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A-Mark Precious Metals

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September 17, 2024 at 1:20 PM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Steve Reiner

President of CFC

Steve Reiner is Executive Vice President for A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc.

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.

The first speaker today is Steve Rayner, President of Amar Precious Metals. Ears a bit differentiated in the sense that it operates in the downstream and is a fully integrated precious metals platform. So Steve I'll hand over to you, Ross. Thank you and I want to thank everyone for joining me this afternoon. Let me just say that Ross just promoted me. I'm actually an executive vice president with with, with Aar. But with that said, Aar is a vaguely integrated retailer of minted precious metals. So we focus on coins or and, and bars operate in three vaguely integrated channels, wholesale and minting direct to consumer and secure lending to give you a sense of relative scale for the fiscal year ended June 30th 2024 Aar sold 100 and 8 million ounces of silver, one and 1.8 million ounces of gold and inclusive of a $16.7 million remeasuring gain associated with an M and a transaction. AAR generated IBI of 100 and $7 million and eps of 284 share. Let me start with a short video to give you an overview of the company and then we'll talk about specific business units and our economic performance in a bit more detail, dedicated, innovative integrated, we are Amar a leading portfolio of brands serving the precious metals community. Since 1965 we are a vertically integrated Fortune 500 company with comprehensive services spanning the entire precious metals industry in today's volatile markets. Investors are increasingly drawn to the stability of precious metals as a store of value. This includes traditional mature event driven customers as well as digital first customers. Many of whom are beginning their investment journey. Amar is committed to serving the breadth of these customers as our market expands, our fully integrated end to end solution covers the full range of precious metals products and services including wholesale, direct to consumer, minting, logistics and storage and lending, creating the industry's most comprehensive platform. Our foundational capacity is rooted in the Amar wholesale business trusted by sovereign mints worldwide and an authorized purchaser for the US mint. Amar's long standing institutional relationships are in a league of their own, from collectors to metal Refiners, from financial institutions to manufacturers. Amar sells over 200 products worldwide. In addition to our wholesale business, we've assembled a broad and growing portfolio of leading precious metals consumer brands. Our direct to consumer category is led by Goldline and JM Bullion. Since its inception in 2011, JM Bullion transformed the precious metals ownership model by leveraging technology and cutting edge ecommerce tools to become one of the nation's premier online retailers of precious metals. JM Bullion offers physical and physically backed precious metals ownership via its mobile app and website. It also enables a two way market through its robust buyback program for investors. Looking for a more personalized service. Goldline provides exemplary precious metals account management for a true concierge experience. Amar's portfolio of complementary services supports all of these transactions resulting in a frictionless customer experience serving the transportation distribution and storage needs of the entire portfolio is Amar global logistics. Amar global logistics provides precious metals receiving storage and delivery services from its state of the art depository in Las Vegas and Dallas. AMG L's capabilities include the ability to pick pack and ship over 100,000 packages per month. A service that supports both Amar's direct to consumer brands and wholesale clients. Supporting our minting needs our silver Town and Sunshine mints combining old world craftsmanship with modern trailblazing technology is Silvertown Mint, a leading iso certified manufacturer of custom bullion products. We're also proud to own a stake in Sunshine Mint, an industry leader and North America's largest private mint as a result of this highly nimble diversified minting capacity. A mark can shift priorities with unprecedented speed as the market demands to help our commercial customers meet their liquidity needs. Our secured lending unit is collateral finance corporation with over $300 million in loans to date. CFC integrates seamlessly into the A R portfolio by offering collateralized lending to borrowers across the bullion and numismatic markets. The breadth and effectiveness of our integrated portfolio means that Amar excels where the customer is today. While our commitment to technology and exceptional customer service means we're ready for tomorrow. This combination of integration and innovation gives a mark, an enviable foundation for scale. As the precious metals market expands, we invite you to learn more about Amar, The industry's foremost precious metals professionals, proven experienced and ready for the future. Yeah. OK. So to briefly review again, three integrated business units, foundational business unit is wholesale trading and minting. This means that we sit between both sovereign mints like the US mint, the Royal Canadian mint and the royal mint in dealers that sell to consumers. And as mentioned in the video, Amar today owns the largest private mints in North America, either outright ownership or through significant private investment. Then starting in 2018, we moved into retail through a direct to consumer and a series of acquisitions beginning with gold line which is a foam based retailer and then 2021 we acquired the 78% of JM Bullion, the nation's largest retailer, precious metals that we did not own. At the time, we've been increasingly acquisitive over the last several years, acquiring several companies both in the United States significant stake, a 57% stake in Kansas Silver gold, a 25% stake in Atkinson the UK. And earlier in this year, we announced the acquisition of L PM in Hong Kong. And again, as mentioned in the video, we have a secured lending unit and currently have north of $100 million in loans outstanding to individuals that own precious metals. Let me walk you through the history of the business. Talk about each of those business units and explain how a Marc makes money. Let me focus your attention please. On this chart, it specifically towards the bottom and focus on gross profit margin. A Mark was founded in 1965 acquired by the current management team in 2005. It went public in 2015. We have a, we have a June 30th year end. So you're looking at fiscal year ends and if I could call your attention to gross profit and gross profit margin on the bottom of the page. Keeping in mind that a mar acquired its first retailer goal line in 2018 and then Jm Bullion in 2021. What you'll note is that from 2015 to about 2019, we generally earned about 50 to 70 basis points as what was primarily a wholesale trading business sitting between sovereign mints and dealers come 2009, 2020 21 forward. As a Mark has moved boldly into the direct to consumer space, we've significantly changed the economic model of the company where we've generate significantly greater earnings. As I mentioned, my opening for the year ended June 30th 2024. AAR earned 284 a share in EPS and 100 and $7 million in EB da up top. We've listed just a number of those acquisitions that span the range of consumer facing brands and mints, as mentioned in the video. AARC, not only partners with sovereign mints, but through a series of acquisitions, owns either owns outright or s through significant in coves the largest private mints in North America. We are a bit different, I think than most anyone else at this. At this conference. The majority of mining companies sit upstream extracting precious metals from the ground. A mark is a dominant company in the downstream space operating again in minting wholesale services and at the consumer, let me give you a sense of performance for the business as we talk about, you know, specificity around our consumers. So at the end of the day, a mark, if I could focus your attention, please, on the left, which is these numbers are through the nine months ended, March 31. A mark generating gross profit of $216 million and Eva do of 100 and $63 million. And if I can focus your attention to the right, you'll see our active customer accounts. that means customers who have purchased in the past year. So this is from our direct to consumer segment, 342,000 or 343,000 customers active within the past year. Jm Bullen again, which is our flagship brand in the US, founded in 2011 has north of 3 million customers in the aggregate with an average order value in our DTC segment through March 31 of close to $2400 a unit. So how does a mark make money effectively? We are the beneficiary of volatility in the marketplace for any of you who own precious metal or own bullion in the physical form or familiar with the purchase of precious metals in in physical form. You're going to be familiar with the concept called premium, essentially what you as a consumer pay over spot to buy precious metals. Well, those premiums will vary based on supply demand dynamics in the marketplace. When volatility kicks into the marketplace, when consumers feel that they have to own precious metals and increase their purchase activity for precious metals, that premium generally expands because at the end of the day, we're dealing with a minted manufactured product. So supply is relatively fixed and takes time to increase while demand can turn on instantaneously. So, a market at the end of the day is the beneficiary of volatility in the marketplace. We engage with clients through a series of of brands as I mentioned, silver gold bowl in Canada. This chart talks about zoning 47.4%. We actually now own 55% of the company after an Acquis after a small acquisition earlier this year, a whole series of specialty brands including Provident silver.com, buy gold and silver coins and bullion Max. And we own the pricing resources, Gold price.com and Silver price.com. And in fact, a mark just acquired earlier this year, the URL gold.com and I think you'll see some announcements regarding gold.com later this year or early next, let's talk about minting. So as mentioned, there are two types of mints in the marketplace, government or sovereign mints and private mints. As noted. Amar is a authorized distributor or authorized purchaser of the US mint and has a comparable relationship with every major consumer facing mint around the world. Our relationship with the US mint is over 35 years old. We historically received the largest allocation from the mint. So an average a market acquires and sells about a third of the silver bullion produced by the US mint. About 25% of the gold and products produced by the US. Men typically demand the highest premium in the market. And we have similar relationships again with the Royal Canadian mint, the royal mint, the Perth refinery, the, the RA M refinery. Then we have owned mints including Silvertown in in Indiana, in Winchester, Indiana and the Sunshine mint, which is a two facility company with facilities both in Cola, in Idaho and in Las Vegas, Nevada. To give you a sense of relative scale. The US mint produces on average about half a million ounces of bullion a week. A Mark's facility sunshine in Silvertown, depending upon market demand produced north of 3 million ounces of product a week. Those private mints give us a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. As noted on the on the slide. The first thing it does is allow us us to offer customized offerings. So only mints we can create unique product that we sell through our wholesale channel and our retail channel. And those products generally ge generally realize higher premiums in the marketplace. But the other thing that private mints do is they provide us an invaluable resource. When consumer demand kicks in, as I mentioned, we are the beneficiary of volatility. So when the bank currency crisis led by Silicon Valley bank kicks in or events happen between Russia and Ukraine or inflation is front and center in the news or the reddit silver squeeze happens and consumer demand for precious meals kicks in the private mints controlled by Amar allows our retail brands to basically stay in stock and have product when our retail competitors are struggling to identify product in terms of products that we sell. Our flagship site. JM Bullion sells over 1000 SKU S over 1000 individual units. Those items range from products again produced by both government mints and private mints. They come in a range of metals, the four core precious metals and they come in a range of different sizes, weights currencies and denominations a r global logistics. So as a consumer facing business, the ability to deliver products to customers on time as expected is critical to what we do. We have two facilities, one in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is currently being expanded and another in Dallas Texas and as noted in the video in a busy month, we will pick pack and ship over 100,000 packages from our facilities and deliver them to consumers across North America. It's essentially an ecommerce platform sitting in those two centers. That's an incredible resource. The facility in Las Vegas is located at at the airport, Harry Reid International Airport and actually sits opens up in the back to the tarmac and so it's located conveniently both to next to UPS and to fedex. The third business unit that Amar has is to secure lending arm. So we loan to individuals and the small institutions that own precious metals and want to create liquidity. We lend against three asset classes bullion where a loan, the value is typically up to 75%. We lend against New M Maddox which means rear or collectible coins and currency or alone. The value is up to about 65% and increasingly because like numismatics, they are graded, we've begun to lend against sports cards. LTV. S tend to be a little bit lower for that asset class just given the volatility of pricing. As we last reported, that's a,, the blown book currently sits a little bit north of 100 and $10 million. And that's a business that, which really connects deeply into our direct to consumer business. Again, just to summarize the profitability of the business, I'm going to focus your attention if I could lower right hand corner, 100 and $93 million of VBA da or 100 and $94 million in fiscal 22 $225 million in fiscal 23 the year just reported 100 and $7 million a little bit quieter in terms of consumer demand. So premiums were a little bit lower but still a pretty impressive number. Finally, I'm gonna just highlight our balance sheet here. The key theme for A R's balance sheet is number one, we have very deep and supportive bank relationships led by a multibank syndicate, led by C I BC. And number two, our balance sheet is highly liquid, meaning our liabilities are offset by corresponding li corresponding assets. And if we had to monetize that balance sheet, we could generally do so within a, a trading day or two and do so at essentially net break even maybe a little game, maybe a little bit lost. So my point is what looks like a rather complex balance sheet is a balance sheet which is again, very flexible and as we tend to think of it has little true operating leverage against it. Ok, I appreciate I appreciate your, your interest and happy to answer any questions you may have. Are there any questions from the room? Yes, sir. So again, we are the beneficiary. So the question is why are our fiscal 24 numbers lower than our fiscal 23 numbers at the end of the day? A mark is the beneficiary of consumer demand. Consumers in our world generally fall into two broad buckets. We have core accumulation customers meaning customers who buy precious metals on a regular basis and then we have customers who respond to volatility in the marketplace. What we may refer to as FOMO customers, let me talk about each group very quickly with regard to our accumulation customers. I want the the commodity environment, commodity price environment that we've been in for most of the past year of rising prices actually has caused our customer to pause or to slow their purchases as they wait to make sure that precious metals prices are going to stay at elevated levels. And in fact that these prices perhaps represent a new floor. So we've had a little bit of pushback from the consumer. The other thing that's happened is with prices being high given that A R makes a two way market in all our products. So we are a buyer from the marketplace. We've actually been buying back a fair number of of items from our consumer, particularly multigenerational products. So you may have folks who have inherited products from their parents or grandparents that's been coming into the marketplace. The other consumer I mentioned is a little bit more of a FOMO customer or one driven by risk and volatility. And while perhaps there's great angst in the marketplace, there hasn't really been an event at least here in North America since the bank currency crisis of about 15 months or so ago, that's really caused the consumer to feel that they have to have precious metals. So the demand environment was a little bit different. 24 1 last point which I should have mentioned earlier as a company, Amar is fully hedged at all times. So commodity prices have no direct impact upon us other than how the end consumer reacts to those prices. So again, given the rising prices of the last year, our consumers who generally are true believers in precious metals and feel they're a very important part of their financial portfolio, that consumer really is waiting to make sure that prices are going to remain where they are and then we'll react accordingly. Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you very interesting differentiated of


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