Sandstorm Gold Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Sandstorm Gold EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.01
• Consensus EPS: $0.04
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: -$0.04

Sandstorm Gold Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $47.40 million
• Expected Revenue: $67.49 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$20.09 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Sandstorm Gold Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/18/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 11:30AM ET

Sandstorm Gold (NYSE:SAND) operates as a gold royalty company. The company focuses on acquiring royalties and gold and other metals purchase agreements from companies that have advanced stage operating mines. It offers upfront payments for companies to acquire a stream and receives the right to purchase a percentage of a mine's production for the life of the mine. The company has a portfolio of 243 streams and royalties. It primarily has operations in Canada, Mexico, the United States, Mongolia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, South Africa, Ghana, Botswana, Cote D'Ivoire, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guyana, Paraguay, French Guiana, Turkey, Sweden, Fiji, and Australia. The company was formerly known as Sandstorm Resources Ltd. and changed its name to Sandstorm Gold Ltd. in February 2011. Sandstorm Gold Ltd. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

Sandstorm Gold Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Ina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Sandstorm Gold Royalties Annual twenty twenty four Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please be aware that some of the commentary may contain forward looking statements.

[Operator]

There can be no assurance that forward looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer Thank you. Mr. Watson, you may begin your conference.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Thank you, Hina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for calling into our Q4 and annual '20 '20 '4 earnings call. Before I hand things over to Irfan, our CFO, to review the financial statement highlights, I'd like to give an update on a number of things in our business. And specifically number one, a brief characterization of our Q4 production and what we're seeing so far in Q1 of twenty twenty five. Number two, I'd like to provide an explanation of our 2025 guidance as well as our long term production outlook.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Number three, with that backdrop, I'd like to talk about our cash flow expectations and our balance sheet strength. And then four, I'd like to explain our latest strategy for capital allocation because once I walk through each of these points, you'll see that we have a strong balance sheet, lots of cash flow and therefore significant capital allocation decisions. And I think it's important for shareholders to understand how we are allocating capital and why. So starting off with the brief characterization of our Q4 sales, we had strong revenue of $47,000,000 U. S, strong operating cash flow of $36,000,000 being driven by gold equivalent of production of 17,721 ounces, which is similar ounces to the past couple of quarters.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

What's worth noting is that there were a couple of one time events in Q4, '1 of which increased in ounces and one of which was a one time decrease in ounces that effectively offset each other. Specifically during the quarter, Americas Gold and Silver successfully completed their merger and they raised capital and brought in a new management team. And as part of that, they requested to deliver some gold to us early, so that they could reduce their indebtedness and show a stronger balance sheet. Therefore in Sandstorm's Q4 there was an extra 1,500 ounces from Americas Gold and Silver. We made an adjustment to our stream in the future to allow for a corresponding lower delivery over time for the remaining portion of the stream.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Also during Q4 at both Casa Ronis and Chapada, both lending mining assets, there was an abnormal one time drop in deliveries of copper to Sandstorm because during their Q3 even though production was normal, there were delays when they shipped and sold the concentrates and under our contracts the deliveries and payments that Sandstorm are entitled to in Q4 are based on what was shipped and sold in Q3. Therefore, that delay resulted in a material drop in our Q4 sales. The good news is that the production of the underlying mines was normal through these periods. So for Lindeen in Q4, they sold more concentrates than during a normal quarter, which means the Sandstorm will get catch up deliveries in Q1. So we're expecting a relatively strong Q1 to start off 2025.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

So moving on to item two in our 2025 guidance and long term outlook. 2024 was a dip year in production for us with a fewer mines having lower than average years from a production perspective, but also soaring gold prices meant that our silver and our copper revenue turned into fewer gold equivalent ounces than originally anticipated. When we set our budget for 2024, we assumed $1,800 gold prices and internally we were expecting 83,000 ounces as a base case. But with gold prices going up so much, our silver and copper revenue turned into fewer gold equivalent ounces than expected. In the end, for 2024, we missed our internal GEO production targets by 10,700 ounces.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

But 8,300 ounces of that nearly 80% of the miss was from price fluctuations. In the fifteen year history of Sandstorm, we have hit our annual guidance range 13 out of 15 times. And the only two times we missed were one, during COVID when a number of the mines were temporarily shut down and two, in 2024 because of soaring gold prices. We want to be able to give guidance to the market that investors can be confident in so that we do not miss two years in a row because of soaring gold prices. So we've decided to provide a very conservative range guidance for 2025 of 65,000 to 80,000 ounces.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

That might seem low to some people, but please know that part of this is us trying to ensure that we don't make the same mistake twice back to back as gold prices continue to go up, which would be absolutely amazing for our business and for our cash flow and for our balance sheet. And I want to make sure that our reputation as far as guidance is concerned stay strong even if gold prices continue to go up, which I certainly hope they do. We definitely don't expect to have production close to 65,000 ounces for the year. However, there if there are unexpected softness in deliveries for some of our assets or if Bear Creek has trouble delivering their ounces or if Greenstone has unexpected challenges ramping up and then simultaneously gold prices go through the roof, we can paint a picture of a scenario where GEO production could look soft. I think it's also important to note that guiding this way is a double edged sword because there are scenarios where the mines do what we think they do and gold prices soften a bit and we could dramatically misguidance to the upside.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

For example, we ran a scenario where the mines delivered according to their public guidance and the silver prices stayed above $30 an ounce and the copper prices stayed somewhere in the mid-4s. And we said, well, what if gold prices go down to $2,000 an ounce? And our model kicked out a number of 90,000 gold equivalent ounces for the year way outside of our guidance range to the upside. All of this to say that I believe we are guiding conservatively and either way our cash flow will be strong and there are scenarios for upside surprises. I'll talk more about this later, but one of the things that I love about now having a strong balance sheet is that if the market doesn't understand this dynamic and how strong we are and our share price dips because of the conservative guidance, we are happy to step into the market in size now and buyback our shares and cancel them.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

It's days like today for example, where if we weren't in blackouts because of our earnings that we would be in the market in size buying and canceling those shares. So tomorrow when we come out of blackout, we will be stepping into the market to the maximum we are allowed and buying back shares for investors who don't get the big picture and we will cancel those shares that the remaining investors will loan a higher percentage of our company and therefore will get a higher percentage of our future growth. It's time to back up the truck on share buybacks and that's what we're going to do. One of the reasons we're particularly happy to buy back shares and cancel them is because of our belief in our long term guidance. Based on what we're hearing from our mining partners at the moment, it's our expectation that our production will increase to over 150,000 gold equivalent ounces per year over the next five years.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Again, this is from a ramp up at Greenstone, which is now in production, as well as a phased build approach to Ivanhoe's Platte Reef mine, which is now in construction. And Ivanhoe updated the market this morning on their progress at Platte Reef and that's consistent with our guidance, as well as Bexx Robertson mine, which just got its permits and is expected to be completed in 2027, as well as the Hod Moden mine, which based on my most recent understanding, SSR will be giving updated development timelines and capital commitment decisions and guidance to the market within the next month. And our growth also now includes the development of the deep carbonates project at Guacamayo, which Dave is going to talk about in later detail on this call. Around the same time that Guacamayo is coming online should also be when Glencore's Mara mine will be coming towards completion, which I believe is our most valuable stream in our whole portfolio. And I'm told this morning Gary Nagel, the CEO of Glencore mentioned that they would be putting in the RIDGIE application in Argentina in the next six months.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Shortly after that, Rio Tinto should be mining on the Entre joint venture ground Onoyutogohe in Mongolia, which is one of the world's most significant copper mines and will be a significant stream for us for many years to come. Based on all of this, you can see how yes, we have strong cash flow now, we have a strong balance sheet finally, but the future is in construction and it's going to be incredible. You can see on this updated production forecast chart where we now color code the production that we expect from our different growth assets. You can see that these assets come online and as they come online, our production will double and stay high for a longer period of time. In 2025, there will be continuous key catalysts as each of these big projects keep getting pushed forward.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

This is an exciting year for us. When you look at what that production profile can generate in terms of annual cash flows, we have this updated slide to show that our portfolio can now generate after tax cash flows of around $150,000,000 per year based on $2,600 gold. And by the way, gold prices are much higher than that now. And we're just trying to be conservative with our figures. But that cash flow ramps up so that by 02/1930, it should be closer to $260,000,000 U.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

S. Per year. And again, that's a $2,600 gold, dollars 30 silver, dollars 4 copper. At today's spot prices, the cash flow would be closer to $300,000,000 U. S.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Per year. So you can see based on that, we're so confident in our balance sheet right now. A couple of years ago at the peak of our debt, we owed $640,000,000 We now only owe $340,000,000 and we expect that number to go below $300,000,000 sometime between the end of Q2 and Q3 of this year and to continue dropping rapidly. One of the things that will help accomplish this is that for our radicola stream, which has been a non performing stream for some time and for which we have not been recognizing revenue, we have come to an agreement for a buyout option of $14,000,000 which in order to be used has to be exercised shortly. The stream has not been paying us for an extended period, but with the incremental $14,000,000 we would then have all of our capital back plus a profit on this deal.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

So not a bad situation for us and we'll use those proceeds to repay debt. Once our debt is below $300,000,000 that is the point where we are extremely comfortable and happy to stay at indefinitely if necessary if our shares continue to trade at a material discount to their fundamental value. Although $300,000,000 is not a particularly a magic number, it feels magic for us because not only does it mean that our debt is below two times today's EBITDA and approximately one times our forward looking EBITDA for 02/1930, it's also the number that makes our debt less than our investments in other mining companies' debt and equity. We have over $300,000,000 worth of investments in other companies' debt and equity, which is actually yielding us a higher return than our debt is costing us. What I'm trying to paint is a mental picture of a situation where by the middle of this year we no longer have any need to continue to prioritize debt repayment when we have other potential capital allocation alternatives whether they be growth or share buybacks.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

We don't anticipate getting cash called on our Mara Stream option into the latter half of next year once permitting is complete. And when we finally do start contributing to that stream, it will only consume a portion of our operating cash flow for a few years. What this means is that we are now finally in a position with a strong balance sheet and lots of cash flow where we can start increasing the priority of our share buybacks, which leads me to this next slide. In this new slide, we're trying to show that of the big six streaming royalty companies, we are the ones that have been returning the most capital to shareholders over the last nine to twelve months on a relative basis. Over the last nine months for every gold equivalent ounce that we have received and sold, we have returned US540 dollars to shareholders through either dividends or share buybacks.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

This is more than any of our peers. Why I bring this up is that because we believe our balance sheet is now so strong and our shares are still undervalued that we plan on increasing this even further in the months to come and we'll be ramping up our share buybacks. We believe in the long term strength and growth profile of our company and we're looking forward to that future. We're trying to shrink our share flows and cancel our shares. So when we get to that future, we will have way more cash flow and fewer shares outstanding.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

As a significant shareholder of Sandstorm myself, I believe this will be the most profitable path for us all. So with that, I'll hand it over to Irfan to talk about the specific financial results.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

Thanks, Nolan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our 2024 results delivered total revenue of approximately $176,000,000 despite a drop in attributable gold equivalent ounces sold from 97,000 ounces in 2023 to approximately 73,000 ounces in 2024. While the majority of the operations of portfolio met our budgeted forecast, as Nolan mentioned, the outperformance of gold relative to other metals impacted the company's gold equivalent production. That is other commodities like copper, silver and iron ore translate into less gold ounces when the gold price is comparatively higher.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

And as Nolan mentioned at year end, an increase of 30% in average realized gold price compared to our 2024 budgeted results, impacted the difference of over 8,000 fewer gold equivalent ounces than we had anticipated. However, higher gold price environment is welcome and continues to drive healthy operating margins and strong cash flows for the company. Cash costs in 2024 were $275 per attributable ounce, resulting in cash operating margins of approximately $2,100 per ounce. And when excluding changes in non cash working capital, these record margins led to strong cash flows from operating activities of $139,000,000 While not a record in terms of cash flows, they were certainly robust and allowed us to make good progress on debt repayment, decreasing the balance in our credit facility by $80,000,000 as well as returning over $28,000,000 to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks as Nolan discussed. In the fourth quarter, Santoram renewed its revolving credit facility for another four year term with reduced interest rates above SOFR.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

The combination of debt repayments and lower interest rates throughout 2024 reduced the company's finance expense by $4,500,000 Net income for 2024 was $15,500,000 down from $42,700,000 in 2023. The decrease in net income was largely driven by valuation adjustments in the company's investment portfolio as well as the one time contractual payment received in 2023 related to the company's Mt. Hamilton royalty. Sandstorm's tax expense in 2023 was lower due to previously unrecognized tax attributes. Turning to the next slide, this is a detailed asset breakdown of attributable gold equivalent production in 2024.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

First gold deliveries from the Greenstone mine were certainly highlight this past year. Greenstone represents the first material development asset from the investments we made in 2022 to commence production and marks the beginning of the new growth chapter that Nolan highlighted. By the end of the year, Santrum received and sold approximately 2,000 gold ounces from Greenstone. Equinox is continuing to ramp up operations in the mine and we look forward to an increase in attributable production throughout 2025. With Greenstone at full design capacity, we expect gold deliveries to be approximately 8,000 to 10,000 ounces per year attributable to sandstorm.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

As one of Canada's largest open pit gold mines with an initial fifteen year mine life, Greenstone is a welcome addition to our producing mine portfolio and will play an important part as we aim to double our production profile over the next several years. The company's Bonnecro stream was one of the top contributing assets in 2024. Production at Bonnecro has recently benefited from higher grade due to mine sequencing and improved plant throughput from various optimization efforts. In the third quarter of twenty twenty four, Allied Gold announced the closing of a CAD 53,000,000 third party financing package for advancement initiatives at Cote D'Ivoire complex, including the Bonacro mine. Allied allocated $6,500,000 in 2024 for the advancement of high priority targets, which are located within the area of interest of Sandstorm Stream.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

In conjunction with the third party financing, Sandstorm amended its gold stream in the monochrome mine to include minimum annual deliveries, which are between 10,000 ounces in 2025 and 2026. Lundin Gold reported record production of Frutta Del Norte in 2024. The commissioning of the plant expansion continues to progress and Lundin Gold has also identified opportunities to further increase average throughput to 5,500 tonnes per day starting in 2026. In December, Lundin Gold announced that it had surpassed 56,000 meters of drilling in 2024, the largest ever exploration drilling program conducted on the land package at an estimated cost of $44,000,000 when combined with its regional drill program. Drilling has been focused on further delineating the recently discovered Bonza Sur deposit Fruta Del Norte.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

Lundin plans to complete an additional 65,000 meters of drilling in 2025 and release an initial mineral resource in PA on the Bonza Sur deposit this year. At the Antamina mine, the approval of the modified EIA has extended operations through to 02/1936. As a result of the updated mine plan and re estimation of future closure costs, and adjustment to the asset retirement obligation of the mine was recognized in 2024, impacting Rosewood revenues in the fourth quarter. However, we expect this impact to be offset long term with the potential for throughput expansion of up to 40% and more certainly around future mine life extension. At Chapada, One of our larger copper streams 2024 production is expected to be sufficient to meet Sandstorm's annual copper delivery cap.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

However, as Nolan indicated, the timing of settlements shifted approximately 20% to 30% of annual deliveries for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Lundin Mining continues to implement several optimization reported a 46% decrease in mining costs compared to 2022 following various optimization efforts. A redesigned mining plant is expected to streamline operations while maintaining output, further improving free cash flow generated from the mine. In 2025, Lundin Mining is planning a 20,000 meter drill program at Chapada with a goal to grow resources. We're also expecting the results of a scoping study on the Suave deposit and updated technical report to be filed this year.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

In the fourth quarter, Sandstorm amended the terms of its Relief Canyon Stream agreement relating to the timing of six ounces. And as, Nolan explained, Sandstorm received an additional 1,500 ounces of gold in fourth quarter. Under the amended stream terms, the company expects fixed deliveries of approximately 5,000 ounces in each of 2025 through 2027. These stream amendments fall a $50,000,000 financing completed by Americas Gold and Silver in conjunction with their consolidation of the Galena complex in Idaho. And Americas Gold is now being led by Mr.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

Paul Hewitt and is focused on allacking value at Galena and deleveraging the company's balance sheet. In 2024, Sandstorm's attributable production remained predominantly from South America at 45% followed by 35% from North American operations and the remaining 20% from other countries around the world. In terms of metal type, Atulah production was 75% precious metals, approximately 61% from gold. We expect increasingly more gold exposure from the portfolio of Greenstone ramps up and other gold streams begin contributing over the next few years. In 2025, we're already off to a good start with a strong gold market.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

This has allowed us to pay back an additional $15,000,000 of debt since January 1. And as Nolan discussed, we plan to increase the rate of our share buyback program over the course of the year. In terms of production, we are forecasting between 145,000 gold equivalent ounces in 2025. And as the year progresses, we plan on tightening that range as we get better clarity on various commodity price scenarios and the ramp up progress at Greenstone. Long term, we are raising our production outlook based on various positive advancements at our development assets.

[Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer at Sandstorm Gold]

We anticipate production to reach 150,000 attributable gold ounces in 02/1930 based on our existing streams and royalties plus the exercise of Sandstrom's Goldstream option on the Mara project. And with that, I'll pass it over to Dave for more details on our growth assets. Dave?

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Great. Thanks, Erfan, and good morning, everyone. Today's asset update will focus on a couple of less well understood asset exposures in our portfolio in the Oyu Tolgoi joint venture area and the Huay Kamayo mine, with a small mention on Vale's Northern System iron and copper projects. On the topic of Oyu Tolgoi, I'd like to begin by addressing the formalization of the joint venture agreement initially proposed in 02/2008 between OTLLC, the operating entity and Entre Resources. Following this, I'll highlight some of the recently released journal results.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Finalized at the start February, joint venture agreement puts in place mechanisms like to transfer licenses into OT LLC, which is crucial to avoid delays in the development work plan for 2025 within the Hugo North extension. The arbitration decision also sets the stage for potential conversion of the JV agreement into a more efficient arrangement, which should benefit all the stakeholders and align with Mongolian laws regarding economic benefit sharing. We expect Entre to release more information on this as it progresses. Onto the drilling, which although released recently was actually completed as far back completed in 2022 and 2023. Many of the drill holes were infill into the existing resource on the Huguen North Extension, which is the image that we're showing in the plan map on the right.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

However, many of the drill holes were drilled outside the existing resource and wireframes. It's a little hard to see on the slide. There are intercepts of 400 meters of 1.41% copper equivalent, four forty eight meters of 1.62 copper equivalent, six thirteen meters of 0.77% copper equivalent, six thirty eight meters of 1.05% copper equivalent, three ninety eight meters of 2.07% copper equivalent and 175 meters of 1.73% copper equivalent. All these holes are currently outside of any resource, but they exceed the resource cutoff of 0.41% copper equivalent and may be incorporated within the Lift one and Lift two footprint. There are still results pending from eight more holes from the 2023 program.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Additionally, 2,300 ground holes in nearly 2,500 meters of surface drilling were completed in 2024 to target a potential LIFT two footprint. The objective of this drilling is to update the Hugo North Extension resource estimate for geotechnical characterization. Entree will announce these results as they are received. These results are nothing short of extraordinary, effectively setting the new benchmark in the global mining industry. The sheer magnitude of this copper gold project continues to amaze me and I'm confident that future findings will be equally impressive.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

I'm immensely grateful that Sandstorm has the privilege of being a part of this remarkable venture, which promises to deliver even more astonishing outcomes. I really want to speak to Guacamole as well as this is one of our most surprising projects in our portfolio, both for us and for our investors. The first royalty came in the Premier Royalties acquisition and this asset produced for the better part of a decade as a heap leach operation under a number of different operators. In 2023, a subsidiary of the well funded international conglomerate, ISA Group acquired the asset. Since then, the group has invested into the existing heap leach operation to improve the secondary recovery of the heap leach where they uncovered a recoverable leach inventory of 303,000 ounces.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

They began revising a plan on the heap that involved a slope reprofiling plan to improve infiltration and percolation of the heaps. They created a lime filtration plant and improved solution flow, which should allow for a significant increase in recoverability of the residual gold in the heaps. This means potential production of greater than 30,000 ounces per year just from residual leaching. Historically, for the first part and for the first part of twenty twenty five, Sandstorm has held a 1% NSR on the oxide material. Once production reaches a 396,000 ounces threshold expected in the first half of twenty twenty five, the royalty increases to 3% for all remaining oxide material.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

However, this is just the beginning of the upside for Sandstorm as the long awaited sulfide portion of the deep carbonates project is now in motion. The ASA Group has submitted a $1,000,000,000 investment plan to Argentina's incentive regime for major investments or RIGI, as Nolan mentioned before, making it the first mining project to do so and the first project in San Juan. Feasibility studies are scheduled for completion this year, which will pave the way for the development of a new underground mine, along with a milling system and a flotation plant. The proposed processing capacity of these facilities is estimated to be between 507,000 tonnes per day. The deep carbonase project aims to produce 120,000 ounces of gold annually for at least seventeen years with an investment of of $485,000,000 There is also a $52,000,000 exploration program expected to start this year, which will look for potential porphyry mineralization in addition to expanding the sulfide zones of of the current epithermal deposit.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

For Sandstorm, a $30,000,000 bullet payment must be made to us upon declaration of commercial production, which we are now estimating either 2029 or 02/1930. In addition, there is a 2.5% NSR on the Deep Carbonates project, which means we could receive up to 3,000 ounces per year in addition to that one time payment. In 2022, under previous ownership, Guayaquimeo was slated for closure, but in the hands of this ambitious well capitalized group and with the involvement of the Rishi program, the best may be ahead for Guacamayo. Finally, it's worth a quick mention of Vale's recent announcement of their almost $12,500,000,000 U. S.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Investment into the Carriage House region over the next five years. This investment is expected to increase their annual iron ore production from the region to 200,000,000 tons per year. The copper production is projected to increase by 32% within the region. Our royalty will benefit from both of these increases. As more information comes out, we'll update our forecasts.

[David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director at Sandstorm Gold]

And with that, I'll hand it over to Ina, the operator for the Q and A session. Please feel free to ask questions about any of our royalties streams. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank Your first question comes from the line of Josh Wilson from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Yes. Thanks very much. First question is on the Vadacula stream and royalty buyback. Having checked the prior quarters, there was no signs of any distress for the operator. So I'm wondering when did they stop paying the stream and what was sort of the motivation to resolve it in the way that it was disclosed in the sense that there doesn't seem to be much compensation beyond just the base stream year payment and nothing for the royalty?

[Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes, they stopped paying us quite a while ago. We haven't recognized revenue from them in quite some time. And it's one of those situations where it's they're insolvent at the mining operating level, their parent company had no money. But a larger Chinese company is coming in as a shareholder of their parent company on the condition that they buy us out. And so they've already made a $4,000,000 deposit to our lawyers accounts that's non refundable.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

So if they don't pay any additional $10,000,000 then we get to keep the 4 and we keep our stream. So they have to pay us the next 10 by next month is how that works. Okay.

[Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets]

And then on the guidance that now includes Guacamayo, it's what could be I guess a larger contributor. I'll say having covered Yamana previously, this was a project that was more technically complicated. The CapEx number that's in the release is quite large. I'm not familiar at all with the operator or its parent company. So with that in mind, what gives the team the confidence that this should be incorporated into formal guidance?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes. So we've been tracking it for a while now and that big CapEx number that you're seeing that have been in news reports that includes a whole bunch of sustaining capital and whatnot. The actual upfront capital is not that big of a net. The entity that has bought it, I'm not particularly familiar with them, but they are a multi billion dollar Argentinian company and so very, very well capitalized.

[Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. And then sorry, back to the first part, in terms of streams that might be more at risk of renegotiation, is there anything in the portfolio that we should be more aware of where that risk could materialize at some point or maybe where there's an opportunity at higher gold prices today and things could get renegotiated?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

I would say the only two things in our portfolio for a while that I would call our problem children children have been the Americas Gold and Silver and Bear Creek. And Americas Gold and Silver got solved last quarter with all of that new management team coming in, new cash coming in. I think their market cap is up to $500,000,000 now. So that problem children has gone away and the only one that remains is Pear Creek and there's very few ounces in our guidance related to them. And I think one of the benefits is if they do go into some sort of needed process to sell their assets that they owe us $45,000,000 in loans and other things.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

So and we have security of their assets. So I think if there's a positive one of our problem, our only remaining material problem child has the potential to become a material positive for us in terms of monetizing what we're owed.

[Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Derek Ma. Please go ahead.

[Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities]

Thank you. When Sandstorm hits that $300,000,000 debt threshold, to be clear, what are the priorities? Is it share buyback, debt reduction and then acquisition growth or how is Tantrum thinking about that?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Share buybacks, then share buybacks, then share buybacks. Once our share price is closer to 0.5, we'll then keep paying down our debt. I really do like getting debt really low and but share buybacks is the number one priority and then debt reduction. We'll keep looking for deals, but the deals have to come with a higher rate of return than debt reduction and that's a really hard threshold at the moment.

[Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay. And maybe what type of deal opportunities would entice to answer them then and what kind of ticket sizes should we be thinking about?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes, we're not looking at anything seriously right now. I mean the only things that we're looking at are things that are $1,000,000 here, $1,000,000 there, where we're tying down what we think will be a really big opportunity in the future where we're getting brighter first refusal will be the stream provider five years from now, seven years from now. We are not looking at allocating material capital in 2025. I think towards the end of this year, if we bought back a ton of shares and our share price is much higher, then our debt is into the $200,000,000 Will we start looking for acquisitions that would be more near term cash flow and we would pay over time as they build the mine? Yeah, we'll start looking then, but we're not looking now.

[Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay, makes sense. And then in terms of Mara, if that's put forth into the rig in the next six months by Glencore, what does that mean in terms of the option window for Sandstorm and when might Sandstorm be on the hook for deposits?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes, so our option is indefinite until they make the board approved decision and start building the mine and that's what triggers our option. Once that is triggered, we will absolutely and of course say yes. And the way our deal is structured with Glencore, it's slightly different than the original deal was structured with Pimana. When Glencore came in as the operator, we renegotiated the mechanisms of when do we pay. So now the way it works is when we elect yes, we do not have to write a two twenty five million dollars check upfront.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

We pay slowly over time with them as they build the mine. So if it's a two point five year, three year construction, we'd pay about $75,000,000 a year per year over that three years and which is substantially less than what our cash flow will be. So at all points in time, we will be cash flow positive and we'll just have to divert a portion of our cash flow to this when that happens.

[Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities]

So this could start in 2020 or deposits could be in 2027 potentially?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes.

[Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Brian Ascher from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James]

Good morning. My question relates to the sort of the 2027 guidance. Again, I take your comments about GEOs changing with prices, which as you know, it's always been a challenge here. But the other category drops off, starts to drop off pretty substantially in 2027, '20 '20 '8. What's actually going on there?

[Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James]

I'm trying to determine because I would think Vale is up at that time. So some of the others is going up. What's actually dropping off in 2027, '20 '20 '8 that causes that reset?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes, there's a couple of things going on. One is you'll notice that 2026 is an up year relative to 2025 and part of that is Woodlawn and that stream turning on, but it is a capped stream that we inherited when we acquired Nomad. And so we basically get a bunch of payments really fast at $30,000,000 and then the stream drops off. So that's why you see a drop down in 2027 as the Woodlawn starts in 2026 and then goes away by the end of twenty twenty seven. And then there's a little bit of tailing off of our sterile moral stream.

[Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James]

Perfect. Thanks very much. That's very helpful. And just Woodlawn, it's a multi commodity thing again, right? So there's a fair bit of price movement in there as well, right?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes.

[Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James]

Okay.

[Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Tanya Cekaszakonek from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Some have been answered by my colleagues' questions. And I guess, I'm intrigued about your 2025 guidance again.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

And I know, Nolan, you mentioned you don't see a sub down at that 65,000 GEOs. Would that when you risk adjusted and put this guidance in place, was that based on just solely the commodity price getting there or were there other risk adjustments to that guidance that could get you there, some assets that you're concerned about?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

There are other risk adjustments that we've made. So if we look back at 2024, for example, and the things that caused us to miss the number one thing was the gold price going up as I explained before, caused fewer geos. But there were things like Greenstone ramped up much slower than what they had guided. And that was a portion of our miss. And there is an assumed ramp up at Greenstone from their guidance in 2025.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

We've actually been so conservative that our base case model now is so conservative and assumes no ramp up from what they're currently doing. We do think it'll ramp up. We're not seeing anything operationally that would suggest it doesn't. We just don't want to be wrong two years in a row for the same reasons.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Okay. So the risks would be anything to do with the ramp up at Greenstone although your numbers have flat production, I gather from in the 2025 guidance?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes. So if Greenstone ramps up the way Equinox thinks it's going to and gold prices are soft, we could blow through our guidance on the high side.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Okay. And then for the 2025 guidance, I think I heard that Q1 is supposed to be a strong quarter. And so maybe you can just kind of lay out for us how the year looks like is it a strong Q1 and then the other three quarters are equal or how do you see it? Is it a sixtyforty first half, second half? Just guidance on that would be great.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes. I think we're expecting our quarters through 2025 to be relatively consistent with each other with the slight ramp up towards the end of the year if Greenstone does ramp up. But what I would say is Q1 should have an extra bump of 1,000 to maybe 1,500 GEOs related to that extra show up in Q1. So it'll be sort of a one time bump to Q1 and then things should be relatively flat for the year with trending upwards towards the end of the year.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Okay. So kind of how I see it is stronger Q1 and then sort of like maybe a little dip Q2, Q3 equal and then maybe a little stronger in Q4?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Okay. That's very good. Thank you. And then final question, if I could, just coming back on to the on the debt level. So a $300,000,000 in debt by Q2, Q3, somewhere in there, you stop paying down your debt.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

You look at your share buyback obviously depending on where your shares are, you buyback your shares and or look at any other potential deals or transactions in the landscape. You don't really have a payment until 2027 for Marah. So if you don't find anything and you work through your share buyback program, do you look at your dividend as well in terms of moving that up?

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

Yes, it's a good question. I think that our intention with the dividend is has always been to establish it low and then start increasing it slightly every year for a very long period of time. We established it low and then took on a bunch of debt to do these transactions and then interest rates went up. So we just paused those increases. Our balance sheet is now strong enough that so we sort of look at the dividend once a year and I would expect barring any real surprises that the next time we look at it, it will be an increase.

[Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank]

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you on that. Thank you very much for taking my questions and a lot of my other ones were already answered. So thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I want to hand the call back to Mr. Nolan Watson for any closing remarks.

[Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director at Sandstorm Gold]

All right. Thank you very much everyone for calling in. I hope everyone has a good day. And again, if there are any further questions, we're here and around and able to answer them. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Nolan Watson, CEO, President & Director
• Erfan Kazemi-Esfahani, Chief Financial Officer
• David Awram, Co-Founder, Senior Executive VP & Non-Independent Director

Analysts

• Josh Wolfson, Director, Head of Global Mining Research at RBC Capital Markets
• Derick Ma, Equity Research Analyst at TD Securities
• Brian Macarthur, Managing Director at Raymond James
• Tanya Jakusconek, Director specializing in Gold & Precious Minerals at Scotiabank