Good afternoon and welcome to the Ecora Royalties PLC Q1 trading update investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself, however, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Marc Bishop Lafleche, CEO, and Kevin Flynn, CFO. Good afternoon to you both.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for joining us here today. To kick off, I think today what we're looking to do is update our shareholders who are existing shareholders on how the business has performed in the first quarter, but also cover some of the more fundamental cornerstone aspects of our business for new potential investors or interested parties who are keen to learn more about Anglo Pacific Group. What a quarter it's been for quarter one. We always anticipated based on the performance of our commodity basket that Q1 had the potential to be exceptional, and we're delighted that for a third straight consecutive quarter, we reported a portfolio contribution of approximately $44 million, which taken into perspective is almost 50% of the entirety of last year.
We're tracking very well along for an exceptional 2022, depending on how commodity prices perform for the rest of the year. Particularly, that's cobalt and that's coking coal with prices at either record levels or near record levels. We are expecting some continued strength in both for the rest of the year, but we'll circle back to that later in the presentation. On the debt side, we've continued to delever exceptionally quickly, which is for us a key strategic imperative, given our hope to be a de-risked way to get exposure to the mining sector. Furthermore, in a very inflationary environment, the virtues of the royalty model are really shining.
That as a royalty and streaming business, we offer exposure to commodity prices without the operating expenses and without the capital costs that are often incurred by mining companies. We were equally pleased to have a favorable ruling in Australia in relation to our long-running Four Mile dispute. Last, we continue to have the fantastic balance sheet firepower to fund new acquisitions. We're very much where we sit today coming off quarter, which leaves us in a position of exceptional strength to continue to grow and improve this business. From here, I'll hand it over to Kevin to take you through the first quarter results in more detail. Kevin?
Great. Thanks, Marc. Hello, everyone. Looking to this slide, which summarizes the Q1 numbers, we compared this back against the full year results for 2017- 2021. Total portfolio contribution of $43.6 million in the first quarter alone. To put that into context, as Marc said, that's over 50% of what we generated in our record ever royalty year in 2021 of $85.6 million. Obviously, a lot of this is coming through in windfall format from Kestrel. Given coking coal prices are currently north of $500 a ton. To put that into context, in 2021, that number was $289 a ton. We are seeing some very meaningful cash flow coming through from Kestrel.
Equally as important, excluding the Kestrel revenue from the Q1 numbers, produced $10 million of quarterly revenue from the rest of our portfolio. On an annual basis, that's getting towards what the portfolio in its entirety generated in 2020. Which really does show that through cycle, we have achieved a significant reinvestment of the Kestrel portfolio once Kestrel starts to move outside of the private royalty area next year. As Marc mentioned, this level of cash flow that we've generated has really enabled us to accelerate our deleveraging. We ended the month of April at 0.6x levered. The short-term cash flows that we expect to generate will continue to be put to use to delever our balance sheet.
Looking at the individual royalties, and just thinking forward for what 2021 is likely to look like, we expect a very similar level of volume from Kestrel this year as we did last year. In fact, that's quite a similar theme throughout the royalties for 2022. We expect similar volumes generally, but clearly we're in a higher price environment, so we do expect to see some significant growth to come in terms of portfolio contribution. From next year onwards, we would expect the Kestrel volumes to reduce, but I'll cover that off in a couple of slides time. Turning to the next slide. So question, has this record level of commodity pricing shown an equal upturn in terms of our share price? The chart on the left-hand side would suggest not.
Our basket of commodities that we derive our revenue from has increased by 234 points versus 43 on our share price. While our share price has benefited significantly over the past couple of months, this chart would suggest that there should be more to come as we continue to execute on our strategy and add further growth to the portfolio. I suppose if you look to the right-hand side, this is really where you start to see how this has come through into cash flow. The record revenue that we generated in 2021 was really backdated to the second half of that year.
We can see that from the first of July 2021 through to present, our basket has increased by 92%, with coking coal increasing by 138% in that time. Obviously, current prices are still in excess of what was earned in the first quarter as a whole. I'm just gonna pick out two assets specifically. We can go into further detail on the rest of the portfolio in the Q&A perhaps. If we look at Kestrel, and not all of the news here has been just commodity price driven. We've also very pleased to report a new longwall panel has been added to the beginning of the 500-series. As always, with Kestrel, the picture paints a thousand words.
If we look on the right-hand side of the page, we can see the area that's currently been mined, which shows that this panel is going to derive most of the volumes from the current year, which will leave us similar to last year. Then the next two columns and thereafter will show how the royalty begins its transition outside of our private royalty area. To try and put a couple of numbers around that, we broadly expect about 5.2 million-5.3 million tonnes within our private area this year. That's very similar to what we had last year. We would expect over the next three years, on average, about 2 million tonnes from the royalty. Turning to the next slide, which is Maracás.
This is a very good example of how the royalty model works very well in terms of providing considerable upside potential with no associated investment requirements. We were very pleased to see the updated 43-101 in December last year, which basically increased the mine life by about 10 years out to 2041, up from 2031 previously. In addition to this, Largo have been very successful in terms of updating their plant efficiency, and they're now producing 13,200 tonnes per annum. This was up from an initial 9,500 tonnes per annum.
In addition to that as well, t hey're now making considerable progress with their alumina plant, which is looking to produce a TIO2 by-product later on in the year. The royalty covers every product from this operation, which also includes some iron ore by-product as well. We're very pleased with progress that's been made here. If we look on the right very quickly, we can also see that this royalty is a good example of what we are trying to do at Anglo Pacific in terms of positioning a portfolio which is very well positioned on the cost curve. Which in times of significant operational inflationary pressures is a very valuable asset to have in your portfolio, whereby you are obtaining top-line exposure to commodity price through an income producing portfolio, but also very well sheltered against inflationary pressures.
With that, I think I'm handing back to you, Marc, for sliding.
All right. Thank you, Kevin. It will be well known to most, and for those who are dialing in or joining us here today who are less familiar with the business, Ecora Royalties' strategy has been and will continue to be, to diversify its commodity exposure, both in terms of commodity focus, where historically this business was very much in coal to where we are today, where we've repositioned the business such that almost 75% of our exposure today is to commodities that we see as future facing or twenty-first century. By that, we mean commodities which are either absolutely required in the supply chain for a renewable energy production or storage, or mining projects that relative to other miners or other miner operations with the same commodity, are produced in a more sustainable way. We're absolutely delighted with this progress.
This is very much the direction of travel. In other words, Anglo Pacific is very much positioned to be a very diverse way to gain exposure to the commodities that ultimately are going to be a key engine of economic growth for the next century. To that end, we've been very deliberate and methodical in terms of which assets we've added to our portfolio. We've moved slowly and we've been patient and we've been disciplined, but we're very proud of these assets. If you look at those which are highlighted in the darker shading, you can really see that, you know, from our counterparty exposures, these are really tier one operators.
For example, some of the biggest diversified mining companies in the world, or in the example of Cigar Lake, the Cigar Lake mine and the McClean Lake mill operated by some of the largest and best-known Western uranium producers in that space. Furthermore, Capstone Copper, one of the largest diversified copper producers, and Largo, as Kevin just mentioned, Largo Resources owns and operates the world's lowest cost vanadium mine. We think this portfolio that we've assembled is exceptional quality, both in terms of counterparties, but in terms of asset base. There's a huge premium and value to the scarcity of these royalties, and that, you know, it's not. Oftentimes there's only one of these royalties available on these assets, and if you have it, you have it, if you don't, you don't.
We're really proud of this portfolio. We think it's very good quality. Taking a step back when we think about the royalty model in itself and why we think it's interesting, but very simplistically, as we've already mentioned on the right-hand side of the page, you can see that our business model is derived from commodity price exposure and to production. We don't have exposure to operating costs or capital costs.
Obvious that that's crucial in terms of both number one, providing a very safe way relative to mining equities on the inflation side in that as commodity prices go up, oftentimes that revenue gain is offset to the mining company by labor cost inflation, material, raw materials, consumables, diesel, other, such that even though commodity prices could be up 30%-40%, that might not translate directly into a 30%-40% increase in profitability. The virtue of the royalty model, of course, is that inflationary pressure flows through to the bottom line. In a world where inflation is tracking almost 10%, but this virtue of the royalty model has been far less recognized and appreciated in the last 20 years in a period of relatively low inflation.
We expect more inflation, and in fact, we've seen some mining operators report increases in labor costs in the ranges of 30% in one year. Therefore, as we move forward in the next 12, 24 months, we think those inflationary pressures will be even more, like we'll have an even stronger margin erosion, in some instances on the mining side. In terms of where we want to be and how we look to position this portfolio, if we put it simplistically, we have an opportunity here and our strategy and our vision is to build a business where investors can get a diversified exposure to a basket of commodities that would otherwise be very difficult or very risky to put together by going directly into mining companies.
For example, it's very difficult to get diversified exposure to Canadian cobalt, if not impossible. To have that with diversified exposure to tier one low-cost vanadium and similarly diversified exposure to uranium creates a vehicle and a platform where investors are, and our hope is in time as we continue to grow, is to have a vehicle that is, you know, the go-to name for people looking for that exposure to future-facing commodities in a way that doesn't require trolling through mining company A- Z by commodity and taking the very nuanced risk on project development, cost escalation, but also jurisdiction risk in terms of single assets.
Therefore, the Anglo Pacific opportunity and the Anglo Pacific investment thesis is really unique, and there's a lot of white space for us to come into, particularly as ultimately it'll be impossible for the world to achieve a net zero future unless there's just a lot more of these commodities that we list on the left-hand side of the page, produced. Similarly on the right-hand side of the page, the commodities that don't directly flow into a battery supply chain. Well, even if, for example, we have as Anglo Pacific, even if we're allocating capital towards mining operations that produce greener products, that's also a fantastic outcome for the world and the world's ability to achieve decarbonization. It's really quite incredible when one thinks about the actual amount of commodities that are going to be required to achieve a net zero future.
Now, when you think, okay, the lithium sector will need to produce at least and part of it will come from recycling. To think that the world will require 42x the number of lithium mines in the world today is just incredible by volume anyways. Similarly, in terms of the copper market, I mean, to think that the copper market will need to triple in terms of supply. Again, some of that will come from recycling. The bottom line is the mining sector will require a huge amount of investment. Furthermore, not only that, but the mining sector will require investment to projects that themselves are not part of the problem, but are part of the solution. You can really see that when we look at nickel.
I think this slide is an interesting slide that people are keen to understand which commodities broadly are key raw materials by end market as part of the energy transition. When you look at nickel, I'm jumping around a bit here. When you look at the nickel piece, you can see that actually most of the world's nickel supply is largely expected to come from nickel projects that are very carbon intensive. Which is kind of a bit of a conundrum in that most people are buying electric vehicles in order to lower their carbon footprint. That can't necessarily be achieved if the nickel supply is coming at the cost of huge carbon volumes.
nickel is one that we're particularly interested and focused on simply because if you can get exposure to nickel assets and to a commodity that's expected to grow by three times over the next 20 years, which is, you know, incredible. Actually for nickel here, it's three times over the next decade, which is just absolutely remarkable. If we can position the portfolio as we have to have exposure to projects like Piauí Nickel, which are very low in carbon, then, you know, we are benefiting on both sides of the demand piece, but also from a product that is likely to be very marketable and theoretically could even obtain premiums as a result of supply chain audits when an EV manufacturer audits supply chain on carbon, all else being equal, you know, this is a great product.
The cobalt market is developing very, very nicely, and at the time of doing our transaction last year when we acquired the Voisey's Bay stream, we took a view that based on supply, based on expected demand, we really saw an opportunity for outperformance. We've been thrilled to see cobalt prices effectively doubling from around the time we priced this transaction. What's even more interesting, so I would encourage you, when you think about a lot of the noise that's being made by automakers turning to cobalt free battery chemistries, you know, just think, and we have it here on the slide, this blue line in the top right corner, the dark blue line represents the cost of a cobalt free battery, which actually, as of today, costs more than a battery that contains cobalt.
The economic rationale, in other words, the benefit to using a cobalt free battery is that it was cheaper. Today, it's more expensive. Second, the performance of that battery, both in terms of range and output, is significantly lower. We absolutely see a future which will have different chemistries, some of them cobalt free. We don't see a future, at least in the next decade, where cobalt free technologies are going to, you know, completely disappear. In fact, we think the demand for those chemistries will remain very strong, at least until the end of this decade. We look at LFP very briefly. This is an asset that, for the reasons that we mentioned earlier, we think is an integral part to our growth story and we're tracking very carefully.
For those who aren't familiar with that investment, we initially invested $2 million for a 1.25% gross revenue royalty on the project, and we have the right to increase that for $70 million, but not the obligation, at the time of construction. We think that could be exercised as early as 2023, and the project now is really, it's gonna be a big year for Piauí in that there are two key milestones occurring this year. Number one is the completion of a BFS, and number two will be the completion of a small scale production plant.
Now, if you look forward, we earlier made the comment that we expect fairly large nickel shortages, and what the chart on the right-hand shows is the carbon emissions per unit of nickel produced. What you can see is that today, the operations on the right are almost, you know, 20%-30% of the total carbon emitted by the operations on the left. Excuse me, the operations on the left are 20%-30% on average, roughly, of, say, the right-hand side of that curve. What's really unfortunate is that most of the supply of nickel is expected to come in much higher carbon intensity on the right.
From POE, what we have here is an asset which is, you know, potentially one of the lowest cost carbon emitters, and number two, an asset that has exceptional economics at today's spot prices. When we think about capital allocation, and Kevin will speak about this shortly, but we think about capital allocation at the back of our mind is always the $70 million funding obligation, as well as the $20 million funding commitment that we have to Incoa. With that, Kevin, that's a nice segue for you to perhaps go through our capital allocation.
Yeah. Thanks, Marc. This slide is a replica of the slides that we've discussed before, and our capital allocation plans haven't changed since then. I suppose in terms of the first box, our balance sheet strength has improved significantly with the record levels of cash flow that we've been generating over the past six months. Even, and despite the increase in commodity prices, we are still seeing some pretty attractive investment propositions right now, not least the fact that we have $90 million of optionality within our existing portfolio from which to finance. Whilst we continue to see growth opportunities, our capital allocation will still be in favor of growth and continuing on the journey to significantly infill even for these record levels of cash flow.
In addition, we maintained our quarterly dividend at 1.75p per share. That policy will continue. We may shift that amount to a U.S. dollar denominated amount, but it will effectively be the equivalent to 1.75p per quarter, which obviously gives shareholders a very good return on their investment as we continue to grow our business, with a view to adding earnings growth further down the track, which in turn should facilitate a more progressive dividend at that point. Beyond that, we would look to additional shareholder returns, but our priorities at the moment very much still align to repaying our borrowing facility and building a war chest for recycling cash flows into future growth opportunities.
If we look at the next slide, which is our track record, this is why we feel it's beholden upon us to reinvest and recycle cash flows into growth. Our track record, and this is very transparent and largely can be found in the public domain, shows our history of making acquisitions and also the returns that are currently anticipated to accrue on those investments. We've focused on the right-hand side of the page on Maracas, which we discussed earlier. McClean Lake, our LIORC position. Mantos Blancos, which was a copper acquisition that we made in 2019. Given the outlook for copper currently, we think that this is going to prove to be a very significant royalty within our portfolio going forward.
The obvious one, which is Voisey's Bay, an acquisition that we undertook around about this time last year, when we expected cobalt prices to currently be around $21 a pound. Prices currently are closer on having exceeded $40 a pound. So I think we've got a good track record. We've got between Marc and I, we've 20 years of experience of investing in non-precious royalties. Importantly, despite some commodities being at very, very high historical recent levels, we still continue to see value elsewhere outside of precious metals, which is our focus. Back to you, Marc.
Thank you, Kevin. If you're leaving us today with six key points, we'd say number one, Anglo Pacific is arguably one of the only, if not the only, royalty business that can provide investors with exposure 75% to forward-facing metals. Number two, we really reposition this portfolio by virtue of the investments that we've made in terms of recycling Kestrel and recycling those met coal cash flows into growth. Through cycle, as we look ahead post-Kestrel, we think there's a great platform of income in the business which can support a 7p dividend. As Kestrel runs off, we see it's crucial to reinvest to get growth into the business such that there's view and visibility on earnings growth.
Because the reality is, and this is well known to all folks who have been tracking Anglo Pacific Group, the Kestrel royalty is now approaching the end of its life. We've proven our ability to deploy capital wisely and remain disciplined. While we are, of course, looking to grow the business, at the same time, we will remain very disciplined. We are very patient, and we're happy to wait until, you know, the same opportunity might be available in the future at a lower price. Ultimately, we've been very patient in the past and been really pleased with the opportunities we've been able to acquire, as a consequence. The royalty portfolio ultimately 90% exposure to very attractive and well-established mining jurisdictions. Almost 90% OECD.
The very unfortunate conflict in the Ukraine is a very good reminder of why, you know, jurisdictions and jurisdiction risk can change very rapidly and quickly. We've spoken about the growth piece. In terms of the ESG credentials, ultimately the cornerstone assets of our portfolio are, you know, directly or indirectly going to lead to achieving global net zero goals, which we think is a fantastic way for investors to get exposure to the commodities, as I mentioned earlier, required to fuel that achievement.
Furthermore, as we look ahead, while we continue to have a lot of exposure to met coal as Kestrel winds down, and even more so when met coal prices are at $400 or $500 a ton, by 2025 and thereafter, the vast majority of our portfolio will be, copper, nickel, cobalt, uranium, and very clean vanadium that flows both into the steel industry, but also into the battery sector. Thank you very much for listening to our presentation today. We'd now be delighted to turn to Q&A. Starting from the first question, the question is: Can you give a medium-term 1- to five-year cash flow production? We generally aren't in the business of forecasting commodity prices as they can be, as you can imagine, quite volatile.
In terms of commodities, however, our materials include projections on, you know, all the key assets as generally published and as available from the underlying mine operators. From Kestrel, we expect volumes this year to be fairly constant relative to where they were last year. The latest information available to us suggests that the Kestrel volumes will be roughly 50% of what they are this year and last year, in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and thereafter step down. The shape of that step down could change, but broadly speaking, we think it'll be a fairly smooth decline, from, you know, where we are today to 50% of those levels, plus or minus for the next few years, and then with all production fading outside of our royalty zone thereafter.
There, in that context, that again speaks to the point, that number one, we feel in terms of these record and windfall Kestrel cash flows, it feels very prudent and wise to first allocate those cash flows to deleveraging because they aren't going to last forever. Number two, to think about how can we fund acquisitions in the most accretive way possible, such that as we look ahead post Kestrel, there's a very clear and visible path on earnings growth, which can then support sustainable dividends growth. Kevin, there's a question here from Steven P. Do you wanna take that on net debt and leverage?
Sure. Sorry, I'm just getting the mic. Where do we expect debt to be at the end of the year and, how do we expect to make use of the cash? To echo Marc's point, I think, you know, the answer to that will largely depend on what commodity prices do, between now and the end of the year. You know, the consensus prices and expectations for coking coal has increased for the second half of the year, pretty much across the portfolio. We would expect to exceed the level of income that we earned in 2021. That has the potential to return us to a net cash position, towards the end of 2022.
With $150 million facility, and a $30 million stake in LIORC and $10 million of treasury shares, that obviously is a considerable war chest available to us to fund future growth. I think what we would like to do is to obviously maintain our quarterly dividend at the current rate and then use our war chest sensibly, and in a disciplined fashion to continue adding growth to the portfolio. We would not consider at this stage that the commodity environment has become too hot to deploy capital. We continue to see opportunities to put capital to work in a way which should extract value over the medium term, and that's what our continued focus is gonna be.
Thank you, Kevin. We have a question from Mark S. What plans are in place to replace expected revenue decline from Kestrel? If you look at Kestrel income through cycle, Kestrel historically generated $30 million-$50 million. The question is, are we trying to replace Kestrel on sort of through the cycle prices, which has been our goal? The answer to that is we think that's largely been achieved by virtue of the acquisitions and the growth that's already in our portfolio. What we think we have beyond Kestrel, based on our portfolio today, is a platform of assets and income that, you know, keeps us in the same place.
What we haven't been able to do, which would be exceptionally difficult, is to infill the portfolio from an income perspective when met coal prices are, you know, at $500+, where we are today. I don't think anyone was expecting that. While we'll happily take those cash flows, given we can recycle them into green investments and debt repayment, if you assume sort of through the cycle and historical income performance level, we largely believe that Kestrel has been replaced actually, and therefore, the future transactions that we do will be, you know, growth beyond those levels.
Yeah, I think Marc, just to add to that, just to reemphasize the point I made earlier, the rest of the portfolio in Q1 generated $10 million, which on an annualized basis would be $40 million. I think that's a very stable and solid platform from which we can grow the business and add further income by recycling the Kestrel cash flows.
Mm-hmm. On top of that Kestrel, on top of that, when that Kestrel number, when we think about the growth in our portfolio already from Incoa, the growth from POE and future acquisitions, the portfolio really is well positioned to grow. At its current level, however, you know, the run rate of the business is not one that is demonstrative of these current windfall record met coal prices. What news flow should we look out for the remainder of 2022? That question is from Mark A. We've partially answered that question, Mark. Number one, the news on POE, we think will be particularly.
Well, we're really excited to see how the BFS shakes out, how the demo plant is going, as that should really inform the timing to our potential $70 million investment. You should also keep an eye out for generally the nickel market, because, like, we do think that the nickel market is going to be quite choppy and volatile over the next three to four years, particularly as people reassess supply chains. The Ukrainian conflict has, you know, somewhat disrupted traditional nickel supply chains in that a large portion of total nickel supply comes from Russia. Secondly, the next best alternative to that nickel produced in the Russian region is, you know, very carbon intensive nickel supply out of Indonesia.
The West, in its ability and desire to position itself strategically in supply chains, will have to look at securing nickel supply into its vertical vertically into its industries. We may even see later this year OEMs going upstream to partially invest at the project level in the mining sector to ensure security of supply downstream to the car manufacturers. Taking it back to Anglo Pacific, one more thing to watch out for this year is cobalt, because supply chains in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been very stretched, and therefore a lot of cobalt that's being produced in the world today is finding a very hard way to making it to the market.
While we wouldn't necessarily say that cobalt prices will stay at $40 forever, we do think that there's, you know, some more upside from where we are today at the $40 level, potentially before things normalize again. Beyond that, looking ahead at EV chemistries and EV growth rates, we think the outlook for cobalt remains exceptionally strong. The last thing to keep an eye for, of course, will be H1 results. 'Because I think H1 should give us a very clear line of sight on whether or not we think that the exceptionally strong met coal and cobalt prices are likely to run into H2.
I think at this time, we have a fairly good line of sight on the second quarter, potentially not being as strong as Q1, but being, you know, a good quarter in the scheme of things. Then for H2, how long can record prices last? Well, we'll have to see. We'll have more of a feel on that at the time of the H1 results.
Great question here for you, Marc, from David H, to completely put you on the spot. Why do you think that our positive performance here today is not fully reflected in the share price?
Well, there's two reasons. As investors, you know, it's this is up to you to decide. It's not us to tell you whether we think our share price is cheap. Since the question was asked, we have to answer it. Thank you, David H. I think number one, on a relative basis, Anglo Pacific continues to trade at a fairly large discount to royalty sector peers. Dollar for dollar, it's possible to buy, for example, one dollar of cash flow from Anglo Pacific on a relative basis for cheaper than it is to buy other royalty companies. Secondly, the portfolio has performed so strongly that we think while the share price has caught up, we've also paid debt down much more quickly.
When folks look at EV multiples to EBITDA, from EV to cash flows, because the debt numbers come down so quickly, those multiples haven't gone up nearly as much as one might think if they were just basing the calculation on market capitalization.
I think just to add to that, Marc, I think as inflation starts to come through the bottom line of many sectors' P&Ls in the first half of the year, I think the true benefit of an inflation hedge should start to be seen a bit more in the market in the coming quarters. I think, you know, when we are able to report our half-year numbers, which clearly show that benefit, you know, hopefully we'll see a little bit of momentum as well. But in the meantime, you know, we remain focused on delivering our strategy. Our track record is very good. You know, we're generating meaningful cash flows.
I think the more we can demonstrate our ability to recycle those in an accretive way, I think that will just seem to benefit the stock further as we go through the year.
There's a question here from Jay, JG. The question is, with comparatively high commodity price levels today, what is your view on future return potential? There's a few questions. I'll just unpack that and take that one first. I think it very much depends which commodities we go into, and that's really one of the benefits of a royalty model which is not singularly focused on, say, precious metals or only copper. We really have the ability to move between commodities. While in our view, one should be careful on certain commodities, as Kevin mentioned earlier, we continue to see fantastic opportunities in other commodities.
Nickel, for example, is one where, you know, we see a situation where if forecasts are to be believed, a world that requires three times as much nickel in 10 years as what was produced in 2020. Purely from a supply-demand imbalance, we think that it's likely that there'll be strong incentive pricing to support the new supply that's going to be required, particularly in those commodities that flow into energy storage or renewable energy production. You've also asked here what our exposure is on copper. I think copper is a commodity that we're keen to get more exposure to, but it's also one which historically has been very hard to transact in. Within the world of royalty and streaming companies, copper exposure is actually quite rare.
Anglo Pacific has a fairly large royalty and amongst a few other peers. Copper royalties are rare. When we see opportunities for very good quality copper projects and, you know, with strong counterparties, it's vital that we complete because it's, they might not come again for some time. Mervin's question: What are you proposing regarding the dividend? The current rate is not an attractive level. APF has always paid more attractive payout. We have sufficient cash flow. I guess the question here fundamentally is, to what level should the Anglo Pacific dividend be compared? Relative to royalty companies, Anglo Pacific is one of the highest yielding royalty company stocks on the market.
It's true that Anglo Pacific is not paying the same level of yield relative to a mining company, but arguably, the risk level in a royalty company is a lot lower than that of a mining company, and Anglo Pacific should have a lower dividend yield compared to a mining company. In terms of the current rate, I think as much as we would love it if the business could support a much higher dividend last year or this year, the reality is that Kestrel will be stepping out of our lands.
The most prudent thing to do, we think, as a management team to ensure long-term shareholder value is, number one, to pay down debt while we have the cash flows available to us, and to not put ourselves in a situation where, you know, if commodity prices were to turn, the balance sheet would be stretched. So that's the first strategic imperative. Second is to ensure that we have the financial resources to acquire new royalties and new assets that will be adding growth into the business that will therefore support sustainable dividend growth. The reality is, in the mining sector, all our assets are depleting. You know, they don't run forever, they deplete, and therefore we need to reinvest to, at a minimum, even just stay in the same place.
We see that example with Kestrel in that, you know, the Kestrel income, unless we reinvest further, just will not be generated into the future.
Marc, a follow-up to that, Mark B asks, when will we declare dividends for the current year? I think that's largely been done. I think our plan is to pay 1.75p dividend on a quarterly basis, and then we usually announce our final dividend, either with our year-end trading update or the year-end results. For the rest of the year, you can expect to receive your 1.75p on a quarterly basis.
A question here from Mark B, how competitive is the market for acquiring royalties? There's a distinction to be made between how competitive the market is for precious metals royalties versus non-precious metals royalties. The precious metals royalty market is highly competitive. The non-precious metals royalty space where we operate is far less competitive, and most of our transactions that we've completed in the past have been on a bilateral basis. In other words, we negotiated those directly with the sellers. Whereas in the precious metal space, the vast majority of transactions are completed through very competitive auction processes. Therefore, you know, we really feel just by virtue of those dynamics, we're able to acquire royalties at a rate that generate higher returns, and they're not, you know, necessarily races to the bottom.
In terms of how attractive the space is generally, you know, a picture paints 1,000 words, and I would just sort of take folks back to this slide here, in that over the next 20 years, the world will require a huge amount of investment into the mining sector in order to produce and supply these commodities to achieve decarbonization. Even though we are seeing increased inflows from equity and arguably in some commodities from debt, the reality is the pie, i.e., our investable universe and the projects that require our capital, the capital need is growing and will continue to be exceptionally strong, if we ever have any hope of achieving a net zero future. In other words, Mark, we feel very good. We feel strong.
We feel confident about our pipeline, to put it simply.
ONT asks a question, Marc, how concerned are we by Chile and talk of mine nationalization? Generally, we've seen what's happened in Mexico recently, of course, as well.
Yeah, it's something that we have to, you know, track very carefully. At this time, market commentary and commentators alike seem to be of the view that on balance, nationalization is less likely than more. It's something that we all need to monitor very carefully, in terms of our exposure to Chile. That being said, you know, in the worst case outcome, while we're certainly not forecasting this to be the case, in the absolute worst case, Chile continues to be a relatively small part of our entire portfolio. Again, really emphasizes the benefit and need to have a diversified portfolio, both in terms of commodities, both in terms of counterparties, and third, in terms of jurisdictions, which ultimately ensures that the business can support and withstand volatility.
Nationalization is an extreme event which at this time, again, appears unlikely, but there are other risks in the mining sector that diversification ultimately is the cure. I think that's it, Kevin?
All right.
Marc, Kevin, thank you very much for that. I think you actually managed to address all those questions from investors. Of course, the company will review any further questions listed and will publish those responses on the Investing.com platform. But just before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to you both, Marc, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah. In a nutshell, we continue to feel that this year we're on track for a very, very strong year and cash flow generation, which we can, number one, pay down debt exceptionally quick, quickly, and then look to recycle met coal into things like nickel, copper, tin, among other commodities. And as we look ahead beyond Kestrel, the business is very much positioned to be almost 100% forward future facing commodities. We thank you for your interest today and those who are supporting us as we continue on this journey. We're very keen to continue to enhance and grow this business and ultimately, we're doing it for you. Thank you for your support.
Marc, Kevin, thanks once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ecora Royalties PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.
Thank you.