we acquired it. But this is helpful for us, though, is because it's capped, we know exactly how much we put in, we know exactly how much we got out, and we can dissect those returns. And so it's a very helpful case study.

At the time we acquired this royalty in 2005, there were 3 million ounces in reserves and resources at the mine and the mine life was a 7-year mine life. The royalty produced for a period of 14 years, so double that initial expectation of mine life. And when the cap was reached, reserves and resources were actually 4.3 million ounces. So they had grown despite the depletion that occurred over that 14 years of mining.

And so what that meant was our initial 8% expectation of return actually grew to about 36%. And the extended mine life really, it provides a double benefit when you think about it. There's more production, which means more revenue, that's easy to understand. But the longer the mine life, the more you're exposed to the gold prices and volatility, and that's where you get really big value is an additional exposure to a commodity that is quite volatile.

So in this case and in most of the cases we have in our portfolio, we don't have to fund the capital to get exposure to this upside and growth. It's growth that we don't have to pay for. It's free optionality. And it's really important when we look at new opportunities that we identify those that have the potential for exploration and resource growth and that future optionality because that's the thing that allows you as a shareholder to enjoy that additional return in the future if we can identify properties that can grow.

So speaking of growth, we have -- now after the Sandstorm transaction, we have a very -- we're in a very good position when it looks -- when we look forward and look at catalysts within the portfolio. And I've shown on this slide here some of the assets that we see that will be brand-new producers to us over the next several years. And we're going to do an Investor Day in March, at the end of March, and this will be a main focus for us to try and make sure that we articulate to the marketplace what all of these mean to us in the longer term.

But this is a snapshot, and I'll walk through this very quickly because there is a lot to talk about on this slide. We do have a lot of -- there's significant organic growth within the portfolio that comes from what we had before Sandstorm and actually what Sandstorm brought, put them together, and we've got catalysts almost every year now for the next several.

Back River is the first one. They started commercial production in October last year. So this is producing, and we are starting to see revenue from this. Platreef is the next one, which is currently -- they just started milling and mining ore. And we haven't seen any revenue from this one yet, but we're expecting that revenue to come in early this year. The next asset is Robertson. This is part of the Cortez complex in Nevada. We're expecting first production in about 2027.

And then as you go around this curve, you look at Hod Maden, Great Bear, Cactus, we're expecting those to come in before the end of this decade. And then shortly after the turn of the decade, we should see Mara, Oyu Tolgoi, Warintza and Fourmile. And all of these are long-life assets. So once they start producing, they should produce for quite a long period of time to sustain our portfolio into the future.

We think we have one of the best organic growth profiles in the industry. And this does not include some of the assets in the portfolio that are producing today that have expansion or extension potential. So things like the Mount Milligan mine life extension, the extension at Khoemacau, these are not included in this growth. So that's additional growth. And as I said, we'll be focusing on this during our Investor Day in March. So we'll give the market more clarity at that point.

So I'm going to end now or I'll make one more -- I'll talk about one more slide, and then I'll turn it back to Noella for Q&A. But I do want to touch on this. This is our trading multiples. Our business is performing well, as you can imagine, in this gold price environment. We've got lots of cash flow, good organic growth. We're executing on our priorities. Our share price has done very well.

So we've actually -- we've reached all-time highs recently. But that's driven by -- I think it's the gold price environment. It's also a recognition of the larger portfolio that we have now. But as we think about how we're valued and our valuation multiples, we are still -- we still think there's a disconnect between what we think we should be receiving in the marketplace and what the marketplace is actually paying for.

If you look at our NAV multiple, I'd say that we're a little bit below our large cap peers. But -- and so that's okay. But on the cash flow multiple, there is a huge disconnect there. We're trading at the bottom end of our peer group, and we just don't think that makes any sense. I think there are a few reasons why these multiples haven't -- they haven't converged to where we think they should. And that's -- the first is we just issued a bunch of shares for Sandstorm. So I think there's been a bit of churn in our register and hopefully, that's settling down now.

Another is debt. We do have some debt. We're repaying that diligently. So hopefully, that won't be an issue for the long term. And then thirdly, I think it's just a lack of clarity and lack of understanding as to what our portfolio can do over the longer term and what the growth potential is within the portfolio. So we are doing our best to get out in front of people these days to try and make sure they understand what's in the portfolio and what potentially could be coming because there's the scale and the growth potential in the portfolio is really something we think is worthy of note.

So I'll just -- I'll close there. And I guess we have strengthened our business. We've added a lot to it in the past couple of years. And obviously, the timing was fortuitous because the gold price is doing what it's doing. And it just means that all the work that we've done, we should be able to see the benefits of that work as the higher gold price feeds through our results.

We've had a lot of scale. We've diversified the portfolio. We've added growth to it. We have a very strong balance sheet, and we have very strong cash flow in this environment as well. And we have been patient over time, and we've been very good at executing our strategy, and we have a commitment to that long-term strategy, and we think it's just a question of time before the market rewards us with the valuation that we think that all of what we've done should end up with.

So with that, Noella, I will turn it back to you to start the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. We'll now begin the Q&A. Your first question is, was Royal Gold management pleased with the technical report from SSR Mining on the Hod Maden project?

Yes, I think we were. I mean it's obviously -- it's a data point that's in the marketplace now that it makes it easier for us to talk about it. The last information that was in the marketplace is pretty dated. It was from 2021. So this is helpful to us. We weren't surprised. I mean when we did our due diligence of the Sandstorm transaction, one of the assets that we looked at in a lot of detail was Hod Maden. And so we weren't surprised by anything that was in those numbers. We are a partner. So we saw those numbers prior to the release of the press release. But we weren't surprised.

I think it's something that we needed to get -- we need to see that in the marketplace because we made it very clear that our interest in Hod Maden and the ownership structure is not something we want to continue with. We want to try and convert that to something that's more in line with our core business of owning a royalty or a stream. We don't want to have a direct joint venture interest in a mining asset.

So it's important for those numbers we had in the marketplace for the market to understand what the project looks like. And it's really -- it was kind of the very first thing that we needed to see before we can start that process of trying to convert that interest.

So yes, on balance, we're pleased with what's in the marketplace. We're not surprised, and it will be hopefully the thing that allows us to focus on that restructuring in the near term.

Thank you for shedding some light on that. The next question is. Beyond near-term contributions from Mount Milligan, Pueblo Viejo and Cortez, which assets are realistically expected to drive material NAV growth over the next 5 to 10 years?

Well, I think the ones that will materially drive the growth will be the assets that I just pointed to on that one slide with the catalysts. So some of the bigger chunkier assets in there would be things like Platreef, Mara, Great Bear, Fourmile. Those are things that as those get developed, I think they will add a lot of value to us as it becomes clear to the market what the impact will be to Royal Gold.

So we're looking forward to that. We don't want to rush things, of course, but it gives us a nice profile over the next several years of catalysts. And we think that is where a lot of value will come from. Now we've also got some other assets within the portfolio that are going through extensions and extensions and things like that, that will add incremental value. But really the biggest step change value will be from new assets that come into production.

Thank you for clarifying that. The next question is, which assets are expected to show the largest year-over-year GEO increase in 2026?

Well, we haven't done our -- we haven't given any guidance yet. So it's kind of hard for me to answer that question at this point in the year. Companies are coming out with our 2026 guidance as we speak. Barrick is going to be reporting tomorrow. We're looking forward to seeing what they're going to say on Cortez and PV and Fourmile and so on. But I think it's a little early for me to be able to answer that question simply because we haven't seen or are not able to talk about what some of the operators have put forward for 2026 guidance.

Thank you for your comments, nonetheless. Your next question is, what percent of revenue will come from silver, assuming $100 ounce silver?

That's a very good question. We haven't done the math on $100 silver. Typically, silver for us is somewhere between 10% to 15% of revenue on a quarterly basis. I think the run-up in the silver prices for this current quarter will distort that a little bit. So we may see additional silver revenue than we have in the past simply because it's just run-up so quickly. But we haven't done the sensitivities on -- I can't tell you what the $100 silver will mean for us long term.

If it stays at that level, obviously, it's going to be a bigger impact to us. But it's been a quick run-up from a much lower level in a short period of time. So I don't think -- I can't give you that number off the top of my head. I haven't done that. I just have to probably work on it.

Thank you for your response nonetheless, Alistair. Your next question is, how many development stage royalties are still contingent on permitting, financing or operator decisions?

Well, a number of them. I mean when you think about mining projects, there's a whole sequence of things that need to get done. You need to do your preliminary engineering, when you do your permitting, when you do your final engineering and final permits. And then once you get all of that and financing and investment decisions, all of the assets in the portfolio are at different stages because there are just various points in that continuum.

I would say most of the things that are in development still have a lot of work ahead of them. But if you look at the operators and who those counterparties are, these are companies that know how to do these things. They've done these projects before. So we don't look at permitting or engineering or anything like that as something that's a real risk because generally, the companies are moving these projects forward, have done it multiple times before. They know how to do it.

The only delay -- the only risk is really delays because if a project is good enough, generally, what will happen is that people do the work before going to that next stage. And so it will be generally well engineered or the permit will be advanced. There may be questions where those companies have to go back and they perhaps refine whatever is being questioned. But delay is probably the biggest risk, not project shutdown, if that's where the question was going.

Thank you for clarifying that. Your next question is, are there additional noncore assets within the Sandstorm legacy portfolio that could be monetized or restructured over the next 12 to 24 months?

Well, the biggest one [ Hod Maden on ] the restructure interest. So that is a restructuring project for us. So that is number one. There are a few other equity and other financial investments within the portfolio that they're not core to us. It's not our business to own equity or debt instruments. And so we will be looking to monetize those. We're also going to be patient. We don't want to -- we're not interested in selling things at fire sell prices. So we will look for the right opportunities to sell things.

I think you've seen some evidence of that already. We sold the Versamet shares in a block in November. And then in late December, we announced that we had restructured some ownership at the Bear Creek mining some equity and some debt insurance there as well. And so we will deal with these things as opportunities present themselves for us to get full value. And that's the way that we're going to approach this.

But I think having sold the Versamet shares, that was probably one of the biggest assets that was noncore. And the Bear Creek stuff was smaller. Hod Maden, that joint venture ownership structure, we want to deal with that relatively soon. That's a priority for us in 2026. And the remainder of the things are relatively small, and we'll deal with them as opportunities present themselves.

Thank you, Alistair, for that response. Next to you is asking, what are your plans for the formerly Sandstorm Abu Marawat development in Egypt? Or more generally, when will AM be reviewed to determine its core value?

Sorry, I missed the name of that one. Will you please repeat the question.

Certainly. Of course. So they're asking for the Abu Marawat development.

Okay. So yes, anything that's in the portfolio as a royalty stream is going to be -- we'll keep it and we'll just let it run its course naturally. I can't really offer any specific comments on that, but I'm not that familiar with it, to be honest with you. But we're not going to do anything with these assets that our royalties to the stream in the portfolio because it just add to the optionality within the portfolio as a whole.

Thank you, Alistair. Next question. How much do you expect to pay down on the credit facility in 2026? And how will payments be paced through the year?

So we have said -- the most recent comment we've made about debt repayment is in November when we put out our third quarter results. We said that we expect it to be debt-free by 0 debt by the middle of 2027. We will likely be updating that because a lot has changed since then. Metal prices have improved. We've also made very good progress on repaying debt. So stay tuned in the next couple of weeks, we'll be talking about that in more detail.

But our payment schedule for the revolver is really we can make payments on a frequent basis whenever we want it. And so what we've done in the past is we've had cash flow coming from the portfolio. If we don't see new business opportunities that we like, then we'll take that cash flow and we'll apply it to revolver repayments. And I expect that will be the same procedure that we'll follow in 2026. But I'm going to reserve the right to defer that question for a couple of weeks until we put out our results.

Thank you, Alistair. We'll see tuned in a couple of weeks for the results. Your next question is, just to understand how you manage acquisitions, what percentage of the Sandstorm Gold streams are still with Royal Gold?

All of them. We haven't sold any streams from Sandstorm. So anything that was within the Sandstorm portfolio that's a royalty or stream, we will keep, and we haven't sold any of those.

Thank you for clarifying. Next question. Now with a large acquisition complete, how do you avoid becoming a victim of scale where future deals are either too small to matter or too expensive to be accretive?

Well, we have to look at everything on its merits. I think size-wise, we're not scared of doing small transactions. A small transaction takes as much effort as a large transaction from a due diligence and all the internal processes that we follow. But as we have found that some of the smaller transactions are some of the highest returning transactions. And some small things, if you get in at the right time, could grow to be very big things. So we're not afraid of doing small transactions. We have to be careful, though, we always have to keep our eye on the upside. And we don't want to be investing in small assets that will never really become meaningful because that's not a good allocation of resources.

With respect to paying for transaction prices paid, we always have to be careful. We have to watch the markets carefully. We have to have a view on longer term, the return hurdles and the things that we're looking for out of the projects. We just have to be -- we have to adjust constantly because the biggest variable is metal prices. So that changes on a day-to-day basis.

So we're always cognizant of that. It's not something that we can predict where things are going to go. But we also have to be careful like in a price environment like today, prices have run up so quickly, we got to be careful about paying spot prices for things because if things roll over quickly and even if they go down 5% or 10%, they can erode your returns pretty quickly.

So we have to be careful and we have to be -- use a lot of judgment. And that's hopefully one of the things that we bring to the table, [ we have been in ] the business for 40-odd years. We've been able to do this generally pretty well. And so we factor all that into our decision-making. At some points in the cycle, you just have to sit back and say, things are moving too quickly for us to be able to make intelligent decisions. So maybe it's time for us to take a pause.

We're lucky because we've just added a lot of things to the portfolio. So we feel no pressure to do anything in this price environment, but we are very cognizant that things are moving quickly and valuations can change from one day to the next.

Thank you for your insight, Alistair. Next of you is asking, how do you assess long-term credit risk and renegotiation risk as mines age or change ownership?

So we always look at counterparty. When we're looking at a stream, the royalty is a bit different because royalties generally they're not -- they'll often run with the property. So they're not something that is subject to risk when it comes to the balance sheet of a counterparty. But when we look at streams, we look at credit very carefully because we're signing contracts with these people. And so you want to make sure that they're going to be in business over the long term to be able to honor those contracts. And so we do our own credit analysis of companies look at balance sheets, we look at their upcoming commitments and we look at -- we'll flex metal prices, and we'll look at operational things that could occur that may not be helpful. So we try to get a good sense of credit capacity.

When we look at assets change in hands, which I think is where the question was going, then we do look at our -- the acquirer of assets in the same way. If it's somebody that we're comfortable with, then we're not going to cause a problem for the transaction. But if it's somebody that we're prohibited from doing business with or it's [ somebody ] doesn't have the wherewithal or the financial capacity to be able to operate the asset that they may be looking to acquire, then we can actually object to that transaction occurring. So there is some protection in our transactions from that kind of scenario where somebody may own something, they decide they're going to sell it to somebody who can't properly operate it.

Thank you, Alistair, for offering some insight on that. The next question is, what are you expecting from your partners' reserve updates?

Well, that's a very good question. I think we're expecting positive news most likely. And it would mostly be driven by metal price appreciation. I think most companies will likely start using higher reserve and resource pricing. And so that should mean that they're able to mine lower-grade material and that material comes into the mine plans and extends mine lives.

However, I think it's unlikely that we're going to see huge step changes in the prices that people use for the reserves and resources. They're generally pretty conservative assumptions that go into those pricing decisions. And so we may not see reserve and resource pricing that's anywhere close to spot. And so that will be a little disappointing because if you ran your reserves and resources at prices that are even 20% lower than spot today, you will probably see a lot of potential, especially at low-grade open pit assets.

You see those mine lives get extended, I think, pretty significantly. But I don't think, based on what we've seen so far, that operators are going to be increasing their reserve and resource pricing significantly. It's still -- I think the business is still being run quite conservatively, which is good. The last time the metal prices really did well, 10, 15 years ago, you saw an extension in pricing for reserves and people started mining a lot more low-grade ore. And so that caused costs to go up and it cost the entire sector, it costs quite a lot for the sector as margins compressed despite the rising gold prices.

So I think it's interesting. It will be interesting to see what happens. And we haven't seen many of these come out yet. It's still early in the new year. I'd expect in the next 2 to 3 weeks, you'll start seeing those come out, but don't expect there to be big changes in reserve pricing.

Thank you for your comments, Alistair. Your next question. Are there any jurisdictions across the portfolio that are subject to political risks?

Well, every single jurisdiction is subject to political risk. I don't think there's one anywhere. You can look at first world Tier 1 countries can have tax increases that are driven by politics. You can have all sorts of things that can cause businesses to be less confident about the future. In terms of big political risks where you see expropriation or anything like that, we don't see anything in our portfolio that concerns us. There are some places that are more risky than others, but we're not -- we don't look at our portfolio and say we think there are a handful of places that are going to be risks to our business over the longer term. That's not something we see as we look forward.

So -- but we've been very careful about avoiding some places that have a lot of risk. We're not going to go into places that have -- there's civil conflict or there's no rule of law or safety at mine sites is an issue. So we've been careful over the past to avoid those places. And hopefully, that puts us in a good position for the future.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Coming up on your last 2 questions. The first one is, any comments on the precious metal price drop last Friday? Recovery seems to be at hand, but curious to hear what the causes were.

Well, I think if I knew the answer, I'd probably be on TV telling everybody because I haven't heard any good explanations from anybody as to what happened, except for kind of the obvious, which is prices ran so fast that there was a lot of profit taking. And so what that catalyst was not 100% sure. But you're quite right. I mean it looks like prices have stabilized. And if you kind of look at the trend over the month of January there's a nice continuous trend.

If you ignore what happened the last 2 weeks where we saw this big run-up and then big correction, the trend is still continuing if you were to take that peak out. So I think the way we think about it is the fundamentals for metals prices are still in place. I think it's probably the market got a little ahead of itself in the correction, which is probably a healthy thing to have occurred. But I haven't heard of one specific reason for what the catalyst was.

Thank you for your comments, Alistair. And your last question is, with Royal Gold's market cap now at $22 billion, is it eligible for S&P 500 Index inclusion? If yes, can you comment on the next steps and timing?

So the minimum market cap for the S&P 500 is $22.7 billion, and we're just a shade below that now. We traded above that last week. So we are around the minimum. So I think we are -- we check all of the boxes. We have a U.S. domicile. We're traded on -- our primary exchange is a U.S. exchange. We've got quarterly earnings that are positive, market cap threshold we meet. So it's now a question of whether the Index Inclusion Committee is interested in seeing another gold stock get added to the S&P 500.

So the way they do their analysis is it's completely -- you can't lobby. We can't have any contact with them. There's nobody to talk to. They do it all secretly, which is by design. They don't want market moving commentary to be out there influencing pricing. But they will update for every quarter, the S&P gets rebalanced, and that's when you see additions and deletions.

And that's at quarter end, so calendar quarter end, so the end of March. But they'll issue a press release about 3 weeks prior saying what the companies are that they'll add, which ones they'll delete. And so the earliest possible date for us, we think, is going to be this coming March, so in a few weeks. But it could be in June or it could be in September. We're not sure, and it's a complete black box.

We'll find out at the same time the market finds out there will be a press release that said that Royal Gold has been added to the S&P 500, and that will be news to us when we read it. So I can't really offer much more except to say that we meet the criteria. It just is now a question of whether the Inclusion Committee wants to think about us as a candidate.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Alistair, for all of your insight today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance 0to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today.

But before we go, I will turn back the floor to Alistair for final remarks.

Well, thanks, everyone. Happy to speak with you today. And if I didn't answer any questions the way they were intended to be answered, please get back to Renmark and we can square the loop afterwards. So thanks very much. Look forward to chatting again.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Boston and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback of this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24 to 48 hours after this presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.

Great. Thanks, everyone, for joining us at the 29th Annual CIBC Western Institutional Investor Conference or known as the Whistler Conference. And so today, we have a very interesting panel, the royalty panel. My name is Cosmos Chiu. I'm a precious metals analyst here at CIBC. So I don't know if you know, but if you try to put the Whistler Conference into your AI on your phone, Gemini AI or -- I use Gemini, what it says is that given the prestige and the timing of the Whistler Conference, we do set the tone for the year. So with that said, we will try to set the tone for this upcoming year.

Of course, if it's a negative tone, then I might ask you to exit stage right. But beyond that, we'll do that. And I've asked each CEO to do a 5-minute presentation before we get started at our fireside chat. We've decided to go alphabetical order. At times, I've asked potentially to go with market cap, but each and every day, I'm not sure which one is bigger, OR Royalties or Triple Flag. You can tell me which one is bigger today. But -- so today, to make things simple, we'll go with alphabetical order. So first off, we have Jason Attew, President and CEO of OR Royalties.

Thank you, Cosmos. Thank you for the opportunity. And it's hard to believe 29 years here in Whistler. This is a very, very special conference for our company. So thank you very much for the opportunity to present OR Royalties. I will be making some forward-looking statements for which actual results may differ. And just to answer your question, Cosmos, OR Royalties is slightly larger than Triple Flag right now. However, what I'd like to point out is we're obviously in a market right now where -- I mean, it's obviously -- we've had an incredible appreciation of the commodities. We're now talking about $5,000 gold and $100 silver. I can also tell you, Cosmos, that each one of our companies this morning did hit all-time highs. So I really do appreciate the advocacy, the support of CIBC, the mining group, the traders, the whole institution that has got behind not only the royalty and streaming sector, but the mining sector as a whole.

OR royalties. I think most people do know our company. So I'm not going to spend that much time just on, again, our senior quality portfolio, except for the fact that our company is 11 years old, just over 11 years old now. So it's fairly new entrant into the royalty and streaming space. And the reason that they became a royalty and streaming, it was as a result of a hostile takeover defense around our cornerstone asset, Canadian Malartic, an exceptional mine, one of the most profitable mines in the world near Val-d'Or in the Abitibi region in Quebec.

And so again, that's going to continue to be our cornerstone assets. Agnico Eagle is the operator. I think most people know, it is -- they're an exceptional group to be a partner with. They have a vision of taking the Canadian Malartic complex to over 1 million ounce per annum over the next 5 to 6 years with a 5% -- roughly 5% NSR. I think everyone can equate to what that means for ourselves and our shareholder. With respect to 2025, we did hit our guidance this past year, and you can see by some of the metrics that market cap is slightly old now. We're over USD 8 billion. Our cash flow per share, that's a 2024 number. We'll be sharing our 2025 number in the coming weeks when we put out our full financials.

Real quickly on the differentiators for OR Royalties. First and foremost, and I know we're going to talk about this in our fireside chat, but we really do think we differentiate ourselves with respect to the geographical background or the asset geographies of our main assets. 80% of our NAV, 80% of our cash flow comes from the 3 jurisdictions what we define as Tier 1, that being Canada, Australia and the U.S. As you can see, that's tier leading. I think as we move into this environment where obviously, the commodities have exploded or appreciated over the last 24 months, there's a lot more talk about nationalism. There's a lot more talk about mining stability and let's just say, some of the countries that are outside of those -- the Tier 1, there's some talk about expropriation. And so having a portfolio that's got sleep at night countries, I think we're well insulated and well positioned to effectively move forward into this market, which could be somewhat volatile in some of the countries that are looking for essentially the more taxes, more royalties or that sort of thing.

The second key differentiator is our cash margin. Because we're very royalty-centric because of the Canadian Malartic, we actually got a 97% cash margin, and that will continue as Malartic continues to contribute to our portfolio go forward. And that means in a rising gold and silver environment, obviously, that benefits our shareholders, and we have more leverage more so than our peers.

The third differentiating factor is just our growth profile. So we have approximately 40% growth from now over the next 5 years with a whole host of assets that do fit within that Tier 1 jurisdiction. And so we're very excited. We'll be putting out our 5-year outlook, our new 5-year outlook in our February results in just a few weeks, and then we'll obviously be updating that for folks. But this 40% growth, just so I'm very clear, there's no contingent capital associated with it. It's all bought and paid for, and it's really high-quality assets. We're very, very pleased, again, to deliver that growth to our shareholders.

And the last differentiating factor, and it's being called on this stage and other stages as the best gold royalty in the business is Canadian Malartic. Again, I think everybody knows what Canadian Malartic can deliver now that they're in the process of moving from a bulk tonnage open pit to an underground. It's just that deposit there on the underground basis, it's getting to close to 15 million, 16 million ounces in all categories. It is a monster. We're very pleased to be associated with it, and we're very pleased to get the updates from Agnico as they do so go forward.

What I thought I'd spend just a bit of time doing just on a few stats as it relates to the market as a whole because it has been a very interesting market in 2025. And by market, I'm talking about royalty streaming acquisitions as well as corporate acquisitions. As you can see on this slide, in 2025, it was an all-time record in terms of corporate acquisitions and M&A acquisitions as well as acquisitions of royalties and streams, almost 3x from 2023 to 2024 at over $9 billion. Again, complete record.

What OR Royalties has done over the course of 2023 and '24, as you can see, we participate in roughly 10% of the aggregate deal volume of about $3 billion, $2.6 billion and $3.5 billion in '23, '24. In 2025, we were only $25 million of that $9.3 billion. And so again, what I know we're going to talk about in the fireside, but I'll tell you the reason for that. It's not that we didn't have a desire to do deals. It was just -- and we were in every single one of those processes around the $9.3 billion. We either didn't see eye to eye on the valuation. It didn't meet our certain filters. As you can see on the right-hand side, 55% of the deals were done outside of what we classify as the Tier 1 jurisdictions.

So a lot of jurisdictions that we weren't necessarily comfortable with as well as -- and I think this is an important note as well as 26% or $1.3 billion of the transactions were unsecured last year. That is a red line for our royalties. We do need security in any of our instruments go forward. And so we got very close on a number of transactions for which some of our peers just decided to relax the covenants as it relates to security, specifically on streams. So I think that demonstrates from our company's perspective, we have a strong desire to deploy capital. We're debt-free now. We're growing cash. We did a buyback program because we thought that was the best use to get exposure for our shareholders. We bought back close to CAD 50 million or around CAD 50 million last year in our normal course issuer bid.

But we do want to deploy capital on acquisitions, but they have to be, in our mind, effectively accretive to our shareholders. And that means positive IRRs, not negative IRRs based on consensus and/or spot as well as, again, the jurisdiction is important to us. It's one of our main filters. But as well, as I mentioned, we will not do -- we're not in the habit of doing unsecured deals, and that was certainly a trend that we saw in 2025, where, again, roughly or just over 1/4 of the deals were unsecured deals.

So just a few stats for you from 2025, and it demonstrates in our mind that OR Royalties will continue to be disciplined around capital allocation, especially in an environment where we've obviously got a very much an appreciating commodity price and an environment where arguably operators and the counterparties are asking for a lot of concessions in the deals. We'll just remain disciplined. We've got our red lines.

And with that, I'd like to then hand it over to Bill, and he'll talk about his company. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jason.