Sprott Inc.

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to SPOT, Inc.' 's 2020 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star followed by the zero for operator assistance at any time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, November 13, 2020. On behalf of the speakers that follow, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation and the responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Canadian Provincial Securities Law. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are implied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements, Please consult the MD&A for the quarter and Sprott's other filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Peter Groskopf. Please go ahead, Mr. Groskopf.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I hope that you're all staying safe and managing through these challenging times. On the call with me today is Whitney George, President of Sprott, our CFO, Kevin Hibbert, and John Champaglia, the CEO of Sprott Asset Management. Our Q3 results were released this morning and are available on our website where you can also find our financial statements and MD&A. I'll start on slide four and then I'll quickly pass it over to the team. During the third quarter of 2020, gold continued to perform well, breaking through $2,000 per ounce and setting a new high in early August before pulling back later in the quarter. For much of the year, markets have remained focused on two key issues, First, the economic impact of COVID-19, and secondly, the U.S. election. The COVID situation is ongoing, and although the results of the U.S. election are still being digested, market reactions appear favorable. While we understand that on a short-term basis, the expectations for additional stimulus and its effect on both interest rates and equities will remain in focus, we believe the long-term trends which have driven precious metal prices to new highs remain unchanged. In the first nine months of 2020, Gold outperformed all major asset classes and we expect this trend will continue to be positive into 2021. Turning over to slide five for a look at some of our year-to-date highlights. We continue to experience significant asset growth with our assets under management increasing by 76% during the first nine months of 2020. These gains have been driven by a combination of factors, including 2.3 billion in year-to-date sales, largely in our physical trusts, stronger gold and silver prices, the Q1 acquisition and closure of the Tocqueville gold strategies, and strong investment performance within our managed equity strategies. These factors combined to benefit our year-to-date financial performance, resulting in a 36% increase in adjusted base EBITDA and operating margins of approximately 46% through the first nine months of the year. And remember, we have a bit of a lag when it comes to recognizing the effects of higher assets within our system. Yesterday, our board of directors proved an 8.7% increase to our quarterly dividend effective immediately. This increase is a reflection of the robust financial performance of the company and our strong financial position. We're confident that our business will support not only this dividend level, but it will continue to allow us to fund future growth initiatives. We continue to work to build shareholder value and our efforts have been recognized lately through Sprott's addition to the S&P TSX Composite Index and our inclusion in the TSX 30, which recognizes the 30 top performing TSX stocks over a three year period based on dividend adjusted share price appreciation. I'll now pass it over to Kevin for some detailed comments on our quarterly results.

Thanks Peter and good morning everyone. I'll start on slide six, which provides a summary of our AUM as at September 30th, 2020. Our AUM finished the quarter at $16.3 billion, up $2.4 billion, or 17% from June 30th, 2020, and was up $7 billion, or 76% from December 31st, 2019. Our AUM benefited largely from strong inflows into our physical trusts, strong precious metals prices in our physical trusts, and strong market value appreciation across most of our equity fund products. We also benefited from new capital calls, net of distributions in our lending funds. Slides seven and eight contain our three and nine months operating performance. And what you'll see there is that our adjusted base EBITDA in the quarter was $12 million, up $4.4 million, or 58%, from the prior period, and was $29.4 million on a year-to-date basis, up $7.9 million, or 36%. The increases on a three- and nine-months-ended basis were primarily due to strong net inflows and precious metals price appreciation in our exchange-listed products, the Tocqueville Gold Strategies acquisition AUM benefits earlier this year, coupled with stronger equity valuations in our precious metals fund strategies. However, we also benefited from increased commission revenues in our brokerage segment due to very strong equity origination and transaction activity. All these increases more than offset lower finance income in our lending segment and higher compensation as a result of the acquisition and increased revenues and earnings across the company that are driving our variable at-risk compensation. For more information on our revenues, expenses, and EBITDA, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation as well as our Q3 2020 MD&A that we filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John. John?