Report Highlights
• In this report, we look at the gold royalty industry in relation to traditional gold mining companies and the commodity itself. As specialty financiers, royalty companies provide project financing to miners via various contracts, purchase third-party royalties, and even accumulate properties or property options of their own (with the intention of selling or optioning them to miners in the future for profit and/ or royalty agreements).
• Outperformance vs. Gold Miners: In terms of share price performance and valuation multiples, the major gold royalty companies have largely outperformed the major precious metals miners. We believe that this is in large part due to differences in operating models and the relative strengths of the royalty model that minimize operating cost and CAPEX intensity, as well as risk and operating complexity.
• Valuation Multiples Expansion and Returns to Scale: A phenomenon that has been well recognized in the mining royalty industry is the positive value accretion with scale. As royalty companies accumulate royalties and other holdings, they benefit from organic asset growth on royalties that comes at no additional cost, combined with de-risking benefits related to portfolio diversification. As a result, we have seen major royalty companies exhibit higher multiples as they grow their portfolios.
• Small-Scale Gold Royalty Companies Poised for Growth: Due to the aforementioned effect, smaller royalty companies with the right equation and catalyst to drive royalty portfolio growth can see dramatic increases to their valuations. In this report, we will be examining Ely Gold Royalties Inc. (TSXV: ELY) as a benchmark example of this.
