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

Thank you. Welcome to the Gold Royalty Corps Second Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key, followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Garofalo, Chair and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in today's call to review our second quarter 2026 results. Please note, for those not currently on the webcast, a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the presentations page of our website. Some of the commentary in today's call will include forward-looking statements, and I would direct everyone to review slide two of the presentation, which includes important cautionary notes. All dollar values in today's call are expressed in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. Speaking alongside me this morning will be our President, John Griffith, Andrew Goebbels, Chief Financial Officer, and Jackie Przbylowski, Vice President, Capital Markets and State Sustainability. For the first quarter in several years, the gold price was down, falling by 13% or nearly $600 per ounce in the second quarter of 2026. However, to put this price movement in the proper perspective, the commodity was still up strongly year over year by nearly 18% or over $700 per ounce. Reflecting the risk-off sentiment that has prevailed in our sector since the onset of the Iran war, gold mining equities levered to gold fared even worse than the commodity price. The GDX and the GDXJ, VanEck's Gold Miners and Junior Gold Miners ETFs each fell 18% in the second quarter. And gold royalty is a small cap liquid stock, which has outperformed our peers through 2025, was down 23%. This downward movement in the gold price, equities, and in our share price in particular, are severely overdone and reflect neither the fundamentals of the commodity nor those of the robust and accelerating growth of gold royalties business. All the key drivers for gold remain in place. Continued government fiscal deficits, elevated government spending, and persistent inflationary pressures have the potential to further erode the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies. In this environment, we believe gold remains well positioned as a store of value and is expected to be driven vastly higher from increased investor and central bank demand. The improved outlook for gold and the growth Gold Royalty Corp is experiencing from our world-class portfolio will act as a tailwind for gold equities, and in particular, for our share price. Unlike the gold miners, we have no inflationary pressures weighing on our operating margins. The increasing costs for oil, fuel, and other petroleum derived products such as explosives, which have impacted operations this year will continue to be fully borne by our operating partners, allowing our shareholders to enjoy unmitigated leverage to the gold price. One of the great features of our royalty model is that we are insulated from most sources of cost inflation. NSR royalties are royalties on revenues and are not impacted by mine site operating costs. Nor do they have fixed or variable payments back to the operators. And nearly all of our royalties are NSR royalties, which gives us strong margins even compared with our royalty and streaming peers. The data in slide five show our strong margins strong operating margins versus peers. And we note that our margins continue to improve as we continue to realize our peer leading revenue growth over the next few years. To be clear, our operating costs are essentially fixed. Every dollar of revenue growth has and will continue to fall right to the bottom line. property margin is projected to continue to grow over the ensuing quarters in years. Our portfolio, which is weighted at 92% gold, is highly leveraged to gold prices and is poised to benefit from the expected improved outlook for gold that we've already discussed. With strong growth in all key production and financial results expected over the next five years and peer leading trading liquidity, we are poised to outperform both gold producer equities and our royalty peers. Turning to the results for the quarter. The second quarter was another strong one for gold royalty. We've reported record results for the half year ended June 30th with a more than doubling or 116% increase in total revenue, land agreement proceeds and interest to $17.3 million. and an over 40% increase in gold equivalent ounces to 3,677 ounces. and a more than tripling or 212% increase in adjusted EBITDA to $12.6 million as Andrew will go through in more detail in a few moments. We also continue to be very optimistic about our outlook for organic growth for the second half of 2026, as Jackie will discuss shortly, and remain on track to meet our previously disclosed full-year production guidance of 7,500 to 9,300 geos. John will also lead you through the steady progress we were making in business development, as we added a second royalty and barracks rent project in June, and two additional royalties subsequent to quarter end to complement the consistent creation of cost-free royalties from our royalty generator model. These are in addition to two major acquisitions completed since late last year of the Pedro Branca and additional Borba Rema royalties. As a reminder, we published our updated integrated report, a combined asset handbook and sustainability report. You can find this report under the portfolio integrated report sections of our website on goldroyalty.com. We also hosted GoRoyalties annual capital markets day in the second quarter, where we discussed in detail our exciting organic growth already fully bought and paid for. our continued disciplined approach to creative growth, and the high quality of assets in our portfolio. those of you who are interested in learning more about our Royalty Generator Model, Jerry Boffman took a deep dive into the Royalty Generator Model and the opportunities we're seeing. And we were joined by representatives of Corex, DPM, and Orla to review some of the most exciting assets in our portfolio. A replay of the June 18th event can be found in the Investors and Events section of our website. I'll now pass the call over to our CFO, Andrew Goebbels, to discuss the financial results for the quarter and the year to date.

Thanks Dave. As Dave mentioned, we're pleased to report new records for revenue and adjust EBITDA in the first half of 2026. Specific to the second quarter, total revenue land agreement proceeds and interest was $7.9 million, translating to 1,757 geos in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.6 million, more than doubling from the $2.4 million in the comparable quarter in 2025. Our balance sheet also remains strong. We exited the second quarter with over $11.3 million of cash. no debt, and a fully undrawn $150 million credit facility. As we continue to generate cash, our portfolio is expected to generate consistent positive free cash flow, positioning gold royalty well to self-fund its business going forward. With a clean balance sheet, we now have the flexibility to execute our long-term strategy. Our current intent is to maintain a modest cash balance and to allocate additional cash generated from operations towards growth opportunities where appropriate. As our cash flows continue to grow, the capital return policy is actively being considered by our board of directors and will be announced in due course. I will now pass the call to John Griffith to review our recent growth transactions.

Thanks, Andrew. We have balance sheet and undrawn borrowing capacity to make meaningful acquisitions, potentially as large as $200 million and larger in partnership with Taurus under our cooperation agreement. Competition for larger transactions, especially with near-term cash flow prospects in good jurisdictions and with great operators has been robust, negatively impacting implied returns. It is with this backdrop that we've remained disciplined in our pursuits of value-enhancing accretive transactions. That is not to suggest the potential pipeline is not robust. We continue to pursue a significant number of exciting opportunities and we maintain a deep pipeline of potential transactions to drive growth beyond our already peer-leading organic growth. We continue to be active on smaller transactions as well. In June and July, we made two separate acquisitions. The first was an additional 0.1875% NSR royalty on the Wren project, operated by Barrick, and jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont under the Nevada Goldmine's joint venture. This royalty, which we acquired for six and a quarter million, is in in addition to the existing 1.5% NSR and 3.5% NPI royalties that we already hold. Barrick continues to expect that Wren will achieve first production by year-end and will ramp up to its full 140,000 oz per year production run rate by 2027 year-end. The second transaction was announced subsequent to the end of the second quarter on July 13. We acquired two Nevada royalties in that transaction, a 2% NSR on the Sterling property operated by Angla Gold Ashanti, located south of its Arthur project, previously known as Expanded Silicon, and a 0.5% NSR on the Angla Gold Ashanti. on portions of Granite Creek operated by IAT Gold. This Granite Creek royalty covers portions of the Felix and Blue Bell pits. Neither Felix nor Blue Bell are included in the proposed mine sequence over the initially envisaged eight and a half year mine life at the Granite Creek open pit as per the March 2025 43-101 PEA study. But these deposits do represent longer-term optionality to us. I'll now pass the call to Jackie Przbylowski to review our guidance and key catalysts underpinning our peer-leading organic growth.

Thanks, John. Looking at our portfolio in more detail, as David noted, we reported 1,757 gold equivalent ounces in the second quarter of 2026 and 3,677 GEOs in the first half, or 44% of the midpoint of our guidance range of 7,500 to 9,300 GEOs. in 2026. We're already very encouraged with this result because it's better than the 40% first half waiting that we were expecting for this year. We continue to expect that volumes will be more heavily weighted to the second half of the year as far as and county line ramp up to their full production run rates through the year. and as we could see production growth at Borden, Cote and Pedrabranca. Finally, while it's not factored into our guidance, the rock mass movement at the Canadian Malartic Barnat Pit could bring forward processing and sale of stockpiled material under our royalty coverage. Just a quick reminder that our 2026 guidance was set at $5,150 per ounce gold price assumption for the full year. Lower gold prices would work in our favor. as conversion of the land agreement proceeds and interest and conversion of revenue from copper and other metals would translate to higher GEO values. Please. see our March 18, 2026 press release for a table showing the sensitivity of our gold prices, of our guidance to gold prices. And reiterating John's comment from earlier, gold royalty expects production to grow to 28,000 to 34,000 GEOs by 2030, or approximately six times our actual 2025 result from assets that are already fully bought and paid for in our portfolio. Our extensive portfolio continues to offer exciting news flow and catalysts, and we have a number of exciting asset updates in our earnings report. I'll just highlight a few on this call that we're expecting in the second half. First, DPM Metals has restarted the VARs mine, on which we have a stream on all copper produced. The operator expects to achieve commercial production by the end of September and full production run rate by year end 2026. Second, first production at Wren, jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont, is expected by year end. Third, Equinox Gold continues to plan to start construction on South Railroad in mid-2026, pending receipt of final permits. and could be in production in late 2027 or early 2028. We hold a 0.44% NSR on South Railroad. A study to double plant capacity at Oro Minerals' Boberimma project to 4.4 million tons per year is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. An updated mine plan to reflect the integration of Ion Gold's Cote and Gausland zones at Cote in Q4 2026. While we don't have any exposure to Gausland in our royalty coverage, pushback of the Cote pit wall to accommodate a super pit design could add additional material from our zones 5 and 7 coverage into the mine plan. A feasibility study for I-80 Gold's Granite Creek Underground is expected in the third quarter this year. A pre-feasibility study by First Majestic Silver on a Jarrett Canyon restart is expected to be completed in Q4. And finally, shaft number two, technical evaluation at Canadian Malarctic's Odyssey project is to be completed by NECO Eagle also in the fourth quarter of this year. Please see our earnings release for additional asset updates. With over 250 assets in our portfolio, we continue to expect a steady stream of exciting positive news flow.

I'll pass the floor back to Dave for closing remarks. Thank you, Jackie. There's indeed lots to get excited about as you look across our portfolio and the various high quality assets ramping up and entering production with We continue to see compelling upside to our share price as our portfolio assets continue to develop as the market gives us credit for this organic growth. Our valuation could be further boosted by accretive growth, but we emphasize that we will remain patient and disciplined as we consider any acquisitions as we review our capital allocation options going forward. We continue to prioritize a creative growth as always. However, as we continue to build cash, we view a modest capital return as a signal to the market that we will remain disciplined on our growth and that we have matured as a company. We reached first positive free cashflow in mid 2025, and we expect to continue to strengthen our balance sheet with higher geo volume stronger gold prices and lower costs as we've eliminated interest costs and we continue to rationalize our G&A. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the earnings call. We'll now open up the call to Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw the question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Eco Isle with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Hi, David. It's Kay Stepping in for Heiko. Congrats on the successful quarter and for taking our questions. Thank you. So first question, you still have a fairly wide range in your guidance, 7,500 and 9,300 geos for the year. I assume we're going to see this range narrowed with the next quarter and building on that. Which assets are you watching the most? And in turn, I guess which one should we be watching the most that could get you to either end?.