Altius Minerals Corporation (ALS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Altius Minerals Annual General Meeting Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand over the conference to your speaker for today, Chairman, John Baker. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good day, everybody. I'd like to call the meeting to order, and welcome, everyone, to our 24th Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Altius, and thank you for joining us today. Our second virtual meeting, while we continue to be bound by government public health regulations pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. My name is John Baker, Executive Chairman of the corporation. And in accordance with the bylaws of the corporation, I will act as Chairman of this meeting. In light of the ongoing public health concerns related to COVID-19 and in order to comply with those measures, we encouraged to shareholders again this year not to attend the meeting in person and instead implemented the option for shareholders to participate in this meeting in real-time by conference call or webcast. The webcast allows you to hear the meeting and view Brian's presentation to be given shortly. The webcast is listen-only, so if you'd like to ask questions at any time, either during the formal part of the meeting that we'll do right now or after Brian's presentation, you should dial into the conference call, as all questions will be received by phone. The webcast link is shown on the homepage of our website, so if anyone has only dialed into the conference call and wants to go on the webcast, they should go to our website now and click the link and go into the webcast in order to see Brian's presentation when we get to that point. If you are listening over the webcast and would like to ask questions at any stage, then the dial-in numbers are also set out on our website. But for your reference, the number is (866) 521-4909, with passcode 1771416. Now all shareholders were urged to vote on the matters before the meeting by proxy, electronically by mail or by phone, and we thank you all for working cooperatively with us again this year to allow us to comply with the prescribed limits on public gatherings and physical distancing regulations. Hopefully, by next year, we can all be together in person again. Before we begin, I'll take the opportunity to introduce Altius' senior management team who are physically attending with me here today at our Altius headquarters. Brian Dalton is here, the President and CEO and a Director; Chad Wells, Vice President, Business Development; and Ben Lewis, our Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Lawrence Winter, our VP, Exploration and all of our current non-executive directors, Nicole Adshead-Bell, Teresa Conway, Anna El-Erian, Andre Gaumond, Fred Mifflin, Jamie Strauss and Roger Lace are all attending today by conference call, and I note for the record their attendance. As I've said, following the formal portion of this meeting, our President will provide a presentation highlighting the corporation's activities during the past year. Chad Wells, the Corporate Secretary is present, and I appoint him to act as Secretary and scrutineer of the meeting. The notice calling this meeting and all proxy related materials were mailed to shareholders in accordance with the requirements of our bylaws and the Alberta Corporations Act. TSX Trust company has provided us with confirmation that the mailing of these materials was completed on April 7, 2021. A copy of their affidavit of mailing is posted on our website for inspection and confirmation by any shareholder. Canadian securities regulations require that the company published advanced notice of any general meeting in a national newspaper, and I can confirm the notice of this meeting and of the record date for this meeting was published in the March 8, 2021 edition of The Globe and Mail. A quorum for any meeting of shareholders is one person present, representing 5% of the shares entitled to vote at such meeting. I have the scrutineer's preliminary written report on attendance, which states as follows: there are 4 voting members present in person at the meeting, representing 2,161,247 shares and represented by proxies in favor of management are another 21,072,441 shares. So the total of the shares represented at the meeting, both in person and by proxy is 23,233,688 shares, being over 56% of the shares outstanding, which is a very pleasant result of the voting and one we're very pleased with. And this more than meets the quorum requirement for the meeting. So accordingly, notice of the meeting have been given as required and form being present, I declare the meeting to be properly called and constituted for the transaction of business. Our bylaws permit a shareholder to participate in a meeting by means of telephone or other telecommunication facilities that permit all persons participating in the meeting to hear one another. However, neither the bylaws nor other laws permit voting to take place other than in person or by proxy. Accordingly, only those persons present in person may cast a vote although, as I've noted, they hold proxies representing a large percentage of the outstanding shareholders. Unless a ballot is demanded on any motion, I'll therefore conduct all votes by a show of hands of those present in person. Each registered shareholder or a proxy holder present in person or by telephone may also demand that a ballot be conducted on any motion put before the meeting, either before a show of hands vote or following that vote. But I have to advise that this would result in the meeting being adjourned in connection with such business and rescheduled at a later date when a meeting could be safely held or other measures taken in order for ballot votes on that particular motion to be delivered and counted. The minutes of the last annual meeting held on May 12, 2020, are filed in the minute book and are available for inspection. If there are no objections, I will entertain a motion that the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting be dispensed with. I would note for everyone present that in order for the meeting to flow efficiently in these unusual circumstances, I've asked Ben Lewis and Chad Wells, both shareholders, to move and second all resolutions. Both are present in the room with me and, as I said, are registered shareholders.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting be dispensed with and that the minutes be taken as read, approved and adopted as presented.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion? All in favor, those opposed, I declare the motion carried. I now submit and formally receive the corporation's financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the auditor's report on those statements is mailed to shareholders on April 7, 2021. Now we'll move onto the proxy business. Firstly, the appointment of auditor. As you will note from the information circular, management is nominating the firm of Deloitte LLP of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador's auditors to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successor is appointed and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration. For your information, Deloitte has been the company's auditor since 2006. Do I have a motion for this item of business?

Mr. Chairman, I move that Deloitte LLP be appointed the corporation's auditor to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting and that the corporation's directors be authorized to fix the remuneration to be paid to the auditor.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion? If not, I'll ask for a motion -- a vote on the motion by a show of hands. And I remind you, you cannot vote against the motion, your choice is to vote in favor of the motion or to withhold your vote. All those in favor? I declare the motion carried unanimously. Next is the nomination and election of directors. The Board has fixed the number of directors to be elected at the meeting at 9. May I have nominations for directors.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to nominate the following people for election as directors for the next year. John Baker, Nicole Adshead-Bell, Teresa Conway, Brian Dalton, Anna El-Erian, Andre Gaumond, Roger Lace, Frederick Mifflin and Jamie Strauss.

Mr. Chairman, I second the nomination.

Thank you. As was noted in our information circular, these 9 persons are management's nominees for election to the Board. Our advanced notice bylaw requires that any person proposing to nominate a director for election must provide the company with advance notice and prescribe details concerning any proposed nominee. As there were no advance notices provided in accordance with this bylaw, we may now proceed directly to the election of directors. The Board has adopted a policy stipulating that any nominee proposed for election as a director who receives, based on the shares voted at the meeting in person or by proxy, a greater number of shares withheld then shares voted in favor must tender his or her resignation to the Chairman of the Board to take effect on acceptance by the Board. 9 persons have been nominated to fill the 9 directors positions. So I have a motion for this item of business.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the 9 persons who are nominated for election of directors be elected to the corporation's directors for the next year to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting and that the shareholders authorize the election of the 9 nominees by a single resolution.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, and anyone opposed, I declare the motion carried. And before I move on from this item of business, just a personal thing concerning the retirement of our good friend, Don Warr, which I'd like to publicly acknowledge Don's retirement from the Board of Altius just prior to this AGM. Don has been a Director of Altius since 2006 after a few years prior to that, a brief stint as Chief Financial Officer of Altius. Back at that time, Don, I think everyone in our community would acknowledge was a superstar CA in our province, and we were fortunate to recruit him to our Board. He's been a calm, steady and insightful Board member and member of the Audit Committee for over 15 years and we will miss his influence, not to mention his enthusiastic participation in social activities with the Board and the staff. We certainly wish Don well in his retirement from our Board. And to be a bit corny in using a geologic analogy, I would say Don has been a gem to us for over 15 years and we will miss him greatly and wish him all the best. The next item of formal business is to consider and if agreed, to pass an advisory resolution on the corporation's approach to executive compensation known as a Say on Pay resolution, the details of which were set forth in the management information circular. As noted in that circular, the corporation believes that its compensation objectives and approach to executive compensation appropriately align the interest of management with the long-term interests of our shareholders. The corporation adopted its Say on Pay policy on March 10th of this year, providing shareholders the opportunity to cast an advisory vote on our approach to executive compensation on an annual basis. This policy reflects the corporation's ongoing efforts to meet the highest governance standards and to ensure a high level of shareholder engagement. The Board, with myself and Brian Dalton abstaining, unanimously recommended that shareholders vote in favor of the following advisory resolution as set forth on Page 22 of the information circular. Resolved on an advisory basis and not to diminish the role and responsibilities of the Board that the shareholders accept the approach to executive compensation disclosed in the 2021 circular. Do I have a motion to approve this resolution?

Mr. Chairman, I move on an advisory basis and not to diminish the role and responsibilities of the Board that the shareholders accept the approach to executive compensation disclosed in the 2021 circular.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, no one opposed, I declare the motion carried and note for the record as well that the proxy submitted on this resolution in advance of the meeting voted in favor of this resolution by over 97%, which is gratifying to those of us in management that we are taking a responsible approach to executive compensation. That concludes the formal business of the meeting. Is there any other matter a shareholder wishes to raise? And for these purposes, I would ask the conference operator to open the phone lines to determine if there is any other matter for a shareholder to raise in the formal part of the meeting.

[Operator Instructions]

That's fine, operator. I wasn't expecting any questions at this time. So I'll proceed. There will likely be more questions of a business nature after the President's presentation. So I'll now entertain a motion that the meeting be -- the formal part of the meeting be terminated.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the meeting be terminated.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

All those in favor, anyone opposed? I declare the motion carried and the formal meeting concluded. And I will now pass the call over to Brian Dalton to make his presentation, and a Q&A period will follow. You may see and follow along Brian's presentation by logging into the webcast using the details mentioned earlier. Brian?

Thank you, Chairman Baker, and I guess, thank you to our shareholders as well. It's 24th annual meeting. So as we -- I guess the vote means the successful vote here means that we're going to make it to our 25th year, Mr. Baker, Chairman. So that's nice to know. For this presentation today, I want to start by giving an overview of some of the highlights of the year that was 2020. And it wasn't every year, it feels like about 5, to be quite honest with you. So the way I've broken this out and for those following along on the webcast that the slide -- I'll read the slide titles as I proceed, if I can remember to do that. The first slide is looking back a year in review. So to start with, on the corporate side, happy to point out that between our offices here in St. John's, Toronto and New Hampshire, there were no cases of COVID-19 within the group. I think that's a shout out to deserve there for the -- to the whole team, but particularly those that were charged with keeping us safe and well-functioning through the pandemic. Productivity, I would say, within the group was unimpacted by lockdowns or if it was impacted, it was probably to the good -- it maybe was our busiest year in 24. It was also the 11th year running for the company with no health, safety or environmental incidents. So again, great kudos to the team for that amazing accomplishment. We published our first ever sustainability report. And work hard, I believe, to communicate our attributes in that regard to the investment community as well as some of the rating agency, and that's begun to be reflected now in improved ESG scores, the last little while. New annual cash flow per share record despite some of the revenue hiccups that came along due to COVID. That's another gratifying accomplishment. 1.1 million shares were bought back since the beginning of 2020. I haven't done the math on that, but that's a significant percentage reduction in our denominator. And for anyone who knows Altius, they know that the denominator really matters. Per share is how we build and plan our business. Shifting now to the minerals part of our business, the core minerals royalties part of our business for several years. Shareholders will note us talking about a pending perfect storm that was coming from mineral prices and probably started to ask themselves whatever come are they making this off. Well, I don't want to jinx things, but I believe it hit us. In fact, I think it's a category 5 or better. That's a bonus at the moment, maybe a little too far, too fast, if anything. But anyway, all good, it's here, and I'm really happy to say that I think we're incredibly well positioned for the shift that's now happening in the market overall. Within that, the things that we're seeing and that we saw during the year that are encouraging, are a real pickup in demand globally for potash. That just goes to that whole narrative around growing population and less arable land per capita that requires higher yielding agricultural practices and potash stands the benefit there. A real change that took hold over the course of the year was the narrative around green steel or cleaner steel, if you will. We've been talking about this for a while, but the market has really started to price the environmental costs of steelmaking. So that's getting reflected in the price of steel. And what it's doing is it's putting heightened value on iron ore types, steelmaking inputs that result in less pollution. So that's pretty neat because our exposures are all aligned around that type of narrative. Another big highlight during the year was the acquisition of the Kami Iron Ore project by Champion. Altius has a 3% royalty. The Kami project was originated by Altius' Project Generation team several moons ago. We're very happy to see that the project has landed in the hands of an incredibly successful and dynamic operator within the Labrador trough. Turning to the renewables part of our business. What I've put in the presentation is the coal to renewables part of our business, electricity generation, very busy year, very big and accomplished year. And I would like to point out or command the group in New Hampshire that's been responsible for much of this success and growth over the year. And highlights would include the fact that Apollo, a major private equity group in the U.S., agreed to buy into the ARR business with an $80 million U.S. investment, now is the Altius Renewable Royalties joint venture partner. ARR recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, using 100 -- or raising $100 million as part of its IPO. And the overall portfolio of projects that are subject to royalty grew very substantially with much of that in fact coming just in the past few months to a total now of 1,885 megawatts. And for any of our local Newfoundland shareholders, if you want some context, that's a little more than 2x must that fall. That's a lot less cost. Last but not least, on the Project Generation side, Project Generation is the roots of Altius. For the last number of years, we've been incredibly busy preparing for what seems to be upon us right now. So I'd go back as far as 2015 when we -- I think we'd acquired -- we -- a mineral land from -- I believe it was 1.7 million hectares at one point. Those have been banded to a number of juniors in exchange for royalties and equity positions. Things have really taken off in the past 8, 9 months, capital in general has returned to that to the junior mining sector. The companies that we either invested in or became large shareholders of through project sales, I believe were recipients of an outsized share of that new returning capital. And as a result, across that portfolio, there is an incredible amount of work that's been funded, that represents an awful lot of option value for all of you, shareholders, both through its equity holdings as well as its portfolio of created royalties through this part of our business. So really, really strong year there. And I think just getting going. I reentered the slides. The next one is called before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns, this is a slide from last year's presentation. So this time last year, prices would have been much lower, and we all would have been very concerned about demand. And we offered in that -- last year's presentation that something was happening that there was a glimpse of the future that was happening through all of these lockdowns. Parts of the world that hadn't seen blue skies in a very long time. We're seeing it again. And we speculated that glimpse of the future was going to have repercussions in the form of a post-COVID recovery and stimulus, government stimulus type effort that was going to be decidedly greener, but people were going to want to get back to this glimpse of the future that they had. So it was a neat slide, and I wanted to repeat it here. Because that is really what's happened in the past year. That's what's changed since we were here last, is that come to be? And who would have thought it would be a global pandemic that would have been the catalyst, if you will, for the major shifts that we've had in the commodity cycle. But I guess, it had to be something and turned out it was a pandemic. It's not what we would have been -- not what we would have predicted beforehand, but we'll take it. Next slide, where within the mineral commodity cycle. We pride ourselves on a long-term countercyclical approach to the growth of Altius. As a result of that, you've probably heard us say for patients more than you might have liked over the last many numbers of years, but we really believe that, that is the way to grow and build our business. So it's important for us to have a good sense of where we think we are and where we're heading. Thankfully, history repeats very much in our business. So it's -- it maybe is not as hard as it looks. We will place us right now at somewhere -- obviously, on the way back up in the market cycle. Bottoms would have been in around 2016, maybe a couple of false starts before -- between then and now. But right now, you're at a point where demand growth is building. There are things to point to in terms of expected further demand growth that are quite structural and very broadly funded from industry through government. So demand side of things is in great shape. And probably just as importantly, if not more so, it's now been about 10 years since there's been any meaningful investment in the growth of supply in most mineral commodity sectors. And over that time, lots of mines have depleted, have gotten lower grade or become deeper. And so there's a real structural need at this point for prices to be higher in order to incentivize new production. Otherwise, we just won't have the metals that are required and the other commodities that are required for these macroscale sustainability transitions that we all, as society are so hungry to have become may have or to have happened. We're definitely getting to the point now in prices for a lot of commodities that we could say that incentivization is probably close. The price when you plug it into a model for the development of a project factoring in building costs and operating costs is probably starting to pop up some green lights. Not seeing much of it just yet, but I'm sure lots of people are dusting off old files on projects and starting to consider when they look at current prices. This is great news for us. It's a little market shift. For the last number of years when things were tougher, we focused our efforts to grow the business around M&A and buying up assets and sentiment with poor and now it means that those assets that we acquired are starting to be considered for investment by their operators and any growth that results from that is purely to our benefit as royalty holders. And equally importantly, we have no share of the cost. And as I mentioned, capital is returning quite strongly to the junior sector. So early innings of the new cycle. Whether it turns out to be a super cycle or not? I don't quite know what a super cycle is, but I guess it just means it's a big and a long one. And I believe firmly that the boom sets up the bust and the bust sets up the boom as far as the commodities markets go, and I'll just remind people that it's now been 10 years since there's been any meaningful investment. And I can tell you what a $4 or $5 copper for a couple of weeks hasn't solved any of the problems that need to be solved in our business. So we're quite optimistic that there's a long runway ahead here. Long-term countercyclical growth focus is the next slide, and this is really just to illustrate some of the things I said. The little stars that are shown on our, I guess, our interpreted cyclical position chart are points of acquisition over the -- through the down cycle. It shows the different royalties that we acquired, the respective commodities and the timing again, mostly M&A-based. Now we shift to more of an organic growth focus going forward. But even through the M&A, I'm quite happy and proud to say that the activity -- the effort that we made there was quite accretive. And on a per share basis, you can see that through the cash flow per share charts that are superimposed on the chart here. Next slide, commodity market exposure. So now we start to think about -- this is the part of the cycle where you think about growth in terms of, obviously, just higher prices, multiplying by production volumes. But also about how those higher prices will incentivize -- potentially incentivize even more production volume to come to the market. Obviously, some very positive looking charts across the board here. And we're optimistic that we're going to see. These prices reflected into royalty revenues for the next number of years. So anyway, that part is there. The other thing I'll point out is that when we think about -- when we were thinking about the timing of our acquisitions through the down cycle. And I made this point in different presentations. We don't intend to be buyers of assets all through the cycle. It's buying at the bottom of the markets and low points in the cycle, that mean the early years after your investment experience things like they are happening right now, you get higher prices, and that dramatically impacts upon your payback periods and ultimately, your investment returns. But if you do the opposite, if you're buying at higher point in the cycle, it inevitably means that a lot of your expected payback years will be at lower prices and have the opposite impact. Again, things are playing out. Thankfully much as we had hoped and acted accordingly around over the past few years. So organic royalty drivers, royalty exposure is well aligned. I won't go through these in detail. I'll just say that they're here now. This is not speculation. This is what is driving most of the investment capital in the world today is these trends that the world wants to work itself towards. And the funding, as I said earlier, comes from every level from individual investors and where they choose and who they choose to invest with and right up to governments and where they're making infrastructure bet. So tremendous tailwinds behind the various types of exposures that we have basically tried to put ourselves in front of over the past number of years. The other thing about our investment philosophy other than just having things that are aligned with these macro growth trends is that we selected for -- on the mineral side, anyway, assets with extremely long resource lives as well as great operating margin positions because we feel those are 2 very important predictors of assets that will be preferentially invested in stronger markets. Next slide royalty asset lives. This just goes to those long lives. On the slide here, we say unrivaled in the sector. I'm confident that, that's true. On average, our remaining resource lives will be far in excess of any other royalty company out there. And most extreme examples would be in the case of potash, where, in some instances, the mines that we hold royalties on heavy resource lives that will allow them to run for hundreds and even thousands of years. Next slide, mine economics. Again, going to that point around predicting which assets in the world get invested in first for growth, long resource lives, good margin positions. These are the things that are pretty straightforward simple predictors. And you can see here that across the board, in addition to being really credible, strong counterparties on average. The underlying particular assets that we have royalties on are outperformers across the board. So just to conclude, really, in terms of what to look forward to now that we've reached that part of the cycle where incentivization is present. The things that we're looking at right now that get us excited are with regards to those potash mines. Those mines, the mines that we have royalties on have additional nameplate capacity. So this is an ability to produce beyond the level that they're currently producing at, that would amount to about a 50% level of growth over time. And we're seeing that pattern unfold as global demand growth for potash increases. The operators are feeding extra production into the market from an increase in utilization from these mines. But that represents a 50% level of potential growth. That's already bought, fully built and ready to go, and it's sitting there what our royalties attached. On the Altius Renewable Royalties, touched on this, and we'll have another slide coming up. But the growth rate there is obviously pretty incredible. And we believe that can continue. There are enormous tailwinds behind that sector right now and demand for new renewable energy projects is practically insatiable. At the Chapada operation, which again was recently acquired by Lundin Mining. We see a good opportunity there for growth that would be this cycle. Since we made our acquisition of the Chapada stream from its then owner, which was Yamana Gold, in early 2016, resources have grown very substantially. And so the indicated potential mine life of the project has grown by quite a bit to the point that it's probably not optimized at its current production levels. And so Lundin has stated that they are quite active in doing an evaluation around expansion options from Chapada to potentially increase the production rate and better optimize the operation. And I'll also point out that Chapada is one of the lowest cost copper mine in all of South America. So all the right things that you need to see, big resource life, great cash cost positions and in the case of the operator here very strong, credible operator with lots of available firepower to execute on any decisions that they might make to expand. IOC, Labrador, we own an indirect interest to our shareholding in Labrador and our Royalty Corporation. It was pleasant to see this year in Rio Tinto's production outlook earlier this quarter that they've made an additional allocation of capital towards what they're calling growth investment. So in the last market cycle, IOC made significant investments in growing out its capacity. But really, they haven't come to full fruition. There's been some growth, but there are bottlenecks that remain -- that have kept them from reaching that full potential. So right now over the past couple of years, IOC has been running at levels that would -- we'll basically put it this way, there's about 20% more production growth potential there if they're able to reach full nameplate capacities. So we've seen an announcement from them about investment to try to clear some of their bottlenecks. So that's some good growth potential there. New mine construction at Voisey's Bay that continues to proceed. Voisey's did shut down for a period last year during the worst of the COVID days in Labrador, but it's on track. We understand and the new mine development is going very well. At the Gunnison mine, the most recent report, we have from the operator is that they continue to work towards their sequential ramp-up, targeting Stage 1 production of about 24 million tons. There are some indications that, that's going slower than perhaps they had originally envisioned. But again, as part of a 3-stage plan development or a ramp up there, where we're very optimistic that they're going to solve the remaining ramp up issues. Adventus Mining, we have a royalty on their Curipamba project in Ecuador, super high-grade copper gold project. They're expecting to publish an updated feasibility study later. This year as well as a new resource estimate. And we think this is a project that could, in fact, get built and funded this current year. And lastly, Sigma Lithium, which we own a direct royalty interest as well as an indirect royalty interest to our holding in Lithium Royalty Corporation has been making great progress at getting their lithium project in Brazil up and running. And I'm being pointing at -- people are pointing out here that I might have missed maybe what should have been the first one on the list. I said the Kami project has found its way into Champion Iron Ore. And what we understand there is that Champion is evaluating the previous feasibility study that was completed by Alderon a couple of years ago but thinking a little differently about the project as being something that could produce an even higher grade concentrates than Alderon was envisioning and potentially even something that could feed into the what we call the direct reduction pellet market as a feedstock there. And that goes to that earlier point that was being made around clean steel and trends that are happening in that regard. But potentially a very high-impact project. So Champion does go ahead with building the Kami project will be a very important day in Altius' history. So our fingers crossed all shareholders, please. Renewable energy. Our slide, I know it's a busy slide, but I'll just zone in on the key elements. Point out the Apollo joint venture as well as the IPO. But then on the bottom, individual projects from different regions of the U.S. that have been successfully vended through our developers into final sponsors. Again, just a remarkable, very busy year for ARR, but a year of remarkable growth. And we're really getting the sense that the royalty, the concept of royalties and royalty financing is gaining adoption within the renewable energy sector, probably more quickly than we could have even hoped. It's becoming a real thing. 2 years ago, if you'd talk to anybody in the renewable sector about royalty financing, they would have given you a blank stare. Now if you mention it, I'm sure half or more would say, oh, yes, that's a new thing that's happening. So fingers crossed as well. On the Project Generation side, same cyclical charts, but in this case, not showing royalty purchases, showing key events around project lands that are being converted into equity positions and royalties that I think really set the stage and set the base of opportunity for Altius and its shareholders as we go into this new market cycle. And broad big picture highlights Project Generation business slide, 225 kilometers of drilling exposure across the portfolio this year, 225,000 meters of drilling, that's a remarkable number. It would take you -- we think about it at 100 kilometers, it would take you over 2 hours to drive past all that much course that were laid out in the end. The group, again, overall, I mentioned it at the outset, the portfolio did really well. Bought outside their weight class and attracted, I would size share of the new capital that return to the sector. So I think that's a great testament to the credibility of the group that we've been able to attract to our projects overall. Highlights that I'd point to from the PG business and to some degree, catalysts as well. We've already touched on Champion in the Kami project. We are a shareholder of Champion. In addition to owning a royalty on the Kami project, same story with Adventus. We have the royalty on the Curipamba project that we're very excited and encouraged about overall also the major shareholder or one of the major shareholders of Adventus. Orogen, we are pretty sure the largest shareholder at this point in time. We were a shareholder of both of the predecessor companies that were put together over the past year to form Orogen, that will be Evrim and Renaissance. Orogen, I think has a pretty exciting year ahead of it. The project royalty that it holds on the Ermitaño project is in construction and planned for production next year. So they're about to receive their first paying royalty. And Orogen is a direct 1% royalty holder on the silicon project, which is the Nevada AngloGold project where we continue to hear a potential significant discovery has been made. And I will also point out that Altius owns a 1.5% direct royalty on that project as well. We are watching this one very closely and look forward with great anticipation to when Anglo actually says what they've got there. So far, they've been strangely quiet. Wolfden drilling away at the Pickett Mountain project in Maine. They've had some great results over the course of the past year, high-grade zinc-rich material and incrementally -- that we think will incrementally add tons to that project and get it to the point that it has critical mass and scale. Royalty holder as well as a shareholder. One of the big winners in our portfolio in the past year was AbraPlata Silver. AbraPlata was formed when our -- a company that we spun out a few years ago called Aethon was merged with another company to form AbraPlata. They have the Diablillos project, silver project in Argentina, and we're successful in publishing fantastic results all through last year and attracting very significant investors. I think they have a resource estimate coming later this year. Quite an exciting one. I think it was the top-performing silver stock in -- probably in the world last year. Last but not least, our group remains very active in generating new projects and to bringing those to new sales and royalty creation. Last year, some of the plans we would have had going in early were derailed a little bit like COVID. So we might have had plans to be in quite a few places in the world generating new projects. But of course, that didn't happen. But what it did do was get us more focused on our home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. And through that effort, 4 significant projects were ultimately put together and sold on to different juniors. Aiding that effort, of course, are great results that have come from Marathon Gold in building their Valentine Lake project as well as extremely high-grade exploration results from both the New Found Gold Queensway Project and the Sokoman Moosehead project which, by the way, we have a royalty on and for anyone who's been a shareholder for as long as John and I have will know it was one of the founding projects within the company. Last slide, capital structure and track record. Just want to conclude by saying it was obviously a very strange and unusual year, but it was also an incredibly productive year. I think we are incredibly well positioned as a company on all fronts, whether it'd be mineral royalties, the renewables segment or in Project Generation to begin this our 25th year. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Brian. I'll ask if there are any questions from those on the conference call, the operator can give you instructions now again as to how to pose those questions.

[Operator Instructions]

While that's happening, I'm assuming I'm still live in my operator?

Yes, you are.

Yes, while you're compiling the Q&A list, I should point out as well that some of the topics I just touched upon will be covered in a considerably greater detail tomorrow when we'll be hosting our first ever Investor Day, and we'll drill into many of these forms of potential upside and value creation that sit within the business. So we hope that many of you will have the opportunity to join us again tomorrow to drill into some of these things.

And if anyone wishes to the link process for joining that and the link is again on the homepage of the Altius website, where you just briefly register and then can log in to morning for about a 2-hour session.

And we have no audio questions at this time.

Everybody is saving them for tomorrow, I'm sure.

Well, thank you, everyone, again for participating. Thank all our shareholders and Brian and Chad and Ben for being here with me for the meeting. We appreciate all of your support, and we will continue to work hard on your behalf, and see you again next year. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Board. Thank you, fellow Altius team members.

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.