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spk00: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Dundee Corporation first quarter 2022 results conference call. Listeners are reminded that certain matters discussed in today's conference call or answers that may be given to questions asked could constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to Dundee Corporation's future financial or business performance. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The risk factors that may affect results are detailed in Dundee Corporation's 2021 Annual Information Form and other periodic filings. You can access these documents under the company's profile at www.cdar.com. I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded today. Thursday, May 12, 2022. On this call, management of Dundee Corporation will be quoting dollar figures. All figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Participating on this call will be Jonathan Goodman, President and CEO of Dundee Corporation, and Lila Manassa-Murphy, Executive Vice President and CFO of Dundee Corporation. At this time, I would now like to introduce Mr. Jonathan Goodman to provide an update on the quarter. Please go ahead, Mr. Goodman.
spk04: Thank you, operator. I think we're going to change up the strategy of the call a little bit, this call, in that some of the feedback that we've got shows we'd like to learn more about strategy and where we're heading. So I'm going to try and cover that. And then I will turn it over to Lila, who will cover obviously the financial statements. Lila Manassa Murphy, our executive vice president and CFO, and as well as some of the progress we've made on some of the other strategic objectives in the quarter. So to start with, as a mining investment team, in our firm, we have over 12, mining investment professionals. And these professionals have different areas of expertise. We've got people who have expertise in geology, people who are experts in mining, metallurgy. We have people who are experts in environmental sciences, finance, projects, construction, investment banking, investing. We have people on our team who have operated mines. We have people who have run mining companies. and we have people who have built mines. Our investment style is more conducive to being like in a corporate development style. As you would see on many actual mining companies, they've got corporate development departments. We tend to operate like that. When we look at a company or a business, we usually sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement or a confidentiality agreement. And with that, we then look at the data that the company has. And in most cases, we download the data, we deconstruct that data, and then we reconstruct the project using, in many cases, what are more conservative assumptions. It is this process which gives us the ability and conviction to be able to take larger positions in your liquid companies. In many cases, as we make our investments, we also ask for a board seat. And with that, we share all of the work we've done with the companies. We try to use the vast experience of our team to help these companies deliver better outcomes. So I guess the joke I always make is if there's a mistake that we've made in our past, we have the ability to warn them not to make that same mistake. I want to share with you some of the thinking and thought processes and the Big River gold story and how that's evolved. When we did our work on Big River, this was several years ago, The first thing we noted was that they had planned to mine about one third of their 2.4 million ounce stated resorts, which obviously we thought that was quite low and we thought there was potential opportunity to at some point expand the mine and expand the project. I apologize for the background noise, Mr. Legos, who delivered us another package, which even goes with Don Barton. So we recognize that there's opportunities down the road, hopefully, to potentially expand this mine. But we did feel that originally looking at a two-million-dollar operation was a very conservative comparison besides the resources. We also thought that the capital cost that they had used that they're asking us to build the mine was too low. That said, we did like the ore body and we made the investment and we asked Adrian Goldstone, one of our very valued team members, to go on the Big River board. And our goal there was for Adrian to be able to introduce the company to some of the independent engineering groups that we've worked with over the years and that we know where their 18s are so that the company can go out and get more reliable estimates and eventually put out what we hope would be a better study. On April 1st of this year, Big River put out a press release updating the cost of their feasibility study. And these are their numbers, of course, from their press release. But their project, as stated, had an internal rate of return of 29% at $1,700 gold and an NPV, an after-tax NPV of $217 million. As we moved on, over the course of time, we were approached by Aura Minerals, who is a company... that has Brazilian assets, and the senior management of the company are Brazilian, and they thought the company would be a good fit. And we noted with them that we really did like the project, and we were a 20% shareholder, I guess about 19 and change is what we own, and that we would like to remain around the 20% level, but we were happy for them to buy the other 80% of the project. We spent a lot of time with the management and also met with the chair of ORA's board. And as we got to know them, we realized that they were an excellent company and that we thought they would make an excellent partner in the project. And we noted that not only did we feel that our interests were potentially aligned, we also felt that there was a shared set of values there. And we were very much looking forward to partnering with Aura on this deal. More importantly, as this mine gets built, and I think the first step we're going to do once Aura buys it is work with Aura to redo a study to get numbers that we all buy into and hopefully then work with them to build a mine. And that will provide a very excellent stream of cash flow to Dundee Corporation. More importantly, we think that this model is replicable and we intend to pursue more deals like this. And as investors, we know that, you know, if you read the research, you know, junior mining stocks tend to trade at somewhere between 10 and 30% of the ultimate NPD. And often we all know that those NPDs turn out to be wrong. But our strategy is if we can do our homework and really do the work, there's several ways to get MPB out of a project. The historical way, which was always to sell the project because junior mining stocks or mines tend to trade historically around MPB and for most of my career, they traded at premium to MPB. And they trade at premium because they're probably worth, in most cases, in many cases, premium to MPB. And that is When you look at a mine, very often, you know, I can give you an example. The mine when I was at Dundee Precious Metals, our mine at Shellapetch, when we bought it, had about seven or eight years of reserve life. And today, which we bought it in 2003, so 19 years ago, and today it still has, I believe, somewhere around 10 to 12 years of reserve life. And we've mined it for 19 years. So mines often can go much longer than that initial resource or reserve life that we develop these fancy models that call them that. So there are reasons. But the other way of getting it is if you can't sell it and we're in a market where you can't sell it, is to actually be part of the team that builds the project and owns the project and get that stream of cash flows which is the component that makes up the NPD. And from our perspective, that's not only a strategy we'd like to pursue, it's also a strategy of a reward as well as we move forward. And of course, the goal is to make sure we continue to dot our I's and cross our T's and do our job right. So that's kind of, the outline of the strategy part, and I'm going to hand it over to Lila now to talk about the quarter.
spk01: Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. After that very fulsome update on our corporate vision and strategy, I would like to to now give you a financial review for this past quarter for the company. But before I do that, I would like to congratulate the Dundee team for a quarter of solid investment success. I am very pleased that we have begun to rebuild our capital base through prudence and well-researched investments, particularly within the context of a very uncertain global backdrop. Dungy Corporation incurred a pre-tax profit of $31.1 million in the first quarter of 2022. That is compared to a loss of $19.7 million in the first quarter of 2021. As I mentioned, the key driver this quarter was a $46.6 million gain in our consolidated investment portfolio. The company generated consolidated revenues of $3.8 million. compared to 5.3 million in the first quarter of 2021. The market value of our publicly traded securities increased to 170.3 million as of March 31st, 2022, from 113 million at December 31st of 2021, representing almost a 50% increase quarter over quarter. Net income from our portfolio investments in excluding GCIC was 45.7 million in Q1 2022, and that compares to a loss of 11.1 million in the first quarter of 2021. The notable positive performance in the quarter came from gains in Reunion Gold of 26.3 million and Centaurus Minerals of 5.5 million. During the first quarter of 2022, The company invested $19.5 million in new and existing positions in its corporate portfolio. The net gain from investments during the first quarter of 2022 includes $1.8 million in dividends and interest income distributed from our portfolio investments compared to $700,000 a year ago. Turning to our operating subsidiary performance for the quarter, Goodman & Company Investment Council, or GCIC, asset vendor management increased from 57.9 million in Q4 2021 to 64 million in Q1 2022. During the first three months of 2022, GCIC raised net capital of $13.2 million from launching a new tax-assisted Limited Partnership, the CMT 2022 Resource Limited Partnership. Redemptions of AUM during the same period of 2022 were 7.29. During the first quarter of 2022, this segment recognized a pre-tax loss of $323,000 compared to pre-tax earnings of $159,000 in the year-ago period. Blue Goose incurred a pre-tax loss of $28,000 from continuing operations. As a reminder, the Blue Goose Beef Division was sold in 2021 for aggregate proceeds over two transactions of over $70 million. $2 million was received in Q3 of 2021, and around $63 million was received in Q4 of 2021. In the quarter, we settled the cattle holdback for proceeds of $2.3 million. Turning now to UHIC, UHIC reported a pre-tax loss of $300,000 in Q1 of 2022, as compared to $9.8 million in Q1 of 2021. And as you will recall, last quarter, we reduced the carrying value of both the royalty and the contingency payment to zero. Despite rising oil prices, the environment in Chad remains very, very uncertain. The company's carrying value of its 84% interest in UHIC is approximately $3.2 million as of March 31st of 2021. Dundee Sustainable Technologies incurred a pre-tax loss of $700,000 in the first quarter of 2022, compared to a loss of $800,000 in the first quarter of 2021. First quarter 2022 revenue for DSP was $1.1 million. which increased from $700,000 in the prior year period. Ag Marine reported a pre-tax net loss of $1.1 million in the first quarter on sales revenues of $1.3 million, which compares to a loss of $900,000 and $1.5 million, respectively, in Q1 2021. During the first quarter of 2022, Dundee 360, generated pre-tax earnings of $500,000 compared to $67,000 in the year-ago period. Now for a bit of a head asset summary. The first quarter of 2022 consolidated G&A, which includes all of our subsidiary G&A, inclusive of stock-based compensation with $6.1 million compared to 6.7 continuing operations a year ago. We know we have a lot more work to do here, but we are continuing to make progress. Head office GNA excluding stock-based compensation for Q1 of 2022 with $2.7 million compared to $3 million in Q1 of 2021 year over year. We ended the quarter in a very solid liquidity position. At quarter end, we had $76.2 million in consolidated cash versus $93.9 million at the end of Q4 of 2021. We received correspondence from the CRA, which maintains the audit reassessment, and we are preparing a response to the appeals division. We continue to have $13.8 million on deposit regarding the 2014 to 2016 tax years. This amount is separately disclosed on our balance sheet as deposit with taxation authority. That concludes my comments. Back to you, Jonathan.
spk04: Well, thank you very much, Lila. Once again, I'd like to thank all of our employees for the hard work of the quarter and the Still in a pandemic-laid environment, which seems to be the new normal. And I'd like to take this time to open it up for questions.
spk00: Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, followed by the number one. on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the number two. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Brett Reese of Janie Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead. Hi, Jonathan. Hi, Lila.
spk02: Hi, Brett.
spk01: Good morning. Good morning, Brett.
spk02: Good morning. Good morning. You know, with interest rates moving up in the United States, has that created an opportunity to, you know, maybe buy back some of the preference preferreds, you know, at a bigger discount, right?
spk03: Well, they're not really trading at a bigger discount yet.
spk04: So, you know, we're still... doing a lot of work, Brett, on what our capital needs are going to be with the strategy that I just discussed. And so we have an issue a bit, and we certainly do look at it and talk about it a lot. But before we step forward and buy either common shares or prep shares back, we're doing a lot of work with our board right now on making sure that we have enough capital to meet our needs.
spk02: Okay. We think we do, but we just want to finish that. Okay. Do we still have the investment in Android? Yes, we do. So with the new normal that supply chains maybe want to, come closer to home and this business with moving more to electric cars. Do those two trends, are those headwinds or tailwinds for the value of our Android investment?
spk03: Lila, do you want to take a stab at that or should I?
spk01: I can take that question, sure. I think the answer is a bit of a mixed picture. Easy is certainly a tailwind for the company. The company does partake in that business. I think near term, the supply chain is certainly a challenge. I think the flip side of that is significant future growth opportunities and a bit of a hockey stick of growth for the company going forward because there is a great deal of pent-up demand in the auto market for new cars. So we remain, even though Android, we consider it to be non-core, we remain extremely constructive about the company's prospects going forward. They have done a fantastic job of managing the things that are within their control, and they had a very good 2021.
spk02: Okay. And one last one. Jonathan, there's a lot of buzz about companies trying to develop lithium carbonate. Is that something you've looked at as a potential opportunity for the company, or is it smoke and mirrors?
spk04: Well, I wouldn't suggest it's smoke and mirrors. I mean, lithium is very much a key component in the batteries that goes into a Tesla or an electric car. But let's recognize that over the course of my career, which is pushing 33 years of doing this, lithium is still a little different than a lot of other commodities. And so from our point of view is when you look at the You know, Elon Musk was once quoted as saying, I don't know why they call it the lithium, but that it is a lot more nickel in it than lithium. And nickel is a base metal, which we're much more comfortable with. Right. So rather than, you know, it's definitely not smoke and mirrors, but we don't have a lot of experience on lithium. So before we would do something, we would spend a lot of time learning trying to get some experience, trying to understand more about how it's mined, the pros, the cons, etc. And the way we've attacked the battery metal world is more through traditional base metals. We own an interest in a company called Centaurus Metals, which is developing a very exciting nickel project in Brazil, and that nickel is going to go right into the same battery besides the lithium. And it's much more traditional in the way it's mined. And traditional, I mean, they mine it by ways that we're very comfortable with and can bring some expertise to the table. We also own a company, a little junior company called Magna Mining, which is developing a nickel, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and copper project called the Shakespeare Project in the Sudbury area, which is a very prolific belt of rocks. And we also have an investment company called SPC Sudbury Platinum Corporation. So I think that we've chosen to attack the battery metal through the parts of it that we already know very well.
spk02: Great. Thank you for answering my questions. My pleasure.
spk00: Thanks, Brett. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Mr. Jonathan Goodman for closing remarks.
spk04: Well, I want to thank everyone for participating and look forward to talking to you next quarter.
spk03: Thank you very much.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the conference call for this morning. We would like to thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.
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