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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to 2020 Four's Gold Forum Americas. This is the 36th year in succession. We produce these events through every cycle and we're pleased to do so. And it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the first keynote session for this year's event and introduce Joe Caon. Very well known to most of us surely. a senior representative from the World Gold Council and Joe's gonna take us through some of the gold and bullion market outlook and let us know what we can look forward to in terms of the price and demand and supply expectations. Joe over to you. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, everybody and thanks for, for joining us. As Tim has said, I've got 25 minutes. I'm gonna go through quite a bit of content and what I'd like to start with is just laying out a little bit of the agenda. So I've been with the council for about eight years and I have to be honest with you, it's actually been a pretty exciting eight years to be focusing in on the gold market. What I'll do is I'll take you through who we are in terms of the World Goal Council. Just to make sure you have a picture of that talk about what's happened in the market so far into 2024 you're talking about record prices. It's almost getting a little bit,, uncomfortable because every time we turn around, we hit a new one talk a little bit about the outlook for the rest of the year and into 2025. and then talk for just a few minutes about some of the key industry initiatives that we're working on as an organization, but not only us but the industry in general because I think those are some really important key items that you're gonna need to get your head around. And you can actually start weaving some of this content into your questions as you meet with these companies today because they'll be the factors that will actually change the gold market for the better and actually continue to put it as a mainstream market for investment. So simply put the world Gold Council is a membership organization. We have about 34 member firms. These are the largest gold mining companies in the world. We actually play a key role in terms of making sure that gold is understood as a key asset, a strategic asset and its accessibility and its sustainability is done in a responsible and a very scalable way with the right kind of conditions to it. And the fact that we bring data insights and research to the market helps us get that done in a very simple sense. We are your source of information around what's happening with demand, what's happening with supply, what's happening with the asset and how to understand it, analyze it and weave it into. However you would like to consume it, whether it's in the form of an investment, a true consumable like jewelry or even in the form of technology. So our information is available, it's free. We would encourage everybody to get it if you're not getting it. And ultimately, it helps you understand how to analyze and predict what's going to play out in the gold market. It's key for us to start with some very key basic functions and f and features around the gold market reminding everyone that it is a global market. 71% of it demand is consumed in the emerging markets. You can see how it's been broken down there and that the drivers of gold are not just tactical or short term, but they're strategic in nature. And this is the simple framing that we spend a lot of time talking with our investors around understanding how to analyze gold. On the left side of the slide, you'll see the strategic long term impact. That's the area where we spend most of the time educating investors, economic expansion, wealth creation is when people spend and save and actually, it is supporting the gold price on the long term when market risk and uncertainty plays out again, it is when people gravitate strategically to keep allocations of gold in their portfolios or they save, that's it simply put on the right side of the slide. You'll see that the tactical drivers opportunity costs. That's something we've been facing a lot of in the US in the western markets over the last two years. and then ultimately momentum, we've seen that over the last couple of weeks in the price move. So if you keep this in mind, understanding that gold's global, you'll understand how to analyze gold and be able to look at it going forward. So talking about what's played out, we thought we had a fantastic year in 2023 in terms of being one of the best performing assets with a return of near 15% for gold. Only to be no pun intended but trumped by 2024 so far where we are outperforming just about everything around the globe in terms of an asset class performance. Lots of questions around whether or not this is speculative flows or this is a sustainable level. And quite honestly, as I mentioned, as we continue to hit these record highs, it almost gets a little bit embarrassing because this slide every day we update it, we hit another, another record level, gold's hitting record level prices across the globe. But there are some very key and important fundamentals as to why and why we think it's going to be a sustained level of support and the level of gold will continue to grow into 2025. And ultimately the price performance and those targets you're hearing of 2700 or 3000, all very realistic. But you can see no matter where you're looking currencies around the globe, gold as an asset performing exceptional and the returns are record setting. It's basically because of this dynamic and this is fundamentally key to understanding gold. It actually has a dual nature to it. We talked about strategic drivers, economic expansion and market risk and uncertainty. That's when things are going well and people are spending and when things aren't going so well and they're saving. And if you look at how the breakdown of the demand looks, we do a very nice job of keeping it simply organized for you. Jewelry, technology, investment and central banks. It's those four basic categories where you will understand where the demand is the behavior in different economic conditions. And what's interesting about what we're seeing as of late is investment continues to show strong growth as the central bank demand and jewelry for the first time since I've been with the council has dropped below 40% of the demand. Historically, jewelry has been the largest area of gold consumption, a true consumable asset. But in emerging markets like China and India where it's been substantial less. So it's no longer playing as key a role, but it's still a major role in terms of the overall level of consumption. We break this down on a quarterly basis for you in terms of the overall demand trends. And we would encourage you to take a look at what we've got in terms of our, our analysis and so forth. But I'm going to hit a few highlights here while I've got the time you get a lot of publicity around the central bank's buying 6% up for the first half of the year into 2024. You've got OTC demand growing. That is basically physical assets, physical gold, large bars, kilo bars, et cetera being bought in the form of investment and savings mainly in the Asian markets. You hear a lot about ETF flows being negative and out. We're gonna unpack that in a minute on a couple of slides forward into the presentation and bar and coin demand being mixed Western markets, slowing Eastern markets still holding strong. Again, jewelry down 19% consistent with what I was just talking to. We'll talk about that in a minute as well. And a little bit of a bright spot with technology. But again, this all is all the information that's available on our site and you can unpack that. I think I've gone a little bit too quickly and I want to start by talking a little bit about probably the the item that's gotten the most publicity in the market and that is what the central banks have been doing. We've seen record flows in 2022 near record flows in 2023 and actually first half of 2024 again, record flows. These are emerging market. Central banks that are making a conscious decision to allocate an increased level of their reserve portfolios to gold. On their mind is the fact that for the next five years and this has been confirmed by our survey results that they see less interest in holding us dollars in their reserves and the euro. Now I'm not standing here telling you that they're going to deol the globe. They're less dependent on the dollar and dollar based assets. And that's what's on their mind and the concern that they have the debt levels in the US, the ability to sustain a strong dollar. It's on their mind. They've signaled to us they will reduce their dollar exposure, their Euro exposure in the report. They're looking also at their own homegrown concerns around inflation and risks that they have on the home front. And actually they find that gold serves an excellent portfolio. Diversifer on the home front inflation and their own currency concerns 62% of the 70 firms that we've surveyed say that they've been active in gold in the next five in the last five years. And that number is higher for those that will be active in the coming months. And here are the key factors that they've identified the long term store of value and gold's ability to hold its value in an inflationary environment is number one on the list. Historically, it used to be the historical performance of gold and its role in history in their portfolio that's dropped in terms of the overall significance. They're really looking at conditions of investment as the driving factor, the need for liquidity, no credit risk. And ultimately having that diversification in their portfolio, these conditions continue to exist and these conditions will continue to be a strong supporter for emerging market, central banks to be at the front of the demand profile for gold into 2025. But the other dynamic that's actually been quite interesting that hasn't got as much publicity is the emergence of an Eastern investor community. Ultimately, what we've seen is that investors in Asia, China, India, Japan, in particular, all buying more gold in their investment portfolios, lowering their allocation or their interest in jewelry and increasing it in the investment landscape. You can see it in terms of the flows that we've seen in ETF S. It was the bright spot that gets a lot less attention than the Western markets 3 billion in year to date. You can see it in terms of the increased level of OTC flows where there's been significant increase in physical ownership of gold in Asia. And you can also see it in terms of strong support for bars and coins. Here are the bars and coin numbers. You can see that Asia is actually a dominant number. In terms of the chart. You can see the large dark blue line on the chart confirming that the Eastern markets are definitely taking up the slack where the where the Western markets have waned in terms of their demand. But things are starting to shift. We've all been waiting for this inevitable rate cut to come in the Western markets. The fact that there has been monetary policy against the interest in increasing your allocation as a Western investor in the West that's starting to change and it's likely to start as early as this week with the rate cut that's impending from the fed as early as Wednesday of this week. So we're starting to see the investment flows come back to the market from the Western investor. Simply put the opportunity. Cost of holding gold is going to increase the opportunity to hold away from us. Just cash deposits of 5% less than compelling story, real rates declining the investors on the East still active. But the Western investor in the sentiment coming back to the market, we talked a bit about jewelry just very early on in the presentation, not a big surprise consumer spending for a consumable like jewelry when the markets are at these high levels. We're not surprised to see that these people are are backing off in the demand dropping, particularly in China, which the drop that we've seen year to date is pretty substantial. Considering the first two months of the year were strong for China demand. Expect to see this number either flatten out or and continued with a negative trajectory. mine production for 2024 on pace to be record setting, which is exciting and very very promising for the mining community. First half of the year was a record setting number and recycling as well. With the higher levels of prices, we see the recycling levels increase quite substantially. So what does it all mean for the next six months into 2025? Here's how we would like you to organize your thinking about what the risks are and how to think about what's going to impact the price of gold going forward. Think about three categories. First is the political climate. We all know that there's a big election taking place in the US. We all know that debt and diversification is a concern for people worldwide but also the unknown unknowns. When it comes to the political climate, you should expect that those factors to have a short term, minimal impact on the price of gold. But policies that develop from it will have a much more substantive impact on the price of gold. So after the US election, we had a piece that will tell you that there may be a knee jerk reaction to the price of gold but expect the price impact to be six months in when we see policies starting to develop. It also is an area to keep an eye on with respect to sanctions. and just, just global tensions in general around how nations are dealing with each other on debt and diversification. This is an area where we think not only at the US sovereign debt level, but also local debt levels are concerning these high rates have been very painful for a lot of companies and diversification. to add gold to a portfolio, holding bonds has been a pretty substantial move that we've seen many investors make. But ultimately keeping an eye on that risk in the ecosystem is pretty key. And then of course, last the unknown unknowns, these are political events or geopolitical events or conflicts or frightening, you know, frightening moments in the market where things flare up and we have no ability to really understand how they could have impact. We have three examples that we usually talk to. One is the Hamas invasion of, of Israel which basically with that and Gaza, I I should say with that and with the Russian Ukraine conflict and the banking crisis all had moments where we had to pop in the gold price. So the unknown unknowns could be a short term catalyst for for that. what we like to highlight right now is that market consensus was focused on kind of flat lining for the remainder of the year. But with the rate decline, the rate cuts coming from the fed, we're revising this and we actually see a very strong environment for gold. Despite the headwinds that we've had for the last 2 to 3 years, the price looks pretty well supported and strong. Going into the second half of the year, the rate environment will bring back Western investors and what we've seen to date right now has been a lot of speculation that rate cuts will improve the price, the flows from the western investors, the real strategic allocations are still to come. So expect to see those numbers continuing to increase. So it's moving in the right direction but that support will be there even further. Again, we're waiting for this catalyst, the Western flows an area to highlight that's actually quite interesting as well is with jewelry. We thought we would see a decline not only in China and India, but tax changes and tariff changes in India has brought significant levels of increased demand on shore, which is exciting. So we're keeping an eye on how that's going to play out. And the downside will be anything that we haven't foreseen or can't judge from the central banking community that could be a potential impact on the price continuing to be strong or, or anything that could change the dynamic of that Eastern investor who's been right there with the central banks holding the price strong. This is our outlook in terms of where we see demand, we see investment demand coming in a little bit ahead of where where we were expecting it based on the fact that the rate cuts are impending. on the supply side, we're seeing a stronger year, central banks. We still think it will be a number coming in below where we saw record levels in 2022 but still a very strong number. And then in terms of fabrication, probably a little bit worse than we expected based on the speed with which prices have been high. But think about the fact that investment will come on, strong central banks will still be there and supply will be strong for the mining community. I've only got about eight minutes left. So what I'm gonna do is quickly move through some of the significance and importance of gold. You know, we talk about gold and actually a colleague of mine brought up this example, which I thought was quite interesting and it's actually been brought up in the context of the work that we're doing around a number of initiatives, including how we should be thinking about some of the small scale mining or maybe some of the artisanal mining. And some of the challenges that go along with that, you know, most recently we introduced the London Principles where we're working with central banks around the globe, particularly the emerging market, central banks to see if we can expand a program lay out guidelines in a rule based environment for them to work with local artisanal mines to take the offtake. It's been a program that's been up and running in places like the Philippines and we're actually signed right now with, I think it's five firms that five central banks that have signed up and eight will be signed by the end of the year. It's a really exciting opportunity. But when we talk to them, we speak about it in the context of gold and the gold market being a bit like a river. It's part of the natural world that we all live in and it's not gonna go away. It can be both a good thing and a bad thing. And if you actually start to think about it, it can't be stopped. So the gold market is here to stay whether you like it or you don't. So you can either work with it to optimize it or you can let it work against you. And everybody knows if you let a river run wild and it's unharnessed, it basically can really be quite damaging. But we're working with not only our member firms but the LB MA on a number of initiatives and we're looking to bring the best that you can get from a river. We talk about it and we think about everything that we invest in in terms of our initiatives around three kind of key areas of focus, the financial significance of inclusion and inclusion of gold. The fact that it's actually creating national wealth, it's actually a form of money and form of savings and ultimately a role in society where wealth can be transferred amongst different generations of families. The idea of technology increasing and overall gold consumption being stronger in that space is exciting. The more modern technologies, the supercomputer applications are actually putting higher levels of demand and technology for gold. And then ultimately, where we spend a lot of time giving consideration, which is really the job creation, the ecosystem creation that comes along with a gold company, a gold mine, a gold industry developing in different parts of the world, whether it's upstream re related activities in mining or transportation, et cetera being done the right way, creating an ecosystem. These are all really key factors in terms of why we support the gold market and downstream, the things that come along with the the jobs and creation that comes along with it. Now, just talking about the key industry initiatives, the ones I want to highlight are we're gonna start with gold bar integrity or gold 247. This is probably one of the more exciting initiatives that that you're going to hear about here at the event. And basically this is this is a journey where we're going to start to work with our member firms and the entire gold industry, the supply chain to put gold into a modern era. We're going to use Blockchain technology, not only the World Gold Council, but the LB MA have contracted with the firm exits to use this Blockchain technology to start to track and trace all sourced gold. And when you start to do that exercise and bring everything into a known trackable system, then you can start to improve the access, improve the trust and basically ultimately have a much more transparent ecosystem where you can actually get to a lot more people in a lot more of a scalable way. It's really exciting work. It's a very, very large long journey that we're gonna be on. But the idea is to basically bring gold out of the ground, codify it into the Blockchain and follow it all the way from source to ultimate consumption. And we would encourage you to speak to every company that you're working with here at the event and ask them, are you involved? What do you think of the initiative? How do you think it's going to go and ultimately get them excited about this? And we want that groundswell around it because when we start tracking and tracing all gold that's going to take what's in the light and put what's not in the light, whether it's more of the artisanal side of things a bit more at risk. And we want to bring it all into a transparent world where we can actually say the gold markets is as robust and is as healthy as trading and equity market in a developed nation. So it's a big initiative. Very exciting work. Again, the LB MA are on the same path with us working on bringing gold bar integrity and digitizing dematerialize gold into a digital world. Second, I want to just talk a little bit about some of the regulatory initiatives and one that I'll just highlight because it's actually pretty close to home for me. We're, we're not only staying in contact with different legislators here in, in the US around what's happening in the crypto space, in the, in the Blockchain space in the digital space. But we're, we're making sure that gold and, and gold as an asset is treated appropriately when they're thinking about legislation. But something that's actually really exciting, that's actually a bill in issue pending tax legislation next year is what we refer to as the Precious Metals Parity Act and in the US mutual funds or 40 Act funds have a very constrictive environment for investing in commodities. And what we've done is we've worked with Senator Cortez Masto from Nevada to sponsor a bill. It's got bipartisan support and ultimately, what it's going to do is it's going to move that basket of precious metals that's well defined by the IRS into eligible good income for mutual funds. So we're opening a new channel once the legislation gets approved, so that mutual funds can buy gold without the restrictive tax treatment that they may face if they were to buy it under the current environment. So it's a big tax initiative. It's just an example of something that we work on, that's specific. But again, opening a new channel, the 40 a mutual fund space is immense and could be hugely positively impacted by having the opportunity to buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. And the reason we've taken the precious metals category is it's already a defined term in the IRS code. And ultimately, it fits nicely into this new legislation. So with tax reform in 2025 Touchwood, we'll get that approved. And then last, we've been giving a hard and very close look at critical minerals really just an impossible task for us to fit the definition in the Western markets for gold as a critical mineral. But where we're spending our energy and engaging organizations like the Western Caucus Foundation is trying to understand how do we bring that significance of gold in society and its role in the ecosystem to be a more strategic initiative, a more strategically recognized mineral at the legislative level and that at a federal level and not be mistreated or hindered in any way in terms of permitting or other assets or other activities that are taking place at a legislative level. So it's on our list of things to watch. It's in an area where we're focused. But again, defining it as a critical mineral near impossible for us to do under the current definitions by the GS A and others. But ultimately, a key initiative for us to stay focused on getting the right legislative outcome. So I think I'll call it a wrap there, Tim. And I'll say thank you again for giving me the opportunity to address the audience and thanks for having us here at the event. Thanks so much. Do I really appreciate that and thank you so much to the World Gold Council for doing all that work on the tax treatments. It's.