Triple Flag Precious Metals Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2025

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Danica, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Triple Flag Precious Metals Q1 twenty twenty five Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to the CEO, Sheldon Van Der Khoi. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Danica. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Triple Flag's first quarter of twenty twenty five results. Today, I am joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Ibn Bari and our Chief Operating Officer, James Engel. Triple Flag achieved strong GEOs and record financial results to start the year. Sales of nearly 29,000 GEOs resulted in record EBITDA of US71 million dollars during the first quarter of twenty twenty five with record operating cash flow of US66 million dollars This strong performance has positioned us well to not only achieve our 2025 GEO guidance of 105,000 to 115,000 ounces, but demonstrates our ability to directly realize higher cash flows in a rising gold and silver price environment.

Speaker 1

To further grow our business, Triple Flag has also maintained a solid pace of acquisitions over the last four months, including our proposed acquisition of Origin Royalties. This transaction announced on April 22 will result in Triple Flag owning a 1% NSR royalty on the expanded Silicon Gold project in Nevada. Expanded silicon is a top tier gold asset located in a premier jurisdiction that is operated by one of the world's most successful producers AngloGold Ashanti. The asset has a track record of rapid growth and has unparalleled exploration potential. We look forward to the completion of this transaction in the third quarter of this year.

Speaker 1

Earlier in March, we are pleased to announce the tuck in acquisition of 5% silver and gold streams on the Arcata and Azuca mines in Peru for CAD35 million. The returns generated by this transaction are exceptionally robust and our regular development updates with the operator management team are positive. Arcata is on track to deliver first production in the near term. Turning to our Cornerstone asset, North Parks continued to deliver record results during the quarter, driven by the processing of higher grade open pit ore. As expected, mining of these pits is now depleted and we continue to expect the processing of the stockpiled ore through 2025.

Speaker 1

Looking further ahead, the next stage of high grade gold ore from Northparks is also advancing to production. Access to the first sublevel at E48 is now substantially complete and commissioning is expected in the second half of twenty twenty five. Finally, we are proud to highlight our top industry ranking by Morningstar Sustainalytics, which we achieved during the first quarter. This ranking is a testament to the commitment of our team and mining partners to ESG. I'll now turn it over to Yvan to discuss our financials for the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Sheldon. Business delivered strong volumes amidst the backdrop of record precious metals prices as well as continuing strong margins. The single most important metric we focus on is operating cash flow per share, which has increased by 74% year over year. We view a progressively growing dividend as a core part of our capital allocation strategy. Our dividend has been maintained at US0.21 dollars on an annualized basis.

Speaker 2

I'm proud that we have increased our dividend every year since our IPO and will continue to assess the potential for further increases going forward. We also remained active on our share buybacks during the first quarter, buying back approximately 490,000 shares in the open market at a price of CAD 23.55. Opportunistic share buybacks remain a core part of our shareholder return strategy. Lastly, I'd like to comment on our balance sheet. We exited the quarter with zero debt, a clean balance sheet, robust operating cash flows and liquidity available under our credit facility of $1,000,000,000 gives us the capital to continue to deploy dollars into accretive opportunities to drive future growth for the business benefit of shareholders.

Speaker 2

Moving ahead, we continue to highlight three key aspects of our investment thesis, namely top tier assets, precious metals focus and a portfolio which is predominantly centered in Australia and The Americas. As Sheldon noted earlier, North Parks had a great quarter due to higher open pit grades, representing a significant portion of our revenue for the period. Our overall revenue is derived 100 from precious metals, which is roughly threefour from gold. This pure play exposure ranks amongst the highest in the sector to precious metals and offers investors exposure to many favorable tailwinds for both gold and silver. Finally, our portfolio is predominantly located in mining friendly jurisdictions.

Speaker 2

A key criteria as we look to expand our portfolio through acquisition. I will now turn it over to James to discuss expanded Silicon Valley project.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Yves. As Sean highlighted earlier, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of Origin royalties a few weeks ago, which resulted in Triple Flag retaining a 1% NSR royalty on the expanded Silicon Gold Project, a Tier one asset. All of the other assets and liabilities of the existing Origin Corporation will be spun into a new and separate company upon close. On the slide, you'll see a picture taken as part of the asset site visits conducted during our due diligence, which shows the core of AngloGold's BT complex, a key focus of their future growth plans. We're excited to add a royalty on one of North America's largest new gold discovery to our portfolio, which has 1% rate for the full life of mine and covers the entirety of the silicon and milling deposits as well as the known extensions.

Speaker 3

It has no step downs, buy downs or caps. The project is contemplated as a straightforward heap leach and milling operation, processing oxide material and AngloGold expects to release pre feasibility study within the next twelve months. Expanded silicon is one of North America's largest new gold discoveries, which AngloGold Ashanti has grown rapidly from first drilling in 2018 to 16,000,000 ounces of total resource today. We see strong potential for this resource to continue growing in the near term from infill and resource upgrade drilling within the Merlin mineralization footprint, as well as areas the North, West and East Of Merlin and the Northwest Of Silicone. Based on our site visits and AngloGold's disclosures, there are numerous drawers that are active on the property.

Speaker 3

Definition drilling and high level of site activity speaks to AngloGold's focus on developing a long term operation rather than simply demonstrating district exploration optionality. It is important to note that within the current outline for Merlin, there are significant intercepts that we have interpreted to not be included in the resource estimate due to drill holes spacing. This includes an assay of 1.3 gram material over two thirty six meters. We look forward to seeing the results of the recent drill programs in due course. Expanded silicon is clearly a very large and well endowed system that will grow and develop over a long period of time.

Speaker 3

Put this in context, this slide highlights the evolution of the expanded silicon resources against Goldstrike and Cortez, Two of the most prolific mining districts in Nevada. You can see the growth trajectory at expanded silicon parallels these districts. Notably, the 16,000,000 ounce resource already exceeds both Goldstrike and Cortez at the time they began to report meaningful production in 1987 and 1995, Barrick respectively. Each of these districts have ultimately delineated over 50,000,000 ounces of resources cumulatively and are still going strong as core pieces of Nevada Gold Mines operations. We strongly believe expanded silicone will continue to grow and has the potential to rival some of the largest gold assets in Nevada and the largest epifilm or gold deposits globally.

Speaker 3

Triple Flag has delivered a consistent track record of GEO growth since inception. Beyond the guidance we have set for 2025, we see further growth to 135,000 to 145,000 GEOs in 2029. With the addition of expanded silicon, we now see strong potential for this pace of growth to continue well beyond 2029. Silicon will join Cone and Hope Bay as well as other projects that will drive growth in the long term. I'll now pass back to Sheldon to conclude the formal part of the presentation.

Speaker 1

Thank you, James. We've had a strong start to 2025 and are well positioned to achieve our 2025 guidance. We saw robust growth in operating cash flow per share and delivered transactions that will benefit our shareholders for decades to come. The model is working well. The record gold prices are translating into record cash flows as they should.

Speaker 1

We are deploying those cash flows into a growing dividend for shareholders and we reinvest in high quality assets such as silicon to grow the portfolio. We are debt free and have significant capacity to grow the portfolio going forward. Thank you very much.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Derek Ma with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you very much. Where does share buybacks sit within the capital allocation strategy? And what can shareholders expect in terms of share buybacks going forward?

Speaker 1

Yes. Hi, Derek. This is Sheldon. I'll take that one. We've always been opportunistic on share buybacks.

Speaker 1

We generate very robust cash flows. And whenever we see an opportunity to take some shares out of the register, we look forward to that. We were pretty robust on the share buybacks in Q1. And really we just saw that the market gave us an opportunity to do so at very attractive prices. We're always balancing the pipeline versus the share buybacks.

Speaker 1

And of course, the other element of the capital returns is the dividend. And we've been pretty clear and consistent since we've gone public that we increase the dividend annually. So it sits in with that, but we don't have any stated policy on buybacks that lock us in.

Speaker 4

Got it. And in terms of Prescott, there's some verbiage there in terms of the conditions that Triple Flag would like to see and move forward that option. Has any of the thinking internally changed with the updated feasibility? And what do you guys envision in terms of that asset?

Speaker 1

Yes. I'll turn it over to James. I don't think anything's really changed, but we're quite excited about this project, but I'll turn it over to James.

Speaker 3

No, Derek. Nothing's really changed. The feasibility study was published a few weeks ago. We are working with the company to review that feasibility study. We have an existing 0.8% G.

Speaker 3

R. Royalty, which we're very happy to hold. We will look at this as a fresh investment decision. So we'll be working through that over the balance of the back end of the year. The two conditions that you'll really probably recall, the first is that the study has to be completed to our satisfaction.

Speaker 3

So in other words, we agree it's executable and satisfies all of our requirements for that level of study. The second is the company has to be fully funded through the free cash flow essentially. So the company is obviously working through those funding elements and we're progressing in parallel with those. So we expect to be able to say more later in the year or early next.

Speaker 4

Thank you. I'll pass it on to Nick. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Derek.

Operator

All right. Our next question comes from Brian MacArthur with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning and thank you for taking my question. It relates to the prepay with Steppi Gold. Can you just go through where we stand on that and whether you expect to get the remaining ounces on the prepay this year? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks, Brian. This is Sheldon. I'll answer that. It's absolutely clear that STEP owes us the sixteen fifty ounces of gold.

Speaker 1

They've been using their cash flows to advance ATO Phase two and they repeatedly asked us for extensions and delivering those ounces. Eventually, just said no more to the extensions and we're taking action to enforce payment. We do have a parent guarantee and based on the public disclosure, Step Gold is performing very well and benefiting from the higher gold price. I really can't say much more given that this is in legal action right now. But I do expect to get those ounces.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

All right. That is all the questions we have for today. Thank you all for joining. That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Triple Flag Precious Metals Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00