All right. That was great. I love actually hearing more and more about Africa because like I said, it is in the spotlight quite a bit more now, and there is a lot more education that is needed for sure. Next up, we're going to jump over to RE Royalties. There are royalty companies, and then there are companies quietly building exposure to one of the most powerful global trends of this decade, the transition to renewable energy. Pardon me. RE Royalties, they've created a model that stands apart in the clean energy space, generating diversified royalty and investment exposure across renewable infrastructure, while also positioning itself at the intersection of energy demand, long-term cash flow, and the global push towards decarbonization. Joining us today is CEO. Who are we speaking with today? We are speaking with Peter Leighton of RE Royalties.
He is a leader who has spent years identifying opportunities where capital markets and renewable energy innovation collide. I'm going to get him to jump on the screen here. There you are, Peter. It's so great to see you, and welcome to IIF.
Thank you.
I'm going to shut my camera off and send the spotlight over to you. We're excited to learn all about RE Royalties.
Great.
Okay, Peter, just a little heads up, I'll come back on about the 20-minute mark, which is just sort of a gentle nudge to say, "Let's wrap it up," and we'll go into the Q&A, okay?
Yeah. Perfect.
Okay. Just pulling up the presentation. In the meantime, Peter, why don't you just give us a little highlight of your background?
Sure. I am the co-founder and just going to pull my screen in here so we can see it. Can you see my screen now?
We can see your screen, yep. Did you want to try and make that full screen?
Yeah, we're working on it.
Okay.
There we go. How's that?
Not quite. There we go. Yes. Got it.
All right, perfect. Okay, great. Thank you about that. I'm the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at RE Royalties, and really, RE Royalties is, we're an innovative financing solution for renewable energy and clean technology projects. We have a simple mission to help accelerate the global energy transition while creating long-term value for investors. Today, I'll walk you through the growth opportunity in renewable energy, the financing gap we're solving, and how our business model works, and finally, why we believe we're uniquely positioned in this market to take advantage of this growth. For anyone interested in following our progress, we trade publicly on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada under the symbol RE, under the OTC in the U.S. under RROYF, and on the Frankfurt Exchange under Y2V.
I guess before I start, I could leave you with two takeaways before we start this presentation. One is that the renewable energy market is really, really big and it's growing very rapidly globally. Two, we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of this growth. We are publicly traded, so I have to give you this cautionary statement that basically says I'll be talking about stuff that's happened and not trying to forecast things that are going to happen. Our vision is pretty simple. We set out with two objectives, really. Create wealth for investors while generating a positive environmental impact. Easy to say, but something that we think we've done a pretty good job in achieving. We've done this by building a diversified portfolio of renewable energy projects that generate stable recurring long-term cash flows.
These include solar projects, wind projects, battery energy storage systems, renewable natural gas, hydro, and energy efficiency infrastructure. The idea is to create a predictable recurring revenue stream, as with the global transition to cleaner and more resilient energy systems continues. Importantly, our model is designed to scale. We can invest new capital and recycle currently invested capital to drive revenue growth without incurring any additional operating cost. This operating leverage allows us to increase shareholder value as our top-line growth falls directly to the bottom line. That means every dollar of revenue we add from here on goes right to the bottom line. We were the first company to apply royalty financing to the renewable energy sector. I guess for all of you out there, someone asks often, what is a royalty? Well, royalties have been around since the beginning of time.
If you think of the first time someone came to a landowner and said, "Hey, I'll grow potatoes on your extra lot." The landowner said, "Sure, you go ahead, grow the potatoes. I just want to take 5% of your production." That's the idea of a royalty. It's been prevalent in the mining sector, the oil and gas sector, pharmaceuticals, music, you name it. We were the first ones to take that proven business model and apply it to the renewable energy sector. We closed our first renewable energy royalty in March of 2016, and there wasn't really anybody else out there doing it. Historically, developers had had to go to expensive venture capital, more expensive private equity, or slow and painful traditional bank debt.
These options for them were highly dilutive or very restrictive. What we did was take this proven model, and that's already worked in many industries, and apply it to the renewable energy sector. The idea for us is that in return for providing capital, we receive a long-term royalty stream as a percentage of project revenues over the life of a project. Our first-mover position allowed us to build proprietary deal flow, develop strong industry relationships, and create a diversified portfolio. Other companies have entered the market since, we now have competition, but that's great because that means more people are focused on what we're trying to do. We are a global energy solution, and I think it's important to distinguish that. Our first investment was in Eastern Europe. That's matured now, but we have many investments in North America, Mexico, Chile, Southern Asia, Puerto Rico.
We were funded in 2016, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in 2018, began trading on the OTC in 2022. Last year, we expanded to the Frankfurt Exchange. Since inception, we've raised and deployed more than CAD 80 million into a diversified portfolio across technologies and jurisdictions. To date, we've been able to generate an unlevered internal rate of return on those investments exceeding 19%. Importantly, those returns have flowed to shareholders. Another important point is that 41% of our pipeline comes from repeat or existing clients. We believe in platform growth. We look at groups that we think have long-term growth, and we want to grow alongside them. We've demonstrated strong revenue growth, averaging about 60% annually over the last five years. In addition to financial performance, our investments generate meaningful environmental impact aligned with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
This impact profile also helps us attract lower costs, non-dilutive capital, including issuing our own green bonds to retail investors. I guess the story is why invest in RE Royalties? Really, there's three reasons, and I'll give you the three primary reasons, is growth, capital protection, and our impact or our ability to reduce carbon emissions. Most importantly is growth. We've grown significantly over the last five years, driven by increasing demand for renewable energy financing. Second is capital protection. Many of our investments are structured as secured loans backed by project cash flows or physical assets. We also benefit from diversification. We look at different technologies, so different renewable energy generation platforms, different jurisdictions. This is super important because electricity, although it's a commodity, it doesn't trade like a global commodity. It's very restrictive in terms of local jurisdictions.
We deal with a lot of different counterparties. We're also investing in different parts of the renewable energy life cycle. If you think the traditional developer stakes out land, they begin to do permitting work, they then build, they operate, and we are sampling across that full value chain. There's different returns, there's different risk profiles, and we're able to get a diversified look at that. Thirdly, our impact. Our portfolio currently offsets more than 400,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. Again, we think that's a pretty important piece for long-term health of the planet. We can grow, we can save the planet, and we can save your capital and return it to you. That, to us, is a pretty good investment thesis. I'm going to bore you with a few numbers now.
The market is massive, so it expanding rapidly across the globe, driven by technology cost drop. In the last 10 years, we've seen an order of magnitude drop in the cost to build solar and wind energy, and battery storage is right behind. We've also seen an order of magnitude increase in the efficiency of these generation technologies and in the battery technology space. It's getting cheaper to build, and it's getting more effective. In 2025 alone, the US added approximately 27 gigawatts of new utility scale solar generation, and about 6.3 GW of small scale solar were installed. Rough order of magnitude, a gigawatt is about CAD 1 billion worth of investment. It's very big.
In terms of wind energy, again, another 6.3 MW of new wind capacity added in the U.S., and battery storage is now the fastest-growing segment in the industry, with installations rising nearly 40% year-over-year. Material growth. All of this creates enormous demand for financing solutions, particularly for small and mid-size developers that are underserved by traditional capital providers. I'll give you a look at Canada as well. Between 2020 and 2025, Canada's storage capacity grew by approximately 56%, so almost 25 GW. There are about 24 GW. Again, that's about CAD 24 billion of new renewable energy projects announced or under development across the country. And of that total, approximately 8 GW are expected to connect by 2029. And by 2035, that's going to double.
This creates a very large financing opportunity for companies like RE Royalties, and it's a significant opportunity for our investors. On the dollar side, Canada will require massive capital injections to build renewables. Industry forecasts anticipate at least 59 GW of new projects coming online by 2035, and actual investment requirements are going to be in the CAD 14 billion-CAD 30 billion. Governments alone can't finance this transition. Private capital needs to play a critical role, and we believe that you need to be innovative. Innovative financing, like we provide at RE Royalties, is well-positioned to participate in this growth. It goes without saying that today there's a heightened focus on energy security. Geopolitical instability has reinforced the importance of having the ability to generate your energy at home. As I said, electricity is a global commodity.
If you look at the United States, there are at least 100 different electricity markets within the United States. Each state, some states have two different markets, some only have one. The only thing more difficult to build in North America right now than an oil and gas pipeline would be an electricity transmission line. This means that connecting all of these different markets is very difficult. What this is driving is an increased focus on distributed generation. Rather than building a massive power plant and trying to wheel electrons for hundreds of kilometers, or thousands of kilometers in the case of the province I live in, we're building at source. Where are the consumers? Where does that electricity need to be built? Build the generation on-site, close at hand.
It does mean that these are slightly smaller projects, and again, that plays to our strengths. As I say, small and mid-size developers are becoming increasingly important contributors, but they remain underserved by traditional financing institutions. The North American clean energy finance market was about CAD 120 billion in 2025 and continues to grow steadily. At this time, U.S. developers have safe harbored approximately 170 GW of capacity. These are projects that have received investment tax credits and are ready to build. Distributed solar is continuing to expand rapidly, and community scale and mid-market projects are growing in importance. These smaller developers move faster and are more innovative, but they need more flexible capital solutions, and that's exactly where we operate. Policy tailwinds are opening the door for these smaller developers because government policy is creating additional momentum for renewable energy investment.
In Canada, there is a federal Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit that provides a 30% tax incentive through 2034. In the U.S., the investment tax credits have got about another six months to run. Provinces in Canada are introducing new procurement models and community-based energy programs that favor smaller developers. In the United States, policy deadlines are accelerating project timelines and increasing the urgency around financing availability. These policies help level the playing field for the mid-market developers, so the ones who can't purely rely on scale, and are increasing the urgency around getting financing available for them. I'll say it again because it's a message that I can't say often enough. The energy demand is surging. Everybody is talking AI. In Canada, the top 100 companies are expected to require an additional 7.7 GW of energy by 2040.
AI infrastructure, data centers, electrification, manufacturing growth, now security of local supply are driving demand that we're seeing globally. For electricity consumers, prices are only going up. Self-generating distributed generation allows partial disconnect from the grid. If I were standing in this room, I would ask everybody who's present, how many of you still have a landline at home? If you think about where we were 25 years ago, landlines were the only way to get your telecommunications. The same thing is going to happen in electricity. There are 5 billion people in the continent of Africa who are not connected to the grid. Distributed generation is the only solution for them, and it will be a continuing solution as North American and European consumers get tired of paying for excessive grid costs. In order to get there, a clear financing gap exists.
Despite strong market growth, traditional lenders typically favor larger companies, larger projects, and people with established balance sheets. I liken it to if you want to borrow CAD 100 million, every bank is your friend. If you want to borrow CAD 10 million, they say, "Hey, put that on your credit card." That is where we find the niche is that underserved market of small to mid-size developers who struggle to access affordable non-dilutive capital. Our opportunity is really threefold. Three things going on. The revenue-based financing market is projected to more than triple by 2034, at its basis, that's what we do, revenue-based financing. We base our financing on the revenue that a project's going to deliver. Bridge lending, where people have to get to some kind of certainty, is also one of the fastest-growing segments within the clean energy finance.
Procurement programs, corporate buyers, people like Amazon, people like Budweiser, are wanting to buy renewable energy so that they can then tell their end customers that their products are green, and that's driving huge development. Some big numbers, again. Most renewable infrastructure investments remain private market opportunities, typically reserved for pension funds, private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds, and family offices. The limits are that they often require high minimum commitments, long lockup periods, and significant concentration risk. Really, the public renewable energy market is tiny. In Canada, the TSX, it's less than 1% of the total stock exchange. It makes it difficult for individual investors to gain any exposure to the renewable energy market and to energy transition.
What we do is we're helping solve this problem by providing public market investors with exposure to diversified portfolio of renewable energy investments through a single publicly traded company. We are, in essence, an ETF that covers multiple jurisdictions, multiple renewable energy technologies, multiple points on the renewable energy value curve, and people can get it all by purchasing a share in our publicly traded company. What do they get for that? Our portfolio is about, we've invested about CAD 83 million over our history, over 27 transactions with about 135 projects that we now have royalties on. That covers the gamut, as you can see from the map. We are in storage, solar, wind, energy efficiency, biogas, and hydro, and we span the globe, generally speaking.
We have a diversified and secured asset portfolio, and more than 80% of our portfolio is located in North America, and it's generating about 19% unlevered IRR since inception. We are intentionally disciplined and diversified, again, wanting to sample across multiple projects in multiple jurisdictions. We invest only in renewables, and we focus on proven technologies. I have had some experience on being on the bleeding edge of technology, and that's not something that our investors are exposed to. We only look at proven technologies, and we really, really like cash flow. We don't really invest in long-term development cycles, which can be 7, 8, 9, 10 years. We're looking for investments that can return cash within the year because cash is what our investors want to see.
Our target returns range between 12% and 20%, and I'll tell you a little bit more about why that is as we move along. Really, the idea is that we are exposing our investors to both yield and to long-term growth. We really have two products. How do we do this? One is a long-term royalty acquisition. This is something that has a very high multiple of invested capital. We would essentially invest money for a 25-year strip of revenue off of that. The second product that we are involved in is a loan and royalty structure. This is often the loan is a short-term bridge, one to three years, so we get a return of our capital, we get a return on our capital, and we get interests, or we get a royalty on that long-term project life.
We're right now about 50/50 in terms of that. Selected information. As of yesterday, our share price was about CAD 0.42, with a market cap of CAD 18.7 million. We have meaningful insider ownership at 24%, and we've got continual revenue growth year-over-year. Our company was named one of the fastest-growing companies by The Globe and Mail Report on Business. Our business model has demonstrated strong portfolio performance and repeatability. As I said, we've deployed more than CAD 83 million across 130 projects and have generated approximately a 19% weighted IRR or a 1.5 multiple of invested capital. We have an attractive spread. We generally borrow capital at about 69%, and we invest at returns exceeding 19%, so that's a pretty decent structural margin. Our capital recycling model also allows us to continue scaling using recurring royalty revenue and continue to grow over time.
In terms of the management team, roughly 100 years of experience. I think the key takeaway is this is the team. We have the operating leverage that would say we could double revenue next year with the same SG&A. We don't have to increase our cost base CAD 1 to double our revenue. In fact, we could triple our revenue, meaning all that revenue falls to the bottom line. At one point in time, Wheaton Precious Metals Corp., which was a large mining royalty, had the largest revenue per employee on the Toronto Stock Exchange, that's the kind of leverage that we have with this royalty financing model. We have a board of directors that covers significant expertise across capital markets, renewable energy, and corporate governance, their guidance supports our long-term strategy and disciplined approach to growth. I want to leave you with two takeaways.
I said at the beginning, I would like to explain to you that the renewable energy industry is a massive global market that is growing extremely rapidly. Secondly, we at RE Royalties are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this growth. I encourage you to reach out. Follow our progress on the TSX Venture, the OTC, the Frankfurt Exchange. I'd be happy to answer questions, and I'd be happy to have any of you reach out to me personally.
Peter, thank you so much. You have such a calm demeanor, and it just makes everything more focused and more exciting to hear about. Thank you so much for all of that. We're going to jump into a little bit of Q&A. As we know, renewable energy financing is becoming increasingly competitive as institutional capital flows into the sector. Now, Peter, from your perspective, where does RE Royalties still have an edge that larger pools of capital can't easily replicate?
I think it's in two places. If you think of the traditional bank lending model, it's based on fees.
Sure.
In order to generate fees and to cover their massive overhead infrastructure, they need to do large transactions. They don't get out of bed for anything less than CAD 100 million, and most of them would look more like at the billion-dollar range.
Yeah.
Where we think the niche is, for small to mid-size, is in that CAD 10 million, CAD 20 million, CAD 30 million. There's the speed. Our record deployment was we addressed an opportunity on December 15th, and we funded by January 10th. Right over the Christmas holidays.
Nice.
That developer saved their project. They were at risk of losing their project, and we were able to step in and help them out. That's the kind of speed that we can move at.
And is the kind of scale that makes it more attractive for us.
Behind the scenes, what are the characteristics or the signals, actually, you look for in cases like that for a renewable project that make you lean in more aggressively, we'll say, even before the broader market fully understands its future cash flow potential?
Yeah. I mentioned to you that the market for electricity is very different, but the infrastructure around developing and constructing, building, operating projects is very similar across all jurisdictions. It's the same stool, it has the same four legs, whether that stool is in Europe or it's in North America or it's in Asia.
Right.
Our team are all ex-developers, so we have the flat forehead that comes with trying to develop stuff, and we've all learned through the schools of hard knocks. We're able to assess risk very quickly. We outsource things, local expertise like legal, because that's something that you can't really apply across jurisdictions.
Fair enough.
We have a very elaborate investment committee approach that walks each investment opportunity through the same scale. What's our security? What's our time to value? Time to value is super important. The longer our money's invested, it's got to have returns very quickly.
Yeah.
Do we trust the partners? This is one of the reasons we love platform clients, groups who are growing, because we do one transaction with them, then we do another and another. So far, about 40% of our book is repeat clients.
That's amazing to hear. That's really good. I know that RE Royalties recently announced a strategic review to evaluate pathways for long-term shareholder value creation, while also continuing to expand the portfolio with new solar and battery storage investments. Behind closed doors, what do you believe the market still isn't fully appreciating about the underlying value of the platform you've built?
I think it's a function of, as I say, 1% of the Toronto Stock Exchange right now is focused on renewables.
Sure.
Banks and oil and gas companies are the preponderance.
Right.
There isn't that natural ecosystem of being able to present to small investors and retail investors our ideas.
That's one challenge we have, and I think the second challenge we have is looking for permanent capital. We've been very effective at raising green bonds, but they're on a five-year tenor.
Right.
Every five years, we have to renew, re-up, or repay those green bonds.
Our royalties have a term of 20, 25, some 40 year.
We really need to match that capital with the duration of our portfolios, and so that's part of the reason we're out for that strategic review is looking for that permanent capital that can be part of our capital stack.
Yeah.
That matches the long-term nature of our investments.
Well, we have run out of time. I know that there's 1 million more questions that we could definitely bring up and ask about, but for right now, I think that gives us a really good insight into the company, into what you're doing, and what to look out for. Thank you again for your time, Peter.
Thank you, Lindsay. We really appreciate it.
Absolutely. We'll talk to you soon.