Royal Gold, Inc.

Hello and welcome to today's Royal Gold Incorporated calendar year 2022 first quarter conference call. My name is Bailey and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to Alistair Baker. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to our discussion of Royal Gold's first quarter 2022 results. This event is being webcast live and you will be able to access a replay of this call on our website. Speaking on the call today are Bill Heismuttle, President and CEO, Paul Lindner, CFO and Treasurer, and Mark Kisto, Executive Vice President and COO of Royal Gold Corporation. Dan Brees, Vice President Corporate Development of RGHE, and Randy Shepman, General Counsel, are also available for questions. During today's call, we will make forward with the statements, including statements about our projections and expectations for the future. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in yesterday's press release and our filings with the SEC. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted net income per share, and adjusted EBITDA margins. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available on yesterday's press release, which can be found on our website. Bill will give you an overview of the quarter, followed by Mark with an operating update. Paul will then provide a financial update, and Bill will wrap up the call with some closing comments. We'll then open the lines for a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Bill.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. Our call today will be relatively short as we provided an in-depth review of our business two weeks ago during our annual investor update. For those who are unable to join the event, it is available for replay on our website. Turning to the results for the quarter, I'll begin on slide four. It was another good quarter with very solid operating and financial results. We recorded healthy revenue of $162 million, operating cash flow of $101 million, and earnings of $66 million, which were all up significantly over the prior year period. It is worth noting that our margins remain strong and our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 81%, which is consistent with the 80% we saw for the same quarter a year ago. Unlike operating companies who often see margins erode with the effects of cost inflation, our business model's low cost base has limited the impact of inflationary pressures and allowed us to maintain our high margins. The solid cash flow allowed us to further strengthen the balance sheet and at quarter end we remained debt free with cash on hand of $184 million and access to our full $1 billion revolving credit facility. We remain active in the search for new business opportunities and our strong balance sheet and cash flow position us well to act. We paid our quarterly dividend at our new higher rate of 35 cents per quarter and we were included in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index in January, which reflects our approach to steadily growing our capital return to shareholders over the long term. During the quarter, we issued our first annual guidance for GEO sales, DDNA, and effective tax rate, and I'm pleased to say that we remain on track to meet that guidance. Within the portfolio, we funded the final advance payment on the stream at ComiCow, and we are now entitled to 100% of the payable silver from this high quality and long life operation. We also added a royalty in the lawyers project in British Columbia. This is a small investment that provides us exposure to an emerging gold camp and is a good example of how we use our internal technical skills to identify early stage opportunities that have interesting long-term potential. And finally, just after quarter end, we issued our inaugural ESG report, which is available for review on our website. We think our approach to ESG is unique and well-suited to our business model, and we look forward to engaging with our stakeholders over the coming months to get feedback on the direction we've taken. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark for an update on our portfolio. Thanks, Bill.