Gold Royalty Corp. (GROY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I'm Joanne Jobin with Vid Media. Welcome to another town hall forum. And today, we're here with Gold Royalty Corp. Now before we start, I would like to introduce CEO, David Garofalo; Sam Mah, VP of Evaluations; and Alastair Still, Director of Technical Services. The gentlemen will provide an update on the company. After their presentation, I'll be pleased to moderate submitted questions. Now a few words on the company. Gold Royalty Corp. is a precious metals-focused royalty and streaming company, offering creative financing solutions to the metals and mining industry. It currently has a diversified portfolio of over 190 royalties. These are located in mining-friendly jurisdictions throughout the Americas. The company's business model includes acquiring royalties and streams and similar interest at varying stages of the mine life cycle, which, in turn, helps to build a balanced portfolio, offering near, medium and longer-term attractive return for investors. Now again, before I get started, I do want to remind you that if you have any questions for the company, place them into the Q&A tab at the top of your chat section. I will then publish those questions. And please ensure that you fill in the questionnaire at the end of the presentation. This helps us and the company communicate more effectively with you for future events. And now I'd like to turn it over to the team to provide an update on the company.

Thank you, Joanne. I'm David Garofalo, Chairman and CEO of Gold Royalty Corp. I'm so glad that you could join us today, in particular, given it's a strong day for the gold price, but also we've had quite a bit of news flow this week. We announced our dividend this morning, our fourth quarterly dividend. Our stock is yielding close to 1.3%, very auspicious beginning for this company. 10 months after our IPO, we introduced a dividend. And as we discuss a little later on with our revenue growth, I feel that we have a high potential to grow that dividend over time. And with $200 million being invested by our operating partners in their underlying assets and exploration, we have quite a few catalysts to talk about that we think will enhance value in our story over the coming months and years. And then finally, we announced the addition of new CFO, Andrew Gubbels who joined us from an investment banking background, but most recently at Aris Gold, a very accomplished mining executive, adding further depth to the organization. And along that team, I'm joined today by two of our strongest and most senior technical people, Alastair Still, our Director of Technical Services. Alistair also does double duty as CEO of GoldMining, Inc., our affiliated company, our largest shareholder at 14%. Alistair brings a wide array of experience as a geologist, a mine operator and also a mine builder throughout the world and extensive M&A expertise as well, and he directs all of our due diligence efforts on opportunities that we've undertaken since our IPO. He's one of the founding members of the Gold Royalty team, going back to August 2020 when we were formed as a private company. Sam, who's our VP of Vice President of Evaluations, joined us a little over a year ago from SSR Mining. So he has significant mining expertise, a mining engineer. But also, he was one of the founding employees of Wheaton Precious Metals, spent 10 years of his career there. So brings extensive experience both in terms of technical expertise, but also a fundamental understanding how the royalty and streaming business works and he's been instrumental in our acquisitions over the last year that continue to grow our business. So we're going to spend quite a bit of time with Alistair and Sam today talking through the catalyst-rich news flow that we've had from our operating partners, again, with over $200 million invested in exploration this year, 700,000 meters of drilling on the underlying properties. You can imagine the news flow has been extensive. The growth in reserves and resources has been substantial, and that obviously helps enhance the value of our royalty portfolio, which is extensive in its own right. I thought I'd just spend a minute talking about the gold price. Obviously, it's starting to catch a bit of a bid. We're seeing that this morning. We're also seeing a rotation out of cryptocurrencies, which frankly took a lot of wind out of our sales over the last few years, but that's proven to be the Ponzi scheme we've always said it would be. Gold has been the ultimate currency for 4,000 years, indestructible. Has the physical properties and security that people are looking for in a volatile market as they're looking to preserve their assets. And we do find ourselves at an interesting point in the interest rate cycle. As you can see on the bottom of the chart there, real interest rates are actually declining even as the nominal rates are going up with Central Bank's tightening rates seemingly, but the inflation numbers continue to accelerate. And that means that real interest rates continue to dive quite dramatically. And typically, in these falling real interest rate environment, gold goes up anywhere from 350% to 400%. We're only at the very beginning of a significant rally in the gold price at this point in the interest rate cycle, it's only up a little over 80%. So quite a bit of runway to be had in the gold price, we think, over the coming months and years as real interest rates continue to decline. And we do think there's going to be a grand pivot by the central banks over the course of 2023. So not only will real interest rates come down, we think nominal rates will either plateau or come down quite substantially. And the reason we believe that is because unlike the last big inflation cycle in early 1970s, the amount of debt that we're carrying globally is 3.5x what it was back in the 70s. So it's very limited latitude for the central banks to significantly tighten interest rates without bankrupt in governments. And so they're going to have to inflate their way out of debt. Make no mistake about it, central banks want inflation. They may be saying something else, but the reality is they need to inflate the amount of -- significant amount of debt that governments are stopped on away. And the only way to do that is allow inflation to gallop away. So we are going to be entering to an entrenched inflationary cycle, falling real interest rates. That's a perfect storm for gold to do substantially better than it's doing today. And in fact, we're not even anywhere near the very all-time high for gold, which back in the early 1980s, it was over $800 an ounce, inflation adjusted to today's dollars, that will be over $3,000 an ounce. And in that type of environment, the best place to be to get the optimum leverage to the gold price is in the royalty and streaming business. And that's why you're seeing all these operating people like myself, Alastair and Sam come into the royalty streaming business away from operations because we do believe in the bull scenario for gold, but we want to be in a vehicle that offers optimum leverage of the gold price, optimum leverage to exploration while insulating our shareholders from inflation, which unfortunately, mining companies are not going to be immune from as it affects the general economy and supply chains generally. And we're best positioned, we believe, in the royalty business to provide the maximum exposure to the best properties in the world. And we're in the best jurisdictions of the world in the Americas with a heavy concentration in Quebec, Ontario and Nevada where the Fraser ranks these 3 jurisdictions in the top 5 globally every year for mineral potential, low political risk and low regulatory risk. And we have royalties on 3 of the biggest operating mines in North America, Canadian Malartic, Côté which will be operating in 2024, representing the #1 and #2 producing gold mines in Canada and then a royalty on the underground extension of Goldstrike, the biggest producing gold mine in the United States. So this is not just about the quantity of the portfolio. And certainly, we have a wide array of royalties across the Americas of over 200. We also have substantial multi-decade annuities that provide a foundational element to our story in Canadian Malartic, Côté and Goldstrike, which will really provide annuity for our shareholders for many, many decades to come. And you can see that we have royalties really across the broad spectrum of the life cycle of a mine. From early-stage exploration right through to production, we have about 7 currently producing royalties, another 15 in the construction and development stage, which really provides a substantial growth profile in our revenue over the coming years. As you can see, it's with well-capitalized partners. We have 75 operating partners that own the 200 underlying assets that we have royalties on, and these are all well capitalized in a great position to build out, optimize and explore their projects. As I said, they're investing collectively $200 million in exploration on these properties over 700,000 years of diamond drilling. That's a lot of exploration potential that we're actually crystallizing over the course of this year, and we expect we'll see a substantial budget in 2023 as these companies turn their mind to planning their exploration activities for the new year. This all underpins sector-leading growth in revenue, compounded annual growth of 60% over the course of the next decade. As we get to the end of the deck with Canadian Malartic and Côté achieving full production, we'll be generating about $50 million to $60 million of gross revenue against a very, very small operating cost base. We have 8 full-time employees and it's a very scalable business. We could run a business 10x the size with the same human footprint. So that means every incremental dollar of revenue puts us in an excellent position to grow that dividend over time. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Alistair to start walking us through our project portfolio. Thank you for your attention this morning.

Okay. Fantastic. Thanks for that, Dave. And pleasure to be here and thank everyone for joining our call today. Before I get into the assets, maybe just a brief introduction about myself. As Dave said, I've been with Gold Royalty Corp. since it was launched in 2021. I'm a geologist by profession and have worked some 25 years in the industry. Most of that has been with operating and producing mines and companies such as Kinross, Placer Dome, Goldcorp and Newmont in a variety of different functions, including operations, mine development and corporate M&A activity. So very exciting to be working at a company such as Gold Royalty. And while we have close to 100 assets in Quebec and Ontario region. In particular, I'd like to focus on 3 of those key assets today. And these are located in Quebec and Ontario in an area known as the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. And this is one of the most prolific gold producing regions in Canadian history, which has produced some 190 million ounces of past gold production. And if you included current reserves and resources across all properties in the region, that number shoots up to closer to 300 million ounces. So a very sizable global area, and we're excited to have projects in here. But in particular, for me, as a geologist who started my working career working in the mines in Val-d'Or in Quebec and Kirkland Lake and Timmins, I'm excited that we have projects in this region again, and I'm happy to tell you about the potential that we see on these projects. So before I get into the details of the projects, maybe I'll just let Sam quickly introduce himself and he's going to cover the Nevada portions of the portfolio. But maybe, Sam, you could give yourself a quick introduction too. Actually, you know what, maybe we'll wait for -- hello, Sam.

Yes, I was just having some technical difficulties. Hi, everybody. My name is Sam Mah. I'm the Vice President of Evaluations. And as Dave indicated, I am a mining engineer and I have spent quality time operating as well as consulting working for several consultant firms. And so I'm very pleased to be on this team, hopefully replicating some of the work that we've been doing with Wheaton Precious and entering into the royalty and streaming space. And so very pleased to be here.

Excellent. Thanks, Sam. And with that, I'll start to get into our assets, and we'll start with our Odyssey project. And certainly, a cornerstone asset for our company. We have a 3% NSR over a significant portion of this property and what will become Canada's largest gold mine. And Odyssey is essentially the underground portion, the underground deposit located just to the east of the existing Canadian Malartic open pit mine and deposit. Gold Royalty does have a small royalty on a portion of production from the open pit at Canadian Malartic. But really, the core value is on the deposit to the east known as Odyssey as it advances towards a major underground operation. That's the focus of our royalty. And this is an interesting area for me in particular because in a previous career for a different company, I was fortunate enough to visit the Malartic area some 15 years ago before development of the open pit operation at Canadian Malartic. So I got a sense into the future and the potential there to see it before it was developed and to see the development and scale of the operation today is extremely impressive. We conducted a site visit here earlier this summer. It's an extremely well-managed and run operation. Yamana and Agnico-Eagle are currently joint venture partners on the project, and that is set to become fully owned by Agnico-Eagle based on one of their recent announcements. We can touch on that in a moment. We can see a picture of the newly constructed head frame. This will facilitate shaft sinking, which begins in Q1, which is a huge major milestone for the project. And really what keeps us excited here is the Abitibi as a region and a district has a great track record of not only developing large mines, but extending the life of these mines turning into a multi-decade operations. One of the most common questions we do get asked about Odyssey, and if we look at a little more detail into the project is exactly what our royalty coverage is on the property. And hopefully, I can provide some clarity as we work through the following 3 images we have on the slide here. In the top right image is an air photo map for the property. And you can see our key royalty is the 3% NSR in the top center of the map. And within that royalty area, we've marked that where the Odyssey Shaft is located, and that will be sunk in the center of our property near the southern edge of our royalty boundary. And essentially, most of our royalty covers the Odyssey North deposit, the majority of the East Malartic deposit, a portion of Norrie Zone and a piece of Odyssey South. And we did talk about the current open pit, which we can see in the air photo and in the various sections and long sections, but most of our focus is on Odyssey underground as the cornerstone production going forward. It would also be important to point out in that plan map, we also have several regional-based properties, including a 1.5% NSR on the extensive Midway property located to the east of Odyssey. If we look in the bottom left corner here, we can see a South to North cross-section, looking -- facing to the west. And you can see our coverage is marcated by the orange vertical line. And again, this illustrates the deposits that cover our royalty, primarily East Malartic and Odyssey North. But we can see a portion of Odyssey South is on our property, and East Gouldie also appears to dip towards the north at depth, and it will project it onto our property. The final image at the bottom of the page is a colorful long section looking to the north, showing the extent of the open pit operation, location of the shaft and a number of the outlines of the main deposits. It's important to note that initial development on Odyssey is occurring from the ramp areas, the upper parts of the deposit. That is not principally where our royalties are located. What I would focus the [indiscernible] is the planned shaft extends to an area where you can exceed an extreme concentration of drilling. This is really the heart of the deposit. This is really where our royalty ramps into full-scale production that comes online with the completion of the shaft and that should be at full-scale production from the main shaft area by 2027. And that cluster of drilling, we can see that still remains open, and so the exploration potential is still very high on this property. As we look at a little more at the schedule and the planning, one of the images, I think it's a great picture here. On the right-hand side is actually our team at site this summer. It was a very good tour we made. But I would also like to emphasize that, that is one of the core strengths we bring as a royalty company, is our technical and financial strength and our ability to do due diligence and create our own assessments and views on various properties. You can see there is some underground development that has already commenced on the property. The main next phase of development will be the commencement of shaft sinking, which is set to begin in the first quarter of 2023. And we're also seeing an awful lot of exploration drills. I think at some point, there's been upwards of 15 drills operating on the property. So there's an awful lot of exploration activity going on. We can see that the drilling has extending the strike on the west side of East Gouldie, and there's some exceptional results that are also above the existing Norrie zone. These would extend onto our property. And there's also some further strike extensions to East near our Midway project. So we have some regional potential in the camp as well. We did mention as highlighted here, the recent news that Agnico-Eagle and the acquisition moving up to 100% of the asset here, we think, is a great advancement for the project. Agnico is one of the world's greatest mine builders and mine operating companies, and we think that further strengthens the ability for them to advance this project on time and on schedule. If we look into some specific catalysts for timing of development on the next slide here, shaft sinking is a major milestone. We saw the previous image with the construction of the head frame. So the infrastructure is in place ready for that shaft sinking, which is expected early in the new year. The initial production coming from the ramp areas. That's largely not on our royalty area, but that's an important milestone for the project as it begins to transition from largely an open pit operation to underground mining. And what we can expect coming up in the new year as well is some -- likely some significant updates to the mineral resource estimate and the mine plan. And one thing that I think helps illustrate the upside on this property is that the current PEA only incorporates just under half of the underlying resources that are in the mine plan. So when you consider that half of those resources are not even captured in the current mining plan, it really illustrates the upside potential here. And the Malartic Camp itself, what can we say about a camp like this? It's been in production for a number of years, principally in the past, it was underground operations, but the camp has already achieved more than 10 million ounces of production. And while that's a significant camp in its own right, the Abitibi Greenstone Belt is also well known for hosting world-class giant deposits, such as a Timmins camp, which has produced over 75 million ounces at Kirkland Lake, over 48 million ounces. Val-d'Or has 18 million ounces. So Malartic really is just getting started, and we're very excited about the future lying ahead for Odyssey. So if we shift a little to the west now move back to the Ontario side of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, we'll discuss the Côté Gold project. This is a significant project, which is rapidly advancing to become one of Canada's largest gold mines. It's located in the heart of mining districts in Ontario. It's about 125 kilometers southwest of Timmins and 175 kilometers northwest of Sudbury, both major mining camps. The project is serviced by excellent infrastructure, roadways and highways and a very skilled workforce. The milestone productions on this, you can see here on the left-hand side, during the first 6 years of the mine life, starting in the first quarter of 2024, the project is going to average over 500 -- or about 500,000 ounces per year of gold. So very sizable production. That mine life does right now continue to 2042, excuse me. That's already an extensive mine life, but one might expect, as we've seen with countless other projects in the Abitibi, there is a great opportunity here to expand and grow resources. As we did at Odyssey, it's also important to touch on our royalty coverage. Our royalty coverage, you can see on the plan map on the right-hand side, the royalty that Gold Royalty has is covered by zones 5 and 7 at the southern portion of what is shown here is an outline of the open pit or the planned open pit. And if you look at that by surface area, it would appear that our royalty covers about the Southern 1/3 of the pit area. However, if you look at a slice through the deposit and plan view on the left showing a block model, what we can see is that we think there is a higher proportion than the surface area represents of the mineralization on our portion of the deposit, and we certainly believe that the early years of production will see higher than the proportional surface area in the startup starting in 2024. So that's positive for us that the deposit is not centered in that image. It's located more favorably to us on the southern portion of the outline where our claims are located. If we go into a little detail on Côté itself, the operator, IAMGOLD, has announced some updates. And like many in the industry, they've touched on some of the challenges that they have faced in the construction here, one of which has been the capital cost inflation and some increased costs due to unforeseen factors such as the COVID pandemic. But for us being the royalty holders here, I think these points really just further highlight the benefit to having a royalty and the royalty model in general. And that is as the royalty company, we are insulated from the cost overruns by having our exposure to top line revenue from production once the mine gets operating. The other exciting announcement for the project, which is very positive for its continued advancement and development, IAMGOLD has recently announced an agreement where they sold their Rosebel mine to Zijin for approximately $360 million. And that really is a sign that they're focused on developing Côté, and they have the cash and resources to keep the project moving along. Currently, it's at about 64 completion -- percent complete, and production is still forecast by IAMGOLD to be in the first quarter of 2024. Looking at the time line for Côté in this slide here and having worked myself in the development and construction for Goldcorp of a 500,000 ounce a year mine in Southern Argentina, Cerro Negro. I really do appreciate the challenges of bringing a large-scale mine into production. But this time line proposed by IAMGOLD is an experienced operating company. They're well advanced on their plan, and they have the additional advantage of being located near some pretty extensive infrastructure and experienced industry personnel located nearby mining centers. That is really a very positive location aspect of this project. And certainly, the coming year ahead will be key for IAMGOLD to execute on this plan, and they lock down the remaining finance pieces. We believe, certainly, Côté is an exciting deposit and it's rapidly developing into one of the largest gold mines in Canada. Shifting back to Quebec now for the final project I'll discuss before I pass over to Sam is the impressive Fenelon Gold project, which is operated by Wallbridge Mining. This project is located within the Sunday Lake deformation zone, which is still part of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt but occurs in the northern trend of the Abitibi Greenstone belt. And this is an area that is probably more familiar to a number of people. This is a long trend, along strike from Agnico-Eagle's Detour Lake mine, which have had a combined past production and reserves and resources of some 30 million ounces. So very extensive known center of mineralization located to the West along the same structure. And Fenelon is really just getting started. It is a fairly recent discovery. In fact, the maiden resource was only announced in late 2021. And since then, Wallbridge is advancing this multimillion ounce deposit quite rapidly. Easy to outline our royalty coverage here. It's over the entire property. So we have full exposure to all exploration on the property. This is a large deposit already. It's in a great jurisdiction. These types of deposits are becoming increasingly rare. And with close to 445,000 meters drilled in the last 5 years, there's been a significant investment put into this asset, and we believe significant exploration potential remains. If we look at the updates and catalysts that have been provided by the operator, certainly, the resource growth and the upcoming preliminary economic assessment, which will give a little more clarity on the construction plans for the project will be better suited for us and others to estimate the value of this deposit and its development pipeline. It's likely the deposit could have open pit and underground components. However, Wallbridge has a current focus on developing a bulk underground mining scenario. The nice thing about this being a new discovery or relatively new discovery is that the operators can optimize from the start of development rather than a series of unplanned developments that may go underground and as a secondary thought advancing with open pit development. This led them optimize the development of the project in the early days. And while we wait for that PEA and the resource updates to get a better sense of our cash flow and the timing to cash flow, we are very much excited by the exploration potential on this property. You can see in the planned view there, which shows the outline of [Audio Gap] model. This is certainly a key catalyst, is the exploration potential on the project, and we look forward to in 2023, an updated resource estimate and the PEA, which will help us better quantify the project. So that wraps for me a quick summary of our projects in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. And now I would like to turn over to Sam to highlight some of our assets in Nevada.

Well, that's great. Thank you, Alastair, for describing the merits of Ontario and Quebec assets. I am pleased to be able to take our conversation South of the border into the state of Nevada, also known to be quite a favorable jurisdiction for mining. In my previous role with SSR Mining, I spent some time in Nevada as well and can attest to how the mining industry has been seemed to be a positive impact for that region -- in the region. Geologically speaking, Nevada is endowed with 3 major trends as shown in the right figure, namely the Carlin, the Battle Mountain and the Getchell trend. They have hosted many world-class deposits. And as Gold Royalty has over 80 royalties in Nevada in our portfolio. Many of those reside in these prolific trends. So for today, I just want to highlight 3 of them, starting with the REN project. Gold Royalty owns 2 royalty interests here, the 1.5% NSR as well as the 3.5% NPI that essentially envelops an entire REN deposit. The REN project is part of the Carlin complex, which is operated by the Nevada Gold Mines, which as you can see on the left table is a joint venture between Barrick and Newmont. The Carlin complex, as the name suggests, is quite complicated. It is comprised of 6 open pits as well as 3 underground operations. The whole -- as a whole, they benefit from synergies and they share resources and infrastructure. Nevada Gold Mines is actively developing on the REN project by advancing internal technical studies and continued exploration. At the end of 2021, the inaugural mineral resource estimate was disclosed. And the bulk of it was in the inverse -- inferred category, comprising about 1.2 million ounces. We see from Barrick's Analyst Day presentation, they view the REN project to be approaching the pre-feasibility stage as well as there's immense exploration upside in the vicinity of 2 million to 3.5 million ounces. Though at this point, unclear, Barrick has expressed the intention of incorporating the REN project into their mine plan in the near term. So let's have a deeper dive at the REN project. In the previous slide, we described REN as being the Northwest extension of Goldstrike along strike. If we look to the figure to the left, it's a plane view map of the Carlin complex. On the very bottom, you'll see a red outline. And that is the Goldstrike open pit. That quickly transitions to the Goldstrike underground portion. As you move further to the northwest direction, you'll see Rodeo and then Meikle and both of these are underground operations. And finally, continuing a little bit further northwest, we see Banshee and finally, REN deposit. Gold Royalties coverage is depicted by the black outline, which encompasses the entirety of the REN deposit as we know it. Within that black outline, you can see red shaded areas. And these represent the mineralization targets that they are discovering, namely the Corona zone and the JB zone. We are encouraged by the news that the West Barrel layback at the Goldstrike open pit is being accelerated, and this is in order to support the REN infrastructure likely to provide access. Since this type of ore from REN will be refractory in nature, it will provide supplemental feed for the Carlin complex processing facility, which is the figure to the right. Looking ahead to upcoming catalysts, we are anticipating an update in the mineral resource for the REN project. We're expecting growth in the inferred category, and this will be disclosed sometime in the first quarter of 2023. As well, we hope to gain a little bit more clarity on Barrick's plan for the project with regards to time line. In April of this year, our team was able to visit the Carlin complex, and we've got a chance to visit the operation, both the surface as well as the underground and to meet the management and the frontline supervisors. Based on the many site visits that I have participated in the past, it's clear to me that the Nevada Gold Mines has a strong team comprised of high-caliber mining professionals that are clearly enthusiastic about the REN project. I too share the enthusiasm of their team based on the continuity and exceptional grades that we're seeing so far. In addition to proximity to existing infrastructure, the combined need for additional feed to feed those hungry mills, the REN project is a natural candidate to be fast track towards production. To this end, it makes our royalties that we hold more valuable. Moving on to the second asset to highlight today brings us to our most recent acquisition we closed in September of 2022, which is the Granite Creek royalty. Note that this asset is located in the Getchell trend, which is marked in the figure to the right. As a company, we jumped at this opportunity to expand our footprint in Nevada, but also we wanted to be partnered with i-80 as they are a proven operator. Over the past 2 years, i-80 has executed on its strategy to assemble a number of binding operations to feed a central processing facility, which in this case is the Lone Tree Complex. There, they have an autoclave, which is able to handle refractory type material. The Granite Creek asset is comprised of both open pit and the underground portion. The mineral resource on the open pit, which is the heap leach for material is approximately 1.3 grams of gold, which is really considered to be enviable as it ranks as one of the highest amongst all heat leach projects. Similarly, the mineral resource on the underground portion is all plus 10 grams of gold, which places Granite Creek as the higher end of the grade spectrum for North American gold projects. Gold Royalty is happy and pleased to hold a 10% NPI on this asset. Given the high-grade nature of Granite Creek and the expected reasonable CapEx levels required to restart operations, we believe the NPI to be an attractive investment. Moving along, we see Granite Creek is being advanced quickly. On the exploration front, i-80 initially disclosed a 20,000-meter drill program for both core and reverse circulation type drilling. Subsequently, this program has been upsized to 30,000 meters and this is all based on their continued exploration success. We have seen recent news describe exciting drill results with very high-grade intercepts in the South Pacific zone, as shown in the figures to the right. On the production front, i-80 has accelerated its plans and has commenced underground mining earlier this year. Mining from the [indiscernible] Zone is currently at 350 tonnes a day with plans to ramp up by the end of this year to about 450 tonnes a day. The target sometime in the new year, we should be 1,000 tonnes a day. Until the Lone Tree Complex is refurbished, an interim toll milling agreement has been made with Nevada Gold Mines at the Twin Creeks and that will take some of the material, refractory type material from this asset. We are excited to see that this drill information will be incorporated into an updated resource. And sometime this year, we should be seeing a feasibility study for the underground. As for the third asset that I'll be covering today, which is the operating mine called Jerritt Canyon. This is located in about 75 kilometers north of Elko. It is owned and operated by First Majestic Silver, who acquired this asset in 2021 April. Interestingly enough, Jerritt Canyon is a dominant gold operation, which is really a slight deviation from First Majestic's primary focus on silver, which to me, speaks to the attractiveness of this asset and the perceived opportunity here. Jerritt Canyon Mine is an underground operation, utilizing a very selective mining method called cut and fill. Previously, Jerritt Canyon could be described as being 2 separate underground operations. Now these 2 mines have been joined via underground drift, which really offers a lot of benefits. Not only are we able to -- are they able to share resources, such as manpower and equipment, it also enables ventilation to flow through as well as making it a little bit easier for materials handling. First Majestic often speaks of unlocking the value at Jerritt Canyon. Since acquiring this asset, they have been very committed in putting capital back in. They are set on creating operational flexibility by adding more mining areas. In doing so, they have been working on West Generator as well as restarting Saval II. Steps such as these will help them increase their production rate from where they're at today to about 3,000 tonnes a day. Of course, they continue to explore their large land package. They have earmarked a very substantial '22 exploration program, which is comprised of 120,000 meters and about 9 drill rigs. Gold Royalty holds 0.5% NSR as well as a per ton royalty. These initiatives undertaken by First Majestic are not only beneficial for them as an operation, but also to our shareholders. For third quarter, First Majestic disclosed that production has been lower than expected, and this is largely due to a planned 14-day shutdown of the roaster. It is also noted that during this time, additional ore has been stockpiled and the intention is to process that in this fourth quarter. Hopefully, this will offset some of the production shortfall. However, in an updated corporate presentation, First Majestic is revising guidance for Jerritt Canyon to the amount of 96 to 103 kilo ounces for the year. And again, variances have been largely attributed to tonnage shortfalls as well as a slight reduction in grades, but overall metallurgical recoveries have been in line with expectations. Overall, Gold Royalty is confident in First Majestic's team that they will leverage their collective underground experience gained from their Mexican operations to accomplish their goals at Jerritt Canyon. And so we are pleased to be partnering up with them in this endeavor. Thank you, everybody, for this time of listening to our update. I will hand this back over to Dave.

Thanks, Sam, and Alastair, I'll ask you to pop back on and just be prepared to take any questions. Joanne, will you be, I guess, leading us to the Q&A.

Yes. Just turning on my camera. Great. Thank you very much. And so I just want to say that we've had a record number of people sign on today. So well done, Gold Royalty. We've had over 150 people on the platform. So really happy about that. Now Q&A. All right.

The first question, lots of uploading action going on here as well. With Sandstorm acquiring Nomad and Triple Flag acquiring Maverix, do you think another company will look to acquire Gold Royalty? Or is Gold Royalty looking to acquire smaller royalty companies?

So look, I still think there's quite a bit of scope for consolidation in the sector. And I think we kicked it off really last year. There wasn't much M&A going on in the royalty space until we IPO-ed back in March of last year, and we acquired Ely Gold, Golden Valley and Abitibi royalties. And then since then, Nomad and Maverix have been absorbed. And there have been a couple of other smaller cap royalty companies have also been absorbed. So there are about 7 companies that existed at our IPO that don't exist anymore. And it's really part of a drive to create critical mass. It's been demonstrated empirically that the companies that have bigger scale and most diversity in their portfolio are the ones that get the best multiple and the lowest cost of capital, which is absolutely key to our business. So look, I would say there's scope for more consolidation. We'll just have to see how it plays out over the coming months and years to create that mid-tier champion, frankly, where none exists currently. And to me, a mid-tier company, is somewhere in the $5 billion market cap range, which is big enough to matter to a broader base of investors, particularly institutional investors, but small enough still to grow meaningfully. And that's, I think, the opportunity that we think that we need to achieve and help achieve in the sector to capture that growth multiple that really is absent in the sector right now.

How many assets we'll be producing by 2024?

Yes. So as I said, there's about 7 currently producing. There's another 15 in development. Within the next 5 years, we're going to have somewhere between 15 to 20 producing royalties. That's really what underpins that sector-leading revenue growth of 60% compounded annual growth over the next 10 years.

This one is directed to Sam. How would you compare GROY's positioning to Wheaton Precious Metals in its early days?

Wow, that's a great question. I would say we are doing our very best to keep up. Wheaton Precious had a really good start with their San Dimas asset. And so we have similar assets in our portfolio that unfortunately will take -- not unfortunately, sorry, will take a couple of years to mature.

Thank you, Sam. And I'm going to ask a question that has been asked over and over. I'm seeing it come up all the time. And this is concerning Elemental royalties. Everyone wants to know, is there still a chance to get a hold of Elemental or not?

We crossed that bridge, and really, there's no going back. I think we made the best offer we could. We were invited to bid against ourselves. And I think the important thing is we showed discipline as a management team. And in the absence of any other bids, we decided to walk away. So we wish them luck.

Thank you, David. So one -- the other question here that keeps popping up is about dividends. So on one hand, GoldMining, your major shareholder needs the dividend for drilling and G&A. Whereas on the other hand, most of the shareholders from GROY want to preserve capital and grow the company. So conflicting goals -- are these conflicting goals for the company? Great question.

Yes, it's an excellent question. I think we can strike a good balance. I mean at the end of the day, royalty companies are a collection of annuities, and we have growing collection of annuities from more and more producing assets, and we think we should share that annuity with our shareholders while maintaining a strong enough balance sheet for us to be competitive for new M&A opportunities. I think we can strike that balance. And to answer the question that was pulled to Sam earlier on comparing us to Wheaton Precious Metals, I'd say we compare extremely well to the early days of Franco, Wheaton, Royal Gold in that we have an anchor asset that we can grow our business around. In fact, we have 3 of them. As I said, we have royalties on 3 of the biggest producing gold mines in North America in the best jurisdictions. If you look back to the early days of those 3 companies, they all had that company-defining asset, at least one of them. We have 3 of them.

Well said. So is Gold Royalty only focused on precious metals and North America? Or are you looking to continue to grow the portfolio through other means?

Yes. Look, we're open to taking a bit more diversification in our metals in our geography. Right now, we're about 95% gold. So we have a little bit room to add some bipartite metal in. Generally, we're bringing other metals into the mix if it became -- if it came as part of a package of royalties on a polymetallic deposit that's primarily gold that has copper, zinc, silver, for example. Copper, in particular, I'm extremely bullish on given its necessity for decarbonizing our economy. And we have significant copper exposure through a couple of gold mining assets upon which we have royalties. Geographically, really, at the end of the day, what we're looking at primarily is the best geological model. We're looking for the best deposits, and we'll take on a little bit more political risk if we're convinced that the operator has a strong track record of operating in that country in that environment. So there's limited scope for that, but there is scope for us to look beyond the Americas for sure.

Thank you, David. And again, going with the M&A focus, if a large royalty companies such as Franco-Nevada approached GROY, with M&A on their minds, what would management do?

Look, I think right now, where we're trading, we're trading at about 0.5x the consensus net asset value on the street. We're severely undervalued. As you can see with this revenue growth, and it's all organic, it's all paid for. We never have to put another dim into it. We have far too big a rerate to achieve just by harvesting what we've put into the portfolio over the next couple of years. And our shareholders will enjoy significant re-rate just holding on for that.

Okay. Excellent. And another question on the dividend. We've issued a lot of shares this year. Have we acquired enough near-term production to fund the current dividend on the additional shares? Or are we borrowing to pay the dividend?

Well, as you can see, next year, we're actually going to be generating free cash flow. We have a very small G&A footprint. We have cash G&A of about $6 million a year. So with that incremental revenue growth, you're going to see a lot of free cash flow go to the bottom line over the coming years, which puts us in an excellent position to continue to pay the dividend. We have virtually no debt on the balance sheet. We have a small working capital line with BMO. We've drawn about $10 million. So the interest costs would be minimis. And that's against a market cap of $400 million. And you're never going to see a lot of debt as part of our permanent capital structure. Occasionally, drawing on it for small short-term needs, I should say. But longer term, we'll always be very conservatively capitalized, which puts us in an excellent position to pay a dividend and achieve that balance I was talking about between M&A and paying dividends.

Question about the former Ely Gold merger. Are you still employing the generation -- the project generation model that Ely Gold used in the beginning and keeping a royalty while auctioning the properties. And is Jerry still involved with the company policy?

Yes, I was just going to say I'm delighted that both Jerry Baughman and Trey Wasser are involved with the company. Trey is a member of Advisory Board, sits in a lot of our management meetings every week to provide his insights in Nevada, in particular. Jerry Baughman is our VP for Nevada. And so he continues to generate royalties for us. But not only that, we kept on Glenn Mullan, the founder of Golden Valley and Abitibi Royalties, as our head of our Quebec and Ontario business. We have an office in Baldor. He does precisely what Jerry does in Nevada in that they stake exploration claims and then take royalties back as they firm those properties out before they're require any significant exploration expenditures. Nearly 40 of the royalties we have in the portfolio have been generated through our generative model that Glenn and Jerry are running in Quebec, Ontario and Nevada, respectively.

Can you comment on the streams in your portfolio? And how many you actually have?

Currently, we just have royalties. We have no streams in the portfolio currently. But certainly, that is still something that we're looking at and core to our strategy as we look to grow our business over time.

All right. And maybe, Sam, you can take this one. Can you define near term when it comes to putting REN into the mine plan?

Near term would be within 3 years. And so it's going to be around 2024, we believe.

Okay. Will Wallbridge remain an explorer forever? Or do you think they'll eventually go into production?

Alastair, do you want to take that one?

Sure. I mean, I think what we could see is that the strength of Wallbridge as an explorer, like every explorer, they will advance that project on as far as they could take it. If they have to move to a developer mode, I'm sure they can pivot to that. But who knows? I mean it's an active industry. Those type of projects are scarce, and there could be an existing operator or developer who may have plans to perhaps make a move on that project. But their strength so far has been an exploration. They've done an exceptional job of that, and they continue to make new discoveries. So it's an exciting path forward for that project.

And I would add, I'm particularly encouraged by the fact that Tony Makuch has taken over as Chairman. And I know Tony and Alastair have a long history back to the Timmins days when Alastair was a senior operating manager at the Porcupine Complex for Goldcorp. Then Tony has an exceptional track record of bringing projects through feasibility to the development stage. And in the last few companies, he's run, he sold -- and so I expect in time, this asset is just far too attractive and far too attractive a district for the marine independent. Right? Alastair, you have a longer history with Tony than I do. So I don't know if you wanted to add.

No, absolutely. Tony was the first mine manager I worked for at Macassa Mine in the 1990s. So he certainly has a long history of his time there and at Lake Shore Gold and at Kirkland Lake Gold. So they are in very good hands and with a very good asset. So it will be an interesting future indeed.

Thank you, Alastair. Does the recovery cost of gold from these mines affect the stock price of Gold Royalty?

Well, the attractive thing about the royalty model is that -- and virtually all of our royalties are what we call NSR, net smelter return royalties. So top line royalties. It really doesn't matter what happens to the operating capital cost at the mine site. We're insulated from that. And Alastair pointed that out and particularly in the context of Côté, which has had significant capital cost overruns, and we were completely insulated from that. So again, our 200 royalties are entirely bought and paid for. And so there is no capital cost required on those royalties. We just have to wait and harvest the returns on them. And the other dimension it brings is the exploration potential in that we're not contributing to the exploration budgets, but we're certainly enjoying the upside that comes with the intensive exploration undertaken by our operating partners.

Thank you, David. And we're coming up to the top of the hour, so we're going to wrap it up shortly. But one question is regarding NSR and MPI. Can you please explain the difference?

Yes. So virtually all of our royalties are what we call NSR or net smelter return royalties. And in fact, it's basically a percentage of the revenue, the top line. We have the occasional NPI royalty, which requires some operating cost and capital cost recovery. In one particular case, it's Granite Creek, where we have an NPI royalty, a very attractive one. And it's attractive because it's a very high-grade deposit with low capital intensity. So there's very little capital to recover before we actually start to get paid on that NPI royalty. And the high-grade nature of it means that the margins are going to be very, very high in that particular deposit.

Thank you, David. That is about all the time for questions that we have today. Please, if you have any questions that weren't answered today, please send them to -- don't send them to me, but send them to David, but send them to [email protected]. And also before we leave, I'd like to turn it back over to David to see if he'd like to say a few more words to this great audience. I'm so pleased with the turnout today. David?

Well, I'm delighted with everybody's attention and attendance today, the loyalty to the story, the belief in what we're doing, I think we're building a fundamentally sound business with the best growth in the sector. And I think in the fullness of time, with momentum now on the gold price, I think people are going to start to pay for this growth. We're going to see expansion in our multiple, a significant re-rate opportunity for our shareholders, again, just by waiting and harvesting from our existing business. We've assembled a very impressive portfolio of royalties in a very short period of time in the best jurisdictions and the best geologies in the world in our view. Thanks so much for your time today.

Thank you, everyone, and we'll see you at the next Vid Town Hall Forum. Good day.