Gold Royalty (GROY) Q3 2025 earnings call transcript

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in today's call to review our third quarter 2025 results. Please note that those not currently on the webcast, a presentation accompanying this conference call is available on the presentations 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.

Speaking alongside me on today's call will be Andrew Goebbels, Chief Financial Officer, John Griffith, Chief Development Officer, and Jackie Przolowski, Vice President, Capital Markets. We are proud to report a second consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow, as well as another quarter of record revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and operating cash flow. These cash flows are a manifestation of the tremendous potential we saw from the assets as we've been carefully curating our portfolio over the past five years, potential which is not yet fully realized as we have tremendous growth and value creation still to come. Gordian cash flows and revenues continue to improve our balance sheet, as Andrew will discuss in a moment.

But first, I want to go over our approach to capital allocation. We have told you for the last few quarters that debt repayment is our top priority, and we're glad to be able to start paying it down with $2 million of our revolving credit facility being paid down in the third quarter and a further $5 million debt reduction subsequent to quarter end.

Capital allocation continues to be an important strategic priority. Looking ahead, we maintain our focus on debt reduction while considering strategic growth opportunities in a disciplined manner. With our convertible debentures and outstanding common share warrants now deeply in the money and the continued growth of our free cash flow, we could be in an essentially debt-free position by the end of 2026. Balance sheet flexibility is a priority, and we believe this will position us well to continue executing our long-term strategy on all cylinders.

With that, I will pass the call over to Andrew Goebbels to discuss the details of our first quarter results and our outlook on slide four.

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report new records for revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the quarter and year-to-date. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.5 million in the third quarter, up from $2.4 million in the previous quarter, and up from $779,000 in the comparable quarter in 2024. Total revenue, land agreement proceeds, and interest was $4.6 million, translating to 1,323 gold-declined ounces in the quarter. I've seen the impact of recognizing a meaningful deferred tax recovery due to the streamlining and reorganization of our subsidiaries in the third quarter of 2024.

Our net loss and adjusted net loss continues to improve quarter on quarter. As David mentioned, we again generated positive free cash flow this quarter. We're very excited about this transition to positive free cash flow, which has improved our liquidity position. As anticipated, we have allocated excess cash, including proceeds from the exercise of outstanding warrants, to repay part of our evolving credit facility, bringing our debt down from $27.3 million at the end of June to $28.5 million as of today. As the revenues grow, operating costs remain consistently low and fixed charges decrease.

We expect to continue to deliver quickly. Our current intent is to maintain a modest cash balance and to allocate additional cash generated from operations towards debt repayment As David alluded we believe improving our balance sheet and reducing debt will give us the flexibility to execute our strategy in the long term I'll now pass the call over to our Chief Development Officer, John Griffith.

Thanks, Andrew. On October 24th, the stablecoin company Tether disclosed in a 13-D filing with the SEC that it had acquired 13.8 million share position in gold royalty, or 8% of our outstanding share float. Days later, it made a further disclosure that it increased its position to approximately 10% of our outstanding shares. We want to declare that we were unaware of Tether's position before this disclosure.

We see this as a validation of the immense value in our existing assets and business plans. However, we must also protect and maximize value for all our shareholders. To this end, our board and its special committee of independent directors just recently approved the adoption of a rights plan. Details can be found in our recent press release on the matter. We cannot comment further at this time, but what we can do and what we are doing is continuing to work to maximize and preserve the utmost value for all GOLD Royalty shareholders. GOLD Royalty was acquisitive when we had the currency to be competitive, acquiring Ely Gold, Golden Valley and Abitibi Royalties in 2021.

We have further built on this foundation, having grown our portfolio 14-fold in just under five years to more than 250 assets, seven of which are cash flowing.

We continue to evaluate growth opportunities. Our strengthening share price and growing cash balance has made us more competitive in pursuing transactions and M&A opportunities.

However, the same is true for many of our peers, and the landscape for transactions remains very competitive, with at least 30 public royalty and streaming companies, and by our estimate, a further 20 private entities, or seeking to deploy capital and acquire royalties in the streams, given how attractive the business model is. As we have noted many times in the past, gold royalty is most successful when we can leverage our deep management and board experience in bilateral transactions.

And this continues to be true. While we regularly evaluate growth opportunities, we will certainly continue to remain disciplined in our growth. We often get asked what opportunities we're seeing in the market.

Of course, the higher gold price has not only raised revenues and cash flows for most producing companies, but also opened up multiple financing avenues, which means operating companies have alternatives to selling royalties and streams. to finance producing gold mines. At the same time, the current environment, both in terms of permitting and in terms of mine financing, is extremely conducive to mine construction, and we're seeing some miners and developers offering royalties for sale as part of a larger construction financing package. At this time, we're not necessarily prioritizing targeting these pre-construction royalties.

Given our existing deep pipeline of early-stage royalties, we are prioritizing royalties which are currently cash-flowing. We can generate early-stage royalties for no cost in-house through our royalty generator model, And so we have less of a need to buy these earlier stage assets. The same market conditions supportive of mine development outside of our portfolio should also create value inside our portfolio, as these early stage assets in which we hold royalties will move through development and towards cash flow. One area where we are seeing acquisition opportunities is in the purchase of existing royalties from prospectors or third holders who might be more open to crystallizing value in an historically reasonably high gold price environment I'll now pass the call over to our Vice President of Capital Markets, Jackie.

Thanks, John.

Turning to slide seven, I'll review a few of the key developments in our asset portfolio. Starting with the most significant impact to our production forecast, we noted in our October 23rd revenue pre-release that production to Gold Royalty's account could be around or modestly below the bottom end of our previously disclosed guidance range of 5,700 to 7,000 gold equivalent ounces, or GEOs, in 2025. There are a couple reasons for that.

First, it's partly a function of higher gold commodity prices so far this year. We have provided our guidance on a volume basis to introduce as few assumptions as possible into our guidance. However, in calculating the GEOs, we have converted revenues that come from our royalty generator model, which we call land agreement proceeds. These revenues are paid in dollars, and we divide by gold price to derive a gold equivalent ounce number. However, when we set our guidance in March of this year, we assumed a gold price of $2,668 per ounce through 2025, which was the spot gold price at the time, which converted $1.6 million in revenue to approximately 600 GEOs at that time.

The gold price has been significantly higher than $2,668 per ounce year-to-date. So, the $1.244 million in land agreement proceeds that we've received in the first nine months contribute significantly less on a GEO basis than we had expected. In fact, this would translate to only 388 GEOs at the average gold price of $3,200 per ounce, as shown in yesterday's NDNA, rather than the 466 GEOs, which would have been assumed under the March gold price estimate. The second reason for caution on our 2025 full-year guidance is the well-telegraphed temporary shift from mining to development at DPM Metals' Varus mine, on which we hold a copper stream.

Even before DPM completed the acquisition of Adriatic Metals, they had messaged that it would change the mining sequence at Varus. Mining was previously sourced from the upper levels of the deposit, and the change involves establishing mining from the lower bottom elevation, which is more efficient and effective, as it avoids leaving behind sill pillars. Access to the bottom elevation will require extensive underground development, which is expected to displace mine production activity for approximately six months.

DPM first released this plan in an NI43-101 technical report, effective April 1, 2025. Of course, at that time, DPM didn't own VARAS, and the timing and impact of the change to 2025 production wasn't clear, And so we didn't update our guidance then. But we did choose to reflect the near-term impact in our guidance after the transaction closed on September 3rd, and after DTM gave more granular detail about the timing of the production disruption on October 9th, when it noted that it continues to expect minimal production at Varus over the balance of 2025. As Varus continues to produce from stockpiled ore, and given the natural lag in payments between the operator and our stream, we could continue to see stream payments in early Q4, and in fact, we have received some stream payments quarter to date.

Further revenues from royalties in our portfolio and the royalty generator model could also continue to partially offset the impact of the virus closure. Aura Minerals declared commercial production at Boberema on September 23rd, on schedule, and after first production on March 28th. This is great news and shows the quality of Aura as an operator and Boberema as an asset.

This also marks the change to our royalty at Boberema. With commercial production, we move from our pre-production payments and into our 2% NSR long-term arrangement. As the mine continues to ramp up, we expect our revenue contributions from Boberima to grow. We continue to be excited about further upsides to Boberima as well. For example, government approval to relocate a highway near the mine would meaningfully grow reserves and would justify an expansion to the operation, providing free value growth to Gold Royalty. Speaking of expansion and long mine lives the Canadian Malarctic Shaft recently reached a depth of 1 meters ahead of schedule and received the approval for deepening of the shaft to extend additional 70 meters to a total depth of 1 meters when the shaft is complete Engineering work for the shaft expansion started in the third quarter of 2025.

In our view, the expansion represents upside to our royalty. Exit is an investment decision which was justified based on a longer mine life, potentially accessing deposits such as East Goldie at deeper depths. While East Goldie is not located within our royalty property boundary as it is delineated today, it does trend towards our property at depth. Also, development of a second shaft is still under study, and that represents potential for additional future upside at our flagship royalty asset over the next couple of years. Despite the potential short-term disruption of errors, we remain confident in our medium and longer-term outlook.

We maintain our five-year guidance at 23,000 to 28,000 GEOs by 2029, and we continue to note this longer-term outlook is fully bought and paid for, is comprised of mostly mature and brownfield operations, and is owned by experienced and well-funded operators. I'll pass the call back to CEO David Gruffalo for closing remarks.

Thanks, Jackie. There's indeed lots to get excited about as you look across our portfolio and the various high-quality assets ramping up and entering production. One of the key benefits to our diversified portfolio is the steady flow of exciting growth catalysts at our underlying assets. These near-, medium-, and long-term catalysts contributed to peer-leading growth that Jackie highlighted in our 2029 outlook. We continue to see compelling upside to our share price as our portfolio assets continue to develop according to our 2029 outlook 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. Paying down our revolving credit facility would continue to be one of our priority uses of capital, as you have seen in the third quarter, and our subsequent debt reduction.

As our share price has now been comfortably above our warrant exercise price for some time, we think it's prudent to highlight this to any warrant holders on today's call. As of September 30, 2025, the company had approximately 17 million outstanding share purchase warrants, with each warrant exercisable into a common share at U. S. 225 exercise price per share.

The warrants are listed on the NYC American under the trading symbol GROY. WS, and they expire May 31, 2027. For more information on exercising warrants, please see our second quarter earnings press release.

Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to the earnings call. And with that, I'd be happy to open up the call to Q&A. Operator?

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to our shareholders for joining us today. Of course, if you'd like to follow up with any direct questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us through our 1-800 number or through our emails. My email is dgarofla at goldroyalty. com. Jackie's is jackiep at goldroyalty. com. And everybody else you've heard on the phone is first initial last name at goldroyalty. com. By all means, don't hesitate to reach out. We'd be delighted to hear from you and answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.