Gold Royalty Corp. (GROY) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Welcome to the call. Thank you. Welcome to the Gold Royalty Corp 3rd Quarter 2026 results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Gruffalo, Chair and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in today's call to review our third quarter 2026 results. Please note, for those not currently on the webcast, a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the presentation page of our website. Some of the commentary on today's call will include forward-looking statements, and I would direct everyone to review slide two of the presentation, which includes important cautionary notes. All dollar values mentioned in today's call are expressed in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. Speaking alongside me this morning will be our President, John Griffith, Andrew Goebbels, Chief Financial Officer, and Jackie Prezbielowski, Vice President, Capital Markets and Sustainability. We truly believe that we're in a very strong environment for gold, and especially for royalty companies today. The macroeconomic environment, while volatile in the short term, continues to be supportive of strong gold prices. Higher global government spending, deficits, and debt, combined with rising costs and concerns about affordability, have the potential to further erode the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and other major global fiat currencies. Rising money supply has historically been strongly correlated to higher gold prices, and we expect this trend will push gold prices higher in 2027 and through the medium term. In this environment, we believe that gold remains well positioned as a store of value and is expected to be driven vastly higher from increased investor and central bank demand. Inflation will also have a meaningful effect on the capital operating costs of mine developers and operators. While we have already seen unit costs rise, we believe this will be increasingly topical in 2027 as inputs including sulfur, diesel, and other petroleum-derived products and labor continue to get more expensive, and as hedges, pre-purchases, and contracts roll over. We want to emphasize that higher costs would continue to be fully borne by our operating partners. Operators who have enjoyed incredibly strong operating margins over the past few years will likely see these margins eroded somewhat, although we're still confident that the producing mines in our portfolio remain profitable enough to stay in operation and for operators to continue to invest in incremental optimization and improvement projects. This sets the stage for royalty companies to outperform, gold royalty included. All of our assets are NSR royalties. NSR royalties are royalties on revenues that are not impacted by mine site operating costs, nor do they have fixed or variable payments back to the operators. In other words, we have no exposure to operating costs or mine profitability. Our structure gives us unmitigated leverage to rising gold prices, and our high-quality and diversified asset portfolio means that we can offer this leverage at a lower risk as compared with higher-torque gold investment options. Turning to our results for the quarter. It might sometimes feel like a broken record, but we once again are pleased to report record quarterly results for the third quarter 2026, including adjusted revenue of over $11 million and nearly 2,700 GOs produced to our account in the quarter, increases of over 40% and over 50% respectively from the second quarter 2026. This is a tremendous result for us and really underscores how we have come through the inflection point and are well underway towards exciting growth over the next few quarters and years. We've truly hit the flywheel phase in our life cycle, where we're not only free cash flow positive, but we're generating sufficient cash to build a comfortable cash balance to fund accretive future growth. And we're in a position to consider returning capital to shareholders. Andrew will go through our quarterly financial results in more detail in a few moments. We also continue to be very optimistic about our outlook on organic growth for the remainder of 2026, as Jackie will discuss shortly, and remain on track to meet, or even potentially to exceed, our previously disclosed full-year production guidance of 7,500 to 9,300 geos. John will also lead you through the steady progress we're making in business development. I'll now pass the call over to our CFO, Andrew Gobbles, to discuss the financial results for the quarter and the year to date.

Thanks, Dave. As Dave mentioned, we're pleased to report new records for revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2026. Total revenue, land agreement, proceeds, and interest were $11.5 million, translating to 2,689 GOs in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $9 million, more than tripling from the $2.5 million in the comparable quarter in 2025, and up approximately 60% from Q2 2026. It wasn't too long ago when Gold Royalty was burning cash to operate its business. Approximately two years ago, we pursued a strategy to add revenue-generating royalties and streams to the portfolio, while introducing controls to identify and remove redundancies and reduce our cash operating costs. As a result, I'm pleased to say that we have more than tripled our trailing 12-month revenue while maintaining steady cash-operating costs over the past eight quarters. This graph shows the trailing 12-month revenue in G&A at the end of each quarter since the beginning of 2024, rather than quarterly revenue at G&A. To illustrate how the company has continued to build its revenue at these consistently stable operating costs. In an environment of higher fuel prices, declining grades, and escalating labor rates, the royalty and streaming business model is expected to look especially attractive as mine operators continue to be affected by these rising costs. Gold Royalty's cash operating margins has not only caught up to, but now outperforms its peer group. As the company's cash flows continue to grow at stable operating costs, we expect our margins to keep increasing over time. Our balance sheet also remains strong. We exit Q3 with approximately $21 million of cash and cash equivalents. That's up from $12 million at the start of the year. We also continue to have no debt and a fully undrawn $150 million credit facility. With a clean balance sheet, we now have the flexibility to freely execute our long-term strategy. Our preference continues to focus on accretive growth, and John will talk about our portfolio growth outlook shortly. Alongside our growth strategy, we continue to evaluate the optimal time to begin returning capital to shareholders. The capital return policy is actively being considered by our board of directors and will be communicated in due course. I'll now pass the call to John Griffith. to review our corporate development activities.

Thanks, Andrew. We have balance sheet and undrawn borrowing capacity to make meaningful acquisitions, potentially as large as 200 million, and larger in partnership with Taurus under our cooperation agreement. Competition for larger transactions Especially with near-term cash flow prospects in good jurisdictions and with great operators, is negatively impacting implied returns. It is with this backdrop that we've remained disciplined in our pursuit of value-enhancing, accretive transactions. That is not to suggest the potential pipeline is not robust. We continue to pursue a significant number of exciting opportunities. And we maintain a deep pipeline of potential transactions to drive growth beyond our already peer-leading organic growth. We continue to be active on smaller transactions as well, like the two acquisitions we completed in June and July, and which we discussed on our August earnings call. In June, we acquired an additional 0.1875% NSR royalty on the Wren project, operated by Barrick, and jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont under the Nevada Gold Mines Joint Venture of $6.25 million. And in July, we acquired two Nevada royalties in one transaction. A 2% NSR on the Stirling property, operated by Anglo Gold Ashanti, located south of its Arthur project, previously known as Expanded Silicon, and a 0.5% NSR on portions of Granite Creek, operated by I-80 Gold. This Granite Creek royalty covers portions of the Felix and Bluebell pits. Neither of which are included in the proposed mining sequence over the initially envisaged eight-and-a-half-year mine life at the Granite Creek open pit, as per the March 2025 NI43101 PEA study. But these deposits represent longer-term optionality to us. I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight our royalty generator model, led in Nevada by our colleague Jerry Boffman. We continue to be committed to this important part of our growth strategy. The royalty generator business continues to be profitable to us. It's low cost and brings in upfront revenues that are well in excess of the de minimis costs associated with staking and holding claims. Our adjusted revenues included $1.1 million in land agreement proceeds for the third quarter. Or $1.9 million for the year to date, as compared with only $0.1 million spent on maintaining the mineral interests over the nine-month period. Our low-cost model includes staking land claims, but does not include any expensive exploration or development activity, and is centered only around the jurisdiction in which we have deep expertise and a competitive advantage. Not only does this business continue to be profitable for us every year, but it represents tremendous long-term optionality for our shareholders. We've generated 60 royalties through this model since Gold Royalties' acquisition of Ely in 2021, including an additional four royalties in the first three quarters of 2026. We currently have 39 properties subject to land agreements and six properties under lease-generating land agreement proceeds. And, as we conduct no exploration on these properties, we can continue to hold our portfolio at very low cost. I'll now pass the call to Jackie Przbilowski to review our guidance and key catalysts underpinning our peer-leading organic growth.

Thanks, John. We've been clear this year that our 2026 production was expected to be 60% weighted to the second half of the year, as Ferris and County Line ramp up to their full production run rates, and as we could also see production growth at Borden, Cote, and Pedrabranca. And, while it's not factored into the guidance, the rock mass movement at the Canadian Malarctic Barnat Pit could bring forward processing and sale of stockpiled material. We are reiterating our 2026 full-year guidance, 7,500 to 9,300 GEOs. Production of 2,689 GEOs in Q3 brings our total production to 6,366 GEOs year-to-date, which is 76% of the midpoint of our guidance range. We were at 44% of the midpoint of our guidance range as at the end of the second quarter, so you can see that we have made up a lot of ground in Q3. We continue to be well on track to achieve the midpoint of our guidance range, and we continue to believe in strong second-half production, which includes a strong fourth quarter. Barring any major disruptions, and depending on the gold prices realized between now and year-end, we could end the year with production in the higher end of our guidance range. Just a quick reminder that our 2026 guidance was set at a $5,150 per ounce gold price assumption for the full year. Lower gold prices would work in our favor. As conversion of the land agreement proceeds and interest and conversion of revenue from copper and other metals would translate to higher GEO values. Please see our March 18, 2026 press release for a table showing the sensitivity of our guidance to gold prices. We're excited by this result, not only because it's another record for us on production, adjusted revenue, and adjusted EBITDA, but because it reaffirms the even stronger growth in our portfolio over the medium term. As we have previously disclosed, Gold Royalty expects production to grow to 28,000 to 34,000 GEOs by 2030, or approximately six times our actual 2025 result, from assets already fully bought and paid for in our portfolio. Our extensive portfolio continues to offer exciting news flowing catalysts, and we have a number of exciting updates in our earnings report. I'll just highlight a few on this call that we're expecting in the final quarter of the year. A study to double plant capacity at Aura Minerals Bobarima project to 4 million tons per year should be completed shortly. First production at Wren, which is jointly owned by Barrick and Newmont, is expected by year-end. An updated mine plan to reflect the integration of IAM Gold's Cote and Gosling zones at Cote in Q4. While we don't have any exposure to Gosling, pushback of the Cote pit wall to accommodate a super pit design could add additional material from our zones 5 and 7 coverage into the mine plan. A pre-feasibility level study by First Majestic Silver on Jarrett Canyon restart to be completed in Q4. And the shaft number two technical evaluation at Canadian Malartic's Odyssey project to be completed by Agnico Eagle also in the fourth quarter. We also want to highlight DPM Metals' Varus mine. As you will recall, Varus was temporarily closed late last year as the then-new owner, DPM Metals, optimized the mine. It has restarted and achieved commercial production on August 10th, well ahead of the company's target, which was in September. The operator continues to expect that Varus will achieve its full production run rate of 850,000 tons per year by the end of this year. DPM has also noted that it now expects to exceed the high end of its 2026 guidance range on a gold-equivalent production basis. We want to congratulate DPM Metals for consistently outperforming on its operating milestones at this world-class silver mine. On September 30th, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina set a six-month review related to a constitutional dispute which has challenged the authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to certain acts regarding state-owned land, including the VARES concession agreement. This constitutional dispute relates to state-owned forests and land of Bosnia and Herzegovina and forms part of a broader issue affecting a number of large concession-based investments in the country. We want to emphasize that VARs continues to operate normally, and operator DPM Metals does not expect any impact on its 2026 production guidance as a result of the court's decision. DPM is actively engaging with the relevant authorities to support the six-month review process to the extent possible. The VAR's operation employs more than 600 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and is the top exporter in the Zenitsidobos Canton. But it's important to note that this is a countrywide issue that extends well beyond VARIS and includes numerous other major national and international projects of critical importance. I'll pass the floor back to Dave for closing remarks.

Thanks, Jackie. We're so pleased to report another record quarter. Calling this a record quarter understates the magnitude of our achievement this quarter. Our adjusted revenue, including land agreement proceeds and other, was 23% higher than our previous record quarter, and our GOs were 40% higher than our previous record quarter. In 2025, we achieved the inflection to a positive free cash flow, and our growth has been on a steady march upwards ever since. We expect that our growth will continue, for example, our 2030 guidance assumes roughly 500% or six times increase at the midpoint from our 2025 actual results. We continue to see compelling upside to our share price as our portfolio assets continue to develop and as the market gives us credit for this organic growth. Our valuation could be further boosted by accretive growth, but we emphasize that we will remain patient and disciplined as we consider any acquisitions and as we review our capital allocation options going forward. We continue to prioritize accretive growth, as always, while building a strong cash treasury, which will enable us to consider a modest capital return as a signal to the market that we will remain disciplined on our growth and that we have matured as a company. One housekeeping item before we take a question. As you all know, we've ceased our practice of pre-releasing our preliminary revenue results ahead of quarterly earnings. We chose to do this to remove volatility in our results as some of our royalties don't provide information sufficiently ahead of our quarterly reporting. We will make an exception for the fourth quarter to provide our investors with timely information, given the longer delay in our year-end reporting. We plan to pre-release a preliminary Q4 revenue results ahead of full-year financial results, likely in mid-February. Thank you everyone for tuning into the earnings call. We'll now open up the call to Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you reuse a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Heiko Illy with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Hey, team. Casey, you're filling in for Heiko. Thanks for taking our questions, and congrats on another great quarter.

Thank you.

You guys ended with $21 million in cash. Given the increased size and scope of the firm, could you maybe walk us through the minimum sizing of cash that you'd want to hold just to feel comfortable? And maybe how this cash level could change as more and more assets enter production? And if you want to add some additional color on if gold prices don't have any input on those minimum cash levels.

Sure, I'll hand that off to Andrew Goebbels, our CFO.

Yeah, no, thanks, Dave. Look, we don't have a hard and fast target for minimum cash. That being said, we do have, I guess, practically speaking, we'd like to keep cash on the balance sheet for working capital purposes as required. Tentatively, somewhere in the circa $10 million range is what we have in mind. It can fluctuate sort of around that level. Now, that's not, again, a hard and fast rule. In terms of additions to cash throughout the year, I think you can run your models, and it depends on where your gold price is for revenue, as well as what your estimates are for geos. But just keep in mind that our operating costs have been quite consistent over the number eight to 10 previous quarters. So around that seven or $8 million range for GNA, everything in excess would be really free cash, given that we don't have any debt on the balance sheet. So in terms of what we build is contingent on what your assumptions are on some of those factors going forward. But I would say somewhere in around that $10 million cash range is where we sort of feel comfortable keeping cash on the balance sheet.

Thank you. That was really helpful. Second question, and last, on the royalty asset generator, you guys mentioned you generated 60 royalties since the acquisition of Elite Gold. Could you maybe walk us through two or three that you think are most undervalued by the market and also the analyst community?

John, do you want to handle that, John Griffiths?

Yeah, look, I think the reality with... Early stage assets is it's very difficult to predict what is going to ultimately become a mine. The one thing that is very important to bear in mind with our royalty generator business model is the fact that we don't, we're not staking claims on properties that are You know, unknown from a geological perspective. There is a lot of what we would refer to as neurology involved. Many of the properties are staked. In close proximity to existing operations and existing resources. So it's really difficult to give you a prediction of what's going to really turn into a mine over a period of time. But the reality is it's tremendous option value for our stakeholders on that portfolio.

I think the one example I would illustrate, though, to add to what John said, is Tonopah West in Nevada, which we staked back in 2021. It's one of the more significant silver discoveries in that region. And we sold it to BlackRock Silver for about a million and a half dollars in cash and a 3% royalty back in 2024. And BlackRock believes it'll be in production by the end of the decade. So that's warp speed by mining standards. And just remind you that our entry price was effectively zero, so the rate of return is infinite for our shareholders. And that's the power of this generator model is effectively no entry cost and the potential to generate outsized returns.

Perfect. Thank you, guys, for answering the questions. I'll hop back into queue. Thank you.

The next question comes from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

I thank you. You had some comments on the VARAs, your royalty with, I mean, increasing to $2.4 million in the third quarter, and then with the details from DPM about increasing annualized processing capacity by 49% to the end of the year. I mean, should we factor in that scale of an increase for your copper royalty for 2027, or would you caution against that, please?

I'll hand it off to Jackie.

Thanks very much, Tate, for the question. Yeah, I think, you know, we don't have a great amount of disclosure on the copper grade or copper expected to be produced in 2027, just because it's not particularly material to DPM, given our stream on that asset. I would say, you know, directionally, with far as reaching the full run rate, 850,000 tons per year, by the end of 2026, we would expect processing at that run rate for the full year 2027. So, you know, broadly speaking, without any major changes in copper grade, we would expect to see that sort of Q4 level of production to our accounts or continue through 2027 or even potentially slightly higher as the early part of Q4 won't be at that 850,000 tons run rate exactly. But having said that, if there is variation in grade, that could affect that ultimate production in 2027 slightly. We haven't seen too much variation in grade at the asset. It has been fairly homogeneous in terms of the copper distribution. So our best outlook right now is that it would look fairly similar to how we're exiting the year this year.

I mean, looking at thank you, Jackie, and looking at the scale, I mean, it potentially could be VAR is your largest royalty revenue, I would think, in 27, or is that not necessarily the case, given all the other dynamics in the portfolio?

It's definitely our largest stream revenue, given that's the only stream we have, but absolutely, it'll be one of the biggest contributors to our revenue next year, yeah.

Okay, and then if you can, I mean, just, I mean, there were some indications of separately Tether selling some gold ounces from 630 to 930, But then I think their share position in you went up a little bit. Have you had many interactions with Tether or willing to comment on their market behavior at all?

I don't think we can provide any particular insight. They've been a passive shareholder in our company, and they've been consistently accumulating since they started buying the stock back a year ago last summer. And you'd have to ask them what their intentions are. But clearly, they're still dealing with a fairly significant inflow of interest or yield on their treasuries, and those treasury yields are only going up or have only gone up this year.

Good point. Thank you very much.

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question comes from Derek Ma with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. My question's on REN. What are your expectations for REN in 2027 and beyond, and specifically when you start expecting to get paid on that 3.5% MTI?

I'll pass that on to Jackie.

Thanks a lot, Derek. So with Wren, I know Beric has mentioned that it's expecting to be in production by the end of this year. So we are expecting to see first production from Wren fairly soon and to reach 140,000 ounces per year as the full run rate by sort of late 2027. So definitely expecting to see REN really start production very well over the next few months and quarters. To your point about when we start to get paid, so with REN on the NPI, the structure of the NPI is that Barrick or Nevada gold mines will recover the invested capital first before the NPI starts to pay out to us. And so we would expect that sometime in 2028, depending on gold price, but our base case forecast would be sort of early 2028 at current gold prices.

Okay. Thank you. And very strong land agreement proceeds in Q3. How much of that is recurring, and how should we be thinking about the revenue-generating power of this business segment going forward?

Andrew, do you want to handle that, please?

Yeah, sure. Look, the land agreement proceeds is lumpy by nature. It's really dependent on contracts. In Q3, we had a couple that were chunkier. I would, the way that I would sort of see land agreement proceeds moving forward is It's a smaller contribution to the overall mix. Royalty and stream revenue will certainly be on the larger side. This quarterly amount is larger than it was in the previous quarter and quarter before that. In terms of run rate, it really depends on how many more contracts are signed and how the agreements play out. But generally speaking, I would say that this quarter is higher than what we'd expect normally. I'd say Q1, Q2 is probably a little more consistent with where we see future quarters. That being said, we haven't put out guidance for the next year, and when we do, it'll be clear, but there are, again, some lumpy revenue coming from land agreement proceeds in future quarters that we expect as well. But this quarter is a little higher than what we usually see. But again, trailing off somewhere, if you look at our run rate in the last couple of years, it has decreased as a contribution. But if you look at the revenue contribution for last year, I think it's fairly consistent if you add up the quarters in this year and going forward somewhere in that area as well. It's not expected to be substantially bigger, but this quarter is a little bit higher.

Okay, helpful. Thank you, guys.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to David Gruffalo for our closing remarks.

Thanks very much, everybody. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Jackie at JackieP at goldroyalty.com or any of us. Please email, call. We'd be happy to answer any other follow-up questions. Thank you for your attention this morning.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.