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OR Royalties Inc.
5/7/2026
Thank you. Thank you. . . . . . .
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to ORR Royalties Q1 2026 results conference call. After the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note that this call has been recorded today, May 7, 2026 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to our host for today's call, Mr. Jason Atu. Bonjour, Mesdames et Messieurs. Bienvenue à l'appel conférence des résultats du premier trimestre de 2026 de Redevance Or. Après la présentation, nous procéderons à une séance de questions et réponses. Si vous désirez poser une question, veuillez appuyer sur la touche étoile suivie du numéro 1. Veuillez prendre note que cet appel est enregistré aujourd'hui le 7 mai 2026 à 10 h, heure de l'Est. J'aimerais maintenant céder la parole à votre hôte, M. Jason Latourne.
Merci Joelle. Good morning everybody and thanks for being on today's call. Procedurally, I'll run through our prepared presentation and then we'll subsequently open up the line for question and answer session. For those participating online via the webcast, you can submit your questions in advance through the webcast platform. Today's presentation will also be available and downloadable online through our corporate website. Please note that there are forward-looking statements in this presentation. from which actual results may differ. Also, please note that all amounts presented and discussed will be in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise stated. I'm joined on the call this morning by Fred Ruel, the company's Vice President Finance and Chief Financial Officer, amongst others indicated on slide three. When looking at Orr Royalty's first quarter of 2026, it's safe to say that the company is off to an impressive start. Our royalties earned 22,740 gold equivalent ounces in the first quarter of 2026, a great start to the year as it relates to our annual delivery guidance of 80,000 to 90,000 gold equivalent ounces. As a reminder, the company is expecting fairly balanced quarter-over-quarter geo performance through the rest of the 2026 calendar year. Propelled by the strong performance from our asset base, as well as robust precious metals pricing during the period, ore royalties achieved record quarterly revenues of 102.8 million, along with peer leading cash margin of 96.8%. Ore royalties ended the first quarter with 94.9 million in cash, and as at the end of March, we were also completely debt free. We'll revisit the balance sheet later on in today's formal presentation, as there have been some key movements subsequent to the quarter end that we'll be providing more information on. With respect to our ongoing commitment to return capital to shareholders, the company declared and paid its quarterly dividend of 5.5 cents per share in the first quarter, marking its 46th consecutive quarterly dividend with over $289 million returned to shareholders to date from these distributions. Subsequent to quarter end, Orr Royalties Board of Directors approved an 18.2% increase to the base quarterly dividend to $0.065 per common share payable on July 15, 2026 to shareholders of record of the close of business June 30, also 2026. The dividend increase itself is a testament of the confidence we have in the consistency, predictability, and the anticipated growth of the current and future cash flows underpinning our business. The 2025 calendar year represented a period of time during which our royalties chose to stay on the sidelines and exercise discipline from a corporate development perspective. It was a period marked by rapidly increasing commodity prices, and in most cases, and as a group, we just couldn't get there on the values being paid at the time or the lack of the security in some of the deals we saw got printed last year. That said, our activity picked up significantly in the first quarter of 2026 with the company having announced three new transactions during the period, acquiring 13 new royalties and committing to deploy 438.5 million. More importantly, we proved that we could get deals done at good rates of return and appropriate security and thus completing these transactions as well as a fourth one announced just a few weeks ago at above-average industry returns. We'll come back to all of these specific deals shortly. Even with the increased activity we've announced year-to-date in terms of new investments, Orr Royalties' corporate development function remains very busy, and there are a lot of prospective deals we are currently working on. Our philosophical approach to these new investments remains unchanged, given we're often making these investments on assets with 15, 20, 25-year mine lives, we're not willing to settle for NAV dilutive instruments, nor are we willing to sacrifice having appropriate security in all our streams and royalties. As many of you on the line today know well, unlike many of its peers, Our Royalties has the luxury of being able to walk away from any transactions that doesn't fit this criteria, given our peer-leading, near-to-medium-term organic geo-growth profile. We'll now pivot to the company's financial performance for the first quarter of 2026. As previously noted, quarterly revenues were a record for the company and effectively tracked both increased GEOs earned and higher precious metals prices during the period when compared to the first quarter of 2025. Q1 2026 net earnings of 39 cents per basic common share for the year represented a substantial increase over the first three months of 2025. Most importantly, the first quarter saw a major improvement in cash flow per share versus the same period last year. And finally, positive annual adjusted earnings of 40 cents per basic common share represents 125 increase over the adjusted earnings announced by the company back in Q1 2025. As of May 6, the company had 24 producing assets, with the vast majority of our key contributing royalties and streams coming from what we define as Tier 1 mining jurisdictions, at just under 75% in aggregate, and that includes geos from Canada, the US, and Australia. If we were to include Chile as a Tier 1, we'd be closer to 90%. The list on slide 6 has 24 producing assets. And as we've now included Buena Ventura San Gabriel Mine as our transaction to acquire the Goldfields portfolio is expected to close in the coming days. Recent notable additions to this list include Dalgiranga as we received our first notice of payment from Romilius in late April with first payment expected any day now. as well as Agnico Eagle's amalgamated Kirkland or AK deposit located at Macasa, on which ore holds a 2% NSR royalty. Agnico noted just last week that the mine has now officially gone to produce 40,000 ounces of gold this year at AK. Moving to slide seven and looking at the commodity breakdown for Q1 2026, Over 97% of our geos earned came from precious metals, gold at 57.5% and silver at just under 40%, with the remainder coming primarily from copper. Stronger silver prices realized during the quarter versus our budget provided a boost in terms of both geos earned as well as a direct exposure to the metal versus last year's 30% of geos and revenue having come from silver. no matter which price deck you're using today or for tomorrow, Ore Royalties provides investors with material relative direct exposure to the white metal. Agnico Eagle's Canadian Malartic continued to deliver in the first quarter, performing well versus expectations, primarily as a result of higher grades in ore tons at the Barnett pit. The higher gold grades in ore tons were a result of continued mining of mineralized zones near historical underground slopes in the Barnett Pit. In additional good news, production from the East Gouldie Ramp commenced in March of 2026. All of IGNECO's development and construction activities at Canadian Malartic continue to progress on schedule. Construction of the first loading station is scheduled for first production through shaft number one in the second quarter of 2027. Elsewhere, exploration drilling continued to yield positive results in multiple areas of the Odyssey Mine, and IGNICO now has a combined 35 drill rigs turning both at Malartic as well as regionally. As reiterated again in their Q1 update last week, IGNICO continues to advance the transition to underground mining at Malartic with the construction of the Odyssey Mine, including the development of the Odyssey shaft number one. They also identified the pilot hole for the second shaft and are also advancing internal evaluations on three projects that together have the potential to increase annual throughput. A study covering all three of these projects is expected from IGNICO in September of this year. As many of you also follow IGNICO Eagle, it is notable that the Chief Operating Officer, Dominique Bruchard, mentioned in their conference call last week that the life of mine at Malartic, quote unquote, will probably extend to 2060, which is well beyond the last stated life of mine, which to raw mine people was 2042. At Mantos Blancos, sulfide mill throughput was strong in the first quarter, despite a four-day planned maintenance shutdown. having averaged 19,661 tons per day versus the nameplate of 20,000 tons per day. Based on our current understanding of Capstone's plans for 2026 and anticipated silver grade variability between now and the end of October, Mantos Blancos is expected to have a stronger first half as it relates to ORR's GEOs earned and thus a modestly softer second half of the year. Touching on CSA, And based on our previous disclosure, the asset basically performed to budget in the first quarter. Also in line with Harmony's public disclosure on CSA's copper production guidance through the end of their financial year in late June, 2026. We're anticipating a weaker quarter in terms of GOS for a second quarter owing to Harmony's disclosed one month suspension at CSA to complete necessary structural steel work underground. As it relates to Harmony's guidance for its fiscal year 2027, as well as our partners' longer-term plans at CSA, we'll all have a better understanding later this summer with their FY27 copper production guidance announcement and an updated life of mine plan in August. Other notable mentions included a strong quarter at the Sassa mine in Macedonia, as well as the early benefits of our 2% royalty interest at Nandimi in Ghana. This provides a good segue to slide eight. The first two slides that touch on our four most recent transactions, all of which have been announced year to date in 2026. And after our quiet 2025 in terms of new investments, I'm delighted today to spend some time discussing all of our recent activity. We actually already discussed these first two transactions on our last quarterly conference call, given that they'd already been announced prior to mid-February, but it's worth circling back to provide a bit more context. At that time, we called Nandini a classic no-brainer, and we obviously continue to stand by that claim. The upfront $98.5 million closed in the first quarter of 2026 and was funded entirely with cash on hand. meaning that our end-of-quarter cash balance is reflective of having paid for the additional 1% NSR at Namdini. Similarly, and on our previous conference call, we also expressed our excitement associated with having just announced the acquisition of the portfolio of eight royalties from Goldfields for $115 million, anchored by a 1.5% NSR royalty on Buena Ventura's producing San Gabriel gold and silver mine in Peru. in Operating Mind, which just received its key final permits last week, allowing the operations to really start increasing throughput later this year. The key theme on this page was that Nandimi was completed 100% on a bilateral basis, while the Goldfields acquisition truly demonstrated the creativity of our corporate development team to gain an edge in what was a competitive process. With respect to the latter, while we are able to leverage our relationship and goodwill with Goldfields given our partnership at Windfall. In addition to the producing San Gabriel royalty, our team sees very good value in the 2.25% NPI over the Aurora discovery in BC and the 2% NSR on the Paris project in Western Australia, which incidentally is located just 12 kilometers southeast of Goldfields' iconic St. Ives mine. This asset also recently attracted the discovery management team from Dagaranga. We expect to see strong exploration results in the near term out of these projects. We mentioned in our press release last night that we're confident to have completed deals that have been described by sell side analysts as above average industry returns. Flipping to slide 10, we are illustrating our two most recent transactions in Spring Valley and Murraybrook, both of which were not disclosed on our last call, and the latter of which was actually announced in mid-April, so subsequent to the first quarter's end. Spring Valley was in some ways very analogous to Nandini in that we took the opportunity to effectively double down on an asset within our portfolio, and one that was already serving as a key growth driver for our royalties when looking at our five-year outlook. while the transaction was once again a public process we are able to leverage our institutional knowledge on the asset this distract this transaction closed in april and as such we now own a six percent nsr royalty versus three percent previously on the core claims at spring valley meaning once this project goes into production estimated in 2028 and after 500,000 ounces of gold have been recovered, Spring Valley will be generating approximately 10,000 geos per annum to our account, with our first meaningful payments expected in the 2030 calendar year. The average sell-side IRR at spot prices for this fully funded and fully permitted development asset in a Tier 1 mining jurisdiction was 8.6%. And finally, with Canadian Copper's Murray Brook, we proved that sometimes even smaller deals can come with outsized positive returns. Full credit to our internal team for identifying this under the radar opportunity early on, an opportunity that checked all of our boxes. Future precious metal geos from a near-term brownfield restart in a tier one mining jurisdiction with major infrastructure and labor advantages. First production for the Murraybrook deposit process through the pre-existing caribou mill could occur in late 28 or early 2029, thanks to what should be an accelerated permitting timeline. While the total transaction value was only $28 million, it provided a crucial piece of financing that has allowed our new partner funding through to production. The calculated average sell side IRR for Murraybrook was a formidable 21.6%. In summary, we had been previously conveying that Orr Royalties had been patiently waiting for the right deals. And based on what I've just outlined, I think we proved to both ourselves and our shareholders that our patience has paid off. We'll continue to take the exact same philosophical, disciplined approach to all additional new investments that we hope to complete in 2026 and beyond. So how does this all stack up? Well, moving to slide 10, where we present the same slide you've seen many, many times, it is very much worthy to note that while our 2030 five-year outlook, originally out in February 2026, took into account future geos from the 2% at Nandimi, and the assets acquired from Goldfields, including San Gabriel. What the range does not include any additional potential geos expected from both our additional coverage at Spring Valley, as well as Canadian Copper's Murray Brook project, meaning that there is already confirmed contingency as well as potential upside built into our published 2030 range. Let's move to slide 11. which highlights all the greenfield projects currently in construction and or advanced development that are currently included in our five-year outlook. With the caveat that the approximately 10,000 geos annually from Spring Valley represents the increased royalty coverage, only half of which is in our official 2030 guidance range as just discussed. In the not included section, I'll point to a few names. First, there is Canadian Copper's Murraybrook, with that transaction expected to close in the next two weeks. Second, more positive progress continues to be made at Agnico Eagle's Upper Beaver project, with our partners still guiding for a 2030 startup. And given the recent comments by Agnico, we feel that we might see some geos in 2030. Third and finally, It was announced last week that Baru Mining has entered into a 90-day exclusivity period with PricewaterhouseCoopers acting as a receiver in respect to its proposed acquisition of the Eagle Gold Mine in the Yukon. At Oro Royalties, this is an exciting announcement that could result in potential future upside to our five-year outlook. A 5% NSR at a Canadian mine that has a good potential for restart before the end of the decade could be additive to our already impressive growth profile. Moving to slide 12, I just wanted to flag a few key items of note on our Catalyst page based on some very recent updates provided by our operating partners. First, Goldfields is now expecting to complete its permitting process and associated finalized First Nation IBA work for windfall in the third quarter of this year. This keeps the project on track for Goldfield's publicly disclosed base case timeline, which anticipates first production from windfall in the first quarter of 2029. And second, last week, South 32 provided a comprehensive update on its Hermosa Taylor development project in Arizona, which is now expecting to see first production from the Taylor mine in the first half of 2028. previously mid-2027, and ramping up to full throughput and production rates by early 2031, previously mid-2030. The most important takeaway, however, is that our partner remains very much committed to what is eventually set to become a cornerstone asset within its broader portfolio. Finally, we'll end the formal part of the presentation on slide 13 which outlines the current state of Oral Royalty's balance sheet. As at the end of March, we were completely debt free and held approximately 95 million in cash on the balance sheet, which as previously noted, accounted for the closing of the Nandini part two transaction, along with our associated initial payment of 98.5 million funded with cash. You'll also notice we were active in our buyback program in Q1. As you can see in the cash flow waterfall, we bought back and canceled another $12.9 million of ore shares. Worth noting, however, is that the $168 million spring value transaction closed in April of 2026, and that was funded by a drawdown from the credit facility. Along the same lines, we're expecting the aggregate transactions with Goldfields to close in the coming days, and that $167 million will also be funded by a combination of balance sheet cash and amounts drawn from the credit facility. The Murraybrook transaction is also imminent with a total of $9 million of initial cash outflows from ore to be funded with cash off the balance sheet. The long story short, after closing and funding all these transactions, drawn debt on the facility should stand at approximately $230 million. with their cash balance being at just over $30 million. Needless to say, after all this, we still have sufficient liquidity to execute on new streams and royalties as they present themselves over the next months and years. Our corporate development pipeline remains robust, and our core focus amidst this opportunity set remains on adding geos today and our geos that will contribute to our already peer leading growth profile between now and 2030. We have a strong desire to continue to grow the business by completing new and accretive transactions, and that remains our number one priority. But as we've said before, here at Orr Royalties, we're not looking to achieve these goals at any cost. And with that, I'd like to thank everyone for listening today. We'll now open up the line for questions as well as questions posted on the webcast. If we don't get to all the questions on the line, we'll make sure to respond offline to those that we don't cover on this webcast. Joelle, back to you, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys.
One moment, please. Your first question comes from Tanya Jakubek with Gosha Bank. Your line is now open. Hello. I think that's me. Hello.
Good morning, Tanya.
Oh, morning. Morning. It's always hard to know if that's you or not with these names. Okay. Morning, everybody. I just wanted to circle back. First of all, congratulations, Jason, on your four deals that you've done this year. I was just looking at them. They're ranging anywhere. I'm going to say like 50 to 300 million or thereabout. Is that how I should be thinking about it? your pipeline that you're looking at, is it sort of still in that sweet spot for you?
Tanya, thank you for your question and thank you for the congratulations on the quarter. And again, do commend our corporate development team for the four deals that we've done this year. I would say, again, our sweet spot, as we've communicated many, many times, We do look at smaller deals as evidenced by what we did with Canadian Copper. So you can think of kind of the sweet spot between 50 million US dollars and 300. That said, the opportunities that there are a number of deals out there that are significantly above that range, the 550 to 300. As we have exhibited in 2025, though, some of those big deals, we just couldn't get there both on valuation and on structure. We will continue to be disciplined. We will continue to participate if there are auctions around those bigger transactions. Clearly what's happened with Wheaton Precious' successful stream on Antamina is there's a lot more conversations, we would say, at both the senior diversified companies and the larger and mid-tier copper co's that have significant byproducts. to essentially stream off to fund their capital projects. So the deals I would say that we're seeing, they do range from the sweet spot that I said, all the way up to some billion dollar transactions. We will be very careful with our shareholders' capital. As we've talked about before, we do have obviously very stringent and disciplined hurdles, but that's the environment out there right now, Tanya. But I think it's safe to say for us, You know, you can think about 50 to 300 million is our sweet spot.
And then, Jason, as you mentioned, you're very particular in some of the security that you want to have in place in your contract. Can you remind us what are the critical, let's say, top three that you will not budge on in terms of the security that you're looking for?
Yeah, well, first of all, again, and I'll just talk to the last year's transactions that we didn't see. Most of them that we did see, in fact, the majority of them were on streams. And some of the streams that we did see were completely unsecured. So, again, there's a whole range or variance or continuum of security associated with these instruments. What I would say is for ourselves and for our shareholders, we need to essentially, from a risk management perspective, The mining industry is very tough, as you know, Tanya. There can be unexpected events within assets, within countries, that we certainly need some sort of security. And again, there's a continuum for which we can affect that, for which if an incident does happen, that effectively we're a creditor at the table, either around insolvency or if a mine doesn't... to work out a kind of worst case where effectively the mind goes pear-shaped and effectively it's not delivering as to the expectations. Again, it's something that our team is very focused on. We obviously would like to have a lot of transactions that wouldn't have the workouts that I'm describing, but for risk management and a shareholder perspective, again, we're insistent that we have some tie of security back to the asset that if something does go wrong, at least we have a seat at the table to negotiate something, go forward to protect the capital that we put in.
Okay. And so, Jason, what I'm hearing from you is that you want security at the asset level is what I took away. How important is it to you to have security from parent guarantee. How important is that for you?
Yeah, look, again, there's a whole continuum of security, Tanya. And so asset level security would vary from country to country as well. Obviously, if it's a multi-asset company, a parent guarantee or corporate guarantee would satisfy our requirements just around security and any sort of acquisition go forward. But again, there has to be In our mind, with large transactions, there has to be some sort of ability for us to essentially sit at the table when things do go wrong. We're hoping that doesn't happen for our peers and for ourselves to go forward. But as you know, you've been in the industry and the sector as long as I have. That does happen from occasion to occasion.
I would assume that you would want also arbitration rights. We've seen those as well. That's correct. And just mainly my last question just on these deals. You mentioned, you know, syndication of deals. Are you seeing any opportunities in the syndication front?
Well, the way I'd answer that, Tanya, is clearly you saw a syndicate, a deal in Cascabel with Franco probably now 18 months ago or almost two years ago. We do like the syndication of deals in jurisdictions that we would say are not tier one. That was a very unique circumstance for which I think you know, both ourselves and Franco already had existing royalties. We'd done a bunch of diligence. We've been to site multiple times. We're very pleased that obviously what's happened since then is Jiangxi Copper has come in and acquired Seoul Gold because it does provide financial certainty. But that said, again, there's a blueprint there for streaming and royalty companies to work together in specific instances. I would say that we're an advocate of the structure. We're an advocate of syndicating deals that have the certain unique aspects that, again, just point back to Caskabel. So we're certainly open for it. I would encourage you to ask the same question to the other royalty and streaming companies that you cover because I do think there is a mix of attitudes around whether or not they're looking to syndicate. And it's also why I would say that it's pretty rare. The syndicated deal, I think, was the first one done in 20-plus years that we did with Franco.
Yeah, it's just I don't hear anyone else say it, so... Okay, well, and then finally, just on the corporate transaction, are there any opportunities there or are you seeing better value in sort of these asset deals?
I would say, listen, Tanya, we obviously evaluate our sector. We've always said that consolidation should happen in the sector. We've got very good views on valuation of both the mid-tiers and the junior tiers. royalty and streaming co's. I would say at this point, again, everything's got a price, but at this point, we're not seeing a lot of value in that subset of royalty and streaming co's, but things can change rapidly, whether it's the assets getting some good geologic perspective, whether, again, every day, all our companies trade from, you know, 930 to 4P. And so there is, a value for, we believe, a value for everything in transit. We're just not there currently today with, again, the subset that I talked about. But we're certainly open and we're certainly aware and we're certainly monitoring everything.
Okay. Thank you so much for taking all my questions. I'll pass it on to someone else. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Tanya. We know it's a very busy day for you and the rest of the analysts, so appreciate your time and support.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Derek Ma with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
Thank you. If some of these larger 500 million billion dollar transactions do materialize in OR's favor, is there sufficient liquidity and flexibility available to the business to execute? And how are you thinking about the NCIB in the context of the current deal market?
Yeah, really good question, Derek. Thank you for that. So, um, again i think it really depends on the transaction that we've been talking about we do have sufficient liquidity under a revolving facility as you know we've got um 650 undrawn as of the quarter one with a 200 million dollar accordion obviously we've now deployed quite a bit as i mentioned in my comments we're expecting to have a drawn around a drawn by the time we close all these transactions of 230 million with some cash of about 30. We are obviously making quite a bit of cash flow quarter over quarter. So that comes into the lens. But look, if there was a really unique opportunity that met all the, checked all their boxes, met the hurdle rates, was in a good jurisdiction, we could obviously, we've got a really good relationship with our bank syndicate. We've got plenty of capacity. If you think about the way they think things through things, around compliance tests such as EBITDA as well as leverage ratios. We could certainly extend that revolver if we saw something that was really appealing for us. I would say at this stage, we're not having any of those discussions, so that might give you some hints as to, again, we really believe we got sufficient liquidity to execute on our business plan given the opportunity set that we're seeing currently.
This is a business model that I think can support quite a bit of leverage, but what is the leverage ratio that you're ultimately comfortable with? If it did materialize.
Yeah, obviously what informs the leverage if we were to do a significant sizable transaction is the commodity price underpinning whatever we're doing. We are certainly a precious metals vehicle, so let's for argument's sake say it's a gold or silver transaction. I think the way, and I'll ask Fred to comment here too, if he likes, the way we think about our business is if there was an exceptional opportunity, we thought being very accretive, we wouldn't want to go much past two times EBITDA levels, debt to EBITDA levels. For an exceptional opportunity, we could kind of stretch to two and a half, but this would be an opportunity that, again, would be, paying geos for us so we get back down to two times EBITDA very quickly and then continue to pay off our revolver but we're quite comfortable if that was a scenario and situation but it would have to be a very unique opportunity for us and look there's also other avenues or instruments too that doesn't necessarily have to be through the revolver if you look at what Wheaton did With their Antamina transaction, they got a term loan from a syndicate as well. That's certainly available to us as well with the right opportunity.
Got it. Let me ask you on jurisdictional risk then. There's a high concentration of assets in Tier 1 jurisdictions for OR. That's been a trademark of the portfolio. How does jurisdictional risk factor into the assessment of new transactions going forward, given there's arguably some room to take on more jurisdictional risk in the portfolio?
Look, I think it's a really good question, Derek. I think this is what differentiates our company from our peers. We do take great pride in, again, having what we classify as the majority of our assets in Tier 1 jurisdictions. And so it would be very off-brand for us to take a material transaction in a non-Tier 1 jurisdiction. You can think Africa or Turkey. um, you know, other jurisdictions that we wouldn't classify as, as tier one. It'd be very off brand for us to do a material transaction because again, we do believe this is what differentiates ourselves. We do like doing transactions and we have a, a filter when we're looking at perspective opportunities and, and, and the filter is, you know, the tier one jurisdiction filter. Um, Because the way we see things going forward and the House view is especially given the turbulent times that we anticipate around kind of geopolitical aspects and geopolitical strife, as well as you couple that with the quite robust commodity environment, we would expect, you know, countries that don't necessarily have a rule of law or deep mining history that they're going to try trying to extract through windfall taxes or increased royalties in countries already started to see that to essentially get some more value for them and the assets versus again, what we consider tier one jurisdictions where it's obviously got established rule of law, deep mining history, And these governments and stakeholders really do understand what mining can provide for communities, governments, and the sort. So we do have a strong filter at looking at, again, transactions in North America. It's no accident, therefore, when you look at the four transactions that we did print in 2026, there were a couple of them, the one being in Ghana, the other one being in Peru. that our team was very focused on making sure we had the ballast come back with the transactions at Spring Valley in Nevada and obviously Canadian copper in Canada here. So we do think through that frequently. We do debate it quite a bit. As I said, it would be very off-brand for us to do a very large stream in an African country. That would change, again, the jurisdictional exposure that we think insulates us and provides a superior investment vehicle to our shareholders.
Got it.
Thanks for taking my questions and good luck.
Thank you, Derek.
Your next question comes from Brian MacArthur with Raymond James.
Your line is now open.
Good morning, Jake. And I just want to follow up on that. So one of your bigger projects that's coming on is Almasar. A couple of questions. First, I don't know if you can give me security on that, but what I'm more interested in is whether you take that in kind or whether you have to have the risk of them shipping you out of the country. And the second thing, just on your comments there, because I do think it is something that is unique and helps with Cisco, if someone were to give you a very good price for something like Elmazar, would you be willing to sell that to improve the multiple technically? Um, cause maybe it's somewhere else better than someone else, but on the other hand, that's 6,000 ounces. It's pretty big.
Yeah. Really good question. Look, the way we'd answer that is you have to recall that a Mars, a Mulsar was a legacy asset. Um, uh, right. And so Mike Spencer's in the room here and he's basically spent the last eight years of his life, uh, effectively getting that through a workout as, as you know, with Orion Mine Finance to the point where we're effectively looking at first gold by the summer. So again, well done in essentially taking a legacy workout and making sure that we can continue to extract or get geos from it. And it is, again, it's not a material, if you think about, and I don't know what your number is, but we can take this offline in terms of The 2020 2030 outlook it's not a material contributor to our overall there is some ounces that we're, including in our internal 2030 outlook but it's again it's not material. If you think about the overall growth in our in our portfolio to dance to the question about whether or not we'd sell that position, I think we've always said. We're open for business. If someone was going to lay down something significant that we saw was good for our shareholders and quite accretive understanding kind of the risks and opportunities in Armenia, absolutely we would consider it. We do think it's a very good asset. We do think that the management team, the United Group, is doing a very good job of moving that forward. Um, and, and, and so, again, I think that's the best way we can, we can answer that question, but it is a legacy asset. It is a legacy workout and, uh, you know, uh, all, all the commendations that to Mike and, and his team for essentially, you know, we're, we're going to be extracting geos for our shareholders, um, in the, in the next few years because of just a sticking with it and, and a workout.
Fair enough. And do you get that in kind or is it like someone delivers you a paper somewhere at the end of the day?
It's in kind. Okay. Thank you very much, Jason. All right, Brian.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Jason for closing remarks.
There are no further questions? No.
I'm sorry, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Okay, thank you, Joelle. Before we wrap up today's call, I want to leave you with a final thought on oral royalties. As a management team, we focus on capital returns and hence why we bought shares back in the quarter and increased our dividend by 18%. We'll continue to keep shareholder returns at the forefront of all our strategic decisions. And with that, thank you for your attention today. We do appreciate your support and we'll talk to you next quarter.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your line.