Sprott Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to SPRA Inc.' 's 2021 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in 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 5th, 2021. 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.

the President of Sprott, our Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Hibbert, and John Champaglia, the Chief Executive Officer of Sprott Asset Management. Our third quarter 2021 results were released this morning and are available on our website, where you can also find the financial statements and NDNA. I'd like to begin the call by providing a bit of context, which I believe is important when considering our quarter. This has been a difficult year for gold and silver given their pullbacks with much choppy sideways price movement. Investor interest was tested as metals took a backseat to eye-watering appreciation in the equity and crypto markets. Precious metals do not usually fare well during times of maximum confidence and compressed volatility. Given that backdrop, I believe our business performed exceptionally well during the quarter. The big story this quarter was the launch of the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust in July. SPOT has quickly emerged as the world's most in-demand physical uranium vehicle and has now grown to more than $1.6 billion in AUM. Yesterday, we announced we are expanding our uranium business with the addition of URNM, one of the world's leading uranium equity ETFs. John will speak more about both Sput and URNM in a few minutes. All of Sprott's businesses are currently growing, including our streaming and royalty strategy, which raised $400 million in Q3. And finally, subsequent to quarter end, our AUM reached a $20 billion milestone for the first time. This is a significant milestone for our business, and I would like to thank all of our employees for their efforts in and for all of our client support. We have a long way to go. With that, I'll pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide five, which provides a summary of our AUM as at September 30th of this year. AUM was $19 billion this quarter. up $466 million, or 3% from June 30th of this year, and was up $1.6 billion, or 9% from December 31st of last year. In the quarter, we benefited from the UPC transaction, which added $630 million to our physical trusts at inception, followed by another $670 million of uranium trust inflows and market value appreciation. On a full year basis, we also benefited from strong inflows into our physical silver trust earlier in the year, coupled with continued inflows into our lending segment this quarter, as Peter noted earlier. Also, to Peter's point, subsequent to the quarter end, we did surpass the $20 billion mark in AUM, which is a new historic high for our shareholders. Moving now to slide six. Slide six provides a brief look into our three and nine month earnings. Adjusted base EBITDA in the quarter was $16.7 million, which was up $4.7 million, or 39% from the prior period. And on a year-to-date basis, adjusted base EBITDA was $46.4 million, up $17 million, or 58% from the prior period. On a quarter and year-to-date basis, we benefited from the acquisition of UPC and the subsequent market value appreciation and inflows into those assets. We also benefited from strong inflows into our lending products this quarter and into the physical silver trust earlier in the year. Finally, we saw very robust mining equity origination activity in the first half of the year coupled with strong ongoing AUM development 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 third quarter 2021 MD&A filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John.