Hello and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual Non-Deal Roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, Virtual Event Moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Boston and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session through which you can participate using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. That being said, I will now hand over to Alistair.
Thank you, Noella, and thanks everybody for your attention today. The strong gold price environment continues, so it's very timely for me to be giving you an update on Royal Gold today. As I start, I will make the obligatory comments before making statements. There are risks and uncertainties in the statements that I'll make today that could cause actual results to differ materially. All of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC. During the presentation today, I will give you an overview and an investment thesis for Royal Gold and what we provide to investors, which is precious metals exposure with consistent financial performance and a focus on per-share metrics. The presentation is divided into five sections.
I'll talk about our low-risk leverage to gold, our long history of executing on a very simple business strategy, our business model itself, which is quite unique, organic growth from within our portfolio, and then finally valuation, which I think if you look at over the long term, we're trading at pretty attractive levels today. So, to give you an overview of Royal Gold, we are a high-margin business. We generate consistent cash flows from precious metals. We've been in the business since the 1980s, and we've been on the NASDAQ for over 40 years. We have two segments to our business. We have streams, which produce about two-thirds of our revenue, and royalties produce about one-third. Royalties and streams do have structural differences, but they essentially provide the same thing, which is top-line exposure to mining assets. We released our Q4 results last week.
It was also our 2024 results release. We had an excellent Q4, and it really ended an excellent year for Royal Gold. We had record revenue, earnings, and cash flow, not just for the quarter, but for the entire year, and we saw our EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter increase to about 84%. Our revenue in the quarter was 76% gold, pretty consistent with where it has been over the past several quarters, and 60% of our revenue came from Canada, the USA, and Australia, so safe jurisdictions. We achieved our sales guidance for 2024, with the exception of silver, where we were slightly below the low end of the range, and that was due to an asset issue at PVM in the Dominican Republic, which we've talked about many times.
We ended the year in the quarter with zero debt and about $1.2 billion of liquidity available to us to deploy for new transactions. It was an excellent year, an excellent quarter. The results were very, very good, and they demonstrate that we have continued high margins and a business that benefits from strong and rising gold prices. Just where we are relative to our peers, this is an important slide to show. We think we sit in a very interesting position. We're large enough to compete for the largest transactions. We've got lots of cash flow from our portfolio. We have access to low-cost capital. Yet, we're also small enough to be able to show growth. A small transaction in Royal Gold can add meaningful value. A small transaction to our largest peers is tougher for them to show growth.
We're not aiming to be the best, though. Sorry, we're not aiming to be the biggest. We are aiming to be the best. So, we think the Goldilocks position that we're in provides a very good platform for us to be able to continue our strategy of growing in gold. Now, I'll talk in this next section about our leverage to gold, and the slide shows the different ways you can invest in gold and how Royal Gold is positioned. And we provide, our model provides the exposure to precious metals without many of the risks that come with owning equity investments in mining companies or exploration companies. We provide exposure to gold, the price itself, but also the optionality of the assets where we have interests while reducing the downside risk by not having direct exposure to operating capital costs.
That's very important when you think about inflation and margin erosion. There are other ways you can invest in gold. You can be conservative and invest in the metal itself, but an ounce will always be an ounce. It will cost you to hold it, and you won't get a dividend. You can be more aggressive and own a mining company or an exploration company, but with those, you will also get exposure to operating capital cost risks. There are some who would say that we do not provide the same leverage as an operating company to the gold price, but I think if you look at our financial results from the last quarter or the last year, you would find that that's not a true statement. Now, our historic performance, this shows you that leverage.
We have a very good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to precious metals. On the left-hand side, you can see our betas to the gold price of 1.8 is very strong, and on the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance. Going back to the beginning of the GDX index in 2006, we've outperformed the gold price. We've outperformed the GDX index. We've also outperformed the general market indices. So, I think that speaks to the long-term nature of our performance. Now, we have a long history of executing on our business strategy, and I'm going to talk about that in this next section. It's really driven around consistency and disciplined performance, and this slide shows our 20-year history of capital allocation and growth, which is driven by providing per-share accretive growth to our shareholders.
Since 2000, our revenue and cash flow have grown significantly, as you can see on this slide. There are three aspects of this growth that I just want to highlight. The first is our business is high margin, and it's very scalable. You can see that because our revenue growth has far exceeded the growth in our G&A expense. We don't need to add people when we need to add a new asset to the portfolio. We can scale our business. We have 30 employees in the company. We can grow that business without having to add new headcount. Second is our revenue growth isn't dependent solely on metal prices. We've had a great tailwind recently from the gold price, but that's not the thing that's provided the additional growth to our revenue.
We've been able to add volume over the last 20 years to our portfolio by adding new assets. And then finally, we've financed our growth largely from internal sources without a significant rise in our share count over this period. We're one of the founding members of the GDX index, and we have the lowest share count by far of any other member in the index. We have not issued equity since 2012, and we want to try and avoid shareholder dilution. So, if we can fund our business using internal resources, then that provides that per-share growth to our shareholders. I'll talk for a moment or two on liquidity. We have to be patient in our business. We have to maintain a strong balance sheet. We have to maintain liquidity on hand to be able to finance opportunities as they arise, and sometimes they can arise quite quickly.
We look to fund our business using cash on hand first, operating cash flow, and then a revolving credit facility, and equity is at the end of the list. The waterfall graph on the left shows what we did and how we allocated our cash flow in 2024, so we used our operating cash flow. The majority of it was used to repay debt. We paid our dividend, and we also reinvested in the business. We had liquidity at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year last year, of $1.2 billion, and that includes working capital of about almost $200 million, and our revolving credit facility is completely undrawn at this point, which provides us lots of liquidity for the business development environment we find ourselves in today.
Now, this slide just shows our revolving credit facility and how we've used it over the past several years. You can see it's a $1 billion revolver. It provides cheap and flexible financing. There are eight banks, top-tier banks in the facility, so we're not reliant on one particular bank. And what we do is we draw on this revolving credit facility to finance an acquisition or finance a need for capital, and we'll pay that back from cash flow as it comes in in subsequent quarters. 2022 was a big year for acquisitions for us. We ended the year with $575 million of debt after we acquired two very long-life royalty assets, a Cortez and a Great Bear. We've now repaid all of that debt, and that really shows you how quickly we can deleverage this business from cash flow produced from the portfolio.
Now, there is an interest cost to own or to draw on debt, to use debt to finance our business, but we think a short-term interest expense is a worthy trade-off when you think about adding multi-decade assets to the portfolio like what we did in 2022. So, I'll talk now about return of capital and our dividend, which is really a strategic focus for us at Royal Gold and is something that makes us absolutely unique when you think about us and other precious metals investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000. We've increased the dividend every year since 2001, and that's despite volatility in the gold price. In November of 2024, we raised our dividend for the 24th consecutive annual year, and that was a 12.5% increase over the prior year's period.
We've now paid out about $1 billion in dividends to our shareholders, and we're the only company in the GDX index that's paid an increasing dividend every year since the GDX was formed. We're the only precious metals company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So, that is a very unique attribute with Royal Gold when you think about any other precious metals investment you can make. Now, another unique attribute that we like to think about is our competency when it comes to due diligence. And due diligence is very important. When you're adding assets, you want to make sure you add the right assets and avoid adding the wrong ones to our portfolio. And we're always busy, always looking at new opportunities, but not all opportunities make it through a process that's very disciplined.
Our due diligence process is extensive, and we are very disciplined in the way that we deploy our capital. If we see risks in an asset that we don't like, we're happy to walk away. We don't feel pressure to do transactions. So, if we can't find the right opportunities, what we'll do is we'll collect cash flow from the portfolio, we'll build our balance sheet, and we'll wait. And 2023 is a good case in point. You can see on this graph that there was no activity. It looks like there was no activity in 2023. There were no closed transactions. But we were very busy in 2022. So, what we did in 2023, we just didn't see the right opportunities for us that didn't meet our strategic criteria for investment. So, we paid down our debt. We built up our liquidity, and we were patient.
Now, another aspect of our business that's unique is we do not have operating control of the assets in our portfolio, but ESG considerations have always been a very important part of our business. We invest for the long term, so making sure that the investments that we add or the investments we make are sustainable, that's a very important part of our business and an important part of our due diligence process. We will build language into our transaction documents to make sure that operators operate the assets to the best of their abilities and according to well-established standards.
And we'll look to see if there are opportunities for us to invest alongside operators to improve social or other aspects around the assets we'll reinvest because those assets, if they continue producing, they're continued revenue generators to Royal Gold, which is an important part of our focus on the long term. MSCI and Sustainalytics are two influential ratings providers in our sector, and you can see how we're ranked by both of those. We're top-rated by Sustainalytics, and we're AA ranked by MSCI. Now, in this next section, I'm going to talk about our business model and some of the factors that make it unique. And the key to our business model really is optionality, and that's optionality to the assets that we invest in, to the reserve and resource growth at those assets without having to make further investments. So, there are two examples shown on this slide.
Both of these investments were made almost 10 years ago, first as a PV in the Dominican Republic, the second as Wassa in Ghana, and in both cases, the total reserves and resources today are higher than at the time that we made the original investments, and that's in addition to the cash that we've received from PV, which allowed us. It's 95% of what we put in, and at Wassa, it's 170% of what we put in, and there are still growth projects underway at both assets, so at PV, there's a plant expansion in the final stages, and there's a tailings facility expansion that should extend the mine life to 2046. At Wassa, there's a big resource that could, if it's brought into the mine plant, could extend the mine life by another 20 years beyond the initial or beyond the existing reserve life.
The thing that's common about both of these is that we do not need to fund any more capital or invest further to get exposure to these upsides. This is growth that we've already paid for, and it's optionality that our shareholders receive. And it's not exploration and production upside. It's very important when we look at new opportunities because it's probably the thing that drives our business the most. Another unique aspect of our business is our business model itself. It's very efficient. We have 30 employees in the company. Last year, we produced over $700 million of revenue. Today, our market cap is just over $9.5 billion. So, on a per-employee basis, we compare well to any large company in any sector. And that low employee count means that we have a low fixed cash G&A, which further contributes to our efficiency.
Our EBITDA margin in 2024 was 81% for the year. Our Cash G&A was about 4% of our revenue. In the fourth quarter, with the rapid run-up in the gold price and our consistent costs, our EBITDA margin actually increased to 84%, and the G&A, Cash G&A, dropped to 3% of our revenue. That shows you that we do directly benefit from a rising gold price. Our G&A is low. It is made up mostly of fixed costs, so inflation should not be something that impacts our margins. This next slide, the point of this slide is to show you how our G&A and cost structure differs from the average gold producer. Gold producers, they use a lot of things in their production process, and those things are often tied, or the costs of those are tied to inflation.
Input costs, things like labor, energy, consumables, and so on, many of those things are actually commodity-based costs. When the gold price does well, those commodity prices rise as well, so you don't get that expanded margin. Some of these actually maybe hit harder as a result of tariffs. As tariffs become something that's widely applied, then you may see things like steel for grinding media or other energy, things like that may actually, those costs may increase, which will shrink margins for the producers. Our G&A costs, on the other hand, though, are pretty steady. Things like salaries, services, office rents, they're not typically subject to short-term increases, and our margins are much less exposed to inflation pressure simply because we're not directly exposed to the cost increases that a producer would see. Now, I'll spend a few minutes talking about our portfolio.
This slide shows a map of where we are. You can see we're located in the lower risk, more mine-friendly jurisdictions. Our principal properties are called out on the right-hand side. Those are the assets that provide the bulk of our revenue. Those four assets provide about 55% of our revenue last year. And where we are in terms of mining camps, just showing this next slide. So, about 50% of our revenue comes from, or came from in 2024, came from Nevada, British Columbia, and Western Australia. And we do have significant exposure to these regions. Historical mining areas are good hunting ground for us because there's excellent prospectivity there already, as proven by the fact that there are mines. Second is you often find supportive regulatory environments. And thirdly, that's where you find people who actually understand the mining business.
They have the skills to be able to work in those places. There's a saying that the best place to find a mine is near a mine. So, we're well situated to capture additional optionality from exploration success in these camps. Now, as we think about diversification, our portfolio is very well diversified, and that provides stability to us. So, you look at our operators, they're best in class, large, well-capitalized, experienced. We have 42 mines that produce revenue today. That portfolio breadth compares very well to any mining company out there. Our underlying assets are about 50% precious metals focused, and then 50% would be base and precious metals. And more than 50% of our revenue comes from Canada and the USA. So, and the remainder of the jurisdictions where we operate are pretty mining-friendly jurisdictions.
That portfolio diversification reduces our risk when it comes to single asset exposure or operator exposure or jurisdictional exposure. Now, our portfolio can be a source of organic growth as well. And if you look at our portfolio, it spans the various stages of mining project development. We have 133 assets that are not in production today that are at the various stages of either exploration, evaluation, or development. And we would expect there to be some organic growth from within the portfolio as assets advance through this pipeline to production. Examples of this recently would be King of the Hills and Bellevue, which were in our portfolio for over a decade, just sitting there. We didn't ascribe any value to them. And now they're revenue producers because they've got new management teams and a new gold price environment.
They've looked at those assets and said, you know, we can do things differently, and we can get those assets into production, and now they're creating revenue for us. So, that's growth that came from within the portfolio. And to continue on that theme, this slide just shows, I'm not going to go through this in any detail because there's a lot here, but we do see a number of key catalysts at various assets within the portfolio. And if there are any mine expansions or extensions or new production from within the portfolio, that really provides that optionality that I mentioned earlier. Those incremental improvements do provide that free optionality, and this is growth that we don't have to pay for. It's already paid for.
Now, we have been busy adding to the portfolio as well as relying on. We don't just rely on organic growth as well as enjoying organic growth. We do add to the portfolio when it makes sense, and this slide summarizes what we've done in the last several years. Since June 2021, we've deployed $1.2 billion of capital on several transactions. These are all gold assets with significant upside potential in safe jurisdictions. We funded these transactions using cash on hand at our revolving credit facility. We haven't diluted our shareholders by issuing equity to acquire these assets, and I'll just give you a very quick explanation as to what these are. Cortez in Nevada, top left-hand corner. We own several royalty interests here. We've owned these since the beginning of the company, but we bought more in 2022.
They give us bigger exposure to probably one of the best gold complexes in the world. It's in Nevada. It's operated by Barrick and Newmont, two of the biggest companies in our sector. There's a tremendous amount of growth potential here. There's a new Goldrush Mine that's ramping up. The Four Mile Project looks like it's world-class on its very own. The Robertson Property also is moving along. There's exploration potential here. This is a fantastic asset to be exposed to. The Red Chris Mine in northern British Columbia is now owned by Newmont. This is a large copper gold project that is transitioning to a large bulk tonnage operation from a relatively small open pit, 36-plus year mine life. We're looking forward to hearing from Newmont later this week around their plans for this asset.
Xavantina in Brazil, small, high-grade underground gold mine, has had tremendous exploration success. Ero Copper is the operator here. They're targeting 50,000-60,000 ounces of production from this asset in the next several years. Côté Gold in Ontario is in the final stages of ramping up. Construction was completed last year and entered commercial production late in the year. The Great Bear Project in Ontario is another one of these emerging world-class opportunities. Kinross, who's the operator here, released a preliminary economic assessment in September last year, 6.6 million ounces of resources. They're expecting 500,000 ounces a year of production over the first eight years of the mine life. But they're also doing exploration that should add to that and hopefully improve that project metrics over the next several years. And then finally, Back River in Nunavut. This is an asset that is in construction.
We're expecting this to provide new revenue to us around the middle of this year. The mine plan, as it stands today, we'll see the asset produce about 3.3 million ounces over a 15-year mine life. We have about a 3.3% gross smelter return equivalent royalty on this asset. We're very excited with this. All of these are consistent with our strategy. So, they all provide great exposure to production and exploration upside in safe jurisdictions in a metal that we understand very well. Now, as promised, I'll make a couple of comments on our valuation in this next section. And you can see on this slide how we've been trading over the past 10-plus years. We are trading at pretty historically attractive multiples. Our business is performing extremely well. We've got very strong cash flow. We've been very disciplined with our capital allocation.
We've got good organic growth coming from within the portfolio, but I think if you look at our share price, it does not seem to be reflecting the strong gold price outlook, especially when you look at our cash flow multiple. We're trading at the bottom end of the peer group. I just think the market is missing the value of the long-life assets and the optionality that we have within the portfolio, and it feels like the market's just not giving us recognition for what should probably be a sustained higher gold price environment and the strong cash flow that will come to our portfolio as a result of being exposed to that gold price, so with that, Noel, I have come to the end of the formal part of the presentation. As I've said, it's really, we've had a very good string of several quarters.
We're very well positioned today. Our record is very strong. Business is performing well. We've got high-quality assets in good jurisdictions and a very diversified portfolio that should provide organic growth. We're trading at an attractive valuation. We've got a strong balance sheet, lots of liquidity to look for new transactions. So, we're feeling very good about the future for Royal Gold. So, with that, Noella, I'll turn it back to you for Q&A.
Thank you, Alistair, for the presentation. As you said, we'll now begin the Q&A. Your first question is, how does the company prioritize new investments?
So, we're always busy looking at different things at different times, and sometimes it's hard to prioritize because we'll be looking at something, and then something very interesting will come in halfway through a review. So, you're not always looking at things at the same stage of analysis.
What we try and, you know, our strategy really is to be investing in gold assets in good jurisdictions with strong upside potential and strong counterparties, so you know, if anything comes in that checks those boxes, then we will move forward very seriously on those opportunities. We do often find that there's something that comes in and may have one or more of those boxes aren't checked, and so, we'll discard those very quickly if they're not things that are of interest. We have to be very careful. We don't have a large team, as I mentioned, so we have to be very careful that we don't spend a lot of time looking at things that aren't going to make it, so we have to be careful prioritizing, but it is very much a judgment call on those metrics that I mentioned.
Thank you for that response.
Your next question is, how exposed is Royal Gold to potential changes in mining regulations or tax laws?
Well, if there are regulations or tax laws that affect assets, we do have exposure to those. We don't have direct exposure, but if the operator is subject to a new regulation, then it will impact us potentially because if it impacts production, then it will impact our take or percentage of that production. So, we do have some exposure. Taxes are the same thing. So, if governments put in higher taxes on assets where we have interests, if it disincentivizes the operator to continue operating or continue investing in that asset because their cost structure has changed, then it may impact us. We don't see a direct impact, but there could be a follow-on impact. Now, it often takes time for that to work out.
So, it may not be from one day to the next that we see the impact, but what we may see happen is that investment is slowed at the asset, which means reserve growth may not be as fast as what you would expect. So, it may have a longer-term negative impact and not right in the immediate term.
Thank you for your insight on that. Next is, what are the expected production and revenue contributions from key assets, for example, Mount Milligan, Pueblo Viejo, and Andacollo?
So, we haven't given our own guidance yet for 2025. We're expecting to do that sometime towards the end of next month. And at that point, I'll be able to speak in more clarity. But all I can do is point you to the public guidance that operators have put out so far.
With respect to Andacollo, Teck is expecting copper production to increase significantly in 2025. Gold and copper there tend to move together, so it would stand to reason that gold production should improve at Andacollo. At PV, Pueblo Viejo, the plant expansion is ongoing. There are a number of projects that are underway to improve throughput and continue to ramp up this year, so we would expect to see more gold production from PV as the year progresses, and there are a number of other assets that have put out guidance, but Mount Milligan is not yet one of those, so I can't talk to that yet. We would expect them to, since we're to talk about that towards the end of this week when they come out with their quarterly results.
But all that to say, if you want a consolidated number from us, you'll have to wait a little while, about a month, before we can put that out into the marketplace.
Thank you for your insight on that. Next is, how does your valuation compare to Wheaton Precious Metals and Franco-Nevada?
So, we trade at a discount. And that's one of the things that is frustrating and puzzling because if you think about our business and you think about our financial results, we have done very, very well. And I just don't think the market is giving us credit for those results. I think that will come around. I think there's clearly a disconnect when it comes to the price-to-cash flow multiple relative to our peers. That does not make sense to me. I think our portfolio is well diversified. We've got very strong contributors within the portfolio.
We've got som e assets, as I mentioned, that are expected to improve production in 2025 relative to 2024. I just don't think the market's recognized it yet. I think one of the things that does hamper us a little bit is the fact that we are relatively small in that. So, there's a, in any sector, you'll always find that there's a premium paid for the largest, most liquid companies in those sectors, and we're just not the largest. So, I think that is part of the discount. But I think the rest of the discount is that the market just has not given us benefit for the strength of our portfolio.
Thank you, Alistair. Next, a viewer asked, are you expecting your partners to replace reserves?
So, this is a bit similar to the question on guidance.
We haven't seen reserve numbers come out from all of our operators yet for the year. We've seen a few. We're expecting Newmont, Centerra later this week. Barrick certainly did replace reserves. In fact, they grew the resources at Cortez pretty significantly last year with the Four Mile Project, and they expect to continue growing that as well. You know, the one catalyst, and Centerra will talk about this later this week, and it's very much in the public domain, but the one catalyst at Mount Milligan, which is our largest revenue contributor, is what is happening with the study to extend the mine life. They've talked about a PEA study coming out in the middle of this year that will look at mine life extension potential beyond 2035.
If that occurs, then clearly that will be a big, you'll see a resource and a reserve increase at Mount Milligan as a result of that. It will take time for all those studies to be completed and for us to see a reserve increase. But directionally, we should have a pretty good idea of mid-year as to what's happening at Mount Milligan.
Thank you for that response. The next question is, are you more likely to buy a royalty or a small royalty company?
I would say on balance, more likely to buy a royalty. We can look at a royalty very in detail. If we're looking at one thing, we'll look at it in detail, and we'll negotiate a price that we think is fair. And that price will be around that asset value.
If you look at a company, then generally you're looking at paying a Control Premium on top of what the market may already value at a premium. So, and you'll always, in a portfolio, when you buy a company, you're getting a portfolio of assets generally. And there will be some things in there that we just don't like. And so, unfortunately, what you have to do when you buy companies, you have to pay for everything that's in that company. And there may be assets that we would prefer not to own, and we still need to pay for them. So, it's better value for us, we think.
It's a better way for us to grow our business by buying assets one at a time and paying fair value for those assets rather than buying portfolios of assets that we don't, where there may be things that we don't want, but we still have to pay a premium for those assets.
Thank you, Alistair. Next is, given its long-term demand outlook, do you see the company further increasing its exposure to copper in the near future?
It's not a strategic focus for us to increase our exposure to copper. We did do a copper transaction, a small royalty transaction at the end of last quarter. It was completely opportunistic. It was something that came to us. We thought it looked very interesting. The project is very good. It's in Arizona, so a very good jurisdiction for copper.
And it's also run by a management team who we know well. We've had a lot of experience with them in the past, and we like them. They're very credible. So, it was an opportunity for us that is a long mine life. It is a very attractive metal. It's got a lot of things that check a lot of boxes, but it's not something that we were actively trying to add that kind of thing to th e portfolio. It was, as I said, it was opportunistic. It came in. It was a good returning asset for us. We thought it's too good to pass up, so we should buy it. But it wasn't part of a strategic shift. We're still very much precious metals focused.
Thank you for that response.
The next question is, with the gold price at record highs, is management finding it more difficult to secure attractive deals at reasonable valuations?
It is certainly a challenge. When the gold price has risen as it has and it continues to rise, then there's a disconnect in valuation between a seller and a buyer. As a buyer, we're not going to use today's spot price to value assets. As a seller of assets, the seller will always try and use the highest price possible. So, that's today's spot price. So, it does create a bit of a disconnect. You know, what we end up having to do is negotiate more. It doesn't mean that you can't get transactions completed. It just means that you're probably negotiating longer. It would be nice if we saw the gold price, if it stabilized at $3,000 an ounce, that'd be fantastic.
It'd be great for our portfolio. It would also be easier if it was stable to get transactions done because there would be a little bit more of a consistent view on pricing for the long term. So, it does create a bit of a, you know, it's a challenge, but I wouldn't say it's an insurmountable challenge. We just, we get there. It just takes longer.
Thank you for your insight on that, Alistair. The next question is, how much of the revenue growth in 2024 was attributable to higher production volumes at key assets versus commodity price increases?
That's a good question. I think we haven't separated out the commodity price versus the revenue growth. But our revenue, the commodity price was up about 35% in the fourth quarter over the prior year, and our revenue was up 33%, if I remember correctly.
So, that revenue tracked fairly closely. But what you did see was a mix of revenue created higher margins for us. So, our operating cash flow was up 40%. Our earnings were up 71%. So, we did see over the course of 2024, we saw a number of new assets come into production and start producing more volume for us. And so, we saw new royalties from Mara Rosa, Mara Rosa, Manh Choh, and Côté. Bellevue was continuing to ramp up. It is still continuing to ramp up today. So, we did see new revenue contributions from new assets. But, you know, as those contributions come in during a period of rising gold prices, then you get that double whammy effect of more volume on a higher price. And that just improved our financials altogether.
Thank you, Alistair. The next question for you is, is there any new warmth towards rare earth projects given the high metal prices?
Rare earths aren't something that we look at. We don't understand those metals. We don't understand those markets. It's very hard for us to think about investing in rare earths. We see a lot of good growth potential for us in our core commodities. So, stepping outside of those core commodities to do something different isn't something that we feel we need to do. We're at a size, as I said at the beginning of the presentation, we can do small transactions in the metals that we're focused on, and we can still show growth. For some of our larger peers, I think what you've seen them do is step outside of the commodities simply because they need to show growth from other things.
And so, as we think about cobalt, or we think about lithium, or we think about things like that, they're not of interest to us. We just do not understand those metals. We don't understand those markets, and it's not a focus for us.
Thank you for clarifying that. Next, a viewer says, 25 consecutive years of dividends and increases is the typical aristocrat accreditation. Does that potentially place you into any new funds?
It does, yes. I think we, so we analyzed what that did when we got included in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. We saw between 1% and 2% additional buying as a result of being included in more dividend funds and funds that track dividends.
I think, though, one of the things that there may not be a quantifiable result, but when we talk to generalist investors, and that's who we really pitch ourselves to, is a generalist, somebody who wants to have precious metals exposure, but also the ability to sleep at night. They don't want to worry about assets when they have troubles. What we pitch is our allocation of capital more generally, the way that we allocate capital. And dividends is a big part of that. And so, when we can point to our record of 25 years of dividend payments and 24 years of consecutive annual increases, what that does is it makes a lot of generalist investors appreciate the discipline and our focus on shareholder returns. And so, that helps us with them. It helps us sell the story of this being a well-managed company.
We're not just in the precious metals business getting precious metals leverage. We're also a well-managed company that returns capital to shareholders. So, yes, we did see increases in dividend fund uptake, but we also find that's a very helpful marketing tool for a generalist investor.
Thank you for clarifying that. Next is, how many shares do management and directors hold?
So, we will be coming out with our new proxy in six weeks or so. But as of last year's proxy, we had about 345,000 shares held by directors of management. So, at today's prices, that would be about $50 million of total value. It's an important thing for us to see management and the board own shares, and we are all shareholders as well.
Thank you, Alistair. Next, a viewer says, "Congratulations on paying off your debt, but under what circumstances might you want to take on some?"
It's really the circumstances would be, do we need additional capital to invest in our business? And so, if we see a very attractive opportunity that comes across and we may not have the cash on the balance sheet, then we'll draw on our revolving credit facility. We have no qualms about doing that. We've shown that we can pay it back very quickly. We've got stable cash flow from a well-diversified portfolio, so we feel comfortable drawing on our revolving credit facility to pay down any balance quickly. So, it really depends on the acquisition environment. And, you know, as I said, cash on hand is the first choice because it's relatively low cost for us to deploy on new transactions.
But then, secondly, we have our revolving credit facility, which we repay with cash flow.
Thank you for your response. Next, how many employees do you have?
We have 30 employees. So, it's a small group. We wear a lot of hats. We do a lot of things. It's often, you know, we work very well as a team. We support each other. We just do not have tremendous resources in terms of personnel. So, what we end up doing is when we hire somebody, we'll hire somebody who's a professional already, and they've already got some accreditation or experience from somewhere else, whether that be an operating company or maybe it's an accounting firm or maybe it's a law firm or what have you. We will bring in seasoned professionals and so the people who know how to get things done.
We are very focused on making sure that we bring in the right people and with the right skill sets because it is a small team. You want to make sure that you have the right people working together.
Thank you for clarifying that, Alistair. Your next question is, who are some of the largest shareholders of Royal Gold?
If you look at our register, our very largest shareholder is Capital World. They're out of, they're a well-known investor out of California, LA based. They own about 13% of our shares. And then as you look down the register, you know, State Street, Vanguard, VanEck, First Eagle, Findlay Park, Fidelity, BlackRock. We have a lot of very well-known names in the precious metals, but also the general markets would be our shareholders. We have a fairly concentrated register.
Our top 20 shareholders own between 40% and 45% of the total shares outstanding. About 85%-87% of our register is institutional. So, that leaves about 13%, 15% would be retail. Our institutional shareholders have been with us for a long time. If you look at the average duration of holdings, it would be 16 plus years for those institutional shareholders. So, we have a very high-quality register, and we're very pleased to see some, you know, big shareholders supporting us.
Thank you for the detail on that, Alistair. We're coming up on your last two questions. The first one is, are there new smaller royalty companies going public, or has the trend dropped off?
I think you've seen the trend drop off a little while, for a little while.
I think, you know, a number of years ago, it seemed like everybody and their dog was starting a new royalty streaming company. Barriers to entering this business are low. I could start one tomorrow if I wanted to. The problem is you've got to have access to capital. You've got to have cash flow to be able to compete against companies like Royal Gold because we will look at big things, but we'll also look at small things. So, if you're looking to start an emerging company, you'll likely be looking at the small things because that's what you can afford. Well, we will. Royal Gold will look down market, and if it's an attractive opportunity, we'll acquire those. There's no financing risk for a seller. When they sell to Royal Gold, they know that we've got the cash. They know that we know how to do transactions.
So, there's no risk. So, we find that we were able to slow new entrants from coming in just by being very competitive when it comes to new small transactions as well. So, you haven't seen that growth over the past several years. I think a lot of it's tapered off as people realize it's a lot tougher to do this than perhaps people would think.
Thank you for your insight on that. And your last question is, some of your peers are now moving into geographic areas outside of the safe jurisdiction circle. Do you see Royal Gold perhaps looking as well, or will you remain in areas that you operate in currently?
So, jurisdictional risk is a very important thing for us to think about. When we think about new projects, we think about three Ps. There's the people, which is the counterparty.
There's the project itself, so the fundamentals of the asset. But then there's place. And the place is very important. So, place means the jurisdiction is a country. It also means the local environment. Risky places for us are not attractive. They create binary risk. And you may invest in a great asset that's owned by or managed by people who know how to run it. But if it's in a country where you've got, you know, regulations can change quickly, or you've got civil unrest, or you've got other things that could impact the ability of assets to operate, then that can cause binary risk. You may lose your investment. We don't look at our portfolio and say, we're very weighted towards safe places, so we can afford to take some risk by going into riskier places because we've got a portfolio that allows us to accommodate that risk.
We don't think about it that way. We look at every single asset separately when we say, if that asset has the potential to stop producing or if we lose our interest, then we're not interested. It's not about spreading risk, and so we've seen, yeah, you're right. We've seen some transactions done in places that are politically risky. It's very simple for us. If we can't travel there, if there's a travel ban from either the State Department or Canadian Foreign Affairs or what have you, if there's a travel ban or a recommendation to not travel to certain areas, we're not going to send our people, and we're certainly not going to invest our shareholders' capital in those places, so jurisdictional risk is a big consideration for us, and I don't think you should expect us to go off into riskier places.
Now, that said, we will look at new jurisdictions. If we don't have experience in places, we won't write them off and just say, we don't have experience. We're not interested. Botswana is a good case in point. We invested in Botswana in 2019. We had never invested there before, but we did our homework, and we got very comfortable with the jurisdiction, and it's been great.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Alistair, for your insight today. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you do not get a chance to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn back the floor to Alistair for final remarks.
Well, thanks, Noella. Thanks, Renmark, and thanks everybody for attending. Thank you for the questions.
If you do have more questions, please feel free to contact Renmark or contact me directly. I'd be happy to engage in any further discussions if there's something I missed or misunderstood in those questions. Thanks very much. Take care, and we'll look forward to talking to you soon.
Thank you, Alistair. Once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Boston 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 this presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area, and see you next time.