I'm Stuart Macliver from Amvest Capital. Welcome to the Amvest Capital, Inc. live webinar with Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp. Triple Flag trades on both the TSX and New York Stock Exchange as TFPM. We hope you'll enjoy today's program. A replay will be available on demand following today's program. Q&A is a very important aspect of our webinars, so please make sure you submit your questions here, and we'll try and ask them on your behalf in real time. You can also share this event with others during the program, just highlighted here. At the end of the webinar, please share your feedback here. Amvest Capital is a New York-based specialist investment management and corporate finance firm, focused solely on the natural resource sector.
This call is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Joining us today from Triple Flag is our CFO, Sheldon Vanderkooy. Following the formal presentation, members of Amvest Capital will ask questions of management. We also look forward to any attendee questions that you send in. And now I'll turn it over to Sheldon. Thank you.
Thank you, Stuart. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sheldon Vanderkooy. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Triple Flag Precious Metals. I appreciate you giving me the time to hear a little bit about our story and the value proposition that we bring. I'm going to skip over the cautionary statements. All the normal cautions apply to forward-looking statements. I'm gonna start with an overview of Triple Flag, and before I get into the weeds on the slide deck, there's three themes that I really want or three takeaways I want you to take away from my session today. And one is the strong embedded growth that we have in our profile.
So you're gonna see a track record of growth that we've accomplished to date, but there's actually more paid for growth in our portfolio that's gonna be delivered in the next five years, and that's already bought and paid for. So you're gonna see that accrue to shareholders' benefit in the future based on work that we've done in the past. The second is our strong cash flow forecast focus. We care about cash flow a lot. There's a lot of mining stories, and they're based on the hope that something will turn into a deposit, exploration plays, development plays, you know, and people have different business models, and that can be successful. But we've chosen to focus with a very clear line of sight to cash flow.
And as you hear about the streaming and royalty model, you're gonna see that it's a very powerful model for generating shareholder returns and cash flow directly to the bottom line that's available for shareholders. The third point I want to leave you with is that this management team, almost unique in our sector, are, are strong owners, and so owners of the, of the shares. You can see there on the slide that, management and the board are, are the founders of the company. I started with the company in 2016 when it was founded. We didn't have any assets at that point. We built this company from scratch. The management team and the board as a whole own about 4% of the company. That's over... You know, it's well over $100 million of value.
What that means is when we're looking at managing this business, our focus is first and foremost with our shareholder hat on. We're not an embedded management team. We have a long-term view, and we're thinking about what's gonna generate value for shareholders in the long run because we are shareholders. We started Triple Flag in 2016. We weren't spun out with an existing portfolio or an existing asset. What we did is, we really admired the business model of the streaming and royalty sector that didn't actually own mines, but was able to amass large portfolios with high margins, you could be well diversified and produce cash flow and precisely get exposure to gold and silver over a large number of mines in a very effective manner. And it generates good returns over the cycle.
And we think with higher, lower risk exposure and good high exposure to the upside. So we think it's asymmetric exposure. So we set out to build this portfolio. In that time, we've now raised a portfolio where we're the fourth largest streaming and royalty company by GEOs. You can see we're forecasting 105,000 to 115,000 GEOs for 2024. Almost unique in our subsector, we're actually forecasting higher production in 2024 than we had in 2023. We achieved our guidance in 2023. We've got a strong track record in the market. And then, as I alluded to earlier, our five-year outlook is we see that stepping up to 140,000 ounces. Our cash flow is directly scaled from our production.
We get a really good flow through from production, times the gold price, equals our, our cash flow, very low overhead. And so as we scale up from this current level of 105,000 to 115,000 ounces to 140,000 ounces, you're gonna see a direct correlation to the cash flows that are available to shareholders. 234 assets, it's a large portfolio. Our cash flow right now comes from just over 30 of those assets. So that leaves another 200 assets on which we, we benefit if somebody drills a hole and finds some good intercepts, if someone develops a mine, if someone expands an operation, we're gonna benefit from all that, but we don't have to contribute any further capital to that. The next box there is the dividend.
We actually strongly believe a dividend is an important part of the return to shareholders. We're not just a dividend story, we're also a growth story, but we've paid out a dividend right now at a $0.21 per year level. That's U.S. dollars. When we went public, it was at $0.19. We've been public for two years now. Every year, since we've gone public, we've increased our dividend. That's a really nice track record. We look to continue that in the future. And right now, our dividend consumes a little under 25% of our free cash flow. So it's very sustainable, it's not at risk, and actually, we see the ability to increase that over time. As our portfolio grows, we'll also be able to increase that, that, that dividend as well....
The last box there is the available liquidity, and that's our liquidity and our capital that we have available to grow. So we have a very low debt burden. We haven't achieved our growth by leveraging the company. At year-end, our net debt was only $40 million. That represents about a quarter's worth of cash flow. Our trailing free cash flow is about $40 million a quarter, so we'll see being debt-free this year, unless we find some good opportunities to invest in, in which case we'll invest in that, and that'll accrue additional value to shareholders. The business model is very important. Some of you will be more or less familiar with the business model.
When we first got into this business, we were actually emulating ourselves with the Franco-Nevada, the Wheaton Precious Metals, the Royal Gold, who had a really strong track record over decades. What the business model does is, we have contracts with miners, and we get a percentage of the gold or silver that's produced. The ideal asset for us to have an interest in is a copper mine or a zinc mine that has a gold or a silver by-product, and we'll pay money upfront to the mine operator. We won't own the mine, so we don't have the burdens of environmental costs, capital cost inflation, operating cost inflation. We don't have that, but what we do is we get to buy the gold and silver at a discount for as long as that mine runs.
We also hold royalties on properties where we get a percentage of the revenue it produces. What that does is it gives top-line exposure. So as the gold price goes up, as the copper price goes up, as the silver price goes up, we benefit from that directly, but we're not subject to capital cost inflation or operating cost inflation. This has proven to be very important in the last few years. A lot of the disappointments that operators have had have been on the cost inflation side, where they don't get the full benefit of the headline revenue increases because their costs are going up. And as their costs go up, that doesn't really impact us. Our costs are basically fixed by contract.
We'll hit some slides later on that show that we've been experiencing 90% margins quite consistently since the inception of the business. That generates free cash flow available to shareholders. Diversification is very important. If you're a mining company, you have two, three, four, five assets, you feel you're well-diversified, you have a lot of operations. We have 234 assets. Our revenue comes from over 30 assets. It's much easier to get diversified with a royalty and streaming company than it is as an operating company. And what that means is, you get the benefits of diversification, where, you know, one underperforms, one overperforms. On balance, we're looking to overperform, of course, but if something does go wrong, you're well insulated from it because it forms a small part of your portfolio.
And you'll see that we've developed a very diversified portfolio in a short period of time. The next one is very important, it's the optionality, and that's our ability to benefit as the mine operators expand their production, explore new areas, bring new mines into production. That provides optionality for shareholders. If a mine expands its operation, we get to benefit from that. We get to benefit from the additional production. What we don't have to do is, we don't have to fund the costs of that expansion. We don't have to fund the cost of exploration. So if we have a royalty on a property, and that mine operator is spending $10 million a year on exploration, I love it because I get the benefit of that exploration.
If they find something, I'm gonna participate, but I don't have to, to spend shareholders' money on furthering that exploration work. And what that does is it gives you a lot of torque. When new discoveries are brought online, our returns can actually be greater than mine operators because they have to pay for the cost of bringing on that new production, whereas I get to have a free ride. Consistent high margins, I've touched on this already. We'll see a slide later. We've realized 90% margins consistently. For a royalty, you get 100% margin. They send us a check every quarter. It's wonderful. For a stream and royalty, our margins are fixed by contract. On average, it works out to about 90% margins.
So if someone sells us an ounce of gold, that's worth, say, $2000, it's a little lower than today's price, I would pay maybe 10% for that. I'd pay $200, I'd sell that ounce of gold into the market for $2000, and I'd realize that 90% margin. Very forgiving business model. It means I produce cash flow, positive cash flow throughout the cycle. And then scalable and low overhead. This is actually really, really interesting and really powerful. We have a company with 16 employees. We have a market cap of CAD 3.5 billion, $2.5 billion. As you grow the portfolio, you don't need to add a lot of people in this business model, and that's because we're not operating the mines.
We have a technical team, we have geologists, we have mining engineers, we have people that are very experienced in the mining business, but we don't have all the costs of running full mines, full operations. We don't have exposure to a lot of the risks that mines have, such as environmental issues and things like that. We don't bear that, the operators do. Because the model is so scalable, if I were to double my portfolio size tomorrow, I think I'd have to add maybe four or five people, max. So it's very scalable as you go up. I've talked in generalities, but I want to talk now on the hard facts of what we've accomplished over our track record.
What you see here is the operating cash flow, the free cash flow, the net earnings, and the profit margins that I alluded to earlier. You can see we started this business in 2016. Our first year of cash flow was in 2017. We had $27 million of cash flow that year. In our most recent year, 2023, $154 million of cash flow. So you see we're running at, you know, four or five times what we had at that point. But the cash flow is built over the years as we've deployed capital in a very profitable manner. And we'll go into some of the case studies that built up to this record before.
But I'm quite proud of this because we've managed to consistently grow over time, and we're poised for further growth in the future. The other takeaway I want you to have from this slide is, the operating cash flow and the free cash flow charts look almost exactly the same. That's not an accident. That's actually a feature of the model. When you run a mining business, a lot of your operating cash flow gets consumed. It gets consumed with sustaining capital expenditures. It gets consumed with having to do acquisitions, to buy more properties, to replace their reserves and resources. With the streaming royalty model, you get direct drive, where your operating cash flow and your free cash flow are pretty much the same thing.
They go down to the bottom line, they're available to shareholders, and they're available to drive the growth in the business. Net earnings and adjusted EBITDA, very consistent story as well, going, going consistently upwards. We see that generation of earnings as we recover more cash flow than we originally underwrote. So it's been a very successful story over the eight-year history of the business. The gross profit margin is probably the single most powerful feature of this business model. You can see that consistent 90% margins throughout. It just makes it much more heartier business model. If the gold price were to tick down a bit, we don't get hit that hard. We're gonna generate cash at all levels at these, at these margins. As the gold price goes up, we directly drive.
We get a little better than one-to-one leverage on that, and you'll see that directly falling down to the benefit of shareholders. We've maintained our discipline throughout the eight years that Triple Flag has existed. We're shareholders, we're significant shareholders in the company, so we care, and we don't wanna have growth for growth's sake. What we care about is earnings on a cash, on a per share basis, we care about cash flow on a per share basis, and we've always tried to be disciplined in our growth. The culture really matters. The core team of Triple Flag, actually comes out of mining companies. I used to be at First Quantum and Inmet before that.
Our founder, Shaun Usmar, the CEO, he spent, he was the CFO of Barrick, he was at Xstrata throughout their history of growth. So we have deep roots in the mining sector. We try to, we conduct ourselves with integrity at all times. We try to be good business partners for our financing recipients. We just try to be good actors and have good networks within the industry. Financial discipline, I think I touched on. Mining backgrounds, I touched on. The last I'll focus on here is sustainability. It really matters. It matters in, in mining, it matters in the world at large. We care about this stuff. Your social license is key. We do rigorous due diligence when we look at new investment opportunities.
If the local community doesn't accept the mine, then that mine is at risk to being shut down, and that's just a fact in the mining sector. We've seen this time and time again. What we want to be associated with is really great operators that are a force of good in their local communities. We also try to play our part in supporting our operators with that. We support scholarship programs around RBPlat. We provide funding around the Northparkes local community. We just want people to see that if we're benefiting from the mining in the local community, we want that local community to also see to be benefiting from that. This is a map just showing our assets. Obviously, 234 assets is a lot to wrap your mind around.
What we've done is we've really tried to focus on the Tier One mining jurisdictions. The portfolio is largely centered in Australia, Canada, United States. We also have significant assets in Latin America. We also have, you know, some exposure to South Africa and some other places, but really, we try to center ourselves in those Tier One, low risk jurisdictions. Where we are in South Africa, it's with a really good project, a really good partner. We knew it well, just a great opportunity. I'd like to talk a bit about Australia. That's our single highest country concentration. Australia is a great place to mine. It's a mining-friendly jurisdiction. They know mining. It's embedded into the DNA of the company, of the country, I should say.
It's just a very safe place to be. In a world where we have an increasing profile of geopolitical stresses, a lot of conflict, I think having a portfolio that's centered in Australia, Canada, United States, is a really, really good place to be, and it's really been resonating with investors. Here's some circle graphs explaining our portfolio in different ways. One is the asset diversification that I touched on. You can see our single highest concentration is Northparkes at 25%. Northparkes is located in Australia. It's a wonderful cornerstone asset. I'm gonna touch on it in more detail later on in the presentation. But if you're gonna have a cornerstone asset, the place you wanna have it is a place like Australia. After that, nothing exceeds 10%.
So, you know, these are great assets. They're great, cornerstones as well in our portfolio, but we're well-diversified. Commodity exposure is, important as well. We are- we see ourselves as a gold and silver investment vehicle. You can see we're at 94% precious metals. We have some other... We have some exposure to some copper, exposure to some nickel, but that's very minor. We'll pick that up if we see that opportunistically, if we see a good opportunity, but really, we always wanna be a gold and silver investment vehicle. That's why people invest in us. That's the exposure we wanna offer to our investors. And then geography, I think I've already touched on.... Here's just a few of the headline, assets we have in our portfolio. Northparkes in Australia.
Cerro Lindo, our very first asset in Peru, the biggest underground mine in Peru. We have a silver stream there. It's been very successful for us. The Impala Bafokeng mine in South Africa, that's a PGM mine, and we stream the gold off of that. A very successful investment, a wonderful asset, was recently acquired by Implats. They had a long takeover value. I think that really showed the value in that mine that we saw a few years ago, and that's in good hands with Implats. Fosterville is a very high-profile mine, was with Kirkland Lake, and it's now in the Agnico stable.
Wonderful grades at Fosterville, and we actually bought that just as the Swan Zone was beginning to show itself, and we got those super high grades for a number of years. That's tailed off more lately, but again, we've had a really good experience with our Fosterville investment. Young-Davidson in Canada, operated by Alamos. Buriticá is a mine that we acquired a silver stream on Buriticá when it was held by Continental Gold. Since then, it's been taken over by Zijin Mining. It's now in the hands of one of the large international mining companies, and again, a wonderful endowment. Our interest, we actually going to get silver from a very large land footprint, and we only...
The current reserves are less than 2% of the footprint of that property, and there's geographic potential all over there. So we're actually quite excited about that. I won't go through every one of these pictures, but again, we're quite proud of our portfolio, and it shows the diversification and the strengths of the operators that we're associated with. This, I think, is one of the single most important slides in the presentation. You can see, in 2017, we did 33,000 gold equivalent ounces. That was our very first year of operation. All of that was from the Cerro Lindo mine, and you can see that that grew over the years. In 2023, we did 105,000 ounces. That's actually the fourth highest total in the royalty and streaming sector.
We are within our guidance. We're quite proud of that. We've been quite successful in growing our profile over the years. In 2024, we've given guidance that we're going to achieve between 105,000 and 115,000 gold equivalent ounces. But most exciting for me is the next bar, which is the five-year average is going to be over 140,000 ounces per year. We have many assets in our portfolio, have a ramping profile. We're going to go into some of the detail of that to come, but that's not acquisitions that we have to make in the future. That doesn't count on us making new investments. That's... Those are assets within the portfolio that are already bought and paid for.
Shareholders don't have to contribute any additional funds, are going to deliver that growth. As they deliver that growth, we're going to see direct benefit to the bottom line cash flows of the business, which I'm quite excited about. Here's some detail of how we deliver that growth. The single largest component of the growth is we're going to see increasing gold output at Northparkes, which is our cornerstone asset. Northparkes is a copper mine in Australia. It's now operated by Evolution Mining. They just recently acquired it. And we stream the gold off that mine. The gold grades can vary significantly within the different mining areas there, and they're now getting into some higher gold grade zones. They're really interested in the copper. They're just going there because that's the sequence of the mining plan, but we're really going to benefit.
We're going to benefit for a number of years there, and that's going to drive a real increase in our deliveries at Northparkes, that from that, which we, we've experienced it in recent years. We also have expansions at ATO. They're going to the phase two expansion. They're moving out of the oxides, they're moving into the fresh rock. That's being built as we speak. We're going to benefit for over a 10-year mine life there at ATO. Beta Hunt, again, increasing its capacity. What I want you to take away from this is, this isn't dependent on someone discovering a new ore zone or a new ore body with, with a drill bit. This isn't, this isn't speculative. This is built into the mine plans of our operators, and it's being delivered in the very near future.
We also have a number of development assets in the pipeline there. Hope Bay, which is owned by Agnico Eagle. It's in Canada's far north. Agnico has been putting out some very positive reports. It looks like this mine's getting bigger. It might go on for longer. We're not sure exactly when they're going to bring that back into production, but we're quite optimistic that this is going to turn into a very nice mine. We have a royalty on Hope Bay. Eskay Creek is in British Columbia. It's being developed right now by Skeena. Again, we don't know the exact timing, but this is going to be quite a nice mine. It's in British Columbia, and I think it's been getting increased attention.
I won't go through every one on the list, but you can just see there's a good pipeline here, and the main question, I think, is timing. These are good ore bodies in good locations, in good hands, and they're going to be brought into production in the future. When they do, Triple Flag is going to benefit. On the more long-dated side, you can see the exploration projects as well. You know, some very exciting drill intercepts out of the Queensway project that New Found Gold has in Newfoundland. You know, Fenn-Gib as well. You know, we see exciting stuff out of those companies, but those are more longer dated.
They're still doing their drilling and scoping out what they have, but when those come to pass, we're going to benefit. Here's another look at the growth pipeline. Again, we try to do is give investors here a window into what we're thinking is going to come into the 2025 to 2030 period, and what's going to be a little bit more long dated. This is very important here, this slide, and this is it goes to our track record of growth and our ability to generate even more growth in the future through acquisitions. We started the company in 2016 without an existing portfolio. Everything we developed, this management team has bought and paid for. We've actually managed to grow our production significantly while expending a modest amount of capital deployment.
You can see here, we put the, on the right-hand side, the capital deployment of ourselves versus our peers, and then you map that against the growth that we delivered. We have a very nice size portfolio in that if we find a $200 to $300 million opportunity in the gold space, that actually moves the needle nicely for us. We're not so big that we're ex-growth. We're still in this growth mode, and I think that really presents a lot more runway to shareholders. It's important that growth be profitable growth, and that should be a motherhood statement, but I think a lot of the time, management teams lose sight of this. They grow because they want to grow, and then sometimes growth can be value destructive.
I think the fact that we're significant shareholders in the company really guards against that sort of thinking at Triple Flag. We've always had a very strong shareholder returns focus. What we've done here is, and I think of this as our, as our report card, we've done is we've compared our initial investment to how much cash have we received out of the investment, and what do the analysts think that our remaining investment in that property is worth? So the lower bar on each of these operations is not our opinion. This is the opinion of the ten analysts that cover us. So it's actually, it's third party. And you can see we have a very good track record. Northparkes is a more recent investment.
You know, you can see we put $550 million in, and then if you take into account the cash flow we have already received and what the analysts net asset value is, it comes over $665 million, a nice step up. If you look at Cerro Lindo, our first investment, we've actually gotten all the money we've put in there back already, and we still have $181 million of value remaining. You can see that's a nice multiple on invested capital. That's a mine that has had a great track record of replacing its reserves and resources over time. It wouldn't surprise me if we look at this mine in four or five years, and we see a similar sort of NAV at that point, because they're gonna keep drilling and discovering more.
That's been the cadence in the mining sector. When you have underground mines, there's a tendency to find expansions to the reserve base as you go along because you get access to new drilling platforms underground. If you look at Buriticá as well, you know, a 2019 investment, we put $100 million in, we've already gotten $109 million back, and we have over $129 million of NAV. So a really nice track record there. Impala Bafokeng, that's the used to be RBPlat. It's in South Africa. You know, significant returns there on a 2020 investment. ATO is the Mongolian investment we made back in 2017.
We've already more than gotten our money back, and we have lots of mine life there as we get to benefit from the phase two expansion without putting additional capital in. I also spoke earlier to the Fosterville investment that we made. We've gotten all of our capital back from that. We have some remaining mine life there as well. It wouldn't surprise me if we actually do better than that 53. There's no way I'd sell this royalty for that $53 million. They're continuing to explore the property, but they're kind of searching for their next high-grade zone. I'm gonna turn now to Northparkes, which is really our cornerstone asset and one that I'm quite, quite excited about. It's located in Australia, which is a great place to be. Originally, this was a Rio Tinto asset.
When we came into the story, we did a transaction opposite CMOC, and CMOC, just last year, sold to Evolution. Evolution has a great track record of running mines in Australia. I think they're really gonna be great operators. But the main thing here is that they've had a great record of reserve replacements. When we did our transaction, we noticed that they had the same number of gold ounces in reserve when we did the deal 25 years after their earlier reserve. So over time, they just tended to replace. They have a massive endowment there. It's a very large land package. It's under-drilled. There's the capacity to do a lot more.
As I alluded to earlier, there are these higher gold grade zones that are gonna increase the gold production nicely. It's a bit of a geology here, but the copper is a porphyry, but it also has these finger-like structures. A lot of these that they've been mining were actually exposed, but our geologists thought there was great potential for some of these zones to actually link up underground and create additional zones of value. Also, there's always a chance that there's hidden deposits that didn't outcrop at surface. And we've seen some of that come to bear. They've already identified some ore zones since we first came into the story that look quite promising, that actually weren't apparent when we did our initial investment.
This is the gold grades, gold grade story. This is really, really, really, really important. In 2023, they averaged 0.016 grams per ton milled, and you can see as you go to the E31 North, you're gonna see, like, 0.93 there. E31, which is the picture shown, they're mining that as we speak. We're benefiting from that in 2024. The gold grades there are around three times what that average gold grade was in last year. So as we get the gold grades from E31 and E22, we're gonna see a step up in the gold deliveries that we receive. Very nice story. It doesn't depend on exploration success. It doesn't depend on expanding their operations.
It's really just a matter of their mine sequencing, and this is what they're going to now. Evolution is a new owner of Northparkes, and we thought it was really important that we highlight for investors just what a great track record Evolution has had with other mines, specifically the Cowal Mine. The Cowal Mine is located fairly proximately to Northparkes. Evolution acquired the Cowal Mine in 2015 from Barrick, and since they acquired it, when they acquired it, it looked like it was a tired mine. There was a reason why Barrick was getting rid of it. People thought it was on its last legs, and actually, Evolution's management team managed to look at that asset in a different way and, quite frankly, breathe some new life into it, and they realized significant value out of Cowal.
We think that it's a really good analog for Northparkes going forward. Not that Northparkes was a healthy mine. It was doing well. We were happy with how it was, but a new management team based in Australia, we think is the right owners of this mine going forward. I'm also gonna touch a little on our sustainability story. Sustainability is important. The mining sector depends on it. If we don't have the support of local communities, a mine can't operate successfully. We're a finance provider. We don't actually operate the mines, so we're one step removed. We actually think it's really important that us at Triple Flag, personally, we're good corporate citizens.
We also want to be seen to be in accordance with all the latest thinking, and we want to be doing the seen to be doing the right thing and to do the right thing. You can see we've gotten some MSCI... Sorry, Sustainalytics has ranked us very highly. We also got an inaugural rating from MSCI, top levels there. We've looked to share our success with the local communities. We've funded scholarship programs in South Africa. We fund community initiatives in South America and in Australia. We have, you know, strong representation of different, of diverse backgrounds on our team. So just some of the indicators that we're trying to be good citizens.
What I'll leave you with is we're very focused on cash flow. Our portfolio has embedded growth within it that's gonna be delivered to shareholders in the near future. We have a great track record that we're quite proud of, but there's actually more growth ahead of us to come, and we're firmly focused on shareholders' interests. We are shareholders first, and we're really focused on shareholder value. With that, I'll turn it over to you again, Stuart.
Thank you, Sheldon, and we will now move on to the Q&A portion of the program. So I guess, sticking with the Australian theme, it looks like a lot of the royalties and streams on the assets down there were kind of created by non-Aussie companies. I know typically Australian miners are slower to get their head around the royalty and streams in general as a financing option. But, you know, Henty was owned by Placer Dome, which Barrick acquired. Northparkes was North and Rio, then the Chinese, you mentioned, and Beta Hunt, owned by Karora, potentially-
Yeah.
being owned by Ramelius. But now with Northparkes been over Evolution and maybe Beta Hunt going to an Aussie company, how are you seeing, you know, other Australian precious metal companies looking to Triple Flag as a potential financing source?
Yeah, it's actually a really good question and a really good observation. If I take a step back, when we started Triple Flag in 2016, I think streaming royalty was still considered a little bit more niche or alternative financing. I think that was the term was often attached to it.
Mm-hmm.
Part of people would say, "Well, people go to the streaming royalty providers only when they, you know, didn't have access to equity, they didn't have access to debt." I think that's really changed now. Part of that is because the equity markets have been slow for a lot of developers for quite some time. But I don't think there's any mining company in the world anymore that would look to finance new development without considering streaming in the mix. And there's some really good empirical data that a stream actually can form a really good part of the capital structure, along with the right amount of equity and along with the right amount of debt, but not be over-indebted and also not overly dilute shareholders with the equity side.
When you looked in Australia, I think Australia was, in some ways, streaming came last to Australia.
Yeah.
But the best advertising when you're in business is to do business. And when we did the Northparkes transaction, that was great because that actually got some attention in Australia, and people started, you know, we actually got some inbounds off of that, where people were saying: "Okay, I see you're doing an Australian deal. Will you take a look at this?" We've been pretty active in Australia. The other thing is, we financed the Henty and Dargues Mine in Australia with a group called PYBAR. We worked with their advisors and tried to put something in which was attractive to the operator there, and we actually had a really good working relationship with the operator and the-
They're a mining services business, aren't they?
... Yeah, they are.
Yeah.
They got into the thought they want to try their hand also at developing a mine, and since they've kind of, you know, gone back to their origins there. So they've sold out of those two positions. But what we got is that formed really good referrals and word of mouth. So we got told both, we got inbounds from people who said, "Oh, we were talking to the operator, and they thought you were good guys to deal with.
Mm-hmm.
And, and, you know, we like the way you did business." We also got that from their professional advisors or financial advisors. And again, that just goes to show, as you start to get active in an area, you start to make inroads in the community. You get good word of mouth, and we're-
Definitely.
Actually, I'm really with that because I want to be seen as a good partner to mining companies. We're trying to do fair business. We're not trying to take advantage of anyone.
Yep.
I think we have... We've gotten a lot of our, a lot of our deal flow has come through referrals from people we've done deals with in the past.
That's great. Are you seeing many sensible growth opportunities out there in our portfolio?
Yeah. Yeah, there, there's a lot. And, you know, one of the things I've learned in this business is the opportunity set will change from time to time. It's never been quiet since we started this. When we started the business in 2016, people said, "Well, the big refinancings, the Antamina, the Antofagasta, that's come and gone, and you guys are going to have to go, you know, look in Kazakhstan or something like that," which, you know, might be a fine country. I've never been there but, you know, we, the opportunity set has all been passed.
We said, "Well, I..." We thought we'd find some opportunity, and now it's nice to be able to sit from this vantage point and say: Look, we've actually managed to create a really great portfolio in a time that people thought there might not be as much. I got to say, the pipeline right now is more robust than I've ever seen it. That's— there are multiple factors to that, but I mean, it's a healthy metals price environment for some metals, but it's not a healthy, nice, and precious price environment for others, and that creates opportunities as people maybe aren't generating the cash flow they thought they were going to generate. The equity markets are still a little tight for some people-
Yeah
... and so they don't want to overly dilute their interest, and that leaves them open to considering our financing. There's a really good pipeline right now, but scoping out and looking for the longer term in the future, I'm really excited about the opportunity set over the next three to five years, you know, in particular, because-
Yeah
... the electrification story is real, and in order for that story to play out, the world needs a lot more copper, and the existing mines aren't going to produce that copper. So there needs to be more mines produced over time. And we're not a copper company, but where we fit very naturally into that story is to provide funding for a gold stream for people producing some of that new copper capacity that's needed. And I think there's going to be a good opportunity set for our sector because it's a very specialized form of financing, and I think we get to, we'll have good opportunities to deploy on terms that are attractive to shareholders.
Yep, and this could segue into a question someone submitted: What share of your portfolio is on base metal mines, which you have a precious metal royalty and stream?
Yeah, it's around 70% is by-product, and I don't have the number for base. Some of it's like we have, like, a stream on RBPlat, which is a PGM mine where we have a gold stream. But, you know, like, if you look at Northparkes, that's a copper mine with a gold by-product. Cerro Lindo is a zinc-copper with a silver by-product, and that's a very typical story for our portfolio.
Yep. And then, given the strong, consistent, predictable cash flows, why do major established royalty firms not use much more leverage but seem to be happy with zero net debt?
Yeah, it's a really... It's actually a really interesting question as someone with a finance bent. I think this business model has the predictability of the cash flows is, that you could put more leverage on this business model. I think historically, investors have been attracted to very low levels of leverage on the streaming and royalty company side, and that's what we've really tried to stay true to. One of the benefits of that is, it preserves your capacity to take advantage of opportunities as they come up. Were you to lever yourself up, you could take yourself out of the game, and the opportunities sometimes come up, you know, without predictability, you know?
If something comes available, you want to be able to grab it, because we're permanent capital, and our shareholders would benefit for a very-
Yep
... long period of time. Like, if we didn't have the capacity to take on Northparkes when we did, it, like, that opportunity wouldn't have been available, a month later or a year later. I think of, like, you know, Warren Buffett always says, "Cash is an infinite dated call option on a good deal," right?
Mm-hmm.
You just get your time to wait. Personally, I like the low leverage model. That said, we do have a debt facility, and, you know, we'd take ourselves up for $200 million of debt if we had the right opportunity there without diluting shareholders, and just use cash flow to pay that down. There are some of our peers now that have put a little bit more debt on their balance sheet, which is a-
Yep
... perfectly fair choice. One of them has been quite public, saying that they're, you know, kind of not gonna be actively deploying. They're gonna be, you know, reducing their debt levels for a while, which, again, a fair choice for someone to make, but we're not in that category right now. We're very, very low debt. You know, I absent deploying in very near future, we should be debt-free very shortly.
How was the Northparkes transaction financed at your end?
Yeah. So we did Northparkes when we were, we were a private company, so we actually had some equity, we raised some equity from our, our shareholder at that time, and we also borrowed on a revolving credit facility. When we were a private company, we actually had a higher level of debt because, you know, again, this business model comfortably supports a higher level of debt, and that made the right financial sense. When we went public, we, we actually, it was 100% treasury offering. Shareholders didn't cash out in any way, shape, or form on our IPO, and we used that to, to largely pay down our debt on IPOs.
Mm-hmm.
We emerged on IPO, largely debt-free.
Got it... You might not have this stat on hand, but someone asked, what is the return on capital employed of the business?
Yeah, that's so we always get asked about our discount rates and our hurdle rates. I'm not gonna tell people what sort of discount rate we use for new investments. What I will tell people is, it will vary depending on our assessment of the risk of the investment. When you look at the portfolio, like we've... There's things that we underwrote at, like, 20%+ returns. And there's things that we wrote at, you know, the everyone that invests in the royalty and streaming space is familiar with NAV 5, and there's things that we'll invest at NAV 5 because we think that that's a real fair assessment of this top-tier asset. In terms of...
One of the numbers we do look at is the return on the capital we've invested, like, the cash returns. And you can see, like, here, we're tracking around 10% of the owner's equity in terms of free cash flow. And that varies a little bit, and we did a large transaction last year. But, you know, that's a number which I'm quite proud of, because cash is king, and it's actually quite an attractive rate of return.
Yep. And then the same person was asking, what is your view on royalties versus streams?
Yeah. I'm fairly agnostic on royalties versus streams. What I like about both is they give top-line exposure. If you're looking at a new investment and you're coming in alongside, you know, other financing to finance a new development, it usually tends to be a stream, whereas royalties tend to be something that was created when the property was maybe not worth very much and might have grown to be quite valuable. But quite frankly, if it's the right mine and... You know, right mine, right operator, you know, in a good jurisdiction, I'm pretty agnostic whether it's a royalty or a stream.
Got it. Then, another question was, does the royalty check you get depend on the cost of production from the operator?
In the vast majority of times, it does not, and it shouldn't. There's something called a net profits interest, which is the second best flavor of royalty, and that's where you kind of have a bottom-line exposure. But what the vast, vast majority of our portfolio is, what we call NSR royalties, and that's net smelter returns, and so that's top-line exposure. Their costs can go up. As long as they're producing, we get our percentage-
Yeah.
That's, that's the beauty of the business.
Great. And then when you do a transaction like Maverix, you know, is there much integration at your end in something like that? Like in a typical mining M&A transaction?
Yeah. So there's a lot less integration when you're doing M&A in the royalty and streaming space than there is when you're doing operating mines, you know? And that's just for the reasons that's, I think, quite intuitive for everyone, where, you know, you're not merging operations. There is some work that has to be done. It's important to make sure you connect with the operators in your portfolio. We actually spend a lot of time just making sure we understand what's going on in our portfolio, talking to our operators, keeping good lines of communication. One thing is, that's a great business development tool because these are people in the industry. There's some work behind the scenes, but really, it's quite...
You know, you put the two, the two organizations together, there's a, you know, a little bit of, back office accounting work and IT work, but it's all something that, from a shareholder's perspective, should be a pretty ordinary course. We've integrated Maverix now. It was a little over a year ago, we completed that acquisition. As part of the portfolio, we're quite glad we got that under our belt. It's a, it's a really nice acquisition for us.
Right. And then, you mentioned your 25% dividend payout ratio and on free cash flow. How does that 25% compare to your peers in the sector?
Oh, that's a great question. I don't know. I didn't benchmark that against others. I'd be, I'd be speculating.
Sure.
I'm not sure.
No worries. I know the history of Triple Flag with Elliott, and obviously, there was a big announcement with Elliott forming Hyperion. Do you have much interaction with those people at Hyperion?
Yeah, no. So we have had a bit of interaction with them. I had lunch with their team, you know, a couple months ago, but really, they're a separate company from us. Elliott's obviously a common owner, but, you know, they're doing their business. It's not a streaming and royalty business that they're operating. They're looking to operate mines, and we're kind of running our business. So, you know, I think we're friendly acquaintances with a common-
Yeah
... common shareholder.
All right. Someone just asked a question, which geographies do you typically exclude from doing any deals in?
Oh, yeah, yeah. There's so, there are certainly some jurisdictions we wouldn't go into. I mean, I think some of those are the jurisdictions other people would also have, right? Like, you know, I don't think I'd be looking at... I'm a little loath to start naming countries, but, like, look, sanctions, sanctions places. I'm not gonna do a deal in Syria. I'm not gonna do a deal in Iran. I'm not gonna do a deal in North Korea. There's also other-
Yeah
... mining jurisdictions where, you know, you might say, "Okay, that's not the preferred jurisdiction," but then it becomes more of a risk management exercise than a return expectation exercise. You say, "Okay, you know, if it, how small is it? What are my return expectations?" And this is an important one: "How quickly do I think I'm gonna get my return?" Because if you're underwriting, like, something that you think you have to wait, like, 10, 15 years to get your money back, well, in some jurisdictions, you know, you wanna kinda be pretty confident you've gotten your money back within, like, a much shorter timeframe, including maybe before the next election.
Sure.
I'm not talking about the United States, sir.
Yeah, yeah. Well, again, I think we might move to a close. Again, thanks to Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp. Then, once again, we value your attendee feedback, so please make sure you send it in here. Just highlight it on your screen. Then the on-demand replay will be available in about an hour and a half via the same link that you used to join today's webinar. We hope you'll join us again for future webinars. You can find a full calendar of upcoming webinars, as well as a library of replays at amvestcapital.com/webinars. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you very much. Bye.