Good morning, and welcome to Royal Gold's 2023 investor update. My name is Alistair Baker, and I'm Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development for Royal Gold, Inc. We'll run through a program starting with opening comments from our CEO and then move into discussions of our ESG report, our portfolio, valuation, and our financial position. Prepared remarks should run for a bit less than two hours, and then we'll open the floor to a Q&A session. For participants joining us via the webcast link, there is a question box available where you can type and submit questions at any time during the event. For participants joining us by phone, questions may be submitted via the telephone operator after the conclusion of the prepared remarks.
We'll have some team members participating in the Q&A portion from other office locations, so I ask that you bear with us as we change speakers and pass the microphone around during that part of the agenda. This event is being webcast live, and you'll be able to access a replay on our website shortly following this webcast. During the event, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements about our projections and expectations for the future. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K and in our other filings with the SEC. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, operating cash flow margin, cash G&A, and net debt.
Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available as an appendix to the slide presentation and in our December quarter 2022 results press release, which can be found on our website. I'll now turn it over to our President and CEO, William Heissenbuttel, who will start off the event with an introduction and strategic overview of Royal Gold.
Good morning. I would like to add my thanks for your participation in our investor day. I think we have a number of interesting areas to focus on over the next couple of hours. I look forward to once again demonstrating the depth of our team by having multiple speakers address various topics. My slides will be devoted to an introduction of the company from a discussion of the low risk gold exposure we offer investors, which you can get from a number of companies in our sector, to a discussion of some of the things that make us different. I will close with a review of our simple longstanding corporate strategy. If you want to try to understand the culture of our company, I think our vision, mission, and core values as what do we want to be?
What do we do, and how do we do it? We want to be the gold standard, period, in everything we do, whether that is negotiating in good faith on a new investment, giving our time at local charities, or as an investment for you. Our mission has been purposely framed to focus on finance. We are not a mining company, and this may answer the question, what do we do all day? We are constantly thinking of new ideas to discuss with operators, new investment structures, new co-investment situations while remaining true to our core product of royalty and streaming finance. Our values are purposely limited in scope so that they can be recalled, but those three cover the principles behind how we try to conduct ourselves every day. Most of you probably know, I won't spend a lot of time on this introductory slide.
The four things to take away from the slide are, number one, we remain dedicated to the royalty and streaming model. We have a diverse portfolio of gold-focused assets. We have good liquidity and modest leverage despite having been in an aggressive investment period. We have a limited number of staff of talented people behind an $8 billion+ market cap company. All of these points will be further discussed, both in the context of our business model, the unique characteristics of our company, and our strategy. There are a number of ways to invest in gold, from physical gold to high risk exploration plays. ETFs, bars, and coins provide metal exposure but no upside or return on that investment through dividends or interest.
Exploration and operating companies offer exposure to gold and upside potential but have full exposure to rising operating and capital costs from a portfolio that is often limited in number, and a consistent dividend is not common. Royal Gold offers exposure to the metal resource upside to a diverse portfolio of assets, limited exposure to operating and capital costs, and nobody in our industry has put sustainable and sustainable dividend like we have done over the past two decades. Given that we have exposure to the geologic upside potential at our assets, it is not surprising that our gold beta is well above one times. An ounce of gold will always be an ounce of gold, but if you layer in cost-free upside to additional gold ounces at our existing properties, you can see why there is a bit more torque in our share price than in the metal price.
However, it is also interesting to note that we have a low but positive beta relative to the S&P 500. We are not just a counter-cyclical niche commodity play, but one that shows positive correlation to the market as a whole. Looking back to fiscal 2022, our revenue contribution can be broken down a number of different ways. From a jurisdiction point of view, Canada and the U.S. contributed 53% of our revenue, and while there has been increased noise out of jurisdictions like Chile and Mexico in recent months, our investments in those countries are with longstanding operations and operators. Even our exposure in Africa is in Ghana and Botswana, two of the safer locales on the continent and both with a historical mining culture.
From a diversification perspective, we still have our top five assets contributing almost 70% of our revenue. Those assets have been in operation for no less than a decade. It does remain a key strategic objective to further diversify our revenue base through future acquisitions. Our revenue comes from mines that are almost entirely gold or copper focused. The streaming product is a great fit for base metal mines with a nominal precious metal revenue stream. While our interests at Pueblo Viejo, Rainy River, and Wassa are evidence that a gold stream can be successfully done on a primary gold mine. A final point on the revenue distribution is our counterparty profile. It's one thing to look at a high-profile names like Barrick, Newmont, and Teck, but one should also consider the importance of the underlying property to the operator.
How important is Mount Milligan to Centerra, Pueblo Viejo to Barrick, Cortez to Nevada Gold Mines joint venture, and Peñasquito to Newmont? There is motivation on the part of the operators to extend the lives of these mines. While we have compiled a recent history of gold-focused revenue growth, you can see that it has resulted in a larger growth in our operating cash flow. That is a reflection of the scalability of the business. New investments do not require new teams of people to monitor and track them, our excellent asset monitoring group allows our business development team to move efficiently from one opportunity to another. More impressive than our operating cash flow margin of almost 70% are the adjusted EBITDA margin and cash expense to revenue percentage.
In the face of all of the inflation the market saw in 2022, our adjusted EBITDA margin rose from 75%- 79%, and the percentage of revenue represented by a cash G&A expenses stayed at 4%. When you consider that the biggest deduction to get from revenue to adjusted EBITDA is cost of sales, which is a contractually driven number largely based on metal prices, you can see that this is a company that offers both excellent long-term exposure to gold, but also insulation against a downward movement in the price of the metal. The difference between our cost structure and the cost structure of a typical operator is striking. As I just stated, our cost of sales is metal price dependent, not dependent on the cost structure of the operating mines that produce our revenue.
The cost of sales will fluctuate, but it's not a controllable expense from our side. It is driven by our metal sales and the associated cash price for each ounce or ton sold. The only part of our cost structure that is subject to inflation is our overhead, which is less than $100 per Gold Equivalent Ounce and, as I said, 4% of revenue. We have seen inflation in areas like accounting and legal fees and cost of living adjustments, but the cost base is so small that those increases really don't register on a relative basis in our margin calculations. While the topics I covered should give you a good sense of why our company offers a low-risk exposure to gold, I have to admit that we're not entirely unique in that sense.
There are others in our sector that are similarly gold focused with high cash flow margins and low expense bases. I will turn to items that might make us a bit more unique. In the first place, we really do sit in the middle of our sector. I'd like to say we don't have the move the needle challenge faced by our larger peers, but we have the liquidity to compete with them because streaming and royalty transactions tend to be clustered at values that aren't that large. The billion-plus streaming deals we have seen can be counted on one hand. A modest $250 million deal like Khoemacau will be recognizable in our revenue and cash flows.
While modest-sized deals might show up more in the revenue and cash flows of our smaller competitors, they don't have the same liquidity, and they don't trade at our multiple, giving us a cost of capital advantage. A quick review of the market for new deals show that there is always something to do. The mining industry needs capital, whether to build mines, expand operations, restructure balance sheets, consolidate, divest. Mining companies have a higher cost of capital than we do, especially base metal companies. If we can translate a precious metal flow that represents 8% of a mine's total revenue into an investment that covers 40% of a capital project, that financing is probably going to be advantageous to the operator.
You may look at this chart and say the market is very volatile, and I would only caution that a transaction that shows up in 2018 may have been in the works for months in 2017. The market is highly unpredictable in terms of timing and volumes. I'll also caution you that this chart only covers the streaming market. Our Côté, Red Chris, Great Bear, and Cortez royalty acquisitions, totaling $1.1 billion since mid-2021, are not included in these numbers. With our large investments in 2022, our liquidity has been the focus of many investors. Do we have enough capital to continue to invest? Do we need to raise additional capital at this point?
Paul will cover this a bit later, but I'll simply say that we had almost $550 million of liquidity at the end of December. Since 2004, one half of all streaming transactions have been less than $200 million, and the average only $293 million. Yes, I believe we have the liquidity to continue to invest. We expect to generate the cash flows to repay our outstanding debt in a relatively short period of time, and barring further transactions, we don't have a current need for additional capital. Our financing strategy has long been to rely on cash flows and our revolving credit to finance our growth without going to the equity market. We have not done an equity issue since 2012.
While I cannot promise we won't access the equity markets going forward or access other capital markets for funding, I can tell you that equity does not rank high on our list of options. What else makes us unique is our U.S. base. If you are a generalist investor in the U.S. with benchmarks based on a variety of U.S. equity indices, we are included in over 200 of them, including the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats Index, in which we are the only precious metal participant. Our shareholder base is also relatively unique to many of our Canadian-based competitors. The percentage of passive shareholders in our register is probably twice that of Franco or Wheaton. This more than likely contributes to our low but positive correlation to the S&P 500.
Our investor base, especially our top 10 shareholders, tend to change infrequently, which I take as a vote of confidence in our strategy and the way in which our company is managed. Our dividend history is well known in our sector and a point of pride for the company. 20+ years of paying an increasing dividend has no peer in our sector. We've been paying higher annual dividends longer than any of the currently constituted members of our sector have been around. We don't target a payout ratio, which would guarantee dividend volatility, and we don't target yield, which is almost impossible given the premium at which our shares trade. We are not trying to make flashy announcements with respect to our dividend. We only hope to be consistently boring by building on our past record.
I also think we're led by a board of directors and a senior management team with industry experience and depth. Our board has individuals with past experience with companies like Barrick, Placer Dome, Teck, Goldcorp, Klamas, and Eldorado. Our board has the necessary skills, like operating, finance and accounting, legal, ESG, and business development to understand, address, or mitigate the company's opportunities, risks, and uncertainties. I have an excellent relationship with our board, but it is an inquisitive, curious, and probing board, unafraid of testing management's assumptions and conclusions. Our management team is similarly experienced. Given our lean staff, you don't join Royal Gold to learn a trade. You have to employ your trade on day one. I would be remiss to not mention the rest of our team here.
Everyone has an important role to play. I think there is a certain satisfaction for our team knowing everyone's contributions matter every day. We've had a very low turnover over the years. I think that is a positive indicator for our culture. I'll now turn to my final topic, which is a review of our strategy. I went back 15 years to our 2008 annual report. The following five strategies were highlighted, provide lower risk exposure to gold through royalty ownership, maintain financial flexibility to compete for royalty acquisitions, further enhance high margins by maintaining a low cost structure, apply rigorous and detailed royalty evaluation criteria, and continue to build a diversified portfolio of quality royalty assets. Does that look or sound familiar? Whether or not those words appear on the screen, they all remain high priorities for our company to this date.
We wanna provide investors with long-term exposure to gold with limited equity dilution and hopefully continue our dividend history of increasing rates. It is that simple. There is nothing complicated about what we are trying to achieve. That really helps us focus and prioritize when we are presented with numerous investment opportunities. I presented this slide a couple of months ago, I was struck by the number of accomplishments we achieved in 2022. We made three key long-term high-quality asset acquisitions. We saw Khoemacau ramp up to full production. We saw mine life increases at Milligan and Rainy River. We saw projects progress at Red Chris, Côté, and King of the Hills, all while achieving important corporate objectives that make it easier to compare us to others, like our new fiscal year end, providing annual guidance, and our first ESG report.
We're still able to finance growth without equity dilution. Our activity over the last 20 months has had a number of key themes that are consistent with our strategy. Quality, long-life acquisitions, good operators, good jurisdictions, gold-focused, and most of all, resource upside. You don't always find investments with so many of these qualities, and I can't guarantee that future acquisitions will show a substantial overlap with all of our strategic goals. Our recent activity, taken as a whole, has certainly checked all of the boxes. These qualities may not be immediately evident on day one, and it may take time for the upside in our acquisitions to develop. We are playing a long game, making an upside assessment and hopefully watching as projects develop as we envisioned.
While that may frustrate those with shorter time horizons, I think our track record shows that more times than not, the upside we see on day 1 develops over time. I think our ability to demonstrate a successful investment track record over the long term has been reflected in our share price. We use such a long-term horizon for this analysis because that is exactly how we view investments. Paying today for an asset with good long-term potential might make some pause. An asset that we will be happy to have in the portfolio in 5, 10, or 15 years can fit our long-term vision. To conclude my comments, and in keeping with one of the themes this year, I leave you with three simple thoughts. Gold focus, resource upside exposure, and long-term commitment to a strategy that really hasn't changed much over time.
We will try to deliver on these points in an accretive way for our shareholders. Our greatest asset is our people. You cannot do transactions like Red Chris, Great Bear, and Cortez without an experienced quality team. As we move to the next part of our presentation, I am pleased to have many members of our senior management team here today. First up, I would like to introduce you to Allison Forrest, our newest addition to the senior management and our Vice President, Investment Stewardship. Allison and Mark Isto will be providing a summary of our recently issued 2022 ESG report. I hope you enjoy the rest of the presentations today, and I thank you again for your time.
Hello, everyone. I'd like to take a brief moment to introduce myself. My name is Allison Forrest. I joined the Royal Gold team as Vice President, Investment Stewardship in late June of last year. Previous to Royal Gold, I worked in mining private equity for just shy of a decade, managing ESG and responsible investment matters. I have spent my entire career working in various ESG-specific roles. I am pleased to have joined the Royal Gold team, given its strong focus on transparency and commitment to ESG. Today, we will be focusing on the ESG report overview, ESG frameworks and scorecards, lastly, our climate change scenario analysis. As most of you know, this year marks the second year of the release of Royal Gold's ESG report.
We wanted to take a few moments to walk you through the high-level details of the report and provide a brief overview of where we are at with respect to our ESG journey. This year's ESG report, as shown on these three slides, shows that we've made a few modifications that will help our readers navigate the report more efficiently. For example, the report sections on the top of the page brings you directly to each section of the report, and the table of contents is also hyperlinked to bring the reader to specific content. As suggested by some of our investors, we have disclosed some of our most important and interesting ESG highlights on a single page at the front of the report.
After having several discussions with a variety of investors and stakeholders, consistent feedback highlighted the need for Royal Gold to make its ESG data easily accessible. Not only have we made our data downloadable in the report, we also made the data available directly on our website. We have integrated three ESG-specific standards or frameworks for this report. The first being the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, also known as the TCFD. Royal Gold first introduced some aspects of the TCFD last year. However, this year's report includes more robust disclosure and in-depth scenario analysis. Mark Isto will fill you in on those details shortly. The second and third ESG frameworks are new to Royal Gold this year. These include the Global Reporting Initiative, also known as the GRI, and the Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the SDGs.
We believe reporting to universally accepted ESG definitions such as the GRI and the TCFD will in turn help support our stakeholders as they make their own ESG disclosures. One area we also wanted to highlight during today's presentation, which you will also find in our ESG report, is our performance with respect to third-party ESG ratings. We know reporting to a variety of these rating agencies can be challenging, and as we all know, scoring outcomes are not consistent. We have, however, continued to maintain strong scores and/or make improvements among the rating agencies listed in this slide. Please refer to our ESG report for our complete list of third-party 2022 ESG ratings and scoring trends over time. An important update we made in 2022 was the formalization of our internal ESG committee.
As you can see highlighted in the middle and green square at the center of the slide. The Royal Gold ESG committee is responsible for ensuring that Royal Gold sustainability and ESG initiatives are effectively monitored, managed, and fulfilled, and that issues are reported to the Compensation, Nomination and Governance Committee of the board as appropriate. The ESG committee is a cross-functional management committee and consists of members of Royal Gold senior management with ESG-related expertise in the following areas: ESG, operations, compliance, finance, investor relations, legal, and is led by myself, the Vice President of Investment Stewardship. The committee meets on a monthly frequency to discuss a variety of ESG topics. In our 2022 ESG report, we have also made a positive change by creating ESG scorecards for Royal Gold.
We now have two sets of scorecards, one for Royal Gold as a corporation and the other for our revenue-producing stream and royalty companies, what we refer to as our operators. The ESG scorecards mark our first effort to constructively track ESG performance over periods of time. This slide shows the overview of our corporate ESG scorecard, which includes our corporate performance on greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, employee and board statistics, community donations, and our third-party ratings. This next slide shows a sample of our stream and royalty portfolio ESG scorecard. Our scorecard is especially useful in helping us understand our portfolio as a whole and how potential new investments could affect our portfolio.
In addition to approving our disclosures and management of ESG topics, Royal Gold continues to make an effort to contribute to our local communities where our offices are located, as well as the communities in which our operators are located. In our corporate and operator charitable donations section of the ESG report, you can learn about some of the specific donations we made in 2022 and how they align with the SDGs. Two notable contributions, although all of our contributions are considered to be very important, includes contributions to the Toteng Medical Clinic located near the Khoemacau Mine in Botswana, Africa, and our partnership with Project C.U.R.E. that's based here in Denver, Colorado. We have also made some significant strides on setting up U.S.-based university scholarships in 2022 at the Colorado School of Mines, Montana Tech, and South Dakota Mines.
All three of these universities have a deep commitment to science, technology, engineering, and math excellence in the mining industry. All three Royal Gold scholarships are aimed at attracting female and underrepresented minority students. We are excited to support these universities, and two of this year's scholarship recipients have been highlighted in our ESG report. Lastly, before I turn the remainder of the ESG presentation over to Mark, I wanted to reference some of our most notable ESG highlights for 2022. We continue to make strong contributions to our local communities. We remain carbon neutral. We have offset our emissions since 2020.
Please read our report to learn more about our offset program we are currently supporting. We have disclosed 98% of our Scope 3 operator investment emissions and have seen a declining trend in greenhouse gas emissions intensity from 2019- 2022. We continue to maintain a low turnover rate. 20% of our senior management identifies as female. As mentioned, we formally reported against the TCFD this year. On that note, I would like to thank you for your time and pass the presentation over to Mark to fill you in on more details about our TCFD reporting and climate change milestones. Thank you.
Thanks, Allison. Good morning. Managing the subjects covered by ESG is not new to us. However, evaluating the potential impacts of climate change is an exception where we've been putting in considerable efforts to advance our understanding. I'll spend a few minutes and provide an overview of how we're approaching climate change and the process we went through to assess climate risk and encourage you to investigate our new ESG report for more in-depth discussion. Our approach is informed by three fundamental principles. M easuring performance, understanding the risks, and reducing to the extent practical our impacts and disclosing our performance. With respect to our portfolio, we've been focused on the first step of understanding the emissions attributed to our beneficial interests from our streams and royalties.
We have relied on a U.K. mining ESG research firm, Skarn Associates, who compile energy, GHG emission, and water usage data on an asset level basis. Skarn has compiled GHG Scope 1 and 2 emissions estimates for more than 63 million ounces of annual gold production worldwide. Our portfolio average GHG emission benchmarks in the middle of the third quartile of gold producers. We estimate that on average, 740 kg of CO₂ equivalent are emitted for each of our attributed gold equivalent ounces in 2021, the last year that a full data set is available. We have chosen to present and disclose information to our stakeholders consistent with TCFD, whose guidelines include assessing our business and portfolio using scenario analysis, a risk assessment tool.
The knowledge gained through this process is allowing us to better integrate climate risk into our due diligence process, develop a life of portfolio emission model, and identify opportunities to support operations in their journey to reduce emissions. The objective in climate scenario analysis is to assess a broad range of potential climate change impacts that address both physical risks driven by changing weather patterns and transition risks driven by increased regulation and carbon taxation. We chose three climate scenarios defined by the Network for Greening the Financial System, NGFS, and assessed 10 jurisdictions that produce more than 83% of our revenue in 2021.
The first scenario we assessed is referred to as the current policy scenario, which is basically business as usual, which sees a slow transition to new energy supplies, driving GHG emissions and generating the most significant physical risk of the three scenarios. The delayed transition scenario is based on the premise that business as usual will continue to 2030, at which point carbon taxation and regulation are abruptly applied to drive an accelerated reduction in emissions to meet a 2050 net zero target. This scenario also severs the physical risks associated with the current policy scenario through the mid 2030s and generates the most significant transition risks of the three scenarios. The net zero 2050 scenario is based on orderly transition to a low carbon economy through the systematic adoption of regulation and carbon taxation across the globe to incentivize the energy transition.
This scenario is dominated by pervasive carbon taxation that systematically rises over time, but doesn't reach the level of taxation or social disruption expected in the delayed transition scenario. The analysis allows us three things, specific physical and transition risks by jurisdiction, potential financial impacts on our business associated with identified risks and our portfolio resilience to climate risk. A summary representation of the key physical risks identified in a portion of the 10 jurisdictions we assessed, along with a range of carbon taxation that is forecast for the delayed transition in the net zero 2050 scenarios are presented on the map for an assessment date of 2035.
We did not find any physical risks that were pervasive across the portfolio as measured by an assessment date of 2035 due to our geographically diverse portfolio and a key aspect supporting our business resilience. We find that physical risks are more likely to impact our business through revenue delays. When we look at carbon taxation in the range of $250-$300 a ton in the mid-2030s, we see costs for operations rising that could lead to changes in resources and reserve classifications and margin pressure on less robust operations are possible, which could impact our longer-term revenue and our attributed mineral resources and reserve.
Ending on a positive note, transition to a low carbon economy will also generate opportunities through the implementation of innovative technologies, the expansion of renewed power supplies, and the development of carbon offset projects, which we see as potential business opportunities to support our core stream and royalty business. We will now turn to the portfolio update portion of our presentation. I'll provide a discussion of our 2023 sales guidance and an introduction into our portfolio. Jason will follow with a presentation on developments at recent acquisitions. Martin will follow Jason, continuing the discussion of recent developments along with organic growth developing within the portfolio. In 2023, our sales guidance is expected to range from 320-345,000 GEOs, with gold contributing approximately 73% using the stated metal prices.
Supporting our guidance, we see strong revenue from Cortez, with production expected to range from 450,000-480,000 ounces of gold from the legacy royalty area, which hosts an equivalent gross value royalty rate of approximately 9.4%. From the Cortez Complex or CC zone, where production is expected to range from 490,000-580,000 ounces, where our interest is equivalent to a 1.6% gross value royalty. We also see a full year of production from Khoemacau.
Lower production will come from Mount Milligan, with Centerra producing lower 2023 production compared to 2022, and 2023 production being back-end weighted is expected to further impact our sales in the H2 of the year due to the normal lag in timing between concentrate shipments and stream deliveries. Deliveries of silver from Pueblo Viejo are expected to remain variable in 2023, and no material deliveries of deferred silver are expected while the plant ramps up to full performance levels throughout the year after substantial completion of commissioning, which Barrick expects in the Q1 . We hold 182 stream and royalty interests containing 40 revenue generating properties in some of the most prolific mining jurisdictions of the world.
Our principal properties made up 71% of our 2022 revenue, with locations in Chile, Northern Nevada, British Columbia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Botswana. Jason and Martin will discuss production growth catalysts associated with a number of our principal properties later in the presentation. We bucket our properties into four categories, producing, development, which denotes disclosed reserves but no production, evaluation, which hosts mineral resources but no reserves, and exploration. We look at the exploration, evaluation, and development categories as hosting optionality and a significant source of organic production potential. Since December 2019, we've seen four projects classified as evaluation move to development, Bellevue, Manh Choh, Castelo De Sonhos and Mt Goode. While Bellevue, Manh Choh, Back River and Mara Rosa, currently classified as development, are in construction and expected to move into production in the near future.
In the last five years, we've seen LaRonde Zone 5 move to production while seeing King of the Hills complete a significant expansion reflecting organic growth. We see significant production growth associated with properties that generate 35% of our 2022 revenue. Jason will now provide more description on developments associated with some of our recent acquisitions. I thank you for your time.
Thank you, Mark. I will highlight some of the investments we've made over the past two years, namely interests in Cortez, Great Bear, Red Chris, and Javelina, following which Martin will provide an update on some of our longer-held assets. We're very pleased with our recent acquisition track record, having secured assets which meet our investment criteria. High-quality projects with embedded optionality, stable jurisdictions managed by experienced operators. Together, these acquisitions enhance our portfolio in terms of asset quality, longevity, and counterparty strength. A key trait we see across each of these assets is growth potential. As Bill mentioned, sometimes this potential could be demonstrated on day one. Sometimes it takes time to manifest.
This growth potential, whether in reserves and resources or production volume, is the optionality that we are looking to embed in our portfolio and that we believe our investors covet, helping to drive a premium valuation. I will start at Nevada Gold Mines' Cortez complex in northern Nevada, operated by Barrick Gold. Cortez has been in Royal Gold's DNA for decades and is, in fact, the company's foundational asset dating back to 1987. We have watched the complex grow into one of the largest gold producers in North America with discoveries such as Cortez Hills, Gold Rush, and Four Mile, all off of our original or legacy royalty ground as we refer to it now. Last year, we had the opportunity to acquire two new royalty interests covering the complex for a total of $730 million.
As is shown on the maps on this slide, these two newly acquired interests, which we refer to as the Rio Tinto and the Idaho royalties, are largely overlapping and have greatly increased our exposure to NGM's world-class complex. The principal difference between the Rio Tinto and Idaho maps is the inclusion of Robertson within the Idaho AOI. Not only have we increased our exposure to the Pipeline and Crossroads deposits within the legacy zone, but we now have meaningful exposure to the other producing mines, including Cortez Hills, to the deposits currently under development at Four Mile, Gold Rush, and Robertson, and to the many ex-exploration targets within the complex. We hope that our new way of presenting these overlapping interests makes it easier for shareholders and analysts to quantify our position here. Barrick have a demonstrated track record of replacing depletion and growing reserves and resources.
Since they consolidated ownership of Cortez in 2008, when the total endowment was 18 million ounces, the complex has produced 15 million ounces, yet reserves of resources have all increased, with the total endowment now standing at 31.5 million ounces. Meaningful contributions to that growth came from discoveries at Gold Rush in 2011 and Four Mile in 2015 and from the acquisition of Robertson in 2017. These reserves and resources underpin Cortez's Tier 1 production profile, which we expect will continue for decades. While our legacy royalty position will continue to generate material revenues for the foreseeable future, the bulk of near-term production growth is forecast to come from areas outside of the legacy zone, to which we now have exposure through these two acquisitions.
Namely at Gold Rush, which is expected to be a stand-alone Tier one mine with multi-decade potential and which Barrick forecasts will start ramping up later this year following receipt of a Record of Decision from the BLM, and also from Robertson in 2027. The potential of the Cortez property does not stop at what has been delineated to date. We believe the recent discovery history is an indication of just how prospective the property remains for new discoveries. We conducted an in-depth assessment of the property's target risk potential during due diligence using in-house expertise and outside Carlin Trend experts. As Barrick continues to gain operating experience, they gain knowledge of how the various ore bodies behave, and they are able to create more accurate geologic frameworks from which to target future discoveries.
Some of the targets that Barrick has identified are listed on this slide, and we look forward to following their exploration progress. Cortez was already a principal property for Royal Gold, and these new acquisitions ensure that it will continue to be a meaningful contributor to our portfolio for decades to come. Discoveries of gold deposits with world-class potential are rare, and those located near communities that are supportive of mining with proximal infrastructure are even more so. We believe that the Great Bear project in Red Lake, Ontario, possesses these attributes, and its potential is just starting to be daylighted with many exploration and development catalysts expected over the coming years. We watched the Great Bear project evolve since discovery, and the royalty that we acquired last year is the only one that exists on the project today.
While the royalty is a fairly standard 2% NSR, we took a unique approach to the transaction by entering into a cooperation agreement with Kinross following their $1.4 billion acquisition of the project. This agreement gave us real-time access to the technical team running the project and to their data, which afforded us the opportunity to conduct detailed first principles due diligence in order to validate Kinross's vision for the project. The project offers Kinross a lot of development optionality, hosting gold in both disseminated style mineralization and traditional high-grade Red Lake style mineralization. Kinross's current plan for the LP zone is to develop a high-grade open pit, followed by a bulk tonnage underground operation, with production potential of 500,000 ounces per year. Traditional Red Lake mineralization, as has been identified at the Hinge and Limb zones, could act as underground satellite feed sources.
Since Kinross closed the acquisition early last year, they conducted a significant drilling campaign in addition to what was carried out by the original owner. A total of 550,000 meters were completed between 2018 and 2022. While the initial 5 million ounce resource is an encouraging milestone, we fully expect that it will take years to define the ultimate potential, both in near-surface extensions and in the underground at the LP zone, as well as elsewhere on the property's 9,000 hectares. The initial resource is limited to a depth of 500 meters, while significant intercepts of high-grade and visible gold have been intercepted below 500 meters to a depth of 1,000 meters. This deeper potential will be more efficiently defined from underground drilling, and the driving of an exploration decline is part of Kinross's development plan.
Kinross continued to use the Hemlo analogy, referring to Barrick's long-producing mine in Ontario, which has produced over 22 million ounces since 1985. In addition to continued exploration drilling, Kinross is undertaking economic and environmental baseline studies to support a potential construction decision in 2027. The next major milestone is likely to be an initial PEA forecast to be released next year. While the project is still in its infancy, we are excited to have life-of-mine, property-wide exposure to this world-class gold discovery in the hands of a proven mine builder who is highly motivated for success. Continuing on the theme of long-life assets and safe jurisdictions with experienced operators, in 2021, we acquired a 1% NSR royalty on Newcrest's Red Chris copper-gold mine located in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
Despite the fact that it is currently a producing open pit, the real value of Red Chris is and always has been in its underground potential, which was the focus of our due diligence. What we observed was multi-decade block cave potential with tremendous exploration upside and optionality. The validation of our thesis began just a few months after we closed the acquisition, when Newcrest released a pre-feasibility study with a 31 year bulk tonnage underground mine life, which is currently the subject of a feasibility study due in the second half of this year. There is abundant resource growth and exploration potential beyond what is presented in the PFS. Most notably at East Ridge, which at the time of our acquisition was classified simply as a new discovery.
In less than two years, Newcrest has upgraded it to an exploration target of 400 million-500 million tons. To put that in perspective, the 31-year PFS contemplates underground ore production of 400 million tons. Conceptually, we are looking at a doubling of the resource base from this zone alone. East Ridge is not just expected to extend the mine life, but also to provide optionality around mine sequencing and throughput rates with a view to maximizing NPV. While we do not expect East Ridge to be incorporated into the upcoming feasibility study, an inaugural resource is forecast for later this year. In summary, we continue to be pleasantly surprised by the pace at which our investment thesis is bearing out, and we look forward to following Red Chris's progress in the hands of one of the global leaders in underground bulk mining.
Our investment in Ero Copper's Xavantina mine in Brazil is another example of our due diligence process identifying undervalued attributes. Once again, our investment thesis being substantiated sooner than anticipated. When we first looked at Xavantina, on the surface it was a sub 40,000 ounce per year mine with a short life mining from a single vein structure and feeding a mill running at less than 60% of nameplate capacity. What attracted us following our due diligence process was the exploration potential of the 30,000+ hectare land package covering an underexplored greenstone belt that had both near mine and regional high-quality exploration targets. The opportunity to turn that exploration potential into near-term value creation hinged on the ability to open up an additional mining front to make use of the spare milling capacity.
The Ero Copper team, who have a demonstrated track record of delivering operational and exploration success in Brazil, shared this vision. A unique incentive structure was built into the stream agreement to encourage regional exploration activities and near-mine resource growth for the benefit of both parties. Fast-forward two years, M&I resources have increased by over 60% and reserves by over 45%, and Ero continues to invest in the operation. With the opening of a second mining front on the Matinha vein to supplement production from Santo Antônio, output is forecast to grow substantially from the 38,000 ounces produced in 2021. As part of their NX60 project , Ero is guiding to 50+ thousand ounces this year and 55-60 thousand ounces for 2024 onwards.
In addition to this near-term production growth, new mineralized systems have been identified on the property, which Ero believes could one day lead to a third mining front and the use of the 25% mill capacity expected to remain after Matinha is in full production. I will now hand things over to Martin
Thank you, Jason. Good morning. I'll now spend some time on other assets in the portfolio where we are seeing interesting developments. At Khoemacau Copper Silver Mine in Botswana, we invested $265 million during a successful construction and ramp-up executed by the Khoemacau team. The Zone 5 underground mine and Boseto processing facility have been operating at nameplate capacity of 10,000 tonnes a day since December 2022. Throughput grade and metallurgical performance are meeting design parameters, with 2023 forecast to be the first year of full production. The Zone 5 ore body is open on strike and at depth. Several other deposits have been identified on the property. The company is now conducting a feasibility study level evaluation of the expansion option.
Before I move off this slide, I'd like to draw your attention to the payable silver profile graph and note that while the mine has reached nameplate capacity for tonnage, it does not reach its full silver production target until 2025, 2026 as the silver grade goes up with depth. For the expansion, it is envisaged that a new 4.5 million ton per year processing facility will be built at Zone 5, increasing output from the Zone 5 mine by over 20% and eliminating the 35 kilometer haul to the Boseto mill. The existing Zone 5 mine, which is in effect 3 underground mines, each with their own dedicated access and underground infrastructure, is designed to support this increasing mining rate.
Following the construction of the new Zone 5 mill, the existing Boseto mill would be tasked with processing ore from several newly built underground mines on satellite deposits, including at Mango Northeast, which is within Royal Gold's AOI. We expect the expansion to have a materially positive impact on our investment, while the stream agreement protects us from displacement by all sources outside of the AOI. Moving on to Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic. Barrick released a 43-101 report a few weeks ago that outlined the details of the expanded mine plan. With the new Naranjo tails facility site now identified and permitting underway, significant resource conversion occurred at the end of 2022. With the expanded reserve, Barrick is expecting mining to continue through 2041 and processing to continue through 2044.
Life of mine production from Barrick's 60% share, which is the basis of our streams, is expected to be over 11 million ounces of gold and 50 million ounces of silver over that period. With respect to the plant expansion, Barrick's last update was in mid-February, and at that time it was targeting substantial completion for commissioning of the new infrastructure in the first quarter of this year. Barrick's guidance for its share of 2023 production was 470,000-520,000 ounces of gold, with production expected to be stronger in the second half of the year as commissioning is completed and the plant throughput ramps up. With respect to deferred deliveries on our silver stream, as we mentioned on our last earnings call, approximately 513,000 ounces of silver remain deferred.
We do expect that deliveries will be made in the future as silver recovery is expected to improve, but we don't expect material silver deliveries to occur during the remainder of 2023 until the expanded plant reaches steady state operation. At Mount Milligan, we reached a major milestone last year with the full recovery of our seven hundred and eighty-one and a half million dollar stream advance payment. Shortly after this, in early November, we were pleased to see Centerra's updated 43-101 report, which outlines plans to extend mining and milling at Mount Milligan through 2033. The new 43-101 report outlined average annual production levels of 175,000 ounces of gold and 68 million pounds of copper through this period.
Centerra also noted that they are evaluating ways to optimize the mine plan and potentially increase 2024 and 2025 production levels above these life of mine averages. They also reported positive brownfield exploration results proximal to the open pit that could also have the potential to support further resource growth. Mount Milligan remains the largest revenue generator in our portfolio, and we are encouraged to see continued potential to expand and extend the mine life. I'll now spend a few minutes talking about some of our other assets in the portfolio that we expect to start generating revenue in the near to medium term. As you can see on the slide, we have several development assets that are targeted to start production soon.
While most of these are relatively small producers, if you exclude the large Gold Rush project to Cortez and the longer dated Great Bear project, we expect the total annual contribution from these assets when they get to steady-state to be about 25,000 GEOs. This is slightly more than what we expect to see from Khoemacau, further demonstrating that we don't need growth from the largest assets to see a meaningful revenue impact. We also expect the revenue from these assets to be high margin, as several of them have been in the portfolio for over a decade and have a nominal book value. I'll start with King of the Hills in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia.
On April fifth, Red 5 announced that King of the Hills delivered record gold production in the March 2023 quarter of 17,550 ounces from the open pit and underground sources. They also announced that TSF construction was completed in the March quarter. In the same release, they reaffirmed half one 2023 guidance of 90,000-105,000 ounces. Although we do expect some contribution from Darlot Mine, which is not subject to our royalty. At Bellevue Gold, also in Western Australia, mining has started at the Vanguard open pit, which is expected to produce 10,000 ounces for toll processing in mid-2023 in advance of completion of the Bellevue processing facility. Bellevue has announced that construction of the processing facility is advancing on schedule with the ball mill on site and secondary and tertiary crushers installed.
Underground development is now over 10 km complete, and three underground jumbos are operating and targeting an advance of more than 300 meters per jumbo per month. I had the opportunity to visit the Bellevue project earlier this month, and I was extremely impressed by the team on site and the construction progress on the underground process plant and infrastructure. At the Côté Gold Project in Ontario, construction has continued without interruption since it began in Q3 2020. IAMGOLD reported that the project is 73% complete as of the end of December, and that funding is in place to complete the project based on the current schedule. IAMGOLD is continuing to target first gold in early 2024. Recall that our royalty covers approximately 70% of the main Côté reserve and IAMGOLD does not expect to process any ore from Gosselin before 2030.
At the Mara Rosa project in Brazil, Hochschild continues to make progress and reports that development is advancing on time and on budget. In February, Hochschild reported that earthworks and construction of the processing plant were underway and the project is over 57% complete. Hochschild continues to expect first production in half one 2024. They have also identified several optimization and exploration opportunities to extend the mine life and improve economics. At the Manh Choh project in Alaska, Kinross, the project operator, released the results of the feasibility study in mid-2022, a few months ahead of schedule. Kinross confirmed production of 914,000 GEOs from two open pits over an initial mine life of four and a half years, with ore to be trucked to the Fort Knox mill for processing.
Development is continuing with early works construction underway. Kinross continues to expect initial production in the second half of 2024. At the Back River project in Nunavut, Canada, we think the acquisition agreement between B2Gold and Sabina will be a good development for the project. B2Gold is a well-capitalized operator with a strong record of project development. They have already outlined the vision for the Back River gold district as a large, long-life mining complex. B2 expects to complete the transaction in the current quarter. In addition to pushing construction ahead, they have already started evaluating options to accelerate production, as well as a district-wide exploration program with over 40 targets identified at the George Project for follow-up drilling. In the meantime, Sabina has continued to advance development and early-stage construction at the Goose project, with full construction activity to start shortly.
The mine will produce 223,000 ounces per year over a 15-year life of mine, and Royal Gold has an approximately 2% GSR royalty on the Goose Lake after 400,000 ounces have been produced and on George Lake after 800,000 ounces have been produced. I'll end off with a short summary of one of the most exciting assets in the portfolio. We've had a royalty at Ruby Hill for 13 years, but this project became a lot more interesting for us when i-80 acquired it and began work in July 2021. i-80 began looking at base metal potential at Ruby Hill, which previous gold owners did not pursue. Ruby Hill has quickly become i-80's flagship project, and they've had significant success in identifying multiple new zones of both Carlin-type gold and carbonate replacement type precious and base metal mineralization.
Their ultimate goal is to mine gold and base metal deposits using common infrastructure, and they have an ambitious plan in 2023 that includes continuing a large-scale drill program, a PEA for the Ruby Deeps and 426 gold deposits, which is expected in Q2 2023, permit submissions to start underground development from the existing open pit, which will improve access for definition drilling and test mining, and finally, economic studies. It is also worth mentioning that we have up to a 5.9% royalty on i-80's Granite Creek project, where first production is expected this year. We look forward to continuous updates from i-80 as they advance both of these projects in 2023. I'll now turn the presentation over to Alastair, and he'll provide some comments on our approach to value and returns.
Thanks, Martin. This section addresses frequent questions from investors and analysts about valuation, and the most common questions we get are: How do you think about the gold price? Why do you trade at such high multiples? How do you value upside? What is your due diligence process? What are we missing as a street sometimes in your transaction valuations? I'm gonna start with a comment on valuation methodology and discounted cash flow, or DCF specifically. DCF is our principal valuation tool, but it does have some limitations. These limitations are most obvious when looking at day one evaluation of assets with multi-decade potential, and those are the assets that we cover the most.
Not only does the time value of money concept understate the intrinsic value of long reserve lives on the day the investment is made, it also minimizes the impact of mine life extensions and production increases. Because these assets provide long-term exposure to a volatile commodity price, DCF valuations with flat pricing assumptions disregard the value of price variability, which increases with time. On this slide, I've laid out a simple illustrative example. A 10,000 ounce per year gold stream on a 25-year mine life with 10 years of upside potential, valued at the current flat long-term consensus gold price of $1,650 an ounce and a 5% discount rate.
As you can see in the graph, more than half of the value of the 25-year base case is in the first 10 years, and the additional 10 years only adds about 16% to the value on day one. Because of the long life, that future value doesn't really change much as time passes and you reevaluate the value in the future. For example, if you update your DCF after five years, the future value of $284 million decreases by only about $18 million. If you've already recovered over $80 million over that five-year period, then you can deploy towards other things, your balance sheet, your dividends, additional investments, and your future value at that point is relatively unchanged.
There's an inherent option value in getting exposure to long lives and expansion extension potential that doesn't show up in DCF valuation on day one. What we aim to do, and we have a track record of accomplishing, is to identify those assets that provide high quality, lower risk exposure to gold prices and to acquire them at the lowest price possible and hopefully watch the value grow over time. The gold price is the biggest factor that impacts value in our business and also the most difficult to forecast. We often find that our return expectations for new transactions are very different from those of the street, and gold price forecasts may explain some of that difference. Transactions often get judged using consensus price estimates, but consensus price forecasts are generally flat without volatility, and history shows that consensus estimates are generally conservative.
It also takes some time between agreeing commercial terms for a transaction and announcing that transaction. A near-term move in the gold price can make transaction return estimates look very different from what we expect when we agree that transaction. Rather than try to predict prices, we try to find those assets that will provide long-term exposure to the gold price, and we will run sensitivities to understand how different gold price scenarios may cause risk to the sustainability of those investments. Our own experience shows how exposure to actual gold prices can impact results. We can't pick the timing for transactions, and prices can rise or fall after completion. Longer life assets are exposed to volatility that compensates for lower revenue in periods of weak prices.
We have consistently found that actual gold prices have resulted in higher revenues from our investments than what flat price scenarios predicted on the date of acquisition. Because our cost structure is so low and our margins are so high, lower gold prices don't impact us as much as they do for producers. Turning back to valuation, using a flat gold price to value a producer makes sense if you don't want to consider the uncertainty of inflation and input costs, but it may not for a royalty company. For a producer with higher costs, if there is inflation in the gold price, then there's likely inflation in input costs, so there's an offset, and margins remain relatively constant. We saw this in 2008 through 2012 when producer margins did not expand with the rising gold price.
However, in our business, inflating costs from a low base doesn't do much to margins. If you own gold equities for inflation protection, a flat gold price forecast probably underestimates the value of our business. We do see margin expansion with rising gold prices, and this may provide a partial explanation for why royalty companies have such high multiples compared to producers. Another reason why we trade at such high multiples is our business model. Compared to producers, our cash flows are lower risk. They're more diversified, generally more predictable, and have cost-free optionality to reserve and resource upside. If you apply the standard 5% discount rate across the broader precious metal sector, our multiples do appear to be very high.
If you use a relatively lower discount rate for streamers that more appropriately reflects risk, then multiples seem to converge to more reasonable levels. We and our peers have traded at high multiples over the long term, either the market accepts paying premium multiples or it values the royalty companies using lower discount rates. We should also think about how discount rates should reflect risk and upside for single assets. We think discount rates should be adjusted for a variety of factors, many of which are subjective. We review those factors in our due diligence of single assets, we view cash flowing assets in good jurisdictions run by experienced counterparties as having inherently lower risks, which means that those assets should demand a premium valuation.
There is subjectivity involved in selecting discount rates to reflect risk. Our due diligence informs our view of risks and upsides. In a competitive bidding situation, we have no advantage if we use a production profile from a NI 43-101 report for valuation. Everyone has access to this information. Only gold price and discount rate assumptions will differentiate bids. If we do our due diligence properly, we may uncover value not seen by the market or perhaps others, which allows us to differentiate our bid. We typically spend months reviewing opportunities. Each review is based on technical fundamentals. Our due diligence team is led by our internal technical team. We'll bolster that team with external experts if we don't have internal experience or if we want to go into more detail on a specific issue.
Each of the transactions shown here had a different focus, and you can see that the teams were put together accordingly. At Xavantina, exploration was a focus given the early stage of development. At Red Chris, exploration and block caving were the focus given Newcrest's plans for the future. At Great Bear, it was exploration and resource modeling that were the focus, and that was given the early stage of the project. At Cortez, we used a wider team with exploration, operations, and production development focus, given the multiple projects at various stages within the Cortez Complex. This approach to due diligence has worked well, and we've had a good record of picking the right assets and avoiding the wrong ones. In a typical year, we re-review well over 100 assets, and most don't make it through to transactions for various reasons.
For the assets that do, if you consider write-downs as a measure of investing success, we score very well. Over our history, we've invested over $4.9 billion, and impairments have been limited. Our biggest impairment was on our 5.4% royalty on Pascua-Lama, which we wrote down after Barrick stopped project development. The full royalty remains in the portfolio, and the full resource remains in the ground. If you exclude this and consider only those where we no longer have interests, we have impaired only about 2.6% of our total invested capital. We don't like to see any impairments, but we think this record speaks to our success in identifying and investing in the right assets. Our business model takes some time for assets to show their upsides, and over time, our largest transactions have done very well.
This slide shows data from Scotiabank where they've estimated deal returns on day one and then updated those estimates to the end of December. We always say that we have to be competitive with our pricing on day one to win deals, but we target much higher returns over the long term, which is clearly shown here. All the assets here are still producing, so we would expect to see returns continue to grow as more time passes and more upside is realized. You can also see multiples of payback on this slide, which although it does not consider the time value of money, is another way to think about long life investment returns. Another way of looking at this is to track initial investments compared to actual cash flow received to date and the street's view of future value from here forward.
As assets produce for longer periods and as growth potential is realized by the operators, we have seen that a significant value has been added. This slide very clearly shows the point I made in my first slide, which is at day one, DCF valuation doesn't tell the full story for assets with long lives and growth potential. If we can identify assets with the right upside potential, we expect that final returns should be significantly better than what day 1 return estimates may indicate. It does take time for this to play out. To summarize, we operate in a sector with a lot of uncertainty. Gold prices are difficult to forecast, and investment risks are often subjective. However, if we take a disciplined approach to due diligence, we can reduce some of the risks.
If we pick the right assets with potential to provide growth and long-term exposure to metal prices, we should continue to add to our successful investing record and maintain a valuation that reflects that record. I'll now turn the presentation over to Paul for an update on our financing strategy.
Thank you, Alistair. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be speaking to you today about how we think about capital allocation and the strategies for financing the growth of our business. Before I make comments on our capital allocation and financing strategies, I want to again recognize the entire Royal Gold team for successfully completing the transition from a June 30 year-end to a December 31 year-end with the recent filing of our annual 10-K. Changing year-ends is no small task, especially for a publicly traded company. I could not be more pleased with the effort and result, especially during a period when we were very active on the investment front.
I hope investors and analysts will all agree that the work has been worth the effort and that everyone is now able to compare our performance with our peers and the rest of the industry with more ease. The next slide illustrates how we have been able to grow and finance our growth accretively over the past 22 years and all without any significant equity dilution. We have demonstrated remarkable increases in revenue and operating cash flow over the past two decades and have done so without solely relying on the gold price to drive those results. The growth in our G&A expenses has been limited, which further illustrates the scalability and efficiency of our business model and the cost discipline approach we have here at Royal Gold.
All this underlying growth over the past two decades had to be financed in some way, but we have been able to keep our share count low by relying on our available cash resources, our strong cash flows to reinvest in the business, and also by relying on our credit facility as another source of capital. As Will said, we will never rule out financing our growth using equity, and we have used equity in the past, but it is last on our list of financing sources. Because of this allocation strategy, the net result has been meaningful per share accretion in a number of financial measures, leaving our shareholders to benefit directly from further exposure to portfolio growth.
The next slide highlights some interesting facts about our limited equity dilution and share count over time. Royal Gold is one of the original members of the GDX, and we have the lowest share count among all the index members. In fact, the median share count in the GDX is just over 450 million shares, and we currently just have over 65 million shares outstanding. Also, as illustrated by the bottom navy-colored line, Royal Gold share count has increased less than 1% since 2015, and all this increase is due to Royal Gold using equity as part of our overall long-term incentive compensation program for employees.
When compared to many of the large cap precious metal peers, including our direct stream and royalty competitors, we have maintained our share count since 2015, while others shown in the slide have grown their counts by 10% or more over that same period of time. The one downside to a low share count, however, is that smaller increases in our reported expenses or other accounting charges can have a greater impact on our reported EPS. For example, an increase in pre-tax expense of $600,000, which is small for a company of our size, would decrease our EPS by nearly $0.01 per share. I view this as a worthy trade-off for a limited shareholder dilution as a continued challenge for all members of the Royal Gold team for cost containment.
Capital allocation and how we finance our growth is a big topic, and you have heard me say previously and today that using our available cash resources and strong cash flows to reinvest back into the business is our first priority. Another non-dilutive form of capital that is also important piece to our growth financing puzzle is debt, and more specifically, our revolving credit facility. This next slide provides some key attributes of our credit facility. Our credit facility has evolved over time, and it is a key strategic tool for financing our business. The committed portion of our facility is $1 billion in size and also includes a $250 million uncommitted accordion feature. The facility is low cost, it's flexible, and allows us to draw or repay without penalty. There are eight banks in our facility.
They are all major lenders to the global mining industry. No individual bank accounts for more than 18% of the total credit facility. Given some of the recent news and events in the U.S. and some European banks, having this strong and diversified syndicate is very important. We are very grateful for the long relationships and continued support from this banking group. As others before me today have shared, 2022 was a very active investment year for Royal Gold, with just under $1 billion of capital deployed on some very good assets that will provide long-term growth. With using our credit facility to help fund some of our 2022 acquisitions, our current leverage ratio stands at just under 1x net debt to EBITDA.
Our diverse portfolio provides consistent cash flow. We are comfortable using and taking on debt, say even up to 3x net debt to EBITDA if we can see good reduction in that leverage, say back to 2x over a reasonable period of time, which I view as somewhere between 12 and 18 months. While we are comfortable taking on debt, we are also very disciplined in maintaining low debt levels. As illustrated on this slide, we have demonstrated this approach by steadily repaying any outstanding borrowings over shorter periods of time or as cash flow allows. Turning to the next slide, at the end of 2022, we had just under $550 million of available liquidity, which included amounts available on our credit facility and our working capital.
We did make another $75 million repayment against our revolver in March and currently have $500 million available for use. I continue to estimate that we can repay our remaining balance by mid-2024. This estimated amortization period is based on current metal prices and assumes no additional business development needs. With respect to our quarterly cash balances, we sometimes get asked, "How much cash do you like to maintain on your balance sheet each period?" My short answer to this question is somewhere around $100 million-$125 million. The reason for this answer, I want to ensure we have sufficient funds to cover our dividend and our cash G&A expenses for the upcoming year. Given our current liquidity, we also get asked, "Do we feel this is enough liquidity to compete for new assets?" The answer is yes.
As you've heard this management team recently say, we continue to see opportunities in the $100 million-$300 million range. I do believe our current liquidity is sufficient for what we are seeing today, and it allows us to keep looking for these good opportunities. We are not hesitant to use our full capacity on the revolver. As Will indicated earlier, our business model is highly efficient and high margin. Even if we were to use the entire $1 billion credit facility, our leverage ratio would be a manageable 2 x. Given the cash flows resulting from these higher margins, we would then expect to bring that debt down over a short period of time. To summarize my update to you today, we are always looking for ways to grow and reinvest in our business accretively.
We aim to fund our growth by using cash on hand, our strong operating cash flows, and our credit facility, generally in that order too. At the end of each day, I always want to ensure that we have sufficient capital on hand and available to help us manage the balance sheet, our dividend, and investment in further growth. In closing, our approach to capital allocation and financing has proven itself over the long term as we've been able to increase our capital return to shareholders while continuing to grow our business and our per share metrics. Couple this with our strong balance sheet and liquidity, I feel very strong about our ability to compete and deliver results for our shareholders in today's environment. That concludes today's presentation. We will now begin the question and answer portion of the session.
Like to ask a question. Now, you will be placed in the queue in the order received. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone now. Our first question comes from Josh Wolfson from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Josh.
A couple questions. First, maybe from a higher level perspective, you know, there was a lot of review about the merits of long duration assets and the opportunities through the price cycle. I'm wondering what the company's views are on some short cycle assets, which, you know, we've seen historically generate very high returns, especially where mine life expansion comes in. And in particular, I guess one that comes to mind that could become a meaningful part of the growth would be Khoemacau, and I guess how you look at investing in potential new opportunities like that are relatively short, let's say, within the overall portfolio.
Josh, thanks very much for the question. I hope you can hear me okay. You know, I think we do have a preference for longer-term assets. That being said, a quality short-term asset is certainly something we look at. I think a really good example there is Wassa. You know, when we made that investment in 2015, the mine plan would've been mined out last year. According to the last technical report we've seen, which I think was done a couple years ago, you had six years of reserves, 11 years of resource. You know, anything shorter assets that don't see upside are tough to do. If we see a 5-7 year mine life that could turn into 15 or 20, fantastic. That would be great. Your comment about Manh Choh, I think the one thing about Manh Choh right now is it has a relatively short mine life, according to Kinross. I think it's what? four years or so?
Yeah. That at least what we're estimating.
Our next question comes Tanya Jakusconec from Scotiabank. Please go ahead, Tanya.
Great. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for the presentation and for taking my questions. Just have two. Just going to follow up on Josh's question just on how you think about the landscape. Again, we mentioned this $100 million-$300 million range. I think that's the range that pretty much every streamer company is talking about. So I'm wondering, number one, how, you know, you see yourself advantage-wise relative to your competitors, 'cause you've got four or five other people all looking the same range. Number two, you know, we're looking at mainly these development type opportunities of these smaller companies that need to be funded. Just wondering if you're thinking about anything else beyond the funding, if there's something else that you're looking and focusing on. Would you consider lithium in your portfolio, given that's very much in vogue? That's my first question.
Maybe I'll take the last one first. I don't know much about lithium. I think that would be a tough one for us, and I think there's now a publicly traded option available to investors. I don't think we'd go there. That applies to a lot of things, other things like rare earths that might come into vogue. It's really not a focus for us. The development funding has always traditionally been the main use of proceeds for streaming. It's not the only thing. If you go back to 2015 when we were doing those very large transactions, that was all about balance sheet de-leveraging.
If you go back to the original Milligan transaction, most of the proceeds were actually used to fund the M&A acquisition, the M&A financing for Teranga Gold. Those are the other two areas. If a company needs capital and there's a precious metal element to an operation, we'll look at it. That's the one good thing is we're not tied to cyclical things like de-leveraging or project development. We can just move from use of proceeds to use of proceeds. I think your last question in terms of advantages, yeah, there. I mean, look, there's a lot of competition.
We like to think we have a lower cost of capital than some of our competition, but not all of our competition. A s I said in the presentation, we have the liquidity to compete with the Francos and the Wheatons. What's beneficial for us is that those transactions will show up. You'll see them in the revenue and the cash flow. I don't feel we have maybe the same move the needle issue, as I called it, that the bigger folks do.
Okay. I mean, there's not really much of a tax advantage anyways in terms of with the global minimum tax, because there's very little impact on you anyway. You'd be in similar advantage with same advantages as your peers on that basis.
Yeah. You know, the global minimum tax is an interesting one. I would just say, you know, as a U.S. company, I don't expect the U.S. to do anything, not with the Republicans controlling the House. The question becomes, are other countries gonna be willing to move on their own? Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. At a very high level, you know, we all know that a couple of our competitors use offshore structures that might be impacted. If that could level the playing field with our current tax situation, that would be great.
Okay. I'll leave the M&A or the transaction portion and maybe just go to the asset portion of your portfolio. Just a couple of things because, you know, we were a little high on the GEO production forecast for 2023, and just trying to. Thank you very much for some of the details that you gave us. One area was on the deliveries of silver, obviously at Pueblo Viejo. How should we think that remaining 513,000 ounces to be delivered? Is that to be delivered all during 2024, or should I spread it out over 2024, 2025? I'm just trying to understand how to do that.
On the other assets, I'm just trying to get a feel for which assets, particularly as you look at 2023 versus 2022, do you have a real dip? You know, you've given us some of the bigger assets. Appreciate that. You know, I looked at our model and it seemed to be in line there. I'm just trying to understand where else I could be off. Thank you.
Thanks, T anya. What I might do is ask Mark Isto to take the guidance question.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. On silver, it's obviously been difficult for us to have any ability to forecast that. We still anticipate that as the expansion project beds in and all the parameters meet their expectations, that we'll start seeing the silver come back to us in deliveries. But I would expect at the 500+ thousand ounce balance that we see today, it'll take several years probably to see that silver come back. I would spread it over 2024 and 2025, you know, at a minimum. I don't know if I would expect it to come back any quicker than that. As for any additional question on PV Silver?
No, it was just on the fact that, you know, we were a little high on our 2023 forecast for GEOs. What other assets besides the ones you've already put in your press release that I'm okay on? I'm trying to see what other assets could have a dip in 2023 versus 2022 production or other, where I could potentially be off. Thank you.
Okay. Well, obviously, we mentioned Mount Milligan, we're just so significantly impacted by the delivery of concentrate and sale of concentrate that's really back-end weighted. Sometimes that is well understood and factored in, other times it's not. We have a six-month delay, you know, when Centerra is saying 35% of concentrate sales are gonna occur in Q4, that's very back-end weighted for us. We get no value for that this year, as you would expect. That, given it's 30% of our revenue, that's a huge impact to us. Now we saw, let's take Penasquito as an example.
The public guidance from Newmont is -20% on gold using a midpoint of their guidance to their actual in '22. Although the base metal and silver are up, so it isn't as. It's still a negative impact to us for the asset. You know, Penasquito and Milligan, I think are the two ones that really come to my mind. A lot of the smaller assets that we see, obviously, have some negative impacts. We did mention Andacollo, that's been had some lower grades last year, and we see that coming in the concentrate sales for the first six months of this year. Again, a timing of timing of shipments issue.
You know, on the positive side, you know, certainly, Cortez is going to is proposing a significant overperformance. PV is is on the gold side, is looking to overperform from what they did last year. And then Khoemacau comes in and a few of the smaller assets as well. But, you know, when I'm when I'm looking at my waterfall chart, you know, Milligan is is the standout impact because of the delivery issue. And overall their they're forecasting 12% and 13% less metal this year than they did last year. Then you put on top of that the delivery i ssue. We look at it as it's really a, you know, a Milligan, centric issue. I don't know, if I can really expand any more than that.
We have a follow-up question from Josh Wolfson from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Josh.
Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I think we were disconnected earlier. Continuing on the conversation of guidance, the numbers, you know, similarly for us were a bit lighter than expected, and part of that does look to be Milligan related. From a bigger picture, I'll just comment, you know, since 2016, the company's corporate production has been flat at roughly 330,000 GEO, you know, despite there being very significant capital investment over that period of about, I think, $1.5 billion we calculate. The forecast we have outline pretty meaningful growth, or I guess previously expected in 2023, that looks like it's now been pushed out to 2024 of about 15%.
I know the company doesn't issue guidance beyond the current year, but, you know, given the history here of some, you know, flatter production, is there any kind of, you know, forward-looking perspectives you can provide on what the growth looks like, beyond 2023, or if that's really what's reasonable to expect?
Yeah. Josh, you know, I've, as you know, I've struggled with the issue because we don't, we don't control the properties. I'm sure there's something going on at a property right now that will affect our 2023 results, and we just don't know about it yet. When Mark talks about, you know, the Milligan delivery issue, it isn't just the six-month lag. It can be early delivery of metal. We had a shipment at the end of 2022 that we didn't expect, and so we ended up at the higher end of our, of our guidance. What that did is that moved metal from 2023 into 2022.
The other thing is if you just recall calendar year 2021 was a fantastic year, and every single asset, every material asset was performing exceptionally well. You know, it was a fantastic production year. When I, you know, when I look at should we give three-year or five-year guidance, you know, we could have a shipment come in from Milligan tomorrow that we didn't expect for another month. That's why I get, I'm kind of reluctant to put something forward that says in three or five years, this is what we're going to do when I don't know. You know, I could have a surprise in a day or two. It doesn't mean we're never gonna do it. W e are looking at it, trying to figure out how comfortable we could be with it. Right now I could give you numbers and I know they'd be wrong, just because, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen at the properties in three or five years.
Okay. I would just sort of say or comment, you know, most of the or all the peers provide guidance on some longer timeframe. Understandably, there are risks with guidance even in the current year. It would be helpful, you know, given the history of pretty flat production, it might help provide kind of more confidence in the growth outlook, at least that we forecast if that information is reaffirmed by management. I understand the challenges and concerns with that.
Josh, I'll just add, you know, we're the only U.S. company and I know, you know, folks like you would say, "Yeah, you know, okay, that's your best estimate. You know, may not hold you to it." I get worried about the SEC holding us to public statements, and that becomes a bit of an issue for us, and maybe it's a unique issue to us.
Our next question comes from John Tumazos from John Tumazos Independent Research. Please go ahead, John.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I'm looking at your press release this morning. It's so formidable to replace a quarter million ounces of deliveries this year and 90,000 ounces equivalent of byproducts. I guess it's sort of like doing a financing a 5 million ounce gold deposit every year with a 5% NSR stream to get 250,000 ounces. Last year, you found the Cortez royalty, which is sort of in that magnitude. Most years it's hard to do. For the years where you can't find a 5 million ounce gold mine to finance to replace a quarter million ounces of depletion, I know that some of the operators are gonna replace reserves. Some of the operators don't. Is buying shares a suitable way to replace depletion?
Buying Royal Gold shares, buying another streaming royalty company shares, I think it's like I'm taking the Lord's name in vain. Excuse me. Buying resource companies that are developed or undeveloped. Given that there's so much competition, and it's so hard to find a quarter million ounces of new gold to replace what you're delivering every year, are there any broader strategies you might undertake?
John, there's a lot to sort of unpack there. I would say if you go back in our history, we've gone long periods of time without doing a transaction. From 2015 until 2019, we made one $70 million acquisition. We might have made some smaller ones along the way, but anything of materiality. You know, between Pueblo Viejo in 2015 and Khoemacau in 2019, we really didn't do anything. The benefit of having a diverse portfolio where you're right, some producers are gonna replace reserves, some aren't. If we've got a broad enough portfolio, we're gonna have some of both in that portfolio. We will see some replacement over time.
You know, as to buying our shares, I mean, that's a valuation. You know, what's the best use of proceeds? Where are we valued? What can we buy assets for in the market? I would say we haven't found an opportunity that's attractive to buy shares. And as for buying other companies' shares, I guess, you know, when I sit with our investors, I say, "You know, we're a streaming and royalty company, and we're that's what we're going to invest in. To become sort of a mutual fund, a little bit, I think would be a little bit off strategy for us. Then you introduce the whole mark-to-market issue in our income statement.
I mean, I would have to admit, you know, consolidation in the industry, something we always look at. Buying 5% or 10% of our competition, probably not something we'd look at.
We should just be patient, and if it takes five years to find the next good transaction, we just wait 5 years.
Yeah, I think we have to be patient, 'cause if you're not patient, you're basically saying, "I have to do something." That's the worst thing. That's the worst position to be in. One of the reasons I don't worry about it probably won't make you feel all that more comfortable. At the beginning of 2022, I had no idea we were gonna buy Great Bear royalties, and I had no idea 2 royalties at Cortez were gonna come to market. It's just, that's just part of the business. You react to things that come up, and you don't always see them coming.
It was great that you had those opportunities.
Yeah.
I guess that carries you for a couple years.
Yeah. We have to be. We have to take advantage of the situations that we see.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Alistair, at this time, there are no further phone questions.
Okay, thanks, Ross. I got a few here that have been coming in through the webcast, I'll read them out loud. I'll provide a couple of attributions here. I've got one here from Cosmos Chiu about market cap and size. Bill, you mentioned in your presentation the S&P 500 and your size. I think you're just below the current threshold for potential additions to the S&P 500 index. Is this something you strive towards? It would certainly increase your capital market presence if Royal Gold shares were added to the S&P 500.
Yeah, Cosmos couldn't agree with you more. It would increase our market presence. I think we're a little bit more than just under the S&P limit. I think the last time we looked at it, Alistair, was $13 billion or something like that. There's a ways to go. I don't think we can put a strategy around consolidating the industry, paying big premiums to do it, because even if you get to $13 billion, it's still a black box. You know, they have to want to add a company, they have to want to add a company in the material sector. It's not a given. You know, it's something we have in the past made our name. We sent our information to the group that does this. We try to stay in touch with them. Making getting into the S&P 500 an end or a goal is a little tough to do for us.
Okay. Thank you, Bill. Obviously, Cosmos can't ask a follow-up question on the telephone line. I'm assuming that answers his question. Cosmos, if it doesn't, please follow up with me afterwards. I'll be happy to get back to you. Another question here from Kerry McCrary at Canaccord. Have you thought about a share split given the long-term share price performance?
We have not considered it. I'm not sure there's a lot of evidence, at least the ones that I've looked at, that share splits enhance value. I've not heard that our current share price is an impediment to anyone buying our shares. It's an interesting question. All I can say is no, we have not looked at that option.
Okay, thank you. Another, more strategic question, again from Cosmos at CIBC? How do you incorporate ESG into your royalty stream acquisition decisions, and is it a make or break decision point for new acquisitions? There's a second part. Conversely, for those existing royalty streams already in the portfolio, would you consider divesting portfolio assets if a particular partner no longer meets your ESG, efforts and criteria?
I just at a very high level. Can ESG be a make or break issue? Yes. We have walked away from investment opportunities solely for ESG reasons. It is critically important. Divesting an asset that doesn't meet our ESG criteria, that's a tough one, because, you know, who would buy it, would be my question. It would probably have to be somebody who's privately held, because no public company would want to buy an asset if we're saying the reason we've divested is there were issues at the site. I think it would be a tough one to do, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out if something was quite difficult. Now, Allison, I don't know if you wanna just maybe talk about some of the recent transactions that we might have looked at and some of the ESG issues we might have considered?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Bill. You know, how we incorporate ESG, you know, each investment we're going in, eyes wide open. We're looking at permitting. We're looking at community or indigenous relations. We're looking at their ESG governance process. You know, who's there, what are they doing, what's their level of understanding of the people and environment around them. Our ESG due diligence is very robust. We come in there looking at a variety of issues, biodiversity, labor, water availability, country risk. When we do that due diligence, we're looking effectively for areas of improvement. You know, those come through. Gaps are identified.
When those types of things come through, we look at that as an investor and say, you know, "How can we leverage those gaps and work to influence and work with the potential company?" On some of the recent transactions, you know, we're looking at these different details, and then when we have engagement with the company, these are the things that we bring to the table. We're hoping to bring value. We've identified these gaps, and how can we help you work through those gaps. You know, there's opportunities to influence. The ESG monitoring piece, you know, once we make an investment, we're receiving those monthly reports. We hopefully have an open avenue for engagement with the company and make sure that those gaps are being filled or progress is being made. You know, I think each transaction looks a little bit different, but we certainly apply a very robust due diligence process, when evaluating all opportunities.
Okay. Thanks, Allison. Another question here from Brian MacArthur at Raymond James. This is more a question just on the issue that Mark, you talked about with Mount Milligan and the delay from production to us receiving deliveries. The question is: Can you highlight any other timing delays at any other of your material investments? Do you have the same issue at Khoemacau, PV or others? Mark, do you wanna take that?
Yeah, sure. I'll add a few comments. Certainly at Andacollo, the again, a very similar situation to Mount Milligan. We'll get similar delays in the receipt of product based on the shipment of concentrates. At PV, we've got a, you know, a small multi-month delay. We get deliveries once a quarter. I think Andacollo and Mount Milligan are really the standouts with respect to timing issues. Yeah, I guess, you know, when we look at Khoemacau, they can, they ship on a monthly basis. It's, it really hasn't been any kind of issue on that side. We get paid effectively as they ship and get paid from their offtaker.
Okay. Thank you, Mark. Another question here from Cosmos Chiu at CIBC. This one is about interest rates and debt. Interest rates have certainly increased over the past year. Has that changed your view on debt? It doesn't sound like it since your debt ratios still look very good. Have you considered higher interest rates in your capital allocation decisions?
Yeah. I mean, the way we look at the debt is if it's manageable, if we can pay it off in a short period of time, yes, rates have gone up. If we're buying a 30-year asset and we use 5% or 6% debt for a year, you know, that is acceptable. If debt was a sort of more permanent piece of our capital structure, I think we would be having a different discussion with different analysis. No, the increase in interest rates has not changed our preference to use our revolving credit facility as the primary source of funding our acquisitions.
Okay. Thank you, Bill. A fairly general strategic question that's come in is: Are you happy with your geographical and commodity split today as it stands?
Yeah, I am. You know, I think over 50% of our revenue is, I think I said, comes from the U.S. and Canada, and I think that's great. I think all but one of our recent, what is it, seven transactions or so were in the U.S. or Canada. I think that's great. That being said, we're not always gonna be able to do transactions in those jurisdictions. You know, we're still, we still look at other places, although political risk has certainly risen in places like Mexico and Peru and Chile, so we just have to be mindful. Commodity-wise, we were 73% gold last year. And sort of 85% or so precious. That's great. I like having a little copper in the portfolio, but as we've said, we're gonna stay focused primarily on precious metals and gold in particular.
Another capital allocation question, more strategically is, would you consider a share buyback instead of increasing your dividends?
Well, again, I think very similar to John's comment or question. A share buyback, it is a valuation exercise. Obviously, it's the asset we know best, right? It's our portfolio. Given where we currently trade from a premium perspective, our current view would be that's not the best way to return capital to shareholders. The other thing that we get asked about is special dividends. I think we've been pretty consistent that what we're trying to do is increase our dividend every year. We've been saying the same thing and doing the same thing for years and years.
I think most of our investors, sort of understand that that is the current strategy and the best way for us to return capital.
Another question that follows on from the theme that John raised is just consolidation in the royalty sector. Would you consider consolidating the royalty sector further to remove competition from some of your smaller competitors?
We got a model on everybody. We follow them. You know, everybody knows there are times when there are differences in valuation premiums. But you need to have two willing parties to do that. And if we can find assets, quality assets, and maybe we're paying a slight premium to NAV, you know, paying a 30% or a 40% premium on a company that's trading at a 30% premium, it just becomes a more difficult transaction. And, you know, I, I just don't. I don't get the sense that there is a lot of momentum in the industry around consolidation, which means you probably don't have two willing parties at this point.
Okay. Thank you. Another more general question around people. Are you finding it difficult to find people with the right level of experience for your business?
For our business, no. Just got Allison, who's fantastic. No. I mean, we only have 31 people. I would say we have a pretty good reputation in the industry. We found that when we did have openings, we had a lot of interest. I haven't seen any real issue finding the quality people that we need. Obviously, different story for our operators. For our company, I'm very happy with the folks we have and don't see a limit on potential replacements if we need one.
Okay, Ross, I don't see any other kind of unique questions here on the webcast, so I'll turn it back to you to see if there are any more questions that have come in over the phone line.
Okay. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question by phone, please press star one on your phone now. Alistair, at this time, there are no additional phone questions.
Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Ross, and thanks everybody for participating. There were a number of questions that did come in on the webcast that were similar, so if we did not answer the specific question that you were asking, if I misunderstood and grouped your question into somebody else's, in error, please let me know. I'd be very happy to get back to you after this event to talk about it. Thank you very much for attending today. This does conclude our 2023 investor update, and we thank you very much for your interest, and we look forward to connecting again in the future. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending.