Thanks for joining us. Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world. My name is Trevor Hall. I am CEO of Clear Commodity Network and host of the Mining Stock Daily podcast. I've been asked to moderate and host this webinar on the back of really exciting news out of the royalty space, merging two wonderful companies, Elemental Altus Royalties and also EMX Royalty . Joining us to walk us through is both CEOs, Fred Bell of Elemental Altus and Dave Cole. In the background as well, we have the firm Tether and Executive Chairman of Elemental Altus , Juan Sartori. He will be addressing any questions later in this webinar. A couple of housekeeping items as well. We will be taking some Q&A following the presentation from both Fred and Dave.
You can post those questions into the chat, and we will address those once the presentation is over. We will just jump right into it. First off, congratulations, David and Frederick. We knew consolidation was continuing to be a big theme in the royalty space. This is huge news as we approach a very active day in the gold market as we are reaching new all-time highs in gold price. I'll leave it to you guys. Take it away.
Trevor, you know, and the folks listening know that I'm a huge believer in royalties. Fundamentally, I believe that the value of mineral rights augments over time. I like to remind folks that when I was 10 years old, the price of gold was $35 an ounce. I'm fascinated by the fact that it's now $3,500 an ounce at my age over the course of more than half a century. It's rather astonishing that that is an 8% going on 9% compounded annual growth rate over that timeframe. That speaks volumes to the fact that the value of mineral rights augments over time. The best way to be exposed to mineral rights is royalties, because royalties have this aspect of immense embedded optionality. Scale is very important in the royalty business. The bigger you are, the more each royalty is worth. We've seen that historically throughout the sector.
When we look across the sector, we see a real gem in Elemental and their team and their portfolio. We believe the two augment each other immensely. I'm really pleased to be able to put on the Elemental hat. Did that just for you, Fred. I think this is a great opportunity. I'm very much looking forward to working with Fred and all the folks at Elemental .
From the Elemental Altus side, I think we've long thought that if there was one group and one company, both from an asset quality, from a shareholder value perspective, but also from a cultural fit, that company was EMX. We've got some shared DNA going back really through the company, through some of the assets we own, through some of the deals we've looked at together. I'm really delighted to be sitting here today with Dave, and a big thank you to all the team at EMX and Elemental Altus for getting us to this point and a really exciting announcement. I'm delighted to have Tether as well and Juan representing Tether on this call, who I think are going to be a really cornerstone shareholder for both of us going forward.
Thanks, Juan, for supporting us. I think we need to go to the next slide. Is that right? Yeah, we'll skip on past that one. Fred and I have been getting to know, and our team's been getting to know each other since 2021. We did syndicate the purchase of Caserones, which has turned into a great royalty for both companies, a cornerstone royalty for us. Over the course of the last years, we've been getting to know each other, developing a lot of respect. We've discussed the possibility of merging now for approximately a year and a half. We finally came to the realization that the time was right, particularly given the catalyst of the support from Tether.
I think that when we look at this, this combination creates a portfolio with a number of cornerstone royalties that is really like any others in the junior space. I think some really key assets that we can talk to as we go through the presentation. If we're looking at the combination of our Caserones royalty, if we look at Timok, if we look at Karlawinda, if we look at the new Laverton royalty, Leeville, and there are others we can talk to, I think those there are really the bedrock of the combined company. For someone new to be able to come in and put those together now would be very difficult.
It puts us in a really, really strong position with a shared philosophy going forwards and a revenue base and that margin expansion that is going to put the company in such a powerful position to continue to grow and build and take advantage of opportunities jointly that in the past we had to syndicate with others or with each other in order to get to this point.
More arrows in the quiver. I think they were behind us. There you go. Thank you very much. I think you can go one more slide forward as we just spoke to those points. Thank you so much. I will say that I fundamentally believe that Fred's job, my job, number one thing is long-term positive compound annual growth rate to our shareholders. That's why we're here. That's our fiduciary duty. The mining industry does not have the best track record of strong CAGR, compound annual growth rate returns to shareholders. A lot of the royalty companies do. These two royalty companies are excellent examples. I'm proud of the fact that EMX over our 22.5 years had a 17% CAGR, and Fred has even beaten that over his eight years. With over 20% CAGR, that's very admirable. That speaks to the quality of the teams and specifically the business model and the power of royalties.
Look, Dave, very nice comment there, but I think we can all acknowledge that having a 20-year plus track record in CAGR is really something that takes a lot of work. We both have examples through our portfolio of assets where we've been able to add real and thorough value both through the optionality and upgrade, but also through being able to recognize the potential in assets at an earlier stage. If you look at our portfolios today, with 80 royalties in total at Elemental Altus and approximately 138 at EMX, that portfolio today, I think less than half of that by now is in production. There is huge optionality across that portfolio that is yet to come in and where our partners and counterparties are continuing to spend money, drill, explore, and build out the base.
For us to have that foundation of a portfolio cornerstoned with the optionality and growth in it, and then, as we mentioned earlier, that real support from a cornerstone shareholder like Tether , it puts us in a really unique position going forwards. This next slide, slide five here, really gives you an idea of the width and breadth of our portfolio. I think it's common to see a geographical focus for royalty companies. Clearly, you can see here that we are generally spread across the world. The one thing we have in common is we are looking for quality. We're looking for quality assets wherever they are. We're fortunate that we have some in tier one jurisdictions as well. There's one or two in particular probably that Dave could talk to.
Yeah, great point, Fred. One of those key assets, it's in a great jurisdiction and has a phenomenal operator, Lundin Mining Corporation's Caserones, where our footprint on that royalty, which combined between the two companies, is now 1.3% NSR. Over an area of the size of a small state, the footprint there is immense with a whole host of targets that are being tested by Lundin. They've been bragging about that in recent press releases, including the exploration results or discovery results out in [Hecla], high-grade breccia zones being found from in-pit drilling at Caserones, and increasing production up to nameplate capacity at Caserones all to our benefit. Those are the reasons why you want to own royalties. We're very bullish on copper price.
Other significant ongoing aspects of actuation of discovery optionality would be at Cactus, where we have combined royalties there now, giving us a nice footprint over that, which will be fast track copper production in the United States. Very importantly, Diablillos, they just continue to find more silver and gold there. We have a 1% royalty over that in perpetuity, once again, a very large footprint. It's a great example of discovery optionality coming to fruition within the portfolio. My favorite in the portfolio is Timok operated by Zijin. Zijin is drilling 12 drill rigs on the surface. They've been drilling out additional holes into the lower zone. The production from the upper zone continues to augment, and the lifespan of the upper zones has been expanded as per their last annual report.
The huge MG discovery, which had a median resource of 180 million tons at over 2% copper equivalent. Very nice gold credit there. I'm very, very pleased to see that. I know that Fred is also proud of some discovery optionalities, specifically at Laverton.
Yeah, look, I think that's a great example of where we're not standing still. Even as we were progressing this merger and this combination, we were still looking at royalty opportunities. One that we announced earlier this week, which will make a new cornerstone asset for the company in the future, is Laverton. That is where we already had a 2% royalty, and we doubled that, getting an additional 2% royalty on a bit under 4 million ounces. It is pretty rare to get that opportunity now in a mature jurisdiction and gold field like the Laverton district, with an operator like Genesis Minerals , who are extremely well known and very successful. I think one of the unique aspects there is there has effectively been very little to no exploration on that gold belt for the last, on these licenses, for the last 10 to 12 years.
That was partly due to the ownership structure. You've had a scenario where the gold price in Aussie dollar terms has almost tripled in that timeframe, and you've had this prime real estate in terms of gold exploration, already a multimillion ounce endowment that has seen virtually no exploration. To be able to source that transaction, to be able to do it efficiently in a bilateral manner and add into our portfolio tier one jurisdiction, high-quality operator gold, I think is really an indication of what we will be able to do going forwards.
Moving on to six, please, Trevor. Thank you. I think it's great that we're in a situation today in this balanced portfolio where the net asset value, as determined by the analysts, of our currently cash-flowing assets represents 45% of that portfolio. That speaks highly that we have this ongoing cash flow that we can utilize to continue to build the company. In addition to that, 55% of the net asset value, as determined by the analysts, are those assets that are yet to come into production. That speaks to the growth potential. Very pleased to be in a situation where 67% of the current income is precious metals. As everybody knows, I'm a fan of diversity. I think that gold is the most precious metal and copper is the most strategic. We believe these are excellent elements. That's why I like the name Elemental to be exposed to.
Moving on to this slide, I think this is one that both companies have been really proud of, which is an ability to actually demonstrate real revenue growth individually. When you look at that graph there, in the top half is EMX in orange, and the bottom half is Elemental Altus in blue. You can see that 2023 were record years, 2024 record years, 2025 combined, it's going to be another record year, and going into organic growth for 2026. Some of the fantastic aspects of that are that with this business model, it's the margin expansion that you get. We've got that exposure to top line revenue, particularly in the gold and then copper side as well. We've got relatively fixed costs as a business, and as we scale here, we're going to strengthen that situation and our position financially even more.
The concurrent financing we're doing with this with Tether will put the company in a net cash position with a credit facility in the future that we believe could be significantly expanded and generating, as you can see here, in the order of $70 million- $80 million of revenue going forwards.
I will say that immediately upon announcement, Fred and I were both asked about synergies within the combined companies. I'm confident that we'll find multiple millions of dollars of cost savings between the two companies. I want to clearly point out that, of course, frugality is a virtue. It's always important for us to concentrate on efficiency. Our greater focus is on creating value over the next $100 million or billion as we move forward with, in my opinion, a very well experienced and intelligent team.
Moving on to the next slide, I'll let Dave lead with this.
With this scale increase, there's a phenomenon within the royalty business that we're all familiar with. That is that the greater number of royalties you have and the more cash flow you have, then the better your PNAV, the better that you trade relative to your net asset value. That's been a phenomenon within the space for a long time. It's one of the key driving aspects to building scale within the business. We're poised here trading just that by current analyst evaluation. We're trading right at one times our net asset value pro forma.
I believe that net asset value is going to move up and to the right as the analysts dig in and take a closer look at some of these assets that continue to perform exceptionally well, particularly on the discovery side, in addition to the expansion of our PNAV as people realize that we have a strong record and deserve to trade at the types of valuations that our mid-tier peers are trading at.
Just to reinforce the point, I think that portfolio combined, we will have approximately 200 plus royalties. Half of those also by now being pre-production means that there's an awful lot of value to come as those projects are advanced through development, exploration stage, and catalysts are hitting. If you look at the combined company, as Dave said, trading at just over one times PNAV, which is almost the lowest in the junior royalty space, despite the fact that we're now moving out of that space. You can look on that on the right-hand side chart there in terms of revenue and see that the gap there between us and the juniors has just increased dramatically. I think EMX and Elemental Altus were already two of the highest, they are this year, the highest revenue royalty companies there. Combined, even further out there.
For us, the lovely thing is most of that royalty revenue is de-risked in the sense that it is coming from existing producing assets. We're not looking at this and saying that 2025, 2026 is dependent on assets going through development at the moment. These are already producing royalties that are already paying us. To that extent, they risk. The company has significant scope for value uplift, both on a PNAV basis. You can see as the revenue increases, the margin expansion, it will put us in an increasingly strong position going forwards.
Very well said, Fred. Up and to the right is the direction that we are headed here. Very proud of the fact that our up and to the right movements, if you would, of both companies, as per the analysts' determinations, are on a per share basis. That's the key thing, that we are building value on a per share basis and moving away from the crowded junior space into the mid-tier space because of this success. The combination of the two is just pouring gasoline on the fire, in my view. We'll have a much improved balance sheet as per Fred's comments. I likely will be able to increase our revolver, probably in the range of $150 million plus approximately $50 million in cash, putting us in a situation where we have larger arrows and more arrows in our quiver to be able to hunt bigger game with.
Both companies in the past have been hampered by that, of course. This will put us in a situation where we can prudently allocate capital and continue this up and to the right pathway.
Yeah, that's a great point. We touched on it briefly earlier, with both syndicated transactions in the past where they were either too large for the individual company or it made sense from a risk perspective balancing it in the portfolio. If you look at where we are, as Dave said, in terms of our access to credit facilities based on the revenues of the combined pro forma company, our existing cash that we would have on a pro forma basis, and the revenue that we're generating, clearly we have an ability now to look at transactions that we did not do individually or where we had to share some of that upside. I think that's a really attractive feature for the combined company going forwards as well.
Prospect generation, royalty generation is key to my ethos. It all goes back to this concept that the value of royalties, the value of mineral rights goes up over time. The best way to capture that is through royalties. The very best value creation that we can do, particularly in the early stages of the company, and both companies have a history of having done this, is royalty generation, prospect generation. This puts smart engineers and geologists in the field around the world doing that generative work and also identifying royalties to purchase. The royalty generation side of the business has a distinct positive expectation. Purchasing royalties smartly has a distinct positive expectation. The integration of the two actually just accelerates both because it gives you this team of sharp geologists and engineers. We have a saying that astute business decisions are rooted in solid technical understanding.
We have the technical strength in-house to be able to drive both of those aspects of our business forward. It has panned out very, very well for us thus far. It's a great marriage between the two companies in that regard.
Moving on to the combined board and management teams, I'll run through the board of directors quickly. Dave could talk to the team on the ground. We're pleased to have Juan with us here today, who's the Executive Chairman and representing Tether Investments as well. I think they've been a real breath of fresh air for Elemental Altus since they came in. In the two and a half months or so since Tether became a major shareholder in the company, we've done two transactions with two different counterparties. We have announced this M&A deal with EMX . In parallel, we have been progressing a U.S. listing to announce that.
I think that we have really turbocharged our desire to grow, to build a company, to get this to real scale, but all the while adding value and making sure we've got a culture that is not just growth for growth's sake, but is actually making sure we add value as we do it. Dave is coming on the board as well. Clearly, everyone here, I think, knows Dave very well and his background as a founder in building EMX from 20 years ago. We've got Sunny as well, who's on the board, coming from EMX , real experience across formerly Kinross, Solaris, Highland, Silver. We've got Simon and Ravi as well, who are both currently on the board of Elemental Altus and have been working through with really all the management teams to get us to the point today where we can announce.
I think it's a strong board with a good blend of skill sets. I'll leave it to Dave to really talk to the management team going forwards.
With regards to the board, Fred, really looking forward to working with all these folks. I want to point out that Sunny is a phenomenal person. She led the special committee on behalf of EMX, worked her tail off, and just delighted to have had her contribution at the board level as Chairman of the Audit Committee. I'm looking forward to working with her further now going forward on this board. Truly a fantastic person to work with here. I'm very pleased about that. It's a tough decision to decide which two board members come from EMX because we have a strong board in general that was really great to work with. Sunny and I will carry forward. I've made it, done my best in my career to work with people smarter than me, so it rubs off a little bit.
This is certainly the case when I have a chance to work with this management team. I'm humbled by these folks. I'm looking forward to getting to know Juan better, but what I've seen so far is really interesting. His enthusiasm is phenomenal. It's great to work with people that have a very bullish outlook on metal pricing and looking forward to that. The immense amount of respect for Fred that I've gained over the years and his strong background in capital markets and understanding of banking and whatnot is really going to pay off well. One of the key aspects is the meshing and synergies of the intellectual side of this business. Stefan Wenger, who came to EMX after having worked at Royal Gold for 15+ years and moved that company from a couple hundred million dollar market cap to a few billion during his tenure there.
We're now on a pathway to do that here. Stefan sitting right here next to me, it's great to have a CFO right next to you when you're the CEO. I really enjoy my time working with him and glad to have him continuing on in the joint company as CFO. Dave Baker, who was originally in the business development side of Elemental and then filled in the position of CFO. Dave's delighted to be back on the biz dev side. I think he's an ideal person to run the company going forward as Chief Investment Officer.
From a capital markets perspective, you can see a summary of the company here and pro forma market cap as of close of play yesterday would be about a $930 million market cap with approximately $50 million in cash, $10 million in equity investments, a very strong revenue profile that is going to continue to contribute to the company as we go forwards, and zero debt. We currently have an undrawn credit facility of up to $50 million. Clearly, with this combined company and profile, there is a much greater ability there to build on that going forwards. In terms of the analyst coverage currently, we both share National Bank. We have a number of other analysts across.
One of the benefits of this transaction is that we're going to have increased liquidity, particularly with the combined entity doing the U.S. listing, which we're working on as well. That increased size, scale, liquidity, U.S. listing, and the strength of the portfolio and management team combined is going to make the combined entity much, much more attractive for investors as a vehicle going forwards. In terms of coverage as well and increasing the profile and awareness of the business, it's going to put us in a really strong position. An interesting point that we haven't talked to really to date, but the pro forma company will be in a great position to qualify for is some of the indices that you see in the space and increasingly influential in driving capital flows. Neither Elemental or EMX are in those indices today. When you look at the pro forma company, we would qualify for a number of those.
That is going to be as well an important driver initially of increasing liquidity and then maintaining it, which is a really virtuous circle. Just speaking from the Elemental side, one of the challenges we've had historically is we've had an incredibly supportive shareholder base and a number of really material long-term shareholders who have backed us from the early days. That's great. The only challenge we've had sometimes is actually that liquidity has not been as strong. This combination is going to have a completely transformational effect on the liquidity for us, the company, and for our shareholders. Maybe Dave, you can talk to the shareholders a bit.
You know, we're both here today in this situation where we can actuate this thanks to our shareholders. It's not fortuitous that many of the shareholders that each company has are the same. A lot of crossover there. That's because these are shareholders that recognize the power of the royalty business model and want to back folks like us that are executing that model around the world. Just delighted to bring that together. I want to point out specifically that Darin Milmeister at Extract Capital has been very supportive of EMX and Elemental and this transaction. Paul Stevens, who is an aficionado of the royalty business and was an early investor and Franco and has told me many times that he tripled his money and Franco sold, bought back, tripled it again. I did that a few times.
I'm just delighted to have Paul here as a strong supporter of EMX over the years. I know that Paul is a big fan of this transaction. Thank you very much. Adrian Day at Euro Pacific also has been a supporter of both of us for many years. We're very appreciative of that. I think it's a real feather in the cap of EMX that we have the investment from Franco- Nevada. We were the only royalty company that Franco had ever bought stock in. They were our lender, and that loan will be paid off part and parcel to this transaction. I want to point that out. We have a great deal of respect for Franco and look forward to them continuing on as a shareholder in the merged company.
Sprott and specifically Rick Rule on the Sprott Global side have been massive supporters of us over the years and are supportive of this transaction. Should we move on to answer some questions, Fred? What do you think?
I think, Trevor, if we could hand over to you, that would be great. You can take us away with a couple of questions.
All right, thanks, gentlemen. Again, for anybody with questions, I know a lot have been rolling in, put your questions into the chat. We will relay them here over the next few minutes. As I mentioned before, we do have Juan Sartori on this call as well. He will be addressing any specific questions his way later in this presentation. I would like to start things off here. This is finally tackling a couple of the themes or questions I have come in. Dave, the prospect generator model, you did address this a little bit in the presentation, but that's been a real pillar of EMX throughout its business. How do you balance not only the prospect generation model in this new combined company, but also a lot of the DNA that comes along with it? Fred, maybe you address that as the new COO. How will that be balanced?
Will it be brought into the mold and kind of address that?
We are big believers in this and specifically big believers in the synergy and the value that that creates in the merged business model. I anticipate that the royalty generation side of our business will remain approximately the same size, which means that as a % of the overall business, it will be cut in half, if that makes any sense. We still get the benefits of that with respect to superior due diligence and royalty opportunity sleuthing around the world across the entire business. Does that answer your question, Trevor?
Yeah, Fred, maybe talk about that. That's a different aspect with Elemental in your business model that you'll be working on.
Yeah, I think there's some similarities here. Obviously, Elemental and Altus was a merger of two companies. On the Altus board was EMX's Chairman, Michael Winn. I think some people know that, but not everyone. Two of the directors on the Elemental board had both previously been directors of prospect generator companies, so very good understanding of the business model. If you look at our portfolio today, actually our most recent producing royalty was generated through that model where the project was advanced, successfully sold to Allied Gold, who took it from resource through to definition, delineation, drilling, permitting, and production in about 18 months. That is now a paying producing royalty on part of a 10 million ounce endowment at [Sadio Alumi]. Clearly, we've got some examples in our portfolio where we've benefited from that.
One of the interesting synergies that we're looking forward to is we've always found historically that some of the best deals we've done have been ones where we've been able to identify the opportunity ourselves, really evaluate it, and then transact on it in an efficient bilateral manner. I think that a lot of the skill sets and sort of on-the-ground experience that EMX have, that's going to be a real synergy working alongside on that royalty acquisition front. Already talking today between the teams, there are examples of opportunities where I think we can work together really well and do a better job than we would have been able to individually.
Yeah, you know, just knowing the EMX team, some of the best technical people on the ground I've ever met and worked with, a really exciting time. There's a question regarding just kind of the scale of the prospect generation. Will the DNA be maintained at an absolute level or a percentage of revenue? I think this is a good question.
I've always believed that it should be maintained at a prudent absolute level, not as a percentage of the overall business. Therefore, as growth of the revenues increase, it's a smaller percentage of the overall business, if that's specifically what you're asking. We found that the best royalty generation teams work when they're a little bit underfunded. They're really focused on frugality and covering the ground efficiently.
I would add just that, Trevor, this transaction is clearly going to generate some synergies at the basic level in terms of the listing, the corporate entity, and a lot of the costs and ancillary costs that go along with that. We know there's going to be multimillion dollar synergies on that corporate front to begin with. I think beyond that, we're going to work together really hard over the coming weeks to sort of put the team in the best position and take advantage of the opportunities. One of the key, I think, almost philosophies from Tether has been looking forwards and looking at that growth mindset and scaling up the business. We really want to have as many opportunities as possible to grow that business.
The generation side and the acquisition side go really well together in helping us do that as efficiently, as quickly, and ultimately, you know, as accretively as possible.
Well said, Fred.
A couple of questions that came in regarding kind of management of the equity. Elemental has had a normal course issuer bid in place. EMX has been actively buying back shares the last number of quarters here. Given this deal, can we assume that both kind of get put on pause for this to continue to move forward and close? Where does that lead those two kind of action items once the new company's in place?
We've not yet had a board decision on this, but I believe that it's most prudent for us to pause the normal course issuer bids for the time being whilst we integrate the two companies and ascertain our go-forward cost of capital, which I believe has decreased substantially.
On the Elemental side, we haven't used our normal course issuer bid yet. We put it in place, but we never actually used it. I think we've been in and out of periods where we're not able to use it, so we haven't used it yet. We're not planning to in the short term, but we have it available if and when needed.
In the news release, and this is another question that came in a couple of times, in the news release, you did mention having a new U.S. listing in due course. EMX already has a U.S. listing on the NYSE. You know, can you kind of walk us through this decision on creating a new listing in the NYSE? In due time, why not just move everything over to the EMX listing? You know, how are we balancing this out? How should we go ahead?
Go ahead, Fred. You can explain that.
I think, just as a result of the structure of the combination, we're not going to be able to keep the listing that EMX already have. We're applying for one in parallel that will be up and running by the time the combination closes and we can go into seamlessly. I think that's more of a structuring point of view from the point of view of this combination. Clearly, putting it together, there were a whole number of factors that we took into account from the tax perspective, from shareholders' perspective. It worked out that that was the optimal way to structure this. It shouldn't have any meaningful impact in terms of, you know, we will have a U.S. listing prior to this transaction closing. The combined company has one, that's the reason.
In head office, Fred being based in London, Dave being based here in the Denver area, where will the head office be?
We're a North American company and we have our headquarters in Vancouver and Denver. We intend on keeping that and that will be the main headquarters. I believe it's quite prudent for us to have a footprint in Europe as well. I'm delighted to have Fred in London.
Yeah, and look, ironically, Trevor, actually nearly all the European royalties, if not all, come from the Apex side, even though they're in our principle. I think when we did the merger with Altus, and for those who know Elemental, we were a British Columbia incorporated company and Altus were actually listed in London. One of the conscious decisions we made at that point was for the B.C. company to continue. I think that was really driven by the fact that the center of gravity for the royalty business here is in North America. If you look across the space, some of the most knowledgeable investors, the biggest companies and players in the space, they are all really in North America. For us, it's actually been, on that sense, it's helped the transactions that both companies are B.C. incorporated companies and we're able to continue that going forwards.
Dave, can you comment on the position of your shareholder Franco-Nevada going forward with this deal and support?
They had to approve the transaction part and partial to the covenants of the loan agreement, and they've given us that approval.
Okay, very good. There's a couple of questions coming in here. Let's see. Oh, here's a good one. Dividends. Thoughts on dividends? Maybe jumping the horse here or putting the cart before the horse. You know, thoughts on dividends going forward now that you are in all likelihood looking to be a billion dollar royalty company?
Go ahead, Frederick. You can take that one.
Look, from the Elemental perspective, and it's probably not a much known fact, but actually as a private company from day one, we paid a dividend and it was in the constitution of the company. When we went public, actually a lot of the larger institutional shareholders who backed us said, look, the most important thing for the company at this stage is to scale up and lower your cost of capital. If you look at us since we went public then in 2020, I think we've done that. This transaction puts us in an even stronger position. I think the privileged position where we can actually, as a combined entity, we have so many options on the table to add shareholder value. We can use a normal course issue bid opportunistically.
If we think the value of the shares does not reflect the value of the portfolio, we can put a dividend in place because we actually have the revenue, the balance sheet, the cash flow, and that margin to support a sensible dividend while still redeploying capital into acquisitions, into new transactions, and investments. No decision at this point, but I think that the combined pro forma entity is in an incredibly strong position to be able to look at all of these and have all of these levers on the table. I'm very conscious that as you scale up as a royalty company, it's a sign of a more mature business that you can afford to pay a sensible dividend and still maintain those growth rates.
It's a logical path forward.
Dave, you had talked earlier about the long support of Adrian Day. He's on this call and he's put in a couple of questions. I'll share one of those with you. His question was about timing. You mentioned you two had been in discussions about these synergies for a year, if not a little bit more. Why is now the appropriate time for this combination? Why not a year ago?
EMX was aware that there was an immense discovery being made at Timok. We wanted to make sure that that discovery was actuated and understood by our shareholders before we proceeded with a major corporate transaction. In the meantime, that's been quite beneficial for us. Fred has done his own great transactions and had their own success as well. I will point out that we're particularly excited about bringing in Tether and the financial backing and capital availability that Tether has. That was the tipping point to what already was a conclusion that was forthcoming.
Actually, you mentioned Tether. I'm wondering if Juan, if he might be able to jump on. There's a couple of questions that came in. Probably best for you to address. Thanks so much for joining us and giving us some of your time. Maybe first quick comments from you, the backing of this deal. You know, welcome to the gold royalty space.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for allowing me to address it. First of all, I would say congratulations to everybody because it was some weeks of a lot of work, a lot of due diligence, a lot of structuring, lawyers, and organization. I think we are all very, very happy and excited to announce this transaction today. I think the market is seeing the benefits that we saw when we started discussing it for quite some time. What I would highlight is the power of the combination because you had two very good companies with very good management, with good assets. The combination of the two is not an addition. It's a multiplication of value, of experience, of capacity. They are very complementary. If you look at philosophically, always there's a bit of a dispute between the generation model and the acquisition model.
I think here we were able to put together the best in class of royalty acquisitions with the best in class of royalty generations. They are both very complementary and can create a lot of value together. I think when I see today that we are doing the dream team of royalty of the next years, this is the basis for a company that is going, I think, to surprise by the value of what it can do. From our point of view, also at Tether, to have been a catalyst for this to happen as a supportive shareholder where the whole pipeline and opportunities that this management team sees, we're able now to fund, to lower the cost of capital in order to reach those levels of bigger company, bigger valuation.
That's a virtuous cycle that we see happening when gold royalty companies start growing in size, become more profitable, and become more organized. We also see it in the experience of David and the youth of Fred, the capacity of the team to work together there, the fact that it's now a global company with presence in London, in Denver, royalties all over the world. From almost all points of view, we see really a multiplication of the power of this combination and very, very strong and clear catalyst in the very short term. I would say even between now and the end of the year, we're going to have so many exciting and positive catalysts, whether it's the U.S. listing, more liquidity, more coverage, more capacity to go with this additional financing for opportunities that we are seeing.
That makes us very, very excited and proud to announce this deal today and be part of it and to see the support we got from all the shareholders that we crossed the wall a few days ago and are getting in touch today. I think we are all very aligned on what we want to accomplish and that the future is very, very bright and announce this on a day where gold is reaching an all-time high and going into uncharted territories as probably just the beginning of a very powerful trend would not position us better to announce this deal in this moment with this team. We will be supporting and really strongly, strongly working hard at continuing with these kinds of transactions that we are announcing today in the short-term future of the company.
Thanks, Juan. There was a question. There was a question that actually came in, or a couple of them I'd like to address with you. One of them is, you know, Tether's in your roles with this new merged company on the back of now it's kind of a multi-prong business strategy with the prospect generation. What kind of support or how do you see that role from you and Tether coming in to support the other aspects of this new business?
Basically, we believe that here we haven't invested only in gold or only in royalties. We've invested in people, and we see the value of the experience here as one of the most important intangibles of this company that we want to support and that's going to create the value. What we have said is you guys are the best in this industry. We want to allocate more capital to this industry, and this is the trusted vehicle and the trusted team to do it. We will be able to support and back their views of the market that, as we see by the track record, is also very disciplined. They deploy in smart deals, in good deals. They know how to find it. I don't think it's a matter of allocating generation versus acquisitions.
It's really a matter of allocating profitably and creating value across all of the different possibilities that this team has now of executing.
Okay. There was another question that came in regarding Tether. Do they hold anti-dilution rights, and does Tether intend to continue that exercise?
I don't think we have anti-dilution rights. We are a happy shareholder and probably we are happy to continue investing more into the company if it requires financing and be very supportive. If the company has good ideas, we are happy to provide more capital at it, like most of the other shareholders that called us today. The idea is to try to retain the high, high quality shareholder list that this company already had. We are a big and very committed shareholder. I think there's a lot of equally impressive and equally supportive shareholders in this company that we are very proud to partner with from now into the future.
Yeah. You've done an excellent job of really merging, you know, physical assets with the digital assets, leaps and bounds in the last six months or so, Juan. What can you tell us from the sentiment you hear from the new generation of digital assets and the people focusing in this realm? Are they starting to look towards the likes of Tether and the physical asset market and the gold asset that maybe we're starting to see a shift or a rotation within the generational models of those two? Can you address that?
I have no doubt that the new generation has realized that the financial system or the traditional one has to change and probably is stronger and better for people if it relies on non-government related assets that have real value and have limited supply, like for example, our gold or Bitcoin in the digital way. I don't think they separate by digital or real. They separate into non-intervened assets that have limited supply and real value. All of the financial system will start relying more on those assets and less on the traditional ones.
The impact we see in gold today is because central banks are suddenly again realizing it's a better asset to hold than most of the fiat or treasuries or financial assets because retail people are suddenly able to own gold in innovative ways, like can be Tether Gold, one of our products, where they can suddenly own it on a wallet, use it to pay for anything without having to have a physical one or paying the huge fees that the financial industries can put. The financial industry transformed gold into a negative carry asset when actually it's not. We think that some of those digital innovations can probably give gold a stronger shine, make it more accessible for more people. Why not be more and more of the international reserve currency that it once was, thanks to these technological innovations?
That's the direction that we think is going and why we like the exposure to gold. Obviously, exposure to gold with an additional value, like this is the royalty model that David explained very well, why it's superior, is what makes this company also so attractive to invest in.
I want to focus on gold. Can you address the merging of Caserones brings in a lot of copper as well? EMX has a number of base metal assets within that portfolio, silver as well. You talk a lot about gold. Can you maybe address not only silver? Obviously, that's important as well in the precious metals complex, but also the base metals coming into this portfolio.
Look, the focus is gold and precious metals, but David gave me a geological explanation. The gold rarely comes alone. You go to look for the gold, usually you're going to get copper, silver, or other things. It's part of the pursuit of what we like the most, makes it a better business, but taking the rest of it. I think there's a fine line there. Precious metals companies trade at a better valuation. We want to make sure that there is some diversification, but at the same time, the focus on precious metals is important for investors' exposure to be clearly defined for valuation of the company. We may have some other royalties, but I think the focus strategically continues to be on precious metals and a big, big percentage of it in gold and associated ones.
Thank you, Juan. I think we're wrapping things up. Dave, Fred, Juan, if you have any closing comments, please share it before we depart.
I think maybe just a huge thank you to, first of all, all the people attending today, particularly the shareholders on both sides. We're fortunate to have both EMX and Elemental. We've had some really supportive long-term shareholders, mutual shareholders who have backed us through the markets. I think for a long time, a number of investors in the royalty space have been looking for an opportunity to create a new leader from the junior space and see that consolidation happening. I think really pleased to be able to do it with EMX today. A huge thank you to the teams on both sides, the boards, everyone who's been advisors working to get us to this point today.
Looking forward to the next couple of months, which are going to be incredibly busy with a lot going on and working with Dave and the team at EMX to really give our shareholders the best opportunity going forward.
I echo everything Fred just said. Thank you very much. I'll specifically point out that we will be presenting jointly at the Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek next week. We have two time slots, one originally for EMX and one for Elemental. Our intent is to jointly present the big picture of the combined company in the first presentation and go into greater detail about some of the individual assets, answering many of the questions that I see here today about which mines are coming in production next to be the catalyst for cash flow and whatnot. That will be an opportunity for us to address that. Both of those will be broadcast. Likewise, moving on to the Denver Gold Show the week after that, there will be a further presentation and a chance for folks to ask us questions. As I said, those presentations will be broadcast.
There is a chance to learn more from us via those venues. Thanks very much to everyone.
Thank you. All right, everybody, that concludes the presentation of the webinar. Thank you so much for your time. Have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend.
Thanks, all.
Thank you.