GROY Gold Royalty Corp.

AMEX
$3.11

Gold Royalty Corp. Q3 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Conference Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Gold Royalty Corp. Third Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Garofalo, Chair and CEO. Please go ahead.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in today's call to review our third quarter 2026 results. Please note, for those not currently on the webcast, a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the presentation page of our website. Some of the commentary on today's call will include forward-looking statements, and I would direct everyone to review slide two of the presentation, which includes important cautionary notes, All dollar values mentioned in today's call are expressed in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. Speaking alongside me this morning will be our President, John Griffith, Andrew Gubbels, Chief Financial Officer, and Jackie Przybylowski, Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability. We truly believe that we're in a very strong environment for gold, and especially for royalty companies today. The macroeconomic environment, while volatile in the short term, continues to be supportive of strong gold prices. Higher global government spending, deficits and debt, combined with rising costs and concerns about affordability, have the potential to further erode the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and other major global fiat currencies. The rising money supply has historically been strongly correlated to higher gold prices. and we expect this trend will push gold prices higher in 2027 and through the medium term. In this environment, we believe that gold remains well positioned as a store of value and is expected to be driven vastly higher from increased investor and central bank demand. Inflation will also have a meaningful effect on the capital operating costs of mine developers and operators. While we have already seen unit costs rise, we believe this will be increasingly topical in 2027 as inputs including sulfur, diesel, and other petroleum-derived products and labor continue to get more expensive and as hedges, pre-purchases, and contracts roll over. We want to emphasize that higher costs will continue to be fully borne by our operating partners. Operators who have enjoyed incredibly strong operating margins over the past few years will likely see these margins eroded somewhat, although we're still confident that the producing minds in our portfolio remain profitable enough to stay in operation and for operators to continue to invest in incremental optimization and improvement projects. This sets the stage for royalty companies to outperform, gold royalty included. All of our assets are NSR royalties. NSR royalties are revenues that are not impacted by mindset operating costs, nor do they have fixed or variable payments back to the operators. In other words, we have no exposure to operating costs or mine profitability. Our structure gives us unmitigated leverage to rising gold prices, and our high-quality and diversified asset portfolio means that we can offer this leverage at a lower risk as compared with higher-torque gold investment options. Turning to our results for the quarter. It might sometimes feel like a broken record, but we once again are pleased to report record quarterly results for the third quarter of 2026, including adjusted revenue of over $11 million and nearly 2,700 geos produced to our account in the quarter. Increases of over 40% and over 50% respectively from the second quarter of 2026. This is a tremendous result for us and really underscores how we have come through the inflection point and are well underway towards exciting growth over the next few quarters and years. We've truly hit the flywheel phase in our life cycle where we're not only free cash flow positive, but we're generating sufficient cash to build a comfortable cash balance to fund accretive future growth. And we're in a position to consider returning capital to shareholders. Andrew will go through our quarterly financial results in more detail in a few moments. We also continue to be very optimistic about our outlook on organic growth for the remainder of 2026, as Jackie will discuss shortly, and remain on track to meet, or even potentially to exceed, our previously disclosed full-year production guidance of 7,500 to 9,300 geos. John will also lead you through the steady progress we're making in business development. I'll now pass the call over to our CFO, Andrew Gubbels, to discuss the financial results for the quarter and the year to date.
Andrew Gubbels
Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Dave. As Dave mentioned, we're pleased to report new records for revenue in adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2026. Total revenue land agreement proceeds and interest were $11.5 million, translating to 2,689 geos in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $9 million, more than tripling from the $2.5 million in the comparable quarter in 2025 and up approximately 60% from Q2, 2026. It wasn't too long ago when Gold Royalty was burning cash to operate its business. Approximately two years ago, we pursued a strategy to add revenue-generating royalties and streams to the portfolio while introducing controls to identify and remove redundancies and reduce our cash operating costs. As a result, I'm pleased to say that we have more than tripled our trailing 12-month revenue while maintaining steady cash operating costs over the past eight quarters. This graph shows the trailing 12-month revenue in G&A at the end of each quarter since the beginning of 2024 rather than quarterly revenue at G&A to illustrate how the company has continued to build its revenue at these consistently stable operating costs. In an environment of higher fuel prices, declining grades, and escalating labor rates, The Royalty and Streaming business model is expected to look especially attractive as mine operators continue to be affected by these rising costs. Gold Royalty's cash operating margins has not only caught up to, but now outperforms its peer group. As the company's cash flows continue to grow at stable operating costs, we expect our margins to keep increasing over time. Our balance sheet also remains strong. We exit Q3 with approximately $21 million of cash and cash equivalents. That's up from $12 million at the start of the year. We also continue to have no debt and a fully undrawn $150 million credit facility. With a clean balance sheet, we now have the flexibility to freely execute our long-term strategy. Our preference continues to focus on accretive growth, and John will talk about our portfolio growth outlook shortly. Alongside our growth strategy, we continue to evaluate the optimal time to begin returning capital to shareholders. The capital return policy is actively being considered by our board of directors and will be communicated in due course. I'll now pass the call to John Griffith, to review our corporate development activities.
John Griffith
President
Thanks, Andrew. We have balance sheet and undrawn borrowing capacity to make meaningful acquisitions, potentially as large as 200 million and larger in partnership with Taurus under our cooperation agreement. Competition for larger transactions, especially with near-term cash flow prospects in good jurisdictions and with great operators, is negatively impacting implied returns. It is with this backdrop that we've remained disciplined in our pursuit of value enhancing accretive transactions. That is not to suggest the potential pipeline is not robust. We continue to pursue a significant number of exciting opportunities and we maintain a deep pipeline of potential transactions to drive growth beyond our already peer-leading organic growth. We continue to be active on smaller transactions as well, like the two acquisitions we completed in June and July and which we discussed on our August earnings call. In June, we acquired an additional 0.1875% NSR royalty on the REN project, operated by Barrick. and jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont under the Nevada Goldmine's joint venture of $6.25 million. And in July, we acquired two Nevada royalties in one transaction, a 2% NSR on the Sterling property operated by Anglo Gold Ashanti, located south of its Arthur project, previously known as Expanded Silicon, and a 0.5% NSR on portions of Granite Creek operated by IAT Gold. This Granite Creek Royalty covers portions of the Felix and Blue Bell Pits, neither of which are included in the proposed mining sequence over the initially envisaged eight and a half year mine life at the Granite Creek Open Pit as per the March 2025 NI43101 PEA study. but these deposits represent longer term optionality to us. I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight our royalty generator model, led in Nevada by our colleague, Jerry Boffman. We continue to be committed to this important part of our growth strategy. The Royalty Generator business continues to be profitable to us. It's low cost and brings in upfront revenues that are well in excess of the de minimis costs associated with staking and holding claims. Our adjusted revenues included $1.1 million in land agreement proceeds for the third quarter, or $1.9 million for the year to date, as compared with only $0.1 million Thank you very much. but it represents tremendous long-term optionality for our shareholders. We've generated 60 royalties through this model since Gold Royalty's acquisition of Ely in 2021, including an additional four royalties in the first three quarters of 2026. We currently have 39 properties subject to land agreements and six properties under lease generating land agreement proceeds and as we conduct no exploration on these properties, we can continue to hold our portfolio at very low cost. I'll now pass the call to Jackie Przybylowski to review our guidance and key catalysts underpinning our peer-leading organic growth.
Jackie Przybylowski
Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability
Thanks, John. We've been clear this year that our 2026 production was expected to be 60% weighted to the second half of the year, as Ferris and County Line ramp up to their full production run rates, and as we could also see production growth at Borden, Cote, and Pedro Branca. And, while it's not factored into the guidance, the rock mass movement at the Canadian Malarctic Barnat Pit could bring forward processing and sale of stockpiled material. We are reiterating our 2026 full year guidance, 7,500 to 9,300 GEOs. Production of 2,689 GEOs in Q3 brings our total production to 6,366 GEOs year to date, which is 76% of the midpoint of our guidance range. We were at 44% of the midpoint of our guidance range as at the end of the second quarter. So you can see that we have made up a lot of ground in Q3. We continue to be well on track to achieve the midpoint of our guidance range and we continue to believe in strong second half production, which includes a strong fourth quarter. Barring any major disruptions and depending on the gold prices realized between now and year end, we could end the year with production in the higher end of our guidance range. Just a quick reminder that our 2026 guidance was set at a $5,150 per ounce gold price assumption for the full year. Lower gold prices would work in our favor as conversion of the land agreement proceeds and interest and conversion of revenue from copper and other metals would translate to higher GEO values. Please see our March 18th, 2026 press release for a table showing the sensitivity of our guidance to gold prices. We're excited by this result, not only because it's another record for us on production adjusted revenue and adjusted EBITDA, but because it reaffirms the even stronger growth in our portfolio over the medium term. As we have previously disclosed, Gold Royalty expects production to grow to 28,000 to 34,000 GEOs by 2030, or approximately six times our actual 2025 result from assets already fully bought and paid for in our portfolio. Our extensive portfolio continues to offer exciting news flow and catalysts, and we have a number of exciting updates in our earnings report. I'll just highlight a few on this call that we're expecting in the final quarter of the year. A study to double plant capacity at Ora Minerals Boberama project to 4 million tons per year should be completed shortly. First production at Wren, which is jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont, is expected by year end. An updated mine plan to reflect the integration of IAM Gold's Cote and Goslin zones at Cote in Q4. While we don't have any exposure to Goslin, pushback of the Cote pit wall to accommodate a super pit design could add additional material from our Zones 5 and 7 coverage into the mine plan. A pre-feasibility level study by 1st Majestic Silver on Jarrett Canyon restart to be completed in Q4. and the shaft number two technical evaluation at Canadian Malarctic's Odyssey project to be completed by Agnico Eagle also in the fourth quarter. We also want to highlight DPM Metals Varus mine. As you will recall, Varus was temporarily closed late last year as the then new owner DPM Metals optimized the mine. It has restarted and achieved commercial production on August 10th, well ahead of the company's target, which was in September. The operator continues to expect that Varus will achieve its full production run rate of 850,000 tons per year by the end of this year. DPM has also noted that it now expects to exceed the high end of its 2026 guidance range on a gold equivalent production basis. We want to congratulate DPM Metals for consistently outperforming on its operating milestones at this world-class silver mine. On September 30, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina set a six-month review related to a constitutional dispute which has challenged the authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to certain acts regarding state-owned land, including the Varese Concession Agreement. This constitutional dispute relates to state-owned forests and land in Bosnia and Herzegovina and forms part of a broader issue affecting a number of large concession-based investments in the country. We want to emphasize that VARS continues to operate normally and operator DPM Metals does not expect any impact on its 2026 production guidance as a result of the court's decision. DPM is actively engaging with the relevant authorities to support the six-month review process to the extent possible. The VARS operation employs more than 600 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and is the top exporter in the Zenicodobo Canton. But it's important to note that this is a countrywide issue that extends well beyond VERUS and includes numerous other major national and international projects of critical importance. I'll pass the floor back to Dave for closing remarks.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jackie. We're so pleased to report another record quarter. Calling this a record quarter understates the magnitude of our achievement this quarter. Our adjusted revenue, including land agreement proceeds and other, was 23% higher than our previous record quarter, and our GOs were 40% higher than our previous record quarter. In 2025, we achieved the inflection to a positive free cash flow and our growth has been on a steady march upwards ever since. We expect that our growth will continue, for example, our 2020-2030 guidance assumes roughly 500% or six times increase at the midpoint from our 2025 actual results. We continue to see compelling upside to our share price as our portfolio assets continue to develop and as the market gives us credit for this organic growth. Our valuation could be further boosted by accretive growth but we emphasize that we will remain patient and disciplined as we consider any acquisitions and as we review our capital allocation options going forward. We continue to prioritize accretive growth as always while building a strong cash treasury which will enable us to consider a modest capital return as a signal to the market that we will remain disciplined on our growth and that we have matured as a company. One housekeeping item before we take a question. As you all know, we've ceased our practice of pre-releasing our preliminary revenue results ahead of quarterly earnings. We chose to do this to remove volatility in our results as some of our royalties don't provide information sufficiently ahead of our quarterly reporting. But we will make an exception for the fourth quarter to provide our investors with timely information given the longer delay in our year-end reporting. We plan to pre-release our preliminary Q4 revenue results ahead of full-year financial results, likely in mid-February. Thank you everyone for tuning into the earnings call. We'll now open up the call to Q&A.
Conference Operator
Operator
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Heiko Illy with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Casey
HC Wainwright Representative
Hey team, Casey here filling in for Heiko. Thanks for taking our questions and congrats on another great quarter.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Casey
HC Wainwright Representative
You guys ended with $21 million in cash. Given the increased size and scope of the firm, could you maybe walk us through the minimum sizing of cash that you'd want to hold just to feel comfortable? and maybe how this cash level could change as more and more assets enter production. And if you want to add some additional color on if gold prices have any input on those minimum cash levels.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Sure, I'll hand that off to Andrew Gubbels, our CFO.
Andrew Gubbels
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, no, thanks, Dave. Look, we don't have a hard and fast target for minimum cash. That being said, we do have I guess practically speaking we'd like to keep cash on the balance sheet for working capital purposes as required tentatively somewhere in the circa 10 million dollar range is what we have in mind it can it can fluctuate sort of around that level now that's not a again a hard and fast rule in terms of additions to cash throughout the year I think You can run your models and it depends on where your gold price is for revenue as well as what your estimates are for geos. But just keep in mind that our operating costs have been quite consistent over the number eight to 10 previous quarters. So around that Thank you that was really helpful.
Casey
HC Wainwright Representative
John, do you want to handle that, John Griffith? Yeah, look, I think the
John Griffith
President
The reality with early stage assets is it's very difficult to predict what is going to ultimately become a mine. The one thing that is very important to bear in mind with our royalty generator business model is the fact that we're not staking claims on properties that are unknown from a geological perspective. There is a lot of what we would refer to as neurology involved. Many of the properties are staked in close proximity to existing operations and existing resources. So it's really difficult to give you a prediction of what's going to really turn into a mine over a period of time. But the reality is it's Tremendous option value for our stakeholders on that portfolio.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
I think the one example I would illustrate, though, to add to what John said, is Tonopah West in Nevada, which we staked back in 2021. It's one of the more significant silver discoveries in that region. And we sold it to BlackRock Silver for about $1.5 million in cash and a 3% royalty back in 2024, and BlackRock believes it'll be in production by the end of the decade. So that's warp speed by mining standards, and Just remind you that our entry price was effectively zero, so the rate of return is infinite for our shareholders. And that's the power of this generator model is effectively no entry cost and the potential to generate outsized returns.
Casey
HC Wainwright Representative
Perfect. Thank you guys for answering the questions. I'll hop back into queue. Thank you.
Conference Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Tate Sullivan with Maxson Group. Please go ahead.
Tate Sullivan
Maxson Group
I thank you. You had some comments on the VAREs, your royalty with, I mean, increasing to $2.4 million in the third quarter, and then with the details from DPM about increasing annualized processing capacity by 49% to the end of the year. I mean, should we factor in that scale of an increase for your copper royalty for 2027, or would you caution against that, please?
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
I'll hand it off to Jackie.
Jackie Przybylowski
Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability
Thanks very much, Tate, for the question. Yeah, I think we don't have a great amount of disclosure on the copper grade or copper expected to be produced in 2027, just because it's not particularly material to DPM, given our stream on that asset. I would say directionally with DPM, with FARs reaching the full run rate, 850,000 tons per year. By the end of 2026, we would expect processing at that run rate for the full year 2027. So, you know, broadly speaking, without any major changes in copper grade, we would expect to see that sort of Q4 level of production to our accounts or continue through 2027 or even potentially slightly higher as as the early part of Q4 won't be at that 850,000 tons run rate exactly. But having said that, if there is variation in grade, that could affect that ultimate production in 2027 slightly. We haven't seen too much variation in grade at the asset. It has been fairly homogeneous in terms of the copper distribution. So, you know, our best outlook right now is it would look fairly similar to how we're exiting the year this year.
Tate Sullivan
Maxson Group
I mean, looking at, thank you, Jackie, and looking at the scale, I mean, it potentially could be your largest royalty revenue, I would think, in 27, or is that not necessarily the case given all the other dynamics in the portfolio?
Jackie Przybylowski
Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability
It's definitely our largest stream revenue, given that's the only stream we have, but absolutely, it'll be one of the biggest contributors to our revenue next year, yeah.
Tate Sullivan
Maxson Group
Okay, and then if you can, I mean, just, I mean, there were some indications of separately Tether selling some gold ounces from 630 to 930, but then I think their share position in you went up a little bit. Have you had many interactions with Tether willing to comment on their market behavior at all?
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
I don't think we can provide any particular insight. They've been a passive shareholder in our company and they've been consistently accumulating since they started buying the stock back a year ago last summer. And you'd have to ask them what their intentions are. But clearly they're still dealing with a fairly significant inflow of interest or yield on their treasuries and those treasury yields are only going up or have only gone up this year.
Tate Sullivan
Maxson Group
Good point. Okay. Thank you very much.
Conference Operator
Operator
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Derek Ma with TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Derek Ma
TD Securities
Thank you. My question's on REN. What are your expectations for REN in 2027 and beyond, and specifically when you start expecting to get paid on that 3.5% MPI?
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
I'll pass that on to Jackie.
Jackie Przybylowski
Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability
Thanks a lot, Derek. So with Wren, I know Beric has mentioned that it's expecting to be in production by the end of this year. So we are expecting to see first production from Wren fairly soon and to reach 140,000 Thank you for joining us today. On the NPI, the structure of the NPI is that Barrick or Nevada Gold Mines will recover the invested capital first before the NPI starts to pay out to us. And so we would expect that sometime in 2028, depending on gold price, but our base case forecast would be sort of early 2028 at current gold prices. Okay.
Derek Ma
TD Securities
Thank you. And very strong land agreement proceeds in Q3. How much of that is recurring and how should we be thinking about the revenue generating power of this business segment going forward?
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Andrew, do you want to handle that, please?
Andrew Gubbels
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, sure. Look, the land agreement proceeds is lumpy by nature. It's really dependent on contracts. In Q3, we had We had a couple that were chunkier. The way that I would sort of see land agreement proceeds moving forward is a smaller contribution to the overall mix. Royalty and stream revenue will certainly be on the larger side. This quarterly amount is larger than it was in the previous quarter and quarter before that. In terms of run rate, it really depends on how many more contracts are signed and how the agreements play out. But generally speaking, I would say that this quarter is higher than what we'd expect normally. I'd say Q1, Q2 is probably a little more consistent with where we see future quarters. That being said, we haven't put out for the next year. And when we do, it'll be clear. But there are, again, some lumpy revenue coming from land agreement proceeds in future quarters that we expect as well. But this quarter is a little higher than what we usually see. But again, trailing off somewhere, if you look at our run rate the last couple of years, it has decreased as a contribution. But if you look at the revenue contribution over the last year, I think it's fairly consistent if you add up the quarters in this year and going forward somewhere in that area as well. It's not expected to be substantially bigger, but this quarter is a little bit higher.
Derek Ma
TD Securities
Okay, helpful. Thank you, guys.
Andrew Gubbels
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah.
Conference Operator
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to David Garofalo for closing remarks.
David Garofalo
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks very much, everybody. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Jackie P. at goldroyalty.com or any of us. Please email, call. We'd be happy to answer any other follow-up questions. Thank you for your attention this morning.
Conference Operator
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.