Earnings Labs

OR Royalties Inc. (OR)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Sun, Aug 5, 2018

$37.23

-1.49%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Osisko Gold Royalties Q2 2018 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this call is being recorded today, August 3, 2018, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Today on the call, we have Mr. Sean Roosen, Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Osisko Gold Royalties; and Mr. Bryan Coates, President of Osisko Gold Royalties. I would now like to turn the meeting over to our host for today's call, Mr. Sean Roosen.

Sean Roosen

Analyst

So we'll be using our PowerPoint that's posted on our website this morning. I'd like to everybody to the second quarter financial results conference call, and thank you all for attending. The PowerPoint has a forward-looking statement page in the front of it that I'd like everybody to refer to as we will be looking -- making some forward statement in this presentation. So as we look forward to the rest of the year in 2018, the second quarter has been a very good quarter for Osisko, with over 20,500 GEOs earned, 89% increase since the second quarter of 2017, cash flows provided by operating activities of $19.7 million compared to $14.1 million last year for the same quarter, adjusted earnings of $3.7 million compared with $7 million for last year, giving us $0.02 per basic share, a repayment of $51.8 million for our revolving credit facility. We also closed a couple of significant deals: a 5% NSR royalty on Victoria's Eagle Project for $98 million and the purchase of $50 million worth of the equity for the company. We also secured a deal with Falco Resources with a senior secured silver stream facility, up to 100% of future silver produced from the Horne property located in Rouyn-Noranda, which currently has a mineable reserve over 6 million ounces gold equivalent. We also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per common share. This is a continuation with our dividend policy, I believe, bringing us to 16 quarters in a row. In terms of where we are for the first half of the year, this brings our deal totals to $330 million, of which $99 million has been deployed in the first half of the year, so very busy year for us thus far. As we look at the gold equivalent ounces…

Sean Roosen

Analyst

Sure. Thanks, Elif. And in terms of the transactions, we -- the big transaction in the first half of the year has been the Eagle transaction for Victoria Gold for a 5% royalty, which will generate somewhere between 8,000 and 11,000 ounces per year of 100% margin gold for us. The project is under construction. We visited site here in July. It's going well under the heap leach operation and located with road access, about 45 kilometers north of Mayo in the Yukon, a very good jurisdiction. And I think that we have a pretty good feel that things there are moving fast there. Equipment's being delivered, and we think that this project is on track to deliver gold in 2019, somewhere in the second half of the year as we go forward. So this is one that's pretty much in the here now and moving well with a very experienced management and EPCM contractors fully deployed on site. The Horne 5 silver stream on Page 13. We have -- we obviously know this project quite well. It's located in Rouyn-Noranda in Quebec, 6 million ounces of minable reserves at 2.37 grams, looking to build a 15,000-ton-a-day-plus operation here. Feasibility was completed last year and currently in the EIA permitting process with our partners at Glencore. Good-looking numbers in terms of what we're seeing, in terms of upside potential there as well. Some strategic items have moved forward in the project. The sites has been secured, and the school that we had to relocate will be handed over and exchanged some time, probably by the end of September as we move forward. So that project is in good stead, and we think that, that's going to be a long-term asset with quite a long mine life as well located right…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from the line of Dan Rollins with RBC Capital Markets.

Dan Rollins

Analyst

Yes. Sean, I'm just wondered if you -- a couple of questions for me but just on the first one. Can you confirm if in the 2018 guidance on gold equivalent sales/production, how much is in there for Amulsar this year?

Sean Roosen

Analyst

I don't believe we included anything in this year.

Dan Rollins

Analyst

Okay. Perfect. and then just more bigger picture, now that you've had sort of the Orion package in the fall for a few quarters, and I know it's still pretty early given the long-lived nature of some of those assets, but which assets have been sort of performing better than expected? And which ones have you been a little bit more disappointed in?

Sean Roosen

Analyst

I don't think that there's too many surprises for us in the mining industry. We've been around a while. We knew we were purchasing a fairly young portfolio of ramp-up assets, so nothing's really surprised us. Some things have disappointed us and we celebrate what goes well, and we hope for the best for the rest. Sasa's been a good one. Seabee's been good. And Stornoway's been performing relatively strongly for us. So we've had -- there are some issues that started at Stornoway but we're -- it's one of our top performers in terms of gold equivalent ounces for us right now. I think that the evolution at Pretium, as you know, we've always had to wait and see. The company does want to buy that stream back, so we've included that as just cash back. We haven't put that in our long-term forecast at this point in time, but it's been relatively strong last quarter, and we continue to see good progress on the mine development there. So Mantos has been quite strong, and we continue to see good progress on that asset. It's not one that a lot of people know much about. It's previously annual asset, but the Orion team has gone in there and really had very good success at evolving that asset. So we're quite happy with both of those, and we knew 2018 and 2019 were ramp-up years, so we continue to have a patient hand and support where we can. Our goal is always to support these projects. We're experienced miners. And we know that in the mining industry, there's always something to fix. So that's our job, and we're eyes wide open.

Dan Rollins

Analyst

Okay, perfect. And then on the opportunity set, what are you seeing out there? Obviously, we've seen share prices pull back here for the precious metal space. Gold's come off, hovering at just over $1,200 now. Are you seeing more opportunities coming through the pipeline? And if so, what's the competition for those opportunities look like, and that's it for me.

Sean Roosen

Analyst

I think Victoria's a pretty good indicator of what we're seeing out there. I mean, a fully permitted project in the Yukon where we're able to team up with Caterpillar Finance, Orion and put together a package to get that project fully financed. So that's less money in, kind of best-case scenario, where we like the jurisdiction and a lot of the engineering and permitting issues are taken at hand. So that's been a really good one for us. In an uptick market, that might have been a harder deal. But the reality is there's not that many allocations of capital coming out of the equity space right now. So we're pretty busy, and we're seeing quite good competition mostly from private equity on the project finance side. On the exploration side and development side, there's less competition because there's less people wanting to get involved in exploration assets. So we're picking our partners extremely carefully on exploration, but we are still doing some good shots on the assets that we have a strong belief system in on the exploration side. So you we're seeing quite a bit there. And those are quite smaller bets, so they're not really things that are going to have a short-term effect on us. But they do set the stage for the future, so we're working the short term, medium term and long term. But it's a very good sign to be a royalty and streaming company and to be trying -- we're still driving and trying to focus on the Canadian and North American assets. And we work pretty hard in that piece of business, and that's kind of where we're hanging around right now.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from the line of Mike Jalonen with Bank of America.

Michael Jalonen

Analyst · Bank of America.

With Falco and the stream there, what will be the next incubator company to -- you might get a stream on? Would that be Windfall or -- just curious.

Sean Roosen

Analyst · Bank of America.

Well, I don't like making forward statements, but I will go that far. No deal's ever done 'til it's done. But obviously, providing capital to projects that are moving forward that have a near-term opportunity to attain production is goal one. But we're seeing quite a few things that are starting to move. Permits are coming together and we were -- we're going to stay focused, as I say, trying to be dominantly Canadians and trying to be on -- dominantly in brownfield caps where we can, where we understand the game. But I won't give you any specifics today.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Siperco with Macquarie.

Michael Siperco

Analyst · Macquarie.

If I'm not mistaken, it looks like the share buyback activity dropped off a little bit in the second quarter. Could you talk a little bit, I guess, about your thoughts on that and maybe more broadly, how you look at the valuation versus your peers versus to the sector? And any commentary that you might have around that?

Sean Roosen

Analyst · Macquarie.

Yes. This quarter, we elected to really focus on the debt theme -- repay the debt. So that was our priority for this quarter. We'll examine on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It is an ever-changing equity market as we all know. So we're trying to find out what's going on in the equity space, as are a lot of people. But at the end of the day, we run a pretty good business based on cash flow and assets. And we'll deal with equity at the appropriate time, but we're not committed to any particular strategy given the volatility of the markets. If we see an opportunity where we feel that repurchase of shares is the appropriate step, well, we will act. If you -- next year, we'll always have an asset in place with most of the companies we're involved in for special events. Right now, I think we're sizing things up, and we'll see how we go. But for us, we've been able to deploy capital at some good projects, and we were able to pay back our -- $51 million on our revolver. So I think that was a pretty good act for the quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Tumazos with John Tumazos Independent Research.

John Tumazos

Analyst · John Tumazos Independent Research.

If the gold price stays wild or falls another $100 and lots of good opportunities drop in your lap because the other small companies, gold companies, can't raise money, what are your plans to take advantage of those good opportunities, Sean?

Sean Roosen

Analyst · John Tumazos Independent Research.

Well, as we said in the call, we have more than $900 million of free board in our company right now for royalty and streaming companies. Providing capital is our business. We try to do it at the bottom of the market, so we're very active right now in terms of identifying opportunities. It's extremely busy times for us, and this is when royalty and streaming companies do their work. So we'll be there to provide capital and to provide support for companies that want to keep moving forward. As we know, these projects are longer term. The day-to-day gold price gets taken into effect. But at the end of the day, tentatively speaking, from permit to -- from discovery to permit, construction, it tends to be about 6 or 7 years now. So we take a slightly longer-term view of the project cycle. And we try to deploy at the right time, so that we earn a return for our shareholders. We had a very good time in 2015, which was our first big year versus the gold royalties. We did the Virginia deal, and we continued to move forward. 2016, the second half, we saw the market strengthened. We didn't get too many deals done, but we were able to build from the success of 2015. And just like the first half of '16, we were able to incubate our fiscal mining part of our gold, Barkerville Gold, Falco Resources. So we continue to stay on our accelerator strategy, John, and to be there not only to provide capital but also to provide technical and financial support to the company to get into the asset. Because we don't really want to just own royalties and streams on things that don't get built. We need these things to go on to production. So that's kind of our focus, is we want to make sure that we're there for the whole cycle. John, I just -- they didn't mention that you were very independent on that sales announcement, so I'll just clear that up for everybody's.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time.

Sean Roosen

Analyst

All right. Thank you, everybody, and have a good weekend. Thank you for taking time on a Friday to call. I really appreciate that, and give us a call if any other questions come up. We're not on vacation.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.