Royal Gold, Inc. (RGLD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's Virtual Non-Deal Roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander Young, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in San Francisco and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate using the chat box in the top right and corner of your screen. With that being said, I will now hand the floor over to Alistair.

Thanks, Noella, and thanks, everybody, for your attention today. I know it's a holiday week for you, so appreciate you taking the time to listen to Royal Gold. It's been a good time for the gold price and certainly a good time to think about gold as a way to continue to get exposure to rising price, so appreciate your attention. I will be making forward-looking statements during today's presentation, and there are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC. So what I'm going to do in this presentation is give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold, which is really what we provide to investors, and that is precious metals exposure with consistent financial performance and a focus on per-share metrics. Presentation is divided into sections. I'm going to talk about our low-risk leverage to gold, our long history of executing a very simple business strategy, our unique business model, organic growth for within the portfolio, which is quite well diversified. And then finally, valuation, which I think, despite the strong gold price environment, is still pretty attractive to where we have been trading historically. So in this first slide, this gives an overview of Royal Gold at very high level, and in one sentence, we are a high-margin business that generates consistent cash flows from precious metals. We've been in the business since the mid- to late 1980s. We've been on the NASDAQ for 40 years. So we've got a very well-established record of doing well in our business. We have 2 straight -- 2 segments to our business. We have streams that are about 69% of our revenue, and royalties are about 31%. They're essentially the same in that they give us exposure in top line production from mining assets. We released our third quarter results for the year in November, a couple of weeks ago. We had excellent results, and those -- they demonstrate very clearly that we directly benefit from strong and rising gold prices. Our record -- our revenue, for example, was a record at $194 million for the quarter. We had record adjusted earnings for the quarter as well at $1.47 a share. We maintained our 81% EBITDA margin. And in fact, we increased it slightly over a year ago, and our revenue is 76% gold and about 60% came from Canada, in the U.S. and Australia. We ended the quarter with 0 debt and about $1.1 billion of liquidity. And so far in 2024, if you compare our performance this year compared to what's shown on this slide, we've had, in the first 9 months of this year, revenue of $517 million, earnings of $225 million and operating cash flow of $388 million. So the business is performing extremely well in this gold price environment. Now before I start talking about Royal Gold specifically, I'll set the table a little bit and just talk about how we compare it to our peers and where we sit in the royalty-streaming universe. We do sit in a very interesting position. We like to think of ourselves as being the Goldilocks in the royalty and streaming business. And when I say that, I mean that we're big enough to compete against the largest competitors in our sector. We can compete for the largest transactions because we have significant cash flow, and we have significant access to capital. Yet we're also small enough to be able to show growth by chasing smaller transactions, and a small transaction can add meaningful value to Royal Gold. In our business, most transactions are the $100 million to $300 million range today. And so we think that we have potential to grow by completing those transactions. And for some of our larger peers, that growth transactions like that just do not add up to meaningful growth for them. So I'm going to start with a discussion of our leverage to gold. And this slide, for those of you who do not know Royal Gold, this shows how we are positioned against other ways you can invest in gold. Our model provides exposure to precious metals without many of the risks that come with investing in operating companies. And we provide exposure to the gold price and optionality of the assets where we have interests while reducing our overall risk by holding a diversified portfolio that does not have direct exposure to operating and capital costs. So inflation has been something that has [indiscernible] the gold sector because it tends to erode margins. We do not have margin erosion based on the way that our business is structured. Now there are different ways to invest in gold. You can be conservative, and you can buy the physical metal itself. But if you buy an ounce of gold today, it will only be worth an ounce of gold in the future. You won't get any upside from holding that out. You won't get a dividend from holding that ounce, and it will actually cost you to hold physical gold. You can be more aggressive and you can buy equities in mining companies or exploration companies. But when you do that, you're certainly getting gold price leverage, but you're also getting exposure to operating costs and capital costs, which can erode the value of the investment. Slide 8 here shows our historic share price performance and why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to gold. On the left-hand side of the screen, you can see our beta to the gold price is 1.8%, so a very strong leverage to the gold price. And then on the right-hand side, you can see our share price. And this shows going back to 2006, when the GDX index was formed, how we've performed relative to our peers and general markets. And you can see that we've beaten the gold price. We've beaten the GDX index itself, and we've also beaten general market indices, so a very strong share price performance over the long term. I'm going to talk in this next section about our history of execution. And -- as I said at the outset, we have a long record of being in this business, and we have been able to consistently show performance in a very disciplined way. And this slide, Slide #10, gives a 20-year-plus history of how we've allocated our capital and how we've grown, and the philosophy for us at Royal Gold is really trying to provide accretive growth to our shareholders. And you can see since 2000, we've had significant revenue growth, significant cash flow growth and our business has grown significantly over that period. But there are 3 aspects of this growth that are worth calling out specifically. The first is our business is high margin, and it's very scalable. So our revenue growth has far exceeded our growth in G&A expense. And when we add something to the portfolio, we don't need to add new people to be able to manage that interest. It's a very scalable business. Second is our revenue growth is not dependent solely on metal prices. So we've been able to add volume over this 20-plus year period by acquiring the right assets. And thirdly, we have largely financed our growth internally without a significant increase in our share count. We are one of the original members of the GDX index, and we have the lowest share count in that index. We have not issued equity since 2012. We want to avoid shareholder dilution. And if we can fund our business using internal resources, then that provides per-share growth to our shareholders, and that's really where the best value is added. On this slide, you can see our snapshot of our liquidity, and this is at the end of September, just the third quarter. In our business, we have to be very patient. Opportunities come out of left field sometimes. Opportunities come up quickly. And we need to maintain a strong balance sheet and liquidity on hand to be able to easily finance and access those opportunities as they arise. And our approach to funding our business is really to use cash on hand, operating cash flow and our revolving credit facility and use equity as the least preferred method of financing our growth. And on the left-hand side, you could see a waterfall of how we actually allocated our cash flow in 2023. We used operating cash flow in 2023 to repay our debt and pay our dividend. And we ended September 30 of this year, on the right-hand side, you can see a little ring that shows our liquidity position, we have about $1.1 billion of liquidity available today for new transactions. So -- that's because we don't have any debt. We have full access to the revolving credit facility. We also have just over $100 million of working capital. So we have lots of liquidity for the business -- business development environment that we find ourselves in today. This slide shows our history of how we've used our revolving credit facility, and it is a $1 billion revolver that is -- that provides cheap and flexible financing to us. We have 8 banks in this facility. They're all top-tier banks in the mining sector. And the way -- what we do is we draw on the facility for a transaction, for an acquisition, and then we'll repay that drawing from cash flow as the portfolio delivers cash flow in the future. 2022 is a big year for us for acquisitions. We bore in the third and the fourth quarters of that year to acquire long-life assets, and those were royalties at Cortez and royalties at Great Bear. And we've now repaid all of that borrowing, and it's been a relatively short period of time. We repaid several hundred million dollars of debt. That really shows you the power of the cash flow generation potential of our portfolio. And while there is an interest cost in the short term for using a revolver to acquire assets. We think if we can acquire multi-decade assets, a couple of quarters of interest payments is really de minimis in the equation. So we think it's a very effective tool for us to be able to add assets in the portfolio without diluting shareholders. Now at Royal Gold, we also think a lot about returning capital to shareholders, and that's a key strategic objective for us. And it's something that makes us unique amongst other precious metals investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every year since 2001, despite volatility in the gold price. And in fact, last week, we raised our dividend for 2025 by 12.5% over 2024. And that was our 24th consecutive annual increase in the dividend. We've paid out almost $1 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends, and we're the only company in the GDX that has paid an increasing dividend since the index was formed in 2006. And we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that is something that sets us apart from everybody else in this sector. Now something else that we think sets us apart is our due diligence competency, and due diligence is a very important part of our business. We're always looking to make sure that we have the right assets, and we avoid the wrong ones. And while we're always looking at opportunities, not all opportunities make it through our filter. We do have a very extensive due diligence process, and we're very disciplined in the way that we deploy our capital. So if we see risks that we don't like, we'll walk away from transactions. We don't feel pressure to do transactions. We're not compensated by doing a certain number of transactions within a certain time period. So if we can't find the right opportunities, we'll collect our revenue, build our balance sheet and wait because history has shown that opportunities often come up when you're least expecting them. And 2023 is a good case in point. We're very busy in 2022, as I mentioned. In 2023, we didn't see the right opportunities to invest. So what we did was we paid down our debt, and we rebuilt our liquidity. I'll make a mention on this slide about sustainability. And ESG or sustainability, whatever you want to call it, it is and always has been a very important part of our business. We invest for the long term. So ensuring the sustainability of the assets we invest in is a very important part of our due diligence of new transactions. And we've got a couple of ratings provider shown on this slide. We've got MSCI and Sustainalytics. They're are 2 influential rating providers in our sector. We're top rated by Sustainalytics, and we're AA rated by MSCI. We've done a lot over the past several years to improve the transparency of our practices in this area. As I said, it's been a core part of the way we've done business for many years, but we haven't been as transparent as others. And so over the past several years, we've been trying to improve our transparency, and as a result, we've seen improvements in our scores. I'm going to talk in this next section about our business model, which is quite unique. And the key to our business model really is optionality, and that's optionality to reserve and resource growth without having to make further investments. There are 2 examples shown on this slide: PV on the left, Wassa on the right. We made both of these investments in 2015. And in both cases, total reserves and resources today are higher than at the time of the initial acquisitions, and that's in addition to production that's allowed us to recover over 85% of our investment in PV and over 140% of our investment at Wassa. And there are still growth opportunities of both of these assets. The PV, that expansion is in the final stages. It's in the ramp-up now actually as we speak, and there's a mine life extension project underway to extend the mine life to 2046. At Wassa, there's a 4-year reserve life, and recently, the operator has put out a 43-101 report that talks about a potential mine life to 2049. So in both of these cases, Royal Gold does not require to fund capital or invest any further to get exposure on this upside. This is growth that we don't have to pay for. It's optionality that's just in our shares. And the exploration and production upside is a very important factor we look at and consider when we do due diligence on new opportunities because it's really the most important feature of our business model. Now another feature that is also important is the efficiency of our business model. We have 30 employees across our 4 offices. And last year, we produced over $600 million of revenue. Today, our market cap is just around $9.5 billion. So on a per-employee basis, you could compare us to any company in any sector, big or small, and we compare very, very well. So it's a very efficient business model. And our low employee count means that we have a low fixed cash G&A, which obviously further contributes to our efficiency. In 2023, we had a 79% adjusted EBITDA margin, which has actually grown this last quarter to 81%. In 2023, our cash G&A was 5% of revenue. It's now actually closer to 4%. So that shows you that we directly benefit from a rising gold price. Our G&A is made up mostly of low and mostly fixed costs. So cost inflation is not something that impacts our margins in a significant way. And you can see that in this next slide, when we compare our cost structure to the cost structure of the average gold producer, gold producers in any mining company is exposed to inflation in input cost, so whether that be labor or energy or other consumables. Often those costs rise with commodity prices. So margins may not actually expand. Our G&A costs, on the other hand, are mostly steady. So we've got salaries, services, office rents, things that don't tend to move in short term -- in a short-term manner. So our margins are a lot less exposed to inflation pressures, simply because we're not exposed directly to operating and capital costs. This next section, I'll talk a little bit about our portfolio. And you could see on this slide, we have a global portfolio, but it is weighted towards lower-risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions. On the right-hand side, the assets that are called out are those what we call our principal properties. They're the larger portfolio assets that do provide the bulk of our revenue. Now we are spread across the globe. We have exposure to established mining camps, and about 50% of our revenue comes from Nevada, British Columbia and Western Australia. We have significant exposure to early-stage projects in all of these regions. Historical mining areas typically have excellent prospectivity. They have supportive regulatory environments, and they're also a good place to find people with expertise who actually understand how to work in mines and how to maximize potential of mines. There's a saying that the best place to find a mine is near a mine, and we're very well situated to be able to capture additional upside in some of the assets where we think there is exploration potential. Now our portfolio as well is quite well diversified, and that provides stability to our cash flows. Our operators are best-in-class. We have many large well-capitalized and experienced counterparties who operate the assets where we have interest. We have 40 mines in our portfolio that produce revenue today, and that portfolio breadth compares well to any base or precious metals-producing company that you can look at. Our underlying assets are about 50% gold assets and then about 50% would be gold, copper or base metals. And our largest country exposures are to Canada, U.S.A., Dominican Republic and Chile. All of those are mining-friendly jurisdictions. So our portfolio diversification really reduces our exposure to single assets operator and jurisdictional risk. So we're very comfortable with our diversification. Our portfolio also -- it spans the various stages of mining project development. We have 135 assets that are not producing today. They're in various stages of exploration, evaluation and development, and we would expect the potential for organic growth within the portfolio as assets move from the left-hand side of the slide to the right-hand side and actually into production. We've got a couple of very good examples that have started producing recently, King of the Hills and Bellevue. Both of those are Australian royalty interests. Both of those have been in the portfolio for well over a decade and only recently started producing revenue to our accounts. So there is organic growth from within the portfolio, and we're very pleased to see some of that surface, especially in this gold price environment. Now to continue on the theme of organic growth. This slide shows some of the key catalysts that we say within the portfolio for various assets. At the top of the slide in the light blue color, we've got potential for mine life extensions and production increases in several assets that are producing today and have produced for a long time. One category down, in the gold color, we've actually got growing revenue from development assets that very, very recently started to contribute revenue to us. So we've got Mara Rosa and Côté Gold. Both of those produced their first gold in the first quarter of this year. At Goldrush in Cortez, there's a ramp-up of the asset that's going from 130,000 ounces this year to 400,000 ounces by 2028. Manh Choh in Alaska poured the first gold in July of this year, and we're expecting to see first gold from the Back River project in the first half of next year. And then further down the track, we expect to see the Great Bear projects move into production sometime towards the end of this decade. All of the growth shown on this slide is free. It's free optionality to our shareholders. It's all fully funded. We do not need to pay any further to get exposure to this growth. Now organic growth is obviously good. We're very happy to see it within the portfolio, but we don't rely on it. We're always looking to add to our portfolio opportunistically, and we're always in the market looking for new opportunities. And this slide shows what we've done since 2021. We deployed $1.2 billion on 7 transactions on 6 assets, and all of these are -- they provide gold exposure to assets with upside potential in safe jurisdictions. We funded all of these with cash on hand and a revolving credit facility. So we haven't issued any shares, and our shareholders have not been diluted at all as we've added these assets to the portfolio. And this slide shows a little bit of detail, but -- and I'll walk through it quickly, just talking about what has happened at some of these assets we've added to the portfolio. And at Cortez in Nevada, we own several royalty interests there now. We've always had a royalty interest. That's where Royal Gold started. But we added to that position in 2022, and now we have exposure to the entire complex. This is a world-class gold complex, very mining-friendly jurisdiction. It's in Nevada. It' operated by Barrick and Newmont, 2 of the biggest companies in our sector, and there's a tremendous amount of potential here. Barrick did an Investor Day last week and talked about upsides at Goldrush, Fourmile, Cortez Hills Underground, the Robertson project, the Swift project. All of this is within the Cortez Complex. So we're very pleased to see that potential unfolding. We have Red Chris. We have a royalty there in Northern British Columbia. Newmont is the new owner of that asset after the acquisition of Newcrest, and there's a plan underway to convert the asset from a relatively small bit to the large bulk tonnage underground operation. Current mine life is expected to be north of 36 years, and so we're very pleased to see that. There's exploration potential as well that Newmont has been continuing to uncover, and we're expecting to see some good news when they're ready to put out some updates on the project. At Xavantina in Brazil, Ero Copper, the operator there, has done a very good job of adding to the asset through exploration success. They're now targeting sustained gold production of 60,000 ounces a year. When we got into the asset in the first instance, it was well below 40,000 ounces a year. That's grown significantly since we got involved. The Côté project in Northern Ontario is in its commissioning stage. It's ramping up now. For the first gold in March, they're expecting to be at 90% of throughput by the end of this year. The Great Bear project in Ontario, Kinross has released a preliminary economic assessment, 6.6 million ounces of resources so far. They're expecting at least 500,000 ounces a year of production for the first 8 years of production, at least a 12-year mine life. They're also doing a lot of explorations to try and add resources and extend that mine life before they actually start committing to what will be the life of mine plan. And then finally, the Back River project in Nunavut. We acquired some additional royalties on this project in the middle of this year. We now have an approximate 3.3% gross smelter return royalty exposure to this asset. The first couple of years, we'll see the royalty rate ramp up. But once they're at full production and once a couple of thresholds have been met, we should be able to enjoy a 3.3% gross smelter return royalty on any production from that asset. So there's a consistent theme with all of these assets, and it's really consistency around strategy. They're all precious metals assets, and they all provide further exposure in production and exploration upside. I'm going to end on this slide talking about valuation. So we are trading at pretty historically attractive multiples if you look back 10 years, which I've shown on this slide, price to NAV, price to cash flow. Our business is performing very well. We've got very strong cash flow. We've been very disciplined with our allocation of capital. We have good organic growth from within the portfolio. However, it doesn't feel like the share price is really factoring in the strong gold price outlook. And in fact, if you look at our price-to-cash flow multiple, we're actually trading at the bottom half of our peer group. And I think that's because the value of the long-life assets and the optionality within the portfolio is not recognized by the market widely. It also feels like the market is just generally not pricing in a higher long-term gold price. And with the gold price being where it is, we're generating significant cash flow, and you can look at our last quarter results for that. I don't think the market's really priced that in for the longer term. So with that, Noella, I've come to the end. Hopefully, I've given a good overview of Royal Gold. And we certainly believe we're very well positioned today. Our record is strong. Our business has been performing very well. We've got high-quality assets and a well-diversified portfolio that has organic growth. We've got very strong balance sheet. We've got good access to liquidity for the business development environment today, and we're trading at a pretty attractive valuation. So with that, I've come to the end of the formal portion of the presentation. I'll turn it back to you for Q&A.

Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. We will now begin the Q&A. Your first question is, what is the longest time line to revenue generation that Royal Gold would allow for in a new -- for a new transaction?

We don't have a -- there's not one specific number that I'd be able to give you for that answer. I think when we look at every opportunity, it's really based on quality of the opportunity. We think about it in terms of 3 Ps: there's people, place and projects. And the -- so people is the operator, place is the jurisdiction and the project is the fundamental quality of the asset. We typically like to invest in things that will return cash to us fairly quickly. So we don't like to have long-dated assets in the portfolio. But depending on the quality of the asset, we will do that. And Great Bear is a good example. As I mentioned, Great Bear is not expected to start producing until the -- towards the end of this decade, but we saw a very attractive opportunity to acquire royalty on that asset. And we did that a couple of years ago, knowing that it will be several years to production. We think in the case of Great Bear, that it's going to be a very, very good asset, and we think it's worth the wait. And we wanted to get in early because the opportunity presented itself. If we hadn't acted when we did, then maybe the opportunity wouldn't be there. But that's a more unusual circumstance for us because we typically like to be able to invest in things that will start returning cash to us fairly quickly. But it does depend on the opportunity.

Thank you for elaborating on that, Alistair. Your next question is, what were the main factors that contributed to the 40% increase in revenues over Q3 2024, gold prices?

Gold price is a big part of it. We also had some new production from other assets that are brand new. So we have Manh Choh in Alaska. It started -- we recognized revenue in the third quarter of this year from that. We also recognized revenue from Côté Gold. So there are a lot of moving parts in the portfolio. We have 40 producing assets, some produce better results than others compared to last year. And we have those new assets as well. The gold price, obviously, was much stronger as well. So that was a big part of the increase in revenues, but it was a combination of those 2.

Thank you, Alistair. The next question is, given the increasing gold price throughout the year, are investors still better off investing in a royalty and streaming company? Or is the exposure to higher gold prices better with gold equities?

I mean that's a call that you have to make. I -- think obviously, I'm quite biased, and I'll give you my thinking. Our business and the way that we're structured, we will -- if the gold price rises, you'll see those -- you'll see that increase in the gold price and increase in margin in our bottom line. With a producing company, what you've often seen is that gold prices will rise, but then you'll have -- there'll be a commodity -- a rising commodity price environment where the input costs for those operations that they operate also rise, and you may not see margin expansion with gold price. And that's what happened in the 2009 through 2011 period, the gold price did very, very well. And operators they were trying to improve production and they started mining lower-grade but higher-cost material, and so they didn't actually see margin expansion. And that's what I think a lot of shareholders are disappointed with. Us, on the other hand, every dollar that's added to the revenue side, it is pure margin to us because our G&A costs tend not to move, as I said in the presentation of -- things like: salaries. We don't adjust our salaries on a frequent basis. It's once a year; office rents, if we have 10-year leases, they're well-defined costs for a long period of time; things like consulting services and accounting fees and things like that are -- they tend to be negotiated, and we have contracts over long periods of time. So we don't have inflationary pressures impacting our margins. So if the gold price rises, the margin expansion occurs in our business, whereas it may not occur in the operators.

Thank you for your insight on that. The next question is, a viewer said, sounds like Khoemacau mining operations are moving upward and have a positive outlook for the next 2 years. What is the production increase due to mainly?

So the Khoemacau asset is -- it's an underground asset that's being mined top down, and the grade increases as the orebody gets deeper. So in the first few years of operations, they always expected there to be lower grade, and obviously, that means lower metal production. But as they get deeper, then it starts to increase. And so as the grade increases -- the throughput doesn't change. They're still mining the same number of tons. But the -- as grade increases, then that just means that more metal is produced. So 2024 was always planned to be a lower year of production at Khoemacau, and we expect to see that reverse in the next couple of years.

Thank you, Alistair, for your response. The next question is, are you forecasting 2025 to have overinflated values and bids for new opportunities?

I think whenever you see the gold price do very, very well. Any seller of an asset that's got gold in it will always be looking to maximize their value. So right now, we've got this interesting position or interesting situation where the spot gold price is significantly higher than the consensus gold price. And so there is a little bit of a value disconnect between what we as a buyer and somebody as a seller may want to see. I think it's just a factor in our business. We just need to be careful, and we just need to make sure that we don't invest and pay top dollar at the top of the market for things. So it's a judgment call. We look at assets in many different ways from many different perspectives, and we're always trying to make sure that we invest in assets that've got long-term potential and are low enough down on the cost curve that if things did start to -- if metal prices did start to reverse, those assets will not be affected and our returns will not be materially affected as well. So it's a judgment call. I think in a frothy environment, yes, you can expect there to be a lot more of a fulsome discussion with the counterparty on valuation, but it's still an environment where we think we can get things done.

Thank you, Alistair. The next question is, do you expect to maintain the revenue split having at least 75% from gold?

Yes. I think looking forward, our portfolio is obviously very gold-heavy, and it's something that we expect based on the investments we've made and what is coming on. That will remain relatively consistent over time. But we're not averse to moving that a little bit if we see the right opportunities. We're not out looking to diversify our revenue. We think that having 75-plus percent gold in our revenue stream is a bit of a differentiator for us, and so we're not actively looking to diversify. But if we see very good opportunities in metals that we understand, and that's the key. So things like copper, for example, we've already got copper in our portfolio. If we see good opportunity come across our desks, we'll look at it. But if we have gold investments that could occur at the same time, we'll probably be more biased towards gold investments.

Thank you, Alistair, for your insight. The next question is, did most or all of the company's analysts raised their price targets after the Q3 results?

We had 2 analysts raised price targets on us. We had one that was a relatively minor $4 increase, and then we had another one that was about $22. So we didn't see a lot of movement. I think a lot of analysts have set their expectations for the year. And then perhaps when 2025 starts, we'll see what -- see if there's any change there. As they roll their commodity price forecast forward, then perhaps it'll be -- when we get into 2025, maybe they'll start thinking that the gold price will be higher again. We may see some movements on price targets, but we haven't seen a wholesale revision of price targets recently.

Thank you, Alistair. The next question is, any comments on meeting 2024 guidance?

Only what we said in our Q3 conference call a couple of weeks ago, and I'd encourage you to just have look at that. What we did say is that we expect to meet our -- be within our 2024 guidance ranges for all metals, except for silver. Silver is -- we're expecting to be below the low end of guidance there, not simply because of one single issue at PV in the Dominican Republic, the silver recovery. But everything else, we're expecting to be within the guidance ranges.

Thank you for that response, Alistair. The next question is, what is the expected revenue to be generated from the Manh Choh and Côté Gold agreements in 2025?

I can't give you those numbers off the top of my head because I don't know them. Manh Choh in the last quarter was $7 million to our accounts. So that was a very positive number. I don't know if it's fair to multiply that by 4 and expect that to be for the full year because we haven't seen the mine plan for Manh Choh. And I don't know what Côté will be because it is in the ramp-up phases. Right now, it's still ramping up and, once again, into 2025. Hopefully, it'll all hit steady state, and we'll be a little bit more predictable.

Thank you for your insight on that, nonetheless. The next question is, can you estimate the production profile until the end of the decade?

We don't give long-term guidance, and it's a decision we make because we don't control the assets where we invest. We're a taker of the revenue that they provide. And we have our own internal forecast, but we don't put anything out into the market simply because a lot of things do change from year-to-year. And in some cases, we don't have good information on some of the assets where we may have historic royalty interests. So we don't give long-term guidance. I think if you're looking to answer that question, you should find a research analyst who does cover us and give them a call and ask them what their thoughts are for their projections.

Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Next is, do you think gold can make its way higher if the U.S. dollar remains strong?

I think so. I think there are a lot of things that are tailwinds to the gold price today. I think central bank buying has been something that did surprise the gold market, and that has continued. And that is for a couple of reasons. I think they're political reasons, and they're also probably U.S. dollar valuation reasons as well. Central banks around the world are looking to diversify some of their U.S. dollar holdings, and gold is a unique asset class. Gold is a currency. So you've seen that provide a very stable floor to the gold price. So I think yes. I think the potential for the gold price is good in the medium to long term.

Thank you, Alistair. Next question is, which development projects will be coming online in 2025?

So the biggest one would be Back River, and that's in the -- in Nunavut. I talked about that during the presentation. We also have a few other things that -- they aren't development projects, but they're already producing assets where we're expecting to see some growth. Penasquito is a very well-established large asset in Mexico. Newmont is the operator there. They've talked about higher gold grades in the current quarter that we're in now, but then also into 2025. So we're expecting that to provide some upside. Barrick, last week, talked about continued expansion of the Goldrush project as they ramp up. They also talked about PV. The ramp-up of the expansion there is going to continue through 2025. So there are a number of things in the portfolio that they may not be development projects. They may not be new sources of revenue for us, but they may provide more revenue to us in 2025 than in 2024.

Thank you, Alistair, for your response. The next question is, do you expect any material changes to the investment landscape for mining in Botswana?

I don't think so at the moment. Botswana is a -- mining is a big part of the Botswana economy. So I think there will be probably more of a push. The last government of Botswana did have an objective, a strategic objective to try and diversify away from diamonds and more into copper. And so that was a big push. The Khoemacau asset was put into production, and that was -- received a lot of government support. With the new government, I think it's a little bit early to say what their plans will be, but I think they'll probably continue on the same path. We certainly haven't seen any signs that I'm aware of that would indicate that there's any kind of a pullback on government will to continue to support the mining business.

Thank you, Alistair. We're coming up to your last 2 questions. The first one is, have higher interest rates increased demand for miners for your financing options?

Interest rates are a factor, for sure. I think what we find is when interest rates are higher than that. Obviously, it's a competing source of capital. That's more expensive. And so people look at our product as being a more effective and lower cost of capital than debt. That said, a lot of the parties that we talked to today, they're developers, so they probably wouldn't have access to debt anyway. So -- or if they do have access to debt, it's going to be very expensive that it'll come from a specialty lender. Interest rates are important factor in our business, but we don't see a big impact right now at the level that interest rates are at. So it's -- we feel pretty competitive with any debt that anybody could raise. But then obviously, as I said, many of those companies we've talked to wouldn't be able to raise debt in a reasonable way, reasonable cost anyway.

Thank you for clarifying that. And your last question for today is, a viewer says another annual raise in the dividend is outstanding. Is there any other company in this sector that makes a similar claim?

No. We are the only one. And as I said in the presentation, we're the only company -- the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that is absolutely unique to Royal Gold, that record, and it's a very long-standing record. It's a big part of the way that we think about our business. Raising the dividend every year is something we want to continue doing well into the future. So we're very measured on our dividend. We like to do -- we like to raise it. I think a lot of shareholders don't necessarily buy us for yield, but what they do like is the consistency. And they like to see that we think about shareholders as part of our capital allocation decision-making. So it's done very well for us, and it is something that I think our shareholders appreciate. So we intend to continue doing the same thing every year.

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

Well, thanks very much, everybody, appreciate it. I know it's a holiday week. So I will say goodbye and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving, and hope to talk to you soon. Thanks.

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