On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Dallas 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, Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session, which you can participate using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that being said, I will now hand it over to Alistair.
Well, thanks, Noella. Thanks, Renmark, for the opportunity to present today. Gold reached a record high this morning, so it's very timely to give you an update on Royal Gold, as 75% of our revenue comes from gold. So, hopefully, you find today's presentation to be interesting and, current. So I'll make a few mentions about forward-looking statements. To start with, I will be making forward-looking statements during the presentation. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, and all of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filings with the SEC. So during this presentation, I'm going to give you the investment thesis for Royal Gold and what we provide to our investors.
In a sentence, it really is precious metals exposure with consistent financial performance and a focus on per share metrics. The presentation is divided up into sections to help explain this. I'm gonna talk about our low-risk leverage to gold, our long history of successfully executing very simple business strategy, our unique business model itself, the organic growth from within a diversified portfolio, and then finally, some comments on valuation. This slide shows Royal Gold at a high level. We are a high-margin business that generates consistent cash flows for precious metals. We've been in the business since the mid-1980s. We've been on the NASDAQ for well over 40 years now. In 2023, our stream segment contributed about 69% of our revenue. Our royalty segment was about 31%.
Royalties do tend to be higher margin than streams, but they both provide the same things. Royalties and streams provide top-line exposure to mining assets and metal production. In 2023, we were very focused on our balance sheet. We repaid $325 million of debt, and as we have done so for 23 consecutive years, we raised our dividends again by 7%, last year. We reported our Q1 results in May, so we had very good results for the first quarter of the year. And, as I said, we had 75% of our revenue came from gold, and over 50% of our revenue came from Canada, the U.S., and Australia. We report our Q2 results in three weeks on August seventh. So, please tune in to our conference call for any further updates.
So to set the table, I'm gonna talk a little bit first about how we compare to our peers, and we sit in a very interesting position. We are, as you can see on this graph, we are the third of the big three royalty streaming companies. But we are big enough to compete for the largest transactions. We have significant cash flow, we have access to low-cost capital, and but we are also small enough to show growth, and so a small transaction can add meaningful growth and meaningful value to our company. And that's an important differentiator. When you think about the business development environment that we operate in, being the size that we are, being able to show growth by doing small transactions, that's actually quite an important strategic consideration.
So I'm now gonna talk about our low-risk leverage to gold, and this slide shows different ways you can invest in gold and how Royal Gold is positioned. Our model is designed to provide exposure to precious metals without many of the risks that come with operating in or with investing in operating companies. We provide upside exposure to gold and optionality while reducing downside risk by holding a diverse portfolio that does not have direct exposure to operating and capital cost risk. And that's very important when you think about margin erosion and you think about inflation. We've seen a lot of inflation over the past several years in input costs. There are other ways to invest in gold. If you want to be very conservative, you can buy the physical metal, but if you buy an ounce, it will always be an ounce.
It will never pay you a dividend, and in fact, it will cost you to store that ounce. You can be more aggressive, and you can buy equities in, in operating companies or ex- exploration companies, but with that, you're also taking on the risk of, cost exposure. Royal Gold operates somewhere in the middle. So our historical performance on this slide shows why we think we're a good alternative for those who are looking for conservative exposure to gold. On the left-hand side, you can see we have a strong beta to the gold price, so we have good leverage to gold. On the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance over the past, several years. This graph goes back to the beginning of the GDX. The GDX is the index, of our peers, as the group that we compare ourselves against.
So it is quite a relevant, relevant comparison. But over this time period, we've beaten the gold price, we've beaten the GDX index, and we've also done very well relative to the general market indices. Now, obviously, the markets have done very, very well recently as a result of AI and some of the large cap tech companies, but over time, you can see that our performance has been very strong relative to just about any of those metrics. I'm gonna talk about our history of execution, and as I said in my opening comments, we do have a long record and of consistent and disciplined financial performance. This slide shows a 20+ year history of capital allocation and growth for Royal Gold.
This really one of the founding or one of the most important strategic tenets in the company is to provide accretive growth to our shareholders. This slide shows that quite well. Since 2000, you can see that we've had significant revenue and cash flow growth from within the portfolio. But there are three aspects of this growth that are worth highlighting. The first is our business is high margin and is scalable. Our revenue growth has far exceeded the growth in G&A. When we acquire a new asset, it doesn't take an additional workforce to look after that asset. We can roll it into our existing procedures, and we don't need to hire any more people. So the business is very scalable. The second is our revenue growth is not dependent on metal price appreciation.
Metal prices have done well over this time period, but we have also added volume. So we've been opportunistic in adding assets to the portfolio. Now, thirdly, we have financed our growth internally, and that's without a significant rise in our share count. So we're one of the original members of the GDX index, and we have the lowest share count in that index. We want to avoid shareholder dilution if we can, and if we can fund our business using internal resources, then that provides per share growth to our shareholders, and that's what we're really trying to do. I'm going to talk a bit in this, on this slide about liquidity. Liquidity is very important in our business. We have to be patient in our business.
So that means we have to maintain a strong balance sheet and liquidity to be able to fund transactions easily, as they arise. Having a strong balance sheet is very important. It... You may not see it ahead of you, lots of opportunity, but you never know when something is coming. So you want to make sure you've got a strong balance sheet and liquidity to be able to finance transactions. As I said, we look to equity as the least preferred way of financing transactions. So we'll use cash on hand, we'll use our operating cash flow, we'll use our revolving credit facility as the ways to finance transactions. Waterfall on the left shows how we allocated our capital in 2023.
We used our operating cash flow to repay debt and to pay our dividends, and we ended the first quarter of this year with total liquidity of $966 million. That includes our undrawn revolver capacity as well as our working capital. So we have lots of liquidity for what we see ahead of ourselves today in the business development market. Now, to talk a little bit further about our credit facility, this slide shows how we have used it in the past, and you can see that it, it's a $1 billion revolver. You can see that it provides very cheap and flexible financing to us. We have eight top-tier banks in the facility, and the way we use it is much the same way that you would use your own personal credit card.
When you acquire something, when you buy something, you use your credit card, and then you pay that balance off. That's how we do it. We draw on the facility to fund acquisitions, and we pay back the drawings from cash flow that comes from the portfolio. 2022 was a very big year for us when it came to acquisitions, and we borrowed in the third and fourth quarter of that year to acquire long-life assets. We acquired royalties on the Cortez and Great Bear projects, and since then, we've repaid most of that. We've repaid since the end of 2022 to our last reporting period, we've repaid $500 million of that drawing.
So as of the end of... Sorry, as of early May, we only had $75 million remaining on the revolving credit facility balance, and we expect to repay that sometime early in the current quarter that we're in today. That rapid paydown really does it shows you how the cash flow generation potential in on our portfolio. While there is an interest cost in drawing on the revolver, on the revolver and having a revolver balance outstanding, the short-term interest expense is a worthy trade-off when you consider if you're adding a multi-decade asset to the portfolio, you pay interest for a handful of quarters, and then you then you've got that asset on the books, and you have the new shareholders, and your interest costs are relatively low. So it's a very strategic financing tool for us.
I'm gonna talk on this slide about dividends, and return of capital is a key strategic objective for Royal Gold, and it's one of the attributes that makes us unique amongst other precious metals or gold investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000. We've increased the dividend every year, despite volatility and ups and downs in the gold price. We've paid out almost $1 billion of dividends since we started paying dividends, and we're the only company in the GDX that's paid an increasing dividend every year since the index was formed in 2006. We're the only precious company in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. That is a big and important differentiator for us when we're talking to a generalist audience who wants to understand how we think about capital allocation.
Now, our business is really around the acquisition and management of stream and royalty interests. So due diligence is a very important part of our business. It's an important core competency for us. Good due diligence practices are important to make sure that we add the right assets to the portfolio, and we avoid adding the wrong assets. While we look at many opportunities at any one time, not all opportunities make it through our due diligence process. The process is very extensive, and we're disciplined in the way that we deploy our capital. If we see risks that we don't like in an opportunity, we are comfortable walking away from that opportunity and waiting. We don't feel pressure to do transactions. We're not compensated by doing a certain number of transactions in a given time period.
So if we can't find the right opportunities, then we're happy to harvest revenue from the portfolio, build the balance sheet, and wait for the right opportunities. We've always found that opportunities do present themselves, so it is always... We're quite comfortable not acting on everything that we see. And 2023 really is a good case in point. We were busy in 2022, adding to the portfolio. In 2023, we just didn't see the right opportunities, so we took the opportunity to pay down our debt and build up our liquidity. So that explains how we thought about 2023 and what we did there. I'm going to talk for a moment about ESG. Our business model is passive.
We do not have direct operating control of the assets that we invest in, but ESG has always been a very important part of our business. We invest for the long term, so ensuring the sustainability of the assets we invest in is a very important part of our due diligence for new transactions. On this slide, you can see we've got MSCI and Sustainalytics ratings over time. They are two influential ratings providers in our sector, and we are top-rated by Sustainalytics, and we're doubly rated by MSCI. Now, we have not always, in the longer past, we've never really talked about ESG. It was always just part of what we did. It was just bread and butter for us.
But we've done a lot more to improve the transparency of our practices and our processes, and we're very pleased to see that our ratings have improved as a result of us giving more information to the market. I'm going to talk in this next section about our business model, and the key to our model really is optionality, and that's what's shown on this slide here. And that's optionality to reserve and resource growth without having to make further investments. I've got two assets shown on this slide. We've got PV and Wassa. We did stream investments on both in 2015, and in both cases today, total reserves and resources are higher than at the time of the initial acquisition of our interests.
And that's in addition to the production that's allowed us to recover over 85% of our investment at PV and over 140% of our investment at Wassa. And there are growth projects underway at both assets. At Wassa, there's a potential for a deep extension to the ore body to extend mine life by another decade or so. And at PV, Barrick has just finished a plant expansion, and they're looking at a tailings facility expansion that will extend the mine life to 2045 or so. Now, in both cases, Royal Gold is not required to fund any further capital or invest anything further to get exposure to this upside. So this is growth that we don't have to pay for.
The exploration and production growth, whenever we look at a new opportunity, that's always a key focus because that optionality to any growth is the most important feature of our business model, and it gives our shareholders that extra return. Now, our business model is very efficient. We have 30 employees in the company. Last year, we produced just over $600 million of revenue, and today we're just over $9 billion in terms of market cap. So on a per-employee basis, we compare to very well compared to any company, large or small, both inside and outside of the gold sector. The low employee count means that we have a low fixed cash G&A, which further contributes to our efficiency.
We have, last year, we had a 79% adjusted EBITDA margin, which is pretty consistent over the past several years, and our cash G&A was about 5% of revenue. Our G&A is low and made up mostly of fixed costs, so inflation should not be a risk or a significant risk to our margins. You can see that more clearly on this slide. If you see on the left-hand side, our cost structure versus the average gold producer's cost structure, you can see that our costs are a lot more insulated from cost inflation. Producers are exposed to inflation and input costs, so things like labor, energy, or other consumables that they require to run the mines, those often those prices will increase whenever you see commodity prices increase. So often, producer margins don't expand as you see higher gold prices.
Whereas our G&A costs are mostly steady. We have salaries, services, office rents, things like that, that are not typically subject to short-term increases. So our margins are a lot less exposed to inflation pressures than simply because we're not directly exposed to operating and capital costs. I'm gonna talk a little bit in this section about our portfolio, which is quite large and has lots of good organic growth potential from within it. On Slide 22 here, you can see our global portfolio on the map, and our portfolio is weighted towards lower risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions. Our principal properties are those called out on the right-hand side. Those are the largest assets that provide the bulk of our revenue. About 70%, 70%-75% of our revenue comes from those six assets.
We are... As you can see on this map, if you were to focus on some of the areas where we have the most interest, we are very focused, and we have exposure to some of the more established mining camps in the world. We have about 50% of our revenue comes from Nevada, British Columbia, and Western Australia. These are all historic mining areas that have excellent prospectivity, they have supportive regulatory environments, and they have access to people and expertise to be able to run these assets. So that's a very important consideration. And we have significant exposure to earlier-stage projects in these regions, so we think that we're very well-situated from a geographic perspective. Now, thinking about diversification of the portfolio. Our portfolio is well-diversified, and that provides stability to us. Our operators are best in class.
Most of our operators are the largest, most well-capitalized, and experienced companies in the mining sector. We have a large portfolio that contributes revenue. We have about 37 producing assets in our portfolio right now, and that portfolio breadth compares very well to other mining companies. Our underlying assets are about 50%, primary precious metals and about 50% from a mix of copper, gold, and base metals assets. Our largest country exposures are to Canada and the U.S.A., and then Dominican Republic and Chile. All of these are arguably mining-friendly jurisdictions. That portfolio diversification, when you think about all those different factors, really does reduce our exposure to single asset, operator, and jurisdictional risk.
Now, if we were to bucket our portfolio into the various stages of project development, you can see that our portfolio does have groupings that of properties that span the various stages of project development. We have 141 assets that are not producing today, but are in various stages of exploration, evaluation, and development. And we would expect there to be the potential for organic growth for any assets that advance through this pipeline to production. King of the Hills and Bellevue Gold are great examples of this organic growth from projects that have been in the portfolio and relatively dormant for many years. Both of these assets, we acquired over a decade ago.
Not much was happening until the last couple of years, and in the last year, both of these assets have started to produce revenue to us as new management teams have come into these assets and rethought them and redeveloped these assets. Now, to continue on the theme of organic growth, this slide shows some of the key catalysts that we see from various assets within the portfolio today. At the top of the slide in the blue arrows, you can see some of the producing assets. Some of these are the largest assets in our portfolio, but there is potential for mine life extensions as well as production increases at several of these assets.
Then, as you move further down the slide, you can see that we have potential for new revenue in some of the assets here shown in gold color. We've actually, in fact, seen first gold poured at Mara Rosa in Brazil, Cote Gold in Canada and Ontario, as well as Manh Choh, most recently, just over a week ago. In addition, the Goldr ush Mine at the Cortez Complex was officially opened in the first quarter of this year. And if you looked a little bit further down the timeline, you can see that Back River, we're expecting to see first production from that sometime in the, you know, the second half of next year, as well as Great Bear, which we should see coming into the portfolio sometime toward the end of this decade.
All of the growth that's shown on this slide is free optionality, to my previous point. It's all fully funded. We do not need to pay any more to get exposure to this growth. So as a shareholder, you benefit from any optionality that's discovered, or realized through these expansions. Now, we are always very focused on adding to the portfolio as well. We can't rely on organic growth to grow the company, so we're always looking at adding new assets to the portfolio. And this slide shows what we've done since 2021. We've deployed $1.2 billion of capital in six large transactions on five assets that provide gold exposure, on assets with upside potential in safe jurisdictions.
We funded all of these transactions using cash on hand, our revolving credit facility, and we have not issued any shares that dilute our shareholder exposure to these assets. Just to give you a very quick summary of these assets, these acquisitions, the Cortez mine in Nevada, the Cortez Complex, we acquired. We, we've owned royalty interests at Cortez since the beginning of the company, and we expanded. We had an opportunity to expand our royalty interests in 2022, and we now have coverage of the entire Cortez Complex. This is a world-class gold-producing complex in a mining-friendly jurisdiction. It's operated by Barrick and Newmont, the two largest gold producers in the world.
As I said, the new gold mine, the new Goldr ush Mine, it was just opened in the first quarter of this year, and there are other projects underway. There's the Fourm ile project, which looks very interesting, and the Robertson project as well, which will provide significant growth in towards the end of this decade. So very happy with our investment at Cortez. At Red Chris, in Northern British Columbia, Newmont is continuing the plan that Newcrest put in place to transition the mine from an open pit to a large underground bulk tonnage operation. The current expected mine life here is well over 36 years, and that does not include additional resources that have been found since the original scoping study was released.
At Xavantina in Brazil, Ero Copper's had great success with exploration there, and now they're targeting sustained gold production of 60,000 ounces a year. At the Côté project in Canada, as I mentioned, they poured the first gold. They're targeting commercial production in the third quarter of this year. And finally, the Great Bear project in Ontario, Kinross has now outlined at least 6 million ounces of resources, and they're continuing exploration to add to that resource base over the next several years. And they're targeting first production sometime in the 2029 time period. Now, there's one consistent theme with all of these acquisitions. They're all consistent with our strategy to provide precious metals exposure to assets with significant exploration and production upside.
Now, my final topic here is just valuation, and I just want to show you the two metrics that most companies in our sector are evaluated on, which is price to NAV and price to cash flow. If you look back far enough, you can see that we're trading at historically attractive multiples today compared to our peers. Our business is performing very well. We've got strong cash flow. We're very disciplined with the capital we allocate, and we've got good organic growth from within the portfolio. However, multiples do seem to be lagging a little bit, especially when it comes to price to cash flow. We are trading on a price to cash flow basis in the bottom half of our peer group.
And I, I don't think the market is reflecting, price is not reflecting the quality of the cash flow that we're receiving from our high-quality set of, of assets. I, I don't think the value of the long-life assets we've added and the optionality of those assets has yet been recognized by the market. And then there's a second overlay as well, and that's, I think, today in the markets, the, the higher long-term gold price has not been factored in. Investors have not yet come to terms with the higher... The potential for a higher long-term gold price. So I think that is holding back valuation somewhat. So it may be quite an interesting time to consider, gold equities. Now, I've come to the end of the, the formal remarks. As I said, I think we're, we're very well positioned today.
Our record is strong. Our business is performing very well. We've got high-quality assets and a well-diversified portfolio with good organic growth. We have an attractive valuation, we have a strong balance sheet, and we have ample liquidity to continue growing in the business development market we see ahead of ourselves today. Noella, I've come to the end of the formal remarks that we have, and turn it back to you for Q&A.
Thank you very much, Alistair, for the presentation. As you said, we will now begin the Q&A. Your first question for today is: Which nations or continents are off-limits to Royal Gold in order to reduce political risks? Does Royal Gold have a percentage limit on collective exposure to third- world nations or outside of NAFTA and Australia?
We think about it more in terms of countries that we just do not want to invest in. So there are some countries, clearly Russia, we will not go to, China, we will not go to, Venezuela, we're not—we don't like South Africa, a lot of risk there. A lot of Africa is off-limits for us. If you don't have security of title, if you don't have physical security as well, if it's a place where rule of law is challenged, then we don't want to be there. If we can't send our own people to go see an asset, we don't want to invest there. So there are certain countries that we will not invest in. In terms of a percentage allocation, we don't think about it that way.
It's kind of a binary risk when we think about political risk or geopolitical risk; it's binary. It either there is risk that you're happy with or not. And so, we don't say, "Well, we'll allocate 5% of our portfolio to some higher risk areas because we'll be offset with others." That's not the way we think about it. We'd rather make sure that any investment we make is going to be sound and not subject to risks that could cause it to be jeopardized.
Thank you for that response. Next question: What did you pay for the NSR on Côté, and what do you expect as the payback period?
So on that asset, I believe it was around $70 million, was the royalty price, give or take $1 million-$2 million. I can't remember the exact figure. Our payback on that, if I remember correctly, was, it'll be less than 10 years, but there is a little bit of a wild card there, and that is, we do not have royalty coverage of 100% of the deposit. So depending on where mining occurs, there may be... We may find that we are receiving more than 70% of the production or perhaps less. So that, the number I gave you, the time I gave you is an estimate based on what we think their mine plan will be.
I'm expecting that IAMGOLD will be talking more about their plans for Côté as they get through the ramp-up and into commercial production. They'll start talking with more detail about any changes they've made to the mine plan over the next several quarters, and obviously, we'll be talking about that with our investors as well.
Thank you for clarifying. Next reviewer says: Very happy to see the stock hitting new highs. Do you see metal prices remaining strong through the fall?
Yeah, I think so. I think the, you know, we're not, we're not necessarily gold bugs at Royal Gold. But we do—I think there's a pretty consistent sentiment within the company that we think the metal prices will stay strong over the long term. I think, you know, if you look at what's happened, the gold price has been surprisingly driven by central bank purchases, large, large central bank purchases over the past several quarters. And while you've seen some of those central bank purchases perhaps being paused, there's a trend in central bank gold holdings to de-dollarization, and a couple of reasons for that. Some of it is geopolitical risk, some of it is also just a view on the value of the U.S. dollar.
I think that is something that is going to continue, and it's going to be something that's a longer term, a longer term event. But then on top of that, you've got now, more speculation about rate cuts in the U.S., and if that occurs, that should be a very strong tailwind to the gold price. So I think we're thinking that the gold price will be strong for the midterm, at least. I think long term, you know, it's just the amount of debt in the world, government debt, is not sustainable. So, gold is one of those assets that is a real store of value, and so we think that, the future of the gold price is quite good.
Thank you, Alistair. Next question: Kinross' Manh Choh recently had their first pour. Can you go over your royalty and perhaps explain the 28% NSR on the silver produced?
Yeah, so we actually had a direct asset interest. It was a very unusual structure. We actually were the operator of the Contango project at the time, Peak Gold, that project, and we sold out to Kinross. And they became—they took our position, and they became the operator, and we retained royalty interests. Now, it's a very large property package. We have a couple of different royalty interests on the original area where there's mining today, and then we have a royalty interest over a larger area as well. But we also have a 28% silver NSR. And silver is not, it's not the driver of the economics there.
It's a large royalty, but it was just a way for us to make up some additional value when we sold it to Kinross. That asset itself, we expect to produce for currently the plan is about 4.5 years. It's about 900,000 ounces over that 4.5 years. And our royalty should end up providing to us, if memory serves, it would be about 8,000-8,500 GEOs to our account every year for the next 4.5 years. So quite pleased to see that asset moving forward.
Thank you for your response. Next question: Q2 stream segment sales news release mentions gold and silver in inventory. Do you generally like to keep a certain amount in inventory always, or will it be sold in Q3?
So inventory is a function of timing. We do not manage our inventory levels. What happens is, with our streams, we receive physical metal, and so when we receive that metal, we have a plan to sell it over the next, over the time period, and even in increments, to the next delivery from that same asset. So say we get 100 ounces from Mount Milligan today, we're expecting to get 100 ounces in 10 days, second delivery. We'll sell 10 ounces a day between now and when we expect that next delivery to occur. And so inventory is just a function of what is unsold, over that time period. If, you know, at the end of the quarter, we will have some amount that's outstanding and not, it has not been sold.
We still own it, and we will sell that. So inventory is not something that we manage. It's just a function of our sales, and it varies from quarter- to- quarter, but generally, over time, it's relatively consistent.
Thank you, Alistair. Next question: How does the company perform due diligence on potential new acquisitions with just 30 employees?
So we have probably about a third of the employees in the company are technical. So we do have a good technical bench strength within the company. We have a couple of mining engineers, metallurgists, geologists, a resource modeler. But then what we do is we will also hire consultants to help us, and these are generally people we've worked with in the past. They understand how we look at things. We'll if we're looking at a certain opportunity that may have certain characteristics, we'll find a consultant who's got experience looking at those characteristics, if we don't have the expertise in-house. So we will use external resources to bolster our team, and it's very much a horses for courses kind of approach, where we just find the right person to help us with a specific opportunity.
That's how we do it, but all the due diligence is done under the direction of somebody from within Royal Gold. And when we go to the board to talk about any acquisition, and we talk about our due diligence findings, there's always a Royal Gold person who is the champion or the accountable person to the board for those due diligence findings. So we don't farm out our due diligence to somebody and just take their results and use those. We will actually manage it internally, and there's direct accountability as well internally.
Thank you for clarifying. The next question is: What sort of safeguards does Royal Gold implement to protect against partners who run into cash flow generation issues down the road?
Well, so there are a number of different things we can do within our contracts to try and limit further borrowings or, you know, if a company starts to get into financial distress, then we want to do certain things. We'll put in covenants, so we'll try and limit the ability for those companies to do certain things that may actually cause further problems. But generally, what happens is we think about ourselves as a partner, and if there is an issue that a counterparty is having, we will, if they approach us, and then obviously, it's got to be a mutual arrangement. But if they come to us and say, "We're having trouble, we need some help or some relief or something," we will always listen.
And so I can't guarantee that in every circumstance we're going to come up with a solution that makes sense for the counterparty who's having trouble, but we'll try and find a way for us to work with that counterparty to fix the issue or at least address it. And, you know, we're not in the business of giving out value, but we'll certainly do what we can to help, because it's in nobody's best interest if the mine stops working. If the mine stops working, obviously, the operator doesn't have any... There's no benefit to the operator, there's no benefit to us. So we'll work with our counterparties if it comes to it.
Thank you for that response. Next question: Which asset has seen the most production growth recently?
We've seen, I guess. We've had a lot of growth in production from several assets. I think, you know, one of the assets that obviously our royalty coverage is much larger now than it was, Cortez. There's so much optionality in that land package that I think we'll see significant opportunity within Cortez, just because we have exposure now to several mines in that area. The planned expansion at Pueblo Viejo will give us exposure to much higher production levels as well. Mount Milligan is a relatively stable producer, but there's a lot of work going on right now to try and optimize recoveries as well as extend the mine life.
So there's a lot of stuff. I can't point to one specific example that's gonna necessarily be the one to hang your hat on, but there's a lot of stuff happening within the portfolio, where we see good potential for growth. And we've actually seen good historical growth as well. I think that if I was to point to one specific asset, maybe Ero Copper, Santo Antonio. When we got involved in that, the production levels were just over 30,000 oz a year. Now, they're expecting a sustained 60,000 oz of gold per year. That's a pretty significant increase, and that's purely driven by grade and exploration success. So that's one that's been fantastic for us.
Thank you for your insight, Alistair. Next question: How does the interest rate on your credit facility compare to peers?
I think it'd be pretty comparable. The large cap peers, anyway, I think you know, the banks in our facility, they bank our large peers as well. We have a fairly low risk from a banking perspective, simply because we do have a diversified portfolio that produces pretty consistent cash flow. So I don't think you see much difference in our credit facility costs compared to large cap peers. Now, the smaller peers, yes, we would be cheaper, likely, because we're just a better credit quality than some of the smaller companies.
Thank you, Alistair. Next question: In this precious metals price environment, have you noticed an increase in institutional holdings and hedge funds?
We tend to have a fairly consistent register from quarter to quarter, and we don't have a lot of movements in the top end of our register. The large active funds who own us have been around for a long time. In fact, I think our institutional holdings on average would be about 15+ years, 15.5 years. We do see hedge funds come in and out, and they're often large movements, but that will be depending. It'll be it may not be driven solely by the gold price, or maybe a view. A hedge fund may have a view on relative valuation of us compared to something else that they're looking at, and we may sell one and buy the other.
So I think the... What I'm expecting to see is, if we see good results in the second quarter from the gold sector, generally, if margins are maintained, I think that'll bring interest back into the sector. We may find that there is quite a lot of buying. I think we're still in a wait-and-see market. I think a lot of investors who invested in the gold sector 10 years ago, when the gold price really ran, they were disappointed when they saw the margins did not expand. I think this time, the industry is a lot more, they've been a lot more disciplined when it comes to costs. So perhaps we'll see margin expansion, and some of those investors who are waiting will start coming back into the sector. If that occurs, I think we'll see good price performance.
Thank you for that response. Next, a viewer is asking: On average, what requirement within your due diligence process removes the most amount of potential, potential deals approved?
Sorry, Noella, can you read that again? I...
Certainly. So the question is: On average, what requirement within your due diligence process removes the most amount of potential deals approved?
Okay. So I guess, if I could rephrase the question, if I get this wrong, please contact Renmark, and different answer. But I'm understanding the question to be: Is there any specific red flag that generally occurs that would allow or force us to walk away from something? I think the general red flag would, you know, geology. If we cannot understand geology or if we think there's something wrong with the geology, then we will walk away from a transaction. You know, you can't fix geology, so clearly that's something that causes us. We look at that very carefully. A second thing would be anything where there's a risk that can't be mitigated.
So, for example, if you've got a tailings facility that is old and has not been maintained properly, and we think there's some issues with the tailings facility, we would not be keen to invest if you can't fix it. Because if something happens with that tailings facility, then potentially it could mean the mine stops operating. So any kind of risk like that that you cannot address. Now, it could be anything. I mean, there are many technical risks that occur. I wouldn't say there's one specifically that crops up all the time. Every asset is different. Every asset's got unique characteristics, and management teams are unique as well. Companies are unique. Some are well-capitalized, some are not as well-capitalized, so they can address issues.
I wouldn't say there's one specific red flag, but I would say the one thing that if we can't get comfortable with geology, we will not invest in something.
Thank you for your insight on that. Next, how much cash do you anticipate deploying in H2 relative to streams and royalty commitments?
That's a hard question to answer because we don't give any kind of guidance on how we expect to deploy our cash. We're always looking at new opportunities, royalties or streams. Now, what we can't do is we're a bit of an opportunity taker, so when an opportunity presents itself, if we like it, we act. And so we can't choose necessarily whether. If we have one royalty and one stream opportunity to look at at the same time, we don't say, "We prefer the royalty, and we'll leave the stream," or vice versa. We'll just try and do whatever we can to win both of them, and we'll rebalance if we need to. We expect that would occur on the coming period of time.
We just have to act on what is available, and if it's a high-quality opportunity, and perhaps it knocks us out of balance a little bit on something that is a characteristic that we focus on, that will get fixed over time as we add other assets to the portfolio.
Thank you, Alistair. The next question for you is: What's the average mine life of your royalty and streams?
So we don't give a one-number average mine life. We have an Asset Handbook that has a table that shows individual assets and the mine lives based on reserves of those assets. So I'd refer whoever asked the question to the Asset Handbook. It's available on our website. You can get a good sense of our portfolio. We have a number of assets that have very long mine lives. So, you know, from a weighted average value perspective, I can't give you a number off the top of my head. But keep in mind as well, that's based on reserves. The mine lives in our Asset Handbook are based on reserves. Resources are additional to that.
In a strong metal price environment, likely to see conversion of resources into reserves, so it's, it's a point-in-time estimate.
Thank you, Alistair. We're coming up on your last two questions. The first one is: How often do bidding wars occur for new potential deals?
It's... We operate in a pretty competitive sector, so there is the price, and price usually wins the day. I mean, there are other features as well that we can offer that will maybe influence, but price generally is the thing that means that we win or lose a transaction. I think, you know, it's safe to say, I wouldn't say bidding war is necessarily the right way to think about it, but whenever we put forward a number, we have to be very careful or think very carefully what our competitors are going to put forward as well. And so, it is a competitive sector for sure.
Thank you for your insight. The last question is: What catalyst do you see helping the stock break out of its five-year trading range?
Well, I think one of the things that we have tried to do recently, and I, I just mentioned our Asset Handbook, but one of the things that we've tried to do is daylight the potential within the portfolio. We have not done over the past several years, we have not done a great job of showing what we have within the portfolio. We always talk about the largest assets in the portfolio. We have a number of assets that are smaller, and even though they are smaller, you, you add up incremental growth from those assets, and it can be significant. So what we've done more recently is to try and daylight some of those assets and make sure the market understands them. And in our quarterly press releases, you'll see that we often talk about some of the smaller assets in the portfolio.
We'll give a little description of what's happening that may be topical, may be interesting, just to make sure that the market understands that, yes, we do have the six large assets, but we also have 31 other assets that are producing revenue, and some of those have significant growth ahead of them. So that's probably the market recognition of that optionality, the depth of the portfolio is probably the biggest catalyst now. Obviously, the gold price will be helpful as well, so if the gold price continues to do well, I think you'll see us do well. And as I mentioned, as I answered a question earlier, I think if the sector itself provides good financial results in this next reporting period, I think that may be a catalyst for the market generally.
I think you'll see a lot of people looking at gold and, the gold sector and try to pick the investments that they want to make.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Alistair, for your responses today, and thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did 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, and thanks, everybody, for participating. If I didn't get any questions right, if I answered a question, if I didn't understand the question that was asked properly, then please get back to Renmark. I'd be happy to get back to you with, with, you know, an answer to the question. So, I guess I look forward to catching up with you again, and until then, take care, and we'll enjoy the rest of your summer.
Thank you, Alistair. Once again, this was Royal Gold trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Dallas 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.