Franco-Nevada Corp
TSX:FNV
Earnings Call Analysis
Q3-2023 Analysis
Franco-Nevada Corp
The company has demonstrated a robust business model capable of generating consistently high margins. A key takeaway from the earnings call is that costs of sales have remained relatively stable, irrespective of the mix of royalty and stream GEOs (Gold Equivalent Ounces) that include both mining and energy contributions. Specifically, corporate administration costs, which cover stock-based compensation among other expenses, have been less than 2% of revenue for the quarter, averaging around $8 million quarterly. Moreover, in an environment where commodity prices rise, the company is well-positioned to reap full benefits without significant changes anticipated in their cost structure.
Financially speaking, the company is on solid footing with approximately $2.3 billion in available capital, inclusive of their $1 billion credit facility. In terms of sales guidance, the company expects to hit the lower end of the forecasted range for both total GEOs sold ($640,000 to $700,000) and precious metals ($490,000 to $530,000). These projections reflect a conservative stance due to the conversion of non-gold revenue to GEOs based on revised commodity prices.
The Canadian government's introduction of a 15% global minimum tax, effective January 2024, raises concerns. However, the impact on the company's Barbados subsidiary, which currently enjoys a tax rate below 15%, seems manageable. Barbados government's response to raise its local corporate tax rate to 9% and propose an additional 6% top-up tax for companies under the global minimum tax scheme shifts more tax computation from accounting to a regular tax basis - a development viewed as positive by the company.
The company observes that the gold market is currently tight on capital, which ironically spells out opportunities for the company to secure more royalties and streams, especially in the gold segment.
The reliance on Cobre Panama for future growth is part of the company's strategic expansion beyond gold properties to include substantial and long-lived copper assets, delivering both immediate growth and future potential. Assets like Antamina, Antapaccay, and Candelaria have surpassed their initial performance expectations and promise even greater longevity and performance over the years. No impairments or provisions are currently anticipated for the Cobre Panama situation, as operation remains strong and well.
Should the operators face concession challenges, arbitration is seen as a viable resolution pathway. The company's past experiences and agreements stipulate that in case of a favorable settlement from arbitration, they are entitled to receive a proportionate share, ensuring some degree of risk mitigation.
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Good morning, and welcome to Franco-Nevada Corporation's Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call and Webcast. This call is being recorded on November 9, 2023. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Candida Hayden, Senior Analyst, of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Jerry. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Franco-Nevada's Third Quarter 2023 Results. Accompanying this call is a presentation, which is available on our website at franco-nevada.com, where you will also find our full financial results. Presentation is also available to view on the webcast. During our call this morning, Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franco-Nevada, will provide introductory remarks; followed by Sandip Rana, Chief Financial Officer, who will provide a brief review of our results. This will be followed by a Q&A period. Our full executive team is available to answer any questions. [Operator Instructions]. We would like to remind participants that some of today's commentary may contain forward-looking information, and we refer you to our detailed cautionary note on Slide 2 of this presentation. I will now turn over the call to Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franco-Nevada.
Thanks, Candida, and good morning. We were saddened holding our Board yesterday with an empty seat, after the passing of Randall Oliphant early in September. Randall was a leader in the gold mining industry, had been a strong presence in our Board room for 16 years and played a big role in our company's success. He is missed by all of us at Franco-Nevada. Our core precious metal assets anchored the third quarter results. Both precious metal GEOs and revenues were up over the same period last year. Total revenues increased, although total GEOs were slightly down, in part due to gold prices being relatively stronger than oil and gas and iron ore prices. Fourth quarter GEOs are expected to be slightly higher than the third quarter. The Cobre Panama CP100 expansion is on track for year-end, and we expect the core streams to perform well. As we had indicated following Q2, we expect to be near the low end of our GEO guidance range for the year. Gold prices maintained at current levels, it will further boost revenues and financial results. Cobre Panama has dominated the news over the last 10 days. There have been substantial social and anti-mining process, following approval by the National Assembly of the revises concession agreement in October. Last week, the government enacted a moratorium and granting new mining concession contracts. They also proposed but didn't proceed with the proper consultation on the new mining contract. Panamanian Supreme Court is now considering a number of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Law 406. Production at Cobre Panama has continued despite the protest activity, including road blockades. We've been in close contact with our partner, First Quantum, as the situation unfolds, and together, we are continuing to monitor it closely. Looking forward to 2024, we're expecting added precious metal contributions from a number of new mines. Most impactful will be the Tocantinzinho stream, which G Mining Ventures is progressing construction, and as you'd expect from that team, on time and on budget. We have a meaningful 3% NSR on Equinox in Orion's Greenstone project in Ontario, where first gold is expected before midyear. We recently agreed to acquire an incremental 1% NSR on Argonaut's Magino gold mine, taking our total NSR there also to 3%. Gino achieved commercial production on November 1 and continues to ramp up production. Lastly, Gold Fields is Salares Norte project in Chile, was 96% complete at the last report, and we expect our first royalty payments in early 2024. We continue to get good news on the longer-term organic growth in the portfolio. Candelaria received its environmental impact approval from the regional Chilean authorities. And I hope that paves the way for an expansion of the underground operations that they've been contemplating. On a similar note, Kinross are now considering an underground expansion of Tasiast. Both Hudbay and Canadian Nickel have released new studies, a PFS of the copper world with a time line to production in 2028, and a feasibility study at Crawford Nickel. Lundin Mining, again is having great success with their recently acquired Caserones mine, with throughput well ahead of the acquisition assumptions and aggressive exploration program planned. Marathon Gold had a simplified permitting process confirmed that would allow that the Berry deposit expansion be included earlier in their mine plan. Finally, on our balance sheet and outlook. While developments at Cobre Panama have added uncertainty at one of our assets, our business is designed to weather such events. And regardless of the outcome, our business will remain robust, generating strong cash flows with high margins. We have no debt and a cash balance of $1.3 billion. Including our undrawn facilities, our available capital for deployment is $2.3 billion. We continue to be the capital provider of choice for many players, where equity capital is difficult to raise and debt capital is increasingly expensive. With that, I'll turn it over to Sandip.
Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Our diverse royalty stream portfolio continued to generate strong cash flows and high margins during third quarter 2023. If you turn to Slide 4, the chart shows gold equivalent ounces sold for third quarter 2023, along with the previous four quarters. GEO sold in the quarter were $160,848, a 5% decrease relative to second quarter 2023 and a 9% decrease relative to the comparable period for the prior year. Of total GEOs sold for the quarter, precious metals were $125,337, an increase of 4% from same quarter last year. For the quarter, the largest contributors for precious metal GEOs were Cobre Panama, Candelaria and Antapaccay, with the increase year-over-year being from Cobre Panama and Guadalupe. Cobre Panama delivered 33% more GEOs than the same quarter in prior year. This was driven by higher copper grades and the continued ramp-up of the CP100 expansion project. Guadalupe GEO sold were higher by 14% relative to the comparable period from the prior year, with the increase being due to higher average grades being mined. One asset, which did have a weaker quarter for us compared to prior year was Antamina. At Antamina, we had approximately 30% lower GEOs sold in prior year, as the operator was impacted by a tropical cyclone that affected Peru's Northern region in April 2023. As you will recall, there is a 1-quarter lag for delivery of silver ounces from Antamina. The deliveries in third quarter related to production from April to June 2023. For our diversified portfolio, we did record lower GEOs and revenue in the quarter, as energy prices were lower compared to prior year. Third quarter 2023 saw continued volatility in commodity prices, as highlighted on Slide 5. Precious metals did see an improvement year-over-year, with average gold prices higher by 11.6%, silver by 22.6% and platinum by 5.1%. However, palladium and energy prices were down significantly. A large component of our diversified GEOs and revenue comes from our energy assets. On a barrel of oil equivalent basis, production was slightly lower than prior year. However, as seen on the bar chart on Slide 6, there was a larger retreat in oil and gas prices. WTI averaged a $82.26 a barrel in the quarter, lower by 10% versus the comparable quarter in prior year, and natural gas averaged $2.66 in mcf, lower by 66%. As a result, the lower energy prices impacted our GEOs sold and revenue, with GEOs sold from our energy assets being 43% lower in third quarter 2023 compared to prior year. Slide 7 highlights our total revenue and adjusted EBITDA amounts for the 3 months ended September 30, 2023 and 2022. The portfolio continues to deliver consistent performance. Revenue was $309.5 million for the quarter, slightly higher than prior year of $304.2 million, while adjusted EBITDA was relatively flat at $255.1 million compared to $256.7 million in third quarter of 2022. The company continued to generate a strong margin at 82.4% for the quarter. As you turn to Slide 8, you will see the key financial results for the company. As mentioned, GEOs sold were lower for the quarter, but revenue was higher due to higher average precious metal prices. On the cost side, we did have an increase in cost of sales, which was $48.9 million, compared to $42 million in third quarter 2022. The largest component of this is the per ounce fixed cost we pay for stream ounces. We sold 97,275 stream ounces in third quarter compared to 90,237 a year ago. Depletion remained relatively flat at $68.1 million versus $68.5 million a year ago. And for third quarter 2023, adjusted net income was $175.1 million or $0.91 per share compared to $159.7 million or 83% per share in prior year. Slide 9 highlights the continued diversification of the portfolio. As shown, 78% of our Q3 2023 revenue was generated by precious metals. This compares to 68% a year ago. The geographic revenue profile has revenue being sourced 88% from the Americas. With respect to asset diversification, Cobre Panama was our largest revenue generator at 22% of total revenue for the quarter, followed by Candelaria and Antapaccay. The last chart highlights our operator diversity with First Quantum being largest at 22% of revenue. Slide 10 illustrates the strength of our business model to generate consistent high margins. On the slide, you can see that cost of sales has remained fairly consistent over the period shown. The amount of cost of sales will depend on the mix of royalty versus stream GEOs, including both mining and energy. Corporate administration costs, including stock-based compensation, was less 2% of revenue for the quarter. This can fluctuate quarter-to-quarter, but is tended to average approximately $8 million quarterly. In a rising commodity price environment, we expect to benefit fully as we do not expect our cost structure to change significantly. Slide 11 summarizes the financial resources available to the company. When including our credit facility of $1 billion, total available capital is $2.3 billion at the end of September. The company continues to be debt free and generated $236 million in operating capital during the quarter. Outflows for the quarter included $66.2 million to G Mining Ventures for the remainder of the $250 million stream deposit for TZ, the full deposit has now been funded. We closed the Pascua Lama royalty transaction for $75 million, and the company did declare dividends of $65.3 million during the quarter. On Slide 12, we reiterate our guidance for the year, based upon updated commodity prices, as highlighted on the slide and our expectations of production from our royalty stream interest for the remainder of the year, we are maintaining our guidance range for total GEOs sold of $640,000 to $700,000. We expect to be near the lower end of that range due to the conversion of non-gold revenue to GEOs based on our revised commodity prices. For precious metals, the GEOs sold range is $490,000 to $530,000, again, we expect to be near the lower end of that range. Turning to tax matters. As you are aware, the Canadian government has announced that it will be proceeding with the implementation of the 15% global minimum tax. We expect this to be effective January 2024. For Franco-Nevada, this will impact the tax associated with the income from our Barbados subsidiary where the current corporate tax rate is less than 15%. However, earlier this week, the Barbados government announced that they are proposing to raise their local corporate tax rate to 9%. In addition, they are proposing to implement an additional 6% top-up tax for companies whose parent entity is subject to the global minimum tax. The specific Barbados legislation has not been released at this time. We will review and determine the impact once available. And now I'll pass it over to Jerry as we're happy to answer any questions.
[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle of H.C. Wainright.
With Antamina in your release, you state that I recall it production at the mine was also impacted by Cyclone Yaku, which constrained logistics in March and April of this year. This was reflected in the deliveries we received in Q3 '23. You sort of hinted at this in your prepared remarks, but just to clarify this again, this issue is completely in the review mirror now and given the delivery schedule that was agreed upon, and we can go back to our prior models on the site, correct? In other words, there should not be any follow-through to this into Q4?
Yes, yes. That related to earlier in the year, and that's been rectified. So the delivery we would get in November will be from production from July to September.
That's how I figured it. And this was a little bit more open-ended. I mean, I understand that the chart is looking quite pretty, gold's up $240 over the past year. It's within $120, $130 of its annual high, and it's looking quite nice in a 5-year chart as well. In the meantime, the GDX as close as annual low, Franco-Nevada shares really aren't a big exception to all of this. So we see premarket today is looking quite decent. In your view, is the market -- broader market missing something, what are they looking for to properly reward your company and its investors? Is it more ESG? Or broader base? Is it higher dividends? It is just people have been beaten down for too long, they don't care anymore. Anything you want to share with us that you're seeing from folks you talk with on the phone?
Think a couple of things there. And the obvious one is the impact of Cobre Panama at the moment, and that has had a clear impact on the stock. The other one, and in terms of the performance of the stock and where we found that the value creation over time is, we truly have a business that's not impacted by cost inflation and cost inflation has been such a big element that's eaten into the return of mining companies over time. So one, it's been protected on that aspect of the business. The other is we have a very deep portfolio and the core thing about the mining industry is so much of the value is created at the drill bit. And when the industry is able to drill, have the capital and can make new discoveries inevitably, they do and the beauty of our businesses, we are exposed to that. Both with our streams plus an extremely deep royalty portfolio, and it's that optionality and that's why I spoke to it a bit in my comments. We continue to get good news as to what's happening in the exploration portfolio, and I think that's the element that ultimately drives the future value of the company.
Fair enough. I mean, Cobre Panama obviously doesn't really have a whole lot of impact on the GDX. It's really just you. But I agree with the rest of your answer.
[Operator Instructions] We have a question from the line of Brian MacArthur of Raymond James. [Operator Instructions].
Sorry about that. Sandip, I was wondering if you could just go through the Barbados again. Sorry, I may have missed it because my line cut out. But sorry, is it not just going to be 15% going forward, like everything else is global of minimum tax? Or is there something else you were kind of going through because I sort of heard 9% and 6% when you went through it. If you could just go through that again, that would be helpful.
Sure. So the way the global minimum tax works, Brian, is that whatever the difference is between the 15% and the local corporate tax rate, you'll pay a top up, you were supposed to pay a top-up tax in Canada based on accounting income. So for example, we were low single digits in Barbados and now the 15%. So assume the delta is 13%, you would pay that 13% based on accounting income. So there would be a cash tax payable. Barbados is now increasing their corporate tax rate from low single digits to 9% at least they propose to do so. As a result, that will be based on regular tax where you get the deposit treatment. And then what they're doing is they're proposing to implement a top-up tax from 9% to 15%, which would be based on accounting. And so for there, there would be a cash tax payable. So essentially, we're still determining the impact, but we think it will be positive.
So just if I look at your global portfolio though, will you not then just pay like on all the screens that are run through that 15% and then the other stuff that the [indiscernible] or the other structured ones, you'll pay the rate in that jurisdiction on a consolidated basis, you'll probably get something just rated slightly higher than 15%. Is that fair? Or how should I think about that?
It's just the split between what's going to be calculated based on tax versus accounting. There is an impact to that. We can go offline, Brian, I can walk you through it.
Your next question comes from the line of Adrian Day of Adrian Day Asset Management.
I was just wondering if you could update us how your view in the market for new streams and possibly royalties, but new streams yes, yes.
Adrian, it's Eaun Gray speaking. As Paul commented, the gold market is quite constrained for capital. So we are seeing good opportunities there. for additional royalties and streams, as you saw with our recent Magino transaction. So we're looking forward to doing more there, and I do see it as being relatively bland, especially on the gold side.
Largely development, helping development?
Yes. I think that's a fair characterization.
And there are no further questions on the phone line at this time. I will now turn the Q&A session over to Candida Hayden, who will take questions from the webcast.
Thank you, Jerry. Our first question comes from Alex Richardson from Ananda Asset Management. Why do you decide to become so reliant on Cobre Panama for future year growth given it is not a gold property?
Alex, the -- our business has expanded over time. And you know the history of the company is we bought many royalties on gold properties, and those have had tremendous -- shown tremendous optionality and growth over time. But a lot of the growth in our business, as you correctly point out, has been buying precious metal streams on big copper assets. And that has been a very good element that allowed us to grow the business faster. Principally, copper assets tend to be much larger than gold assets. They also tend to have much longer life spans. So if you look at Antamina, Antapaccay, Candelaria, all of those, we get precious metal from those copper assets. Not only have those assets done very well, all of them have outperformed our assumptions that acquisition. They have very long lives, and we've also seen tremendous life expansion from those assets. Probably a good example is Candelaria. Candelaria, when we bought -- when we helped finance Lundin to acquire that asset, 6 or so years ago, it had a 14-year mine life. Lundin Mining is a tremendous success with the exploration program. And when we look forward today, the go-forward mine life is in the order of 25 years. So they are long-life assets, but also have the potential to get better over time. So it's been a good business for us.
Our next question comes from a private investor, any provisions taken on the Cobre Panama situation?
No provisions is out there from First Quantum and ourselves, the mine is still operating, operating very well. So there's no provision, no review or impairment at this time.
Our next question comes from Vincenzo at Seven Pillars Capital Management. Could you please give me some color on the contingency plan if First Quantum, Cobre Panama were to go into arbitration. How should we think about potential claims that Franco-Nevada might have on an arbitration result, or if any potential exportation of Cobre Panama should occur since there are any insurance or [Nevada] claim?
Yes. So we hope it doesn't go in that direction. But if the concession were taken away from the operators, the one route for them is arbitration. What we've seen in the past is, in some of softer circumstances. The international arbiters have ruled in favorable mining companies. So you typically have seen settlements for the companies. They have been meaningful. They do have real teeth. So they ultimately do get paid. Our agreement and our contract is if there is a settlement that we would get a proportionate share of that settlement.
Next question is from Diego at North Star Capital Management. In a scenario where Cobre Panama is expatriated, what kind of actions would you legally expect to take?
Here, I would the -- in terms of the comments that we've already made, the action to be taken is by the operators, the -- and arbitration is the most likely course for them there. Again, hope they don't go down that course and then our protections of [indiscernible] as we had already outlined.
Thank you, Paul. There are no further questions from the webcast. This concludes our third quarter 2023 results conference call and webcast. We expect to release our year-end 2023 results after market close on March 5 with the conference call held the following morning. Thank you for your interest in Franco-Nevada.