Royal Gold, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the Royal Gold 2024 First Quarter Conference. My name is Chach and I'll be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I'd now like to pass the conference over to your host, Alistair Baker, to begin. Alistair, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our discussion of Royal Gold's first quarter 2024 results. This event is being webcast live and a replay of this call will be available on our website. Speaking on the call today are Bill Heisenbuttel, President and CEO, Martin Raffield, Senior Vice President of Operations, and Paul Lindner, Senior Vice President and CFO. Randy Shuffman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Dan Brees, Senior Vice President Corporate Development of RGAG, are also available for questions. During today's call, we will make four looking 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. Reconciliations of these measures to the most direct and comparable gap measures are available in yesterday's press release, which can be found on our website. Bill will start with an overview of the quarter. Martin will give some commentary on the portfolio, and Paul will provide a financial update. After the formal remarks, we'll 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. I'll begin on slide four. We had a good start to the year with revenue of $149 million, operating cash flow of $138 million, and earnings of $47 million, or 72 cents per share. After adjustments, earnings were 91 cents per share. Revenue was 75% gold and 88% precious metals as we continued to focus our business development efforts on these metals, and we generated 53% of revenue from the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Our adjusted EBITDA margin remained strong and steady at 79% for the quarter. And with the record high gold price providing a strong tailwind, we were able to significantly reduce our debt and increase available liquidity. We repaid $100 million outstanding on a revolving credit facility and ended the quarter with almost a billion dollars of total liquidity. As previously disclosed, during the quarter, we entered into an additional agreement with Sentara to provide long-term cost support at Mount Milligan in return for near-term cash and future gold consideration and a future free cash flow royalty. This allowed an immediate two-year extension to the mine life to 2035 and provides the incentive for Sentara to continue to invest in the long-term future and maximize the value of the large mineral endowment around the mine. Sentara is working on a PEA to evaluate opportunities to extend the mine life beyond 2035 and we look forward to the results when it is completed in the first half of 2025. We also have a new operating partner at ComiCow with the completion of the acquisition of ComiCow by MMG in March. Recall that we provided a $25 million loan facility to the previous owner during the development of ComiCow that accrued in capitalized interest at a rate of LIBOR plus 11%. This facility was repayable upon a change of control and we received total proceeds of $37 million, including principal and capitalized interest. With these proceeds, the upfront cash payment from Sentara on the Milligan transaction, and continued strong cash flow, we have made additional revolver repayments of $75 million since the end of the quarter, bringing our outstanding revolver balance down to $75 million. We are well positioned to repay the remainder of the balance during the third quarter, absent new investment opportunities. Maintaining a strong balance sheet is one of our core strategic objectives as it allows us to act quickly when attractive business development opportunities arise. We paid our quarterly dividend of 40 cents per share, a 7% increase over the previous quarter, marking the start of a 23rd straight year of paying an increased dividend. And finally, we issued our first asset handbook shortly after quarter end. And by the end of the week, we expect to publish our investment stewardship report which is our reimagined publication that covers ESG risks and a separate climate report. All of these documents are currently or will be available on our website. These publications take an enormous effort from a staff that is limited in size, and I want to thank them for their efforts in preparing these reports. I hope you find them helpful in your review of our company. I'll now turn the call over to Martin to provide some comments on the portfolio.