Royal Gold, Inc. Aktie

Hello, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. 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 want to thank everyone 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.

[Operator Instructions] With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Alistair.

Well, thanks very much, Noella, and thanks, everybody, for your attention today. It's great to be here and give you an update on Royal Gold. We've been very busy over the past year or so, and it's been a while since I've spoken to you in New York. So very happy to give you an update.

As always, 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'm going to give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. And we are -- in a very short sentence, we're a high-margin business that generates consistent cash flows from precious metals. We're not a mining company. And this presentation covers the various key attributes of Royal Gold as we see them. So the first is our focus on precious metals and gold in particular. The second is our high-margin business with a consistent commitment, long-standing commitment of returning capital to shareholders in the form of a dividend.

Our diversified portfolio, which is the most diversified amongst peers in terms of assets, operators and jurisdictions, limited operating risks in our business model as well as steady margins without direct exposure to inflation, being the right size in a small sector where we can compete for the largest transactions and the smallest transactions can be meaningful to us. And then finally, the optionality embedded within our portfolio where we don't have to pay for organic growth from mine expansions or extensions.

But before we get into that, I just want to give you an overview or highlight a little bit our 2025 activity. 2025 was a transformative year for us at Royal Gold. We completed 2 corporate transactions, Sandstorm, Horizon, that added significant growth and diversification to our portfolio. But we weren't just active on the corporate front. We added 2 significant gold streams to our portfolio. Kansanshi, Tier 1 operating asset in Zambia. We have a gold stream there that provides immediate cash flow. And Warintza, embedded -- an emerging Tier 1 asset in Ecuador, we have exposure to a very attractive gold and copper development project.

But it wasn't just acquisitions in 2025 where we saw a very positive news. We saw some very significant optionality surface within the portfolio at Mount Milligan and Fourmile. And since we closed those transactions, we've had 2 very strong quarters of positive results. The first quarter of this year, we had record revenue, cash flow and earnings. In the second quarter this year, we had -- we followed it up with record operating cash flow in the second quarter. So we've repaid $1 billion of debt since this time last year, since closing the Sandstorm, Horizon transactions, and we've repurchased and canceled about $30 million of shares. We've also raised our dividend for the 25th consecutive year, and we increased our portfolio reserve life by about 25% to 18 years.

So in summary, we added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio, but we did not change our strategy. And I want you to keep that in mind as I get towards the end of the presentation and talk about valuation.

Now when it comes to Sandstorm and Horizon, we've seen some very positive developments over the past several months, and we've been owners of these assets. We've seen significant revenue and operating cash flow come from these portfolios of these 2 corporate transactions. But we've also done a lot of work to try and simplify some of the parts of the transactions that weren't very popular with the market. The very first thing we did when we closed these transactions was we collapsed the intercompany arrangements between Sandstorm and Horizon, simplified the story in a pretty meaningful way. We've also divested about $200 million worth of noncore equity positions that were held by those companies.

We've restructured some of the more complex arrangements, Bear Creek, Relief Canyon being 2 of those. And we've reduced our direct equity ownership of the Hod Maden project from about 30% to 15%. We've also seen some very positive developments from within the operating side of the portfolio. We've seen -- at MARA, in Argentina, we've seen the approval of the RIGI application, and Glencore has actually started mining at the Alumbrera pit 6 months ahead of schedule. At Platreef, we've received our first delivery under the stream agreement, and that asset continues to ramp up. Hod Maden, the development is about 25% complete. At Fruta del Norte, we've seen some very strong exploration results. We've also seen some very attractive or interesting news at Omai and Lobo-Marte as those projects continue to advance. And on top of that, we've seen good revenue from Antamina, Caserones and Chapada to name 3.

So it's been a very positive experience for us over the past several months with the Sandstorm and Horizon transactions within our portfolio, and we're very pleased with the developments in a short period of time.

So what does this all mean? We provided our 5-year guidance outlook for the first time in March of this year at our Investor Day. And we have a pretty strong growth runway ahead of us. Compared to last year, we're expecting the midpoint of guidance to be about 30% higher than where we were last year. And then if you look ahead 5 years, we expect to the midpoint of guidance to be about 17% ahead of where we are this year. So very nice growth. And we're seeing growth beyond that from some pretty material assets like MARA and Fourmile. The good thing about our growth profile is that it's diversified, and it's not dependent upon one single asset to get us there.

Now in this next section, I'm just going to touch on gold and our focus on gold. And we've been around for over 40 years with a very gold-focused, very gold-heavy focus. The company started in the mid-1980s. This year is our 45th anniversary on the NASDAQ. And our strategy has been pretty consistent over that time. We're focused on gold revenue from good assets in good jurisdictions run by good operators. And our revenue has grown consistently, and the metal mix has not changed. We try to provide our shareholders with gold exposure in a conservatively managed vehicle.

And this next slide shows you why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to gold. On the left-hand side, you can see our beta of 1.6, very strong leverage to the gold price. And on the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance over time since the beginning of the GDX Index in 2006. Since that time, we've actually outperformed the gold price, we've outperformed the GDX Index itself, and we've also outperformed the S&P 500. So we have been a very good long-term investment in a very volatile commodity.

I'm going to spend a few minutes here just talking about our business model. And we have a very high operating margin in our business. The model is unique. It is, as I said, high model or high margin, pardon me, but it's also very scalable. Our trailing 12-month EBITDA margin is about 83%. So that's like a software company. And our cash G&A, the cost we have to incur to run this business, is about 3% of our revenue. Our costs are low and they're fixed, and cost inflation should not be something that causes significant risk to our margins.

Our business model is also very efficient. We have a pretty low headcount for the scale of our business. We have 39 employees working for Royal Gold today, and our market cap is about $20 billion. So on a per employee basis, we compare well to any company in any sector.

And return of capital is something that's a key strategic objective for us at Royal Gold, and it's an attribute that makes us unique amongst all the other ways you can invest in gold. 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 we've increased the dividend for 25 consecutive years and 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 every year 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 should show you how we are committed to our dividend and returning capital to shareholders.

I'm going to talk in this next section about our portfolio, and this really -- it underpins the performance of our business. We have a global portfolio that's weighted towards lower risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions. And our portfolio spans the various stages of mining project development. We have over 360 assets in the portfolio, 80 of which produce revenue today, about 30 are in development. So that means that they should start producing revenue in the near term. And then beyond that, we have over 250 that are earlier stage exploration or evaluation. Organic growth comes to us from within the portfolio as assets move through that pipeline from development and exploration stage into revenue producing and operations.

Having a diversified portfolio is very important. It reduces single asset and counterparty risks. And our portfolio is very gold focused, but we do have some important silver and copper. Our gold revenue percentage is actually the highest of our large cap peers. When you think about geographically, our portfolio is also very well diversified. We do have a North American focus, but we do have a spread in other mining-friendly jurisdictions. And on a net asset value basis, the most -- we have the most diversified portfolio in the mining or in our sector, in the royalty streaming sector. 9 of our top 10 assets are producing revenue today, and we have expansion and extension projects underway at about 5 of those assets.

Our operators are best-in-class. They're, generally speaking, large, well capitalized and experienced. And we've recently added First Quantum, Glencore and Rio Tinto to our counterparty list. So very strong operators. Portfolio diversification is very important because it reduces our exposure to single asset or operator or jurisdictional risks. And it's a very important feature when it comes to a generalist investor who doesn't want to spend the time understanding the assets, underpinning the portfolio because we've got such a diversity of those assets.

Now we have a -- our business model provides for limited operating risk. And one of the advantages of investing in the royalty model is it provides the best of both worlds. Our model provides gold exposure with reduced risk. This slide shows you the different ways you can invest in gold and how we are positioned. 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 increases.

You can invest in gold in many different ways. You can buy physical gold if you want to be conservative. But if you buy an ounce today, it's always going to be an ounce, you won't get upside, you won't get a dividend. You can be more aggressive and you can buy equity in an operating company or an exploration company. But with that, you'll also get operating and capital cost risk exposure and inflation can impact margins as those costs increase. There is a perception from some in the marketplace that our business model doesn't provide good leverage to gold. But I think if you look at our financial results, that shows otherwise.

Now our margins actually expand quite nicely with rising gold prices. And this slide shows producers and gold producers and Royal Gold have very different cost structures. Our costs are low and fixed. So margins should expand as metal prices increase, whereas operator costs are subject to inflation. So margins may not expand as quickly. And in some cases, they may actually compress as operating costs rise faster than metals prices.

And you can see in this next slide, what our cost structure looks like relative to the average producer. Producers are exposed to inflation and input costs. So anything that costs them or any cost that they have to incur to run their operations, so labor, energy, consumables, anything like that, those costs often rise with commodity price increases.

You look at our G&A costs, on the other hand, though, and they're mostly steady, things like salaries, services and office rents. They don't move in short-term bursts. They typically don't change that much from one period to the next. Anything that impacts costs impacts margins. And we haven't seen it yet, but I think the operating sector of the mining business is going to start seeing higher operating costs. Oil and gas prices and diesel, especially, those are big parts, big input costs for mining companies. So we will see at some point, there will be some inflation in those costs, which may actually compress margins. We're not directly exposed to that.

I'm going to talk about where we sit in our sector right now. And we are large enough to compete, yet small enough to show growth. Our sector is built on relatively small transactions. And if you look back over the history of our sector, most transactions are smaller than about $300 million, and the average transaction size is just over $100 million.

But we sit in a very interesting position because we're big enough to compete for the largest transactions. We have significant cash flow and access to capital and the $1 billion Kansanshi stream last year is evidence of that. Yet we're also small enough to show growth. A small transaction to us can actually add meaningful value. The $200 million Warintza transaction last year is also evidence of that. We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector, but we do want to be the best. And we think the Goldilocks position that we sit in provides us a great platform to execute our strategy of growth in gold.

Now there's embedded growth and optionality from within our portfolio. But before I start talking about that, I do want to talk about capital allocation because our growth and successful growth really does depend on successfully allocating capital. Our strategy remains simple and consistent. The first thing that we always try and do is reinvest in our business using nondilutive financing. The second is we try to maintain a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity. And the third is we want to continue returning capital to shareholders.

Now we have to be flexible when it comes to allocating capital because market conditions are changing every day. But our framework provides for us to target double-digit returns when we invest in new transactions, and that provides per share growth. We also want to repay debt quickly because we want to rebuild our liquidity. So we've always got cash on hand and the ability to execute on new transactions as they come available. And then the third is we want to continue growing our dividend and returning capital to shareholders, as I said before, is a key strategic attribute.

Now we've introduced a couple of new tools to our capital allocation toolbox. And in the second quarter, we put in place a $600 million uncommitted accordion facility on our revolving credit facility. So that should allow us up to $2 billion of liquidity if we were to fully execute that accordion. And then the second thing we did was we instituted a buyback program. The Board gave us authorization to buy back up to $500 million worth of shares. And we put that in place not so much as a return of capital tool, but more to address a valuation disconnect and apply our capital to where we saw the best opportunity, which earlier in the second quarter of this year was certainly our shares.

So how have we done over the past 25 years? This slide sums that up. Since 2000, we've seen significant revenue and cash flow growth. But there are 3 aspects of this growth that are really important to understand. The first is our G&A costs have not risen anywhere near our revenue and cash flow growth. Our revenue growth far exceeds the increase in G&A costs, and that shows that our business is scalable. We don't need to add people when we add assets to the portfolio.

The second is our revenue growth is not dependent only on metal prices. The gold price has been a very positive tailwind for us over the past couple of decades, but we've also been able to add volume during that period. And we've seen organic growth come to us from within the portfolio as well. So it's not just metal prices that's been helping us. And then finally, we've been able to grow mostly from using internal resources without causing shareholder dilution. We did issue 19 million shares last year for the Sandstorm transaction. That was the first time we'd issued equity since 2012.

So even with the new shares that we added last year, we have the lowest share count on the GDX index. And like I said earlier, we're one of the founding companies of that index over 20 years ago. So we want to avoid shareholder dilution and providing per share growth to our shareholders is something that we're always looking to do.

I'm going to talk a little bit here about returns on transactions that we do. We aim for double-digit returns, but we have to be patient for it to become clear to the market what returns are actually going to be. When we look at any new investment opportunity, we're always looking at exploration and production upside. And that is where we get that additional return. It takes time, though, for -- sometimes for that to show up in the assets where we invest.

We do extensive due diligence of new opportunities. We take a bottoms-up technical fundamental approach to any asset acquisition. And analysts on the sell side often don't have the benefit of that work. And so when you see an analyst publish a research note on a transaction that we've completed, it often looks like the transaction returns are pretty low. And it may take a bit of time, in some cases, years for the upside to become clear to the market. And this slide illustrates this point. As time has passed, expected returns have increased with production expansions, mine life extensions, and that's all driven by resource and reserve growth without us having to fund or contribute anything further to that expansion.

This next slide shows the same story in a slightly different way. As time passes, we recover our investment from cash flow, and we -- any value added to the assets where we invest by the operators increases the future value of our interest. And that's, again, measured by the Street in terms of the -- looking forward, the net asset value of the assets we have in the portfolio.

And this really comes from this growth or an increase in value comes from 2 sources. It's really a multiplier effect. Any extension to mine life provides a double benefit. We get, obviously, an extended mine life provides more production, more revenue, but an extended mine life means that you are able to capture volatility in the gold price over a longer period of time. Operators are always looking to expand mine lives. They've sunk capital to develop assets. They want to try and squeeze as much value out of those assets as possible. And we benefit because we don't have to pay for any of this.

So last year, for example, in 2025, operators spent or they drilled about 2 million meters of exploration drilling in the assets in our portfolio, significantly expensive. But we didn't have to pay for that, but we do get the benefit based on the structure of our investments. And that optionality, the ability for us to extract additional value from the assets is one of the most important features of our business model.

Now we do have a pretty robust development pipeline. And this slide shows some of the key catalysts we see today from new assets that provide organic growth potential. It's a pretty significant organic growth pipeline, and we see catalysts basically almost every year for the next decade within the portfolio.

So if you want to start on the left-hand side, Back River started production last year -- late last year, and it's ramping up now. We've got our newest contributor with Platreef. They started milling ore late last year. We got our first stream delivery in August, just a couple of months ago. Robertson at the Cortez complex is expected to start producing in 2027. Then we've got Hod Maden, Great Bear, Warintza towards the end of this decade. And then beyond the beginning of the next decade, we have MARA and Fourmile expected to start contributing.

This slide doesn't show growth at producing assets today. So last year, we had an increase in the Mount Milligan mine life to 2045. That adds significant value to our portfolio. We also saw, and we're still seeing it today, MMG, the operator of Khoemacau, is putting in an expansion to increase production at Khoemacau that should increase our silver contribution by about 35%. So this is one of the best organic growth pipelines in the industry today.

Now as we think about what that means in valuation, I would say that we're performing very well. Our business has got strong cash flow, good organic growth. We're executing on our priorities. But a snapshot of relative multiples today compared to our peers shows that we're trading at an NAV discount to our large-cap peers. We're actually trading at the bottom of the price to cash flow multiples compared to our large and smaller cap peers.

And what does this mean? It means that if you were to invest the same amount of money in Royal Gold versus our peers, you actually get more in terms of gold and GEO exposure per dollar invested in Royal Gold than you do from our peers. We -- and on top of this, we also have a long-duration portfolio that with embedded growth that provides upside beyond that current revenue.

So kind of an interesting situation when you think about it from a valuation perspective. And this is just -- we hope this is a temporary feature. This slide shows where we've traded over the last 10 years relative to our peer group. And we are trading -- there is a bit of a valuation disconnect in place today. We hope this is a short-term issue, and it's -- we hope it's because the market is just not absorbing yet. They haven't had a chance to absorb the scale and growth potential of the portfolio. And instead, it's probably more focused on some of the integration risks from 2025 acquisitions without recognizing solid financial results.

Now we've only had 2 quarters of results to speak to. So it's a pretty short period of time. We're expecting to -- we will release our third quarter results in 3 weeks. But in the first 2 quarters of this year, we had $770 million of EBITDA. We've paid down $1 billion of debt, and we've seen some pretty significant advances in the portfolio. So our focus right now is to make sure the market understands how well we're executing to address this valuation disconnect.

So with that, I've come to the end of the formal part of the presentation. I'll wrap it up by saying we have done a lot to strengthen Royal Gold's position and position it for a strong gold price environment. We've added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio. We have a strong balance sheet, significant cash flow. And we think our patient approach and our commitment to a long-term strategy that works should be rewarded by the market in the hopefully near term.

So with that, Noella, I'll turn it back to you to start the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the great presentation. We'll now begin the Q&A.

Your first question is, how has the ownership restructuring at Hod Maden changed the project's risk profile, expected returns and time line to production?

Well, the ownership change hasn't really changed anything with respect to the project. Lidya, the new operator is working on the same development plan that was developed by SSR when -- before when SSR had an ownership position in the project. They are doing a review of the capital cost and execution plan, but that's standard practice, I think, when anybody takes over a new asset. But they haven't said anything around time line or production levels or anything like that, that are different. I think from our perspective, what it's done is it's -- we have now got lower exposure to the asset directly, which is what we wanted.

When we announced the transaction with Sandstorm last year, the one thing that we did not like, and we made it very clear in our commentary, was that the 30% direct interest in a development project or any project for that matter, that's not core to us. That's not the kind of structure that we like. We very much like the Hod Maden asset. We think it's a great asset, but the ownership structure doesn't suit our business model. So we've gone from a 30% direct equity interest to 15%. We took back an equivalent value and royalty for that delta of 15%. And where we are today, it's a $900 million project. We have 15% exposure to it.

If you think about the cash flows from Royal Gold's portfolio, really any exposure to that project and any increase in cost that may occur, that's pretty de minimis within the scale of our business. This was something that strategically we wanted to get to -- we want to get to 0, actually, direct equity ownership. But these things take a bit of time. We've taken a very meaningful first step to get to 15% from 30%. It really does mitigate risks to us and our shareholders, risks in terms of capital cost increases or any development risks, but we would like to get to 0 eventually. And hopefully, that will happen in the medium term.

Thank you for clarifying that. Next viewer is asking, at Khoemacau, how much improvement in silver deliveries do you expect from operational recovery? And can higher volumes meaningfully cushion the effect of lower silver prices?

Well, we -- the recovery of silver is actually pretty decent at Khoemacau. I think where we're expecting to see the bigger jump in silver deliveries is going to come from the expansion. And as I mentioned in the presentation, we're expecting about a 35% increase in silver deliveries to us once the expansion starts and gets up to full production levels, which will likely be in the '28, '29 time period.

The silver price, yes, the silver price has come down. But when we announced this transaction in 2019, the silver price and the valuation that we did the transaction was about $16, $17 an ounce. So we're multiples higher than that. We would like to obviously see the silver price continue to stay high because that obviously provides additional return to us. But relative to where we were when we did this transaction, we calculate our returns based on a much, much lower silver price than where we are today.

So I think it's a combination of maintaining the silver price where it is today, but the higher production levels from the expansion will be what drives the higher return there at Khoemacau.

Thank you for that. Your next question, what is your cost of debt? What are the terms of the $400 million debt? And how will rising interest rates affect the rate you pay back to that debt?

So the $400 million was the balance outstanding on June 30. We have paid down -- we announced that we -- when we did our second quarter conference call, we announced that we've made an additional $75 million payment. We're going to make another $100 million shortly after that. So we are working very hard to get the debt level down to 0. And we expect by sometime this quarter, we should be there. That was the time line that we gave the last time we reported to the marketplace.

Our revolving credit facility, I think, costs on the order of 6% today, maybe a little less than that. But it's relatively small dollars when you think about how quickly we're able to repay this debt. So it's not something we see as being a real drag on our performance. It's a revolving credit facility. So it's a bit like a credit card. If we see an asset that we like and we don't have cash on the balance sheet, we'll use our revolving credit facility to provide funding to acquire that asset.

And then we'll just repay the balance very quickly based on cash flows. And our trailing 12-month EBITDA is about $1.3 billion. So you can see very quickly that even if we drew the revolving credit facility to the maximum of $1.4 billion, it's about 1x -- just over 1x our EBITDA on a trailing 12-month basis. So it's not something that really burdens the company and obviously, we're trying to get the balance down as quickly as possible to rebuild our liquidity and the cost of the revolving credit facility is relatively low compared to the returns that we ultimately try and achieve when we buy a multi-decade asset.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Next [ viewer ] was asking, as major mining companies face rising capital costs, could delays to expansion projects reduce the expected growth in Royal Gold stream and royalty deliveries?

By any delays to development projects, yes, that can cause risks, absolutely. But I think as I made the point during the presentation, our growth, if you look forward and you look at our growth and where we expect it to come from, it's not from one asset. It's from a multitude of assets. So if we do see one asset or maybe two assets slip, then it's not going to impact materially. It shouldn't impact materially the long-term growth potential.

If you do see things slip, that's -- obviously, you don't want to see it happen, but it's not the end of the world because those ounces are still there. It just means we're not going to get them as quickly as we were planning on it before. But we don't see that being a significant risk. I mean it's a risk in any scenario when you've got development assets, you could always see time lines slip, but we don't see it as a significant risk because it is a very diversified development pipeline. So that should mitigate any impact from one single asset slipping. And hopefully, we won't see all of them slip at the same time.

Thank you for clarifying. Your next question, does retaining a 15% equity interest in Hod Maden create any capital requirements that investors should consider as development advances?

Yes. So we have about 15% direct equity interest based on a $900 million project capital spend is about $165 million. That's our exposure. We've already funded $70 million of that. So we have about $65 million (sic) [ $95 million ] remaining. So it's not -- in the context of our cash flow, it's not a huge amount.

Thank you, Alistair. Next, has the company found it more difficult to find single asset royalty or streaming deals that will move the needle given the larger portfolio?

No. We have been -- I think if you look back at what we've been able to do over the past several years, you'd see that the size of our existing portfolio doesn't really limit us from looking at new opportunities and adding the Kansanshi transaction last year, I mean, it's now one of our top 5 assets. So those are opportunities that come up every so often. We're not limited because we have a large portfolio.

I think if we're a much larger company in terms of market cap, yes, that would be more of a consideration because you need to do much larger transactions to show an impact on a company that's much, much larger. So that's why we think we're in a good spot. We're about a $20 billion market cap company today. We can do transactions that are typically in the $300 million to $500 million range, and we should see those adding significantly to our financial results. So I think we're in a good spot. If we're much larger, it would be a much bigger challenge.

Thank you for commenting. Next, what valuation criteria determines when you buy shares versus directing capital or debt or acquisition?

Well, we -- I'm not quite sure I understand where the question is coming from. We're always very focused on royalties or streams. That is what we want to own. We don't typically go out looking for equity or debt investments. But what we will do in some circumstances, if an operator needs more capital and they're limited for whatever reason, how much stream or royalty they can offer, we will look to make up any delta using equity or debt. We've done that before. We've done that in the past. We don't like to do it because it's owning equity and owning debt is not really -- we're not going to get full value in the marketplace.

If we own a royalty or a stream, we should get full value. And that's where -- that's why our shareholders own us is to get royalty stream exposure. It's not to get exposure to a portfolio of equity and debt investments. So if we can, we'll always very much focus on our core business, which is royalties or streams. And sometimes we will take a little bit of equity or a little bit of debt because that may be the need of the counterparty. And so it's helpful in getting that larger investment, which is obviously the royalty or the stream.

Thank you for that insight, Alistair. Your next question, are there any producing assets in the portfolio with the potential to become significantly larger contributors in the future?

Any existing assets in the portfolio? Yes, there are. I mean we -- Khoemacau is a great example. I mean that's a producing asset today. There's an expansion underway, an additional 35% silver production should come to our accounts. We have a number of assets in the portfolio that are -- there's always optimization happening at mines. So maybe there's a way for an operator to increase their production by putting more material through the mill. Xavantina is a great example of that. There's excess mill capacity there. If they're able to mine more and put that through the mill, that should be higher gold production.

So there's a lot within the portfolio where that organic growth. It may not be asset by asset, hugely significant, but you pull it together, and yes, we do see some significant organic growth from that kind of opportunity. But the one that I would point to, the most obvious example is Khoemacau.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. Your next question from the viewer is, gold, silver and copper make up the majority of your portfolio. Have you thought about making investments into the rare earth space?

I mean we see these opportunities all the time. The mining sector needs capital and rare earths and battery metals and things like that need capital as well. We're not comfortable with metals that we don't understand. So things with rare earths and other battery metals, those are very specialized businesses. You really need to understand the marketing of those. Often, they're not exchange traded. So there's no liquidity. There's no price that you can look to. You have to negotiate long-term offtake agreements with strategic offtakers.

That's not something we have a lot of expertise in. We have expertise in exchange-traded metals, gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead. We have some experience in that. But we're not looking to change our focus. We're very much precious metals focused. If we see a metal come in that looks at -- it's something we understand. It's a very high returning or good quality opportunity, we'll look at that, but we're not out seeking it. We prefer to focus on gold and silver and other precious metals.

Thank you for clarifying that. Next, your question is, what do you think is an appropriate premium when looking at your valuation compared to producers?

Well, I think the premiums change depending on what's happening in the marketplace and where we are in the metal price cycle. But I think the -- it always makes sense for royalty companies to trade at a premium to producers because, as I said in the presentation, costs are lower and they're fixed or relatively fixed. So margin should expand. We're not exposed to inflation. The second is we can get -- Royal Gold gets additional value from money that's spent by the operators to expand or extend the mine lives.

The thing that -- and so that should end up giving us a higher trading premium in the marketplace. Our cash flows are a lot more predictable. You can look -- all you need to do to understand our cash flows is look at the top line production levels from assets and apply the royalty or the stream rate to those top line numbers. You don't have to do the same analysis you do with a mining company where you look at potential inflation and operating costs, you look at what is it going to cost for sustaining capital or expansion capital. Those risks are not inherent in our business.

So that explains or it should explain why we trade and our peers, why we trade at higher multiples than operating companies. And that's something that I think that is pretty easy to understand when you think about the quality of the cash flows, the predictability of cash flows, the more -- the higher we get a premium, and that should explain why we trade at a higher premium than the operators.

Thank you for illustrating that. Next question. What percent of your exploration royalties do you think will eventually produce?

That's a very hard question to answer. And it really does depend on each of the opportunities. I would say we have 250 earlier-stage assets in the portfolio. I think it would be unfair for me to say all of them are going to result in revenue in the future. That's probably not a good statement to make. But I can't handicap what would be some of the other assets that may become producers in our portfolio. We've seen examples of assets in the portfolio that have been dormant for a long time. We've actually acquired assets as part of portfolio transactions that have got 0 value in our view, 0 book value because we never thought those things would be producers.

Bellevue Gold is a great example of that. We acquired Bellevue as part of a portfolio transaction in 2010. It sat dormant for a long time. We have 0 book value on it. But Bellevue was acquired by a management team who had a different vision for the asset. They did some -- they did a lot of exploration work. They did a lot of work rethinking the deposit, and they put it back into production. And now it's a fairly consistently 150,000 to 170,000 ounce a year producer, and we have a 2% royalty on that.

That 15 years ago to us was worthless. Today, it's worth a lot. And it's really hard for us to look at the portfolio today and make a prediction what could happen in 15 years. It depends on a lot of things, including a motivated management team that's able to find financing. Metal price environment, obviously, is very important as well. So it's very hard to provide a simple answer to that question.

Well, I appreciate your response, nonetheless, Alistair. Coming up on your last few questions here. The next one is, which jurisdictions do you see offering the most attractive opportunities for Royal Gold to expand its portfolio through strategic acquisitions in the near term?

Well, where we invest is obviously driven by where there are mining opportunities. And so we've done very well in North America and South America. I think there still is a lot of prospectivity in those jurisdictions. One of the places where we would really like to see some activity focus and generate some new opportunities is Australia. We have a number of revenue producers in Australia. Unfortunately, they're relatively small compared to the rest of the portfolio. But Australia is a very prospective jurisdiction for us as well as North and South America.

There are occasionally opportunities that we'll see in other different jurisdictions as well, but we tend to be focused on those places that are more stable. We're not going to go to certain jurisdictions that you don't have security of tenure or you've got physical risks or other things that governments just don't treat resource companies fairly. We're going to stay away from places like that. And so it probably means you'll see us continue to reinvest or invest in places that are pretty stable, mining-friendly jurisdictions like in Canada, the U.S., certain parts of South America and Australia.

Thank you for clarifying. Your next question, how does your general framework for dividends change during metal price downturns?

So the way we set our dividend is we want our dividend to continue to grow. And so we will look at raising the dividend every year. We go through the exercise in late in the year. And we look at what we are paying today. We look at the portfolio, what we think it's going to generate in terms of cash flow, and we'll make an adjustment to the dividend from there. But we also look not just 1 year ahead, we'll look several years ahead because if we raise the dividend this year to a new level, when we come to the end of next year, we raise it again, and we can raise it again on top of that.

So that's the way we think about the dividend. It's not a mechanical approach. We don't think about the gold price dropping, we should pull back our dividend. We look at the portfolio and obviously, we'll do some sensitivity analysis on prices. And we get a sense, okay, what is the portfolio going to produce based on different price assumptions? And what are we comfortable with as a dividend in that -- in those scenarios. So it's a rigorous but also a very subjective analysis of the dividend.

Thank you for your insight, Alistair. And your last question, in your opinion, what key milestones could drive the next meaningful re-rating of Royal Gold's valuation?

Well, I think the biggest milestone, I think, is really just getting the market to focus on the cash flow that we generate. And maybe that will be with our next quarterly results, and then we've got 3 quarters for the market to look at. Maybe it's going to take 4 quarters. I don't know. But the fact that we've paid down $1 billion of debt in a year, I think, should be a very positive sign to the market, plus the fact that we raised our dividend again. We bought back $30 million worth of shares. All the seeds or all the components are there for the market to look at if you want to think about a re-rate in the valuation.

Now there are other things as well that could occur that would be catalysts. I mean if you saw positive news from any of the development projects that we -- that I talked about, you saw anything advancing faster than expected, obviously, that's going to help. When you see Platreef starting to deliver on a steady state, I think that will be a catalyst. When you see new production at Robertson, that will be a catalyst.

So there are a lot of asset-specific catalysts within the portfolio that should provide additional comfort to the market and there's growth. But I think the biggest thing right now is just for the market to look at our financial results, the cash flow and rationalize that with the price that we're trading at in the marketplace. And I think that may happen relatively soon.

Excellent. 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 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 very much, Noella. Thanks, Renmark, and thanks, everybody, for your questions. If I misunderstood any questions or if you'd like to go into anything in more detail, please contact Renmark. I'd be happy to engage with you one-on-one.

Until the next time, take care, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in New York and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this Virtual Non-Deal Roadshow will be available on our website within 24 to 48 hours after this presentation on our website under the VNDR Library tab and on our YouTube channel.

Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.

Good morning. We're so pleased to host Jason Hynes, Senior Vice President of Royal Gold, who's going to tell us all about their progress and the various projects they've invested in. And without further ado, Jason, let's hear the good news.

Well, John, thanks for having us, and thanks for your support of the company over the many, many years you've been following us. As you said, I'm the SVP of Strategy and Business Development. I've been with Royal Gold for about 13 years. I've worked out of our headquarters in Denver. I've worked in our Swiss office, and I'm currently in our Vancouver office here.

And it's a really good time, I think, to give an update on Royal Gold, introduce the company. Hopefully, there's some new shareholders online today. Our portfolio is performing really well. It's being boosted by strong commodity prices, although maybe not today's strong commodity prices, but in general, if you zoom out more enough. And it doesn't really appear to be reflected in our valuation relative to peers in our industry and where we've traded historically.

So happy to walk through today. And please, John, interrupt me at any time with any questions you got. This presentation is probably a 20- to 30-minute presentation, but you jump in if you want me to clarify or go into any more detail on anything in particular.

I'm going to go to some forward-looking statements. I will be making forward-looking statements here today. Risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC. So please familiarize yourselves with this.

So I'm not sure if the audience is going to be very familiar with the industry and with Royal Gold. But maybe just as a general comment, we are not a mining company. We provide top-line precious metals exposure from a portfolio of royalties and stream interests on mines. So these are run by well-known operators. The business is high margin. It generates consistent cash flows from a large portfolio of producing mines with many more development and exploration projects also in the pipeline.

In this presentation, I'm just going to cover some key attributes of Royal Gold and also the business model. Our focus is precious metals, gold in particular. Close to 80% of our revenue is from gold. And then the balance is made up mostly of silver and copper. It's a very high-margin business. It's a predictable business. It allows us to maintain a long-standing commitment of dividend growth, 25 years straight.

Our portfolio itself of producing, development, exploration assets is the most diversified in the sector by asset, by operator, by jurisdiction. And it's not just diversified revenue-producing assets, but it's diversified in our growth pipeline as well, which means we're not relying on one or two mines or one or two development projects to make our results today or make our results in the future.

Jurisdictionally speaking, our exposure is skewed to Tier 1 geographies with close to 70% of our revenue from North America. Our -- just generally on the model, our operating cost exposure is limited, which means the margins are predictable, and we do not have very meaningful exposure to inflation, which I know is a topic of conversation these days.

Actually, you benefit from inflation because if costs rise and prices rise, your revenue royalties are automatically worth more -- and on the streams, your down payment is fixed and the revenue upside is uncapped.

Yes.

So you should say that you benefit from inflation.

All right. Yes, you're right. I mean, as long -- yes, if the commodity prices are moving with inflation as they generally will, you're absolutely correct on that, John. Our market cap sits around $20 billion today. In the first half of this year, we generated over $750 million in EBITDA, and we have ample liquidity to grow and return capital to shareholders all at the same time.

The portfolio has a lot of optionality in it. We do not have to invest for the organic growth that's embedded in our close to 400 assets, of which over 80 are in production. So just maybe a quick overview of 2025, which was a very transformative year for Royal Gold with both corporate and asset acquisitions.

On the corporate side, we acquired Sandstorm and Horizon. Just under a year ago, we closed those acquisitions. Those added growth at both the production and development side of our portfolio. They added diversification and they added duration to our portfolio, meaning sort of the average reserve life that we have in our portfolio.

On top of those corporate acquisitions, we did a couple of big asset acquisitions. We did a $1 billion gold stream acquisition from the Kansanshi mine in Zambia, which is a copper mine operated by First Quantum. And we made a $200 million commitment to the Warintza project in Ecuador, which is an emerging Tier 1 copper-gold asset expected to have a very long life.

We've only -- it's only been two full quarters that we've put out since we've closed those acquisitions. And those quarters had record revenue, record cash flow, record earnings. And on the diversification side, which is something that was very important for our management team, is really creating that portfolio effect, is no asset was more than 13% of revenue.

I mentioned that we increased the duration. And what that means is the weighted portfolio reserve life of our portfolio, which was before those acquisitions was probably 14 years, is now more like 18 years. So close to 25% increase in our weighted average reserve life.

We've already repaid most of the debt associated with these transactions. We've instituted and started executing on a share repurchase program, and we raised our dividend for the 25th consecutive year. So to sum up 2025, we added scale, we diversified further, we added growth, and this was all on strategy. And maybe just keep all that in mind for when I get to the end of the presentation and talk a little bit about valuation and where we sit today.

So I just want to spend a few minutes talking about Sandstorm and Horizon, the corporate acquisitions, which were really transformational and remained on strategy. Like I said, we've only had two reported quarters, but the short-term developments in the portfolio from these acquisitions have been very positive.

Our strategy here in adding these companies to the portfolio was they had a very high-quality development asset pipeline, and this pipeline of assets has advanced faster than we had anticipated, and I'll talk a little bit more about some of the assets in there. But it wasn't just a development pipeline. They have a lot of high-quality producing assets that have contributed significant revenue and operating cash flow in the two quarters since we've closed it.

One of the tasks we took upon ourselves after closing was to simplify some of the more complicated and noncore investments that came along. Sandstorm and Horizon were sort of sister companies with interests in common. We've collapsed that intercompany arrangement, and we've unified those assets. And that was mainly the Antamina NPI royalty and the Hod Maden stream, royalty and joint venture interests that were in that portfolio.

We sold over $200 million of noncore equity positions. We also inherited some nontraditional investments in Hod Maden. A 30% joint venture interest is one of them, and we've already converted half of this interest to royalties. And by the way, that mine is now under construction and 25% or so complete.

There were a bunch of smaller complex investments in the portfolio, and we converted some nonperforming debt instruments at Bear Creek into royalty interests at Corani, which is now under construction by Highlander Silver.

There's been some really good -- like I kind of alluded to this, there's been some really positive portfolio developments in some of these development -- larger development assets that we acquired. And I think these have happened faster than we anticipated, obviously, boosted by strong copper and gold prices, which encourage operators and developers to move things forward as quickly as possible.

Talk first about MARA, which stands for Minera Agua Rica Alumbrera, and a little bit of history here. Alumbrera was an old Glencore, Goldcorp, Yamana joint venture in Argentina, which operated for 20 years until 2018 when their reserves were exhausted. And proximal to Alumbrera is a deposit called Agua Rica, which is now a 1.2 billion-tonne undeveloped resource.

So the concept here was you put these two projects together, you've got the Alumbrera large-scale processing infrastructure, and you use that to process the ore from the Agua Rica deposit. So Glencore has unified the ownership on this project 100% now, and Agua Rica is their next multi-decade leg of growth in their copper strategy.

And Royal Gold has a very in-the-money option on a 20% gold stream. This new Alumbrera-Agua Rica combined project is expected to produce 100,000 ounces a year of byproduct gold from the Agua Rica deposit, which is what our stream covers.

Glencore has been accelerating the development on it. They got RIGI approval, which is basically Argentine large-project sort of commitments to fiscal stability that the Argentine government is giving large projects. They actually received approval for that last week. And they've actually started the restart of mining at Alumbrera ahead of schedule, which is going to derisk the Agua Rica startup.

So the point here is they're going to -- there's a little bit of ore left at Alumbrera. They're going to use that to fire up the mills, make sure everything is working while they're developing some of the other infrastructure and then actually fix a few highwall issues, and they're going to use the old Alumbrera pit to store tailings from the Agua Rica ore processing.

So a couple of next steps for Glencore on this project is a feasibility study update middle of next year and, hopefully, a full investment decision by the end of the year and then full construction. And the critical path on this project is a 35-kilometer ore conveyor system to move the ore from the Agua Rica deposit back to the Alumbrera processing facilities. So we're very excited about that development asset coming online over the next few years.

Moving to Platreef, another development asset. This is Ivanhoe's bulk-tonnage PGM mine in South Africa. We received our first delivery of gold from this asset in August, just a couple of months ago, and they continue to ramp up this project with -- they're already into a Phase 2 expansion. It's well underway.

They've completed Shaft #3, and their new 5 million tonnes per year concentrator is on track for completion at the end of year 2027. And this team has a Phase 3 expansion already planned to move forward. But right now, we're focused on execution of Phase 2.

And maybe just to touch on some of the smaller things in the portfolio. People may know the Fruta del Norte mine, which is operated by Lundin Gold in Ecuador. We've got a 0.9% royalty on that. They've had continued production success, continued exploration success at both the high-grade gold and on some new, very interesting copper-gold porphyry targets.

Corani, which is a silver development asset in Peru, is now under construction, and this is one of the world's largest silver deposits. This thing, according to the feasibility study, should produce around 10 million ounces of silver per year when it's up and running.

And just some small things, like I'll point to Omai here. This is a very exciting development asset in Guyana. They've got a brand-new updated PEA. They've got a 6 million-plus-ounce resource, and they are hoping to be producing north of 300,000 ounces a year for 18 years according to that study. So as you can see, we're very pleased with the developments across this acquired portfolio that we've seen in such a short time since owning these businesses.

So we provided 5-year guidance for the first time this past March and really demonstrates sort of the growth runway that we have in the portfolio. Our '26 guidance midpoint was 30% over 2025 actuals and our first ever 5-year outlook shows an additional 17% growth from there. And this does not include material assets such as MARA, which I covered on the previous slide.

Fourmile in the Cortez district, which we'll talk about in a little bit more detail later in the presentation, Hudbay's Cactus copper project in Arizona, our interest in Rio Tinto's Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia on the Entrée Rio Tinto joint venture ground, Omai, just to name a few. So there's a lot of projects still to come beyond that 5-year outlook.

And as we update -- hopefully update that 5-year outlook on an annual basis, some of those projects will filter in, and you'll see that growth continue to climb. So it's -- back to Fourmile. It's the first time I've mentioned it. And we -- just to make it clear for everybody, we have full coverage of the Fourmile deposit with a 1.6% gross smelter royalty, which we acquired around 5 years ago.

This is the -- one of the most significant gold discoveries in a generation, right in the heart of the Barrick, Newmont, Nevada Gold Mines Cortez mining complex, which is where Royal Gold really built its business from the 1980s. Recently, it was a Barrick-owned project, Fourmile, but it was -- it has now been vended into the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture.

So this is great news because it can now be advanced in an optimal manner with the rest of the Cortez complex because Cortez has a lot going on. It's got a lot of different ore types. It's got a lot of processing methodologies. And so having the flexibility to move these things forward under unified ownership is going to be great.

They put out a PEA just on Fourmile last year, and that PEA had a production range of 600,000 to 750,000 ounces a year for 25 years. So that is a very large discovery. Currently, they have 20 drill rigs on site doing infill and exploration drilling. They're planning for a PFS by the end of 2028, a feasibility study in 2029. And there's a lot of permitting activities underway.

And permitting in Nevada is complex and time-consuming. So this is going to take a few years to get all this sorted. But in the meantime, there should be lots of great news coming out on that project. So this is a very diversified growth pipeline that is really not dependent on one large asset, whether you're talking 2026, the 5-year outlook or beyond that.

So maybe just a little bit, we've always been focused on gold, and we're going to talk a little bit about that gold focus here over the next couple of slides. Our company was started in the mid-1980s. So we've been focused on gold for 40-plus years. The strategy has been consistent over that time, find good assets in good jurisdictions run by good operators.

As you can see here from the chart, our revenue has grown consistently and the metal mix has not really changed with gold remaining dominant. And our goal is to provide exposure to gold in a conservatively managed vehicle that investors can put in their portfolio and not worry about.

Just to show that investing in Royal Gold is a good alternative for conservative exposure to gold. Our beta of 1.6 to gold shows excellent leverage. So basically, what that means is for every 1% move in the gold price, our stock has historically moved 1.6%. And conversely, we are far less sensitive to movements in the general markets with only a 0.6 beta to the S&P 500.

And you can look back 20 years since the GDX was formed. Our share price has outperformed gold, the GDX and the S&P 500. So we've been a very good long-term investment in a volatile commodity. So a little bit more about the business and our margins and our dividend growth and return of capital strategy.

The business is high margin and very scalable. Production volumes and commodity prices can fluctuate, but margins are high, they're stable and predictable, and there's very limited exposure to inflation, as you and I traded thoughts on a few minutes ago, John. On a trailing 12-month basis, that EBITDA margin has been 83%. And importantly, our cash G&A is just 3% of revenue.

So that's what it costs us on a cash basis to run this business every year. These costs are low. They're mostly fixed and hence, inflation to us is not a risk to our business and to our margins. Our headcount is very low for the scale of our business. We have 39 employees managing a company with a $20 billion market cap and over $1 billion a year of operating cash flow.

Our team is focused on identifying and negotiating new acquisitions. We spend a lot of time monitoring existing operations from a technical, financial and legal perspective as well, make sure that we understand what it is that we have and what it is that we're getting paid on. We don't have to have the thousands of people that are needed to explore, build and operate mines. Our partners do that for us.

And this is what makes it a very scalable business. We can increase our volumes without material increases in our G&A, cash G&A costs. Return of capital is a key strategic objective for us, and it's one of the attributes that makes us unique among other gold investments.

We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased that dividend every year since 2001 despite volatility in the gold price. We've paid out over $1 billion of dividends in that time, all while maintaining a sustainable payout ratio. And we're the only company in the GDX that has paid an increasing dividend since the index was formed in 2006.

And we're the only precious metals company, not just streaming and royalty company, but precious metals company that's in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index, which recognizes that sustainable dividend growth over multiple decades. Our Board reviews our dividend every year in Q4.

And earlier this year, for the first time, the Board approved a share repurchase program of up to $500 million, which we now have as an additional capital return tool, and we've started executing on this already. So diversification has been a key strategic goal for us for years.

We are portfolio managers, and we don't want to worry about nor rely on any one or two assets to sustain and grow our business. It makes it much easier for us to sleep at night as managers and investors and hopefully makes it easier for investors to make an investment decision where they can just set it and forget it.

Our portfolio does span the globe, but it is very much weighted towards lower-risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions. It also spans the various stages of mining project development. We have north of 360 assets, 80 of them producing, 30 of them in development and greater than 250 of them at an earlier stage.

And it's not surprising to see sort of a barbell curve like this where you got a lot in production, a lot on the exploration side and fewer in development just because projects, once they go into development, they only spend a short time there before they move up to the production phase, hopefully, for a long time.

Organic growth comes from the development and exploration stage assets that advance to production, but it also comes from extensions and expansions at existing operations and strong commodity prices are a good tailwind for that. I've mentioned already our commodity focus is gold, and we do have the highest gold revenue percentage of our large-cap peers with the balance made up of silver and copper, both metals that we like.

Our strong preference is precious metals, gold, silver, secondary preference for PGMs over base metals, but we entertain high-quality, long-life base metal assets, particularly copper assets when the opportunity presents itself. I've mentioned that we are geographically diverse. North America has been the focus. We do invest in new jurisdictions from time to time.

But when we do, we do significant due diligence, and we really have a preference for countries with both a strong rule of law and an established mining industry. Risks do move around over time, and we use diversification to manage that risk. But an established mining industry is an important component because you're going to go -- some countries, you're going to go through rough times, rough political times.

But if mining has been a big part of the sort of economic and social fabric of a country, they understand the value that it brings, and it will usually come back around to the positive side. On a net asset value basis, this is the most diversified asset portfolio in the sector. Of our top 10 assets, eight of them are producing revenue, two of them are in development.

And of the eight that are producing revenue right now, five of those have expansion or extension projects underway. On the right side, our operating partners are best-in-class. They are large, well-capitalized, experienced mining companies. Over the past few years, we've added First Quantum to this list, Glencore, Rio Tinto as well.

And sometimes you'll see good projects move into stronger hands over time through M&A. So in the past, when we've helped smaller companies or private equity companies build projects, over time, those have moved into larger hands, and we see that in many of our investments.

And Khoemacau is a good example of that, which was -- we sponsored a private equity company to build that project, and it's now owned and operated and being expanded by Minmetals Group. This portfolio to us is the most important part of our business. It reduces our exposure to single assets, single operators, single jurisdiction risks. And like I said, helps us sleep better at night.

And this is very important, in our view, for generalist investors who can buy a portfolio. Instead of spending time reviewing asset details, they can just trust that there's a high-quality diversified portfolio that they're investing in without spending too much time having to evaluate assets one at a time. I know, John, that makes your job a little more difficult sometimes.

We just talk a little bit about the limited operating risks associated with our business models, just for those who aren't familiar with it. I won't spend too much time on it, though. We provide gold exposure with reduced risk. And listed here are various ways you can invest in gold and how we are positioned relative to those other options.

So we provide upside exposure to gold. I mentioned our 1.6 beta. We provide optionality with a diversified portfolio of assets that are in production, development and exploration and evaluation, and we provide a dividend. And all this is while reducing downside risk through diversity and without direct exposure to operating and capital costs.

So on one end of the spectrum, you've got physical gold, which does not provide any alpha or a dividend. And at the other end, you've got mining companies, which have exposure to operating and capital cost risks, which can expose them to greater inflationary pressures.

There's the perception that our business model does not provide leverage to gold. But like I said, that 1.6 beta demonstrates it does. It might not provide the same operating leverage that you see from a lower-margin producer, but our financial results demonstrate that leverage to gold.

So Jason, in some cases, it could be argued the royalty companies have better or more leverage than a producer because when the gold price rises, the CapEx costs go up, the operating costs go up, you get higher taxes, expropriation, wage hikes. I helped finance an Idaho exploration project in the spring.

And for the diamond drill contractor, the fourth rig worked. The first three didn't. Then the poor guy flew to Missouri in August and bought two diesel engines for the RC rig that didn't work from a different contractor. And now he's got to pay 2027 in advance for them to buy new equipment.

And when the damn thing breaks down, he paid the workers anyway because if you don't pay the drill crews, those guys walk when the son of a bitch breaks down, excuse me. So I believe the royalty companies have better leverage than the mine operators. My clients don't always understand, but -- you guys have less problems.

Yes, we definitely have less problems. And perhaps what I was saying, like in the strict definition of operating leverage sense, is when you got those lower margins, that moves in the gold price can have an effect. But you're absolutely right in terms of our exposure to gold and how that flows through to our financial results.

And definitely on a simplicity perspective, our operating partners do amazing, very hard work for our benefit. So this is -- I mean, this slide talks a little bit about it. So on the right, you can see our costs are low and either fixed or they're actually tied to metal prices, and those are prices that we make upon delivery under our stream structures.

So margins expand as the metal price increases, whereas on the left, you got operator margins, which are lower. Like I said, does provide greater operating leverage in the strict sense when the gold price moves, but it cuts both ways and leaves them exposed to inflation as we see in various corners of the economy today, which eats into margins and makes them margins much more difficult to predict.

This is a simplistic comparison of the cost structure between a streamer and a producer showing the various inputs that are exposed to inflation. Producers have labor, input, energy, consumables, et cetera. And many of these increase when commodity prices increase, as you referred to, John.

And energy is a key one these days as diesel prices have soared due to various global issues and diesel is obviously a very key input into the mining process. On the Royal Gold side, our inflationary exposure is limited to G&A. We've got salaries, service, office rents, not typically subject to material short-term increases. And so anything that impacts costs impacts margins, and we have a limited exposure to it.

So spend a little bit of time talking about where Royal Gold sits in the sector, in the royalty and streaming sector, and we like to refer to ourselves as sitting in the Goldilocks position. We are large enough to compete, but still small enough to show growth. We can compete for the largest transactions. We did a $1 billion acquisition last year, as I mentioned, with First Quantum.

And we have significant cash flow and access to capital as demonstrated by those transactions that we were able to complete last year, both on the asset side and the M&A side. While that M&A transaction was a share deal, there was a significant amount of debt that we had to pay off for Sandstorm, and we did pay cash for the Horizon acquisition. In less than a year, we've paid off $900 million of that debt.

So we can -- got lots of cash flow, we can do big deals, but still those small- and medium-sized transactions, they still move the needle for us. They still add to the growth and it's visible. And really less than -- we've been monitoring, obviously, this industry a long time and looking over the past 20 years, less than 20% of the transactions have been over $300 million.

So the bulk of the growth opportunities in this sector are in that sweet spot for us. And so this Goldilocks position really allows us to compete against our peers across the size spectrum, whether it's the bigger guys for the bigger deals, the medium-sized guys for the medium deals. And for a high-quality asset that we want exposure to, we'll go down market and do some smaller assets because we believe that those could add a lot of leverage in the future.

Growth and optionality in the portfolio here, John. Talk a little bit about this. Growth depends on successful capital allocation strategy, and our strategy has remained very simple and consistent over time. First, we reinvest in the business using nondilutive financing, whether that's cash from our operations or we use our revolving credit facility.

Secondly, we always want to maintain a strong balance sheet and have access to liquidity in order to be ready to fund the next leg of growth. When we do a deal, we want to be ready to do the next deal if a high-quality attractive opportunity comes across our desks. And then third, we want to continue returning capital to shareholders.

We have to be flexible as market conditions change, but our principal framework is to target double-digit returns on new investments, and we want to generate growth on a per-share basis. When we do use debt to fund acquisitions, if operating cash flow isn't quite enough, we repay it quickly. And we want to continue growing the dividend as we've done for 25 straight years.

We added a couple of new tools to the toolbox. Last quarter, a $600 million accordion feature to our revolving credit facility, which gives us access to greater liquidity in times when the transaction pipeline looks strong as it does right now. And as I said, the Board approved our first-ever share buyback program up to $500 million.

And we're going to use this to address when we see value disconnects in the market, and we were active on this in Q2 as we announced at the end of that quarter. And we'll give updates on that program with our quarterly results. So what's our track record of actually implementing the strategy over the past 25 years? Here's a few stats that I think demonstrate it.

So since 2000, our revenue and our cash flow have grown significantly, and there's three key aspects to our growth. So our G&A has increased at a far lower rate. So revenue and cash flow growth are far exceeding increases in G&A expense, and that's back to that scalability point I made earlier on the number of people and the amount of G&A it requires to run our business.

Secondly, our revenue growth, while it does benefit from the increase in metal prices, it's not dependent on increases in metal prices. We've added production volume through acquisitions. And just as importantly, we've seen organic growth from within the portfolio, which was bought and paid for long ago. So that comes in at no additional cost to our shareholders.

We've mostly financed our growth internally without a significant rise in the share count. We did issue 18.5 million shares last year to complete Sandstorm. And this was the first equity issue we had done since 2012, so my entire 13 years in the company. And even with these new shares that we issued, we still have the lowest absolute share count of any company in the GDX index.

So we just want to focus on delivering sustainable per-share growth for shareholders. We want to grow production and we want to grow revenue. We want to grow cash flow, and we want to be disciplined about increases in costs and about issuing new shares.

So I mentioned that our goal is to achieve double-digit returns on our investments, but this double-digit return potential is not always evident on the day of the announcement. When we're evaluating investment opportunities, our extensive due diligence process takes a bottoms-up technical approach using a team of mostly in-house technical experts.

And we will supplement that team of in-house experts with trusted outside advisers when we want a second opinion on certain matters that may be unique to a particular investment. Key areas of focus in that due diligence process are exploration potential, the potential to convert resources into reserves and the potential for future upside in production with us, throughput increases, expansions and whatnot.

And these are very key factors in the evaluation process because that's the stuff that is going to move us into the double-digit return territory. But when we announce deals, research analysts and shareholders don't always have the benefit of this detailed review, and this is often proprietary information to the company that we're reviewing. So we can't release it all.

But -- so Street estimates that you see of returns on announcement are often low, and it may take years for the upside to become clear and to filter into analysts, research analyst views and shareholder views. And I think this slide illustrates that point.

This uses Scotia Research and their view of the internal rate of return, their estimate of the internal rate of return at the time of the announcement in the blue bar versus the return estimates that they update on a regular basis. So this was updated end of 2025 or mid-2026.

So as you can see, as time has passed, expected returns have increased with production expansions, mine life extensions, and these are driven by reserve resource growth, reserve growth. And again, this comes almost uniquely with no investment from us. And we're not cherrypicking assets here. These are six of our principal assets.

Strong commodity prices can be a tailwind to these returns and they -- not just by driving higher revenues from the metal that we receive, but also they allow operators to reevaluate uneconomic scenarios. They allow them to convert resources to reserves because they can use lower cutoff grades, and it encourages them to explore.

And almost as importantly, high commodity prices, they provide that excess free cash flow that operators need to invest in that growth because that investment isn't coming from us. It's coming from the operators. You can see here just some examples here.

Kansanshi has been in the portfolio less than a year and the view on returns has nearly doubled. Obviously, not a lot has changed in the underlying operation there. That is largely driven by a pretty significant increase in commodity prices during that time. Khoemacau, we've had the benefit of a significant increase in the silver price, but MMG is undergoing a material expansion at that project, which is going to benefit us.

Just a few examples. Pueblo Viejo, also undergoing an expansion. Mount Milligan announced mine life extension last year, putting our largest asset back into the two decades plus. And Cortez is Cortez here, and it's just been an amazing asset for us over the decades and decades, and we always look to add to it when that opportunity arises.

Here, we are just looking at that same story, but in a different way, looking at it from a net asset value perspective. So this compares the investment that we made to acquire the asset, how much we had to spend to buy the stream or royalty, and that's in blue at the bottom.

And it compares it to the amount of revenue we've already pulled out plus the remaining consensus view of value. So the goal here is the bottom line always stays the same. We've already made the investment. The goal is to grow the top line through revenue and by adding to reserves, adding to resources through expansions, through commodity price increases here.

So you can see here all these assets, the revenue plus the expected view of future value is significantly higher than the investment that we made. Kind of referred to extensions to mine life, which provides a double benefit here. You can see in the dark blue on the left, the mine plan, which is based on the reserves, and in the lighter blue is incremental production, and this is just an illustrative chart.

But what it does is it provides longer exposure to the gold price as well. It doesn't just provide more production and revenue, that longer exposure to the gold price when you extend mine lives, which increases the odds of us hitting multiple bull cycles across an asset. And as we all know, this is a bit of a cyclical business.

So the longer you're in the market, the more opportunity you have to hit those -- the high parts of those cycles and reap significant returns. Operators are always looking to extend asset lives and try to capture incremental revenue. Near-mine exploration expansions will generally produce greater returns than over greenfield investments for them because they can leverage existing infrastructure and permitting requirements are usually less burdensome compared to greenfields.

And just to give you a sense of how extensive our portfolio is, in 2025, there was over 2 million meters of drilling across properties in which we hold an interest. That would include exploration and brownfield drilling. So this is all drilling, which will create value for Royal Gold shareholders, whether it's near term, medium term or long term.

And we do not have to fund the capital or invest further to get exposure to any of that upside. So this is growth that we don't have to pay for and won't have to pay for. And this optionality really is the most important part of our business model and is really what drives the premium valuations the royalty and streaming companies seem to get in the markets.

So we can get into a little bit on some detail of some actual assets here, John. And I think we have a development pipeline that is the envy of the industry. And this slide is really just a sampling of some of the assets expected to ramp up or come online in the next 5 years.

This organic growth pipeline has significant catalysts, which are going to extend well into the next decade. And really, this is just a sampling here. I mean, I'll just pick a few here. Back River project or the Goose project, as B2 calls it, up in Nunavut is ramping up, and we will eventually be a three -- have a 3.3% royalty interest once they hit certain thresholds in the next year or so.

I've talked a little bit about Platreef already. Look at Robertson here, another mine in the Cortez district here. This is an open-pit oxide mine. First production expected next year, and that's going to add 250,000 ounces a year to the Cortez district for quite a long time, and we have a 2.6% interest over that specific part of the Cortez district.

Hod Maden, which we haven't talked about a lot yet. There, we have royalty interests. We still have a 15% joint venture interest. And we also have options on the royalty interests that are held by SSR Mining that they received back when they exited the project and transferred the operatorship back to Lidya.

Great Bear, Kinross' flagship project in Red Lake, where we have a 2% royalty. Warintza is our new investment in Ecuador that we made last year, and we've forwarded $150 million of the $200 million total investment there. That should hopefully come online later this decade.

MARA, we've talked about Fourmile, Cactus, Gualcamayo, which is privately in Argentina in private hands, Oyu Tolgoi in the early 2030s. Again, this is just a sampling. Corani now under construction and expected to produce 10 million ounces of silver, where we have a 2.75% royalty interest.

I've talked a little bit about Omai. And not even listed on here, we got Thesis Gold's Lawyers-Ranch project in British Columbia that has strategic investments from AngloGold and Centerra, and we have royalties covering 0.5% to 2% of the various parts of that project.

People might be familiar with i-80 Gold and their portfolio of development assets in Nevada. They've raised over $1 billion in the past two years to advance that portfolio of assets, and we have royalties across all of them.

Question. Franco invested $250 million for a 1.5% stepping up to 3% royalty on i-80 Gold. But you already have royalty relationships there where you outbid...

John, there was a -- I mean, we don't talk about specifically how we think about things, but we have very significant royalty interests there already at such a low-cost basis that to us, the risk-reward of having somebody else's money come in and advance those projects rather than us having to buy royalty interests at a much higher gold price, commodity price, we just felt that the risk-reward was better to let somebody else's money come in and advance our royalty interests.

So you sent Paul a fruit basket.

I did. And they're an amazing -- that's an amazing company, what they're doing in Nevada. It's very complex. They got multiple projects going on, multiple processing methodologies, and we're really excited to see what they can turn that -- those assets into. Great management team there. But yes, we did send them a fruit basket.

I'm just going to conclude on this slide, John, and we can just kind of jump into questions and talk about specific assets if you want to here. But this is really the opportunity for investors in Royal Gold right now. So hopefully, I've demonstrated that the underlying business is performing well.

We've got strong cash flow. We've got a good organic growth pipeline. We've got a clean balance sheet. We've got a management team that's focused on continuing to execute on a simple strategy. And the opportunity is that our relative multiples are showing significant price and NAV discounts to our large-cap peers and our cash flow multiple is lagging both our large- and our small-cap peers.

And we obviously have to ask the question why? And I think what we believe internally is we need to demonstrate that our investment thesis was correct. We did $5 billion-plus of M&A last year, and we've only put two complete quarters out with both Sandstorm and the Kansanshi stream under our belt. And the market has not yet absorbed the scale and growth potential of the portfolio. But the numbers are already telling you.

Jason, I had a 2016 research report on Sandstorm when they had only a royalty before they bought Mariana and had the 30% working interest in Hod Maden. And I was forecasting in 2016 the Hod Maden output in 2020 revenue. So now we're hoping for 2031. So there's nothing wrong with your communication. I think that some of the properties had a couple of bumps in the road and the investors will pay for it when the cash is flowing.

Yes. And maybe just on Hod Maden in particular, that's now under construction. And Lidya is telling us late 2028 for first ore. I mean, we've funded equity into it. The company is looking to do some project finance to kind of close out the build. And we're very, very excited. That's a very attractive project.

Turkey is one of those countries that's new to us, but it's one of those countries that has a very long history of mining. They understand the value of mining to the economy, to society, and having that project in the hands of a well-known local partner with significant construction experience, we think, is going to be very positive. And things are underway there, and we're heading there for a site visit in November, our next visit.

So I hope I'm too conservative on that.

I hope you are, too, John. But you're right, listen, things take longer, right? I mean, I think that you can look at the same thing with MARA. I mean, it's always difficult, especially big companies like Glencore, as to when they're going to pull the trigger on significant investments.

I mean, MARA is still a -- it's a brownfield, but it's still a $4 billion to $5 billion incremental capital to get Agua Rica into production. It's not always easy to get the time right on these assets, especially when you're acquiring them when they're at an earlier stage. But we're getting pretty confident on the timeline on a lot of these things now.

So this valuation disconnect, John, is really -- it's recognized by -- starting to become recognized by the market. It's definitely recognized by a number of research analysts, just cherry-picking one, RBC has us designated as a Top 30 Global Pick across their -- this isn't mining. This is across their entire global coverage universe. So it's starting to become recognized.

And we are just very well positioned within a strong commodity price environment. Our portfolio has the scale. It has the diversification. It has the duration, it has growth. It has a strong balance sheet. It has the cash flow necessary to contemplate more accretive acquisitions. And we'll continue to grow that shareholder return strategy.

And we're just committed to being patient. We're going to take a long-term approach to value creation, and we're going to work hard to ensure that the market has the information it needs to close the valuation gap. And I think as we continue to put out quarters, the next few quarters with the pro forma business with all these assets combined and continue to give asset updates, I think that will all come into focus for the market and closing that valuation gap is a really big opportunity for current and new Royal Gold shareholders.

And this slide here just shows -- kind of shows where we are trading relative to where we have traded historically. So this is our view that we should trade at or close to the -- our larger-cap peers is it's borne out of history, and we've always traded at perhaps a lower cash flow multiple historically. And that, we believe, was associated with the limited duration of our portfolio, which, again, like I mentioned, we fixed that with these acquisitions over the past years with that average reserve life now approaching two decades.

Some of the large-cap gold stocks are at historically low multiples because people didn't believe the gold price, or maybe still don't believe it even though it came down over $1,000.

Yes. Yes. Like I don't like to look at the gold price.

Just it's a tough comparison. If you compare yourselves to Wheaton and Franco, it's easy to look cheap because they're so expensive.

Yes, that's right. And I think if you look at our portfolio, the quality of it, especially the diversification, the fact that we do not rely on a single asset for our revenue. We do not rely on a single big development asset for future growth. It's just a very diversified portfolio.

And that diversification strategy, I mean, it's just a regular portfolio management approach, but we've seen it in the industry. We've seen the issues that happened at Cobre Panama. And that asset is one that we coveted back in the day and would have been happy to have in our portfolio at one time, but it just goes to show you what portfolio concentration can do even for super high-quality large companies.

And every one of our peers in the space has one of those assets, whether it's Salobo or Malartic or Triple Flag, Northparkes in Australia, everybody's got that one big asset, and we have a real diversified portfolio. And so mining is a risky business and things do happen. And if and when they do happen, it should limit the downside to us.

Jason, there's a slide you don't have that I encourage all the royalty streaming companies to have. In addition to not having CapEx and OpEx, you also don't have reclamation liability. At the end of '23, BHP, Rio and Vale each had $17 billion to $20 billion reclamation accounts, which were much bigger than their debt.

That year, Newmont ended the year with $8.6 billion of reclamation, about $5 billion of it is Yanacocha. And part of the reason Newmont gave away or sold eight properties was to reduce the reclamation account. But it's actually as big a deal as not having CapEx to not have reclamation liability. And those things always get bigger because the requirements get tighter.

Yes, you can come back to this slide and you can think about the producers on the right there, those are sort of their cash costs. If you extend that to sort of the what they call the full enchilada, all-in, fully loaded sustaining capital cost.

And if you think of every ounce of gold or a pound of copper you produce and you got to set aside some money, future money for reclamation, that absolutely tells an even better story for us. It's a good point.

Jason, sometimes when I studied the base metal or industrial companies, earnings per share is a little bit abstract because sometimes there's a gazillion shares. And I would calculate cash flow positive or negative per day. That helps you understand whenever business is good or bad at U.S. Steel or General Motors is going out of business or not. So I just want to explain where I'm coming from.

So in the first half of this year, Royal Gold had $3.5 million of after-tax operating cash flow per day, Franco $5.5 million; and Wheaton $8.5 million a day. I wish I had money like that to spend. So when your small team is sitting around the table with $1 billion to reinvest every year or distribute to shareholders, how are you sure you're going to find all those good opportunities?

I think the only thing that we have is the history of being able to find those good opportunities. And there's been times when that cash balance has really started to grow and the opportunities weren't there, and we're not going to be desperate and deploy capital just because we have growing capital.

And at that time, every -- it's happened before. We've dusted off the old memo on incremental shareholder return, get that memo up, polish it up. And usually, as soon as we do all the hard work to polish it up, some great investment opportunities have come along and allowed us to deploy that liquidity into where we believe it's highest value for shareholders, which is new growth.

It is a risk for the future. I'll tell you the business development pipeline right now, John, is one of the strongest I've seen in the industry in a long time. The royalty and streaming structure has become such an accepted form of financing now that we basically get to review almost every investment opportunity that a mining company is making, they are going to consider streaming and royalty as one of the tools.

And every CFO that's presenting to their Board, I don't think they can get away without presenting whether you're looking at debt, whether you're looking at equity, whether you're looking at using your strong operating cash flow, you need to contemplate a royalty and a stream.

And it's very easy for them to do because we are able to work so hard, and they know we have a pool of capital that is accessible in as little as 6 to 8 weeks of due diligence and documentation. So I'm confident right now that there is enough opportunities not just for Royal Gold, but for the sector as a whole, really for high quality.

Now listen, you got to take a view on commodity prices. You got to take a view on gold, you got to take a view on silver, on whatever you're investing in. But our jobs -- we see our jobs as putting our shareholders' money to use in high-quality assets that are operated by high-quality mining companies in high-quality jurisdictions within the context of the commodity price environment that we're in.

And that's what we will do, and that's what we will continue to do. But we will be patient. We will not do a deal just because we feel like we have to do a deal because cash -- the cash balance is growing.

If you look at our transaction history, which I think I've got on a slide in here somewhere, if you bear with me. You can see here that we have years where we deploy very little here, '23, '24, '16, '17, '18, and it's the years like 2015 and 2022 and 2025, where we see opportunities, whether it's within the commodity price, whether it's high-quality assets, whatnot, where we've deployed significant amount of capital, which has created tremendous value for shareholders.

And 2015 is really the year that built the modern streaming industry for Franco, Wheaton and Royal Gold when balance sheets were extended among large, especially copper players, but also some precious metals players. And that's when we had the opportunity to do business with Teck.

That's when we had the opportunity to buy a stream on Barrick's and Newmont's Pueblo Viejo mine, which is in 1 million years, did we think we'd have the opportunity to buy a stream on 1 million ounce-a-year gold mine from a gold producer. I think that was -- we've seen companies be a lot more cautious with their balance sheets since that time. And the opportunities have come in different ways over the years.

Third-party royalties are always a little bit of a wildcard opportunity. You never know when a third-party royalty holder is going to want to sell a royalty. That's where we got our extra Cortez exposure, including the Fourmile exposure back in late '21, early '22 with $729 million investment there.

And that's just because there was a couple of big royalty holders that decided that the time was right to sell. So as you can see here, we're going to be patient. We're going to invest when the opportunities are good, and we're going to make sure we've got a strong balance sheet to do so, while all the while making sure that we continue to return some of that money to shareholders.

Earlier this year, Wheaton did the $4.3 billion silver transaction on Antamina. That was a great advertisement both for Wheaton and the whole sector. What is the biggest transaction Royal Gold has been asked to do?

Well, our balance sheet is in pretty good shape, John. I don't think it's in $4.3 billion cash payment on one day shape. I don't think we would want to extend ourselves to that point. We are comfortable going to 3x net debt to EBITDA.

So if you just pick $1 billion of EBITDA, just for argument's sake, even though that significantly underestimates our current EBITDA. But -- so could we do a $3 billion deal using our balance sheet? We could. But that's not the -- balance sheet isn't the only thing that we look at, John.

We're looking at concentration. We just spent years diversifying our portfolio so that no single -- so we're not hanging our hat on any single asset. And we really don't want to kind of recreate new concentration risk by doing a huge deal and creating a new 20% of revenue or 20% of NAV asset in our portfolio.

So that is a factor that we will keep in mind as well, is really concentration and that's concentration in a single asset, to a single operator, in a single jurisdiction. So I don't want to tell you what -- I can't tell you exactly, it's all dependent.

Is this a cash-flowing asset? Is it a high free cash flow yield asset? Is it a long-life asset? Just to tell you that there are some large transactions in the market right now, and we feel like we have -- if they're the right ones for us, that we have the balance sheet to be able to execute them.

So Kansanshi has been your biggest single one at $1 billion.

Correct.

And acquiring the two companies last year was $4 billion. I'm your friend, but I'm looking at the slide you have, and I'm going to ask you about all the old deals that have bumps in the road.

Sure.

So when you went into Euromax Ilovica-Shtuka in North Macedonia in 2014, I think I calculated that there were 13 different flags over Skopje since 1870. And -- your guys said that you consulted with attorneys in North Macedonia, and I laughed my a** off wondering what the tradition of law was in North, whether it was Hitler, Stalin, the Ottoman Turks or what. So has that project proceeded?

So maybe just a little bit of the history there. So that is a while ago, that was 2013, I believe, 2013.

2014 in your slide.

Yes. And so we -- that was a new jurisdiction for us. We definitely saw some risks and some uncertainties around the timeline. I don't think anybody thought it was going to sort of take this long. But our approach to that, John, wasn't.

It's still not built, right?

It's still not built, yes. And I can give a quick update.

But you have not advanced any money, have you?

We have not advanced more than -- I think -- I believe it was the $11 million that we advanced back in 2014. And -- but what that bought us was an option on a gold stream for when that project does move forward. Now clearly, the gold price back then was probably $1,200, $1,100. So that is very significantly in the money...

Well, my father's birth certificate was written in Turkish and French. And borders move around a lot in that part of the world.

So that is now...

Sometimes the mining companies act like they're ranchers in Nevada and don't know much about the world. It's always good to stick to what you know.

That's -- there's lessons in our portfolio for sure.

So in the same year -- is it the same year or a year later? Same year, you invested in the Rubicon project in Red Lake. In the original management, I might have caught them talking in the Denver Gold Forum one year. They did not understand mathematics and they could not talk about geostatistics or explain top cuts or the lack thereof.

And I like to look at coefficient of variation as the first statistic on a property or the ratio of standard deviation to the ore grade estimate, uncut, uncomposited, the way God made rock without domains. I think those are all bulls***. How did Royal Gold fortify its mathematical analysis of deposits after Rubicon?

So maybe I'll put it -- I'll step back a little bit and say, so we learned lessons from every deal we do, whether it's a successful deal or a less successful deal. One thing that we took away from that investment was the -- when there's high-risk elements to a project, you need to bring in a second opinion and sometimes even a third opinion to really get it.

We obviously got something wrong in our evaluation process there, and we went back and analyzed it, and we've really fortified our due diligence process to say when we identify specific risks in specific evaluations, bring in a second, bring in a third opinion. And would that second or third opinion have shown us what happened there? Possibly, and maybe would have avoided it.

But I think if you take a step back and you look at the impairment history that Royal Gold has relative to the streaming sector, relative to the mining sector, we have a very good track record of limited impairments relative to what we...

We don't have a bad deal since 2014. So it speaks well for the last 12 years, the current team, and you've invested a lot more money subsequently. You have more opportunities to make mistakes. And to your credit, in 2021, you bought into Côté Gold.

In 2010, based on the first resource of that deposit, I rendered an unfairness opinion to a company in a merger where the first resource on Côté had a coefficient of variation of 9. So I wasn't sure the resource held up. And there were a lot of cottages on the lake. I wasn't sure it was going to get permitted.

And they actually got permits to kill 0.5 million fish. And the CapEx was a triple overrun, but the gold price is so high and the resource got bigger and they're making money and you guys are heroes. So you paid $11 million for Alturas, which Barrick sold in the last year. Give us an update on that one. I think the new owner is called Boroo.

Yes. The new owner is, yes, Boroo. They are a private equity company out of Singapore. You've also seen them in the news. They're, I think, the preferred bidder on the Eagle mine, which is out of bankruptcy, the sale out of bankruptcy.

That would be a big deal for OR Royalties if that got going again.

Yes. So listen, those guys are -- we know them. They kind of give us updates on what's going on down there. They've really turned around the other Barrick assets that they bought in production down there, have done a great job. And so we think that's in great hands to advance it.

These aren't the types of folks that buy stuff to sit on it for a long time. They buy stuff because they want to move it forward. So I don't have a really specific update on it, John. But again, this is just that optionality that's in the portfolio, been sitting there for 5, 6 years. We paid almost nothing for it. And now it's in the hands of people that are investing significant money into the area.

So in 2015, you took more of Pascua-Lama where the construction was halted Halloween Day 2013 with the thing half built. I think that you had a merger that brought in the first piece of Pascua-Lama or the Pascua side of the asset. Give us a little update on that one.

We stay on top of Barrick, and they continue to do studies, and they're evaluating whether they can just do something on the Chilean side, just something on the Argentinian side. Yes, we acquired that royalty in various chunks, like you said, one was through a corporate acquisition. One was a cash acquisition as well. And then this third piece back in 2015 was a smaller kind of a sliver addition to it.

Yes, we've got a nice royalty interest there. Wheaton has a nice stream option there. When is it going to be advanced? We're not 100% sure. There is a significant amount of infrastructure that's gone up there. Barrick says they continue to study it. And so we're hopeful that one day, it will move forward, and it's a very large resource.

There's obviously some social issues, some environmental issues that everybody has to be comfortable with before it moves forward. But I don't have a -- definitely don't have a timeline. It's definitely not in any of our forecasts right now.

In that era, the Barrick management, I think, was challenged by having many assets in many places, and they delegated a lot to the contractors in that construction, and they had both safety and environmental failures. There were shutdowns due to safety violations before the final shutdown on an environmental basis. So I think it was an evolution where the modern Barrick would not have had the same problems, today's Barrick. But go on.

Yes. I mean, kind of coming back to Barrick just general and you think about the North American IPO that they are planning to move forward with. And I think that's going to include their Nevada Gold Mines interest. It's going to include Pueblo Viejo. And we believe that might be good for Pueblo Viejo to have sort of a dedicated management team associated with making sure that expansion goes well.

We'd obviously love to see an improvement in the silver recoveries there, which we do expect not in the near term, but eventually. And so that might be a good -- that might be great for that investment for that to have its own management team focused on it.

There's no questions in the question box. We appreciate everyone's interest and participation, and you're all welcome to ask questions. I'm letting this session run extra at 1:00 because there's so much ground to cover in Royal Gold and so many assets. Could you just review number -- a couple of numbers you did quickly. I didn't get that. How many shares did you issue for the acquisitions last year?

18.6 million shares were issued to Sandstorm shareholders.

And how many was the $30 million buyback in the second quarter, 100,000, 150,000?

That sounds about right, John. I don't have the number on the tip of my fingers here.

So there's room on your cash balances to buy back more shares. This morning, the 30-year Treasury was at 5.71%, up from 5.64% last night, up from 5.69% the night before. So hypothetically, if the 30-year Treasury went to 7% even and the gold price and the stock market got clipped, do you think your company would buy back that whole $500 million authorization?

We -- it's a tool that we have in the toolbox, and it's going to depend on a lot of things. And we use it to -- we really -- the main goal is, hey, where are we sitting? Do we feel that we are undervalued in the market relative to -- on an absolute basis relative to our peers.

We have to look at our business development pipeline and how that's shaping up because, like I said, our first priority, and we believe the highest-value activities that we can undertake and we've demonstrated that in the past, I think, is through new acquisitions. So we have to -- there's a lot of factors that come into play before we decide there, John.

And it's just one that we're going to be reporting to the market kind of on a quarterly basis as we use it.

I'm trying to get you in trouble and you're dancing around. In terms of the mines that aren't built yet, which to me is always the most exciting part of any company, give us an update on MARA first in a little more detail.

So yes, so MARA is -- like I said, they just got -- I mean, it is -- Glencore is saying it is the next leg of growth in their copper development strategy. They just got their approval of RIGI, so basically that large-scale tax stability agreement with the government. They are mining already at Alumbrera.

So they're already -- in the old Alumbrera pits, they're mining in order to put some ore through the mill, get those mills restarted. They're finalizing the feasibility study on the MARA, the Agua Rica-Alumbrera combined project. We expect that middle of this year, and we expect an investment decision on that by the end of this year. And the hope then is you got a two- or three-year construction.

If there's an investment decision, it could jump into your 5-year outlook.

Yes. It's a -- yes, it's going to be a two- to three-year construction period. We'll wait to see what the feasibility study has to say. We'll wait to see what they have. But they have 2,000 people working on site there, John. They've already hired 2,000 people. They bought $250 million worth of gear from Caterpillar to start mining the old pits and to prepare those old pits to accept tailings.

The mill is already there. The processing facilities are already there. What they need is, obviously, you got to strip the new deposit area, the Agua Rica deposit area. They need a 35-kilometer-long conveyor system, and that conveyor system will be used to bring the ore that's mined.

Would that be all one belt or will it be sections?

Oh, I'm sure it will be sections, multiple sections. Yes. Some of it will be -- there's a 5-kilometer, give or take, tunnel as well. That's going to be on the critical path. Tunneling takes some time. So that will definitely be sections. That will be one long belt to repair if it broke.

I was shooting the breeze with somebody at Colorado Springs last week that said that Great Bear hasn't smoked the peace pipe yet with the First Nations. But you have the confidence to have that in your 5-year outlook. Give us an update on Hod Maden. So give us an update why you're sure there aren't going to be any problems there.

Listen, the -- we've seen some -- we've heard those rumors as well, John. People have brought them to my attention. Kinross is -- I mean, there were some legal challenges. They seem to be dismissed. Kinross is continuing to advance the exploration ramp. They clearly have very good relations with the major First Nations in the area.

They -- we have no reason to believe that they aren't on schedule. They haven't made any changes to their timeline. And so we have no reason to question what they're up to there. It's a major asset. It's got a big spotlight on it, and Kinross are great operators and they're great operators from a technical perspective and a social perspective as well. So I'm sure they're doing things the right way. So...

Several years ago, Newmont had a 4-month strike at Peñasquito. And the silver part of that is real big for Wheaton. And Wheaton still came in, in the middle of their guidance range, even though their biggest asset was shut down for 1/3 of the year. So we respect when there's conservatism. So MARA could come in earlier.

For Fourmile, there's already a mill and two roasters, but they're talking about building another roaster. And when Barrick had their little lunch in the Golf Club last Tuesday at Colorado Springs, the guy whispered $2.5 billion to $3 billion for a roaster where the Newmont 1994 roaster was $360 million. So there's some huge money going in.

So is the reason why you have Fourmile is 5 years out that you're waiting for the roaster to get built because it's just an extension of the Goldrush tunnel almost.

Yes. Listen, we don't know exactly what their plans are, and we don't want to be ahead of them in their plans. I think you can either build a roaster within the Cortez complex or you got to build a railroad likely to move a bunch more ore out of the complex and into one of the existing roasters. So I think that that's probably the trade-off study that they're doing, John.

And listen, I think when you look at the value of these assets, it's not -- there's obviously going to be a cost trade-off, but there's a timeline trade-off. What might be easier to permit, what's going to be best? What's their view on -- obviously, if they built a roaster at Cortez, at Goldrush, that would be great because that would give them some significant flexibility to expand production in a district where we have obviously major royalty interests.

So -- but I don't know where they're sitting on that. Like I said, it's either that or you got to have a railroad. Both of them will have fairly significant permitting burdens on them, which is why we're being a little bit cautious on timeline until Nevada Gold Mines tells us what they think it's going to be.

But all we do know is that pre-feasibility study they're aiming for, for next year, a feasibility study the following year. That information will be required to inform the permitting process. And 20 drill rigs on site, doing infill and hopefully some exploration drilling as well. There's some good targets there, I believe, too, to expand not just the Fourmile deposit, but elsewhere in the Cortez district as well.

So once again, everyone is welcome to submit questions in the question box. I think they're having fun seeing whatever I'm going to do next because I haven't submitted any. But I think we covered the big ones. Do you think Horne 5 might get going? There's a lot of gold and copper under the Noranda smelter, and they've been negotiating that one for over 10 years.

Yes. It's an interesting one. It's great optionality to have in the portfolio. It's not one that we're kind of factoring into our guidance anytime soon. I think it's obviously very complex to think about building mines underneath smelters. And I don't profess to be an expert on the subject matter. So I won't say too much about it.

But obviously, we are hopeful that they can find some kind of way to do it. And it's not just agreement. I mean, you got to make sure that it's safe and it takes into account environmental risks. And so listen, it's just -- again, it's just examples of optionality that's in our portfolio. And whether it's a year or three years or seven years from now, we'll be generating value for our shareholders.

Super, super. Jason, thank you for the detailed presentation and let me ask a couple of questions that might have been a little unfair and tough. I appreciate your support. We respect very much the achievements of your company. And we, the investors, we're left to walk the plank when companies screw up. So we really appreciate a company as successful as yours.

Yes. Well, John, we appreciate your support.

Thank you, everyone, for your attention. And I think we'll reconvene at 1:00 for Alamos Gold.

Thanks, John.

I do have some housekeeping to take care of. Well, I can do it. I just have to read our forward-looking statement here. So during today's presentation, I will be making forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties could cause those actual results to differ materially from these statements, and these risks are discussed in our most recent 10-K filed with the SEC. None of the fun stuff.

Great. Well, maybe to start at a high level and to set the stage, for those of people in the room who don't know the Royal Gold story, maybe can you bring us up to speed on where the company stands today following the Sandstorm acquisition and what you see as the investment thesis as it is today?

Yes. I think last year was so transformational for the company as a whole. And the Sandstorm transaction and the Kansanshi transaction allowed us to do a few things that have been strategic goals on our end for a number of years. And the first one is diversification of the portfolio. Those of you who have followed us for a long time have followed Mount Milligan, the ups, the downs when it was 25% or 30% of our revenue and our NAV, and that posed challenges at some point.

With the transactions last year for the first 6 months of this year, we only had 2 assets that generated more than 10% of revenue and the largest was 12.5%. So what we're talking to investors about at this point is relative to all the other royalty and streaming companies you may talk to, we believe we have reduced the event risk in our portfolio better than anybody else in the sector. I think everybody else has a concentration risk that far exceeds the concentration risk that we now have in our portfolio.

Secondly, growth. Again, if you followed us for a while, there was a question about the growth profile of the company. And by adding Sandstorm, which was a very development asset-rich portfolio, we were actually able to take our producing asset portfolio, which was quite strong and put it together with the development assets. And that's MARA, that's Platreef, that's Hod Maden. And so we have this nice balance. We've got a diversified revenue base currently. We have a nice growth profile, which we highlighted at our Investor Day in March. So I think we have a much more balanced portfolio.

I think the third thing about the portfolio that's different is the duration. We've increased the average reserve life from 14 years to 18 years, and it's not just the Sandstorm acquisition. If you recall last year, Centerra announced the Mount Milligan life-of-mine plan extension that took that reserve life to 20 years. And it's nice to have our biggest asset have 20 years of life in front of it. So I would say from a portfolio perspective, those are the things that we're stressing. I'd also like to stress that notwithstanding the equity we issued for Sandstorm, we're still the leader in our industry in terms of per share metrics, looking backwards.

And I think one of the particular strengths is our management team, which has been around, I think, on average, between 10 and 15 years. And one of the things this management team has certainly demonstrated is the ability to identify resource upside. So that when you look at a particular transaction, it might have a 10- or a 15-year reserve life. Our team is able to look at that and say, it's not 10 or 15 years, it's probably 20, 25, 30 years. And so you see a growing IRR in that portfolio, and that skill base is still in the company.

Great. You touched on scale, diversification, duration that you achieved through the acquisition. But there were also more complex structures that came into the portfolio. As you think about the first, I guess, half year of having the expanded portfolio, what has been done to maybe simplify it? And as you think ahead to the portfolio, are there -- is there more simplification to come?

Yes. I think the only complex thing that we really inherited was the intercompany relationship between Sandstorm and Horizon Copper. I don't think investors understood it. I think some investors said, I don't really want to spend the time to understand it. And that was actually the easy part. We just brought the 2 companies together and collapsed it. So that complexity is gone. I would say we inherited a number of noncore assets when we acquired Sandstorm and Horizon. By that, I mean, public equity, debt, joint venture equity. And it was a priority of ours when we closed the transaction to try to simplify those things because they take time, especially if you've got a debt investment and the company needs a waiver, they need something else done with the agreement. You're not focused on buying royalties and streams, you're focused on something else.

So we've done a number of things. We sold the Versamet shares probably within a month of acquiring Sandstorm. We have rationalized the Americas Gold and Silver investment. We rationalized a very complex Bear Creek situation and really turned that into a very simple royalty and increased royalty on Corani, which looks like it's now moving forward. And then Hod Maden, we took that joint venture interest from 30% to 15%, and we took a royalty back. So I think we've done a very good job. We generated over $200 million in revenue from those transactions, and we were able to use that to repay debt. In terms of what's left, okay, we do have, say, a 24% interest in Entree Resources, and we still have the 15% at Hod Maden. Ideally, those things will also be rationalized, but I think we have a bit of flexibility in terms of time to resolve those situations.

That's super clear. And then as you think about the broader portfolio, there's lots of growth and optionality. If you think about Hod Maden, Platreef, Greenstone, Antamina. In your view, which assets or operator decisions have the greatest potential to move Royal Gold's cash flow and NAV over the next few years?

Well, in the next few years, I think the decisions by the operators have been made, which is great. I would say if you're going to look at what might be the most impactful, probably Platreef ramp up. Next year, Kansanshi grades or throughput are supposed to increase, which will actually bring our gold stream up as copper production comes up and towards the end of 2028 is sort of our expectation for Hod Maden. And I would say those probably would have the most material impact. But that sort of overlooks things like Robertson at Cortez or the ramp-up of our royalty at Goose. And I would say the thing about our -- the growth portfolio is that it's as diverse as the producing portfolio, which is nice. We're not relying on one big asset coming into production at a particular time that people are counting on.

Great. And then the Royal Gold, like any royalty streaming company has very limited direct exposure to mine site inflation. It's one of the qualities of royalty streaming company. But higher OpEx and CapEx can influence operator decisions and what your counterparties may do. Do you see risk across the portfolio as you think about what's happening with input cost pressures or build-outs that are costing a lot more than initially expected? And does that present an opportunity for a company like Royal Gold?

I'm not too worried from our current portfolio perspective. As I look at where these assets sit on the cost curve, I just have a hard time imagining inflation getting to the point where a mine closes or suspends its operation because that's really the issue here. As long as they're operating, the vast majority of our interests are revenue based. So that's good. I think the only NPI of any note is Antamina. And I think in the first 6 months of this year, that probably represented 2% to 3% of our total revenue.

So as far as inflation's impact on our current portfolio, I don't -- I'm not that concerned about it. Where you do have to pay attention to it is on the capital cost side for new projects. The projects that I noted for growth, I think one of the nice things is they're sort of already in ramp-up or it's an expansion and they're relatively far along. And as I look in the portfolio, if there were a couple of assets that I think you might want to pay attention to inflation, it is something like MARA. It is something like Great Bear, maybe Red Chris, where they're in the sort of the earlier stages of those projects.

But you did mention opportunity. Anytime this industry needs capital, we're ready. And so if there are cost increases that a particular operator, developer cannot cover, we welcome the call. Because we can be -- you go back to Mount Milligan. Mount Milligan was originally supposed to be a $314 million investment, and it became a $780 million investment because of cost overruns, we were able to cover it. We've had a very successful investment. So we do have a history of helping when costs increase.

Great. I'm going to turn to capital allocation. So the company is currently in the process of deleveraging, which is going very well and should be kind of complete by the end of the year. You're paying a growing dividend, you're repurchasing shares and you're continuing to evaluate new opportunities. How do you think about the priority between those uses of capital? And particularly on the deal pipeline, now that Royal Gold has become a larger company, has the deal size become larger as well?

Yes. This is the tricky one. I would say from a capital allocation perspective, I can make it very simple. We like to find new investments, priority #1. Priority #2, if we borrowed money to make an investment, we want to repay that to restore our revolving credit facility so that we are ready for the next investment. And then there is our dividend. We've increased the dividend every year for 25 years. Nobody else in our sector can say that. So it is something sort of near and dear to our heart.

In the second quarter, we did introduce a share repurchase program. We looked at our share price and felt that there was just a fundamental disconnect between the way the market was looking at us and the way we looked at us, and we were active on that in the second quarter. But this -- it's not a formula. This isn't a math problem. We don't look at free cash flow yield and the interest rate on the debt. And the investment -- to me, share repurchase is great in the short term. But if you ignore the long term and the long term are those new investments. It's putting that 20- or 30-year mine life into the portfolio that preserves value that gives you, to my mind, net asset value.

And so we don't want to go down one road and not the other. So it's always a balance. I know that's not the greatest response. I know people want to say, I'm going to allocate so much capital -- so much cash to capital returns. But as you say, the opportunities are getting bigger and bigger. So liquidity, having available liquidity is precious right now to make sure you're well positioned if those attractive investments come up.

One of your competitors, and we may hear this tomorrow, is talking about we're at a start of much larger transactions. We've seen a $4 billion stream transaction, which I never thought we'd see. But what are you seeing in the pipeline? Is that something that you're anticipating as well? You alluded to that with the comment on liquidity just now, but just what's out there? What are you seeing deal sizes? Where are they coming from across commodities?

Yes. I mean, we are extremely busy from a business development perspective. And I think the best thing about the $4 billion transaction or one of the best things about it is BHP did it. And there's always been this group of companies within the mining industry that you say they're never going to talk to us. They don't need us. But if a BHP says, there's a real value creation here on a metal that means nothing in our portfolio. But we can create billions of dollars of value by doing it. I always say it just takes one company like that to have others potentially say, well, maybe we should be considering that.

We see the same thing in Australia. First time ever, we've seen a series of transactions in Australia. Well, you need just one Australian company to at least open the door and let us have a conversation. So I still think the $1 billion deals are going to be few and far between. It's not like the entire industry is moving in that direction. I think you're still probably $200 million to $500 million will be the bread and butter. But I think the breadth of the market available to us is as big as it's ever been.

Great. And then as you think about the portfolio, I want to give you an opportunity to talk about assets that you think are underappreciated by investors that maybe are overlooked. It's obviously a very diversified portfolio. There is quite a bit of growth. But I want to give you a chance to maybe highlight a few that you think are just being overlooked.

Yes, I don't think it's so much overlooked. I mean the one question that we get, and I understand Cortez is a very complex operation. It's a very complex royalty position. And we have spent the past year or so making sure that people understand, yes, Fourmile is covered by our 1.6% royalty. But the fact that we get that question surely means that they don't appreciate the potential of that asset. Now it's a little bit longer-term project. I mean, you might be talking in the middle part of the next decade, but it's one of the greatest exploration stories ever.

And I just don't think people are just having a hard time putting it into context of Goldrush and Cortez Hills and Crossroads, and that's really up to us to explain. I think the other thing I've always found investors are very much on the development asset side is show me. Don't tell me that MARA is going to be in production in 2031. Don't tell me that Hod Maden is coming in [ 2020 ]. I want to see the cash flow. And so I always think there's been a bit of a discount applied to the growth assets. They really want to see the cash flow happening. And that's where -- that's when I think we get credit for it.

And then earlier in the discussion, you talked about per share metrics and how that's very important. As you think about transactions and then looking back at transactions, what per share metrics would you look at to conclude whether a transaction was successful or not?

Well, when I say per share metrics, it's very much for me a backwards-looking, okay, let's talk about GEO per share. Let's talk about net operating cash flow per share. Let's talk about EBITDA per share. We have the highest metrics in the industry, and in some cases, by a lot. And so if you're going to look forward, it's about NAV per share. Now what we have tried to do historically is primarily finance our acquisitions with debt, which I think has made our per share metrics looking backward look so attractive. But I would invite anybody to pick a per share metric and compare us to the others in our sector because even with -- as I said, even with the Sandstorm acquisition and the equity issue, we're still the top.

Great. And then in the last few minutes that we have, I wanted to touch on, I guess, the evolution of royalty and streaming structures. We've seen more -- just different terms, whether that includes more buyback provisions, areas of interest, some royalty streaming companies are becoming providing debt in addition to royalty and stream. Maybe just talk through what you've seen as just the evolution and the terms of these transactions and the structures of these transactions.

Yes, life used to be so simple. You remember when Wheaton was first formed and every transaction was $3.90 per ounce of silver with an inflation adjustment, right? No buybacks, covered everything. Look, that's what competition does. This is how we compete now. It's not just on price. We try very hard not to compete on things like area of interest. I referenced earlier the management's ability to find mines with upside. If you're cutting off the area of interest, the whole optionality argument goes away.

I think buybacks are certainly here to stay. It's the extent of the buyback that you're willing to offer. But when we offer a buyback, it's not just a reduction in our economics. What we're saying to the operator is we want you to have an incentive to continue to spend money on your project. I want you to take 20-year mine life to a 30- or 40-year mine life. And if you get more of the economics in the long term, maybe that does incentivize you to do that. As for other products, we have made debt investments on 2 occasions. We got fully repaid, had absolutely no issues.

Would we be willing to do debt and equity? Yes. But I would say the stream has to be 60%, 70%, 80% of the total investment. We don't want to start leading. I think about Orion as a private equity. Their primary investment is the debt. Now there is a bit of equity, a bit of stream. That's not what we're about. So it would be a little bit reverse, but we're certainly open to it.

Okay. And then lastly, in the last minute, I've been asking everybody on stage your thoughts on the commodity price and where things are headed.

We're back to $4,000 almost. I don't know. I can't figure it out. Long term, I am very positive about gold. You just look at treasury yields, you look at $40 trillion of debt. I don't know when the next leg of the gold cycle kicks off upward, but I think it's coming.

Great. I think that's a good place to stop. Bill, thank you very much. That was great.

Thank you.

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 want to thank everyone in Seattle 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 corner of your screen.

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

Well, thank you, Noella, and thanks, Renmark, as always, for the opportunity to present today. We've had a lot of news at Royal Gold over the past year or so. So it's very timely for me to give you an update or an introduction for those who don't know the story.

So to start, 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 what I'm going to do in this presentation is give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. We are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals. We're not a mining company. So that's a very important distinction. And I'm going to talk about some of the key attributes of Royal Gold in this presentation and there are really 6 things that I want to focus on. First is our focus on precious metals, gold in particular. Second is our high-margin business and a commitment -- a long-standing commitment to returning capital to shareholders. Third is the diversification of our portfolio, which is the most diversified amongst our peers in terms of assets, operators and jurisdictions.

I want to talk about our operating model, our business model, where we have limited operating risks, where we have steady margins and no direct exposure to cost inflation and other impacts that inflation could bring. We're the right size for a small sector. We can compete for the largest transactions, but also we can do small transactions that show up in our financials because they're meaningful.

And then finally, I'll talk about some of the embedded optionality within the portfolio and the fact that we don't have to pay for any growth that comes from inside the portfolio as a result of mine extensions or expansions. So those are the main sections in the portfolio, but I would like to just make a couple of comments about 2025 and some of the activity that I referenced in my very first comments. It has been a very busy time for us.

In 2025, we think is a transformational year for Royal Gold. We acquired two companies, Sandstorm and Horizon in a corporate transaction that closed in October last year. And with those transactions -- with that transaction, those two companies, we added significant growth and diversification to our portfolio. We also did a couple of individual asset transactions last year. We did a gold stream at Kansanshi, which is operated by First Quantum that provides immediate cash flow from a very long-life, high-quality asset run by a Tier 1 operator.

We also acquired royalty and stream interests on the Warintza project in Ecuador, and this is an emerging Tier 1 asset that we think will produce for decades once it starts. And we didn't just see acquisitions as being a source of growth positive developments within the portfolio last year. We actually saw some optionality that surfaced from within the portfolio. The most important ones I would note would be Mount Milligan, we saw -- that's our largest asset. We saw an extension of the mine life there to 2045. And the operator is talking about potential extension of that even beyond 2045.

So now we have a couple of decades of reserve life at Mount Milligan, our largest asset. The other one that's worth calling out is Fourmile. This is probably one of the most exciting gold discoveries over the past several decades in the hands of Barrick and Newmont. And this was something that Barrick started putting some numbers around last year, and it's going to be a phenomenal asset.

We have 100% coverage of Fourmile with the royalty that we have in the Nevada Gold Mines complex at the Cortez complex. And we've also had -- since closing all of these transactions, we've had some very strong financial results. And we've had 2 clean quarters this year without any of the noise associated with transactions. First quarter of this year, we had record revenue, cash flow and earnings. We followed that with the second quarter with record cash flow.

So it's been a very strong start to the year from this larger portfolio. We've paid down through the end of June 30, we paid down $900 million of debt after we closed the Sandstorm and Horizon transaction in October last year. And we've repurchased and canceled $30 million of shares. We've increased our portfolio reserve life by about 25% to 18 years. That's not including resources, and we raised our dividend for the 25th consecutive year. So we've added a lot to the portfolio. We added scale, diversification and growth, but we have not changed our strategy. And I want you to keep that in mind when I get to the end of the presentation when I start talking about valuation.

Now the final point I'd like to make just about what we did in 2025 was I just want to focus on Sandstorm and Horizon for a moment. We've seen a lot of very positive developments in a very short period of time from these transactions. As I noted, we've had significant revenue and cash flow as a combined entity. A lot of that came from these transactions. But we've also simplified a lot of the structures that were in Sandstorm and Horizon that a lot of investors didn't like. The very first thing we did upon closing was we collapsed this Horizon and Sandstorm arrangements, two companies with intercompany arrangements were complicated for the market to understand, those are gone.

We've divested over $200 million of noncore equity positions, and we used that for debt repayment balance sheet. We've restructured some very complex arrangements with additional assets in the portfolio, Relief Canyon, Bear Creek. And we restructured half of our investment, direct equity investment in the Hod Maden development project. We would like to get down to a 0% direct ownership of Hod Maden. But right now, we're at 15%, which is a lot better than where we were at 30%. And we always recognize that was going to be an issue for the market to give us credit for, but we're making very good progress on that one.

We've seen some extremely good developments as well from within the portfolio. We've got MARA, the largest development project in the portfolio. We've seen Glencore, the operator there, has applied for the tax stability. The RIGI application was made in August, just after we announced the transaction, and they've more recently announced that they've actually started re-mining at the Alumbrera pit about 6 months ahead of schedule, very positive development there. And Platreef, Ivanhoe Mines continues with the development. We've now received our first stream revenue or delivery from that asset, and that asset continues to ramp up towards the end of this year and into next.

Hod Maden, the project itself with a new operator is about 25% complete. And we're seeing good exploration results, if not fantastic exploration results at Fruta del Norte in Ecuador. It just really attractive, interesting developments that you should see that asset continue for decades. And we've also seen some very strong operating performance, Antamina, Caserones, Chapada, all of those assets came from Sandstorm and Horizon. So we're very pleased with the way this transaction has been unfolding in a very short period of time.

And it kind of folds into this next slide, just on our long-term outlook. We did provide for the first time in March this year, we provided a 5-year outlook of our -- what we expect to see with a very nice growth runway. In 2026, we're about 30% higher in terms of gold equivalent ounces than where we were in 2025. And if we go 5 years into the future, take the midpoint of the guidance, we're about 17% growth rate from here there. And we do see additional growth beyond that 5-year window with assets like MARA and Fourmile coming into production early in the next decade.

The thing that you should really note though, about this is if you look at the slide, you can see a bunch of assets we called out specifically. We've got very diversified growth. We're not dependent on one large asset to get us there in terms of growth. So that's a risk mitigation that's inherent in our growth profile. So we're very pleased with that.

So with those introductory comments made, I'll just give you a bit more detail on the key attributes of Royal Gold. So we are a gold-focused company, and we've got over 40 years of experience in our sector doing what we do. We started the company in the mid-1980s. We've been on the NASDAQ. This is our 45th year this year being on the NASDAQ Exchange. Our strategy has been consistent over that entire time period. It's really about getting gold booked revenue on good assets in good jurisdictions run by good operators. And our revenue has grown consistently over that time period and metal mix hasn't really changed.

So we aim to provide our shareholders gold exposure and a conservatively managed vehicle. And our historic performance, as you can see from a share price perspective on this slide, shows you why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to gold, which is a pretty volatile commodity. If you look at our leverage to the gold price is about 1.6x. So we have strong leverage. The bet is strong. And you can look at our share price performance over time as well. And this graph goes back to 2006, which is when the GDX index, including all of our peers was formed.

Our share price has actually outperformed the gold price, the GDX index itself and the S&P 500 over this time. So it goes to the point that we do believe that we are a good long-term investment, if you want exposure to a pretty volatile commodity. So we are a high-margin business and dividend growth, as I said at the outset, is a very important consideration for us. And the business model is unique. It is high margin and it's very scalable. And over the last 12 months or trailing 12 months to the end of June, you can see that our EBITDA margin was 83%, software-like margins.

Our cash G&A was about 3% of our revenue. So it doesn't cost very much to run this business. Our operating expenses are very low compared to our revenue. And our costs because they're low and they're fixed, we don't see cost inflation as being something that really risks our margins. And our business model is very efficient. We have a pretty small headcount for the size of company we are. We have 39 employees today. Our market cap is around $21 billion. So on a per employee basis, we compare well to any company in any sector.

And return of capital is a core strategic objective, and it's something that makes us unique amongst all other gold investments. We paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000. We've increased the dividend every year since 2001 despite volatility in the gold price. And with 25 years of consecutive dividend increases, we've actually paid out well over $1 billion to our shareholders in the form of dividends.

We're the only company on the GDX index that's paid an increasing dividend since that index was formed in 2006. And we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index that separates us from all of our peers in the precious metal sector.

I'm going to talk about our portfolio in this next section. We have a global portfolio and it's weighted towards lower risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions, and it spans the various stages of mining project development. So we have over 360 assets in the portfolio today, about 80 produce revenue, about 30 are in development, which means that there's a clear path to first revenue. And then we have over 250 that are at earlier stages of exploration or evaluation. And organic growth comes to us from development and exploration stage assets that advance through that pipeline to production. So we have a lot of that in our portfolio. And having a diversified portfolio reduces single asset and counterparty risks. And our commodity focus is gold, but we do have diversification towards meaningful -- we have some meaningful copper and silver in the portfolio, but we do have the largest gold revenue percentage of all of our large cap peers in our sector. And we're geographically diverse, but we do have a North American focus in terms of where our revenue comes from.

If you look at our portfolio on a net asset value basis, we have the most diversified asset portfolio in the royalty and streaming sector and 9 of our top 10 assets are actually producing revenue today. And we have expansion and extension projects underway at 5 of those so that gives you a sense of some of the organic growth potential that could be coming through the portfolio.

Our operators are best-in-class. We have large, well-capitalized and experienced operators that run our assets. We've recently added First Quantum, Glencore and Rio Tinto. We have Newmont, Barrick, Centerra, Teck, lots of very well-known companies who operate the assets where we have interest. So we have best-in-class operators is how we like to think about it.

If you step back and you think about portfolio diversification, it's really important because it reduces our exposure to single asset operator and jurisdictional risk. And that's really key for generalist investors who want exposure to the metal, they want exposure to assets and the optionality of those assets, but they don't want to have to spend a lot of time reviewing the assets in the portfolio. With us, it's a very diversified portfolio. If something happens an asset, it shouldn't affect Royal Gold materially because we have so much diversification within the portfolio. That's an important factor when you think about our peers and how we stack up against them in the sector.

Now we do have limited operating risk in our business model. And our model provides gold exposure without -- or with reduced risk from assets. And you can invest in gold in many different ways. The slide tends to show the different categories of investments you can make. We provide exposure to gold and optionality and a dividend while reducing downside risk by holding a diversified portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating capital costs.

You can be more conservative. And if you want to invest in gold, you can buy physical gold, but that won't give you any upside. You buy an ounce today, there's always going to be an ounce. It won't pay you a dividend. In fact, it's going to cost you something to hold it or store it. You can be more aggressive and you can buy equity in mining companies or exploration companies. But with those, you're also getting exposure to operating and cost risks and inflation exposure as well, and that's something that can really impact margins.

There's a perception amongst some that our business model doesn't provide leverage to gold. But I think if you look at our financial results, we actually provide excellent leverage to the commodities. Now we have margins that actually expand with the gold price. And if you look at the average operator, they can't say the same. Our costs are low and they're fixed. So our margins actually do expand as the gold price goes up, whereas operators are often -- their costs are often subject to inflation pressures. So their margins may not expand as quickly.

You can see that more clearly on this next slide, you look at the cost structure of us compared to the average operator. And producers are exposed to inflation and input costs. So labor, energy, consumables and sites. Those often go up when commodity prices increase. If you look at our G&A costs, they're pretty steady. So things like salaries, services and office rents, they're not subject to short-term increases. Anything that impacts costs impacts margins. And we haven't seen it yet, but I think we will see it in the next quarter or 2. We'll start to see inflation and energy costs impacting operator margins as the impacts of the Iran war filter through into the mining sector.

Now I'll talk about where we sit inside our sector and our -- what we think is a Goldilocks position. We're large enough to compete but we're also small enough to show growth. Our sector is built on relatively small transactions. If you look at the history of transactions in our sector, most are smaller than about $300 million. The average transaction size is just over $100 million. But we sit in a very interesting position. We're large enough to compete for the largest transactions. We have significant cash flow and access to low-cost capital and that's evidenced by the transaction we did last year with Kansanshi, it was a $1 billion streaming transaction. It's one of the largest in our sector.

But we're also small enough to show growth. We can do a small transaction that actually shows up in our financials. So something Warintza, a $200 million transaction last year, when that mine starts producing, we should see the impact of that production in our financials. We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector, but we do want to be the best. And this Goldilocks position, we think, gives us a really good platform to continue to execute our strategy for growth in gold.

Now I want to talk a little bit about embedded growth and optionality but it's probably worth spending a moment or 2 on capital allocation first because our growth really does depend on successful capital allocation. Our strategy remains consistent and simple when it comes to capital allocation. First, we want to reinvest in the business using nondilutive financing. Second, we want to maintain a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity. And third, we want to continue returning capital to shareholders.

We have a framework for capital allocation, but it's designed to be flexible because market conditions change constantly. But our framework guides us and really what we're trying to do is make sure that we -- when we target growth, we target double-digit returns on new investments, and we show per share growth to our shareholders. We want to repay debt quickly because that allows us to maintain liquidity to be able to continue funding new transactions. And thirdly, we want to continue growing our dividend. A lot of our shareholders expect that. We see that as a very firm obligation. We want to continue doing that.

Now we added 2 new tools to our toolbox, if you will, in the second quarter of this year to help us in capital allocation. The first is we added a $600 million uncommitted accordion feature to our revolving credit facility. That provides us additional liquidity should we need it if we see large transactions. Secondly, our Board authorized a $500 million share buyback. And this was done because we occasionally see opportunities where we trade at a relatively low value. And if there's a disconnect in the value, it's nice to have the flexibility of being able to buy back some shares when that value presents itself.

So how have we done over the past 25 years? This slide shows a nice snapshot of the results of the capital allocation. Since 2000, you can see we've had revenue and cash flow growth, which is significant. But there are 3 aspects of this growth that I want to touch on and highlight. The first is our G&A has not grown anywhere near revenue and operating cash flow. And we don't need to add people when we add assets to our portfolio. It's a very scalable business. That's the first point.

Second is our revenue growth isn't dependent on metals prices. We've had a great tailwind from rising gold price, but we've also added volume to our portfolio over that period. And we've seen organic growth come from within the portfolio. So it's a bit of a multiplier there. And then thirdly, we've mostly financed our growth internally without a significant increase in our share count. We issued 19 million shares last year to complete the Sandstorm transaction. And that was the first time we had issued equity since 2012. And even with those shares, the new shares added to our share count, we still have the lowest share count in the GDX index, and we've been around since the beginning of the GDX in 2006.

We want to avoid shareholder dilution. And if we can provide per share growth to our shareholders, we think we're doing the right thing. Now when we think about growth and asset investments, we aim for double-digit returns, but we have to be patient. Our business is based on being patient and making investments for the long term. Exploration and production upside is very important when we look at new investment opportunities, and it does take time for those benefits to show up in the assets where we invest.

We do extensive due diligence of new opportunities. We take a bottoms-up technical, fundamentally driven approach to asset reviews. Often, sell-side analysts who publish reports or comments after we announced a transaction, they don't have the benefit of that work. They don't have the benefit of 2 or 3 months in a data room analyzing things carefully. So they just don't have the ability to judge returns the same way that we do.

Street returns when we announce a transaction, they're often very low, and it may take -- in some cases, it may take years for the upside to become clear. We won't invest in an asset if we don't think there's upside potential, but the Street may not have the benefit of that understanding. This slide really does illustrate that point. As time has passed, expected returns have increased with production expansions and mine life extensions and so on. And that's driven by resource and reserve growth without further investment by Royal Gold, but it does take time for that to become clear in the marketplace.

This next slide shows the same story in a slightly different way. And as time passes, we recover the investment we make on day 1. And any value that's added to the assets by the operators also increases the future value of our interests, which is obviously estimated by the -- represented by the Street estimates of the value of those interests from this point forward. So we are always aiming for much higher returns than what we get judged at on day 1 of the transaction announcement. And there's a multiplier effect that's important when you think about the assets where we invest. And any extension to mine life provides a double benefit to us.

First of all, it's more production, which is more revenue. But then secondly, an extension to mine life provides longer exposure to a volatile commodity. There can be a lot of value in having extended exposure to the gold price. Operators are always looking to extend asset lives and capture incremental revenue around the sunk capital they've spent to put assets into production. And in 2025, we saw over 2 million meters of drilling across the portfolio. That's phenomenal. And we benefit from this because we don't have to fund any capital or invest any further to get exposure to any of this upside. So it's growth that we don't have to pay for. And the optionality is the most important feature of our business model.

Now as we take that and apply it to specific examples, I'll show you on this slide, this is our development pipeline as we see it today. There are key catalysts in our portfolio for new assets that should provide organic growth potential. And we see organic growth -- the pipeline is very robust with catalysts extending into the next decade. And we've got Back River, we just started commercial production at the end of last year. It's ramping up. We have a royalty structure that actually increases over time. That is going to be something that provides -- we expect some good growth to our portfolio.

Platreef started milling ore in the fourth quarter of last year. We received our first delivery -- stream delivery in early August this year. Robertson is on tap to be -- to start production in 2027. That's in the Cortez Complex in Nevada. Then we've got Hod Maden, Great Bear, Lorenza coming in later this decade. And beyond that, we have MARA and Fourmile in the 2030s. So we have a very exciting development pipeline ahead of us. And this doesn't include assets that are producing revenue to us today. So things like the Mount Milligan mine life extension, the Khoemacau expansion, those are not included in this slide, but they should provide additional benefits to us as well.

So we think this is one of the best organic growth pipelines in the industry. And as I said at the outset, it's diversified. It's not relying on one asset to get us there. Now I'm going to close off with a couple of comments on valuation. And we think our portfolio growth and duration are still not being valued by the market today. Our business is performing extremely well. We've got very strong cash flow. We've got good organic growth from within the portfolio. We're executing on our priorities. But if you take a snapshot of where we are relative multiple-wise compared to our peers, we're actually trading at a fairly large NAV discount to our large cap peers. And we're actually lagging our small-cap peers and our large cap peers when it comes to the cash flow multiple.

And you can see over the long term, where we have traded and where we're trading today, there's been a bit of a valuation disconnect. And I think it's because the market has not yet absorbed all the activity that we did in 2025. We added a lot of scale and growth to the portfolio and just hasn't been absorbed yet. And in fact, I think the market may be expecting there's been some -- there's still some integration risk with those transactions and has not yet turned to the financial results we put out.

And in the first 2 quarters of this year, $770 million of adjusted EBITDA, and that's through to June 30. We've repaid $900 million of debt since mid-October, and we've seen some pretty important advances of projects in the portfolio. So our focus today is really to make sure the market understands how well we're executing and how well our business is performing so we can address this valuation disconnect. So that is the end of my formal presentation.

I guess I'll just wrap it up by making a couple of closing comments. We do believe we've strengthened Royal Gold materially, positioned it well for a strong gold price environment. We've added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio. We have a strong balance sheet today. We have significant cash flow. So we've got lots of opportunity to continue growing. And we think our patient approach and commitment to a long-term strategy that has worked should be rewarded by the market. And hopefully, that's sooner rather than later. So Noella, with that, I'll turn it back to you for the Q&A session.

Thank you very much Alistair for the presentation. As you said, we'll now start the Q&A.

Your first question is -- does the change in ownership structure create any opportunities to accelerate development or reduce execution risk at Hod Maden?

I think it's certainly helpful that we have a local operator now who is in charge of development. Lidya, they're very well experienced in the mining sector in Turkey. They're part of a conglomerate that has a number of different arms that have services that provide services like EPCM and construction services. So there is an ecosystem within Lidya that I think is very positive. And we think the transfer of ownership from SSR, which is a North American-based company to Lidya, the local Turkish company, it should speed things up. Now Lidya they've made comments that they're going to continue executing the plan that was in place before. They are doing a schedule and execution plan review at the same time. They're always looking to reduce costs and do things more efficiently.

And I think it's probably a balance. It's probably a good thing that we have a local operator now to be able to advance the project and make it more efficient. It's been a very good transition from our perspective. They've made a few minor changes to the project. We think our technical people think are certainly well thought out and will make the project better over the long run. So we're very happy. They are continuing to execute the project, and it is certainly moving forward quite nicely. So we think it's better for the project that the ownership to transfer and the operatorship transfer to Lidya.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Your next question, how much of your expected growth over the next 2 years is tied to higher throughput at established operations versus new mines coming online?

It's going to be a mix of those 2. But I think over the next couple of years, you'll likely see more upside from expansions within the portfolio. So as I said, Back River, it is technically a new mine, but it's already started producing same as Platreef. It is a new mine, but it's already started production. You'll see those ramp up over time.

Greenstone is another example. That's another asset that's just recently started producing and is ramping up over time. So I think in the near term, what you'll see is more growth from those expansions of existing assets. And then on the slide that I referenced, you do see some new mines coming in 2027, Robertson and then you move down the time line, you can see the other ones that are there as well. But in the near term, I think most of the growth is going to be coming from expansions at existing assets. And really, that is a lot of ramp-up of newer assets in the portfolio.

Appreciate you clarifying that. Next was asking, just in terms of Hod Maden, what protections does Royal Gold have if the schedule capital cost or funding assumptions change materially under the new owner operators?

Well, we have a direct equity interest at [ 15% ] in the project. So we are exposed to operating cost overrun or capital cost overruns if there are any. I think the fact that we have it is 15% is a materially reduced number compared to where we were when we acquired Sandstorm. So that provides some mitigation. It's not a high capital intensity project. It's around $900 million of funding that's required. And so 15% of that, it's a relatively small number compared to our cash flow but we do have exposure to it.

Now as I said in the answer to the very first question, with Lidya as a local operator coming in, they do have other parts of their sister companies that have expertise that they're going to be tapping into to develop a project. I think we're in a much better position from the operator's perspective in terms of mitigating some of the risks that you often see with capital projects. When you have a local company operating the project, it will probably be done more efficiently than what a North American company would be able to do. They'll be able to probably negotiate when it comes to services and things like that. They'll have an advantage over a North American company.

So while we do have some conditional or continued exposure to the project, we think it's been mitigated just by virtue of the fact that we have a lower percentage exposure to it and a local operator now.

Thank you for commenting on that. Next, how do you assess the trade-off between acquiring producing assets today versus earlier-stage development assets with greater long-term growth potential?

Well, we evaluate projects on many different levels. But I think the -- what we're always looking for is the potential for projects to grow. And we're looking for risk mitigation as well. So it's always -- if you can find a cash flowing asset like a Kansanshi, for example, that is -- we love doing those kinds of transactions because you put your money in and then you start -- on the day of closing, you start receiving deliveries. So that's cash flow. We always like those. But there's often a lot of interesting potential in growth assets.

And Khoemacau is a great example of that. We invested in that in 2019, well before it started producing. And we invested during the capital build of that project, and it was about 2 to 3 years of investments before we started seeing first revenue, but it's done extremely well for us. So there are pros and cons to both. We like the near-term cash flow producing assets, but we like the growth potential of growth assets or development assets. But the one thing that we like and we want to make sure that we have exposure to in all scenarios is long-term potential. So whether it's producing today or it's in development, we want that potential to be growing over time. So there are different kinds of investments. We don't target one over the other. They have their own attributes. We do like them both.

Next question is, Canada is currently speaking to reducing red tape and time lines for project development. What level of optimism does Royal Gold have that there will be -- there will actually be tangible advancements for Canada to be an easier investment?

Well, I think it's a bit of a trend in other places as well. You're seeing it in the U.S., not only in Canada, but we see it as a very positive development. We have a couple of the big development projects we have in our portfolio are in Canada, and they've been identified by governments as being high-priority projects. So you've got Red Chris in British Columbia is now operated by Newmont. The government of Canada has put CAD 500 million into that project. And it's been with the government of British Columbia, the federal and provincial governments have both designated that project as a high priority project.

That's great news to see that project moving forward. And hopefully, with less red tape, hopefully, it can get to production sooner. The other one is Great Bear in Ontario, and the province of Ontario has made a big effort to try and streamline permitting, and they've got this new process called One Project, One Process. And it's around simplifying permitting and making it easier for operators to go through the processing faster. And so that has been something that it was just put in place several months ago.

I think if you talk to Kinross, they would say it's certainly been helpful. The messaging has been certainly helpful. Whether they've actually seen any results yet beyond the announcement and the push by the government to actually make that happen. I don't know. I can't comment on that. I think it's made things simpler to plan but are you seeing time lines condensed. I think it's a little bit early to say that. But certainly, the messaging from governments, all levels of government has been very positive and should impact us positively as well because it just means a shorter time lines of production if they're able to simplify things.

Thank you for commenting on that. Next, the viewer comments. Royal Gold has a very high-quality portfolio today. Looking 5 to 10 years out, what do you believe is the biggest risk to Royal Gold's ability to continue compounding per share value at attractive rates, asset availability, competition for deals, commodity prices or something else?

I mean our portfolio -- yes, thank you for the complement. We believe that's why we have a very high-quality portfolio. We've got a lot of growth within the portfolio. And so if we, for whatever reason, decided that our investment criteria is going to change or we don't want to invest anymore, we've got lots of growth to be able to continue without us making additional acquisitions. So we think we're in a very good spot.

I think probably the biggest risk is going to be things that we can't control. So something like commodity prices. We can't control commodity prices. If there is a correction in precious metals pricing or base metals pricing as well because many of the assets where we invest are base metals assets. If there's a big contraction in prices, I think you would probably -- that would be the biggest risk to us and the pipeline.

Now that said, I think it's unlikely based on what we see today in the marketplace. So you're going to see any material changes to the downside in metals prices. I think gold is recently decoupled from interest -- long term with interest rates, and it's actually now got a positive correlation to rising long-term bond yields. So that is an indicator. And you've got central banks around the world replacing U.S. dollar assets with gold in their reserves. That's a longer-term tailwind that I think is going to be helpful to gold. So I think it's unlikely that you'll see a big collapse in the price of gold over the longer term.

And then base metals, I think everybody is aware, copper -- when I say base metals, it's mostly copper assets. I think copper, we're probably looking at getting into a supply deficit over the next several years because grades of mines are lowering. They're falling as mines get more mature. It takes a long time to get new copper projects into production. And so you've got this additional demand from electrification and data centers and all those other -- the changes to the way that businesses are run electricity, electrification that cars and all of these other things are going to cause the demand increases at the same time, you probably see supply not growing as fast as that demand.

So I don't think there's any reason why the copper price over the long term is going to be materially lower than where it is today. So we don't think that is -- it is a risk, but we just don't think that's something that we see coming up in the next -- certainly in the next several years.

Your next question, Alistair is, have your reserve life evolved over the years with the acquisitions you've made?

So I didn't have a slide in the presentation. I mentioned it, but we actually have a slide. If you go to our website, you can see we did an Investor Day at the end of March. We have a slide on this specifically, talking about reserve lives. And the slide shows -- what it shows is a year ago, before we did Sandstorm and Horizon, we had about 14 years of reserve life. And now we have about 18. But the number of assets that are longer duration has increased materially. So we now have a -- it's kind of a skewed histogram of mine lives.

So some of the larger assets in the portfolio have much longer mine lives than they did before. And it's really as a result of adding things like MARA, Platreef, we added before that, but Red Chris to the portfolio. And then on top of that, you've got other benefits like Fourmile coming in, which is MARA has talked about a minimum of 25 years of reserve life or production life there when they actually put a plan together. So we are quite pleased with the way that the duration of the portfolio has expanded.

Now keep in mind that 18 years that I mentioned does not include resources. So any additional resources that are at mine site. So an example of that would be Mount Milligan. The mine plan that they put out to the PEA, the preliminary economic assessment shows mine life going to 2045. But they've got a lot of additional resources that they think could be converted to extend that mine life further. So there is additional expansion potential beyond that 18 years. So I think we're selling ourselves a little short by only talking about reserves, but that's just a limitation of our disclosure, unfortunately.

Next, was wondering, do you think the royalty companies can outperform the miners in this inflationary environment?

I think so, yes. I think so. I think it depends on inflation, of course. But I think when you see higher inflation come through to operating costs, what it does is it impacts operator margins. And what you saw 10 or 12 years ago when we went through a very rapid run-up in the gold price, what you saw was a lot of mining companies started mining lower grade ore, which is higher cost with deeper pits. And they were -- their margins, even though the gold price was rising, their margins actually compressed whereas our margins, as I made the point during the presentation, they actually grow with a rising gold price environment.

So I think there are periods when investors will choose to be exposed to the operators versus the streamers. But I think in a high inflationary environment, we certainly want to be exposed to the royalty companies like us because we just don't have that same exposure to operating cost inflation.

Thank you for sharing Alistair. The next question for you is, if there are no near-term acquisitions, how do you think about allocating free cash flow between dividend growth and buybacks as the debt balance comes down?

Well, we always want to make sure that we have liquidity available. And when we talk about liquidity, it's not just room on our revolving credit facility. It's also cash on the balance sheet. So if we don't see opportunities to deploy cash, what we will do is we'll continue with our dividend because that's been a very long-term commitment. So I don't think you should expect too many changes in that respect. We like to grow it every year, and we look forward a number of years in the portfolio, and we make an assessment of how much we can grow it, but we would like to continue growing our dividend into the future.

We'll certainly maintain levels of cash on the balance sheet that we think are adequate for the business development pipeline that we see. But we also have to keep in mind, sometimes business development opportunities come up quickly, and we can't anticipate them all the time. And so you want to make sure that you've got enough firepower to be able to execute on large transactions if they come. We don't ever want to have to subject our offers to an operator with a some kind of a financing commitment or a condition because that makes it harder for us to complete that transaction.

So we always want to make sure that we have cash and liquidity available to us. And then, of course, the share buyback will be dependent on a number of different factors, including our valuation relative to where we think it should be and relative to peers. So I wouldn't say that you should assume that we're going to -- if we start accumulating cash on the balance sheet, we're just going to automatically buy back shares because we want to make sure that we maintain a certain level of cash and not exceed it on the balance sheet. We'll be thinking more about valuation before we use the share buyback as a use of cash.

Very detailed response. Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, you see that investing in Royal Gold has limited risks. What are the risks that investors should be aware of?

Well we do have limited risks. I think it would be unfair to say that we have no risk. We certainly -- if an asset in our portfolio stops producing, we don't get revenue, and that is a risk. So we try and control that risk by making sure that when we make the initial investments, we understand cost structures. We do a lot of work on the fundamentals of the asset to make sure that we understand how grades change over time.

We want to make sure that we invest in counterparties who've got the financial wherewithal to be able to weather any change in metal prices. And so there's a lot of work that goes into the due diligence of opportunities to make sure that we're investing in sustainable assets, but we do have exposure to operating risks. And if something goes wrong in an asset, they could impact our revenue.

So we try and cover that off by making sure we do our due diligence on the initial -- we do that properly initially. And then we also say we have very good relationships with our counterparties. And in many cases, we have information rights that allow us to stay on top of developments at assets after we make that original investment. We don't have operating control, but we'll get monthly reports, we'll get any kind of material disclosure on assets from those operators. And we have the ability to help them if we see something happening that they're unable to address themselves. I mean we do -- one of the big benefits that we offer an operator, any counterparty is that we look at hundreds of assets. We're always looking at assets.

We see a lot of very different things during our reviews were invested in many different kinds of assets. So maybe we've seen somebody approach something a problem and they've got a solution that maybe a counterparty hasn't seen or considered. And so what we can often do is bring some of that knowledge to bear for an operator who is experiencing a problem. And we found that's been helpful in the past that we're able to help. So hopefully, we never get to a situation where we see assets stop producing because of a problem. Hopefully, well in advance of that, we're having a dialogue with the operator to try and help them address any issues.

Thank you for the transparency, Alistair. Coming up on your last 2 questions here. The next question is, what does the market need to be educated more on to value Royal Gold closer to larger peers, deals, deleveraging or repurchases? What is the priority leading into 2027?

Well, our priority is to execute what we said we were going to do when we announced the Sandstorm and Horizon transactions. And that is obviously, we want to pay down our debt. We expect to be finished with that sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, and that's assuming current metal prices and no more transactions. I want to make sure we have a strong balance sheet. We want to continue executing in terms of delivering good financial results. We've had 2 very strong quarters that are clean in terms of no transaction noise. We want to make sure that the market sees that and understands. And I think it's just going to take a bit of time for the market to catch up.

I think whenever you do M&A, you end up with this -- there's a bit of a cloud and people want to see how things settle. They want to see how the business actually performs for a period of time before they come back in. And I think we're in the later stages of proving to the market that what we did in 2025 has added a lot of value. And we're starting to see some benefit. Our stock prices start doing better as a result of the second quarter financial results, which we announced in early August. You can see after that, our stock price has started to improve and our valuation has started to improve as the market gets more comfortable.

But if you look at any M&A transactions in history, they generally take between 2 to 4 quarters for the market to fully understand everything that has happened. So it's a question of time, it's a question of just delivering results and making sure we educate people to make sure they understand the growth profile, they understand what it's made up of, to make sure they understand the quality of the assets in the portfolio, make sure they understand what assets have been doing well, what has happened within the portfolio that we acquired, making sure that we clean up some of the things that we said we were going to.

And as I said in the presentation, we've already done a lot of that. So it makes the story simpler, but there's a lot that the market has to absorb to be able to give us full marks. And I think we're still in that show-me period, hopefully coming out of it.

Excellent. Thank you for your comments on that, Alistair. And your last question is, why is an investment in Royal Gold a better investment than an investment in peers like Wheaton, Franco-Nevada, et cetera? What differentiates Royal Gold from its royalty peers?

I think we have a number of differentiators. I think the fact that we have the highest gold percentage revenue of our peers is a very -- that's a strong positive because we're not focused on other metals, other commodities. Gold is our main focus. And that if you want gold exposure, Royal Gold should be a candidate. I think the way that we have dealt with the dividend, we haven't changed our dividend over time. It's a very consistent, predictable way to show shareholders that we think about shareholders, and we've always thought about shareholders.

I think that's something that some of our peers have more recently started doing, but we've been doing it since the beginning of the company. I think the diversification of the portfolio is a huge differentiator. I think every company in our sector has some kind of concentration risk. And we had that before we did Sandstorm and Horizon. We had Mount Milligan was 20-plus percent of our net asset value. Now it's down to 11% or 12% that's an important distinction or differentiator between us and our peers.

If you're a generalist and you don't want to do the homework on the mining assets underlying the portfolio, you can invest in us and have comfort that there is a broad diversification of assets. You have to do that homework on our peers. If there's something that goes wrong at one of those -- one of their major investments, it could have a material impact on the value of the company.

We have a diversified portfolio, the most diversified in our sector. So I think that's a huge differentiator. I think the fact that we -- our size is an important differentiator as well. We're not a $50 billion or $70 billion company. We can still grow. So I think higher growth companies often get higher multiples because they can still continue growing. I think it could be very difficult for our largest peers to show significant growth from where they are in a market that often doesn't have large transactions.

So as I said in the presentation, we see most of the transactions in our sector are in the several hundred million dollar range. We can do 1 or 2 of those every year and show material growth. Our large cap peers cannot do that. So I think that's an important differentiator as well. So we have a number of differentiators that make Royal Gold unique. We think we're in an excellent position, and we think we have tremendous growth potential from here. And I guess, finally, the final thing I would make to say is embedded in the portfolio, we have a lot of growth. And we have growth in some of the best assets in the business. So you think about Fourmile, Great Bear, Red Chris. These are assets that are owned by Tier 1 companies, and they are their key development assets. So they're going to make those assets work. We have full exposure to those assets.

So we think we've got a fantastic portfolio of growth that we've already paid for. And so it should show some very nice optionality in the future.

Excellent. Well, thank you, Alistair, for all of your insight today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did 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 very much. I enjoyed the Q&A session, lots of very good questions in there. So if there is anything that I didn't -- if I didn't hit the nail on the head with the answer, please get back to Renmark. They will get back to me, and I'll make sure that I answer the question that was asked. So I very much appreciate your attention today. Thanks a lot, and look forward to connecting again in the future.

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

Okay. Good morning, everyone. We'll get started. Welcome to our fireside chat with Royal Gold. Just as an introduction to myself, my name is Fahad Tariq. I'm a mining analyst at Jefferies based out of Toronto. I cover large-cap precious metals, including Royal Gold. Royal Gold is a precious metals royalty and streaming company with a current market cap of about $23 billion. Following its 2025 portfolio expansion, Royal Gold has materially increased its scale and diversification. In the second quarter, gold represented 76% of the company's revenue.

No individual asset contributed more than 13% of revenue, and the portfolio generated revenue from established operations, including Cortez, Pueblo Viejo, Mount Milligan and Peñasquito alongside newer interests such as Kansanshi, Antamina, Caserones and Greenstone. Joining us today is Bill Heissenbuttel, President and Chief Executive Officer. Bill, welcome.

Thank you very much.

As I mentioned in my introduction, 2025, I think, was very transformative for Royal Gold with the acquisition of Sandstorm. It increased the company's scale, diversification. Maybe as a starting point, can you talk about how the first half of this year has gone and, kind of, demonstrated that scale and portfolio diversification?

Yes. Actually, we're very happy with the first 6 months of this fiscal year. And you actually stole some of my talking points with the introduction because when we announced the acquisition of Sandstorm, there were a couple of things that we really pointed to. #1 is diversification. And as you just noted, the largest asset producing revenue for the first 6 months of this year was only 12.5%. There was one other one at 11%. So, we only have two assets that represent more than 10% of our revenue.

And so when you compare us to some of our competitors, all of whom have some sort of concentration risk in the portfolio, what we're trying to do is reduce event risk at any one particular mine because things happen at mines. And if we can diversify the portfolio, that certainly reduces the event risk. So, I'm very happy. If you went back to the first 6 months of 2025, I think the top five assets represented over 60% of the revenue -- for the first 6 months of this year was 44%. So, on that basis, it's been a real success.

When we bought Sandstorm, we talked about diversification of NAV, not necessarily short-term revenue. So, I actually think we're ahead of ourselves in terms of diversification. The other part of the Sandstorm story or strategy had to do with growth. We certainly readily admit that the old Royal Gold growth portfolio was a bit limited. Sandstorm actually had the opposite issue. Their operating assets were okay, but not that notable, but their growth assets were quite strong.

And so you look at Hod Maden, you look at MARA, you look at Platreef, those were the 3 key assets that we identified at the time. And let's look at where they were when we closed on the acquisition in October of last year and where they are now. Platreef was in construction. It's now delivered its first metal. Hod Maden didn't even have an updated technical report and had an operator that we clearly found out later did not have the social license to develop that project. That project is now in construction.

And then with respect to MARA, we really didn't have a timeline. Glencore hadn't really talked about it. It had been on a few lists of potential projects. And then in December, they came out and said, "No, 2027, it started construction, 2031, first production." And they announced at the end of the second quarter that, in fact, they've started mining the old Alumbrera pit earlier than expected.

So, when I look at the whole of the portfolio, and I'll even throw in there Antamina, which, through the first 6 months, generated $26-or-so million of revenue. The record year for that royalty was $40 million. So, we're sort of on a record pace on one of the biggest producing assets in that portfolio. So, I'm extremely happy with the way the first 6 months have gone with the acquisition.

Great. And one of the things the management team has done a really good job is simplifying the inherited Sandstorm interest and assets. An example of that would be Hod Maden. As you think now of how the portfolio is today, is there further portfolio rationalization that needs to happen or changes that need to happen? Or what could a fully optimized portfolio look like?

Yes. I mean, as you said, we've made great progress. I think a lot of institutional investors looked at the Sandstorm portfolio and said, "It's really complicated. There's just too much going on. It's not a pure royalty and streaming. You've got the intercompany relationship with Horizon Copper. And then you have these, I'll call, noncore equity investments and debt investments." And so since we purchased Sandstorm, we sold Versamet shares, we restructured the Bear Creek investments, turning it into cash and additional royalty.

We've simplified Americas Gold and Silver. We've done other things that aren't that notable. But all those things take time away from the management team that's not focused on royalties and streaming, and we've gotten rid of so much of that. I think we've generated over $200 million in revenue from those actions, which has allowed us to pay down debt a bit faster.

What work do we still have to do? I think, #1, we still do have that 20-plus % interest in Entrée Resources. What we've said to the market is we think there may be a value-enhancing moment if Rio Tinto and the government of Mongolia can sort of resolve the issues with the mining licenses. And so we're sort of holding on to it right now. We're a little patient. But if we find the right opportunity, we do want to dispose of it. It remains noncore in our portfolio.

And then the other one, obviously, is Hod Maden. We did take the step with the restructuring with SSR's exit to take some risk off the table. I will say the offer to get out fully would have been at a significant discount to value. We didn't think that was the appropriate thing to do. And what we're now trying to talk to investors about really is, okay, it's a 15% interest on a $900 million project. So, we've already funded over half of our equity capital and the rest is not very large relative to the cash flow.

So, with respect to Hod Maden, the ideal optimized portfolio is we don't own it. We don't own the 15%. We just have a royalty interest. But if that takes some time, maybe get it through construction where we can generate more value, we may do that. If someone is interested in buying it today, call us up. We're certainly interested in having that discussion. But we're going to be a little more flexible with that investment.

I think you answered the question I was going to ask about Hod Maden, but just maybe what's the latest there in terms of where the project is and next steps?

Yes. I mean, early stages. I think Lidya has done an excellent job from an engineering, procurement, construction. I think we're probably 25% overall progress into the project. We're probably still looking at 2028 around their production timeline. And one of the things about that project is it's very much a civil works project, right?

Tunneling and Lidya being part of the group, the Çalik Group having all of that expertise, they were going to be the contractors anyway for much of the civil works contract. So, it's not as though we stepped into a project with somebody who doesn't have the experience to bring this thing into production. They've made a couple of changes with respect to the project that our technical team certainly agrees with. So, so far, so good. Very happy with it.

Okay. Great. And then just taking a step back and thinking about the company's capital allocation. So, the focus right now appears to be repaying the debt, which is, I think, going faster than expected, paying a growing dividend, repurchasing shares and, of course, looking at new royalties and streams. How do you think about the balance between all of those things and specifically buybacks versus looking at new royalty streaming interest?

Yes. I find it interesting. We got a lot of pressure at the end of last year about a share buyback program. And in retrospect, the feedback we were getting was probably correct. And so earlier this year, we did move forward with the first buyback program in the company's history. We were active in the first quarter at a price relative to where it is today that was very attractive.

But it's not a math problem. And by that, I mean, we have people say, well, your free cash flow yield is X and your cost of debt is Y. You should only be buying back shares. Buying back shares is a higher return than making a new investment. But when I look at it and I say, okay, the cost of debt may be lower than the free cash flow yield, but, you know what, when you pay back a revolving credit, your liquidity is preserved. If you're buying back shares, your liquidity is not.

And liquidity is key in our business to be competitive for new investments. And on new investments, share buybacks may be great in the short term. But if we make an investment in an asset that has a 20- or 25-year mine life and could go to a 40-year mine life, that's the long-term potential for the company. And how do I look at a free cash flow yield versus the optionality on the gold price over 30 years. Those are all things that don't always factor into a math equation.

So, I would say the preference would still be to find new investments, first and foremost. We just came through this period where people said, "Where is your growth?" If all we do is buy back shares, and we're going to have to answer that question again in a few years. So, the buyback is formulaic in the sense that we look at our valuation at the time, how is it on an absolute basis, on a relative basis, but then we look at what are the other competing uses of capital.

It may make sense to pay down the debt, increase the availability on the revolving credit so that we're positioned for new investments as opposed to buying back shares. So, again, it's -- there is flexibility with respect to what management does there.

And then this is a good segue into the next question on just the capacity to do larger transactions. So, you mentioned the expanded RCF revolving facility. Maybe talk about the deal pipeline and just transaction size, competition, willingness of base metal producers to monetize precious metals byproducts, as you can appreciate because you've been doing this for a long time that base metal companies today are in a very healthy position, right? They're looking at record copper prices, balance sheets are healthy. So, maybe just touch on that dynamic and just what you're seeing out there.

Yes. So, we've always said there are three purposes for, I'll call them, just streaming advances. There's project construction, there's M&A and there's debt restructuring. What I always like to say is it's almost a cyclical thing. If you've got a balance sheet issue, you're not building a new project. If your balance sheet is healthy and the copper price is up, maybe that is an opportunity to build new mines. So, we're always busy.

I think we saw two things earlier this year that I think are great for this industry. #1, BHP did a $4 billion transaction. And what we always find is when the big guys -- one big guy decides that streaming is okay. We don't mind it. I can create value from it. It does get the attention of the other diversifieds. Most mining companies don't want to be the first one to do something. So, that is positive go back to 2015, where you had Teck and Glencore and Barrick all do it.

But, you know what, then it stopped. So, when they get interested, when the bigger companies get interested, you got to have the liquidity to be in a position to take advantage of it because that -- those opportunities may not be there for the long term. I think the other thing is BHP is in Australia, and we've now seen a number of streams being done in Australia. Australia has been a market that has been closed to the streaming business for a long time.

The Australians just don't like it. They don't like royalties. But again, all it takes is one. And now I think we've got about three. So, we're very hopeful and going to spend some time in Australia that maybe there's more openness to the product. So, I feel really good about the opportunity set. The competition really hasn't changed. I mean, there are effectively five of us that can compete. When you're talking about multibillion dollars, you're talking about three of us that can really compete. That dynamic hasn't changed in years, quite frankly.

Great. And then as you think about -- so that's, kind of, the inorganic growth. If you think about what's already in the portfolio over the next couple of years organically, Greenstone, Platreef, Red Chris, Fruta del Norte, Wassa, there's a number that are either ramping up or coming online or could be expanded. Maybe of the ones that I mentioned or maybe ones that I've excluded, which ones do you think have the most potential to add to the cash flow profile for Royal Gold over the next several years?

Yes. But it's interesting that you use that long list because when we talk about diversification of current revenue, one of the other really nice things about the portfolio is we have diversification of growth. I think of the ones you mentioned, Platreef would probably make the biggest impact. But you look at, okay, Greenstone is ramping up. We're in the first full year of the Sandstorm portfolio. We're in the first full year of the Kansanshi acquisition, their contribution to us.

You look at some of the Sandstorm assets, you're talking about expansions at Caserones, at Chapada, you're looking at all of what's been discovered at Fruta del Norte. And then maybe you go a couple of years out, you've got Hod Maden and you've got Robertson, you've got Warintza, Great Bear. And again, we don't look to one asset and say, "That's going to generate 40,000 GEOs and that's our growth." We probably have 10 assets that may come in and make not an enormous contribution, but in the aggregate, will make a material contribution to the company. And again, that goes back to diversification.

One of the areas that's been particularly strong year-to-date has been the copper and other metals revenue. And I think the company is even suggesting that it could be above the top end of the guidance range. How do you think about commodity diversification? You talked a lot about asset diversification portfolio -- having diversification in the portfolio of just number of mines. But what about commodity diversification? Does Royal Gold have a certain percentage that needs to be precious metals? Or is there targeted precious metals, kind of, exposure versus other metals?

I think the old adage was you had to be like 70% gold to get the gold premium. I mean, we don't hold ourselves to any particular minimum percentage. We're focused on precious metals we are focused on gold. Being 3/4 of our revenue in gold, another 10% is silver, that's great. That's not a bottom limit. I think we've been pretty consistent in saying that if there are other opportunities that come to us in other markets, we just -- we need to be able to understand those markets. We know base metals, right? Because we're looking at byproduct opportunities all the time.

We have some background in other areas in iron ore, so we can look at that. Lithium, uranium, rare earths, I mean, we just have no expertise. We don't know what drives the market. We don't know what drives the prices. So, try to stick with what you think you know on diversification. But just like the Cactus royalty that we bought, it's probably 2 years ago now, we weren't looking for it. Someone called us up and said, "We have this royalty." We looked at it, hey, we like the project. We like the location. We like the operator. And now Hudbay has come in, is now the owner.

But that's just -- it's a one-off transaction. And I would just say that the copper exposure that we have, really -- it's not as though other than Cactus, we really went out to find it. We got Robinson as part of a package. We got Voisey's Bay as part of a package. We got the Milligan copper stream out of a restructuring of the original Milligan gold stream. So, it's not as though we were looking to diversify into copper, but we want to retain the ability to have royalty interest in good assets in markets that we can understand.

And that's really helpful. So, I feel like we've applied a lot of filters as to, how the company is thinking about potential transactions. One that we didn't cover though is jurisdiction. Maybe if you could touch on that, just especially because we've seen some of your peers maybe go into jurisdictions that historically they wouldn't have. Just your thoughts there.

Well, and you can look at Sandstorm and Kansanshi and say, in 1 year, we got into South Africa, Zambia, Turkey, in a bigger way in Argentina. And again, it comes back to the diversification of the portfolio. Okay, we -- big billion investment in Kansanshi, okay, is that 9% of NAV or 8% or Turkey is, like, 3% -- so, that's part of it. I, kind of, like that diversification element to it. There are obviously places we're not going to go, but they're pretty obvious.

And the way we -- I think the way we approach political risk, and I would say, a couple of years ago, we were not active at all. And really, there were just some countries that we couldn't quite wrap our minds around, whether that was Côte d'Ivoire or was Ethiopia. It just couldn't -- we just weren't comfortable making a big investment at that point in time. Maybe we just needed to learn a bit more about those countries. But the way we approach it is political risk, we make investments that last decades. Sometimes the payback is 10 or 15 years.

And you just have to understand that in that period of time, you could have multiple, multiple changes of administration and policy. I mean, you look at Peru's on what, their ninth President in like 10 years or 11 years. So, what we look -- try to look to is the culture. And is mining important to the economy? Do people understand it? Does it contribute to employment, to taxes? And if you find those markets, you're better off. And the thing I think we learned from Franco's issue in Panama is there is no mining industry. I mean, there's one big mine. And so when they got into trouble, there wasn't an industry there to say to the government, no, this is what we contribute. And we're that important to the economy. It was, like, a learning experience for a brand-new country.

In terms of the potential -- you talked about the corporate development team is very busy. There's still lots of large opportunities. One of the things we're hearing is that mining companies are still facing inflationary pressures, more so maybe on the OpEx side near term. But even on the CapEx side, meaning that as they build new projects, the costs just keep going higher and higher. Is that resulting in more opportunities for bringing in a royalty streaming partner? Is that something that you're seeing as well?

Yes. I would just say going back to inflation and operating costs, I feel very comfortable with where the assets in our portfolio sit from a cost curve perspective. I'm not worried that inflation is going to run away and we're going to lose key operating assets. But you actually highlight a really interesting point, right? We do well when the mining industry needs capital, which is all the time. And if inflation gets into a capital budget because we all know that when folks come out with 43-101 technical reports, whatever that capital number is, I mean, you got to multiply it by plus 20%.

And then you introduce inflation. And not every mining company plans for all of that, not every mining company has the capital available to meet those needs. So, inflation that increases capital is an absolute opportunity because now the company is in the middle of a construction, there is pressure to do something. So, you might be able to get better terms than you would a company that doesn't necessarily need to do something right now. So, inflation can be an absolute opportunity for us.

Great. And then just high level, post-Sandstorm, the company, as you mentioned, has a lot more growth long term. The portfolio has been much more diversified. I think this is my perspective that the market sometimes underappreciates the growth that is in the portfolio. Maybe just talk about, like, how the team is communicating that to investors now, talking about near-term, medium-term, long-term growth and just how well received that message is.

Yes. I think what we've tried to do is improve our disclosure. And by that, I mean, we had an Investor Day earlier this year. And for the first time, the company gave a 5-year outlook. And it's based on what the operators are telling us. We haven't -- our team did not sort of digest it and diligence it. It's just an accumulation of what the operators were saying. So, I think that's key #1. That helps boil down a portfolio to where somebody can understand it over the medium term. We put together an asset handbook. And I mean, to try to take all the Sandstorm assets, diligence them, make sure that everything that they say was in the portfolio is actually effective and put it into an asset handbook in 6 months was a tall order.

And if you really dig through that asset handbook, there's a lot of good information. We have summary pages that help again digest some of the short-term production forecast. We've changed our press release to try to put everything into regions, maybe take a step up help folks categorize where the revenue is coming from. And we are more than happy to sit with investors, with analysts who have further questions. You want to dig through a bunch of assets, we certainly have the time. At the same time, we say, "We've got 80 producing assets." Our top 10% of revenue generators represents 2/3 of our revenue. You don't have to get your arm around 80 assets to really understand. It's a little daunting, but you go through a handful of assets or maybe two handful of assets, you're going to have a pretty good feel for what the company looks like.

And then just related to that, if you think about maybe one asset or a few assets that you think are underappreciated by investors in the portfolio, are there any that come to mind?

Well, yes, it's funny. I think what gets lost with Hod Maden is how good that project is. I mean, it is a phenomenal development asset in the gold industry, but it gets clouded by the fact that we have this equity. What are you going to do with it? Well, can you just focus on the quality? Because if we can get through construction, I think this thing could be really valuable. And what I always find with investors is there's always a show-me approach to things. "Don't tell me MARA is going to be in production in 2031." I'll give you credit for it in 2031. We saw that with Khoemacau. It's just -- when we start, we make an investment, we say, "This thing is going to go on much longer."

Xavantina is a great example, right? We did the transaction in 2021. The mine life went to 2026, and investors sort of threw up their hands and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "No, no, no, our geologists are telling us this thing is fantastic." And here we are today, the mine plan is now up to 2032, and our geologists still think this thing is fantastic. So, I just think the future growth and maybe we need to improve on how we help people understand the potential of these assets. But anything that's in development or in the future, I find that investors say, "I'll give you credit when I see it."

I'm just cognizant of time. If there's any questions in the room, we can just pause for a moment and just wait for the mic. We got one over here.

So, when we think about the royalty and streaming sector, there's quite a number of players. I mean, I think there's like a large cap like yourself and Wheaton and then we have Triple Flag and Osisko. But then there's a host of smaller companies. What are your thoughts on corporate M&A for the sector? Corporate M&A.

Corporate M&A.

Okay. We just did our part. I'm joking. The thing I always found, I spent a number of years telling investors that is very hard to do corporate M&A because you have the larger companies that have a certain valuation premium and then you have the smaller companies that have a lower valuation premium, and it would make absolute sense. There is an accretive transaction for both companies if the smaller company is willing to negotiate off their current valuation. What we found for years was the smaller companies always said, "Well, when we get to be at your valuation, then you can pay us a 30% premium, and we'll talk about getting together." Well, that's not going to work.

And so for years, I sort of said that's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. And then Sandstorm finally decided, "You know what, I'm willing to negotiate off my current valuation." There were a number of factors within the company that I think they felt it was time for their company to be in a larger company. Do I think there should be more rationalization in the industry? Absolutely. But you just have to understand even the smaller companies, you probably have 4 or 5 CEOs that want to be the one that consolidates them. And sometimes culture gets in the way of things that mathematically probably make sense. So, again, we contributed to corporate consolidation. I'd rather prefer assets right now.

Bill, maybe just related to that, and maybe this is an unfair question, but just lessons learned from the Sandstorm acquisition and I think it's fair to say now that the market has digested it, they understand it. I think your team has done a really good job now of showcasing the growth in the portfolio. But at the time, there was some criticism of the transaction, negative market reaction. I'm just curious, like from your perspective, lessons learned and how you think about it?

I mean, you always go back and think you could communicate some things better. And we're not a very promotional company. And so when there are obvious drawbacks to things that we're doing, we'll say, "Yes, we understand that the Sandstorm transaction looks like it's going to be short-term dilutive, but we're buying it for the projects and it's long-term accretive." And just -- I think I struggled with that communication a little bit.

I also don't think I fully appreciated the views of institutional shareholders on the Sandstorm portfolio. It was a very retail-driven base. I thought people would already understand MARA and Hod Maden and Platreef, and they really didn't. So, maybe we could have done a better job of explaining those assets and why we see value where perhaps the institutional investors that have ignored this thing for years just didn't quite pick up. Thankfully, as I said, everything is going really well. So, like, something is going wrong, and we learned a lesson and that hasn't happened yet.

Yes. And not to shamelessly plug our own research, but we've -- one of the reports we published very recently, we highlighted Royal Gold as a very attractive catch-up trade in the current part of the cycle in part because the valuation continues to look very attractive relative to some of its peers. And again, I think you alluded to this, but the growth profile now looks a lot more clear or clearer to investors than it did maybe before. So, I just want to mention that. And then just finally, as a last question, I've been asking this of every management team. Your thoughts on the commodities that you are most exposed to in this case, gold and maybe silver as well.

On the future of the metal. Well, $40 trillion in U.S. debt, right? I mean, I'm -- I don't want to spend as much time on silver. Silver has also got that industrial component. But let's just say it's more volatile, but tends to follow with gold. But I just think long term, I'm really happy where we are in gold. I think the fiat currency, the government debt, you're seeing the rising yields in the market, there's a potential for a real issue here. And I'm bullish on the metal.

And then if there's no other questions in the room, I'm going to ask one more. Just in terms of the future of the royalty streaming, kind of, industry going forward, do you anticipate any changes in terms of how deals are structured or any new creative type of -- yes, maybe just different structures within the transactions. And we're finding now some of the larger royalty streaming companies are almost becoming like just an overall source of financing, not just for royalties and streams, but also providing debt, being there at different stages of the development of the project, providing technical expertise; it's becoming a lot more hands-on in some cases. Just your thoughts on the evolution of royalty streaming going forward.

Yes. I would never say it's not going to change because the product has changed so much since -- I mean, when Wheaton first came out with it, remember, it was like $3.90 silver plus a 1% inflation adjustment or something like that. And then silver ran up to -- at the time, ran up to $40, I think. And so we started getting into, okay, we'll do a percentage of spot. And what we have found -- and I would say if there's one distinguishing characteristic that we like to point to, we like to think of ourselves as the creative team where if an operator has a particular issue, we may be able to structure the transaction to meet that challenge, that goal.

Where we don't do as well is where the competition is just give me as much money as you can. Plain, vanilla just bid to the highest bidder, and that's it. And I think of Kansanshi, where we said, "Okay, if Cobre Panamá is actually open, they're not doing a stream. So, how do we help them if Cobre Panamá comes back into production and they're a better credit quality?" So, we offered the two buybacks based on improving creditworthiness. So, I think you'll continue to see structures change just based on the unique characteristics of each situation and each operator.

As for other products, we have invested debt. We invested debt at Khoemacau. We invested debt at Wassa. We got paid back on both. We're open to it. The only thing we would say is we want the stream to be the biggest instrument, long-term instrument as opposed to the equity and the debt. It's not the preferred way we'd like to do it, but if it secures the stream on a very good asset, yes, we're certainly willing to do it. And I think what you've seen over the last few decades, capital providers like banks have disappeared. I mean, a number of banks that do mining project finance, it's probably 1/4 of what it was. And so this industry has stepped in.

Great. I think that's a good place to stop. Bill, thank you very much. That was excellent.

Thank you.

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 Los Angeles 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 corner of your screen.

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

Well, thanks, Noella, and thanks to Renmark, as always, for the opportunity to present today. We've had a lot of news at Royal Gold, so it's pretty timely to give you an update.

Before I start, I will make the obligatory comments about forward-looking statements. I will be making forward-looking statements today during the course of the 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 with that out of the way, I will talk about what we're going to do today, which is really give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. We are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals, and we're not a mining company. So a very different business model than a typical mining investment.

This presentation is divided into sections that really cover the key attributes of Royal Gold and our business model. So the first is our focus on precious metals and gold in particular. I'll talk about our high-margin business with a long-term commitment to dividend growth. Our portfolio is a big part of this discussion. I'll talk about how it's the most diversified in terms of assets, operators and jurisdictions when you compare us against peers. Our model itself has limited operating risks with steady margins and no direct exposure to operating costs and inflationary pressures. We're the right size for a small sector, so that means that we can compete for the largest transactions yet to still show growth from smaller transactions.

And finally, I'll talk about some of the growth in the portfolio, the embedded optionality that we like to call it. We don't have to pay for organic growth once the assets are in our portfolio. Anything that comes from mine extensions or expansions is free to us, and that's the optionality that I think shareholders are most interested in. So I'll cover those during the course of the presentation.

But I will also make some comments right now, just about 2025. It was a transformational year for Royal Gold. We did a lot in 2025. We acquired Sandstorm and Horizon, which are 2 separate companies and a corporate transaction that closed in late October. And that added significant growth and diversification to our portfolio. We also saw a couple of new additions to the portfolio from asset acquisitions. We acquired a gold stream on the Kansanshi mine in Zambia run by First Quantum, that provides immediate cash flow from a world-class copper asset. It's a gold stream. And then the second was Warintza. This is an emerging Tier 1 copper asset where we have a gold stream and royalty in Ecuador. So meaningful growth we expect to come from that transaction in the future.

And it wasn't just acquisitions where we saw some benefits and additions to our portfolio. We saw additional optionality surface from within the portfolio, we saw a mine life extension at Mount Milligan that extended the mine life to the mid-2040s, and potentially beyond, if you listen to the operator and the way they're thinking about the mine plan. And then Fourmile. I think it's one of the most topical and interesting things in the gold sector these days. It's a fairly early-stage discovery at the Cortez complex by Barrick. We have full royalty exposure to Fourmile, and it's certainly one of the best assets that is an emerging asset in the gold sector, and we have full exposure to it. So very pleased to see that advancing quickly.

And so obviously, a lot of things in the portfolio, but we've done a lot since closing the transactions as well. We closed -- everything closed off basically towards the end of October last year. We've had two very solid quarters of financial results that don't have transaction costs and all the other noise associated with the transactions that we had in the first -- second quarter of this year. And the first quarter, we had record revenue, earnings and cash flow. In the second quarter, which we released last week, we had record cash flow. So we've had a very strong 6 months -- first 6 months after bedding down these transactions in 2025.

We've repaid over $900 million of debt since the closing of those transactions in October. We've repurchased and canceled $30 million worth of shares. And we've done a lot to clean up and rationalize and simplify the Sandstorm portfolio. We sold non-core equity positions, raised over $200 million from doing that. We've restructured some of the more complex arrangements within the portfolio. So Relief Canyon, we announced a couple of weeks ago, Bear Creek, we announced at the beginning of this year. And we also restructured half of the joint venture interest in the Hod Maden project in Turkey. So we've done a lot to clean up some of the things that investors didn't really like about the Sandstorm portfolio.

These transactions allowed us to increase our reserve life as well by about 25%. So now we have an 18-year reserve life. That's reserve life. That does not include resource potential beyond that. And most of the mines where we have interests have resources that are additive to reserves. So hopefully, we'll see that 18 years grow as time goes on. And then finally, at the end of last year, as we always do, we raised our dividend. And that was the 25th consecutive raise to the dividend in the company's history. So a very important milestone for us.

So we did all of this. We added scale, diversification and growth. We have not changed our strategy. And I'd like you to keep all of this in mind as I get to the end of the presentation and talk about valuation because I think there's a bit of a disconnect there that we need to talk about.

So in this first section, I'll talk about our gold focus. And we have been around since the mid- to late 1980s. It's always been very gold focused. This is our 45th year on the NASDAQ exchange. So we've been around for a long time. We know this business well. And our strategy has been consistent over that entire time period. We're really focused on gold revenue from good assets in good jurisdictions run by very good operators. And our revenue has grown over time, as you would expect, as we've added to the business, but the metal mix hasn't changed. So that hopefully, that shows you that we are committed to this strategy. And what we aim to provide our investors is gold exposure and a conservatively manage the vehicle.

And this slide here shows why we think we're a good alternative for those investors who want conservative exposure to a very volatile commodity. On the left-hand side, you can see our beta to the gold price of 1.6. So we do have very good leverage to gold. On the right-hand side, though, you can see over the long term, how we have performed relative to some of the metrics that we watch some of the measures that we compare ourselves against. Obviously, the gold price is important. We've beaten the gold price. We've beaten our peers, so the GDX, which has been around since 2006, we're a founding member or we were included in the original list of members in the GDX. We have beaten that index since 2006. And we've also beaten the S&P 500. So this shows why we think we're a very good long-term investment in a volatile commodity.

I'll talk a little bit about margins and dividend growth in this next section. We do have a very high operating margin in our business. Our business model is unique. It's high margin, but it's also scalable. We had an 82% EBITDA margin in 2025, and our cash G&A was about 4% of revenue, so a very high-margin business. Our costs are low and they're fixed. So cost inflation should not be something that really risks our margins.

Our business model is efficient. And when you've got low cost like that, clearly, it's efficient. But our head count is low for the scale of our business. We have 39 employees today, who work for Royal Gold, and our market cap is about $20 billion. So on a per employee basis, we compare well to any company in any sector anywhere.

And return of capital is something that's a very important strategic objective for us at Royal Gold, and it's something that makes us unique amongst other gold investments and our peers. We 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. We've increased the dividend for 20 consecutive years, and we've now paid out over $1 billion in dividends to our shareholders. We're the only company in the GDX that's paid an increasing dividend since that index was formed through to 2026. And we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that is a huge differentiator for us.

Now another differentiator for us is our portfolio. It's highly diversified. And our portfolio is global. We're weighted towards lower risk and what we would consider to be mining-friendly jurisdictions. Our portfolio spans in the various stages of mining project developments. And we have over 360 assets in the portfolio today. About 80 of those are producing revenue and about 30 are in development. And the other, over 250 would be earlier stage. And so organic growth comes from us, that embedded optionality that I talked about at the very beginning, that comes from development and exploration stage assets that move through the project pipeline to revenue -- to production, which means revenue to us.

And having a diversified portfolio reduces single asset and counterparty risks. As I said at the beginning, our commodity focus is gold, and we have the highest revenue percentage of our large cap peers from gold, but we also have meaningful silver and copper in the portfolio. In terms of geographies, we're geographically diverse, but we do have a North American focus. And our portfolio itself, if you look at the different assets in the portfolio, on a net asset value basis, we have the most diversified mining asset portfolio in our sector of royalty streaming companies. And 9 of our top 10 assets are producing revenue today, and there are expansion and extension projects underway at 5 of those assets. So a lot of growth embedded in the portfolio.

Our operators are best-in-class. They're large, well-capitalized and experienced, generally. And we've recently added a few to the portfolio, which we're very proud to have as counterparties, First Quantum, Glencore, Rio Tinto. These are world-class operators that are part of our business. And portfolio diversification, it reduces our exposure to single asset operator and jurisdiction risks. And that's very important for general investors who don't want to spend the time to understand individual mining assets. We have a diversified portfolio. When something goes wrong on one asset, hopefully, something compensates from somewhere else, you don't need to spend as much time as you would if you were to invest in a mining company. You don't need to understand the assets in the same level of detail.

Now I want to talk about our model in a bit more detail and talk about the advantages of the royalty model and what we provide to our investors. Our model provides gold exposure with reduced risk. There are other gold investments you can make, and they're shown on this slide here. What we've tried to do is provide upside to gold and optionality and a dividend while reducing the downside risk through holding a diversified portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating and capital cost risks.

Now the other alternatives you can use to invest in gold range from the conservative. You can buy gold itself, you buy an ounce today. That, though, will never grow into more than an ounce. An ounce will always be an ounce. You'll get price appreciation, but you won't get a dividend either, and it will actually cost you to hold that out. So that's a conservative side of the spectrum. The more aggressive side, you can own equities in mining companies or exploration companies, and you'll certainly get leverage to the gold price. But you'll also get exposure to operating and capital cost risks, and inflation can erode margins and actually impact the value of those investments. There's a perception amongst some that our business model doesn't provide the same leverage to gold as other alternatives. But I think our financial results would prove that wrong and prove that not to be the case.

So let's talk about margins for a second. Producers and Royal Gold have very different cost structures. And our costs are low and they're fixed. So margins should increase and expand as metal prices rise. Operating costs, though, are subject to inflation. So margins may not expand as quickly. And if we want to go into this in a bit more detail, this slide shows the cost structure of ourselves versus the average operator. The operator or producer, they're exposed to inflation and input costs. So these are the costs that operators need to incur to run the assets they have in their portfolio. So labor is a big part of that, energy and then other consumables that are required to run mining assets. Many of these actually increase when commodity prices increase.

You look at our costs, though, there G&A is pretty steady. We have salaries, services and office rents, things that aren't subject to short-term increases. And anything that impacts costs impacts margins. So we would expect to see -- on the producing side, we would expect to see some inflation in costs over the next little while as all of the higher energy prices as a result of the Iran war, those will filter through into the mining sector, and you'll start to see operating cost increases, whereas we're not directly exposed to that. So it's not something that impacts our margins.

I'll talk about our positioning in our sector. And we are what we like to think of being in a Goldilocks position. We're large enough to compete against the big caps to put things in our portfolio, but we're also small enough to do small transactions that show growth. And our sector is actually built on relatively small transactions. Most transactions, if you go back over the history, they're smaller than $300 million, and the average transaction size is just over $100 million. And we sit in a pretty interesting position. We are big enough in terms of cash flow and access to capital and liquidity that we can compete for the largest transactions. And we showed that last year. We did a $1 billion stream transaction at Kansanshi with First Quantum, one of the largest transactions that's been done in our sector. So we were able to do that.

Yet, we also are not so big that we can still show some growth by doing small transactions and small transactions can add meaningful value to us. And Warintza would be the other alternative -- the other example from last year, a $200 million transaction last year, relatively small, but we think it will grow to show pretty meaningful results when that asset starts operating.

We're not aiming to be the biggest in our sector, but we do want to be the best. And that Goldilocks position provides us a great platform to execute our strategy of growing in gold without having to look at other commodities for growth. There's enough growth in the gold sector for us to continue growing from where we are.

I'm going to talk a little bit about embedded growth and optionality. And before I do that, before I get into a little bit more detailed explanation there, I have to talk about our capital allocation priorities and framework. And growth in our sector really depends on successfully allocating capital. Our strategy has remained pretty simple and pretty consistent over the decades that we've been in that business. The first thing is we want to reinvest in our business using non-dilutive financing. The second is we want to maintain a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity because opportunities come up quickly, we want to be able to act. And then thirdly, we always keep shareholders in mind. We want to return capital to shareholders and the dividend is our preferred method of doing that.

All of that said, we have to be flexible when it comes to allocating capital. And we have a framework in place that allows us that flexibility because market conditions change. But the framework, generally speaking, is -- we think about it this way. We want to target double-digit returns on new investments, and show per share growth in the metrics that our shareholders care about. We want to repay debt quickly. We want to make sure that we have liquidity that's free on our balance sheet. We have a revolving capacity -- revolving credit capacity available to us for new transactions. And then thirdly, we want to continue growing that dividend. 25 years of consecutive dividend growth. That's an important thing that we want to continue as a strategic objective, continue growing that dividend into the future.

We added a couple of new tools to our toolkit in the last quarter to help us with these capital allocation priorities. And the first was, we added some more capacity to our revolving credit facility, $600 million uncommitted accordion that helps us with liquidity for transactions that may come up. And the second is, a share buyback. First time we've done this in many, many, many years. And this was put in place to address what we think is -- sometimes we see valuation disconnects. So as we think about the universe of places to buy capital, we wanted to make sure we're positioned to be able to buy back shares if we see a dislocation in the share price.

Now how have we done? So this slide shows a 25-year history of our capital allocation. And I would say, it's been pretty successful. Since 2000, we've grown our revenue and cash flow pretty significantly. But there are 3 aspects of this growth that are worth highlighting, and they're all shown on this slide here. The first is, our G&A has not increased anywhere near revenue and operating cash flow. We don't need to add people when we add assets to the portfolio. The business is very scalable, and that goes to that efficiency comment that I made earlier.

The second is, our revenue growth is not dependent on metal prices. The gold price has grown, and it has risen over the past 20 years. It's been a great tailwind to us or for us, but we've been able to add volume to our portfolio, and we've seen organic growth come from within the portfolio. So we're able to take advantage of that higher gold price as well by adding volume to the portfolio.

And then the third thing is, we've mostly financed our growth internally without a significant rise in our share count. We did issue shares last year to complete the Sandstorm transaction, almost 19 million shares, but that was the first time we had issued equity since 2012. And even with those shares and our higher share count, we still have the lowest share count on the GDX. We want to avoid shareholder dilution and provide per share growth to our shareholders. So keeping a close eye on our share count is obviously a very important part of doing that.

I'm going to talk about assets and transactions and returns. So when we allocate capital and we think about allocating capital to new business, what we're aiming for is trying to get double-digit returns over the long term, but we have to be patient. Exploration and production upside is very important when we look at new assets and new transactions. And it sometimes takes time for the market to see and then to understand the upsides that we see when we make investments. We do very extensive due diligence of new opportunities. We take a bottoms-up technical approach to asset reviews. We have a very strong technical team at Royal Gold, and we look at exploration potential, we look at expansion potential. We look at a lot of things in a very detailed way when we're doing due diligence of new opportunities.

And analysts on the sell side, the ones who publish the research reports that investors often read, they don't have the benefit of that work. So Street estimates on day 1 announcement of the transaction, they may appear pretty low, and it may take a number of years for the upsides that we see in the due diligence to become evident to the marketplace.

And this slide illustrates that point. We've selected a number of transactions on this slide here, you can see the initial estimates on day 1 that one of the sell-side analyst has produced. And then you can see what the estimates are today based on the information that's come to light. So as time has passed, expected returns have grown with production expansions and mine life extensions. And those are all driven by reserve and resource growth without having to make further investments from Royal Gold. So that's the optionality that I was referring to.

And this next slide shows the same concept, but in a slightly different way. As time passes, we recover our investments. And the investment is shown in the dark blue. What we aim to do is see that investment recover over time and any value that's added by the operators to those assets increases the future value of what we own. So that, again, is another way to look at returns. So on day 1, we'll invest a certain amount of capital, but we want to receive multiples of that over time. And sometimes it does take time for that optionality to show up in those assets.

And the way this works is, it's the multiplier effect, which is, we're trying to show here on this cartooney slide, any extension to mine life in an asset where we have an interest, it provides a double benefit to us. Obviously, as production is extended, that means more revenue to us. But as production is extended, that's a mine life extension. That means that we're exposed for a longer period of time to the gold price. And there's a lot of volatility in the gold price that can really add a lot of value to the investments that we make.

Operators are always looking to extend asset lives and capture that incremental revenue. They paid for the capital to build a mine. They want to try and maximize their returns. And the way they do that is by trying to find opportunities to extend mine life. And you can see that in 2025, we had over 2 million meters of drilling that was done by operators across the portfolio. We benefit from that drilling because we don't need to fund it. We don't need to fund any capital or invest any further to get exposure to the upside that those operators were able to surface. This growth that we don't have to pay for. And that's the optionality, which we think is the most important feature of our business model.

And you can see that on this next slide, some of the development assets that we have in the portfolio. These are all bought and paid for. And this slide shows some of the key catalysts that we see today at new assets that provide -- we think will provide organic potential to us in the future. We've got a very significant organic growth pipeline, and we have a decade of catalysts every year, we see at least something happening within the portfolio that should provide some value to our shareholders.

Back River reached commercial production late last year. Platreef started milling ore in the fourth quarter of last year. We just got our first gold stream delivery at the beginning of August from Platreef. Robertson, we're expecting to see in production in 2027. Hod Maden, Great Bear, Warintza, we're expecting to see those in production towards the end of this decade. And then beyond the turn of the decade, MARA and Fourmile, two very important large assets for their operators, Glencore and Barrick, respectively. We don't need to fund any of the growth that we're showing on the slide here.

The Mount Milligan -- and these are new assets. They're not assets that are in the portfolio producing revenue. So if I want to include those, I would have included the Mount Milligan mine life extension. I already include the expansion of production at Khoemacau. So when you take all of this and you boil it down, we have one of the best organic growth pipelines in the sector. And that's reflected in the 5-year guideline or the 5-year outlook that we gave with our guidance in March of this year.

So with all of that said, I'm going to turn to valuation as kind of the final point here. And Royal Gold is performing very well. We've got very strong cash flow, good organic growth within the portfolio. We're executing on our priorities. But if you look at a snapshot today of our valuation metrics, it doesn't reflect that. We're showing valuation multiples on an NAV basis. We're trading at a pretty significant discount to our large cap peers. And on a cash flow multiple basis, we're trading at the lowest end of our large cap as well as small cap peers. So we struggle with that.

And I think if you look at the -- historically, you could see how this has manifested itself over time. This isn't just a snapshot today. It's over the long term, we're trading at pretty low levels, and there's a disconnect. And I think it's because the market hasn't absorbed the scale and the growth potential of the portfolio. A lot of the activity we did in 2025 has not been recognized yet. And the market is probably more focused on the integration risk of the 2025 acquisitions without recognizing some of what we've actually reported. And I'll be clear, we've only had 2 quarters of financial results. So it's not a big data set for the market to focus on. I understand that.

But the first 2 quarters should show, we've got -- we had almost $800 million of adjusted EBITDA in the first 2 quarters of this year. We paid over $900 million of debt since the middle of October last year. And we're seeing pretty important advances from within the portfolio, some of the projects that we have that I've already gone through and just talk about the organic growth. So our focus is really to make sure the market understands how well we're executing. So we address this valuation disconnect with information and with the hard metrics that the market needs to see.

So Noella, I'll turn it back to you in a moment. I'll just sum up here. We believe we've got a lot to strengthen our position for a rising gold price environment. We've added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio. We've got a very strong balance sheet. We've got significant cash flow. And we think our patient approach and our commitment to the long-term strategy that has worked should be rewarded by the market.

And so with that, I think I'll turn it back to you, Noella, and happy 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, gold represented approximately 76% of revenue with silver at 12% and copper at 8%. Has the portfolio become more diversified than investors may realize? And how do you expect that mix to evolve over the next 3 to 5 years?

I think the portfolio mix has stayed pretty consistent over time. Gold has always been the biggest driver of our revenue, and anywhere between 70% and 80% on a quarterly basis would be our contribution from gold. And that's been consistent over time. We're certainly not trying to change our commodity focus. We have a few silver streams, which -- we quite like silver. We're always looking at silver, we think of that as a precious metal. Copper, we're not actively looking to grow in copper. We have a copper stream. We have a couple of copper royalties. We're very happy to have those in the portfolio. We're not out there looking to do anything in base metals. But occasionally, we see interesting base metals opportunities coming across our desks. And we will look at them. If there's a good return to be had in a copper asset, yes, and we understand that business very well. So we'll look at that. But we're not out there actively seeking to change our commodity mix.

And I don't think this is going to change significantly in the future either. I mean if you look at what's in the portfolio, some of the assets that I just talked about where we're expecting new production to come in. Of all of those assets, gold is the #1 focus. There's one on that slide that shows is the Cactus project. We have a small copper royalty on that in Arizona. There won't be a significant change to our metals mix when that starts producing. But we're very focused on precious metals, and we don't intend to change that in any material way.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Your next question. Will the development of Fourmile accelerate following yesterday's Newmont and Barrick agreement?

We hope so. I think it was very promising to see that the dispute between Newmont and Barrick has now been settled, and they're working together to advance this project. I think as the Barrick CEO mentioned yesterday on the conference call, they probably won't see production earlier than what they expected. But what they may see is higher levels of production sooner than they were expecting. So I think the fact that they're now working together and maybe thinking about deploying capital in a different way, maybe installing additional processing capacity close to Fourmile, that will be helpful for the project. Obviously, we benefit as a result of that.

So we're very pleased to see that announcement. I think it was a question in the market's mind as to how quickly Fourmile was going to advance given the dispute between Newmont and Barrick. Now that's been resolved. We think there's a pretty clear runway. And if you think about the two companies who know Nevada the best, that's Barrick and Newmont, if they're working together to advance projects in Nevada, that's probably the best situation you could possibly have.

Thank you for that response. Next, somebody is asking, Royal Gold made another significant debt repayment during Q2. What is the target debt level you would ultimately like to reach?

So what we have said is we expect to be debt-free by the end of -- or in the fourth quarter of this year. And so we don't target necessarily a certain level of debt. We like to maintain as low level of debt as possible. And if it's 0, then that's fine. We have a revolving credit facility that we use as a source of capital. It's non-dilutive, and we are happy to use that as a way to raise money quickly to acquire new assets. And what we'll do is we'll pay that down quickly over time. We've got a long record of doing exactly that. So the revolving credit facility for us is a very strategic financing tool. We borrow and then we pay down. We borrow, pay down.

And so if we can keep the balance as low as possible, what that means is the capacity available to us is higher. And that's what we want. We want to be able to make sure we've always got liquidity to be able to do new transactions. And we see -- when we look down the pipeline, and we often see things that are coming, but sometimes we're surprised. Sometimes things come up faster than we expect. And so you don't want to ever be in a situation where you've got too much debt and you can't raise capacity, you can't raise enough liquidity to be able to execute on transactions. Because transactions, they trade once. If you have an opportunity to buy a royalty on Fourmile, for example, that trades once. As soon as that's in the hands of a peer, it's never going to be shaking loose.

So you want to make sure that you've always got the ability to act quickly and decisively on transactions. And part of that is making sure you have liquidity available. So our debt -- our focus on debt is really to repay the revolving credit facility to maintain that liquidity.

Thank you for your comments on that. Next, somebody was asking, which assets are the main drivers of the other metals outperformance relative to guidance?

So they're a small handful. Peñasquito, we have a royalty there, that's all metals. So Peñasquito is obviously an important gold and silver, but also has lead and zinc. Voisey's Bay in Canada is another one where it's got nickel and copper. And we have a couple of other interests, probably the biggest being Antamina, we have a royalty there. It's a net profits royalty, and we have exposure to zinc there as well. So those would be the main drivers for some of the strength that we've seen in other metals.

Thank you for clarifying that. Next, the question is, do you consider doing buybacks to use treasury shares to acquire other companies that could be more inclined if the offer includes shares? And have you considered deposing of royalties with less expected LOM or quality and using the revenue for buybacks, so you increase NAV per share in better quality assets?

Okay. There's a lot in that question. I'm going to try and answer it. But if I don't get it quite right, please get back to Renmark. We'd be happy to speak to you if I don't get it quite right. But when we think about the assets in the portfolio, we don't like to sell assets. And the reason is because there's always the potential for additional growth in those assets and realizing the value of the that potential is hard. It's worth more to us to keep these assets. It doesn't cost us anything to have assets in the portfolio. And there are examples in the portfolio of assets that have had no book value. And we think they're dormant, we think there's nothing happening and then suddenly, there's a change. And there are a couple of Australian examples. We've got royalties in Australia on Bellevue Gold and King of the Hills. And these were -- 10 years ago, these were dormant assets. They had no potential 10 years ago of moving into production.

In both cases, management teams have come in, looked at the assets, thought about them differently and put them back into production. And now they're actually pretty significant revenue contributors to us. So if we had sold those assets, we wouldn't have received anywhere near the value of those assets. So it's worth more to us to keep them in the portfolio. And that's because that embedded optionality is worth a lot. And we wouldn't want to see us sell an asset for $10 and find out that a year later, somebody is able to put it back into production, and it's worth a multiple of $10. That wouldn't be a good allocation of capital.

So we don't think about it that way. We're not like a mining company that has maybe operating costs are increasing and margins are declining at an asset. And you say, I'd rather focus on higher returning projects. So I'm going to sell that, take proceeds and invest it in the higher returning asset. That's not the way we think about it. This is about owning a portfolio where each of the assets has some additional optionality.

To go back to the question on -- so can you read the first part of the question, please, again, Noella.

Certainly. Yes. So the first part is, do you consider doing buybacks to use treasury shares to acquire other companies that could be more inclined if the offer include shares?

I think I understand the question. We will use shares occasionally. It's not very often, but we have done that in the past to acquire things. And the most recent example would be Sandstorm. So we did use our shares to acquire Sandstorm. It was just a transaction that was too large and actually the selling company wanted shares. They wanted to be able to participate in the larger vehicles. So we have done that in the past. It's not something we typically look to do because, as I said, we want to maintain our share count.

So the buyback is a completely separate calculus, and that's around -- thinking about the buybacks around valuation and other ways that we can deploy capital. We want to make sure that we're doing it in the most accretive way. So hopefully, I've answered that question. But as I said, if I didn't, if I misunderstood it, please go back to Renmark. We can have a conversation offline.

Thank you for breaking that down, Alistair. So your next question. Now that Lidya has assumed operatorship, how should investors think about the updated project schedule and the potential for changes to capital requirements?

So this is -- for those who are not familiar with Lidya and the question, this is an asset which is very unique for us. We have a direct joint venture interest in an asset in Turkey that's being developed by a Turkish company called Lidya. And there's been a big change with the ownership here. Lidya has just taken over as operator of the asset. We own 15% and Lidya owns 85%. As Lidya, they've now stepped into the operator role, and that's been in the last couple of months, quite successfully. We're quite pleased with the way that they're handling the project and moving it forward.

What they did say, though, was that they are reviewing the prior plans in terms of the execution plan and the schedule. At this point, they're executing the project based on the old plans, but they're doing anything that a new operator would do, and that's just look at everything and make sure that they agree. And they haven't said anything yet that would indicate there's been a change. So they're executing to the original plan. And of course, we'll update the market if there's any change.

Thank for that response. Next question, would you consider partnering with another royalty company to close a larger deal?

Yes, we would. We have talked to some of our peers in the past about doing things together. We haven't found the right opportunity, so that's why it hasn't occurred. But yes, absolutely. And I think if you look forward, there are some very large capital spend plans for some of the large base metals companies in the copper business, for example, they've got massive projects that need billions of dollars of capital. Some of those have fairly significant precious metals byproduct credits. So they need to raise a lot of money.

And so is there a way for us to partner with somebody who's like-minded,and provide a stream financing package that comes from 2 parties? Yes, absolutely. We'll be very willing to consider that. And we have, as I said, we've looked at doing that in the past on a couple of opportunities with our peers, but we haven't found the right opportunity. So we haven't really -- there's nothing to talk about publicly, but we have done that, and we're open to it.

Thank you for commenting. Next somebody was asking, with revenue up 115% year-over-year, how much of the improvement would you attribute to commodity prices versus the expanded portfolio and underlying production growth?

Well, the commodity price certainly plays a role, but I think the biggest factor would be the additions to the portfolio. We've got -- so about 20% of our revenue last quarter was from brand-new assets. So those are assets that we did not have a year ago. The metal price, obviously, has increased over the last year as well. So there's a kicker here. So we're getting 20% new revenue, but we're also getting higher revenue because of the gold price. But this past year, we've seen more growth in the number of assets contributing volumes to our account than we have seen growth from the metal price.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. Next somebody was asking, a quick question on Warintza. Following the recent EIA approval and PFS publication, what are the remaining derisking milestones before Royal Gold makes its final $50 million funding contribution?

So we have to -- one of the transaction terms was that we would make our final $50 million funding contribution upon registration of our royalty interest for security reasons. That is a process. It's administrative. We have been working with Solaris, the operator of Warintza. We have been working together to try and get this resolved, and it's just taking a bit more time than we expected. It's purely administrative with the government in Ecuador. We would expect to have that resolved by the end of this year. So we said between sometime in late third quarter, early fourth, hopefully, we'll get this resolved and we'll be able to make that payment, and we'll move on from there.

Thank you for clarifying that. Next, Royal Gold's lowest estimated PEs through the close of 2026, should the general stock market take a substantial loss over a short period of time, the opinion as to how far, if any, the Royal Gold stock will decline. Subsequently, the company's estimate on how long thereafter that Royal Gold will return to its moderated value?

I'm not quite sure how to answer that because I don't have a crystal ball on the stock price. But certainly, we've built our business to survive really, it's -- the equity price is going to be defined by the market. We have no control over that. All we can do is just make sure we built our business, we run it properly, and we try and take risk out of it by investing in the best assets possible.

So it's very hard. If the markets -- if there's some kind of catalyst in the markets that causes them to drop, we would likely drop as well because we're an equity and fund flows would mean that we're going to drop. But it's really hard for me to answer that question because markets can drop for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes, if there's risk -- if the markets risk off, then you may see certain sectors drop and you may see the gold price do better. And if that occurred, then it give us a flight to safety, you may see our equity value actually increase. So it's very hard to define and predict what's going to happen to the stock price, because there are so many different variables.

Obviously, we watch the stock price carefully. We want to make sure that we're doing our best to make sure the market is clear on our potential and what the risks are in the portfolio, so everybody understands it, prices the equity correctly. But we can't control how the market reacts. And sometimes, you end up in a scenario where fund flows dominate and it's no longer fundamental value. And I think the scenario that you're probably talking about is going to be driven by fund flows. So I can't really comment more on that because it's difficult to say.

Thank you for your insight nonetheless, Alistair. We're coming up on your last few questions here. The next one is, what do you mean by an evaluation project? How do you distinguish that from an exploration project?

So the way we think about it is, it depends on the classification of resources. So an exploration project may have an interesting -- may have potential to have a deposit that somebody is looking at with early-stage techniques. And so they're trying to understand what the potential is. Evaluation projects will have a resource defined. And it may be a low-quality resource, but it's still a resource. So it's more advanced than an early-stage exploration project.

And as you move into the next category, would be development projects, typically, those are projects that have a life of mine plan and a reserve. And there's definitely a time line associated with development of the project. So it's a category that we provide or we try to put our portfolio in so people understand what the different levels are and approximately what's in each of those levels, because that gives you a sense of the potential growth from within the portfolio.

Thank you for your comments on that. Your next question, what percent of shares does management hold?

So we -- in a $20 billion company, I would love to say that I'm a 10% owner, but I'm not. So the number of shares is in the hundreds of thousands. It's not in the many millions. And that's typical for a large-cap company. What I can say, though, is that the share positions that management and the Board owns are significant in terms of the individuals who own them. So in terms of percentage of net worth, it's a large part of these individuals portfolio. So while it may not be a large percentage of the company that's owned, we are very motivated and very aligned with shareholders because a lot of our net worth is tied up in Royal Gold shares. So that's how I would answer that question.

I appreciate your response, Alistair. And then the last question for today is, Royal Gold is often viewed as a relatively low-risk way to obtain leverage to gold prices. Has the addition of more copper and silver exposure changed the company's risk reward profile?

No. I would say, no. I'd simply because we've had a similar revenue mix for a number of years now, and it hasn't impacted us from a valuation perspective as far as we're aware. As we talk to investors, it's never a point of concern. I think a lot of investors would see silver and gold trading together. So that's not necessarily an issue. As the price of one rises, the price of the other often does as well. Copper is a little bit different because there is a commodity play more that's driven by supply and demand. But copper is not a huge part of our portfolio. And so it's not something that really impacts our valuation.

So we're very happy with the way we are in the portfolio mix. And obviously, we're focused on gold, as I said during the presentation. We're always looking to grow in gold. So that's where we focus our activity. We're being proactive in trying to grow in gold. But at the same time, if we do see something attractive that comes across our desks, that's high returning and good quality, maybe a copper asset, we'll certainly look at that as well. But we're not out there looking to grow our copper exposure.

Thank you so 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 very much. There are a lot of very good questions in there. So as I said, during the answers, if there's anything that I missed in terms of misunderstanding the questions, please get back to Renmark. I'd be happy to connect with you offline to talk about it in more detail. So look forward to talking to you again sometime soon. And in the interim, I guess, enjoy the rest of your summer and take care.

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

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Royal Gold, Inc. 2026 Second Quarter Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Business Development. Alistair, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our discussion of Royal Gold's second 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 second 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. This is our second complete quarter of consolidated financial results after significantly growing our business in 2025 and our strong first half of 2026 clearly demonstrates a material change in the scale of our portfolio. Revenue for the quarter was $451 million, operating cash flow was a record $335 million and earnings were $236 million. These were increases of 115%, 119% and 79%, respectively, over the same period last year.

Our diversified portfolio produced revenue from a variety of properties with no one asset contributing more than 13% of revenue and only 2 assets generating more than 10% of revenue. Reducing asset concentration risk was a key driver for our acquisitions in 2025, and we are pleased to see this reflected in our portfolio which is now one of the most diversified in the sector.

After adjustments, net income was $218 million or $2.56 per share, a 41% increase over last year. We remain a gold-focused business and gold contributed 76% of total revenue for the quarter. 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 annual rate of $1.90 per share, 6% higher than last year. We repaid $200 million on the revolver during the quarter, and we ended the quarter with total available liquidity of $1.2 billion. And we are active on our share buyback program and repurchased and canceled 147,000 shares or total cost of $30 million.

As we discussed on our last quarterly call, we put the share buyback program in place as an additional capital allocation tool to be used with discretion. We have multiple priorities for capital deployment, and our decision-making considers the business development pipeline, the balance sheet, our regular dividend and our equity valuation. During the quarter, we balanced the agreed further investment at Warintza, paid $40 million in dividends, bought back shares and made a meaningful reduction in debt, the latter of which preserves liquidity. Changes in market conditions and our outlook mean we must be flexible as we balance all opportunities with the accretive deployment of capital over the long term.

In the second quarter, we thought the market did not reflect what we see as the value of our company, and we are active on the share buyback alongside our other priorities and any further activity will be based on the short and long-term priorities of the company and not just valuation.

During the quarter, we also made further progress on simplifying the Sandstorm portfolio. We announced the restructuring of our ownership in the Hod Maden joint venture. And after quarter end, we reduced our equity interest from 30% to 15% and return for additional royalty interests. Hod Maden is a high-grade and high-margin project, and we are pleased to preserve the value of our position while bringing our overall interest more in line with our core royalty and streaming business. While the residual equity interest is not the ideal investment structure for our portfolio, a smaller interest materially reduces our exposure to operating and capital cost risks, and we may still look for opportunities to reduce this interest in the future.

We also worked with Americas Gold and Silver to settle fixed delivery obligations related to the Relief Canyon Mine. This was a complicated arrangement that was cumbersome to manage, and it eliminates a distraction for both sides without impacting our royalty or stream interest at the Relief Canyon. With these transactions, we have significantly simplified aspects of the Sandstorm portfolio that were difficult for investors to understand.

Over the past few months, we have streamlined the Horizon structure, divested non-core equity positions, restructured the Bear Creek investments, settled the Relief Canyon obligations and made progress on restructuring the direct equity interest in Hod Maden. These steps were a strategic priority for us when we announced the Sandstorm and Horizon transaction, and I am pleased with how quickly we have been able to show progress. I'll now turn the call over to Martin to discuss portfolio performance in the quarter.

Thanks, Bill. Turning to Slide 5. We had another quarter of solid portfolio performance, Volume was 100,000 GEOs with revenue of $451 million. Royalty revenue was up by 83% from the prior year quarter to $140 million. We saw large revenue increases over the prior year from the Cortez Legacy Zone and Voisey's Bay as well as strong contributions from our new Antamina, Caserones, Houndé and Fruta del Norte interests. Stream revenue was also up strongly from the prior year to $311 million, an increase of 133%. We saw materially higher revenue year-over-year from Andacollo, Pueblo Viejo, Rainy River, Khoemacau, Wassa and Xavantina, slightly offset by lower revenue from Mount Milligan. We also saw a strong contribution from Kansanshi as well as our new Greenstone, Bonikro, Cerro Moro and Chapada streams.

With respect to 2026 metal sales guidance, gold and silver are tracking well to the guidance ranges and copper and other metals are trending to be around or above the top end of the ranges. We've seen strong copper-related revenue, largely due to lower-than-expected deductions on the Antamina NPI royalty and strong performance of other assets. Other metal sales have benefited from strong zinc production at Antamina and nickel production at Voisey's Bay.

I'll now turn to Slide 6 and give some high-level commentary on notable developments within the portfolio. At Mount Milligan, Centerra reported that gold and copper production is on track to meet full year guidance. At Rainy River, Coeur announced its plans after acquiring New Gold late in the first quarter including a more aggressive exploration program with a focus on Near-mine drill testing and exploration of the large land package in the Rainy River District, which extends over 50 square kilometers.

At Greenstone, Equinox reported that operations are continuing to ramp up, and 69% of the days in the second quarter exceeded the mill nameplate capacity of 27,000 tonnes per day. Equinox expects this trend to continue, resulting in higher quarter-over-quarter production for the balance of the year. At Red Chris, the government of Canada announced a CAD 500 million investment in the block cave project. Newmont has received key regulatory approvals for the project from the province of British Columbia and is advancing towards Board approval near the end of the year.

At Caserones, work is underway by Lundin Mining to increase utilization of the cathode plant and grow copper production. 39,000 meters of drilling is planned this year on more than 10 exploration targets in the district, an initial resource at Angelica in the deep sulfide targets adjacent to the Caserones pit is expected in the first quarter of 2027.

At Fruta del Norte, Lundin Gold reported the discovery of 2 additional copper-gold porphyries, increasing the district total to 7 with a maiden resource for the Sandia porphyry expected in early 2027. At Kansanshi, First Quantum confirmed 2026 production guidance and reported that the S3 plant throughput was sustained above design capacity in the second quarter, driven by higher operating time, strong utilization and improved milling rates.

At Bonikro, Allied expects to extend the mine life from 2029 to 2036 with average annual gold production of 120,000 ounces per year. Allied is also studying an increase in plant capacity to bring forward the processing of low-grade stockpiles beginning in late 2026 to early 2027.

At Platreef, Ivanhoe is now expecting commercial production from Phase 1 in the fourth quarter of 2026. Shaft 3 commissioning was completed in June, and Ivanhoe expects this will support the Phase 1 ramp-up and the Phase 2 expansion. Construction of the Phase 2 concentrator is on schedule for completion in the fourth quarter of 2027. We received the first delivery under our gold stream last week, and we are looking forward to increased deliveries as the mine ramps up towards commercial production.

At MARA, Glencore reported yesterday that mining restarted ahead of schedule at Alumbrera and that Agua Rica feasibility engineering is underway with the environmental permitting submission expected in the coming weeks and RIGI approval expected shortly thereafter. At Hod Maden, the transition of operatorship to Lidya is complete, and construction is continuing while Lidya undertakes a review of the project schedule and execution plan. Based on the work so far, project expenditures and commitments remain within the scope reflected in the technical report summary published by SSR Mining in January 2026.

As of June 30, overall project progress was approximately 25% when considering engineering at 74%, contracts and procurement at 44% and construction at 8%. Cumulative expenditures were approximately $175 million. Lidya continues to target initial concentrate production in 2028, subject to completion of the schedule and execution plan review and timely execution of the remaining major construction and procurement packages. Finally, I'll note that recent severe winter weather in Central and Northern Chile has caused temporary operational issues at both Andacollo and Caserones. The weather system has passed and neither operator has indicated a change to full year guidance. 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 ended June 30, 2026 to the prior year quarter. Revenue for the quarter was up strongly by 115% to $451 million. The large increase was driven by higher metal prices, new contributions from Kansanshi and the Sandstorm portfolio and higher volumes from Andacollo, Rainy River and the Cortez legacy Zone. Some of these increases were partially offset by lower sales from Mount Milligan. We also recognized a large revenue contribution from Relief Canyon in the second quarter, when we sold 5,000 ounces of gold related to the advanced delivery of stream ounces. The original delivery schedule was 1,275 ounces per quarter through the end of 2027.

In terms of the impact on this year's guidance, we are receiving 1,175 more ounces this year than expected, and all the ounces were delivered in the first half of 2026 rather than being spread evenly across the year. The incremental revenue this quarter from the sale of the advanced delivery was approximately $22 million. Metal price increases were significant with gold up 37%, silver up 117% and copper up 40%. Gold remains our dominant revenue driver at 76% of total revenue with silver at 12% and copper at 8%.

Turning to Slide 8, I'll provide more detail on certain financial line items for the quarter. G&A expense was $13.4 million, which is approximately $3 million higher than the prior year. The increase in our G&A expenses period was mostly due to higher office and employee-related costs, which also includes noncash stock compensation expense. We continue to expect our total G&A expense for the year will finish near the high end of the $50 million to $60 million range we provided earlier on our February conference call.

Our DD&A expense increased to $96 million from $31 million in the prior year. On a unit basis, this expense was $962 per GEO for the quarter compared to $487 per GEO last year. The increase is mainly driven by higher carrying values at Kansanshi Gold stream and the Sandstorm, Horizon interest we acquired in 2025, partially offset by lower gold sales and depletion rates at Mount Milligan. Further, as we flagged in our preliminary financial information press release in July, approximately $12 million of the increase was due to the onetime sale of the gold ounces related to the Relief Canyon fixed delivery obligation settlement. Our overall DD&A expense is in line with expectations, and we expect to finish the year within the guidance range of $339 million to $379 million.

Fair value changes in equity securities was $22 million for the quarter, primarily due to the increase in the value of the Entrée resources shares we acquired with the Sandstorm and Horizon acquisition. Interest and other expense increased to $10 million from $1.5 million, primarily due to higher average amounts outstanding under the revolving credit facility in the current quarter. Tax expense for the quarter was $58 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 19.7%. Before discrete items, our year-to-date effective tax rate is 19.9% and we continue to expect that the rate for the full year will be within the guidance range of 17% to 22%.

Net income for the quarter was $236 million or $2.78 per share, which compares to $132 million or $2.01 per share in the prior year. The increase in net income was largely due to higher revenue and fair value changes in our equity securities. These increases were partially 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 settlement of the Relief Canyon obligation and the tax effect of these adjustments, adjusted net income was $218 million or $2.56 per share. Finally, our operating cash flow this quarter was a record $335 million, up 119% from $153 million in the prior year. The increase was primarily due to higher stream and royalty revenue, partially offset by higher income tax payments, G&A costs and interest payments.

In summary, it was another very strong financial quarter that reflects the significant cash generation potential of the portfolio and the overall increase in the scale of our business.

I will end on Slide 9 and summarize our financial position. Our increased cash flow has allowed us to quickly pay down debt, repurchase shares and rebuild our liquidity. At the end of June, we had total available liquidity of $1.2 billion between the available amounts on the revolver, and $244 million of working capital. After quarter end, we continued our focus on the balance sheet as we made a further $75 million repayment in July, and we intend to make an additional $100 million repayment in mid-August. We continue to expect to fully repay the outstanding balance during the fourth quarter based on current metal prices and absent further significant acquisitions. In terms of additional liquidity, we expect Centerra to deliver the second tranche of gold as part of the deferred consideration for the Mount Milligan cost support agreement sometime towards the end of the third quarter or beginning of the fourth quarter.

Recall that the sale of these ounces will not be treated as revenue and will not be reflected in our calculation of GEOs and the cash received from the sale of these ounces will be reflected in our operating cash flow.

With respect to financial commitments, at the end of June, we had $50 million of funding outstanding for the Warintza acquisition. We expect to fund this amount in the third or fourth quarter, subject to registration of security, which is underway. Our only other remaining commitment is our 15% share of Hod Maden project costs. As part of the ownership restructuring, we funded $70 million of project costs in the second quarter. Lidya is required to fund the next $397 million, after which both parties will fund their share of costs according to their ownership. Assuming no changes to the project timeline or scope and no debt financing, we expect we will start contributing our share of spending in mid-2027.

That concludes my comments on our financial performance for the quarter, and I will now turn the call back to Bill for closing comments.

Thanks, Paul. As I said at the beginning of the call, this is our second full quarter of results after a year of transformational activity. Our financial results so far this year show the benefits of holding a large diversified and cash flowing portfolio and with the resolution of some of the more complicated Sandstorm interest complete and the transaction noise behind us, we have returned to delivering steady and predictable results. A year ago, there was concern that our 2025 transactions would cause dilution to near-term results. While it is only 2 quarters, our per share metrics in terms of GEO per share, adjusted EBITDA per share, operating cash flow per share and EPS all show the overall accretion of our 2025 transactions.

Our business model should be simple for investors to understand and value. We have interest in some of the best assets in the mining business, Cortez, Fourmile, Kansanshi, Antamina, Red Chris, Great Bear, MARA, just to name a few. And I hope we will return to a premium valuation when the market has digested the results and values the cash flow and organic growth potential within the portfolio.

Until such time, we will try to continue to show a strong financial performance and use our increased cash flows to address multiple opportunities that may be present ranging from new investments, further debt repayments and potentially further share repurchases. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from the line of Brian MacArthur, Raymond James.

Just a few quick ones. You talked about cleaning up the portfolio from Sandstorm, you mentioned you still have the Entrée share. What's the latest thinking with respect to them?

Brian, thanks for the question. We're going to be a little patient there. Rio and the government of Mongolia have been having ongoing discussions regarding some of the mining concessions, we just think if that were to get solved. Maybe that might have a positive impact on the Entrée share. So where it was with VersaMet and some of the other ones, we were just let's just sell it. As of right now, we're going to just hold on for a little bit and see what happens.

Great. My second question, thank you for the Hod Maden update spending. So I guess now you sort of -- they paid the next $397 million. You say there's $175 million in and you think you're going to pay -- make payments in mid-2027. The way you see it now -- I mean that's a fair bit of the capital will be spent by mid-2027. Is that back half payment if it goes that way, pretty significant. That is to say the majority of the rest of capital, you're thinking is going up in '27 and very little in 2028, assuming nothing changes. Is that the way I should think about it? I'm just trying to figure out what that actual payment could be in 2027.

Well, I might start with Martin, is there anything on the construction timing we can add at this point? I don't quite know what we've talked about in the past. I imagine it's going to go from -- in 2027 and 2028, but anything you can add, Martin?

I think that the -- so Lidya is still talking about first production of concentrate in 2028. So I think the way to think about it, Brian, was that the -- the remaining input from Royal Gold would probably be split over the second half of 2027 and the first half of 2028. But that's a very rough view at the moment.

Great. And just third question. You mentioned your second tranche for under the support payments for Mount Milligan. Can you just remind me when you get the final ounces under that deal, what the trigger is for that and when you might receive it?

Oh boy. Paul, I'm going to take a shot at it and if you can help me a little bit, I would appreciate. So the total delivery was 50,000 ounces. I think that there were 3 scheduled tranches based on Greenstone of 11,000 ounces. So after the one we get in, say, next quarter or the fourth quarter, will it be another 11? I don't remember the trigger for it. But then the rest of it, I think, is longer term. It sort of goes out into the next decade. Is that -- Paul, am I anywhere close?

That's correct, Bill. And Brian, just remember, it's based on delivery -- or I'm sorry, threshold -- production thresholds at Greenstone. So -- but Bill is correct. The second tranche, 11,111 ounces, as I mentioned, we're anticipating that they're going to meet the next threshold required for that sometime in the late third quarter or possibly early fourth quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Cosmos Chiu with CIBC.

Maybe my first question is on your guidance. You're tracking very well in the other metals category and also the copper category. So maybe in the other metals, could you remind me what's included in that $29 million that you've generated so far in Q1 and Q2?

Yes, Cosmos. I mean, other is going to be things like lead, zinc, nickel, which is good. It's going to come from Antamina on the zinc side, I believe, Voisey's Bay, copper, nickel, and so there's one more. But Paul, what's the other -- Peñasquito, lead and zinc. Paul, is there anything else other than those 3 that really drive that?

No. That -- those are the big highlights.

Okay. So I guess my question is, it's driven off of, I would imagine, higher sort of base metal prices we've seen so far in the first half. Is it a possibility that I take what has been generated in the first half and times 2. And then that will be sort of what the annualized number might be because that would be much higher than what you had expected at least for other metals and then significantly higher as well for copper. Is that one possibility if base metal prices stay at where they are today?

Yes, sure, it's a possibility. The only caveat we have is the Antamina NPI is new to us. And we've seen revenue of $26 million in the first 6 months of this year. If you go back to '23 and '24, Antamina paid somewhere between $16 million and $17 million of royalty revenue for the full year.

Now, we don't know of anything in the portfolio that would bring it down, and that's why we're uncomfortable changing guidance. But we don't have a lot of insight into Peñasquito. We don't have a lot of insight into Voisey's Bay. So as I thought -- look, it's a small piece of revenue, let's get to the end of the third quarter. And then if we need to adjust it, so people know where they're going to end up at the end of the year, then we can talk a little -- feel a bit better about talking about it then.

And Bill, since you talked about being comfortable here, and it's a good news story, copper up and other metals up, but now copper mix up about 8% of your revenue, as Paul had mentioned earlier, it could potentially go higher. Is that a good mix? Or is that -- does that make you uncomfortable? At what point could it make you uncomfortable in terms of cost.

I don't think we -- no. I mean we're 76% gold. And I just can't see -- I don't know what the copper price would have to go to suddenly say, well, that 76% is now substantially lower. I don't worry about it.

Do you see it as an opportunity or no, you're still very much precious metals focused?

We're precious metals focused. But as we've always said, if someone wants to call us up and show us something in another metals market that we can understand and we like the asset, yes, we'll certainly consider an investment. But it's certainly not -- copper's not suddenly strategic metal for us when we're going out and looking for it.

Maybe going to Hod Maden a little bit, Bill. From where you're standing and from where your team is standing, how has that transition been in terms of the operatorship from SSR Mining to Lidya? Has it been okay?

Yes. I think it's been okay. But I'm going to turn that question over to Martin because he's really been a touch with the Lidya technical folks. So Martin, why don't you give Cosmos your thoughts?

Yes. So I think to answer your question, clearly, yes, we do believe the transition has gone well. At the mine site level, not really very much has changed. They've changed some senior leadership positions, but the work is still ongoing. So they're still working on the main access tunnels and they're ramping those up. They're working on the [ Salicor ] tunnel, which is key for us because it gets access between the South Valley and the North Valley where the tailings are stored. They're still working on the permanent camp infrastructure. They're working and almost complete on the water management infrastructure. So everything that we would have expected to continue work under SSR leadership is still going ahead and appears to be ramping up as we would expect. So I think we are -- we're comfortable with that. We're comfortable with the sort of communications that we have with the Lidya team. We've got good relationships going there. We've got clear insights into how the operation is progressing. So yes, overall, very comfortable with the handover.

Great. And as we talked about timelines at Hod Maden, you talked about potentially needing to make that next payment in mid-2027, followed by production starting in sometime 2028. I guess my question is, Bill, as you mentioned, there could be potential for further optimization of the structure, you're still a 15% joint venture ownership -- owner of the joint venture partnership. So ideally, if a transaction were to happen, a further transaction were to happen, would you want that to happen before you need to make that next contribution? Or before production starts? Is there kind of like kind of different timelines that you look at?

Not in that way. But I wouldn't want to start setting deadlines, threshold dates beyond which we don't want to go beyond it. I guess the message we're trying to say is, look, when we started the year, we were a 30% holder, and we were very clear that's not strategic. We want to turn it into something else that looks more similar to what we do. With the change in ownership, we took a half step down that -- towards that road. So the 15% is still non-core. If somebody is interested in buying it, we are more than happy to have a discussion, but it's not the same priorities. We're not out there hiring investment banks to run processes, and we may be looking for the opportune time to dispose of the rest of the 15%, but it's not tied to when we have to make the next payment, it's not before the mine goes into production. We're just -- we've got to play it by ear more than what we were doing at the beginning of the year, which was this is a priority let's figure it out.

[Operator Instructions]

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Major with UBS.

The first one, just on the buyback. I see you've obviously started buying back stock this quarter. How should we be thinking about the criteria for the buyback going forward? And how should we be modeling it? I mean, is this very much dependent on like where the shares are trading relative to the peers, whether the shares are trading in absolute terms relative to the gold price, et cetera. Should we be thinking about it as a proportion of cash generation, like how should we be sort of thinking about the parameters to determine the run rate of that buyback?

Yes. I would -- honestly, I try to talk you out of modeling it because the decisions to buy shares back or not, depends on a number of factors. And as we talked about it in May when we announced the program, NAV multiples and where we trade relative to the others, sure. That is the factor that sort of trips the rest of the decision-making. But it doesn't mean we're going to do something. And so we're not going to talk about at a NAV multiple below this, we're going to buy back so many shares. That's -- we're going to look at all the priorities. And the way I view it is share buybacks are great, but that's sort of a short-term priority. We have to, as a management team, consider the long-term priorities of the company, and that involves new investments. Is it better to buy back shares now or make an investment in a mine that's going to produce revenue for us for 20 years. And so we don't go into this with, you should expect this amount to be bought back each quarter. That's just not the way we're going to approach the program.

What we're going to do is come and tell you what we did as we did with the announcement in July on the quarter-end results. So I'm going to frustrate you a little bit there and not be able to give you a modeling number.

No worries. That's useful color. Then the second question maybe follows on from Brian's question. Just around the Hod Maden additional payments for the remaining CapEx. Can you remind us what your share of the residual CapEx will be due in 2H '27, '28 based on the previous CapEx estimate? And how you think that CapEx number is trending under new ownership?

Yes. Well, I mean, let's just stick with the number that was in the technical report, and I'm going to round it here just to make the math easy, $900 million project. And so 15% of that is $135 million, and we've already invested $70 million. So we only have $65 million to go to be invested over '27, '28. So it's actually -- I mean, compared to our overall cash flow, the remaining commitment here on the base CapEx is relatively small. So -- and that's why we kind of -- we like I'm not too worried about it. We've already invested more than half of what the commitment would be in the last month or 2. So -- but that's -- I mean those are the numbers, and I don't have a trending CapEx number for you. I think we're pretty early. And I know Lidya is using that the original budget to work towards.

Okay. And then yes, the last question, I mean, we've obviously seen some consolidation in the equity valuations across the space. How is the deal pipeline looking, yes, are you seeing -- are you seeing any opportunity set? How is the landscape changing?

In terms of asset acquisitions, new investments?

Yes. Yes, new investments.

Dan, I'll get Dan Breeze on the line here and let him give you some...

Yes. Thanks, Bill. Daniel, thanks for the question. We've been pretty busy. I think that's the way we would describe things. It's pretty wide in terms of the opportunity sets. And to your question specifically, we were wondering at the start of the year with the volatility of the markets and the political risk situation, if that was going to slow down deal flow and sellers and whatnot. We haven't seen that at all. And now with gold finding a bit of a floor here, I hope that's a positive as well. So we're kind of as busy as ever.

And it's a good mix of things that we're looking at new streams and royalties and we're still finding third-party royalties out there, packages and stand-alone royalties. So it's a really good mix for us right now. We're feeling pretty good about the pipeline.

Great. Maybe just one follow-up on that. I mean we've been, I think, as a kind of broader industry waiting for the inflection point in FIDs of copper projects that hasn't really taken off yet. But are you seeing any more opportunity there in terms of funding streams on more sizable base metal investments?

Yes. I think we are, Daniel. I mean, it's -- we're always in conversations with operators and assets like that. I mean that's where our product works best is when you can kind of liberate precious byproducts that have a base metal asset. And of course, we've all seen the big deal this year with -- over Antamina. And I think that takes some interest of other large diversifieds. So we'll see where things end up, but that's more of an arbitrage opportunity as maybe as opposed to development CapEx going into a new project. But those do exist out there for what we're seeing.

Our last question comes from the line of Tanya Jakusconek from Scotiabank.

Maybe, Dan, just finish off with you on the pipeline. [indiscernible] about the royalty opportunities, there's opportunities on streams on from base metal companies on their metals production and opportunities as well [indiscernible]

Tanya, you're breaking up.

Tanya, we're just seeing you're breaking up a little bit. Could you repeat that, please? I didn't quite hear all that, if you don't mind.

Yes. So I just wanted to confirm with Dan that the opportunities that you are seeing for transactions are royalty opportunities, also opportunities from base metal companies on precious metal streams. And also on mine builds on gold producers. Is that how I should be thinking about the opportunities?

Yes, that's right, Tanya. And the bread and butter, which is still what we see right now is skewed towards gold, over development projects, primary gold assets, generally speaking. But as I mentioned, there are other opportunities out there with the base metal assets and third-party royalties and whatnot. But that core -- that's always there is still the prominent deal opportunity for us.

And one of your peers mentioned, Dan, that they've seen the size of opportunities increase, you were seeing between $300 million and $500 million. Is that still your bread and butter of what you're seeing out there?

Yes. I think that's still the core, Tanya, I'd say, $100 million to $500 million. We're aware of a couple of larger opportunities out there. That would be above $500 million, but the bulk of them are still in that category, $100 million to $500 million.

Okay. Just wanted to circle back if I could to Hod Maden. I know we're focusing on this asset and what has to be done in mid-2027 from your standpoint. Can you remind me, is there a right of first refusal for you selling your 15% interest?

Yes. I mean the joint venture has all usual protections you would find from the joint venture partners.

Okay. And then Bill, do you also have the right for dilution should you not want to proceed?

Yes. It's a standard joint venture agreement.

Okay. So that's another way you can do it. Okay. Perfect. And if I can circle back just on your guidance again, it seems that the metals guidance from what I understood, the reason that you are trending towards the upper end of the range and or beyond is to do with the Antamina NPI and obviously, what capital is placed on that NPIs. Is that correct?

That, to me, is the biggest variable in those numbers. The copper number in the other metals number. I mean we've had Peñasquito for years. We've had Voisey's Bay for years. They have variability, too, but it's the Antamina NPI that I just -- I look at the historical revenues and I look at what we've earned so far this year, and I think there is just volatility in the number. That's why we're a little uncomfortable sitting here today saying we think we should change what we're telling you for the year-end. We're just not there. I think in early November, when we report, we'll certainly be able to help you with what things might look like by year-end.

Okay. It seems like it's a champagne problem. Maybe just turning on to -- yes. Maybe just turning on to just your guidance that you're tracking guidance and it had been that the second half of the year was supposed to be stronger. As we look at Q3 and Q4, is there -- between the 2 quarters, anything that stands out asset-wise where we have a stronger contribution in Q4?

Paul, I'm going to turn to you on this. I know we've only talked in terms of halves of years. We haven't talked quarter-by-quarter. Is there anything else we can add to it?

No, there isn't, Tanya. I mean you probably recall earlier where we talked about kind of the 48-52 split year-to-date, I think that still is looking at Q3 and Q4 as well.

Yes. I was just wondering if there were certain assets in Q4 that you saw within the mine plans that are supposed to do better to guide us?

Yes. And Martin, I would probably then look over to you then. Is there any one that you can recall, Q3, Q4 that I may be forgetting here?

No, Tanya. I think Q3 and Q4 at the moment are looking pretty well balanced. Just remember that a lot of our production or our sales come from assets with a significant delay between the production to the deliveries to the sales. So we have -- we're pretty comfortable with those Q3, Q4 numbers being balanced down with the numbers that Paul talked about earlier in terms of magnitude of comparison between H1 and H2.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Bill Heissenbuttel for closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody, 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 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 Houston 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 Q&A session for which you can by using the chat box on the top right end corner of your screen.

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

Well, thank you very much, Noella, and thanks, as always, to Renmark for the opportunity to present today. There's been a lot of news at Royal Gold over the past several quarters. A lot of that has not been recognized yet by the market, and gold is taking a bit of a breather. So I think it's pretty timely to give you an update today.

So I'll start with the obligatory comments on forward-looking statements. During today's presentation, I will be making forward-looking statements. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. And 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'll give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold. So in a sentence, we are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals, and we're not a mining company. And this presentation is divided into sections that talk about the key attributes of Royal Gold in our business model.

So first, I'll talk about our focus on precious metals with gold being the biggest focus. And I'll talk about our high-margin business with a long-standing commitment to dividend growth. Then I'll talk about our portfolio, which is the most diversified amongst our peers in terms of assets, operators and jurisdictions. I'll talk about our business model, which has limited operating risks by having steady margins and no direct exposure to inflation pressures. I talk about our size, we think we're the right size for a small sector. We can compete for the largest transactions, but we can also do small transactions that show meaningful growth. And then finally, I'll end with a comment about embedded optionality within the portfolio and the fact that we do not have to pay for organic growth that comes from within the portfolio, whether that be through mine expansions or extensions.

So in summary, 2025 was a very active and what we like to say, a transformational year for Royal Gold. We completed the Sandstorm and Horizon corporate acquisitions, and they closed in mid-October last year. With those transactions, we added significant growth and diversification to the portfolio. We also added a couple of additional assets to the portfolio during the year. We added Kansanshi and Warintza gold streams. At Kansanshi, we acquired a gold stream on a cash flowing asset. It's a world-class copper mine in Zambia. And at Warintza, we added a gold stream to an emerging Tier 1 development project in Ecuador. So we hope Warintza will be one day a world-class producing asset as well. But it wasn't just acquisitions that we did in 2025 that are notable. We saw some optionality surface from within the portfolio. So we had a mine life extension announcement at Mount Milligan, taking that mine life to 2045 and potentially beyond. In a Fourmile, Barrick has been doing some significant work on the Fourmile project in Nevada that shows that it's probably one of the best gold discoveries over the past several decades. And we have full exposure to that.

So what have we done since closing those transactions that I've talked about? We've had one quarter so far this year of consolidated financial results to reflect all of these activities. And that quarter was the first quarter of this year. We released our results in early May for the first quarter. We had record revenue, cash flow and earnings. And we had $391 million of adjusted EBITDA for that first quarter. So very strong financial performance. We've repaid $800 million of debt since the middle of October. And we've increased our portfolio reserve life by about 25% over the prior year to 18 years. That's not including resource conversion potential.

We've also done a number of things within the portfolio, and we addressed some of the more complicated features of the Sandstorm portfolio, and we've cleaned up some of the things that we thought needed to be addressed. So we sold over $200 million worth of non-core equity positions that we inherited through Sandstorm. And we raised our dividend at the end of the year for the 25th consecutive year. So a lot of activity and we added scale, diversification and growth. We've put in some very solid financial results and we have not changed our strategy. So it was a very good year for us, and we're starting to see hopefully this as a new base for us to grow from.

So I'll start by talking about our gold-focused. And we have been in the business for well over 40 years. It's very gold-focused. Our strategy has been gold-focused since day 1. We started in the mid-1980s and this is a 45th year of us being on the NASDAQ Exchange. Our strategy, as I said, has been consistent over that entire time period. We're very much focused on gold revenue from good assets in good jurisdictions operated by good counterparties. And as you can see on the slide, our revenue has grown consistently over the past several years, and the metal mix has not changed significantly. We aim to provide our shareholders gold exposure in a conservatively managed vehicle.

And if you look at this next slide, where we see our historic performance, our share price performance, you can see why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for a conservative exposure to gold. On the left-hand side, you can see our beta to the gold price of 1.6. So that's a strong leverage to the gold price. On the right-hand side, you can see over the long term, our share price performance has been very strong. We've beaten the gold price. We've beaten the GDX index since it was formed in 2006, and we've also beaten the S&P 500. So we think we are a very good long-term investment to get exposure to a very volatile commodity.

Now in this next section, I'll talk about margins and dividend growth. And we do have a very high operating margin business. Our business model is unique. It's high margin, obviously, as I just said, but it's also very scalable. Our EBITDA margin in 2025 was 82%, very, very high, very strong. And our cash G&A was about 4% of revenue. Our costs are low and they're fixed. So cost inflation should not be something that poses a significant risk to our margins. And to further the point about efficiency, you can see on this slide how efficient we are as a company. When you think about our headcount, we have 39 employees in the business. And for the scale of our business, that's a pretty small number. Today, our market cap is $16 billion, but we're suffering the downdraft in the gold equities as our peers and everybody else in the sector is we've had a market cap as high as $25 billion in the past several months. So it's a very valuable business on a per employee basis. And you can compare us to any company in any sector and we actually compare very, very well compared to those very well-known companies.

Now return of capital is a strategic objective for us, and it's one of the key things that we always talk about every year. And it's an attribute that makes us unique amongst 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. We've increased our dividend now for 25 consecutive years, and we've paid out well over $1 billion of dividends to our shareholders. We're the only company in the GDX index that's paid an increasing dividend every year since that 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 our peers as well as any other company that's in the precious metals sector.

Now in this next section, I'm going to spend a few minutes just talking about our portfolio. Our portfolio is global and it's weighted towards lower risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions. And the portfolio itself spans various stages of mining project development. We have over 360 assets in the portfolio today, about 80 of those are producing revenue and about 30 are in development. So that means that they're within several years of actually producing new revenue. And then beyond that, we have over 250 assets that are earlier stage. And organic growth within the portfolio comes from those earlier stage development, exploration and evaluation projects that advance through to production.

Now our portfolio diversification, having a diversified portfolio reduces single asset and counterparty risk. And that's a very important consideration when you think about us and our business model and compare us to our peers. Our commodity focus is gold, and it always has been and it always will be. We have the highest gold revenue percentage of our large-cap peers, but we also have significant copper and silver revenue as well. So there is a bit of revenue diversification from other metals. We're geographically diverse, but North America is a bit of a focus for us based on where we found transactions and that is definitely the lion's share of the revenue comes from North America.

And when you look at the assets specifically and you look at the diversification within the portfolio, on a net asset value basis, on the left-hand side, you can see that we've got the most diversified asset portfolio in our sector. 9 of our top 10 assets by net asset value are producing revenue today and expansion and extension projects are underway at 5 of these. So that's a pretty interesting mix of big assets within our portfolio.

On the right-hand side, you can see our operators and our operators are best-in-class. These are -- you can look down this list of names and you'll see many large, well-capitalized and experienced companies. And more recently, with some of the transactions we've done, we've got at First Quantum, Rio Tinto and Glencore to this counterparty list. So this portfolio diversification, it reduces our exposure to single asset, operator and jurisdictional risks, and that's an important consideration for generalist investors who they want exposure to our model and assets, but they don't want to spend time reviewing assets in detail. With us, you get a very broad diversified portfolio. So if there is an issue at an asset, it should not impact the value of our company as a whole because hopefully, there's a bit of put and take when it comes to asset performance.

Now operating risk. This is an important factor when you think about our business model. And there are advantages of investing in the royalty model if you want gold exposure. Our model produces gold exposure with reduced risk. And this slide shows the different ways you can invest in gold and how we are positioned. So we provide exposure to gold, upside exposure to gold and optionality and a dividend. And we reduced the downside risk by having that diversified portfolio that I just talked about and also without having direct exposure to operating and capital costs. There are other ways you can invest in gold, you can be conservative and you can invest in physical gold, but you will never get more than the ounce that you buy from physical gold. You won't get upside except for price appreciation. And you certainly won't get a dividend. In fact, it will cost you to keep that gold somewhere safe.

If you want to be more aggressive, you can buy equities in mining companies or exploration companies, and they'll certainly give you exposure to asset optionality. But with those investments, you're also getting exposure to operating at cost risks and inflation, and that could impact the margins and the value of the equity that you acquire. So there is a perception in the marketplace amongst some that our business model doesn't provide leverage to gold. But I think if you look over the long term, our financial results prove that point to be untrue.

Now royalty and streamer margins are important to notice because they do expand with gold price. And producers and Royal Gold, we have very different cost structures, and our costs are low and they're fixed, so our margins should expand as metal prices increase, which is what you as an investor want to see. Operators on the other hand, are -- their costs are often subject to inflation. So margins may not expand as quickly as gold prices run up or in fact, they may actually compress depending on how strong inflation pressures may be.

And you can see on this next slide, the differences in cost structure between ourselves and the average producer. Producers are exposed to inflation in the input costs that they use to run their operations. So labor costs, energy costs, other consumables that they need. Many of those things actually do increase when you see commodity prices increase as well. So the gold price may increase, we may also see metal or steel consumable costs increase as well. So that means that margins for operators may not expand. Our G&A costs, on the other hand, though, they're pretty steady year-on-year. They're salaries, services, office rents, things that don't move on a short-term basis as a result of the inflation pressures. And you need to remember that anything that impacts cost impacts margins.

We haven't seen yet, on the operating side, the impact of the Iran war on operating costs. And I think you'll likely start seeing that in the next quarter, probably in the next several weeks, this company started talking about their second quarter results. As energy prices increases, diesel cost increase, operator costs will increase. The first quarter of this year, you didn't see that because the war hadn't been going on long enough for that really to show off. But I think you're going to start seeing that over the next quarter or 2 in operator costs, you should see our margins stay fairly consistent.

Now I'll talk about our size and our positioning in our sector. And we are -- as I said at the beginning, we're -- we like to think of ourselves as being in a Goldilocks position. We're large enough to compete, but we're also small enough to show growth. And our sector is built on relatively small transactions. Most transactions are smaller than about $300 million. And the average transaction size, if you go back to our history, is about $110 million. So we sit in a pretty interesting position. We have -- we're big enough to compete with the largest transactions against our largest peers. We have significant cash flow. We have access to capital as well and we did a $1 billion stream transaction last year on Kansanshi. So that should show you that we've got the ability to compete for those large transactions.

Yes, we're also small enough to show growth. A small transaction can add meaningful value to us. Last year, the Warintza transaction was a $200 million transaction. We expect that to show meaningful growth to us when that operation begins production. We're not aiming to be the biggest. We prefer to be the best is how we think about it. And that Goldilocks position that we sit in, it provides us a really good platform, we think, to execute our strategy of continuing to grow in gold.

Now as I advertised at the beginning, I'm going to end with a comment on embedded growth and optionality. And so when you think about this, the first thing I should talk about is our capital allocation priority. And our successful growth really depends on being able to allocate capital successfully. And our strategy remains simple and consistent and it has been this way for decades. First thing we think about is reinvesting in the business using non-dilutive financing. So we provide shareholders growth. Second is to maintain a strong balance sheet and access to liquidity and that's to make sure that we're always positioned for those new transactions that may come up quickly. And thirdly, we want to continue returning capital to shareholders. We think this shows discipline to our shareholders. We think about them as a key allocation of our dollars as they come in.

And in the next slide here, we talked a little bit about our framework. And we have to be flexible. If a framework provides guideposts, but we have to be flexible because market conditions change all the time. But our framework is designed to provide hopefully target double-digit returns on assets, any new investments we make, and show per share growth. We also want to repay debt quickly, and we also want to continue growing that dividend that I talked about. And more recently, in the first quarter of this year, we announced -- with those results, we announced that we had added 2 new tools to our toolbox when it comes to capital allocation.

The first was a $600 million accordion facility on our revolving credit facility. This is uncommitted, but it does provide the potential for more liquidity if we see more large transactions pop up. The second was the authorization by the Board of a $500 million share buyback. This wasn't -- it's not based on a formula, it's not based on specific levels, but it's a discretionary tool to use when we see the potential for large valuation disconnects between our equity and what we think is worth. So 2 additional tools that we added while we have the opportunity to do so, and those are now in place.

I'll talk about our history of capital allocation and how we've financed our growth accretively without significant equity dilution. And this slide shows what we've done over the past 25 years. You can see since 2000, we've had significant revenue and cash flow growth, but there are aspects of this growth that are really important to note. The first is G&A growth has not increased nearly as much as our revenue and cash flow. So that shows you that we don't need to add people when we add assets. Our business is very scalable. So it's an efficient, scalable business.

Second is our revenue growth isn't dependent only on metal prices. Certainly, the gold price has been rising fairly consistently since the beginning of this 2000 has been fairly consistent year-on-year growth. It's been a great tailwind for us. But we've also been able to add volume to our portfolio, and we see organic growth come from within the portfolio as well that allows us to take advantage of that higher gold price. And then the third thing I would say is we've been able to finance our growth mostly from internal sources without a significant rise in our share count. Now last year, with the Sandstorm transaction, we did issue almost 19 million new shares. But that was the first time we had issued equity since 2012. And even with those new shares added to our share count, we still have the lowest share count in the GDX index. So we want to avoid shareholder dilution, and we want to provide per share growth to our shareholders. And hopefully, this chart gives a good indication of how we've managed to do that over the past 25 years.

Now I'll talk for a moment about returns when it comes to transactions. And we aim for double-digit returns because as I said, capital allocation, we always want to reinvest in our business because that's the best source of value. That's the best way to grow value. And so we aim to get double-digit returns in any investment that we make, but we have to be patient to see those returns materialize. Exploration and production upside is very important when we look at new investment opportunities, and it does take time for exploration potential, production upside to become clear in those assets when we make those investments. We do a lot of due diligence on new transaction opportunities, and we do take a very bottoms-up technical approach to asset reviews, and analysts on the sell side, they often don't have the same access to that information that we do.

So Street estimates of returns on announcement, they're often low and it may take years, in some cases, for upsides to become clearer to the Street. And this slide really does illustrate that point. As time has passed, expected returns have increased with production expansions and mine life extensions, and that's driven largely by resource and reserve growth. And we don't have to pay for that. So that's how that return increases over time if assets see additional resources or production or what have you, those assets become more valuable. We don't have to pay for that. So that's that additional -- that's where that additional return comes from and is added to our shareholders.

And the next slide shows the same concept in a slightly different way. As time passes, we recover our investment from cash flow and any value that's added by the operators to the assets where we have those investments, that also increases the value of our future cash flow and our interest. And that is recognized by the Street in that NAV from this point forward estimate. So hopefully, what you'll see over time is that the cash flow contributed to -- from -- by Royal Gold in those assets dwarfed by the value of what we recover plus what is ahead of us from those assets.

And the way this works, and it is pretty simple, really, it's this multiplier effect that any extension to mine life in an asset where we have an investment provides a double benefit to us. First of all, obviously, any extension to mine life or production means that there's just more production, more revenue to us, so that's a positive. But the second is anytime you got exposure -- mine lives extending, then you get additional exposure to the gold price. And the gold price is volatile. There's a lot of value in having exposure to that additional gold price volatility. And operators, they're always looking for ways to extend the asset lives within their portfolios because they're trying to capture incremental revenue and increase their returns as well on the invested capital when they built those mines in the first place.

And in 2025, you can see we had 2 million meters of drilling. It was completed by our counterparties at the assets in our portfolio. So that shows you those operators are trying to invest further to extend the mine lives of those assets. And we benefit from that extension simply because we have those interests and we don't have to pay any further to get exposure. And it's that optionality really, which is the key feature of our business model.

And to provide some specifics around this, we think, as you can see on the slide, we've got a number of key catalysts today at assets that should provide some significant organic growth potential over time. And we have a significant pipeline of organic growth from new assets, and we see catalysts from within the portfolio extending into the next decade. So the most recent assets start producing was Back River that started producing late last year. It reached commercial production in October this year should be the first full year of contributions from Back River. And then Platreef started milling ore in the fourth quarter of last year. Robertson should start production in 2027. This is at Cortez complex. Beyond that, leading towards the last part of the decade, we should see new production from Hod Maden, Great Bear and Warintza. And then after the start of the decade, we should start seeing new production from MARA and Fourmile in 2030.

So this is a pretty enviable pipeline, but it doesn't include growth at some of the assets that are producing revenue today. So I mentioned at the beginning, Mount Milligan, there was mine life extension there. That mine now goes to 2045 and potentially beyond. So that's a lot of value to Royal Gold. Another example is Khoemacau. There's an expansion underway at Khoemacau, and that should see about a 30% increase in silver deliveries to us starting around 2028. This is one of the best organic growth pipelines we think, in the industry, and that's reflected in our 5-year outlook that we provided in March.

So I'll end with the standard comments on valuation. And I think what's unique for us right now is where we are. If you think about what I've just described, and if you look at what we've done recently, we are performing exceptionally well. We've got very strong cash flow from the portfolio. We've got excellent organic growth. We're executing on all of our priorities. However, the share price is not reflecting any of that or the strong gold price environment that we're in today. So if you look at us relative to our peers, and if you look at price and net asset value, price to cash flow, and you can see that we're actually lagging quite significantly.

Now we're working and doing our best to close this gap. We are -- the backdrop is not that positive for gold equities today, but we think we need to get our story out there. We're doing our very best to do that and to talk to as many people as possible to make sure they understand what we have done and how we see the business. And we're -- the messaging is simple. It's around our long-term production profile and the growth within that. So we've done an Investor Day at the end of March that was very much focused on that. We put out an asset handbook that includes all of the assets that in the portfolio. So it should be very transparent where our revenue is coming from. And we're doing our best to make sure the market understands the scale and the growth potential of our portfolio. So hopefully, that will mean that we see some kind of a recognition in the marketplace and some kind of an improvement in the trading multiples.

So I think with that, Noella, I've come to the end, I'll just wrap up by saying we've done what we think have been some very significant things to strengthen our position and to position ourselves for a continued strong gold price environment. We've added scale, diversification and growth to the portfolio. We have a strong balance sheet today, and we have significant cash flow. And we think we've got a long-term strategy that works. It certainly worked since the beginning of the company and we expect it to continue to work from this point forward.

So with that, I'll turn it back to you, Noella, for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Alistair, for that presentation. We'll now begin with the Q&A. Your first question is, as several senior gold producers are either acquiring or getting exposure to copper projects, do you feel the trend will continue? And is that something that could change the approach for royalty companies?

I think it probably will continue, that operators are looking for more copper. I think one of the characteristics of copper assets is they generally have longer mine lines than gold assets. So a lot of gold companies, they're looking to extend the duration of their portfolios, and if they can find copper assets and have the gold component, then it allows them to sneak a bunch of higher duration assets into their portfolio while still calling them or at least having some gold exposure in revenue. I don't think that's a new phenomenon. I think that's something that a lot of the gold companies have tried to do for a long time.

Does it continue? Yes, I think it probably does. There's a lot of potential in the world when you see copper and gold together, and a lot of the gold companies are competing against the copper companies for those assets. I think for us, it's -- it creates an opportunity because everybody is looking for the same kinds of things. It's long-duration assets, copper certainly a focus. And so if we can help anybody acquire assets and stream non-core metals from those, whether it's silver or gold, then it creates an opportunity for us.

I think if you look at some of the things we've done in the past, Khoemacau is a good example. That's a copper asset that had a 7% silver revenue component to it. We streamed 100% of the silver, and we actually helped the developer with the financing to actually build that mine. And so for them, they were able to keep exposure to the copper, which is what they wanted, and we were able to get the silver and pay use our lower cost of capital to create a bit of a valuation arbitrage to help them develop that asset and improve their returns. So anything -- any time you see anybody looking for large copper assets, if there's any kind of a precious metals component, that's the kind of opportunity that we see as being very attractive, and we're certainly very interested in getting involved in those. So I think it's a good thing for our business that that's the focus of the industry.

Thank you for clarifying that. Your next question is, which acquired assets have surpassed the upside since closing?

Well, I think the -- if you go back long enough, you can see some of the assets that we've invested and they've done extremely well. But as I said during the presentation, some of the more recent things that we've added to the portfolio take time for upsides to become more evident in the market. But one example that I would point to is Wassa. That's an asset that we invested in 2015. At the time, we expected that asset to be finishing production around 2022. It's still producing today. So we've more than -- our dollars in, dollars out is about 2x at this point. And there is still a significant mine life ahead of it. So that is an example of a very good returning asset.

It did take time for that potential to be seen and to be recognized by the market, but that's an example of something that's really done very well for us. We have other assets in the portfolio that we've invested in decades ago that have done many multiples of the original acquisition price, Robinson in Nevada is a great example. Copper gold asset, has been operating for a long time. We've been invested there for 25 years. And I think it's probably closing in on a 10x return on our original investment. But you have to see things over the long term to be able to make that statement. Some of the more recent acquisitions we've made, we think they're very good acquisitions, but you won't see that kind of return evident until some of the upsides that we identified during our due diligence until those are clear to the marketplace. But we've got a number of those in the portfolio.

Thank you for elaborating on that. Your next question, long-term growth projections, what are the long-term targets for net profit margins?

Well, we don't target margins per se because we are influenced by the gold price. So any fluctuations in the gold price will certainly impact potentially margins. Hopefully, not significantly, as I tried to make a point during our presentation because our G&A costs are so low. But what we do target is making sure that we've got assets in the portfolio that will continue to grow. So when we gave our 5-year guidance in March, that was based on gold equivalent ounce production. That's top line.

So we -- at the time, we were expecting about a 17% increase from the midpoint of our current year guidance to the midpoint of that 5-year outlook, it's about a 17% growth. Margin should stay consistent over that time period. As I said, our G&A costs are relatively low, so they shouldn't be impacted too much by inflation. So hopefully, what you'll see is that 17% growth will be a proxy for what you're looking for in terms of earnings as well.

I appreciate you clarifying that. Next viewer is asking, how much of the expected value from recent transactions depends on reverse conversion or mine life extensions?

So the value -- when we price a transaction, what we're often doing is we're trying to make sure that we get a return on reserves as defined. And anything beyond that is an upside. Now we will have our own internal estimates of what those upsides could be and how that could impact returns. But we don't necessarily target -- we don't -- sorry, we don't disclose what those estimates are. As I said during the presentation, we target double-digit returns in everything we invest in.

So a Street analysts may say, well, we think it's a 2% or 3% or 4% return today, but that will be based on what the Street can see when we do the analysis ourselves after doing due diligence, we may think that there's -- the base return is somewhere closer to double digits, and then hopefully, over time, as conversions or expansions or extensions occur that will go significantly north of that initial investment level. So that initial return level. So that's what we're targeting, and that's how we think about it. But it does take time, as I said, for that to become evident to the Street.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. Next viewer is asking, with the accordion feature potentially increasing the revolving facility to $2 billion, what is the maximum leverage Royal Gold would accept for a compelling acquisition?

So we typically -- what we said during the Investor Day that we did in March, as we talked about capital allocation is, we will, in extreme circumstances, look at going to, say, 3x net debt to EBITDA as the peak level of leverage. But we would want to get down from 3x to 2x within a reasonably quick period of time. So we're not afraid of using leverage to grow our business, but we will be conservative when it comes to using leverage. We never want to be in a position where we're helping somebody, an operator, get out of a -- help them strengthen their balance sheet, yet we weaken our balance sheet by doing a new transaction. We're careful about leverage where we're conservative. So that hopefully gives you a sense of how we think about it.

We certainly wouldn't want to operate on a regular basis at 3x net debt to EBITDA, but we think that would be a peak that we could see or get to, and if we can see ourselves getting down to 2x within a relatively quick period of time after that. Now you look at our portfolio and one of the advantages of the portfolio is as broad, it is diversified. There's a lot of cash flow coming in from the portfolio. So that does give us that additional confidence that we're not subject to single-asset interruption risk. If something didn't perform as planned. We've got the rest of the portfolio to continue providing the cash flow. So that makes us more comfortable when it comes to using financial leverage for new transactions.

Appreciate you clarifying. Next, are there any royalties or streams that management believes the market is assigning little or no value to today, but could become meaningful contributors over the next decade?

We always think there's a lot of stuff in the portfolio that is relatively small that maybe on its own, you would think, oh, maybe that's not worth considering. But you start adding a number of these smaller things together, and they're actually pretty significant when you think about it that way. We have a lot of assets like that in the portfolio. As I said during the presentation, we have over 250 assets that are -- they're not in development, but they're in earlier stages of review by the operators. Some of the development assets we have in the portfolio as well, they're relatively small, and they may not be understood by the Street. And so that's -- I think those are sources of real upside that maybe not getting the recognition that they should be.

We've got examples of assets in the portfolio that were very early stage, very low value that have come through that development cycle and actually are significant contributors of revenue today. And 2 of those are Australian examples within the last 3 or 4 years. We've seen revenue from Bellevue Gold. It's one of the highest grade underground mines in Australia. King of The Hills is another example. It's known by Vault Minerals. Those were dormant projects in our portfolio. There was zero value assigned to those by the Street. But I think today, if you were to look at analyst estimates, they would all have some reasonable value assigned to Bellevue and King of The Hills because those assets are now producing revenue to us. So with the portfolio, the size of what we've got, there are more of those opportunities or more of that -- there's more of that potential within that portfolio just given the size of it.

Thank you for the response, Alistair. Your next question is, are there significant expansions in the works at your assets?

There are a number. I mentioned Khoemacau. MMG is doing a big expansion at Khoemacau, and we're expecting about a 30% increase in our silver deliveries from Khoemacau. I mentioned Mount Milligan. Although the production levels aren't expected to change in a material way, the mine life has been extended by 10 years and the operator is talking about potentially extending it beyond that. So that's another example of a significant expansion within the portfolio.

I think if you were to think about Cortez, there are and Fourmile. It's not necessarily the expansion of an existing mine. But it's an expansion of the complex itself. The Fourmile project is fairly early stage greenfield exploration. That is part of the producing complex. So it's right next to producing mines, which should mean that permitting is faster, should mean that access to labor and expertise and things like that is faster because they're in a pretty mature mining area. And that is something that has tremendous value, we think, and will have value to our portfolio when it starts producing. So there's a lot within our portfolio that has that expansion potential and evaluation potential as well.

Thank you for response Alistair. Next viewer is wondering, if gold stayed flat, where would cash flow growth still come from?

Gold stayed flat, well, I don't think it's going to be from the expansion in new mines -- any new mines that come into production. Those will be the ones that provide that additional growth in cash flow, absent the gold price changing. So as I said during the presentation, that at one slide that shows you the different catalysts that we see from new mines. And the 5-year production outlook that we gave, as I said, it was -- it's about a 17% increase from midpoint this year to the midpoint of that 5-year outlook. So that should -- everything else equal, that should result in cash flow growth of a similar quantum to that 17%.

I appreciate you clarifying that. Next, do you plan to buyback shares at these levels?

So when we announced the share buyback with our Q1 results, we said it would be a discretionary program. We're not going to make it formulaic. We're not going to link into specific metrics. It would be discretionary. And the thinking or the analysis that goes into that would be looking at the business development pipeline. We see ahead of ourselves. Are there opportunities? Is there debt on the balance sheet that needs to be repaid? And then, of course, the dividends, how are we planning on dealing with the dividends? Do we want to continue growing it. So there are other competing sources or uses for capital.

As part of that, obviously, we'll look at valuation of where we trade relative to our peers. So it goes into -- there's a discretionary approach to thinking about how we may use the share buyback authorization that was granted by the Board. And we won't give any indication on share buybacks until we've actually done something. So the plan is to, in any quarter if we were to use the share buyback, we would report on that in the coming -- at the end of that quarter, we report what we've done. So I won't comment on current valuation levels and the share buyback except to say that it's a discretionary program that is obviously subject to a number of different criteria.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. This next question is kind of a 2 in 1. So the first part of the question is, your portfolio has become increasingly diversified with copper exposure. Where do you ultimately see the optimal mix between gold, silver and base metals? And are you seeking more copper exposure?

So the optimal mix, we don't really target a mix. We're happy with the portfolio as it is. I mean we're about 90% precious metals. Gold is somewhere 75% to 80% on a fairly consistent basis. So we're very comfortable with where we are. We're not targeting changing that mix. That said, if something very attractive came in the door tomorrow that wasn't precious metals, yes, we're going to have to look at it and it would have to make makes sense within the context of portfolio. But occasionally, we do see copper assets come in that are attractive. And if they are good returning opportunities and there are good projects and good jurisdictions run by good people, we'll certainly have a look at those.

We're not looking -- we're not proactively trying to diversify our revenue mix, but we will consider things that we understand. And we'll look at those within the context of other things that we're looking at. So if we are looking at a number of opportunities, we're always going to give priority to the precious metals opportunities, but we're not going to turn away attractive base metals opportunities. We'll have a look at those if it makes sense.

Thank you for expanding on that, Alistair. We're coming up on your last 2 questions here. The first question is, how frequently do you revise internal production assumptions when operators delay permitting or construction?

We do that on a regular basis. So we're always monitoring our portfolio, and we're always looking at changes to operator guidance or operator plans, and we'll make those adjustments pretty consistently. What we typically give guidance is once a year. We'll give our guidance for the current year that we're in as well as now we'll give 5-year outlooks. And so any changes will be reflected in those numbers as we give those once a year. Now if there's something notable that happens at an asset that's worth disclosing, obviously, we would mention that during our regular quarterly disclosures. But generally speaking, when we look at asset changes from operators and tweaks to the way that they may be looking at mine plans, that would get reflected in our guidance is given once a year.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. And lastly, viewer is asking, can you please explain why it is a better business case investing my money into Royal Gold and not into competitors like Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals?

Well, we think we have a number of unique attributes that separate us from our peers. I think the diversification within the portfolio is obviously a big one. If you look at our peers, they've had issues with larger assets that may be significant chunks of their value. So we have a -- we've mitigated risk by diversifying our portfolio. So I think that's an important distinguishing difference. I think another is we're not really relying on 1 or 2 projects to help us with growth. We see a number of assets within the portfolio that are going to add growth, we think, over the next several years. And so our growth isn't dependent on the success of 1 or 2 things. So I think that goes to portfolio diversification. So I think that's one point.

I think the fact that we have such a high gold revenue percentage, that sets us apart from our peers as well. Some of our peers have other metals or other than oil and gas or other things in their portfolios that investors may not want exposure to through a gold royalty vehicle. So that's an important factor as well. I think the way we think about our dividend is a bit unique in the sector and the record that we've got of paying a dividend and increasing it every year over the past 25 years, I think that's unmatched. So hopefully, that is a distinguishing factor as well. Our share count is lower than our peers. I think that goes to the way that we funded our business. So we have typically, as I said during the presentation, relied on internal uses or internal sources of funds to grow our business without diluting shareholders. So that's another distinguishing factor.

And then the final thing I would say, it's an interesting point is that we're a U.S. domiciled company in a sector that is underrepresented in the U.S. market. So there's a scarcity factor for U.S. investors who have U.S. mandates only. There are very many opportunities for them to invest in the precious metals companies. There's -- on the large account side, there's Newmont and then there's us. So if you want a gold exposure, Newmont is a mining company, a very different business model, then you've got us as that more conservative exposure. And that's very attractive to U.S. investors. And I think right now in the U.S. marketplace, we're not seeing a lot of love for gold, and I think that's just based on a lot of different things that are happening. But when the U.S. marketplace does turn itself -- its interest to gold, we tend to benefit very well as a result of that. And that's something our peers don't benefit from because they're Canadian. They're not U.S. domiciled companies.

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 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 very much. I really do appreciate everybody's time and attention today and the questions. And of course, if there's anything that I didn't address as intended through the question, please contact Renmark. They'd be happy to put us in touch directly. Happy to have a conversation with you to clarify anything that I may have missed if there was a question that I didn't understand. So thanks very much. Enjoy the rest of your summer. I look forward to connecting as soon as we can. Take care.

Thank you, Alistair. And once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Houston 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.

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.