Sprott Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sprott, Inc.' 's 2023 first 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, May 5th, 2022. On behalf of the speakers that follow, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation is and the response to questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions 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 spross other filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Whitney George. Please go ahead, Mr. George.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me today is our CFO, Kevin Hibbert, and John Chimparia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management. Our 2023 first quarter results were released this morning and are available on our website, where you can also find the financial statements and MD&A. I'll turn to slide four. Despite volatile market conditions, we delivered solid results during the first quarter. We continue to benefit from our positioning in precious metals and energy transition investments. delivering strong sales and performance across all of our fund offerings. As a result, I'm pleased to report that we closed the first quarter with a record high AUM of $25.4 billion. During the quarter, we further expanded our energy transition product offerings with the launch of five new ETFs. Sprott now has eight different strategies in this growing category, offering investors both exchange listed and actively managed investment options. Our team continues to develop new product offerings and we expect to introduce additional strategies over the course of 2023. In April, we completed the management buyout of our Canadian broker dealer. This transaction was part of an ongoing process to streamline our business and increase our focus on our core asset management business. We believe we are exceptionally well positioned for the current market environment. Our outlook for the remainder of 2023 has not changed. The impacts of the Fed's historic rate hike campaign are currently being felt throughout the financial system, with a series of bank failures being the first dominoes to fall. It's becoming increasingly clear that the deteriorating credit conditions will eventually trigger a recession. At that point, we expect rate cuts and a return to some sort of quantitative easing. In this scenario, our positioning in precious metals and energy transition investments should reward our clients and shareholders over the next decade as a global realignment of critical mineral supply chains and production unfolds. With that, I'd like to pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results. Kevin?

Thanks, Whitney, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide five, which provides a summary of our historical AUM. As Whitney mentioned, we finished the quarter with a record high $25.4 billion of AUM. up $1.9 billion or 8% from December 31st. Our AUM benefited from strong market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products and strong inflows to our private strategies and exchange listed products. Slide 6 provides a brief look into our three-month earnings. Adjusted base EBITDA in the quarter was $17.3 million down $852,000 or 5% from the first quarter of last year. First quarter adjusted base EBITDA was negatively impacted by lower commission income on a combination of weaker mining equity origination activity in our former brokered segment and slower at the market activity in our physical uranium trust. However, net fee growth from our core AUM was strong during the quarter. We anticipate this trend continuing throughout the remainder of the year, eventually leading to net fee growth more than offsetting the loss of transaction-based income from our former brokerage segment. Finally, as you can see on slide seven, our balance sheet remains strong as seen by net cash and co-investments representing approximately 20% of our total assets, and we're largely under leveraged at a less than one times debt to EBITDA ratio and an 11% debt-to-capital ratio. For more information on our revenues, expenses, EBITDA, and balance sheet metrics, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation, as well as our first quarter MD&A filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John.