Hello and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Julia Perrell, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Seattle and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold Inc., trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 20 to 25 minutes and will be followed by a formal Q&A session for which you can participate in using the chat box on the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that, I will hand it over to Alistair.
Well, thanks, Julia, and thanks, Renmark, for the invitation to present today. It's a great environment for Royal Gold with a strong metal price backdrop, so it's a very opportune time to be having this conversation. So during this presentation, I will make forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K, filed with the SEC. So during this presentation, I'm going to give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold and what we provide to investors, which in a sentence is precious metals exposure with consistent financial performance and a focus on per-share metrics. The presentation is focused on how we will provide this, or how we do provide this.
I'm going to explain our low-risk leveraged gold, our long history of executing a simple strategy, our unique business model, our organic growth potential from a diversified portfolio, and finally, valuation, which I think is pretty attractive compared to historical levels. Slide four shows Royal Gold at a high level. We are a high-margin business that generates consistent cash flows from precious metals. We've been in the business since the mid-1980s, and we've been on the Nasdaq for well over 40 years. In 2023, our stream segment contributed about 69% of revenue. Our royalty segment contributed about 31%. We have two main segments to our business, but they both provide the same thing, which is really top-line exposure to the production from mining assets. In 2023, we focused on debt repayment.
We repaid $325 million of debt, and we increased our dividends for the year 2024 by 7%. That was a 23rd consecutive annual increase to our dividends, so a very long record of dividend increases. We released our Q1 results in early May, and we had very good financials. We had $140 million, give or take, of operating cash flow, $47 million of earnings, 79% EBITDA margin, so very solid results. Most of our revenue, 75% of it, came from gold, and 53% of our revenue came from Canada, the USA, and Australia. We report our second quarter results on August 7th, so in a few weeks. Now, slide five, I've just got a little bit of table setting here, and this shows how we compare to our peers. We sit in a very interesting position. We're big enough to compete for the largest transactions.
We have significant cash flow. We have access to low-cost capital. Yet we're also small enough to show growth. So a small transaction for Royal Gold can actually add meaningful value to Royal Gold as a company. And that's an important differentiator given our portfolio and some of the opportunities that we see ahead of ourselves in the marketplace today. I'm going to start off talking about our low-risk leveraged gold. And slide seven shows gold investments and how you can invest in gold, different ways you can invest in gold, and how Royal Gold is positioned. And our model provides exposure to precious metals without many of the risks that come with operating or investing in operating companies. We provide exposure to gold and optionality while also reducing the downside risk through holding a diverse portfolio that doesn't have direct exposure to operating and capital costs.
That's been very important over the past several years when you're thinking about inflation and how inflation can erode margins. There are different ways you can invest in gold. If you want to be super conservative, you can invest in physical gold. That announcement will always be announced, but so it won't provide you upside. Physical gold also won't pay you a dividend. In fact, it will cost you money to store it. You can be more aggressive, and you can invest in mining companies or exploration companies. With those investments, you are getting the potential for high returns, but you're also getting the potential for high risk. That's mainly due to operating cost or capital cost risk. Now, slide eight shows our historic performance and why we think we're a good alternative for conservative investors or conservative exposure to gold.
On the left-hand side, you can see we've got very strong leverage to gold, a beta of about 1.9. On the right-hand side, you can see how our share price performance has performed over time, over a long history since the GDX was formed in 2006. Over that period, we performed very well. That's against gold and the GDX index itself, but also against general market indices. We are a very well-run business with very good results despite the history of the gold sector being very volatile. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of our execution in this next section. We do have a long record of consistent and disciplined performance.
And this slide, slide 10, is one of my favorites in this package because it really shows a good snapshot of our 20+ year history of capital allocation and growth, which is driven by providing accretive growth to our shareholders. You can see on this slide that since 2000, we've had significant revenue and cash flow growth. But there are three aspects of this growth that are very important to note. The first is our business is high margin and it's scalable. So our revenue growth has far exceeded the increase in the G&A expense that it costs to run the business. So we've been able to grow our top line without growing our costs. The second is our revenue growth is not dependent only on metal prices. We have been able to add volume to our portfolio and do accretive transactions over that time period.
And the third is we finance that volume growth internally. And that's without a significant rise in our share count. We're an original member of the GDX index. It was formed in 2006, and we have the lowest share count in that index. So we want to avoid shareholder dilution whenever we can. We try to fund our business with internal resources, and that results in providing per-share growth to our shareholders. Now, slide 11 shows a snapshot of our liquidity. We have to be patient in our business. We have to maintain a strong balance sheet and liquidity on hand to be able to quickly and easily finance opportunities as they arise. And our approach to funding growth is to use internal resources, as I said. So that's using cash on hand, our operating cash flow, and our revolving credit facility.
Equity is our least favorite or least preferred way to fund our growth. We have not done an equity offering since 2012. Now, the waterfall on the left-hand side shows how we allocated our cash flow in 2023. And we used our operating cash flow to repay debt and pay our dividend. And we ended the first quarter of this year with about just under $1 billion of liquidity. And that included our working capital and our undrawn revolving credit facility balance. So there's lots of liquidity available to us today for the business development environment that we find ourselves in. Now, slide 12 shows a history of how we use our revolving credit facility. It's a very important strategic financing tool for us. It's a $1 billion revolver, and that provides cheap and flexible financing.
If you look at the banks involved, we've got a syndicate of eight of very high-quality banks in the facility. We draw on the facility much like you would your own personal credit card. We draw on it when we make an acquisition, and we pay back the credit facility from cash flow as it comes in from the portfolio. 2022 was a big year for acquisitions for us. But we financed those acquisitions using our revolving credit facility. In Q3 and Q4 of that year, we drew on the revolving credit facility to acquire royalties on the Cortez Project in Nevada and the Great Bear Project in Northern Ontario. Since then, we've repaid most of that. Through to the end of the first quarter of this year, we had paid back $500 million.
At the beginning of May this year, May 8th, we had $75 million outstanding on our revolving credit facility, which we expect to repay by early in the third quarter of this year. That rapid paydown shows you the cash flow potential of our portfolio. Some would say, well, there's an interest cost associated with borrowing like this. Is the short-term interest, is the cost worth it? Well, we would say yes because it's a short-term cost. We think it's a worthy trade-off if you're able to buy multi-decade assets without diluting your shareholders. That's the way we think about our revolving credit facility and how we have used it in the past. Now, return of capital is a key strategic objective for Royal Gold, and it's one of the attributes that makes us unique amongst other gold investments.
We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every year since. That's despite volatility in the gold price. We've paid out almost $1 billion of dividends since the beginning of the dividend program. We're the only company in the GDX that has paid an increased dividend every year since the index was formed in 2006. In fact, we're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. That sets us apart from our peers in the royalty streaming business. It also sets us apart from any other company in the precious metals business. That's something we like to highlight. Due diligence is a very important core competency for Royal Gold. Our business is really the acquisition and management of royalties and streams.
Good due diligence at the outset is very important to make sure that we add the right assets and avoid the wrong ones. While we're always busy looking at opportunities, not all opportunities make it through to completion. We have a very extensive due diligence process, and we're very disciplined in the way that we will deploy our capital. If we see any risks associated with the projects, whether they're technical or environmental or what have you, we will walk away from transactions. We have done that in many instances. We don't feel the pressure to do transactions. We're not compensated by doing a certain number of transactions in a year. If we can't find the right opportunities, we'll collect the revenue from our portfolio, build our balance sheet, and wait for those right opportunities to present themselves.
History has shown us that they generally do present themselves. 2023 is a very good case in point of how we did this approach. We were very busy in 2022, as I said. We did add a lot to the portfolio. We took on some debt. In 2023, we just didn't see the right opportunities. So what we did was we repaid our debt. We rebuilt our liquidity. So now we're in a very good position for when the next best opportunity comes up. Now, I'm going to talk for a moment on ESG. Our business model does not provide direct operating control, but ESG has always been a very important part of our business. We invest for the long term.
So we have to ensure that the assets that we invest in are sustainable because that is what gives us and our shareholders exposure to the upside in the long term. So it's a very important part of our due diligence process to look at the ESG aspects of assets and opportunities. We build language into our transactions and our documentation that tries to ensure that operations are managed to the highest possible standards. And we're always looking for opportunities to help operators fund initiatives around the assets where we invest. And if you look at this slide, we've got MSCI and Sustainalytics ratings shown over the past couple of years. And we're top-rated by Sustainalytics. We're double-A-rated by MSCI.
The reason these ratings have improved over time is that what we have done is we've done a better job of disclosing and providing more transparency to the market around our ESG and the way that we think about ESG. So we've had a material improvement in the perception and the recognition of these practices as we have progressed. I'm going to change topics a bit now and talk about our business model, which is quite unique. The key to our model is optionality. That's to reserve and resource growth without having to fund further investments. I've got two examples shown on this slide. The first is PV, Pueblo Viejo , on the left-hand side. The second is Wassa on the right-hand side. Both of these are investments we made in 2015.
In both cases, total reserves and resources today are higher than at the time of the initial acquisition. That's in addition to the production and the cash flow that's allowed us to recover over 85% of our investment at PV and over 140% of our investment at Wassa. Now, there are growth projects underway at both of these assets. In both cases, Royal Gold is not required to fund the capital or invest any further to get exposure to this upside. This is the growth that we don't have to pay for. It's the optionality that our shareholders enjoy. The exploration and production upside is very important when we look at any new opportunities because that optionality is what is very important to our shareholders. It's the most important feature that we can provide.
Now, if we think about the business model and efficiency, you can see on this slide, we have 30 employees. Last year, we produced over $600 million of revenue. Currently, today, we have our market cap is over $8 billion. So on a per-employee basis, we compare well to other large companies, regardless of whether they're in the mining sector. So that's some of the largest companies in the world today. We have a very efficient business model compared to them. And our low employee count means that we have a low fixed cash G&A, which further contributes to our efficiency. Our EBITDA margin in 2023 was 79%. It's usually pretty stable around that level. And our cash G&A was about 5% of our revenue. So our G&A is low, and it's made up mostly of fixed costs. So inflation should not be a significant risk to our margins.
On that point, if you look at the cost structure of the average gold mining company and Royal Gold, you can see that we are insulated from cost inflation just because we have a very different structure. Producers are exposed to inflation and input costs. So labor, energy, consumables, and other costs that they have to incur to run operations, a lot of those will actually increase when commodity prices increase. Whereas you look at our costs, and our G&A is mostly steady because it's made up of things that don't increase on a short-term basis. Things like salaries, services, and office rents, they may increase, but they don't increase on a daily basis. They increase on a yearly basis. They're not typically subject to short-term increases. So our margins are much less exposed to inflation pressures simply because we're not directly exposed to operating and capital costs.
I'm going to talk in the next section about our portfolio, which is broad and deep and has lots of good organic growth potential in it. This slide, slide 22, shows our global portfolio. You can see that the portfolio is weighted toward lower risk and mining-friendly jurisdictions. On the right-hand side, you can see our principal properties. Those are the largest portfolio assets, and these provide the bulk of our revenue. On slide 23, you can see where we are with respect to mining camps around the world. There are several well-known, very established mining camps, and we are in many of those. So 50% of our revenue comes from Nevada, British Columbia, Western Australia. These are historical mining areas that have excellent prospectivity, supportive regulatory environments, and access to people and expertise, which is very important.
If you look at our exposure in these areas, we have significant exposure to many early-stage projects in these regions. Now, if you think about diversification of the portfolio, our portfolio is well-diversified. So that provides stability. Our operators are best in class. We have some of the largest and best-capitalized companies in the world. Obviously, they've got very well-experienced workforces. We have 37 mines that are contributing revenue today. So that portfolio breadth is great compared to any producing mining company. Our underlying assets, so just over half, are from precious metals mines, and just under half would be from gold, copper, or base metals mines. And our largest country exposures are to Canada, the USA, the Dominican Republic, and Chile. So these are all mining-friendly jurisdictions. And this portfolio diversification reduces our exposure to single asset or operator or jurisdiction risks.
As we look at our portfolio and how it is broken up and the stages of assets within the portfolio, you can see that we do have assets that span the various stages of mining project development. We have about 140 assets today that are not producing in various stages of either exploration, evaluation, and development. There's always the potential for organic growth from within the portfolio for any assets that advance through the development pipeline to production. We've got a couple of recent examples that have just started producing revenue to us, would be King of the Hills and Bellevue. These are assets in Australia that have been in the portfolio for well over a decade, and they've just started to produce revenue. If you'd asked us five years ago whether these assets would ever produce revenue, we'd probably say it's doubtful.
But with new management teams and with the higher gold price, what has happened is you've had these assets come back to life, and now they have very good prospects ahead of them. So very pleased to see that organic growth. And if we look at some of the specifics of the organic growth that we see ahead of us today, this slide shows some of the key catalysts from various assets. And we have in the blue arrows, we see some of the assets that are producing today where there's potential for mine life extension or production increases. And as you go down further on the slide, you can see some of the assets with the gold arrows. They have either just started producing or will produce soon.
So we've seen first gold was poured in the first quarter of this year at Mara Rosa in Brazil and the Côté Gold Project in Ontario. The Goldrush Mine at the Cortez Complex was officially opened in the first quarter of this year. And we're expecting first gold to be poured at the Manh Choh Project in Alaska on July 8th, so just in a couple of weeks. And if you look a little bit further down the timeline, you can see the Back River. We're expecting to see first production there in 2025 and the Great Bear Project later towards the end of this decade. So all of this growth is free optionality to our shareholders. All of it is funded. We do not need to pay anything additional for exposure to this growth.
Now, I'm going to talk about acquisitions because we can't rely on organic growth to grow our portfolio. We're always busy looking at opportunities and adding to the portfolio when we see the good opportunities. This slide gives you a sense of what we've done in the last several transactions. Going back about three years, we've deployed $1.2 billion of capital on six large transactions on five assets. All of these provide gold exposure with upside potential in safe jurisdictions. We've funded these acquisitions using cash on hand at our revolving credit facility, as I talked about a few minutes ago. We haven't diluted our shareholders by issuing any equity as we've done these transactions. I'll just give a very brief overview of the long-term potential of these acquisitions.
Starting on the left-hand side of the slide, at Cortez in Nevada, we have owned royalty interest there since the beginning of the company, but we had the opportunity to buy some more in 2022 that gave us exposure to the entire Cortez Complex. This is a world-class gold complex in a mining-friendly jurisdiction. It's operated by a JV owned by Barrick and Newmont, the biggest gold mining companies in the world. And as I said, the new Gold Rush mine just started operating in the Cortez Complex, and the operators are pushing forward growth potential at the Fourm ile Project and at the Robertson Project as well. So we're looking forward to seeing that unfold over the next several years. At the Red Chris mine in northern British Columbia, this is now owned by Newmont.
Newmont is advancing a project to convert the mine from a small open pit to a large bulk tonnage underground operation. The expected mine life here is 36+ years, and that does not include additional resources that have been found since some of the more recent studies have been done. At the Xavantina mine in Brazil, the Ero Copper is the operator here. They've had excellent exploration success, and they're now targeting sustained gold production of 60,000 ounces a year. At the Côté Gold Project in Ontario, as I said, they just poured the first gold in March, and they're targeting commercial production in the third quarter of this year. And finally, the Great Bear Project in Ontario, there is now over 6 million ounces of resources that have been identified. Kinross is looking to continue exploration and add to this resource potential over the next several years.
They're targeting production in the 2028-2029 period. So if I was to sum all of these up, I'd say there's a common theme, and that's all consistent with our strategy. These assets are all precious metals assets, and all of them provide further exposure to production and exploration upside. Now, I'm going to end the presentation talking about valuation. This slide shows our price to net asset value and our price to cash flow multiples over time relative to our peers. I think what I draw away from this or what I take away from this is we are trading at attractive multiples relative to where we have in the past. Our business is performing very well. We've got strong cash flow. We're very disciplined in the way that we've allocated our capital. We have very good organic growth ahead of us.
However, the multiples, especially the price to cash flow multiples, seems to be lagging, and we're trading the bottom half of our peer group. I don't think the market has yet recognized the quality of the cash flow that we have from within the portfolio. It's a diversified and high-quality set of assets, and I just don't think the market has given us credit for that yet. So it feels like the value and the optionality is not yet recognized or reflected in the multiples, but it also, if you step back and you look at the gold sector more generally, I don't think the market is pricing in a higher longer-term gold price. I think that is probably more likely than not.
So if you look at the multiples and where we are trading, we have traded at a much higher share price at a much lower gold price, and now we're at record gold prices, and our share price has not quite reflected that yet. So I think there's a very interesting valuation opportunity in Royal Gold shares today. So with that, I've come to the end. I do believe we're in a very good position today. Our record is strong. The business is performing well. We've got high-quality assets and a diversified portfolio that's got organic growth potential from within it. We are trading at attractive valuations. We've got a strong balance sheet, got ample liquidity to continue growing our business.
So we're feeling good about the way Royal Gold is positioned today. So Julia, with that, I've come to the end of the formal part of the presentation. I'd be happy to turn it back to you for Q&A.
Excellent. Thank you, Alistair, for the presentation. As mentioned, we will now start the Q&A. Your first question for today, a viewer is asking, how does Royal Gold's revenue growth compare to peers in the industry?
We have had smaller revenue growth than some of our peers over the past couple of years, but I think our revenue growth tends to depend on what assets are coming in, how they're performing from within the portfolio. You can't necessarily look back and project that into the future. But we feel good about some of the organic growth potential within the portfolio. And of course, the gold price on top of that just means that that will be a further tailwind to any revenue growth. We don't give long-term guidance, so I can't tell you what our revenue growth will be.
But when we set our dividend, and this is the way I often answer this question, when we set our dividend, we raise it every year, but it's not just a one-year exercise. We look forward several years into the portfolio to try and understand where we will be. Will we be able in one or two or three years to raise our dividend then if we raise our dividend today? So that hopefully gives a sense of the way we think about our portfolio and the way we think about the growth within our business and our ability to fund a higher dividend in the future. So yeah, I think we're quite positive, and that would be reflected in the way that we have grown our dividend.
Excellent. Thank you for your insight. Your next question, a viewer is asking, when do you expect to see the Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Mount Milligan mine life extension?
We expect to see that in the second half or, sorry, in the first half of next year. So this is going to be this could be a very positive story for Royal Gold. If they are able to extend the mine life, currently the mine life goes to 2035, but they've identified a significant amount of low-grade resource material that is not in the mine plan. They're also doing exploration to try and bring some of that material into the mine plan. So if they're able to extend the mine life beyond 2035, that will be a very, very positive thing for Royal Gold. So we're looking forward to seeing that study.
Our technical team was on site about two weeks ago, and they came back very impressed with the work that's going on with the study. So it looks like everything is proceeding very well, and they're on track to meet that timeline of sometime in the first half of next year.
Excellent. Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, a viewer is asking, is Peñasquito on track for higher gold production in H2?
I believe it is. And the thing that's happened at Peñasquito is there are two pits there. And one is very. It's got a relatively high gold grade, and the second pit has higher base metals grades. They have been stripping in the higher gold grade portion of the mine. So that pit has been doing. There's been some stripping. There's been less gold production.
As they move throughout the year, they're expecting to finish complete that stripping. They'll be getting into ore. And so I think it probably makes sense that there will be higher gold production at Peñasquito towards the end of this year. But really, what Newmont has said is that the bulk of that will be seen in 2025. So I think that's when you should expect higher production from Peñasquito would be in 2025. You may see some incremental improvement as we go throughout this year, but 2025 would be the large delta.
Great. Thank you for shedding light on that. Moving on to your next question. As the junior mining sector is hungry for funding, do you feel you may invest in earlier stage companies?
Well, we certainly have a lot of opportunities to look at because there seems to be a lack of capital in the sector generally. Equity markets aren't open. A lot of junior companies can't access the debt markets, and debt's more expensive anyway. So we're getting a lot of companies calling us about helping them finance their projects. So I think there is a very interesting opportunity set ahead of us today. It is earlier stage. I mean, when you're talking about that kind of thing, you're always or often talking about earlier stage projects.
That means that we just have to do more due diligence. We just have to be a lot more careful about some of the risks, especially when it comes to things like permitting. Companies that put teams together, are the teams do they have the experience to be able to advance projects? Are there community issues around new assets? Are there any questions in their studies that they haven't answered sufficiently? So we do a lot of due diligence on earlier stage opportunities relative to cash flowing opportunities, but there is a good opportunity set ahead of us from smaller projects, you're right.
Great. Thank you for your answer. Your next question, a viewer commented, with only $75 million in debt reported in Q1, can we expect that you may be debt-free in a H2 ?
Yeah, we expect to pay down our debt sometime early in the third quarter of this year, so within the next several or a couple of months. So we'll be in a very strong position from a balance sheet perspective. And as I said, what we'll do is we'll continue to build cash from our portfolio. We'll continue to let that build up, and we'll just wait for opportunities to present themselves. And hopefully, we'll be in a great position. If we do see a number of opportunities, we'll be able to fund those without having to use debt again.
Great. Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, a viewer is asking, do you foresee ESG standards to ramp up in regions like Africa or Central America in the coming years to a point where more projects would meet standards by your due diligence?
I think ESG standards are generally around the world improving or increasing. We apply our own lens to things. So regardless of what the local standards may be, we will apply what we think are the right standards when we look at opportunities. I think that would be the best and wisest thing to do because if you invest in assets based on local standards that may not be world standards, then what happens is those standards tend to increase or become more rigorous over time.
You don't want to invest in a project today based on lower standards and find out that in several years, standards or requirements have increased, and so suddenly those operations can no longer operate. We don't want that to happen. So what we do is we will look at opportunities. Regardless of the local regulations and standards, we will often apply what we think is best practice and make sure that operations or teams are at least thinking about those things the same way.
Excellent. Thank you for elaborating on that. Your next question, what is the current global supply/demand statistics for gold and silver?
Well, for gold, I think what you've seen is an incredible demand from central banks. And it's been central bank buying mostly in the eastern part of the globe and for a couple of reasons. And it's really around de-dollarization of reserves. And so central banks have been buying gold physically to perhaps replace some of the assets that, if they're US dollar denominated, they may believe that the US dollar has a long-term weakening trend, or there may also be political reasons for it as well. It's very difficult to sanction gold, whereas it's a lot easier to sanction financial instruments.
So that buying has been at record levels for the last several months. And I think if you were to ask the World Gold Council, who does a lot of research on the gold market, they would say that they expect that demand to continue. And so it's not a short-term phenomenon. It's a longer-term thing that is occurring, and we're probably in the earlier stages of that. So that's very good for the fundamentals of gold.
I think with silver, there's always a link between the silver price and the gold price. Historically, there tends to be a little bit of a lag sometimes when one metal performs and the other doesn't, but they generally do have. There is a correlation, or at least they tend to move together. I think the silver price, though, is unique because there's an industrial demand component to the silver price. And if you look at where a lot of silver is used, it's in photovoltaic applications, so solar panels. And around the world, as you think about places that don't have access to grid power, but they have lots of sunshine, solar panels are becoming a bigger part of the energy grid. And so I think the long-term industrial demand for silver is probably quite positive.
And obviously, if the gold price does well, the silver price will probably follow it, and then you've got that industrial demand on top of it. So we feel pretty bullish on the silver price as well.
Great. Thank you for your insight. Your next question, a viewer commented, i-80 Gold released today positive metallurgical results from Ruby Hill and Golden Hill. They state this makes it one of the largest gold/silver deposits in the United States. Any comments to your royalty would be very welcome.
Well, I haven't seen that announcement from today, so that's definitely good news. I don't think it's surprising. I think we expect i-80 to be very focused on Ruby Hill. It's definitely an interesting asset. They have had tremendous exploration success there as they scope it out, and they seem to be finding more things.
Every time we turn around, they seem to have another positive development in that story. So it's very good news if they are talking about metallurgical success there. That's great news. So I'll have to have a look at that specifically, but I can't give any comments other than to say it's probably one of the more interesting exploration projects in our portfolio. We do have a royalty over the entire area.
Excellent. Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, your total revenue has been relatively stable over the past three years. Can investors expect to see the same moving forward, or do you feel an increase is on the horizon due to higher metal prices?
Well, certainly, I mean, there are two components to revenue. There's the underlying production itself, and then there's obviously the metal price. As I said, answering I think was the first question, we don't give long-term guidance on our production volumes. We don't control the assets that we invest in, so it's difficult for us to give credible guidance into the future. But certainly, with the metal price doing what it's doing, if we expect this metal price to stay at or around this level, that should provide a nice tailwind to us. So we feel quite positive about the revenue potential within the portfolio.
Great. Thank you for your response. We're coming up to your last three questions for today. Your next question, a viewer is asking, have there been any other provinces in Canada that have promising projects that Royal Gold has been evaluating?
Yeah, we have looked at other projects, other places in Canada. I would say most of the opportunities that we have seen, though, are where you would expect. They'd be British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. Now, those are the three main mining areas within Canada. There are other projects elsewhere. There aren't as many, though. So most of our recent focus has been in those three areas. But on the east coast of Canada, we've seen a few interesting projects as well. So we don't look at necessarily. We don't target provinces. We target jurisdictions. And so we see Canada as one place that's a safe place to invest. We're happy to invest in Canada.
So whether it's any of those three provinces that I mentioned or maybe something, if it's Nova Scotia or what have you, they're all favorable jurisdictions for us within a safe country.
Great. Thank you for your answer. Your next question, a viewer is asking, what percentage of revenue comes from North America?
It was just over 50% last quarter. So the largest contributor would be Canada. So that's mostly British Columbia. And then the second contributor would be Nevada in the U.S. If you include Mexico as part of North America, which technically it is, and some say it is Latin America, then that is another revenue contributor to us. But between Canada and the U.S., it's over 50%, just over 50%.
Great. Thank you for your response. And your last question for today, a viewer is asking, does Royal Gold hold shares of mining companies? If so, what is the plan for the shares?
We don't have any significant share positions today. We typically don't like to hold equity. We have done, and we will do it sometimes if it makes sense. But we don't take speculative positions in equity of other mining companies. We have the lowest share count in the GDX, as I said. And so we have to mark-to-market changes in any equity positions. And so it can cause volatility in earnings per share if we have large equity positions. That's one reason we don't do it.
The second is, as an investor, you don't need us to make investments in companies for you. You can do that directly. So it's cleaner. It's simpler if we just focus on our core business, which is really royalties and streams. Now, sometimes we do get asked by companies if they want a royalty or a stream investment, they would like us to take some equity. We'll consider that, and we have done that in the past, but it's not a main focus for us. Excellent.
Thank you, Alistair, for all your answers today. Thank you to our viewers who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your question, feel free to reach out to your account manager here at Redmark. This concludes our presentation for today. Before we go, I will turn it back over to Alistair for final remarks.
Well, thanks, Julia. And thanks very much for all the questions today. If there's anything else that comes to mind, or if you'd like me to go into any more detail on a question, please let me know. I'd be happy to get back to you. You can contact me via Redmark, and I'll get back to you personally. So thanks very much. And if I don't hear from you, I look forward to speaking to you again sometime in the future.
Thank you again, Alistair, for the presentation today. Once again, this was Royal Gold Inc., trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Seattle and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24-48 hours after the presentation under the NDR Library tab. Stay tuned for other presentations in your area. Thank you, and see you next time.