We're very pleased this morning to host Shaun Usmar, the CEO, director, and founder of Triple Flag Precious Metals. We knew Shaun in his prior roles, CFO of Barrick Gold and other good jobs. Triple Flag is unique. It was founded by the Elliott Management hedge fund , I guess, put up money for Shaun and the other founders, and it's a very savvy company that's grown very rapidly, and I should let Shaun tell the story, please.
John, thanks. It's, it's great to see you again, and thanks for hosting today. Yeah, just our story is a fairly simple one. We actually turn eight next month. How time flies! And, we were formed, as you said, with capital out of Elliott in New York, as a private business, where at the time, this was back in 2016. I think what brought us together was a view that the sector, and we're seeing it right now, and I mean, the mining sector at large, is chronically underfunded through more conventional forms of funding. It's a long-term capital deployment business, and the equity capital markets and the debt markets often tend to be... Well, they present windows which can be pretty narrow.
Then depending where you are in the cycle, at times, balance sheets and liquidity can be very constrained, and if you can access equity, it can be super expensive. So being able to provide patient, long-term, competitive capital that's structured, our focus was really competing at the top end with Wheaton, Franco, Wheaton, and Royal. Given our backgrounds in mining, on operating executive roles and on financing, you know, we felt that there was an area we could successfully source deal flow and compete globally. So that's what we set out to do. Our idea was, we wanted to deploy roughly around $1 billion of Elliott's funds, and, in the process, look to see, once we hit a critical mass, that we transition to the public markets. That's pretty much what we did. We hit the TSX.
We actually deployed about $1.7 billion gross by the time we listed in Toronto. Once we harvested cash from the portfolio and asset divestments, I guess net was about $1.1 billion. So pretty close to what we set out to do, and the returns are very similar. I think you'll see that quite distinctive for our business, because you mentioned, you know, we were not spun out with other people's existing assets. We built this company, first put a team together. We got in the deal flow very quickly. There's so much opportunity in this space as I see it, and what we've seen is, you know, we have, I think, the highest insider ownership as a result of that in the space.
I own about 2.5 million shares in this company, as a result of this. I've invested more since the IPO, and indeed, my team, all have substantial, you know, part of their net worth tied up in the creation of this company, which is quite unique. So we listed in Toronto, May will be our third anniversary. At the time, it was the eighth biggest mining-related IPO in 8 years on the TSX, and I think 10, in 10 years for precious metals globally. It was about $264 million that we raised. We raised. We listed in New York a year later under MJDS. And so, what I'm gonna share with you is our story, 'cause our strategy was very clear. It's deploying meaningful amounts of capital.
I like to stack the odds in our favor, so what that meant is typically deploying, you know, more like $100 million-$500 million check sizes in the sweet spot, where you're focusing on often polymetallics, where we're streaming byproducts. I spent most of my career in base metal businesses, and I understand that the cash flow multiple that you can get from a gold or a silver stream, or byproduct is just worth less to investors for those sorts of businesses than it is to ours. So we can offer a competitive cost of funding, structure it well, so they can get deferred revenue or, you know, favorable rating agency treatment. It gives our investors a very lucrative stream on often very long-dated, multi-decade long assets, like copper mines with gold or silver byproducts, as an example.
And that creates this flywheel of cash generation, which allows you to pay dividends, continue to generate a lot of cash, which you can then redeploy and really invest over multiple horizons. So you can get the longer-dated developments and exploration, investment opportunities that will pay off in, you know, some subset of those in years ahead. But in the meantime, you also participate not just through the price cycles, but really through mine life extension and expansion. It really makes this model work very, very well, while avoiding the inflation. I know you, you're very familiar with all of that. So that's what we've been up to, and I'll take you through this. I'll just share my screen. Hopefully you can see that. Okay. So, today, I think we're actually at about $2.7 billion market cap now, US dollars.
I'll be speaking in US dollars today, unless some of the audience will focus on Canadian. I'll touch on our growth rate that we've delivered, but you'll see that, you know, this year, we're guiding to 105-115 thousand ounces. And we've got substantial growth that we're projecting in five years and beyond, and essentially, you can think of that as largely fully financed. It's not like we've got a lot of our balance sheet that's still tied up in order to deliver that growth. You'll see at this stage, we've got 234 assets in the portfolio, of which 32 are producing, so that growth is really coming from a small subset. So you can think of this, again, as sort of these larger, chunkier, longer-life, cash-generating assets that are highly diversified, and then a really substantial portfolio...
over 200 in that other category, which over some time in the future are gonna generate, some subset, will generate ounces and cash flow. We pay one of the leading dividends in the sector. We've grown that 5% year-on-year, and you can see, we've got a lot of liquidity. Just to orient you, post the Maverix transaction that we closed last year, we took on a little debt from that. We did a few transactions, but you'll see at the moment, we've got about net debt on the balance sheet of about $40 million. Our trailing cash generation is at around $40 million a quarter, so roughly a quarter's cash flow, obviously, to pay that down. And then, you know, the dividend consumes just over $40 million. So balance sheet's in strong condition.
We've got a credit facility of $500 million plus a $200 million accordion, and you can see nearly $700 million and growing of available liquidity. And then, you know, it's interesting, there's a lot of polarization that we see on sustainability topics, but for us, even as a private company coming out of the mining sector, we thought as capital providers, we know that what mining companies really are subjected to. So for us, we wanted to deploy capital with good partners. We do a lot of work on that, because if you have guys who perhaps are on the wrong side of some of the sustainability initiatives, whether that's with their local communities, the privilege to operate, tailings dams, things of that nature, you're not gonna fix that stuff very often through just a higher rate of return.
Getting the diligence and partnerships right is key. Then for us, you know, we do invest alongside our partners where we can on some of their community investments and elsewhere. We've also tracked just our, our carbon footprint. We've maintained our neutrality since inception, and it's just about, you know, being part of the ecosystem and doing that right. The model, I think, needs no introduction. I know there are several of our peers who will be talking to this point, but I think we've come through a period of inflation where this model has really shown its benefits. We've continued to grow substantially with new records through this period. In actual ounces, our margins have not been compressed because of cost increases.
We don't have a lot of, you know, sustaining capital or anything of that nature to deploy once we've made our investments. So you can see these high margins. You see the benefits that we've witnessed already as a young company, with mine life extensions benefiting from the exploration success of our underlying partners, as well as the expansions at times that they engage in, which we benefit from. These portfolios, because you can actually—you're not operating, and so you can create a level of diversification that you simply cannot replicate in an operating business, which just goes to risk, and you see that, and I'll show you some of that in a minute. Then this is just highly scalable. I've got a modest team.
I've built this team the same way that we really built the corporate structure in Xstrata, where I was one of the early executives. So we grew that company from, I don't know, $500 million to $60 billion or so over a decade. And over all that time, with 60,000 employees globally, we only had about 12 people in the corporate office as capital allocators and people that deal with the markets and investors. So you'll see, we have, I think, by headcounts, one of the smaller teams, but importantly, we leverage our networks, both in sourcing deal flow and assisting us in complementing our existing bench to get to the best answers when we allocate capital and structured deals. It keeps our overhead low, and it keeps us agile and hungry.
I'll remind you on the insider ownership, that really is a part of our DNA. We are a founding management team, and that really does inform how we think about value creation. This is our track record on display. You can see the substantial growth in operating cash flow and the direct translation of operating to free cash flow. You know, we don't have those sustaining CapEx and other sacrifices that you get in operating businesses. You'll see, as we grow in the portfolio, you know, bear in mind, 2016 was when we started. We had nothing in that year other than building the team and expenses for offices and, well, office allocation and head count growth.
You'll see that, as mine lives get extended, units of production get extended, your depletion charges are spread over long periods of time. So, you know, robust, pretty consistent cash margins, but also a profile where, with time, your, your earnings profile tends to improve. You can see that this has been a very robust business over time. On this slide, you know, investors often ask us, "How do we think about you as being any different to any of your competitors?" I think when we started in 2016, my offices are on Bay Street in Toronto. I don't think there was a bank out there who candidly took us seriously at the time. It was, a view that, you know, there's not a lot to do in this sector.
There's three or more very strong incumbents with a low cost of capital and very capable teams, all of which is true. But our view was that the sector is underserved from conventional funding, and we really believed that we had a slightly different approach as to how we would build our business, both from our mining networks and our businesses, where our careers, where we'd spent time in those executive seats. Like, when I was Barrick CFO, and the gold price had plummeted down to $1,050 the month, the business had lost money over three years prior to that, and the balance sheet had over $13 billion of debt. I wasn't about to issue more debt. We were trying to pay down debt. Issuing equity would've been super dilutive.
Selling assets, some of which we did, you were selling EBITDA, and very often, you're making your credit metrics worse. So, you know, a stream was part of that solution, and structuring it was part of the insights. Seeing that competitive landscape was, I think, quite unique to us in many ways. But importantly, it does put you in the seat of that executive trying to think about these trade-offs in a substantive way, and understanding that this form of funding really is competing ultimately with debt and equity. And you'll see that we've built this company where the majority of our deals, and we've seen over 800 opportunities over the last eight years now to build the portfolio we have.
The majority of these deals have come by through letter and putting ideas in front of miners, where occasionally, you know, there is a legitimate use of proceeds, and we can structure a deal that meets their requirements and also gives our investors a very good investment and return, and adds to the portfolio. Part of this is, we didn't grow up as a, as a team, really, in Toronto, in a more narrow, say, America-centric and gold focus. You know, a lot of the businesses, I came to Canada when we took over Falconbridge, for example, to be CFO for the global nickel business.
You know, the insights for polymetallics, the networks from around the world that has enabled us to do that work has really been, I think, very helpful in sourcing deal flow, but also in being able to diligence these opportunities. So, we've seen that. I think as, as owners, we've really deployed capital very carefully. In theory, you're trying to be countercyclical, and you can see the growth that we've developed, because I think in a sector where everything sounds world-class and it's low cost and, you know, I think it's important for investors to go back and see what management teams have said and then what they've delivered, and I believe we are delivering what we said we would, and you'll see that in our growth. We are shareholders first. I've talked about the insider ownership.
We focus, and you'll see this in our short-term incentives, very much on the short-term on the scorecard. That's a very important part of who we are. And then I think strategies are often, they often sound fairly undifferentiated, but the culture you create, the level of engagement and ownership in your team, really can make the difference. That can be the X factor, and I do believe it is at the heart of really the performance we've been able to demonstrate. A lean, highly motivated, talented team with deep experience. Coincidentally, more than half my team have come out of places like Barrick, some of which, guys like John Cash, helped build Goldstrike back in the day. You know, we've got people that have got experience well beyond the size of this organization.
That really helps us as we think about capital allocation, due diligence, and investment. I think we've demonstrated discipline on this, and our mining backgrounds have been a very key part of how we've gone about building this company, sourcing and executing. And sustainability, I've already talked about. We try to make this authentic. We had a lot of well-meaning handholders during our IPO with checklists, and we've religiously avoided that. We're not gonna blow with the wind as to what the latest fad is. You know, we're really trying to focus on authenticity and how we go about as part of the mining ecosystem, deploying capital and partnering. So this is what we've got today. Yeah, you'll see, well-diversified. We do play primarily in, you know, good locations like Australia, where our largest concentration by value is located.
And then you'll see, by number, really in the United States and in Canada, but most of our value concentration is in the Americas and Australia. We will go elsewhere if we've got great geology, good partners, good mineral endowments, and a privilege to operate, with the right commercial structure that gives us a sensible risk, risk/reward return. This topic, as you'd appreciate, in the last six, six or so months, has been a core focus for almost every investor engagement we've had as to how we think about country risk and managing that. And I think you can see it in our portfolio. Part of it's a diversification story, but really, our primary assets are very well located in great jurisdictions like Australia.
So, Shaun, could you explain, sort of how the portfolio came to be? You're in Peru, Colombia, El Mochito, I believe, is Honduras and Mexico, but you're- you have less exposure, for example, to Latin America than most other companies.
That's right.
Just explain kind of how it all came together, and what deliberate or not deliberate actions gave you that geographic spread?
Yeah. So look, I think, John, as you'd appreciate, first and foremost, we're we've got to look, the best deals are the deals you can do. And so at any point in the cycle, at some points, you're doing balance sheet repair, liquidity improvements. There's always mine development opportunities, and I think you could blow your capital on a not irresponsible way on doing too much of that at any given time. So we've been very discerning as to how we thought about that. And then occasionally, you know, there's acquisition opportunities. We tend to find those from time to time where you're part of the capital stack. So as you appreciate, these things happen on the timescale that they happen.
I think we've found, as a public company, just a lot more passive deal flow coming to us than, given our increased visibility, perhaps than we had when we were private.
When you say passive, you mean that people call you and you don't take an action?
Yeah. So the problem with some of that is, and I say it's a problem, we just spent time in December as a team, just reevaluating our strategic choices. Reconfirmed those as being relevant to the ones that we had when we created this company, but also thinking about our track record and what is the actual lived experience of our portfolio performance against what we underwrote? That's worked out, I think, quite well compared to what we'd looked at, so we were very pleased to see that.
But I think part of that is around how much of your time, your actual physical, internal resource do you put on things that are proactive, which is how we built this company, that outreach to miners, where you think, knowing what you think you know about their company, you can add, you know, a new stream to your portfolio by helping them with some of their strategic imperatives. And, less time on some of that stuff that just comes in every single day, which often is, I describe it as low calorie. So, we've got a lot more of that, and I think a lot of that is noise, so you have to have the discipline to focus on it. But to answer your question, we—our strategy, I think we've lived it in execution.
So what does that mean? It means we wanted to deploy meaningful checks. We are not one of these incubator businesses or guys that are accumulating royalties on the smaller end. There's guys who do that well, and we're just not one of them. So, you know, we wanted to deploy meaningful capital to this space, often by-product related. So our first deal, to your point, was Cerro Lindo down in Peru, a VMS-style deposit, about a 4- or 5-hour drive from Lima. You know, we stream a silver by-product on a copper-lead-zinc mine, and it is non-strategic to that team. They have an incredible track record of very low capital development there, and they've done this in a very good way with the communities and the environment in mind. So all of that was fantastic.
We've already recouped our initial capital investment on it, and they've demonstrated a great track record of reserve replacement. That was the genesis. We started this end of April in 2016, and by December, we had already closed our first transaction. Our first real revenues from that came in, and that was around 30,000 ounces a year in the form of silver were coming in through Cerro Lindo at that point. In that year, we were highly concentrated in one country and one commodity, silver. You can see how this portfolio has diversified and grown from there. Our second investment just to give you a sense of the opportunism was a greenfield project on the eastern border of Mongolia in the form of ATO.
You know, here is an example where there was no way, for love or money, this management team could take this, you know, very simple, technically, sort of, small pits, heap leach opportunity, and be able to finance it on the TSX. So we, we found the opportunity, we diligenced it, we accessed our networks, we helped them IPO, and we underwrote an investment case at the time with a high teen return, you know, at $1,250 gold. Sized it for the portfolio, as you think about country risk. It was a $28 million investment, and we importantly, just given our unknowns around changes in administration, we wanted to get our initial capital back within 4 years, and then benefit from the optionality beyond that. That's really what's happened. This team, notwithstanding challenges during COVID, brought this into production.
You know, we've recouped that capital, and we've seen the mine life get extended by 12, 12.5 years as they enter into a fresh rock expansion, which is really at the early stages that they're underway in. So what I'm trying to give you a sense of is, you know, we're taking calculated risks. We're capital allocators, we're investors, we're looking to focus the bulk of the business on things that are cash generating or ideally permitted 2-3 years to cash flow, usually. And we wanna make sure that, you know, we can participate with the bulk of the portfolio from a NAV and investment point of view, in those sorts of low-risk opportunities. That creates the flywheel for cash generation that we can continue to grow and reinvest with over time.
When you'll see that, how that's unfolded... Also, we've stuck to our knitting. There were periods where we'd have investors and others come to us and say, "Hey, battery metals is hot. You should dump this gold stuff and just focus on battery metals." We're unashamedly, you know, we're nearly 100% gold and silver. The rest is copper and nickel. And a lot of that, my best way to help the energy transition is to, you know, do a gold or silver stream on a copper mine, for example, of which we've done several. We have the career experience and networks to do streams and royalties on PGM, on base metal assets. We have done some. We've got room to do more, but we've not blown with the wind. We've stuck to the strategy.
To your point as well, you can see we've been very thoughtful about our geographic location and diversification. So, Northparkes in Australia is our biggest cornerstone, 25%. That's not too different to what you'd see with Franco-Nevada or Royal, from a single asset concentration point of view. But this is New South Wales. It's a 35-year asset with decades ahead of it. And then nothing, you know, above 10%, so nicely diversified and nicely located geographically. So does that give you a bit of a sense?
That's very good. Thank you.
So, you know, this is just a doubling down on that. You'll see here some of the cornerstone assets. You'll see a mix of base metal mines, like, you know, Northparkes, where we stream gold and silver. You'll see, again, base metal mine, like Cerro Lindo, copper, lead, zinc mine, where we stream silver. A PGM mine, you know, we reached out to this management team several years ago, where they just bought out Anglo Platinum from a joint venture on the Styldrift mine, which this is a decade of investment in the infrastructure to create this mechanized underground mine. And, you know, we helped them displace high-cost debt. We've got a three-decade multi-ore source-... you know, low-cost gold stream on a, you know, top, top-quality asset that's been taken out recently by Implats.
You know, another example where we, we knew we were competing with conventional funding, and it was proactive outreach that delivered that opportunity. And then there's royalties on gold assets like Fosterville, Young-Davidson, and others, but a mix of both royalties and streams, gold mines, but also the bulk of the ounces coming really from polymetallics. And then, you know, I'd be remiss if not pointing out that ultimately we are not operators, so we are highly dependent on the quality of the operators that we have.
As a guy who came out of mining companies like BHP Billiton, Xstrata, and others, you know, we made a lot of shareholder value over time in Xstrata, for example, by acquiring assets out of majors, and then taking, say, third or fourth tier businesses, investing capital smartly, upgrading talents, and taking those into second or first quartile with great mineral endowments. And so, you know, I think it is important as we look at these opportunities and these operators, to actually look beyond the brand names to the individuals and the mining teams in these individual assets, and we do a lot of due diligence on that. So, it's not as simple as just saying, "Hey, great, we've got operator X, and aren't they great?
They're listed, and they're big." It does come down to those individual management teams that we put a lot of work into. So there's a lot of hot areas you'd appreciate often in the mining sector, and so I think what matters, and it's the only thing that matters when you're private, it seems to be less of an issue somehow when you're public, but it's what have you done for investors lately, and what is your track record? I'll mention again, we started with nothing in 2016. This is what we delivered, and you'll see it's been consecutive records for the last seven years. Our actual ounce growth has been the highest in the sector, 20% year-on-year. We're projecting, I think we're the only issuer amongst the intermediates and seniors this year to actually project further growth in 2024.
Everyone else is down. And you'll see we're projecting a growth beyond that, which is really coming mostly from ramping assets. So as you think about risk for that growth, it's not like we've got- we're waiting for permits to come to deliver this or, you know, a lot of uncertainty on those. The bulk of that future is really coming from assets that are producing in that portfolio, have reserves associated with them, and are well advanced if there's a growth component or a contingent component on it. And then this is before you factor in the non-producing. There's more than 200 actually non-producing assets that are, you know, at some different time horizon, but some subset of those will continue to deliver growth for us.
This is a bit of a window into that. You'll see that we've got several assets in here that are, you know, ramping, that really delivers the bulk of that. Northparkes, I'll talk about that more in a minute, but you'll see we've got E31 and E31 North. These are shallow, open pits that are... It's a multi-ore source mine, so, you know, you have to blend this as you think about what's in. But when we invested, it was a 6.4 million ton per annum asset. It's now at 7.6 million tons per annum. E31, E31 North, I'll touch on in a minute, but those are high-grade zones from a gold perspective. We will see that flowing through this year and next into our ounces from this operation.
And then a little beyond that horizon is the next, major ore body on E22. That's also a higher gold grade, roughly triple the run of mine grade, that will come in. So you'll see considerably more ounces, as a result from this, this cornerstone asset. There are assets like Beta Hunt that have been ramping. The Impala Bafokeng mine at Styldrift is ramping. So, we're seeing a lot of that. And then ATO is focusing on this phase II expansion. On the development side, there's a list here. You'll see 41 assets in that category. There's a subset in here, including, you know, Hope Bay with Agnico and Eskay Creek and others, that, you know, within the five-year time horizon, some subset of these represent really good ounce growth opportunities for our portfolio.
And then there's things beyond what's captured, I believe, in NAV and ounces in that exploration category. And this is before you really factor in, we've got a lot of dry powder. We grew this company through deals, and there's, I'd say, at the moment, when I look at our deal pipeline, this is, I think, the best deal environment that we're living in right now that I've seen in the last eight years. So it's a very interesting environment.
But that's deal pipeline, because the juniors can't sell stock.
That's, that's part of it. I think it's... But that's always been a bit of an issue, candidly, John. So I think it's a bit more. You would've think, seen in that 2014, 2015 timeframe, you saw these sort of, frankly, the majors doing large streaming transactions that really benefited the Big Three. Almost generational assets that, you know, have been super lucrative to those portfolios. We then saw those disappear roughly around the time we started, which is part of the reason I think Bay Street thought there wasn't much to do in this space.
I think we are seeing—we've seen in the last six months, frankly, in the last three months, we've seen major companies and intermediates in base metal businesses, PGM businesses, take massive write-downs, you know, given what's happened to pricing and everything from nickel to lithium to PGMs, cobalt. So I think there's opportunities we're seeing starting to reemerge for the first time in our, our existence, where companies are looking ahead to their growth requirements, their capital requirements, their funding sources, their own equities. We have seen big divergence in underlying commodity prices in gold, except for example, and the underlying equity values of these companies. So equity issuance, if you can do it, is more expensive.
If there are polymetallics or things of that nature, the ability to boost their balance sheets or repair them is on display. I think it's a very interesting time right now, and that's not just-
I just wanna review this slide because some of the listeners might not recognize all the property names.
Sure.
The expansions are two in Australia, one in Mongolia, and one in South Africa.
Yep.
The development projects are six in the U.S. and Canada, one in Ivory Coast, one in Chile, and Prieska, Orion, also South Africa, right?
Yes, that's right.
Then the exploration are five in the U.S. and Canada, and one in Chile.
Yep.
Some of the U.S. projects might be considered risky. Minnesota has not permitted a copper and nickel project yet.
Some of these are earlier stage. Queensway doesn't have a resource yet. They said at PDAC, giving a paper, that they're gonna drill 650 kilometers before they do a maiden resource, so they have a lot of data. Fenn-Gib is 4 billion ounces at 1 gram. Lake Shore Gold, it went from Lake Shore to Tahoe, to Pan Am, to Mayfair, and I don't remember who it was that Lake Shore bought it from. Some of these projects have been around. Buffalo Valley was in Santa Fe Pacific Gold in the 1990s.
They're not all fast-moving.
No, agreed. So did you want to comment on that?
Sure, sure.
Yeah, and so I think you make, you make an essential point. So, let's, let's think about producing assets that are, maybe have great mineral endowments, like Northparkes, just as an example. So 35 years in operation, you know, decades of mine life ahead on a 26 square kilometer package, more than 500 million tons of resourced reserve grade, mining at 7.6 million tons, and they were at 6.4 when we did the deal a while ago. And multi-ore source just acquired by Evolution, in a great location. So they're aligned.
The potential for, you know, throughput expansion, and when you consider that the stream is on, in a prospective belt, and it's not on 26 square kilometers, it's on over 1,000, that's a pretty good way to start thinking about future life extension, expansion, and our investors to participate in that. At least that's how we think about it.
So when you look at our growth from assets like that and the growth that I just projected over the five years plus, when you consider our track record, we, that hasn't come from us saying, "I'm really banking here on those 41 development assets and 154 exploration assets coming in any time this side of my retirement date." You know, there's some subset of those that will, but when you look at the growth that we're projecting and the portfolio construction and risk, this is a sector that has not had a great track record of delivering things on time and on budget. I've always been on the other side of the table. Mining's hard, and the reality is, you wanna develop a portfolio where the odds are hopefully more in your favor than not.
So your point is exactly bang on, and we've not constructed the portfolio with that in mind. My growth that I'm projecting is not contingent on some of these things that have been listed in that development and exploration phase coming into this time horizon that we've projected. There's some subset of those that will. So, for example, I think, you know, look, Northparkes, ATO, Beta Hunt, Impala, these things are producing, they're operating, and there's so much more ahead of that. So I view those as low risk. And when you consider the proportion of our ounces that are coming from things in production, it's in line more with the majors that trade at a premium multiple.
So say 70%-80% of NAV is in that category, and that is not accidental, for exactly the reason you're alluding to. The risk here-
So four of your development projects are mine restarts: Hope Bay, Eskay Creek, McCoy Cove, and DeLamar. So the geology is-
And Prieska.
The metallurgy down Prieska, five in South Africa, I don't know as well.
Yeah.
The South Railroad is right in the middle of the Carlin Trend.
Yeah.
So they're established districts.
Yep. Actually, and so part of, I'll use Prieska as an example. You know, during PDAC, I was at a CEO event where there was a guy from the U.S. administration present, talking about some of the gaps on how they're gonna hit 2035 copper supply and other things. And if you think about what's happened in Panama recently with 1.5% supply falling away, ongoing grade declines and underperformance on supply side out of Chile and elsewhere, and then even recently in Zambia with the power cuts, 25% power cuts or so, supply is hard. And when I look at the ability of, say, greenfields or assets like copper assets, to go from discovery to coming online, that's nearly two decades.
So I think if you've got brownfield situations where these things have perhaps been exited during low points in price cycles, you've got the right mineral endowments, and perhaps a lot of sunk capital. That is a great way for near-term supply, particularly if it's on private land that's permitted. I think that's just a sensible way for that to come on. So exactly to your point, there's several of these. Like, we know that Agnico is doing extensive work. They're the right operator in that location, and mine and the team are investing substantially in that. You know, the projections I'm seeing are perhaps, you know, something more towards the middle to the back end of the timeframe that we've got on that 2025 time horizon coming online.
You know, they're talking about perhaps a 4,000 ton a day sort of operation, and being able to bring that online. That's, that's just a very useful GEO contributor that will, I think, it will likely come in at some point during our 5-year time horizon for exactly the sort of reasons you mentioned. Eskay Creek, similar sort of thing. I mean, you know, Golden Triangle, I think that mine operated from 1994 to 2008. It's got great infrastructure, you know, all year round access, a 287 kV power line, and it's got a, you know, a 5.5 million ounce resource on that with gold equivalent ounces and 4.6 million ounce of gold equivalent reserves.
So, you know, that, at the moment, is looking like a 12-year life of mine. The first five years alone, they're looking at 455,000 ounces of gold equivalent on that. And, you know, the metallurgy is seemingly straightforward, good recoveries. So, you know, those are the sorts of assets, plus the potential for regional play, that I think have a much greater probability of contributing meaningfully. But if you look at the diversification chart again, you'll see that a lot of these things, as a collective, come quite nicely in, but they're not—it's not like it's a cornerstone asset. As a collective, these generate really nice ounce additions.
And when you look at the growth that we're putting into the public domain, we aren't just aggregating what the operators are saying, adding it up and saying, "Hey, this is where we're gonna get to," because that five-year outlook would be some tens of thousands of ounces higher. What we're doing is we're handicapping, given the realities of the sector. I can go on, but like Prieska is another example. There's 100 million tons of oxide before they even get into the sulfides. The infrastructure, I was underground there just two months ago again. It looks like they left it yesterday. They've got some dewatering to do. They've got to get their funding and their plan in place.
That's an option purely at our election to invest $80 million if we're satisfied with the life of mine plan, the partnerships. You know, we've put a small check in there in order to secure that alongside the IDC. You know, those are the sorts of things, if you can get an option that makes sense, the right partnership, the right plan, I like those odds, and I like that optionality. So does that give you a bit of a flavor?
That's very good.
And-
One of the more recent trends is for countries to change the rules.
Oh, yeah.
You're almost not in any of these countries.
No.
But Chile proposed two constitutions and then decided Pinochet's rules from the eighties were better. One of the things they rejected was quasi-nationalism, where... or a state within a state, which is in the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador, where you are not, where they essentially have indigenous sub-countries.
Yeah.
Obrador proposed a ban on open-pit mining in Mexico, new open pits. The same speech offered to raise the minimum wage, improve pensions, give free fertilizers, increase free scholarships for universities, and it was sort of a socialist manifesto. Guatemala proposes to revise all mine licenses. The word in Spanish was revisa, not revise, not review.
Alicia, my assistant, that's Mexican, translates the press for me in South America, so we try to read in Spanish. In Panama, the constitutionality argument presumes that the executive was corrupt, and essentially argues that the executive had no right to make a mining contract or permit, and wanted to have, at each phase, judicial review, legislative improvement, indigenous review, and national referendum. So you're very lucky or very prudent or very wise in the countries you're in or not in. Are any of your countries or jurisdictions changing rules?
Yeah, so I think what we can show now with literally eight years of hindsight is we have been thoughtful about issues that you've mentioned, because I think in my career in two separate companies I've had to work through expropriation situations where you're taking you know governments to task at the Paris Court of Arbitration or elsewhere. You finally get the awards, but it takes time. I'd like to think that sanity will prevail in Panama, for example, and that you know First Quantum and Franco, by extension, will ultimately you know common sense will prevail just even just from an economic point of view. But when we look at country risk-...
I do think people do themselves a disservice sometimes looking at it just on a national level at a moment in time. You've just cited several examples of places that, you know, one minute it's fine, next minute it's maybe not. I think, though, if you've got an environment like Australia, like Canada, to a lesser extent, the United States, but where mining is actually an integral part, a pretty meaningful contributor to GDP, and there is actually an ecosystem, it's a meaningful employer, that is a different risk profile to countries where perhaps there's large mines, but they maybe have one or two meaningful mines, like we've seen play out in Panama. I've lived through, oh, sorry, and just on that, you mentioned Minnesota.
Like, you know, Tamarack and the team have got backing with the DOD, the DOE grants, the Department of Energy, Department of Defense. They are looking at alternatives for processing outside just because of some of those complexities. But I think they're on good footing. And, you know, it's pretty hard in some parts of Canada to go and get permitting done, same as in the United States. I think the specifics do matter. If you are looking at where Cerro Lindo is located and how they engage with communities in that part of Peru versus the challenges that, you know, Las Bambas or Peru LNG had recurringly over the last 10 years or more.
Where you're located, who the communities are, the context, the infrastructure, all of those should factor into that risk assessment, and also how you would actually go about your privilege to operate. It's part of our investment and decision-making process. So I've also seen when, you know, Xstrata, when we took over Falconbridge, and then I saw it later in Barrick, in the Dominican, you know, after the capital was invested, then essentially the government renegotiated. And, you know, that's the point of maximum peril. The jobs are being created, the capital is being invested. This is hardly a novel or new thing, but eventually, you know, sanity prevailed, and it went forward, and it's hardly unique. We've seen it elsewhere.
What we have seen just a year or two ago, where investors are saying, "Ooh, you know, Peru, there's changes occurring there, and what about Chile?" To the point you just raised. But we saw that in Australia back in 2010, right? A great jurisdiction, but ultimately, what happened, and Australia was maybe the best example, where that mineral resource tax, super profits tax, really, the communities actually helped lobby around the mining companies. And ultimately, that was thwarted. Common sense prevailed. And you know, the importance of mining, particularly to more remote communities, I think, won the day. I think as a sector, we don't do a good enough job of advocating for the essential nature of what we bring to society, and also use our advocates outside the cities as effectively as we can.
Sorry, there's a lot in there, but I think, it's an important part of our portfolio construction to not just say, "Oh, great, Canada is a wonderful place to have an investment," in which it is. You have to really look at the specifics, whether it's in any of those jurisdictions you've outlined, which thankfully we don't have, I think, any exposure to. But, I think that's also the benefit of having a diversified portfolio. It really does matter, and who the operators are and how good they are at being able to manage the local circumstance, in that region.
Thank you.
Let me see. You know, just to put some of those projects, I won't dwell on this slide, but, you know, you can see some of the things that we think would fall within that sort of five-year horizon, which are not in the core ramping components. On an individual basis, none of these are substantial ounce contributors over there, but as a collective, that diversification adds up quite nicely. I, you know, I've seen, even in the last year, there are things in that non-producing category that have ended up coming into the producing category, which we weren't forecasting. Again, I think the benefit of stacking the odds in a portfolio is quite useful. I think Franco's had a good history of that. Most analysts can't keep up with just so many assets. They only model the more material ones.
I think over time, if you include these, it's almost like a financial sleight of hand, where when you incorporate your more material assets into guidance, and over time, these things below the radar can come in. You have the ability to incorporate those and hopefully demonstrate more of a track record, not only of meeting guidance, but exceeding guidance, over time. And that's really our focus and ambition. And you can see things in the longer term here as well. So track record here matters.
I just to orient you on the slide, you know, I remember, Mick Davis, who I worked with for a couple of decades and was on our board, he was a mentor of mine, would often say: "It's easier to make a small fortune, you just have to start with a big one." And, you know, so the point being, just throwing money around to generate growth has been a curse for the sector sometimes. This here, we've anonymized, but these are the intermediates and our seniors in the space. You know, bear in mind, they all had capital deployed before we existed, because, you know, we're the newest in the space.
So this is the entirety of our capital deployment, and there's also predated this in a meaningful way, but you'll see that our capital deployment is in line or even behind some of those. But in actual ounces, whether to date, as well as in the five-year outlook, we've generated roughly, you know, 2-4 times the level of ounce growth over this period of time. That's just empirical. It's there. So it's not like we've bought our way into growth. I think we've been fairly astute. We're generating cash yields on net invested capital, and they're very much in line with the best in the space, and that's part of how we've gone about building this portfolio.
Then again, if you're a private company, you know, you don't get the benefit, or at least the, well, the benefit or the dismay at times of staring at a Bloomberg screen, being either happy or sad on any given day. You know, it's what have you done? And this slide to orient you is some of our cornerstone assets. You know, the gray bars being the cash, the check that we wrote at a point in time. And then on different horizons, you know, the darker bar below is how much cash we've harvested to date. And indeed, as I go forward, these are consensus numbers of, with mine life extension, that the NAVs of those streams or royalties at any given time.
You'll see a mix here by design of longer-dated assets like Northparkes, like Impala Bafokeng, that Northparkes is a great example, where after, you know, the turn of the decade, or sorry, the millennium, they had about 1 million ounces of gold in reserve. Gold, again, is a by-product. They, over the ensuing 20 years, took out about 1.1 million ounces, and they've got just under a million ounces of gold in reserve. So having assets like that in the portfolio with a great cadence of replacement, harvesting cash, and then being able to continue to extend mine life, those are really nice ballasts, if you will, to the portfolio. And then you've got these sort of short-term investments, like I mentioned, with ATO. $28 million check, we've already harvested $41 million. There's their 12.5-year extension.
That's a pretty good, you know, multiple on invested capital, and that's how we've played the country risk aspect and some of those top-tier components as we constructed the portfolio. Cerro Lindo, great, you know, we've recouped that investment. They've continued to extend mine life. No great assets. And I know, John, we spoke last time on, when I was on your conference, you know, about Buriticá, 'cause I know you were quite close to that. And, you know, that's one where for an asset where they've expanded 30% over what we underwrote last year alone, I think they added about 1.2 million ounces through exploration.
Yeah, we've already recouped that investment, and I think there's so much more to come that's not visible in the NAVs, just given the relative scarcity of disclosure from the operator these days. Fosterville will be another one with the work that Agnico's doing there at the moment. We underwrote that, just this one was sort of being unfound or unfilled. And you'll see that, you know, that was before there was this area on Cygnet. I think they'd invested about $250 million on the declines in exploration. We look forward to the updates, 'cause I think it's the sort of asset in the portfolio which is quite likely, in years to come, to unveil things that are not included in NAV at any point in time.
So Northparkes, I'll spend a minute on this. Just, you know, it is a cornerstone. You know, we had China Moly as really great operators on this asset, but really, with their disclosure requirements, it was almost as if this didn't exist, I think, in the minds of many of our investors, particularly in North America. So Evolution acquired this in December. Jake and his team. I was actually in the CFO role at Barrick when Jake and his team acquired Cowal back in 2015, and, you know, they've done a great job on that asset. And, you know, in fact, I was in Xstrata when we took over MIM. When I was at Ernest Henry last, it was an open pit, and they acquired that, and they've got some great expertise in, you know, large-scale underground caving.
So the right address, the right operators in that organization, with the track record and talent, and, we really are very excited to, have that team on board, with that asset. And I think, it's more material to them, in their backyard, and so, we're looking forward to working with them to actually reveal what we see as just, an incredible top-tier asset, for anyone in this sector going forward. So, that's, that's a material development, for us. Just to reorient you, you know, this, again, it's been operating 35 years. It was the first fully automated underground mine in the world, and so incredibly sophisticated.
And a mix. You know, when Rio Tinto owned it, prior to CMOC, they drilled this extensively down to 200 meters, looking more for shallow, you know, open pits. And you'll see there's a mix of open pits and these cigar-like porphyries, so multi-ore source, open at depth. You know, they're currently really extracting mostly from E26, the one north. The E48 is open at depth, and we expect that Evolution will probably do some exploration there and elsewhere, as well as actually focus on some, you know, near infrastructure, shallow open pit targets on exploration, similar to the playbook they used at Cowal. But, and then the next cab off the rank I touched on earlier, the E22, more towards the end of the decade.
But yeah, we're really looking forward to seeing what Jake and Lawrie and the team do on the asset. Given the multi-ore source nature of it, so to put it in context, the run-of-mine grade last year was around 0.16 grams a ton. You'll see that E22 that I mentioned as sort of the next large porphyry online. It is conceivable that instead of doing a block cave, that Jake and his team have sort of referenced possibly doing a sub-level cave to access that ore body sooner. That's nearly triple the grade there, 0.37. And I did mention E31, E31 North. We'll see that, you know, that is 5-6 times the grade which they're mining now in the next couple of years.
So that'll really contribute very nicely to the ounces that we'll receive over the next couple of years. And then, yeah, this is just, again, a bit around Evolution's track record at Cowal. You know, 340% increase in reserves and their ownership, a lot of good exploration success, investment in the ground, and expansion. They've been very astute in adding value for their shareholders in this asset. On the sustainability side, I think I've touched on this a lot already, but, you know, for us, as a private business, you know, I view the ratings we've received now as really the report card... not pandering to an audience, but really the output of the work we've been doing.
You'll see what that's meant, is we were fourth, and now we're third in 117 global precious companies under Sustainalytics. We've got good ratings, and you know, we've continued to invest very proactively in scholarship and other programs. I, John, I may have touched on this with you previously, but I wouldn't be talking to you today if scholarship programs from mining companies were not available to me for my engineering degree and for my MBA in the States. And so I feel there's a lot less of that in the mining system, where we need to attract and develop talent for the sector. And so that's one way our company can contribute, both to the mining ecosystem, but also to the frontline communities and the employee bases of our partners.
So we really focus on that as a real priority within this. And that's just some of the ratings, you know, that have accrued as a consequence of our work. So this is who we are. I mean, it's been 8 years, really, next month. We've grown really to, I think this year alone, the midpoint of our guidance range, where the intermediates, when we started in 2016, where we had nothing, we're already producing 30,000 and 30,000+ and 50,000+ ounces a year on gold equivalents. You know, we last year we did 105,000, and they were in the 90s, and this year, the midpoint of our range would be about 26% ahead of what they're projecting. So I think we've delivered substantively.
We've got 234 assets now, highest growth rate that we've demonstrated in the sector, strong cash margins, the best balance sheet among the intermediates, and, certainly of, you know, and, and the, the best dividend, highest insider ownership, and, a lot of growth potential in what is, as I said, the busiest pipeline with a good balance sheet to continue to play ball. So that really is our story, and, you know, happy to answer any questions that-
Certainly, questions are welcome through the question box in the upper right-hand corner of your screens, for the listeners. Shaun, are there any properties where you have step-downs or caps in your royalty or stream agreements?
We have some. We've seen those. I think we've seen some of the majors recently issue some of their guidance, and you're seeing step-downs in their collective portfolio volumes in the sort of 2026+ timeframe. So, you know, those features are there. You have depleting ore bodies, sometimes the step-downs. But I think as a collective in our portfolio, just to contextualize it, you see continued growth. And beyond the five-year view, our internal projections are for ongoing growth. So I think that's an important point just to-
Are there any individual contracts that have step-downs for you?
Yeah. There, there are. So we've got a few. Cerro Lindo is the most obvious one, which, you know, just over 19 million ounces, where we've still got about 4 or 5 million ounces. We have a step down, which will occur. We have a right of first refusal on that contract for any further stream investment or otherwise. I think we're very well positioned if there was an opportunity to offset that, but that is one. That is baked into our guidance numbers, so when you look at the outlooks beyond, that's all factored in. In Northparkes, there's one, but you can think of that as pretty much in a 30-year time horizon before you would see that kick in.
So, you know, there is one, but it's been put outside of, call it the visible mine life, or at least on a reserve, basis. So, you can think of that there, and that's, I don't know how old they'll be by the time that step down kicks in, but it's gonna be a hell of a long time from now. But we do have one cap that we've inherited, which would be, Kensington, which is a, you know, a thing which we'd expect to contribute some ounces, which isn't currently in our projections.
Is Kensington in Alaska?
Yes, that's right. So, that's, you know, they're operating currently. I know they're doing extensive work on that currently, but, yeah, an exploration work to continue that. But yeah, that's something that should kick in, in due course for us.
So is Fosterville the shortest mine life among your operating properties?
That's a good question. I'd say on a material basis, it's the shortest visible mine life. I look at Fosterville, you'd appreciate this, John. You know, you get some of those mines like a big open pits or a mine like Northparkes that has, you know, or RBPlat, Impala, or Implats RBPlat, or Bafokeng, they call it now, which has decades of visible mine life based on the reserves and what's out there. But then when you look at the resources and the land packages, the expectation is even there, that you will expect to see a lot more to come, just given the cost structure.
But then you get some of these mines that have had a, you know, 2- or 5-year visible mine life for the last 20, 50 years, whatever it is. And so when I think of Fosterville, I think of it more in that light. You know, it's one that at one point was, when Swan was in its heyday, was contributing about 10,000 GEOs for us a year. It's coming in a little under half of that. You know, they've indicated at Agnico that they're looking at exploration to demonstrate a more sustainable, longer life for, say, 170,000-200,000 ounces per annum. And, you know, I think they'll be unveiling their plans fairly, I think it's later this year or 2025....
As to where that is, and then also deciding whether or not they include this as a continued part of their portfolio or divested. I think this is very much one of those assets that you will continue to see that kind of increase. We do have some others like, they're very small in Australia, Stawell. It's a private business. We've just actually increased our investment in last year. It's owned by one of the wealthiest families in Australia called the Smorgons. They're very astute, and we really like what we've seen there. So even though the visible life is seemingly quite short, what we see in the geology and beyond is very exciting, as well as in that partnership.
There are some small things that usually would be below people's radar, but Fosterville is probably the best visible example.
We have a question about the-
Sorry, John, one quick thing.
Ownership with Triple Flag. How much is Elliott versus others?
Yeah, so, you know, Elliott, just for those who are less familiar, so you remember, Elliott was our sole capital provider other than management sweat equity when we were private. So they, they wrote all the checks until we went private. Management earned our equity by virtue of exceeding the cost of funding on our free carried interest. So when we did our IPO, we brought in that $264 million. At that point, Elliott diluted down through the IPO down to about 82%. And we almost had the opposite challenge that you see with a lot of growing companies. Most miners or companies like this start off with a retail following, and over time, get research following, and then they cultivate an institutional following. We had the opposite issue, very little retail, obviously a large Elliott position.
Then on the IPO, we had these really some great blue chip investors from the Qataris, who I think it might have been the first time we saw them invest in IPO since the Glencore IPO, Norges, Fidelity and others like that. So our liquidity was, and still remains low, but when we did the Maverix transaction, that increased our liquidity about tenfold. We saw substantial index inclusion. There's obviously a lot more room for that to grow. We saw a number of accounts that liked our story, but were liquidity-constrained, who came in. Guys like George Cheveley and Ninety One and others who came into the story at that time. So I think that's our trajectory. Elliott, at that time, was diluted down from 82%-62%.
And you remember there were a few strategic blocks with how Maverix had grown. Very supportive shareholders on our transaction, who we liked. You know, Michael Steinmann at Pan American sold his block because he was doing the Yamana deal. We know Kinross, obviously a stake which they'd very patiently held until they'd sort of lightened that position. And then most notably was Newmont, and they had about a 50 million share position. They placed 10 million of that when they were working on the Newcrest transaction. We had a 5 million share residual, which they offered really to either ourselves or Elliott to take out the overhang in the market, which Elliott did. So that takes Elliott now to about 67%. Elliott has not sold a share.
You know, we've been at it 3 years in the public realm now. We had a lot of people saying, "Well, when we go public, Elliott's, this is their exit." But Elliott, as you, I think you know, John, is an evergreen fund. They've been at it for over 40 years. It's really a single pool of capital, about $65 billion AUM. When I started with them, it was about $29 billion. It's not like the resource funds that you see in the mining sector on the private equity side. They usually invest in 5 years and have to find a way to liquidate in, say, 2 or 3. Elliott's held some positions for 30 years, so they're value-focused. There will be potentially a source of sensible liquidity.
We're either gonna continue to grow in a non-dilutive way, like we did on Maverix, which will take their position down and grow liquidity, or perhaps there'll be a source of secondary at, you know, the right share price environment.
So, Shaun, we've gone a little over an hour, and I need to open up the window for the 12:15 speaker, Tony Makuch, with Discovery Silver. Thank you very much. Congratulations, and, congratulations most for staying out of trouble.
Yeah, it's a daily task. We'll continue to do our best to do that. Don't do dumb stuff-
Thank you. It's good to see everything going so well. Thank you.
Thanks, John. It's great to talk to you.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.