Sprott Inc.

Today's conference is scheduled to begin shortly. Please continue to stand by. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to SPROT Inc's 2021 Second 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 here in the conference, two-spread star followed by zero for operator assistance at any time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, August 6, 2021. Forward-looking statements 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 a due 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 court 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.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me today is Whitney George, the president of Sprott, our chief financial officer, Kevin Hibbert, and John Shimpeglia, the CEO of Sprott Asset Management. Our 2021 second quarter 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. Precious metals roundtripped in Q2 to end the quarter close to their lows before recovering in July. The gold price has been range bound and moved sideways for some time as investors handicapped chances for rate rises. We are pleased by how our funds navigated through this choppiness and capitalized on the subsequent rebound. Our business continues to perform well with all of our business units currently growing and delivering strong financial results. In fact, as Kevin will tell you, we are knocking on the door of $20 billion and continue to record and produce record operating results. In July, subsequent to quarter end, Sprott Asset Management completed its agreement with Uranium Participation Corp. to create the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. John will discuss this transaction in detail in a few minutes. But as a general comment, this deal provides us with an important strategic foothold in the clean energy metal space. We have a constructive view on uranium and believe this new trust presents a compelling opportunity to anchor a highly prospective new product area. We look forward to expanding our offerings into areas that complement our core positioning in precious metals. With that, I'll pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide five, which provides a summary of our AUM as at June 30th, 2021. AUM was $18.6 billion this quarter, up $1.5 billion or 9% from March 31st of this year, and up $1.2 billion or 7% from December 31st, 2020. In the second quarter, we experienced market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products while continuing to generate strong inflows into our physical trusts. So this helped to a large degree to offset the market value depreciation we experienced on a full year basis. And slide six provides a brief look into our three and six month earnings. To Peter's point, we had a fantastic quarter. Adjusted base EBITDA was $15.1 million, up $5.8 million or 64% from the prior period. And on a year-to-date basis, adjusted base EBITDA was $29.7 million, up $12.3 million or 71%. The increase in the quarter, as well as on a year-to-date basis, was primarily due to increased fees from strong net inflows in our exchange-listed product segments. higher average AUM in our managed equity segment, and increased commissions and management fee revenues in our brokerage segment. For more information on our revenues, expenses, and EBITDA, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation, as well as our second quarter 2021 MD&A that we filed earlier this morning. So with that said, I'll pass things over to John.