Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and 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 ticker symbol RGLD. Presenting today is Alistair Baker, VP Investor Relations and Business Development. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes following a formal question-and-answer session. Please submit your questions via the chat box at the top right corner of your screen. With that, I will hand it over to Alistair.
Thank you very much, Julia. Thanks for the invitation to present today. I always appreciate it. Before I start, I just wanted to draw your attention to this slide. I will be making forward-looking statements during today's presentation that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. These risks and uncertainties are all discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the SEC. During this presentation, I want to give you the 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.
So during this presentation, I'm going to hopefully give you some messages on our low-risk leverage to gold, our long history of execution of our business plan, the unique nature of our business model, our portfolio, and end off with a couple of comments on valuation, which I think we're trading at pretty attractive levels compared to historical. So as we look at Royal Gold at a high level on this slide, slide four, we're a high-margin business that generates consistent cash flows from precious metals. We've been in business since the mid-1980s, and we've been on the NASDAQ for over 41 years, so we have a very long track record. In 2022, we performed very well, and this slide has some numbers from that full-year performance. Our stream segment contributed about 69% of our revenue, and the royalty segment contributed about 31%.
But streams and royalties are kind of the same from our perspective. They both provide top-line exposure to mining assets and mining production. Our operating and financial results were very strong last year. We had volume of 335,000 gold equivalent ounces, so that's our revenue divided by the gold price. And when you look at our revenue, it was $603 million for the year. Operating cash flow was over $400 million, and we had earnings per share of $363. So a very strong year for us. And as we look back on 2022, there are quite a few achievements shown on this slide. But what I want to say was really it was a busy year, and I'll go into some of these in a bit more detail, but there were kind of three areas of those achievements.
First is we completed transactions on new opportunities that should add long mileage to our portfolio. The second is we saw some very good portfolio events, and so that means organic growth was coming into the portfolio from that portfolio itself. And then thirdly, we completed a number of strategic initiatives, and I'll go into these in a bit more detail, but things like funding acquisitions without issuing equity, continuing to raise our dividends. We actually got included in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that kind of thing. It was a very productive year for us in 2022, and all of these things were definitely in line with our long-term strategic thinking and long-held strategy. So just to give you a bit of a foundation or lay out the positioning of Royal Gold in our sector, this is an interesting graph.
We did this for our investor update in late April, and it very clearly shows how we're positioned relative to our peers in our sector, and we're in a very interesting competitive position. We're big enough. We have the cash flow to be able to compete for the largest transactions, so we can compete with the big guys, but we can also compete very well with the small guys, but with all that, we're small enough to show very good growth. When we look at smaller acquisitions, they actually meaningfully add to our revenue, and so that is something that is unusual in our segment. We can compete for the large transactions. We can do the small transactions, but all transactions actually result in some kind of improvement to the company that you can actually see because we're not too big for that to be seen.
I want you to keep that in mind as I talk about the portfolio and the opportunities that I'm going to discuss during the rest of the presentation. I'll move on to the discussion of our low-risk leverage to gold. There are different ways you can invest in gold, and this slide shows those different kinds of investments and how we're positioned. Our model is really designed to provide exposure to precious metals without the risks that come with investing in operating companies. We provide exposure to gold and exposure to optionality and projects, but we also reduce the downside risk because we're not directly exposed to capital and operating costs, and we have a large portfolio of producing assets. There are other ways you can hold gold investments.
You can buy the physical metal, but one ounce will always be an ounce, and you'll never get upside from project improvements. You can be more aggressive, and you can buy operating mining companies, but with those, you will also get exposure to operating and capital cost risk. This next slide, slide nine, shows our historic performance and 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 our leverage to the gold price. It's 1.9 as our beta, so very good leverage to the gold price. But on the right-hand side, you can see our share price performance over time. And this graph goes back to the beginning of the GDX index, and you can see that our share price has actually performed very well. It's outperformed the gold price.
It's outperformed the GDX index, but it's also outperformed general market indices, which I think is an unrecognized feature of our business and obviously very important to note as well. Now, we have a long history of execution and certainly consistent and disciplined performance in our history, and over our 20-year history, as you can see on this graph, we've done a very good job of allocating capital and growing, and we've really thought about this from the perspective of providing accretive growth to our shareholders, so since 2000, as you can see from this graph, revenue and cash flow growth have been significant, but there are three things that I want to highlight about this growth, and the first is our business is high margin and it's scalable, so our revenue growth has far exceeded the growth in G&A expense, and that's an important thing to note.
The second is the revenue growth is not solely dependent on gold price appreciation. We've added volume during that 20-year period by trying to find and acquire and add the right assets. And then thirdly, we've financed our growth internally, and that's been without a significant increase in our share count. We're one of the original members of the GDX index, and we have the lowest share count in the index. And we want to avoid shareholder dilution. And if we can fund our business using internal resources to provide per-share growth to our shareholders, then we're very pleased or we're successfully executing on a key strategic objective. Now, slide 12 here shows a snapshot of our liquidity.
We have to be patient in our business, and that means that we have to maintain a strong balance sheet and we have to maintain liquidity to act quickly if we see opportunities come up. Our approach to funding has always been to try and use internal resources, so we use cash on hand first. We use our operating cash flow and our revolving credit facility. And then equity is the last and least preferred alternative for us. Our revolving credit facility provides cheap and very flexible financing to us. And currently, we have $500 million drawn on that facility. We drew in July and December last year to fund a couple of the acquisitions that I'll talk about in a minute. And right now, we have about 0.8 times trailing 12 months EBITDA as would be our leverage ratio.
We aim to repay the $500 million by around the middle of next year, but that's at current metal prices and assuming no further business development opportunities, and we don't draw any further on the revolver. Our total liquidity at the end of March, our last reported financials, was about $634 million. That's including our working capital as well. That's a good level of liquidity for the market opportunities that we see for ourselves today. Return of capital is a very important objective for Royal Gold, and it's something that we think about that's top of mind all the time. It does make us unique amongst other precious metals or gold investments. We've paid a growing and sustainable dividend since 2000, and we've increased the dividend every single year despite volatility in the gold price. That's a 22-year history.
We've paid out over $840 million of dividends to shareholders, and we're the only company in the GDX that has paid an increasing dividend since the index was formed in 2005, 2006. And we're the only precious metals company that's included in the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index. So that is a differentiator for Royal Gold. Now, another differentiator we think is our core competency when it comes to due diligence. Good due diligence is very important to ensure that we add the right assets to our portfolio. And while we're always busy looking at new opportunities, not all opportunities make it through our due diligence filter and screens. We have a very extensive process for looking at assets. We're very disciplined in the way that we deploy our capital.
If we see risks that we don't like, whether they're technical or social or environmental or what have you, we're happy to walk away from transactions. We don't feel the pressure to do transactions, and we're happy to wait and be patient. And when we're patient, we can rebuild our balance sheet, and we can be well-funded for the next opportunity that comes across. We found in our history that opportunities always come up out of left field. There are those that you can identify and say that those are likely opportunities, but then you're often surprised. And so having a good, strong balance sheet allows us to be able to act on those opportunities. So taking a bit of a turn here to ESG, our business model does not allow us to have direct operating control.
It's a key feature of our model, but ESG has been a very important part of our business since inception. We invest for the long term. We don't sell our assets. When we buy a royalty or a stream, we tend to own those until the mine life is depleted. And so making sure that we get involved in the right opportunities at the outset is very important. We have to ensure that the opportunities that we're investing in are sustainable and the risks are understood. And so that's a very important part of our due diligence. We also try and incorporate ESG risks into our transactions. And new transactions will build language into our documentation that ensures that operations are managed to the highest standards. And we're always looking for opportunities to help our counterparties as well.
If they have initiatives around mine sites that we could be helpful with from a financing perspective, we're always very keen to participate if we can find the right opportunities. We have worked very hard over the past several years to improve the transparency of our processes around ESG, and I think we've seen material improvements in the perception and the recognition of those practices, and you can see that on the timelines on this slide. We're top-rated by Sustainalytics today, and we're double-A rated by MSCI, and so those are two of the most important ratings providers in our sector. I'm going to spend a bit of time just talking about our business model and the unique nature of the model, and really, the key to our model is optionality, and that's optionality to preserve and resource growth.
Getting that optionality without having to pay for it when it becomes clear that it's something that will occur. There are two examples I've got on this slide here. We've got PV, probably Ero, and Wassa. We made investments, stream investments in both of these assets in 2015. In both cases, total reserves and resources today are higher than at the time of the original acquisitions. That's in addition to the production over the past seven, eight years that has allowed us to recover about 80% of our initial investment in PV and over 100% of our investment at Wassa. The interesting thing here is that there are growth projects underway at both assets today. At PV, there's a plant expansion in the final stages, final stages that's designed to increase or maintain gold production at high levels.
And there's a new tailings facility that has been permitted or sorry, that's in the permitting process that's been added to the mine plan that will allow them to continue operations to the mid-2040s. At Wassa, there's a large resource that could add approximately another 11 years on top of the existing reserve life. And in both of these cases, Royal Gold does not have to fund anything further to get exposure to these upsides. And the growth that we don't have to pay for is the optionality. And so it's that exploration and production upside that's very important when we look at new opportunities, and it's probably the most important part or at least factor in our business model. Now, another part of our business model that's unique is the efficiency.
We have 31 employees in the company, and last year, we produced over $600 million of revenue, and our market cap today is just over $8 billion, so on a per-employee basis, we compare very well to any company, really, in any sector, and our low employee counts means that we have a very low fixed cash G&A, which further contributes to our efficiency. Last year, we had an EBITDA margin of about 79%. Our cash G&A is about 4% of revenue, and our G&A is made up of is low, clearly, and it's made up of mostly fixed costs, so inflation is not a big risk to our margins, and you can see that more clearly on this slide. On the left-hand side, I've got the cost structure for Royal Gold compared to the average gold producer.
And you can see that producers are exposed to inflation and input costs, the costs required to run the mine. So that could be labor. It could be energy. It could be other consumables. And often, things that move when you have commodity price increases. So if the gold price increases, often the cost of those consumables increase as well. Whereas our G&A costs are pretty steady. So the things like salaries and office rents and service provider fees, things that typically don't move that much on a short-term basis. So our margins are much less exposed to inflation pressures than those of operating companies. And it's simply because we're not directly exposed to operating and capital costs. Now, I'm going to take a few minutes here to talk about our portfolio.
And as you can see on this slide here, this map, we have a portfolio that's weighted towards lower risk and more mining-friendly jurisdictions. And our principal properties are the larger portfolio assets that are called out on the right-hand side of this slide. And those produce about 70% of our revenue. Our portfolio is well-diversified, and so that provides stability to our cash flows. Our largest country exposures are to Canada, the USA, Dominican Republic, and Chile. So all of those are pretty mining-friendly jurisdictions. And we have revenue that comes from 40 operating assets today. And so that portfolio breadth, it compares very well to any mining company in the business. And that revenue diversification reduces our exposure to single asset underperformance. And then finally, the underlying assets we're invested in are a mix of base and gold assets as well.
So we're not necessarily tied to the success of one metal necessarily. Our portfolio itself, if you look at how it's broken up and the different components of our portfolio, it spans the various stages of mining project development. We have 142 assets that are in producing various stages of development. So we've got exploration, evaluation, and development. And we would expect there to be the potential for organic growth for many assets that move from the left of this slide to the right. And on the right is where we get our cash flow and revenue. And King of the Hills is a very good example of organic growth from a project that's been moving through the pipeline for the last couple of years. This is a royalty that we own on an asset in Australia. It's been in the portfolio for over a decade.
And new management came in, and they designed a new concept for the mine and an expansion, and they've just started producing from that. And so that's new revenue to us. We didn't have to pay for it. It was embedded in the portfolio. And so it's organic growth that will be beneficial to our shareholders. And to continue on this theme of organic growth, on this slide, you can see some of the key catalysts that we see in the portfolio today from various assets. The arrows at the top in blue are the producing assets, and those are already contributing revenue to us. But there are several opportunities for mine life extensions and production increases at various of those assets today. The next tier down in the gold color would be new revenue that we see from development assets within the portfolio.
A handful of those would be Gold Rush within the Cortez Complex. There's a record of decision expected later this year. We're expecting Bellevue Gold to provide its first royalty revenue to us mid this year. Then early next year, we should see revenue from Côté, Manh Choh, and Mara Rosa. Then a little bit further down the track, we've got Back River, and we have Great Bear towards the end of this decade. The important thing to note here is that all of this growth is free optionality. It's all been paid for. We do not need to pay for any more exposure to this growth. Now, obviously, the portfolio itself does provide some growth, but we're also very active in looking at adding new assets to the portfolio. This slide summarizes what we've done over the past couple of years.
We've deployed over $1.2 billion of capital on six large transactions that provide us gold exposure on assets that have good upside potential in safe jurisdictions. We funded all of these using cash on hand and using our revolving credit facility. So we haven't diluted our shareholders by issuing any equity to complete these acquisitions. I'm going to spend a couple of minutes on a couple of these: Cortez and Great Bear. And the first would be Cortez. And this is the largest transaction that we've done recently, and it was on the Cortez Complex in Nevada. And we've had a long-standing history of ownership of royalties at Cortez. On the left-hand side of this screen, you can see the map that covered our original investments. And this would have been at the beginning of last year. Then in August and in December, we acquired a couple of new royalties.
In August, we acquired the Rio Tinto royalty. In late December, we acquired what we call the Idaho royalty. These royalties, what they do is they basically increase our exposure to the Cortez property from our original exposure. Now, we have a much larger coverage. In some cases, these royalties overlap. We have very high royalty rates over certain areas of this project. When we think in terms of our strategy for investments, we think in terms of three Ps. We call them people, place, and project. Cortez is a great example of how this checks the boxes. The people would be Barrick and Newmont are the operators. The place is Nevada. The project is one of the most prolific gold mining areas in the world. It is very much in line with our strategy, with our investment at Cortez.
We do have exposure to the entire complex. You can see the rates at which we have that exposure on this slide. If you look at the table, it's a little bit involved to look at. The most important thing to note here is the middle column of the table in the dark shading. If you look at the deposits from the Cortez Complex, because of the overlapping royalties here, we have a 9.4% equivalent gross royalty on the Pipeline and Crossroads Mines. We have a 1.6% gross royalty over Cortez Hills and the Gold Rush and Four Mile Projects. We have a 0.45% royalty on the Robertson Project. Now, Barrick is expecting Cortez to produce about 1 million ounces in 2023, and that rises to just over 1.3 million ounces in 2027.
So with those production levels and the royalty rates that I just described, we expect Cortez to become one of the top three royalty contributors within our portfolio. Now, another transaction we did last year was the royalty on the Great Bear Project that's owned by Kinross. We actually acquired a company, and their sole asset, any materiality, was the royalty on this project. So with this, we acquired 2%. That's full return on this project. And like Cortez, this very much meets our three Ps. The people, that's Kinross, well-capitalized, senior gold producer. The place is Northern Ontario in Canada, which is a very mining-friendly jurisdiction. And then thirdly, the project. This is one of the most interesting emerging discoveries over the past several years.
Kinross is targeting around 500,000 ounces of gold to be produced from this project for a couple of decades, starting later this decade. The royalty itself covers about 91 sq km and is life of mine. A very attractive royalty here. Kinross has done a lot of work over the past year and a half since they've owned the project. They announced the initial maiden reserve or sorry, maiden resource for this project in February this year, about five million ounces. They're continuing to do further work on exploration, and they're expecting to do further deep drilling to add to this resource over the next little while. We are very keen to see them progress. We believe this will be an asset that provides long-term growth, scale, and optionality to Royal Gold. We're very pleased to have this in the portfolio.
Slide 31 here summarizes four other additions to the portfolio that have potential for near-term growth. I won't spend much time on these because there is quite a bit of detail on these pages. I'll summarize it as saying, Khoemacau. We have a silver stream on a copper-silver asset in Botswana. This year, we expect to be the first full year of production from that asset after they've been ramping up all of the 2019 construction. We're very pleased to see the first full year of production, hopefully in 2023. At Red Chris in Northern British Columbia, Newcrest, who is in the process of being acquired by Newmont, is advancing studies to transition this project from an open pit to a large underground bulk tonnage operation. We're very pleased to see the exploration success that Newcrest has enjoyed here.
So we think this will be a key asset for Newmont when the final transaction is completed. In Xavantina, Brazil, Ero is working very hard to fill the mill and sustain gold production levels of 60,000 ounces a year. We have a 25% gold stream on this asset, so that's pretty important to us. And then finally, the Côté Gold project in Ontario, IAMGOLD, is working hard to get this completed and into production early in 2024. If there was a common theme that I would describe with all of these assets, they're all precious metals, and they all provide further exposure to production and exploration upside, which is great perspective on all of them. And on this page, in particular, three of these four assets are producing revenue to us today. So we're very pleased with that. Now, I'm going to end on valuation here.
I think historically, if you look back as to how we've traded, we are trading at pretty attractive multiples. We performed very well in 2022, and we outperformed all of our large-cap peers. I think that really did reflect the strong company performance that we turned in. But it feels like the multiples are lagging somewhat. If you look at the cash flow multiple, for example, we're trading at the bottom half of our peer group. I personally don't think that the market is recognizing the quality of the cash flow that we're sourcing from the assets within our portfolio. I think the market is starting to give us credit slowly for some of the recent transactions we've done, but the value of the long-life assets and the optionality has not yet been recognized fully.
And so I need to continue working on that and make sure that people understand our story and what we've been adding. So with that, I think I've come to the end of the prepared comments. I think hopefully I've given you the message that our record is strong, our business is performing well. We've added some very high-quality assets to the portfolio, but we also see organic growth from within the portfolio. And then finally, that our valuation is pretty attractive. And I think I'll close by saying we think we're in a very good position to continue executing at this point in 2023. And with that, Julia, I'll turn it over to you for Q&A.
Thank you so much, Alistair, for the presentation. As mentioned, we will now start the Q&A portion of the presentation.
Your first question today, a viewer is asking, do you have any partners with production that are being affected by the forest fires in Canada?
Not as far as I'm aware right now. We do have a couple of mines in Northern Ontario, but as far as I'm aware, they have not been impacted by any of the fires. So let's keep our fingers crossed. That's good to hear.
Thank you, Alistair. Your next question is, how many meters of drilling will be completed this year across the entire portfolio?
That's a very good question. Unfortunately, I don't have the number. I don't know what the number would be. If you think about some of the drill programs that are underway, they're pretty significant. So at Great Bear, Kinross is drilling in the thousands of meters, tens of thousands of meters this year.
Mount Milligan, they're doing a lot of drilling there too underneath as well as peripheral to the pits. At Cortez, there's a lot of work going on at Four Mile, for example. So those are three of the assets where there is a lot of exploration going on, but I don't have one number for you to give you.
Thank you, Alistair. Your next question is, are there any new countries or regions that Royal Gold is currently prospecting?
Well, we always keep our eyes open for it's got to be led by projects. So we keep our eyes open for interesting projects. And we are not afraid to go into new jurisdictions. We did that with Botswana a few years ago. We've never been there before we invested in Khoemacau. We did a lot of work to get comfort with Botswana.
And I think we were very comfortable when we made our investment. And we've been very comfortable since. It's been a very good place for us to invest. With that said, there are certain places we won't go. It could be that there are very attractive projects in countries where we just don't feel comfortable. So when I said we think about the three Ps, people, place, and project, if we don't have a check mark in all of those boxes, we're not interested. So if place is a risk, then unfortunately, we won't go to those places for good projects. And Venezuela is an example. Venezuela is a very tough place for us to do business. And I don't think we'd be very keen on going into Venezuela.
We do keep our ears and eyes open for projects in interesting places where we're not afraid to do the work if it's somewhere that we don't know.
Thank you for your insight, Alistair. Your next question, a viewer is asking, are you seeing opportunities in West Africa as it's a large gold-producing region?
Yes, we do see some interesting opportunities. I think to go back to the previous answer, we're also seeing heightened risk in some of those places. There are certain countries in West Africa where we just don't feel comfortable investing despite the fact that there may be some interesting projects. We are in Ghana in West Africa, and we're pretty comfortable with Ghana. If there was more in Ghana that met our other criteria, I think we'd be quite interested in having a look at those opportunities.
But it's really on a case-by-case basis. And it just goes down to the place and the risk.
Thank you for your answer. Your next question is, how much of the Cortez mine is underground and at what depth?
Well, Cortez is a mix of open pit and underground. So in terms of tons extracted, I don't know what the numbers would be. Certainly, the open pits would be much, much higher tonnages. But if you're thinking about gold production, again, I don't have that number off the top of my head either. But the Crossroads and Pipeline, which is where we have our legacy royalties, and that's our 9.4% gross royalty rate, those are open pits. Cortez Hills, where we have a lower royalty of 1.6%, that's underground. Gold Rush will be underground. Four Mile will be underground.
I think we see probably more prospectivity underground as Barrick is going deeper and following higher grades and understanding the ore bodies at depth. And I can't say off the top of my head what the maximum depth would be for those underground workings. I just don't have that number.
Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, a viewer is asking, is there an ideal yield that management targets for the dividend?
We don't target yield. We don't target any kind of externality. I think the way that we look at our dividend is this: we think about it using two words, and that's growing and sustainable. So every November is when we have the discussion with the board about the dividend.
When we look to raise our dividend, we look down the path a few years because we want to make sure that if we raise it this year and we think about this next year, will we be in a position to raise it again? If so, what about the year beyond that, and so on? We want to make sure our dividend is sustainable. We don't want to pull it back. We also want to make sure that we can grow it. It's really an analysis that we look at our portfolio. We look at what we expect the prices to do and what we're comfortable paying out as a payout ratio. We don't target yield. We don't target anything that we don't have any control on.
Thank you, Alistair.
Your next question, a viewer is asking, which partner delivers the highest revenues to Royal Gold?
That would be Centerra right now. And from one asset, I should say, Barrick would be our largest because we have a big gold silver stream interest at PV, Pueblo Viejo. And then we have Cortez, which would be another very, very large producer for us. So if you think about all of the different assets, I think Barrick is the largest counterparty that we have. Excellent.
Thank you, Alistair. Your next question, what is your timeline for paying down the debt?
So what we've said, and as I mentioned, we have $500 million outstanding as of the end of March. And what we have said to the market is that we expect to pay that down through cash flow as cash flow is received.
Absent any new business development opportunities, and assuming current metal prices continue, we would expect by sometime in mid-2024 to have that paid down.
Excellent. Thank you, Alistair. Moving on, your next question, a viewer is asking, do you think gold-focused royalty and streamers will outperform gold ETFs?
I think the one thing that we have that gold ETFs, and if you're thinking physical ETFs, the one thing that we have is exposure to property upsides. Gold ETFs will only move with the gold price. We will move with the gold price and hopefully as properties within our portfolios show upside. Generally speaking, I think assuming status quo, it would make sense for us to outperform the physical ETFs in a normal market environment.
Great. Thank you, Alistair.
Your next question, a viewer commented, the share price has seen some pullback over the last couple of weeks. Would you share your thoughts as to why?
I think as I look at, as I watch the share price performance, we're not alone. I think if you look at our peers, we've all suffered from the same kind of pullback. And I think what it is is more related to just general market concerns. I think the markets seem to be very volatile. And with the debt ceiling discussions going on in the U.S., I think that has caused some uncertainty in the markets that has affected us. I think the gold price itself has been affected by some of the macro things that are happening. I think yesterday, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates. That was a surprise. And I think that's rippling through to the U.S. markets.
People are wondering what the Fed is going to do if they're going to do something similar. That's causing pressure on gold. That affects our price as well, our share price as well. I think it's a combination of a number of factors. It's not, as far as I'm aware, anything that's specific to Royal Gold. I think it's just something that's happening with the gold sector. You see this kind of volatility in the short term. It's not surprising. Obviously, I don't like to see it happen when the share price comes down, but it's fairly natural. This is kind of a natural market movement for us, I think.
Thank you for your insight, Alistair. Your next question, a viewer is asking, have you looked at any of the new players in the space as a possible acquisition target?
We always look at our competitors. We have models on our competitors, and we try and maintain valuations on them. And we watch to see what's happening and who's doing what. And if valuations get out of whack, then certain things may become interesting. But we don't really feel the need to consolidate the sector. We have a large portfolio. We have good organic growth within the portfolio. And so buying another portfolio to add to ours doesn't necessarily do anything. We actually find that we get better results if we're able to acquire assets one at a time and really pick and choose what we want to have in the portfolio and add those assets. If you buy somebody else's company, you're buying a portfolio of assets, and you've got to pay for it all. There may only be a handful of things that you really want.
And the rest of the things within that portfolio, you're happy to pass on. But unfortunately, you've got to pay for all of it. So it may not be the best way for us to add value. Now, of course, when company valuations get out of whack, and if one of our smaller peers suddenly had a valuation issue, it could very much be an interesting opportunity for us to think of. But it's not the way we think about growing our business necessarily is by consolidation of the sector. We'd rather grow our business by identifying the best assets to be involved in it and go after those.
Thank you for your answer. Your next question is, have input costs come down for your producing partners?
I don't know if they've come down. I think what has happened is inflation has slowed.
We've seen inflation pressure has started to ease. But we haven't seen costs come down. I guess the one area where costs may have come down would be energy. With a lower oil price, that does factor into costs fairly quickly. Generally, I think in most mining assets, it would be about 30% of the costs are related to energy. So that can have a big impact on costs when the oil price comes down. But most other things tend to be fairly sticky. So things like labor costs, they don't tend to come down. When a union renegotiates a contract, it'll be at a higher level. And very rarely do you see contract levels come down or labor costs come down over time. So I don't think you've necessarily seen a big change in, you haven't seen reduction in costs.
But what has occurred, and it's kind of consistent with the rest of the economy, is that inflation seems to be slowing. So the costs, they're not increasing as quickly as they were.
Thank you, Alistair. We're coming up to your last several questions here. A viewer is asking, which of your development properties can we expect to see come into production next?
The very next one should be Bellevue Gold. That's a royalty at one point, sorry, 2% NSR royalty on an asset in Australia. They're targeting sometime early in the second half of this year. So in the next several weeks, we would hope to see first gold from that project. It's a very interesting project. I mean, this has been in our portfolio for well over 10 years. We have zero book value assigned to this royalty.
A new management team came into the company a few years ago, and they started doing exploration, and they found a lot more prospectivity than I think the last owner had thought about. And so they've been working very hard to get that into production, and they expect to get it into production shortly. So that'll be the next one, so that's the next several weeks we would hope.
Excellent. Your next question: a viewer is asking, where do you expect deliveries to be in the next few years?
Well, we don't give long-term guidance. We've given our 2023 guidance, but we won't go anywhere past that in terms of guidance to the marketplace, and it's simply because we don't have visibility into all of the assets in our portfolio.
A lot of the stream assets we have good information rights to, but some of the royalties we just do not. And we don't control these assets. So it's very hard for us to look into the future and be able to give you a very rigorously calculated number in terms of the guidance. We have our own views on what assets will do, but we don't disclose that to the market, unfortunately.
That's understandable. Thank you, Alistair. Your last question for today, a viewer commented, there have been a lot of companies that have entered the royalty and streaming space over the past couple of years. And I am sure they all aspire to be like Royal Gold. What are Royal Gold's aspirations?
Our aspirations, well, I think in terms of our strategy, it's fairly simple.
We want to be involved in precious metals assets that have good exploration and production upside. We want to continue adding to the portfolio in such a way that it doesn't dilute shareholder exposure to those assets. So simply put, that's what it is. That's our strategy, and so it's all about growth with a very conservative financial approach. So capital allocation, or discipline around the way we allocate capital. If you ask me what a future state of Royal Gold looks like in five or 10 years, I would say I think we're aiming for the company to be bigger, continue growing, but exactly in the same form that you see today. Precious metals will be the focus. We'll have a strong balance sheet. We'll continue paying a dividend.
So those would be the things that I would say that aspirationally we want to do is to be Royal Gold today, but larger in the future, if that helps. Excellent.
Thank you, Alistair. This concludes the Q&A portion of the presentation. Thank you to everyone who submitted your questions. If you do not get a chance to submit your questions, you can send them over to your account manager here at Renmark. This concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn it back over to Alistair for final remarks.
Well, thanks very much, everyone. I really appreciate you taking the time today. And thanks for the questions. And as Julia said, if you do have any more questions, if I didn't answer your question that you asked and give you an answer that you were hoping for, please let Renmark know.
I'd be happy to talk to you one-on-one after the fact if that would be helpful. So thanks very much. Enjoy your day and look forward to talking to you again.
Thank you, Alistair, for the presentation. Once again, this was Royal Gold Inc., trading on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol RGLD. Thank you to everyone in Seattle and surrounding areas for joining us today. Stay tuned for other presentations in your area. Thank you and see you next time.