Greetings, everyone. We are very excited to have Vox Royalty Corp back on the Emerging Growth Conference. Today, we'll be speaking with Kyle Floyd, Chief Executive Officer, and Spencer Cole, Chief Investment Officer, and they're here to talk about Vox's transformational acquisition announced yesterday after market close. Vox trades on the Nasdaq and the TSX under the symbol VOXR. Welcome, Kyle. Welcome, Spencer. How are you, gentlemen, today?
Fantastic. Thanks, Anna.
Doing well. Thanks, Anna.
Wonderful.
Well, it's great to be back on the program with everybody. We're beyond thrilled to announce the acquisition that we put out to market after close yesterday. This is a transaction Vox Royalty Corp and our team have been working on for the better part of now over 6.5 years, 7 years. This transaction is really emblematic of really everything Vox is all about for our shareholders. We have a competitive advantage in terms of sourcing royalties. We have a very, very experienced technical team that's able to analyze royalties from a geological perspective, from a mining engineering perspective. And we have tremendous discipline around what we look for and what we expect to achieve with our—for our investors, with the capital that we invest on behalf of investors.
So this transaction has been many years in the making. We think it's one of the most significant transactions in the sector over the last decade, certainly from a relative value perspective. It has the hallmarks of what is a cornerstone royalty for our business and a cornerstone royalty in the marketplace generally. We've been able to acquire a fantastic value for our business and our company and our shareholders, and so it's a transaction we're really excited to dig into the details on. This is a transaction that you know, given the amount of time that we've been working on it, it's been something that we've been really excited to talk about the market with. With that, I'll turn it over to Spencer to walk through some of the slides that we prepared.
Yeah, thanks, Kyle. Firstly, we'll be making some forward-looking statements, so I'd refer listeners to the disclaimer on our corporate presentation web on our corporate website. So in terms of the deal that we've just announced in the past 24 hours, as Kyle mentioned, this is something that's been in the works for, you know, quite some time, and we're extremely excited to sort of share further information on it today. So what Vox has just acquired is a portfolio of Australian royalties, 9 separate royalties for a purchase price of AUD 6.75 million in cash, which equates to about $4.3 million. The portfolio is heavily weighted towards gold and copper.
It covers and has, you know, quite significant exposure to some really exciting recent mineral discoveries. We believe some of the key assets in this portfolio have real sort of near-term production and revenue potential. And ultimately, with the volume of work that's going on these properties, you know, we think there's quite a high likelihood that these mineral resources are likely to expand. Now, a number of these royalties are quite, you know, were established a number of years ago, decades ago, in some cases. One of the key assets in this portfolio is a gold royalty called Red Hill. This is operated by a $13 billion major Aussie gold producer called Northern Star.
And historically, this gold asset has actually already been mined. The previous royalty holder has already been paid over $7 million, when the project was mined back, you know, in 2003 to 2007, at significantly lower gold prices. This gold project was last mined, you know, at gold prices, you know, as low as $400 an oz. So this Red Hill royalty is really, I guess, one of the cornerstones of this portfolio. And importantly, the royalty is a 4% gross revenue royalty, so a top-line royalty, you know, which is the type of royalty we typically focus on as Vox. And importantly, it covers the majority of a really exciting recent gold discovery at the historical Red Hill pit.
So in May of this year, so less than six months ago, there was a maiden resource of 1.2 million oz of gold, an inferred resource, that was disclosed by Northern Star, about this discovery that's been made in the last 18 months, that's substantially covered by our royalty. And ultimately, you know, we think this new discovery at Red Hill has potential to generate, you know, over $5 million of annual potential royalty revenue, for a period of up to 10 years. So I guess that's one of the reasons why we're so excited about this deal, is having exposure to, you know, really exciting assets like Red Hill, that we think have, you know, quite meaningful revenue potential over a very long dated period.
When we look at the Red Hill asset and the discovery, importantly, it has access to existing processing plants and mills. So it's located approximately 3 km from the Kanowna Belle mill, and approximately 20 km from the Kalgoorlie Super Pit, which is the site of the Fimiston mill, which is undergoing a major expansion to become one of Australia's largest gold processing plants at the moment. Importantly, this is obviously a portfolio of 9 royalties, so there's more than just Red Hill. The portfolio also came with a really exciting copper royalty called Horseshoe Lights. And the operator of that project is exploring some innovative ways to generate some early revenue later this year. I touched a little bit on the Red Hill royalty.
So this was a past producer, but really from sort of 2008 to 2021, there was very little work done on this gold property. In 2021, Northern Star recommenced drilling. The historical operation was only mined to about 120 m below surface. So they barely scratched the surface, per se. And then in 2021, when Northern Star started drilling out the historical open pit, they started discovering significant broad gold in drill intersections that pointed to this new discovery that they've just announced in May of this year. I think it's worth touching on some of these gold drilling results that they've announced are some of the broadest that we've seen in Western Australia.
You know, particularly at these types of gold grades, you know, intersections of in excess of 340 m, or 160 m at 2.8 g. You know, for those generalist investors, that might be hard to sort of fathom and understand, but, you know, the broader these gold intersections, particularly at these grades, which, you know, we believe are, are very economic, particularly with adjacent processing plants. You know, these, these sort of drilling results, from Vox management's perspective, speak to an ore body that we strongly believe is, is highly economic, particularly at these, these, you know, high gold prices.
And then in terms of how we expect this, this royalty to progress from here, Northern Star has highlighted that they view this new exciting Red Hill gold discovery as a bulk mining, so large tonnage, development option, that they think has the potential to displace grade and tons from some of their other deposits. So we're very optimistic about, I guess, over the coming quarters, we expect further drilling, we expect the mineral resource has strong potential to grow, and ultimately, we expect this this project will be brought into production in the near term. I touched on briefly Horseshoe Lights. So this is a past producing, high-grade historical copper mine. It was last mined in 1994, when they were mining grades of up to 20%-30% copper in ore.
So to put that into perspective, most producing copper mines are currently producing at, you know, between 0.5%-1%. This mine historically produced ore, effectively unprocessed ore, as high as 30%. So effectively, you can dig up the ore and export it straight away, which is quite a, quite an anomaly, really. So a really exciting copper project, one of the largest copper projects in all of Western Australia. You know, we think there's a number of aspects to this project that are quite exciting. There has been a historical engineering study done on the project back in 2014, that highlighted up to a six-year mine life. Since then, there's been substantial drilling and the resource has been firmed up.
And another sort of aspect that gets us really excited about this copper royalty is also we think there's potential for this deposit to be a source of ore for a nearby copper operation, the Sandfire's DeGrussa Mine, which has recently been put on care and m aintenance because they've reached the end of their mine life. So, you know, we think there's a path and a world in which Horseshoe Lights could become, you know, an interesting source of copper ore when that DeGrussa Mine changes hands. It's subject to an ongoing divestment process.
So when you look at the historical scoping s tudy numbers that the operator put out on Horseshoe Lights, we think there's potential for, you know, annual revenue of up to about $2 million a year, based on those, those operator numbers, for a period of up to 6 years. So a really exciting sort of copper development opportunity that has meaningful byproduct credits in, in gold and silver as well. That's those are the key assets that we wanted to run through. Kyle, maybe it's, it's worth touching on just, I guess, summarizing, you know, Vox's differentiated factors and how this deal really sort of, you know, exemplifies those, those factors, perhaps.
Yeah. Thanks, Spencer. Well, one of the core tenets of Vox is that we look for value. Value is not, I would say, prevalent right now in the royalty sector, broadly speaking, in terms of royalty companies are paying very, very high prices for assets. Generally, what we've seen is an average of 1.4x-1.5x NAV for assets such as these. And so, an opportunity to acquire what we believe is circa $100 million of value with 50,000 gold equivalent ounces for a little $4 million is really unheard of in our sector. In the 15 years that I've been involved in the sector and 10 years of deploying capital, I've yet to see a transaction where this type of value was acquired knowingly by a royalty company.
And so, you know, it really kind of comes back to the core competitive advantages of Vox, and the discipline around executing our business on behalf of our shareholders. We have a tremendous advantage in terms of sourcing royalties such as these through our database. We have a technical team that is scouring the world every single day for interesting developments on mining assets, going into our database to see if a royalty exists over projects that we like, and then ultimately, hopefully procuring these assets at fantastic valuations. And so, this royalty transaction is really emblematic of our systems, our processes, our advantages that we deploy every single day tirelessly for our investors. And so very excited to be able to bring this transaction into the portfolio.
As Spencer's alluded to, we believe these are going to be very, very high quality operations, and for a very long time. They also have tremendous optionality, and I think that's something that we're going to be excited to be sharing with the market as we continue to get new, and additional work done on these projects that we can put out into the market. One of our key core advantages, and where we are able to really leverage our IP, is in Australia. We have two executives that are from Australia. We understand the geology, we understand the infrastructure, we understand really, I think the Western Australia mining geo landscape, probably better than any royalty company, at least in our market cap range.
And so we're able to leverage the, I would say, overwhelming positive momentum in the cycle in Australia. You've had essentially almost all-time highs in gold prices and all on Australian dollars for nearly four plus years. And so what that means is that projects in Australia are getting developed at a faster pace. They're well capitalized, and they're well incentivized to move these projects forward. And so that thematic is really bolstering our royalty portfolio, and it's the second largest holding of hard rock mining royalties in Australia after Franco-Nevada. And so it's an advantage that I think that we have over any royalty company in our segment of the market, and an advantage that we will continue to deploy to the benefit of our shareholders.
Our database, as I mentioned, is extremely strong in Western Australia. That was really the genesis of the database. It's allowed us to find really fantastic value consistently, whether it's gold royalties, copper royalties, iron ore royalties, and over assets that are about to go through some pretty major transformations. So our discipline around looking for royalties that are anywhere from, say, a quarter out from first production to a couple of years out from first production, is really we're able to find deep value. This acquisition of the Red Hill royalty is a prime example of that ability to look for interesting developments on assets, and then have assets that are going to come into production and produce very meaningful returns for our investors.
You can see this is just a slide of some of the case studies already within the portfolio of Vox, that we've been able to achieve for investors in terms of returns. The Janet Ivy gold r oyalty, it's part of the Australia's largest heap leach gold operation. Bought that royalty, $5 million. We expect it to do over $2.5 million for up to 10+ years. We are expecting a 10x return on a royalty that we bought from a hearing aid technology company for $200,000. That could do $500,000 for, again, a very long mine life.
Then we've already realized a 15x return on a royalty that we bought as part of a portfolio, where we received an early payment for a discovery, and that has up to 50x potential in terms of its return on invested capital. So that's really a metric that we focus on. We're not looking for necessarily, and this is a question that we get quite often. We don't have an IRR benchmark. We obviously value the assets that we're bringing in and have a very, very high threshold for what we expect to generate in terms. But ultimately, we're searching for a multiple on invested capital, and that's what you see most of our royalty transactions delivering for our investors once they enter production.
That's allowing us to buy assets at disconnected valuations and taking advantage of those dislocations in market prices. You can see the revenue growth that we've realized for our shareholders. We went from essentially pre-revenue in 2020 with this strategy to $9.7 million last year. Analysts expect us to do $11 million-$13 million. We haven't updated that guidance yet, so we'll stick with that guidance for now. We have a tremendous amount of projects that we expect to come online over the next few years, Red Hill now being one of those as well. We believe that our portfolio is one of the strongest in our market segments. It's generating the highest returns on invested capital.
This slide gives you a good background of some of the peers in our industry, the types of returns they're generating versus the type of returns that Vox is generating. I think there has been a little bit of a question on, well, has Vox been lucky? Or do they truly have systematic advantages and discipline that allow them to be more successful in deploying capital? We believe our model and our discipline and those advantages is absolutely driving excess value for our shareholders and alpha in our industry, and we will be able to continue to press that advantage for the benefit of our shareholders. That's allowing us to deliver what we believe are some of the best financial returns in the industry.
We're paying a dividend, we've had exceptional revenue growth, and we're trading at a remarkable discount to both our net asset value and relatively to our peers. So for an investor that's new to Vox, you might say, "Well, why Vox and, and why now?" We fundamentally believe that we have the best business model for risk-adjusted exposure in the commodity sector. That's why we exist as a company. That's what we, that's what we aim to execute on behalf of our shareholders, is driving risk-adjusted returns. And, you know, I'm very proud of the track record that we have to date. There's still a tremendous amount of work to do. Our business development pipeline remains very, very robust.
While I think we've set a very, very high bar for the quality of this transaction, I remain very excited about what's in the portfolio and what our business development team is working on. So, you know, while I can't say that there's a carbon copy of this acquisition out in the market, I can tell you that what we have in the pipeline is extremely interesting, and we're going to continue executing with the same discipline and the same principles that have allowed us to deliver these types of returns for our shareholders. And so we're excited about the trajectory of the company. We're excited about what we have in front of us... There are tailwinds generally for the industry, there's tailwinds for Vox.
So we think we're very, very well positioned to deliver growth for our investors, both from the fundamental perspective, which we've been driving a lot of value, but also hopefully from the market value and our share price. With that, Anna, I will go ahead and turn it over to you, and we can commence Q&A.
Great. Well, a congratulations is in order for you, Kyle and Spencer. Just a few questions. I'm curious, what makes this acquisition different from most transactions in the royalty sector? Talk about maybe the last decade.
Yeah, you know, Anna, the royalty sector generally has gotten very, very competitive. I think if you listen to many of our peers talk, they'll, they'll probably say the same thing. But Vox, for, more than a decade now, has always expected the royalty sector to be competitive. These are fantastic assets. They have attributes, that, that retain an increase in value in, you know, in ways not typical with, with most asset classes. So we, we always believed that there would be competition. We believe there's gonna continue to be competition, and what you see is that's driving up the price of royalties generally to where, we believe the average transaction is occurring at, between 1.5x-2x NAV.
This is an example of where this was a completely uncompetitive process, a portfolio of royalties that we've been working on acquiring now for almost seven years, and, you know, that's not the norm in the space. Almost every transaction that you see has been brokered in some way or fashion, and Vox continues to be able to leverage our database, our competitive advantage, and our disciplined process to find royalties that are outside of these processes with fantastic value. And so we'll continue to scan the earth for interesting developments on assets. This is a great case study of what Vox is doing on a daily basis, and the types of returns that it can generate for investors. And again, it's very atypical in our industry, but that being said, that will ultimately work for the benefit of Vox.
We continue to buy royalties at great valuations, but meanwhile, the market generally is, is paying up for royalties, and the valuation of royalty companies.
Thank you for that. Can you also explain a little bit more how the 50,000 gold equivalent ounces or GEOs are calculated, and what specifically does that mean for investors?
Yeah, absolutely, Anna. So, you know, this is a good question, and because gold equivalent ounces is quite, it's one of the most common, commonly used metrics in the royalty industry. In a nutshell, GEOs or gold equivalent ounces, they really mean what's the metal that is to Vox's royalty account on a common currency of gold equivalent ounces. So simplistically, if you take the entire resource or mineral resource at a certain project, and then you multiply it by the royalty rate, and you know, how much of the actual deposit the royalty covers, and then you use long-term commodity prices to convert back into gold ounces, that's how we calculate gold equivalent ounces. So it's sort of a helpful apples-to-apples comparison.
So when you look at 10 different royalty deals, some of them may be pure gold, some may have some copper, some may have some silver. You can compare the effective cost per ounce of gold equivalent. So, you know, as we announced in our press release yesterday, we're effectively acquiring 50,000 oz, which is largely across the Red Hill and Horseshoe Lights projects, and we're acquiring those for approximately $100 per oz. So, you know, you can conceptually think, okay, if gold is at $2,000 an oz, and Vox is effectively acquiring, you know, these gold equivalent ounces at $100, you know, there's effectively $1,900 of margin, so to speak, you know, that that is, you know, has potential to be generated from these assets.
So, you know, looking at 50,000 oz at $2,000 gold, that's sort of a metal worth, you know, somewhere in the order of $100 million, that is now exclusively under Vox's royalty coverage. So a helpful sort of, you know, scale metric for, you know, what we've acquired at a price of $4 million US.
Thank you for breaking that down. That makes some sense. Spencer, also talk about when were Red Hill and Horseshoe Lights last mined, and why did they stop mining them back then?
Yeah, absolutely, Anna. So Red Hill was last mined as recently as 2007. You know, between the years of 2001 and 2007, Barrick Gold, the, you know, the global major gold producer, they produced approximately 467,000 oz of gold. You know, and, and that was at a gold price as low as $400 per oz. So obviously, you know, 15 years ago, the gold, the gold price was, you know, 20% of where it currently was, where it currently is. So, you know, it's a much different gold price environment. And likewise, Horseshoe Lights, you know, that was mined. It was first mined back in 1946, but the most recent mining was, was in from 1992 to 1994.
And they produced about 300,000 oz of gold and a substantial amount of copper as well, at very high grades, as I mentioned earlier. Horseshoe Lights was last mined at a copper price of $0.80 per lbs, which is about one quarter of the current copper price. So these are sort of aspects to these two royalty properties we find really exciting because they're past mined sites, so we've got all the historical mining data, so we can see that these are high-quality ore bodies that are, you know, relatively simple to process. And, you know, from a permitting perspective, they're fast-tracked because, you know, they're already disturbed in pre-mine sites.
So, you know, from an ESG footprint and also from a permitting timeline perspective, the fact that both of these properties have been mined previously, we think is hugely helpful for the timeline to get them back into production.
Absolutely. Spencer, can you also speak to Northern Star as an operator of Red Hill? How has that been?
Yeah. So it's a funny one, Anna. Like, I think, having 46 royalties, Australian royalties in our portfolio out of a total portfolio of 69 royalties, often North American investors, you know, will ask us, "Oh, who's that, who's that ASX-listed mining company?" And we've had this same question with Northern Star. People saying: "Who's Northern Star?" You know, which from our perspective is surprising because Northern Star is one of the largest Australian gold miners. You know, it's a AUD 13 billion ASX-listed company. They're currently ramping up production from about 1.5 million oz per annum to 2 million oz per annum. So, you know, as far as operating partners go, particularly, you know, in the Australian gold landscape, there are very few other companies larger and more credentialed than Northern Star Resources.
Also, they operate one of our other royalty-producing royalty properties called Otto Bore, so we already have an existing relationship with them, which, you know, is really helpful. So, you know, we couldn't be more happy with getting further exposure to a Tier 1 gold operator like Northern Star.
Makes sense. Well, gentlemen, what do you do for an encore after this transaction? Again, congratulations. So talk to us about what's next?
Yeah, thanks, Anna. Well, we're beyond thrilled to have closed this transaction. Again, we see a pretty delineated value of around $100 million for this portfolio, and we've acquired it for around $4 million. There's exploration potential attached to these assets in a very meaningful way. We expect there to be a lot of activity around these assets as well. So, in terms of an encore, you know, look, it's gonna be a high bar to jump over, but what I can tell you is our advantages, our systematic process, and the robustness of our pipeline right now, I think that we will deliver transactions that are really special in terms of the value that they'll bring in for our shareholders.
And just they'll be different, but they're going to be equally as exciting. So we're excited for what we have in front of us. We think our investors should be really excited about the trajectory of the business, the assets that are in the portfolio. Our valuation for anyone looking at Vox for the first time, I think is probably the most attractive that it's ever been, and compares very, very favorably in the space. So it's a unique position for our investors. We, we continue to be systematic and disciplined in terms of what we're acquiring, and, and we're very excited about the future prospects of the business.
You should be. Perfect. We've got tons of questions from our audience, and we're going to go through as many as we can. Remember, sometimes some of the viewers came in late, so they might have missed something. So if it's a duplicate question or redundant, just answer it as you see fit and know that you'll get all these questions on your own when we are done with our conference. So let's jump right on in. You mentioned this earlier, Spencer, but talk about... or Kyle, excuse me. What is the IRR on the deal?
It's a great question. We actually, while we can calculate the IRR, it's, we expect this transaction, we believe it's worth circa $100 million. So, we bought it for around $4 million. So I, IRRs are almost irrelevant, for this transaction. It's a multiple on invested capital. And, and so I guess we haven't actually calculated the thousands of % that it would be.
Okay, thank you for that. We have a question about the properties in this royalty package. Are any currently in production? And if not, are any near to startup status? Plus, when might Vox anticipate first royalties to start coming in?
Yeah, I can take that one, Anna. So, these are advanced stage royalties, but none of these are in production as yet. The operator of Horseshoe Lights has guided the market to the fact that they're exploring early revenue opportunities as early as this year. So, you know, there could be some revenue potential, some early revenue potential, linked to some sort of early production if they're able to achieve that. On Red Hill, as I mentioned earlier, it's a fairly recent discovery in, you know, the last 18 months, and the maiden inferred resource only came out in May of this year. Northern Star is already pointing to the fact that they're, you know, exploring where this sits in the mine plan.
You know, we don't have definitive guidance from Northern Star as yet, but we would expect that, across this portfolio, that we'll be generating revenue, you know, inside of the next sort of two years. So that's, that's a long-winded way of saying near term, which to us means, you know, in the next two years, we would expect to see some revenue from this, this portfolio.
A few follow-up questions about Red Hill. Can you clarify, is the revenue potential from the Red Hill royalty potentially greater than $5 million per year? Also, does Red Hill have to secure access to the nearby mills, or are the nearby mills operated by Northern Star?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll answer the second part first. So Red Hill is wholly owned by Northern Star and the adjacent mills, 3 km and 20 km away are also owned wholly by Northern Star. So this is a completely integrated operational hub, so there's no sort of third-party access to any sort of processing plants required. It's all entirely owned by Northern Star, so which we think presents, you know, very low risk from that perspective. On the revenue potential, in terms of Red Hill and its potential to generate, you know, north of $5 million in annual revenue, ultimately, this comes down to, I guess, what's the ultimate mine plan from Northern Star going to be?
Look, we really strongly believe that, you know, this Red Hill gold deposit has, you know, a pathway to be processed from either of the two mills at Kanowna Belle or Fimiston at the Super Pit. So, you know, based on our internal analysis and modeling, we could see potential that, you know, the ore is treated at both mills. And then based on some scenarios that we've run, you know, there's a number of scenarios where we could see revenue north of $5 million. You know, in a scenario where they're mining, you know, above, say, 2 million tons of ore from Red Hill per annum.
So, you know, these are Vox management scenarios, but, you know, we're quite optimistic that around that revenue potential above $5 million per annum at Red Hill.
Does the royalty area include most or all of the Red Hill and Horseshoe Lights deposits? Also, how do you feel about enforceability of these royalty agreements since they were created many decades ago?
Also great questions. Hopefully, it's none of our cheeky royalty competitors on the line asking these questions. So, the first part of the question, the Red Hill royalty covers the majority of the gold deposit and the discovery. So, you know, we get exposure to the overwhelming majority of the resource. Around enforceability, look, this is a key part of our due diligence process, and having a dedicated, you know, legal counsel who's, you know, fantastic at what he does, and then supported by external counsel, occasionally. You know, enforceability of royalties is a key point that we always look at, particularly because we focus on secondary or, you know, historical royalty contracts.
In the case of these royalties, you know, Red Hill has paid historically, so anytime you've had a royalty that's historically been paid, you know, that's one extra sort of level of risk mitigation. But, you know, in terms of our extensive diligence on these royalties, you know, we're fully confident that these are enforceable and valid royalty rights, that run with the mineral tenure.
Yeah, and, Anna, the one thing that I'd also add to that is Western Australia as a jurisdiction, has great precedent around royalties and the payability and enforceability of royalties. So it's really a strength and an advantage of the Vox portfolio, in that this is a jurisdiction that really respects the rights of royalty holders, and the enforceability of royalty contracts, versus some of the very, let's say, less than tier one jurisdictions that are out there, where you see a lot of royalty transactions done these days, where enforceability, certainly is an issue. So it's a great question, but I believe that's a strength of our overall portfolio, is the quality of Australia from an enforceability perspective. And, you know, we've been very successful with our paying royalties and the enforceability of those contracts to date as well.
Perfect. A question about Horseshoe Lights: Is it primarily a sulfide deposit, or is the stockpile shown just a byproduct of previous open-pit mining operations?
Yeah, so the... It's, it's— there's three sort of distinct ore types. This is sort of getting into the weeds a little bit, but there is, there is an-
Mm-hmm
... oxide zone, a transitional zone, and a sulfide resource. The sulfide resource is the largest component of the current mineral resource. You know, the stockpiles, there's oxide stockpiles and sulfide stockpiles, so there is quite a bit of optionality in terms of the different ore types. Yeah, historically, the operator has looked at, you know, a conventional sulfide flotation pathway, and then more recently, you know, they've been looking into a lower capital cost oxide leaching process. So, yeah, in short, it's primarily sulfide, but there is some oxide and transitional material as well.
Is the Abercrombie Well royalty the first uranium royalty in your portfolio, and have you looked at uranium royalties in the past?
It is the first uranium royalty in our portfolio. And, you know, it's... I guess we probably should have highlighted in earlier discussion points, you know, this royalty does cover an existing uranium resource, part of the Millipede and Centipede mineral resource that is part of Toro Energy's integrated Wiluna project. So, that would be a sort of, you know, royalty-linked resource on top of everything we've just talked about before. It is our first uranium royalty. You know, I think our focus historically has really been on sort of, you know, non-energy, hard rock, mined commodities such as, you know, precious metals and base metals and, you know, and also some iron ore.
So, you know, when we look at the, you know, uranium royalties globally, they don't typically stack up from a returns perspective, to the same extent as sort of base and precious metal royalties that we, that we, you know, typically review.
...Thank you for that. We have a question about the 7/31/2023. The acquisition pre-announcement indicated a potential deal size of $8 million, compared to the final deal size of a $6.8 million. So talk about the changes in the deal since 7/31/2023 announcement.
Yeah. So, oftentimes in these transactions where we're buying portfolios, there are certain notices and rights that we disclose in that announcement, such as right of first refusals and right of first offers. So, there's still one remaining royalty that's subject to a right of first refusal, and we're in process on that, and we hope to be able to acquire that for a remaining AUD 1.25 million. So, we expect to have some feedback to the market on that opportunity in the next 45 days.
Can you talk about institutional ownership? Earlier this year, you were about 10%, so has that number changed?
It has changed, to the best of our knowledge. We have a very supportive group of shareholders. The financing where we raised the capital to be able to complete this transaction was primarily institutionally led, and most of it was from existing shareholders who are very supportive of Vox and our execution strategy. So, we have seen new institutions come to the register, which we're very proud of, but we're also, you know, seeing more retail interest in Vox as well. So we're pleased with, obviously, an increasing appetite and understanding of Vox Royalty Corp.
Well, I'm going to try to combine a few of these. We have a lot of congratulations, so know that. A few questions-
Thank you.
Still about the Red Hill, asking when it will start producing again, asking when it will start adding quarterly revenue. So if you want to touch back onto that to address some of these questions.
Sure. As I mentioned before, you know, we think with, I guess, how the key mills are evolving, so the Kanowna Belle processing plant and the Fimiston processing plant, given they're the two main destinations for the Red Hill gold ore. We think with how they're evolving, particularly Fimiston. So, listeners may be interested to hear that Northern Star is undergoing a major expansion at the Kalgoorlie Super Pit, one of the world's largest gold operations. So they're in process to expand that Fimiston mill, more than 2x.
So they, they're expanding from 13 million tons per annum to 27 million tons per annum, which creates a huge sort of incremental opportunity for ore, such as Red Hill, given it's only about 20 kilometers away, and historically it's been trucked up to 20 km. So, you know, these are some hungry processing plants that need gold ore, exactly of the specification of Red Hill. So, you know, we expect in the next 2 years for Red Hill to commence paying some royalty revenue.
But importantly, I guess, for our investors, you know, with the volume of activity and the volume of disclosure that Northern Star is putting out about this new exciting Red Hill discovery, there'll be quite a bit of news flow between now and, you know, over the coming quarters, where I think we'll be able to sort of clarify, you know, what that timeline and what that potential scale of potential Red Hill production could look like. So, you know, on a quarterly basis, we expect to be able to share some of the exciting news around Red Hill as, as it, you know, approaches production.
Perfect. And talk a little bit about-
Sorry, Anna, just one thing, Spencer. I might interject there with just an analysis of what it produced when it was last in production and what the gold prices were at that point in time.
Yeah, no, great, great question, Kyle. So most recently, so in the year 2007, when Red Hill was last mined, They produced about 81,000 oz of gold there. And keep in mind, that was at a gold price of sort of $600-$700. So hypothetically, and this is just a hypothetical, you shouldn't take this as forward-looking, if you took the 81,000 oz that they produced from Red Hill on the royalty area in 2007, and you applied, you know, a, a current gold price of around $1,950 , you know, at the 4% royalty revenue rate, that equates to about $6.3 million of royalty revenue of hypothetical royalty revenue based on that production rate, that they achieved in 2007.
So, you know, this, this has been a very meaningful producer, producing up to almost 90,000 oz per annum from the Red Hill royalty area. So, you know, that gives us huge incremental confidence around what the scale of this, this Red Hill open pit could be over coming quarters and years.
And what I would add to that is, given the strength of these intercepts, the continuity of the ore body and the increased size of and scale of Northern Star, there's some pretty clear upside scenarios to those numbers in terms of the revenue-generating capability of this asset, not to mention the further exploration success that we expect this asset to realize. One quick thing I would note is they already have outlined wireframes for further drilling under the resource that's been disclosed to the market to date. So we expect further exploration success and potential that, you know, our numbers are very conservative.
A few questions, I'm going to try to group together. Talking about Northern Star, did all the royalties come from Northern Star? Please talk about some buyback provisions. Are there any buyback provisions for the Red Hill royalty? And also, what steps are you taking to reduce the valuation discount? We want to know, are you buying back shares, bringing in strategic shareholders? What steps have you taken?
... I can maybe take the first start and then-
Part one. Sure.
Perfect. So yeah, these royalties did not come from Northern Star. Northern Star is the operator of the Red Hill Gold Project. So we acquired this portfolio of royalties from a different Australian company that historically has been active in these areas and then sold mining claims or mineral tenements in these areas, you know, decades ago and retained royalties. So Northern Star wasn't involved, you know, as the seller. They're the operator of the Red Hill project. On the question of buybacks, none of these royalties have buybacks. What we typically see is buybacks in royalty contracts are much more common in North America, where you might have, say, a 3% royalty with a 1.5% buyback right.
So they're a lot less common in Australia, which is another reason why we love shopping for royalties in Australia. So yeah, none of these royalties have buyback rights embedded in them. Kyle, did you want to take the last one?
Yeah, look, and it's a very good question. We believe that our market valuation is completely dislocated from our fundamental value. We believe we've added, and maybe arguably more, $100 million of value just in this acquisition alone, and our current market cap is $100 million. So there's a lot of work to do in terms of just bringing Vox in line with the net asset value of our firm. Meanwhile, there's many peers in the industry that are trading at premiums to net asset value. So it's something that we're working tirelessly to address. And, you know, I would say that all options are on the table for how we address the valuation disconnect that we have in the marketplace at the moment.
Talk about your exposure to foreign currency fluctuations. How is that affecting the company?
Look, most of our contracts pay in US dollars. US dollars are the probably most typical currency that royalties pay in. We will have a little bit of fluctuation in Aussie dollars, but because gold is essentially transacted worldwide in USD, you know, we're somewhat hedged from big fluctuations in currency moves. Maybe not altogether, but, yeah, it's I don't think it's a big variance for our investors to be focused on.
A question about, is there a halo of lower grade copper or around the Horseshoe Lights deposit?
Spencer, you might be on mute.
Uh-oh.
So you're asking a mining engineer geology questions, which is always dangerous.
But they're Australian, they want to know the details.
Look, there are sort of two dominant, you know, copper mineral types at Horseshoe Lights. Some of the higher grade, sort of closer to surface, sort of stringers are chalcocite, and then at depth, it transitions into a more of a pyrite halo encasing a chalcopyrite ore body. So in terms of, you know, I guess lower grade halos or zones, it is more differentiated based on those two copper mineral types, like chalcocite closer to surface and, you know, copper sulfide chalcopyrite at depth. So we haven't seen a broader sort of disseminated zone at depth. But that said, this ore body really hasn't been drilled out to great depths. Most of the drilling has been, you know, 100 m deep.
Some of it's been sort of 200 m deep. So, you know, we see huge potential at depth here. But, yeah, we can't really further comment at this stage on, you know, what that low-grade potential sort of extension could look like.
Did Northern Star have right of first refusal to acquire the 4% GRR at Red Hill, directly or indirectly?
Kyle, do you want to take that one?
Um, no.
No problem. Got more questions. Let's talk about how many royalties or do many royalties potentially include a potential initial royalty payment based on a maiden reserve milestone, similar to the $82 million you received for Puzzle North?
Yeah. So this is a quite uncommon feature in royalty contracts that we review. So typically, these type of discovery payment, you know, it's, we've seen it in a few royalty contracts from the 1990s, similar to the Kookynie royalty, that we've just generated 15x return on. None of these royalties have that feature of sort of a discovery payment. They're all fairly conventional, sort of production-based royalties on a percentage basis. But I think just going back to one thing I previously said was that, you know, particularly in these two key assets with Horseshoe, Horseshoe Lights is a 3% net smelter return royalty, which is, you know, as close to gross revenues you can possibly get.
Then, the Red Hill royalty is a 4% gross revenue royalty. So, yeah, no discovery payments, but, you know, investors can be confident that these are truly revenue-linked royalties, with minimal to no deductions. So, you know, that's the highest quality royalty you can really buy in the market.
Thank you. So, question: We estimate that the two assets you highlighted created $1.50 in NAV, but notice that your stock is up $0.11. So I think some number of investors don't believe that these assets are that good. So what do you say to help investors better understand the value that you just created?
... Look, I think it's pretty simple. The economic, the economics and, the, I think, the quality of the Red Hill deposit, really, at this point, should speak for itself. It's operated by a major, it's a past producing mine. The economic viability of the project, has already been essentially proven, and it's just a matter of time, before it comes into production. That, I think is pretty clear. So when we look at 50,000 gold equivalent ounces being acquired, on two projects that, that have near-term production potential, there's really not been a transaction like this in the market. Ultimately, you know, we have to do, probably a better job, outlining the value that's in Vox Royalty Corp right now. We clearly have a tremendous amount, of current revenue, that's expected to grow.
These royalties will be, we expect, highly additive to that as well. And we're really the only royalty company, in our market segment, that we believe has a true competitive advantage in terms of acquiring royalties at value. So we'll continue to compound that in favor of our investors. Yes, the share price disconnect is frustrating, but I believe that will close. We've seen some volatility in the share price since the financing, but, you know, I'll remind our investors and investors that may be sitting on the sideline, that capital was raised, mainly for this acquisition. And I don't think that there's been another acquisition like this, that I can recall, in the last 15 years that I've been involved, in the royalty business. So, we're very excited about the prospects of the business.
I think for the investors that are taking a little bit of time now, to understand Vox Royalty Corp, understand the asset base, I believe that they're very, very well positioned.
Thank you for that. Kyle, do you ever look at investing in royalties at any point prior to or on the verge of production?
Well, that's exactly what this transaction is. Our sweet spot is assets that are just a couple of years out from production, if not even sooner. That all goes to speak or speaks to our systematic process. We have a team of mining engineers and geologists that are scanning the world every single day for interesting developments on assets. We then go into our royalty database to see if a royalty exists over these assets, and then we use deal sourcing agents all over the world to put us in touch with these eclectic group of royalty holders and potential sellers to ultimately procure these royalties. And that's a process that, you know, really isn't being done in the space. There's not this competitive advantage that we have, you know, broadly available in the market.
And so we're utilizing our systems, processes, people, and fundamental advantages to secure these types of assets. And so this was down the middle. This was, you know, everything that we tell our investors we do, we do. I think there has been some skepticism that we've been maybe lucky, not good, and when I say good, I mean, our systematic processes around our competitive advantages. And the other thing I would add to that is we believe these advantages are durable over the long term, so we'll continue to be able to find this type of value, which I believe is really unique in the royalty sector.
Yeah, and then the one-
Yeah.
Sorry, the one thing I'll just add to that is, you know, the minute a royalty starts paying revenue, a lot of royalty sellers' value expectations increase exponentially, as you would imagine. So, you know, for us to come in and to leverage our technical management team of engineers and geos, you know, coming in just before those checks start flowing, that's how we're able to deliver, you know, such incredible value for our investors, on a fundamental basis. You know, a lot of that value is eroded and priced into the purchase price once, as the royalty payment period grows deeper.
Another congratulations. You've gotten lots of congratulations today on the acquisition, the long road to acquire these assets. So there's a few questions here. I'm gonna break it down, but the question is, as you say, this validates your process of locating and acquiring royalties at great value. So can you decrease your cost of capital and dilution in the future as you continue to make these acquisitions? And as you move into profitability as a company, how can you minimize your cost structure and dilution to shareholders so that all shareholders benefit on a per-share metric and ultimately achieve greater earnings per share and distributions? How would you answer that?
Well, look, I think we're well on our way. We are one of the few royalty companies that have $500 million in market cap that produce positive cash flow. And that's because we're so successful in deploying capital that deliver returns on that capital. When you look across the sector, returns are averaging sub 5% on invested capital. So it is a strength of ours. I think our financial results are speaking for themselves. This acquisition, certainly, we expect to be additive to that. And so we'll continue to execute on that basis. I mean, we're very disciplined. We see almost every transaction that's out there in the market that's brokered.
We've yet to win a brokered sale process, and so our ability to go out and find immense value in a very competitive sector, I believe, is ultimately going to work to our benefit. We are seeing unbelievably high valuations in royalties, both in the let's call it the auction market, and also the way that some of our peers are valued. And ultimately, we believe that we'll be valued in line with our peers, and that we'll continue to leverage what is, you know, a very, very strong demand market for royalties. So we believe Vox is a very, you know, interesting investment prospect for investors out there that want exposure, certainly at these levels, to Vox.
Spencer, do you have anything to say about that?
No, I think Kyle hit the nail on the head, so, nothing, nothing to add to that.
A follow-up question from a viewer: Would you consider rewarding management with options rather than stock grants and RSU so that the company benefits from this dilution with income that can be used for future further acquisitions?
... That's a very cerebral question, and one I'll be glad to pass on to our board of directors and our comp committee.
Understandable. We have another question, if you'll be at the New Orleans Conference in November?
Great question. We're just about to finalize our fall marketing schedule. We're here at the Beaver Creek Conference now. So, for any of our viewers that are here in Beaver Creek, we'd be happy to meet with you around the conference. New Orleans, we're hoping to be able to make it, but, we haven't been able to confirm our attendance quite yet.
Perfect. Well, we have a lot more questions for you, but we are out of time, so we're gonna send them to you, so you can answer on your own. But I'd love to hear from both of you some closing remarks with our time on this conference today.
Yeah, I'll go first and then let you finish, Kyle. Look, deals like this, this Australian royalty portfolio don't come along very often. You know, the first interactions on this portfolio were over 7 years ago. So, the Vox group has been extremely patient and methodical on transactions such as this, that you know, we believe will unlock huge, you know, meaningful value for investors. You know, it's, we believe it's gonna take some time for investors to fully understand these assets. But, you know, we're completely convinced that over time, the value that we've just acquired, you know, here in the past 24 hours, will really continue to validate the differentiated business model that we've created, you know, over the last 10 years.
You know, we're really excited to, I guess, share the benefits and all the returns attached to these, you know, these fantastic assets with our investors over coming quarters and years.
Yeah, and I would add to that, Anna, we're humbled to be able to bring in this type of value for our investors. We're working tirelessly to ultimately have the value that we believe is in Vox reflected in the public market as well. We're excited about the prospects of the business. It is a very competitive market, but our competitive advantages continue to serve us and our shareholders extremely well. It's durable into the long term, and we'll continue to execute with that discipline. So it's a real honor and privilege to have the investors that we have. They've shown us great support, and we're looking forward to many more opportunities like this in our future, and we'll be excited to come back on the program and discuss them.
Great. Well, congratulations on this news, and thank you for this very thorough presentation and robust Q&A. It's been a pleasure having you back on Emerging Growth. Yes, come back in the near future and give us some more great updates.
Will do. Thanks, Anna.
Thanks, Anna.
All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you all for watching Emerging Growth Conference. We'll see you again soon.