Franco-Nevada Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Franco-Nevada Corporation year-end 2020 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on March 11, 2021. I will now extend the conference over to Candida Hayden. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joanna. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Franco-Nevada's 2020 year-end results. Accompanying this call is a presentation, which is available on our website at franco-nevada.com, where you will also find our full financial results. Paul Brank, President and CEO of Franco-Nevada, will provide introductory remarks. Sandy Barana, our CFO, will provide an overview of our 2020 results. Ian Gray, our Senior Vice President of Business Development, will provide an overview of the Condesable transaction, and Jason O'Connell, our Senior Vice President of Energy, will provide an overview of the Haynesville transaction. This will be followed by a Q&A period. Our executive team is available to answer any questions. We would like to remind participants that some of today's commentary may contain forward-looking information and we refer you to our detailed cautionary note on slide two of this presentation. I will now turn over the call to Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franca Nevada.

Thank you, Candida, and good morning. Our tagline is Franca Nevada is the gold investment that works, and we're committed to ensuring it does work for our shareholders, our operating partners, and our communities. We're proud of the results achieved in 2020, but would like to start by thanking our staff and supporters and the employees and communities that are operating assets for all your efforts and particularly your resolve through the pandemic this year to make the results possible. 2020 was a strong year for Franklin, Nevada. We received top ESG ratings during the year from Sustainalytics, MSCI, and ISS. We were active through the year contributing to help communities weather the COVID-19 crisis. We're committed to the World Gold Council's responsible gold mining principles and during the year became a signatory of the UN Global Compact and the Black North Pledge. We've also strengthened our commitment to increase diversity at Franca Nevada by adopting a goal of at least 40% diverse representation at the board and senior management levels by 2025. Our diverse portfolio weathered the impacts of the pandemic better than expected. Despite COVID interruptions at a number of our operations and a strike at Candelaria, we were able to match and even slightly beat 2019 geo sales. Our energy assets recovered well through the back half of the year, also exceeding our revised guidance. Cobra Panama produced first ore in 2019, but it was early 2020 that it joined Candelaria, Antamina, and Antipakai as one of our core long-term cash flow generators. On the back of high gold prices, the portfolio generated record financial results. Our revenue exceeded a billion dollars for the first time, our EBITDA margin increased to over 80%, and our fourth quarter was our most profitable quarter on record. On the strength of these results, we're increasing the quarterly dividend to 30 cents a share, starting with our second quarter dividend payment in June. This will mark our 14th successive annual dividend increase. The greater than 15% increase is larger than typical, but now that we're receiving full contribution from Cobre Panama, we feel it's well warranted. Our business development team saw good success through the year. Over the last 12 months, we acquired a royalty on the Alpala Copper Gold Development property in Ecuador, a portfolio of natural gas royalties in the Hainesville Shale, and a precious metal stream on the Condé Stable Copper Operations in Peru. The team were selective about the assets they chose, patient waiting for the right window in the energy markets, and added both to immediate cash flow and long-term growth potential. Along with our results, we provided new guidance. We expect strong growth in 2021, leading to another record year. We're guiding to 10% to 15% growth in our business year over year. In particular, we expect increased contributions from Cobra Panama, Candelaria, and Antamina, and that the recovery in energy prices is sustained. Our five-year outlook anticipates 20% to 25% growth in our business. We're expecting Cobre Panama ramping to 100 million ton brand, muscle-wide operating again, expansions at D2S Stillwater and Taziest, and new mines in production, Solaris Norte, Hard Rock, Stipnite Gold, and Valentine Lake. Slides 9 and 10 of the deck provide an indication of the contribution of the core assets and the timing of the expansions and new mines. There's exciting organic growth in the portfolio coming from the drill bit. The year saw exploration success at many of our assets, Detour, Hughton, Guadalupe, Macassar, Malartic, Valentine Lake, and many others. Much of our long-term growth potential is in the form of new copper mines, including Rosemont, Alpala, Tacataca, and Nuevo Union. The recent Norwin investment by Wiley Metals, an Andrew Forrest investment vehicle, both welfare royalties covering much of Ontario's ring of fire. To wrap up, our core assets are outperforming. We have built-in growth and tremendous long-term optionality. We have no debt, $1.9 billion in available capital, and are generating upwards of $800 million per year in cash from operations. We have a good pipeline of opportunities and are looking forward to putting the capital to work as the industry returns to building new mines. Last, some advanced advertising. We're planning to host an analyst day this year with a more in-depth review of our assets, likely the second week of April, and we'll publish our annual asset handbook and our ESG report at the same time. I'll now hand it over to Sandip for his review of the results.