Sprott Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sprott, Inc.' 's 2024 First 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. An instruction will be provided at the time for you to queue up for questions. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, May 8, 2024. 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 Security 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 other filings with the Canadian and U.S. security regulators. I'll now turn the comments over to Mr. Whitney George. Please go ahead, Mr. George.

Our 2024 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 start on slide four. Our AUM once again reached record highs during the quarter, driven by stronger gold and silver prices late in the period, offset somewhat by what we view as a short-term weakness in uranium and related equities. Gold and silver gained eight and 5% respectively on a rally that began in mid-February and has accelerated through March and April. Our AUM as of March 31st, 2024 was up 0.6 billion from the fourth quarter of 2023. Subsequent to the quarter end, AUM increased by 1.8 billion to 31.2 billion as of May 6th, 2024. We reported 284 million in net redemptions during the quarter as our precious metals trust traded at wider discounts to net asset value. This was our first quarter of net redemptions in four years, and I'm happy to report the trends has reversed early in the second quarter. We further expanded our critical materials offerings during the first quarter with the launch of the Sprott Copper Miners ETF and the Sprott Junior Uranium Miners Usage ETF in Europe. We are encouraged by the improved performance of our actively managed precious metals equity strategies, which have performed well in Q1 and year-to-date. With that, I'll pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results. Kevin?

Thanks, Whitney, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into our current period results, I just wanted to provide you with a brief note on some changes to our quarterly reporting you may have noticed with our filing of the MD&A and financial statements this morning. Now that we completed the multi-year exit of non-core businesses that required several non-recurring items to be booked, and we no longer have any other material accounting noise and disclosures to contend with in the near future, we no longer require a place in our financial statement notes to park those multiple other items anymore. So we use this opportunity to clear out the other category in Note 7 of our financial statements and repointed as many accounts as possible to their own lines on the financial statements. You can refer to footnote two of the summary financial information on table nine of the MD&A filed earlier this morning for more details in that respect. That said, I'll start our results update on slide five, which provides a summary of our historical AUM. AUM finished the quarter at $29.4 billion, up 2% from $28.7 billion as at December 31st, 2023. On a three months ended basis, we benefited from market value appreciation in our precious metals trusts and managed equities funds. As Whitney noted, subsequent to the quarter end on May 6th, our AUM increased to over $31 billion. Slide 6 provides a brief look at our three-month earnings. Adjusted base EBITDA was $19.8 million in the quarter, up 14% from $17.3 million earned over the same three-month period last year. Our earnings benefited from higher management fees on strong market value appreciation across our exchange-listed products, partially offset by lower commission income due to the sale of our former Canadian broker-dealer, during the second quarter of last year. Finally, slide 7 provides a few capital management highlights, and as you can see here, our cash and liquidity profile remains strong and our use of leverage modest. For more information on our revenues, expenses, EBITDA, and balance sheet, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation as well as our quarterly MD&A and financial statements filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John. John?