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Sandstorm Gold Royalties

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September 16, 2024 at 1:00 PM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Nolan Watson

Co-Founder, President & CEO

Since co-founding Sandstorm Gold in 2008, Nolan Watson has led the company’s transformation from a small startup into a diversified royalty company with a billion-dollar market capitalization. Prior to co-founding Sandstorm, Nolan was Chief Financial Officer of Silver Wheaton Corp. (now Wheaton Precious Metals Corp.) where he gained the experience that he needed to make Sandstorm a reality and a success. During his time there, Nolan developed the silver streaming business model and helped raise more than US$1 billion in debt and equity to fund the company’s growth.

Nolan is a Fellow of the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (Valedictorian). He holds the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst and received a Bachelor of Commerce degree, with honours, from the University of British Columbia.

Nolan’s professional and charitable achievements are not without their honours either. He was named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year, recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40, awarded CEO of the Year by Business in Vancouver, and received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 2014, Nolan was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is also the President of Nations Cry, a charity focused on education-based development in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

This is an automatically generated transcript. Denver Gold Group cannot accept responsibility for mistakes, errors, omissions, or any action taken in reliance thereon. Use of this transcript is governed by Denver Gold Group’s Terms of Use.

Up with all of the royalty and streaming companies and Nolan's gonna help us kick it off. We have decided on a fireside chat format, so I'll ask a lot of the questions, but I'll leave it to the audience as well. I'll survey the audience once in a while to get those questions. So Nolan, welcome to the Gold Form Americas. You get to kick it off. So I might ask a lot of the similar questions and you get to set the stage for everyone else. Sounds good. So maybe first off big picture Nolan, where do you see the company in about five or 10 years? Time? Yeah. No, it's a great question. based solely on the things the sandstorm has already bought and we were just in that last episode or speech, they're talking about growth cycles. And I think one of the points is buy things when nobody else cares about growth. And we did that based solely on the things that we already own and own the rights to our production is going to double over the next five years. So, in five years time we will be double the production. If we don't buy another single royalty or stream, I think that's a good place to be. I do think that there is going to be M and A in the streaming and royalty space. I do think that sandstorm is one of the transact companies. And if you and I were doing this here 10 years from now to answer your question, I think we will do this in 10 years from now. That would surprise me. So if I look at your your production profile, looking ahead, one of your key growth projects will be harmed in. And as we know due to some circumstances at SSR mining sandstorm now estimates a oneyear delay in terms of commercial production. Maybe could you provide us with any kind of update on harmed and some of the latest developments and how that could impact your long term growth or, or strategy? Yeah. So I think we're in a fortunate situation right now where sandstorm not only is our production maintainable for a long period of time, at that 150,000 ounce a year level, even if things like Hod Maan get delayed over the next five years. If all that happens is Greenstone ramps up. That's a mine that equinox is, is just built and is ramping up and Ivanhoe builds their plat reef mine. If only those two things happen, we have a large stream on on Plat Reef, then our production is going to be materially higher five years from now than it, than it is today. Even if things like Glencore doesn't build Mara and SSR is slow with Ho Mad and having said that Hoden was permitted, was supposed to be in production right now. And our guidance is that it should start construction sometime towards the end of next year. And that's still our best estimate based on what we know. Yeah, you, you talked about the, the indu industry, you touched on it a little bit earlier. But maybe for like the entire sort of business, how do you see, you know, sort of the competitive landscape evolving for royalty and streaming companies? Yeah, I mean, I, I've been in the business for 20 years now and I've seen various has been 20 years. It's been, yeah, it's been 20 years. And so I've seen every iteration of every part of the royalty and, and streaming cycle. I'm actually generally positive about the next phase that we're moving into. I think we're starting to see more and more capital discipline by the streaming and royalty companies. I think you're starting to see a lot more syndication amongst them. I mean, and I remember years ago, sands firm did a syndicated stream with Franco and at the time, Franco and Sandstorm were the only two companies willing to do syndication. But every single one I believe, I don't want to speak for them, but I'm going to of the, the six large stream and realty companies are willing to syndicate with each other. There's lots of conversations that go on. I think we're moving in a really positive direction as a, as an industry. Great. And you know, Nolan, we've talked about the last 20 years, we've also talked about, you know, getting on stage again in the next 10 years. So maybe in that context, you've always been focused in precious metals. Can you talk about your exposure or potential exposure to other metals, other commodities and how that could shape your future plans? Yeah, I think our future plans aren't really going to be changed by that. So basically, as we sit here today, we're 50 to 60% of our revenue is gold. Our second most significant revenue contributor is silver and copper and to a lesser extent to iron ore. But all of the five major growth projects that we already have and five mines that are coming online being a Greenstone flat reef, which we have a gold stream on Robertson, which Barrack is building. We've got a royalty on that then had modern as a gold stream. And then Mara from Glencore is a gold stream. So it's gold, gold, gold, gold and gold. So our gold revenue is going to go up to potentially as high as 85% just gold and with a bit of copper in our heart. And where would you want that to be? You know, you talk about that being 85%. Is that a good number to use or does that on one hand, it's good? On the other hand, does it give you an opportunity to branch off into other opportunities that as you talked about might not be as in love or in vogue today. But I think we did that with copper. So the copper things we bought, we bought when they were not in vogue. And I think copper is probably gonna run here and, and we're not gonna be buying copper things when that happens. I think what you're gonna see from us is just literally watching our assets that we already own get built. I mean, I, I've had a few meetings already here this morning and our investors want us to sit here and wait till our stocky rates because it's just multibillion dollar companies building big mines that we already have streamss on and they're just like, just don't screw it up. That's, that's my job. So you talk about rerate. So what do you think you need for the company to kind of rerate? Because even based on my C I BC estimates you do trade at a discount and so what needs to happen from now to, you know, potential re rating? Yeah. So I think there's, there's three specific things for that. If you look at the mid tiers. we used to trade at the highest multiple of the mid tiers. And then two years ago, we did over a billion dollars worth of acquisitions. We paid for those acquisitions by issuing equity right at around a time when everyone stopped carrying companies. So it was really hard to find buyers for that increment equity. And at the same time, we took the rest of it on, you know, $600 million of debt, all variable interest rates going into a once in a generation interest rate hiking cycle. And so the comments we would get was if I wanted to buy a streaming realty company, why would I pick the one that has too much debt was the comment we'd get. So our share price multiple compressed dramatically during that period of time. And I've been sitting on my hands and paying down debt ever since. And we've paid down debt in half. We've gone from $640 million. We should end the year around $350 million this year. And our cash flow is going up dramatically because gold prices are going up dramatically. And that debt is just sort of evaporating right now. And so the reason NATO and sandstorm have have kind of all gone away with the one exception of people who want clarity on when Homo is going to go into construction and we hope over the next year, we'll have that clarity So you, you took one of my questions here, I guess and talk about debt repayments. And so when do you, I guess to get even more clarity, when would you, when do you believe you can actually repay the debt? You did 32 or thir $32 million in quarterly payments last quarter, you're down to 383 million now net debt. where should we be in terms of 2025 and at all? Yeah, so our, our capital allocation priorities are debt repayments. Number one and then share buybacks as well. We've actually been buying back some of our shares. Recently, we think we're getting a high rate of return by being able to do that. And so I don't ever pick an exact date because I want the flexibility to choose between those two things. Having said that if just rough math of our debt ends the year $350 million our free cash flow is well over $100 million per year like after GN A after tax, after interest expense after dividends, just as like pure free cash flow. And that that number will be ramping up to over a quarter of a billion dollars per year after tax. Once those mines that I just talked about are built, we're just going to be a, just a fire hose of cash flow coming from us. And then,, you know, getting a bit more detail here. You talked about share buybacks, you talked about debt repayments. You talked about the rankings of the different you know places for capital allocation. How about and we also talked about acquisitions as well. So how would you rank them? Maybe put it all together, there's acquisitions for growth, dividend increases, share buybacks, debt repayments again, just wrapping it all together. How would you, how would you rank each of these? Yeah. The, the way I look at it right now is debt repayment. Number one, because debt repayment is not necessarily meaning you're not going to do deals. We have a $625 million revolving line of credit. We, we're only by the end of the year, like I said, we gonna have 350 drawings. So we have lots of room to do deals but every dollar that we pay down on that not only saves us interest, but it reloads our ability to do significant again, scale changing deals in the future. So debt repayment, maybe some share buybacks deals is not on our radar right now, but we're reloading our revolver so that we can do large deals and figure out our next leg of growth at some point in the future. But that's not today. I'll survey the the floor to see if there's any questions. Ok? I still got tons. So I guess we talked about some of the opportunities here, talk about, talked about growth. But what could be one key risk that's facing royalty and streaming the royalty and streaming business today? I, I think one of the great things about our industry is that it does take out a lot of the risks that the mining companies have. So I think that there are a lot fewer risks investing in any royalty and streaming company than there are anything else. I would say the two risks to royalty and streaming companies that you see out there are one I would say if you invest in things that are high cost and those things don't work out, you take write offs. I certainly have made that mistake long in the past and trying never to repeat it again. And then the second thing is being really aggressive on capital allocation during times and periods where cost of capital is low and readily available. So you end up doing low irr deals. I think those are the two risks in our industry. I think looking at, at the major streaming and realty companies in the mid tiers, they've all gotten, you know, much, much more intelligent on both of those two issues going forward. And so I don't see that as a risk the way it would have been over the last 10 years. Great. And Nolan, I know you and I just talked about specifically sandstorm gold and the discount of multiple and how you could potentially rerate that multiple for sandstorm gold. But if I were to take a step back in terms of the entire industry, in light of some of the events that have resulted in write downs at some of the other royalty and streaming companies in the past year. Do you still believe royalty and streaming companies deserve a premium multiple? You know, tell me yes, but I kind of want the reasoning behind it. You already know the answer to that. I ask the question. No. Yes, absolutely. I think if you, if you look through the cycle streaming and royalty companies over the long term, always outperform. They just do. It's a fundamental fact. If you think in my early years, I used to be the guy that would number crunch and, and value minds, you know, going back to my goal, Corp and Wheat and River Days. And if you think about valuing a mind the way people value minds, they literally just sit there on an Excel spreadsheet. They create the most likely scenario and you think they're answering the question, what is this mine going to do? They're not the Excel spreadsheet is telling you what theoretically could the mine do if nothing ever went wrong ever? And that's the valuation and, and we calculate it. Now from that in reality, things are always going wrong at mines, people blockade roads, there are strikes. There are political issues, there are environmental problems that happen and you get shut down for a week at a time, sometimes a month, at a time, sometimes for just one day during those periods of dislocation. A mine goes from a marginal money making operation to a massive money losing operation. If you were to actually take that same Excel spreadsheet and you were to model it out the way it's actually going to work out. Your N A would be a, a fraction of what that Excel model is telling you for a royalty company. We cannot, other than the upfront capital you've put at risk. Once you own a stream and realty, you can't lose money from it. You might have to write off the historical accounting number, but you are, you cannot lose money. So your NAV is pretty close to what the actual NAV is. Plus, then you get the expiration upside for free. So it, it fundamentally is a business model if managed intelligently and I believe it is in our, our industry managed intelligently, then it's gonna perform great. And it's a good thing you brought up Excel spreadsheets. And we also talked about, I think other than harm my dad, you talked about four other assets for the driver of growth on a go forward basis. I think one might be Greenstone. So Equinox announced first gold pour at Greenstone on May or in May 2024 production ramping up. based on the latest update, production of the mine has increased from 2.6000 ounces of gold to 19.8000 ounces in July. How do these numbers kind of compare to your initial spreadsheet? And you know, any kind of incremental return that you can talk to compared to your initial assessment of that investment. Yeah, I think the number of ounces that we had budgeted this year from Greenstone is a little higher than what we're actually going to get just because the the ramp up took a little while, but they the mine has now hit its stride. So we're starting to see a lot more ounces come in and, and that commissioning is, looks like it's going well from, from what we can see. And so from a sandstorm perspective, the gold price is higher today than it would have been had they given us ounces earlier. And so, you know, we're, we're doing well. We're happy to own that stream once it's fully up and running at their 400,000 ounces a year run rate. We'll be getting 10,000 gold stream ounces on that. So we'll be making $20 million a year of free cash flow just from that stream. I think Platt Reef is the other one that you kind of mentioned. Phase one concentrator is now completed construction of the second shafts about 60% complete potential for further expansion to increase processing to over 10 million tons per annum. What can we expect in terms of the potential increase to contribution to sandstorm? Yeah, so there's kind of three phases to that right now. In our guidance, we've only got the first two phases. So mine should be up and running and, and starting to give us goals kind of towards the end of next year. That's that's phase one, that really is only a couple of 1000 ounces a year. But by 2027 the phase two should be complete. They're fast tracking that as much as they can right now. But that's another 10,000 ounces a year to us. So at, at today's goal price again, that's another $20 million a year of free cash flow and that line is going to run for for decades. So that'll be another significant cash con contributor to us. A and Nolan, which were the other two as well that you have mentioned. Yeah, Barrack's building, gonna be building the Robertson mine. We've got a, a royalty on that. It's, it's not in our top 10 assets, but I think it's, you know, a good mine being built by a good operator and will be good cash flow for us. And then we talked about Ho Mo and the last one is Mara. So Glencore's number one copper development project which Gary Nagle, our CEO just started talking about on his quarterly calls this year that, that they are moving that asset forward. They're putting hundreds of millions of dollars of preconstruction capital towards it and have hundreds of employees at site and that mine's going forward. We have the option to acquire a stream on that. And we a we acquired that option back in the year 2015. The gold prices were $1200 an ounce and we priced that option under the A N A basis as if gold could theoretically go all the way up to $400 an ounce. So our $225 million option to acquire that gold stream is what it's worth a $1400 gold. So at 2500 or $2600 gold, we are so far the money on that option. It's, it's amazing once that mine is up and running, we should be cash flowing close to today's gold price is close to $40 million a year for 30 years. So it's, you know, just shy of $1.2 billion of, of cash and we have the ability to buy it for 200 million. And nola I know we've touched on a lot of different assets. But are there any other assets that you want to highlight, you know, some of the assets that investors today might not be as familiar with within your portfolio that you believe could bring your production that right now 75 to 80,000 ounces G OS in 2024. And you're forecasting 100 and 25,000 G Os in the next five years. Are there any assets in there that we should point out that investors might not be as familiar with today? I think one of the things that investors would be surprised at if they haven't looked at us in quite a while is the the quality and strength of the average mines underlying our portfolio. If you take a look at our portfolio and you analyze what is the quality of the mine underlying the stream and royalty, I think people would be surprised to realize that 50% of our assets are coming from mines that can produce their primary product in the lowest cost quartile. These are, these are big high quality mines operated by multibillion dollar companies at low cost and it's just a very diverse, very strong portfolio with mines that are high quality long life and lots of exploration upside. I know, I know a lot of the 2024 is now complete. We're now in September. We're not done yet and I guess other than the fact that gold prices will go higher. What is one event that investors should be excited about, about sandstorm gold during the remaining parts of 2024 interest rates? You know, we all of our debt is variable interest rate. And so we're, we're basically we pay sour plus a spread above sour based on our leverage ratio. And I want interest rates to come down because that, that debt is going to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper at its peak, we're paying about $45 million a year. Us in interest. I'm expecting that number to be 15 to 20 million next year and then around 10 million the year after that. So the debt is coming down fast and if the debt comes down while interest rates come down, it's sort of a double effect on interest rates. But to confirm, you're still gonna pay back that debt, we're paying back the debt. Great. Thank you, Nolan. Those are all the questions. I appreciate it. Thank you.


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