Franco-Nevada Corporation (FNV) Q4 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning. My name is Sally, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Franco-Nevada Corporation's 2013 Results and 2014 Outlook. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Stefan Axell, Manager of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Sally. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased that you've joined us either in person or over the phone for the Franco-Nevada 2013 Results Investor Day Conference Call. Accompanying our call today is a presentation, which is available on our website, where you'll also find our updated 2014 Asset Handbook, as well as our 2013 MD&A and financial results. Before we begin formal remarks, we'd like to remind participants that some of today's commentary may contain forward-looking information and refer you to the detailed cautionary note on Slide 2 of our presentation. Participating on our call today is our entire executive team, but more specifically, we have Sandip Rana, who will discuss our 2013 results; Paul Brink will provide insight into our business model; Phil Wilson will discuss gold ounces associated with our assets and provide an REU update; and finally, David Harquail, our CEO, will detail our outlook moving forward. I will now turn the call over to Sandip to discuss our Q -- 2013 results.

Thank you, Stefan. As you will see from the press release we issued yesterday, the company did report lower revenue for fourth quarter of 2013 and for the full year 2013. In addition, we did record a net loss for the quarter and lower net income for the full year. But I think if you step back and you look at 2013 in general for the mining industry as a whole, it was a period of volatile commodity prices, a period of depressed share prices and just a general negative market sentiment towards the industry as a whole. But I think Franco-Nevada was not immune to this. But when you step back and you look at our company, it showed the strength of our business model, the quality of our assets and the diversity of our portfolio. And this is clearly evident in the number of gold equivalent ounces that we earned in 2013. If you turn to Slide 6, we provide a summary -- I'm sorry. If you'd look at Slide 6, we provide a summary of our gold equivalent ounces for 2013. Last year, we provided guidance to The Street of a range of 215,000 gold equivalent ounces to 235,000. This was done at gold price of $1,600 per ounce, platinum price of $1,600 an ounce and palladium at $725. We also guided oil and gas revenue of 60 -- of $55 million to $65 million. While I'm happy to say that we beat both of those guidance levels, we surpassed our 2012 -- our 2012 guidance actual results as well as the guidance that we did provide. We achieved 241,000 gold equivalent ounces -- sorry. We achieved 241,000 gold equivalent ounces for the year at lower commodity prices. On the oil and gas side, we achieved revenue…

[indiscernible] Thanks, Sandip, and good morning, everybody. I'm going to start with just some comments on our business principles. The royalty and the streaming business keeps changing over time, but our core principles really don't change. And when we're investing, the positive [ph] key thing that we're looking to do is share in any future exploration success over the long term in the deposit. So a key thing in doing that is, obviously, tenure. We need to make sure there's good tenure. We need to make sure we're going to be there over the long term. And what we're trying to minimize is obviously an exposure to cost inflation, also, any encroachments on the property. Mostly, that means trying to avoid increases in tax rates resource [indiscernible]. We don't operate any of the assets that we're involved in. And really, the key to that is that means we can spend all of our management time on trying to find new opportunities to grow the company. So turning to the latest of the new ones, the small acquisition. This is a 2% NSR that we're acquiring. It's on the Yamana's Cerro Moro property. It's in Sta. Cruz province in Argentina. The Yamana team, I mean, both the operating team and the asset development team in the region has done a terrific job over time, so we're very pleased to have an asset -- a piece of an asset that's in their hands. They're due to put out a feasibility later on this year. They're looking for first production in 2016 on this asset. We like the property position here. They have similarities to El Peñón. They're multiple-vein structures. They're shallow structures. We think there's a great potential to expand the production coming out of this asset and to add a lot…

All right. Thank you, Paul. All right, good morning, everybody. So the next few slides, what I'm going to cover are the gold ounces that are associated with some of our assess. We'll examine the impacts of gold prices on these ounces, and then, finally, we'll take a look at the royalty equivalent units and see -- and make a comparison of those 2 to previous years. So if you could start off with turning to Slide #24, this chart is showing the total ounces on roughly 60 properties where we hold royalties or streams. I just want to emphasize a couple of points here. We're showing all the ounces on the property by category and it's based on the operator's public disclosures. And we're only showing the gold ounces here. There is no silver equivalents. There's no platinum group metal equivalents. Now obviously, you're looking at a slide like this, it has its limitations, and principally, that is -- not all these ounces are covered by our royalty position and so this is certainly not our attributable share. Nevertheless, it is somewhat indicative of the level of activity on these properties and it's somewhat directional, so we find a useful slide to show. Now as Stefan mentioned earlier that we -- this morning, we released our updated Asset Handbook. That's available on our website or hard copies here in the offices. And this contains all the supporting information behind this slide, as well as more discussion on the limitation of the slide such as this. So we do encourage you to pick up a copy of the handbook and study it. We'll move on to Slide #25. So we're just staying with the associated ounces for a while, but this time, we're looking at some of the key drivers…

Thank you. Thank you, Phil, and thank you for being here on Franco-Nevada investor day. I can't think of a better way to start spring. You just had some very high-level summaries from Phil on our associated ounces and our REUs. And I take great comfort that we actually have slightly higher numbers in total in terms from our assets. I think one of the things we get asked by investors is always to stress test our portfolio, what's going to be challenged. And the way I look at our portfolio is -- what I particularly focus on is the M&I REUs from our portfolio, because in my mind, that's essentially what we're going to gross from our assets that we can measure today. And so we're still looking at slightly higher M&I REUs of just north of 10 million ounces. So with -- in my mind, I expect a growth over the life of mine about $13 billion in today's gold price. And so to me, I think it's a measure of -- a personal measure to me of the strength of the portfolio and how well it's doing. In Slide #30, it's a plug for the Asset Handbook. It came out hot off the press just this morning, just posted it on our website. It's a lot of work that's been put in by the management team here to put it together. I think this is something that's much more relevant than any annual report that's put out by any company. And I think, what we've done is we've gone the extra mile in terms of trying to -- try to provide disclosure on our over 370 assets that we have in this company. We just can't do them justice in a presentation like this. And besides having…

Cosmos, we're going to just give you a mic here just so others can hear.

I guess my first question is, given what we've seen in the past week or so in terms of base metal prices, especially copper price coming under pressure, there's been some concern in terms of gold companies exposure to copper prices. Maybe you talked about that as well in terms of stress testing your model. But could you give us a sense in terms of your exposure to copper? I guess, what will be Cobre Panama, but beyond that as well.

Yes, just off the top of my head, Cobre Panama, by far -- but the nice thing about it is I think we're somewhat hedged, is that if they slow down the project while we slow down putting money into that project. Because there's a formula there that basically, we put in $1 for every 5 other dollars that go into that project. And in terms of First Quantum spending, they have to put $3. For every $1 we put in, the Koreans put another dollar. So what it might turn out is you might have a longer-term option on a very good gold deposit that will take longer to come. I'm looking at it in the very long term. I'm not particularly concerned if it starts in 2017 or 2020, is that we have the rights to that gold forever and that's something that I'm confident we'll get produced at some point. In terms of other projects, most of our gold projects are established primary gold producers. I can think of Robinson which has been material in Nevada, which is a by-product operation; our Sadbury operations, which are really mostly platinum palladium-driven rather than gold and depend a bit on some nickel production and nickel offtake and copper offtake. But beyond that, I think we're much less exposed to base metal retrenchment than almost any other company out there.

That's great. So maybe another question here. For those of us in Toronto and also certainly in other parts in Canada, it's actually been quite cold. Happy that, as you've said, it's the first day of spring today. Maybe this is a question for Geoff here. You talked about oil and gas being 17% of your portfolio in terms of revenue. How much of that is kind of direct exposure to, a, coal gas prices and how should we look at that in terms of what you've kind of factored in, in terms of your 2014 guidance?

Thanks, Cosmos. With respect to 2014 guidance, it's based on 12% of our volumes are going to come from gas, okay? And that's going to generate, what, 6% of our forecast revenues in 2014, just directly from gas.

It's a safe -- it's a pretty safe assumption that, that's sort of have a positive impact at least on Q1 2014.

Yes.

Maybe just one last question for me. I don't want to be hogging the mic here. In terms of the write-down, this is in the first write-down that we've seen. I guess, the last one was also related to the Gold Wheaton assets, which, Sandip, you mentioned that it was acquired back in 2011. What's the current carrying value now for those former Gold Wheaton assets?

Okay. So there's a slide in the appendices that does give our net book value of our assets. But in total, the Gold Wheaton asset, so including the 2 South African streams, is both $450 million remaining in book value. A large portion is obviously Mine Waste Solutions, and then, the Morrison Levack deposit.

I just have a question on your oil and gas division. Last year, you had guided to -- excuse me, revenues from Weyburn by 2017, around $67 million. This year, currently your guidance to your revenues for your oil and gas business is entirely $65 million to $75 million by 2018. I'm just wondering what happened there? Are costs at the Weyburn unit going up or are we seeing lower rates production at the other units? You were also using $90 last year and $95 this year, so would we expect higher revenues?

It's mainly productions not as high as we anticipated. Cenovus is the operator. It's -- in the past tended to try to maximize production and then speed up or push out that EOR program as quickly as it can. Right now, they're taking a view on that property as a cash flow in property form. They look at it as a cash flow machine. So they're concentrating more on just maintaining existing production, so slower disposition of capital going forward. So that will impact the production numbers in the future. It doesn't impact the recovery of reserves. We're just going to get them over a longer period of time.

David, can we just chat about the Cobre Panama? You said that the commercial terms aren't changing, so what exactly are you working on?

Well, It's, as we've stated it, it's the reporting, because what we had is our business development team. It's always the concern with Inmet, will they have enough money to finish off the project. And part of our deal said, "Okay. We'll put on our money pro rata with you, but we want a constant test in terms of is there enough -- what's the ultimate project capital going to be, and is there enough to cover it. And as well is we want to see the progress, how efficient was the money being spent, was it being spent where we expected." So as a result, we have the ability to use an independent consultant to review the spending being put on the project. We had access to all the joint venture monthly reports. And I think, First Quantum, quite rightly is saying "We're better at credit." And also, they're not accustomed to really joint venture relationships. They want the flexibility to change the plans as they go along. So I think we're willing to be flexible on that. We hear their issue on that. They are different company than Inmet was, so we can consider that. And then the other aspect is that because we were providing $1 billion financial commitment to this project and we've actually core for Inmet being able to proceed on the project that we actually obtained the security, essentially the -- a good portion of the equity that Inmet had in the project. And they were restricted in terms of the boring capacity against that project. Again, First Quantum is making the point is we're in a better credit than Inmet. And we would like -- we think it's proper to be able to do project lending against the project. And will you consider possibly going pari-passu with some guarantees from First Quantum. And so we've said we're willing to discuss that, and so we expect to be able to sort this out in the next few months. What's happened is really First Quantum is in focus on the whole bunch of other issues. This has not been a huge priority, and we expect it'll be resolved some time this summer.

So the borrowing is really the big change in terms of being able to borrow the project.

Yes, in terms of they don't -- they think we have too much security relative to our position in the project and is again -- we're just going to make a judgment call. Okay, what will the new security package look like and we have to negotiate that. So it's just too early to say what the final outcome will be. But we are having constructive dialogue with First Quantum and we hope to resolve how the specific details to you this summer. It's just First Quantum has a lot of things to do right now.

Okay. And maybe just on your acquisition strategy. I think we had talked about maybe acquisitions in the $100 million to $300 million range for you in 2014. Has that changed versus doing the billion-type acquisitions?

It's our sweet spot. I think if you saw Teranga, we're betting well. It's a nice accretive deal for us. I think most of the things, Paula [ph], we have on the pipeline right now are those set of type of dimension deals. We're working -- primarily pressures are on gold deals right now. And I think the sweet spot is deals in the few hundred million dollars for us. That can build a very nice diversified portfolio that way.

And just if I can quickly follow up on the First Quantum. Should we expect negotiations to conclude before you would begin making the payments that you've guided for this year in $200 million or...

I think so. That's part of our handshake right now as we've said. Because the handshake is essentially is -- we don't want to do all this extensive reporting on a project, so we're not going to cash call you right now. So we don't -- and so but once we can sort out what you really need, at that point, we'll cash call you. So that's why we kind of said that some time this year we'll get a deal done and then we'll catch up on our contribution, and that's how we've estimated that $200 million.

Okay. And then, just a couple of questions on potential deals with oil production. Oil and gas production, a bit lower than you had previously expected. Differentials have been higher. It's now slightly lower part of the revenue mix. Does that free up room to do some potential oil deals or...

It does. And then, there's a number of things out there, specially on the royalty side in Western Canada. It's just there's nothing that we -- we can't do another $400 million Weyburn acquisition as we did in 2012. But is there room for us to do another hundred or $150 million? We could squeeze that in now, especially now that we've been adding other gold assets. So pro rata, there is room to do some smaller oil and gas asset acquisitions.

Okay. And just lastly on the slide you gave us here with the third avenue deal flow in gold royalty stream financings, can you comment a bit -- or are they -- does this just open up the field to more deal potential or are these deals more attractive inherently because of [indiscernible].

I think what Paul was trying to get across is just open up the universe, because before, we really couldn't do royalty streaming deals in gold companies because that was our primary optionality. And then, I think what's happened now is because of the way the markets have turned. All of a sudden, gold, royalty and streaming financing actually is very competitive relative to debt and equity markets. So it's something actually we never actually expected. We actually expected streaming will always be a byproduct-type business and the arbitrage was on by-product mines. Now we're saying, "Geez, we're competitive right across the board and we're competitive against project lending from commercial banks, because we can make it more of a one-stop shop rather than having a syndicate." For a couple of hundred million dollars right now, you have a very large syndicate of banks. You have all kinds of cash sweep accounts, all kinds of fees and consultants, and we're so much simpler to deal with. And we're actually partnering with the companies in taking production risks. We'll take the commodity risk. We won't require hedging. And so I think companies are now seeing us a much better alternative. So what I'm impressed with is since we've come public with the IPO, our universe of possibilities just continues to expand and that's why I think there's a lot more running room to grow this company.

Question on the dividend. Had an increasing dividend for 7 years now. How do you think about that going forward?

Upward and onwards. So I think one of the things, as we've said, our policy is to be sustainable. We like to set it at a level that we think we'll never have to cut it and progressive. And so we -- I think we've been able to achieve the progressive part. I wasn't sure in terms of whether we get enough deals done to justify it, but happily, we booked enough deals late in year, early this year, so the board felt comfortable. Okay, those are accretive enough. We can add a bit more of the dividend. I'd say the future dividend increases are going to be dependent on us booking more and more assets to be able to justify those dividend increases. So I can't guarantee it, but I think it expresses that we're confident right now that we have a dividend and it's absolutely sustainable at the levels we're doing it. We've been able to increase our estimate each year. So our ambition is to continue to increase each year.

Is there a set formula in the way that you think...

No, there isn't. We don't want to tie it to earnings or cash flow or set pay out ratio, because we think that's a mistake. The last thing you should be doing is cutting your dividend when gold prices go down, because that's when investors need even more support for your share price. So we think actually having a dividend that is sustainable, irrespective of the gold price, is -- makes our stock even more defensive and lower risk. And that's what we want to do, it's to continue to differentiate ourselves. Just one right here.

David, just a sort of avenue to open up more potential for that to be counted as debt by any of these rating agencies?

Maybe, Paul, you'll talk about it. I look at it as almost a gold loan from our part. But Paul, do you want to talk about being rated as debt?

I think the most important point is the folks that we're dealing with in most of these structures are more junior intermediate-type players. So ratings for them is not at top of their list of considerations. So I don't think that's anything that's going to affect the amount of deals that you can do in this space or not. I think if you were dealing with senior companies, yes. I think our interpretation of the S&P when they put out their report or their view on streaming was they said, "There are elements of stream transactions that if you have them, we would treat them as debt. The -- it's our view and what we're trying to put out on business model is we're not banks that are set with a particular structure. We can be flexible on how we do our deals, and if somebody's concern is rating, we can structure a deal where that's not going to be an issue in that particular deal. So we don't think too much about the rating agencies.

And would you consider a big silver stream transaction?

We'd consider a silver stream transaction where -- don't have -- we see it as a precious metal and is obviously a good correlation with gold. So we have looked at deals that have been silver stream transactions. Obviously, our principal commodity is gold, and I think, the focus for the company will always be principally as a gold company. But if there was a good transaction that came along, we are driven -- in all our deals, whether it's gold, whether it's oil or gas or other minerals, we don't start with the commodity. We start with the resource. Our businesses is invest in resources that we think over time have got a great potential to expand. That's really where our business is successful. What the commodity is, is the second consideration that goes into that.

I think the big advantage, too, of doing these go-forward rate loans and having the trailing royalties is it open up the actionable deals. So for instance, you look at both Teranga and Klondex, they essentially needed a set amount of money, but if we actually made it all royalty or streaming deal, it would have been too oppressive for the company. We'd be taking too much of the margin. So by doing it alone with the tailing -- trailing royalty or stream, I think it's much more palatable, because often these folks would be looking at borrowing money from some other loan shark out there. And we can give them a much better rate, because what we're looking for is that longer-term participation in the project. And by packaging that way, we're not ruining the economics longer term for these projects.

We see it as a positive for both sides.

So perhaps, operator, we have -- if there's anyone on the line that has questions, if you could just poll that?

[Operator Instructions]

Our objective was to be just under 1 hour. [indiscernible].

[Operator Instructions]

I think everybody's here.

There are no questions from the phone at this time.

Thank you, operator. Are there any more questions in the room? Please, Annie?

Just thinking about the future deals and the opportunities out there, obviously, everybody is looking exactly for the long life assets, the good assets, where there's a lot of...

We have a question from the phone.

We'll come back. So go ahead, please, operator. Operator, we done there? Okay. Annie, why don't you go ahead?

So back to my thought. Now with the competition also being what it is today for good assets and the rise in yields and the cost of capital going up, how do you think about the returns that you should expect with the future deals coming up? Is the profitability going to be squeezed and you really need to think about the optionality as the cream of the crop in getting your returns that way?

I think you just have to look at our more recent deals. Our returns are getting higher and the more certainty in terms of the return and timing of those deals with faster paybacks. So I think what's been happening is that we're a reflection of the overall, I guess, competition for capital in the market that is very scarce. And as a result, we've actually been able to improve the returns in our transactions. So I think what we're doing, we have less -- our -- always our biggest competitor has always been the equity markets and the bought deals. And you can actually imagine just about every bought deal that's been announced in the last 3 months. We had a term sheet of -- but we were knocked out by the bought deals instead. And I think that's fair enough. But there will be opportunities for us to be able to exercise our business. And what I'm pleased about is we're getting better deals now than we did in the old days, albeit those are not the long-term assets you're talking about, but again, we have that fantastic exploration optionality, either in Senegal or Nevada that we really love. So we actually do think they're going to be long term it's just we can't measure them today. So are we seeing a lot of head-to-head competition with other royalty companies? Not really. Two years ago, we had almost a dozen little royalty companies being financed in the market. Just about all of them are orphans today. They are being asked. They're being acquired. So I see, if anything, my hope is that actually the royalty companies as a group actually start acting like commercial bankers and would begin actually starting to syndicate deals between each other, but none of us is taking a disproportionate risk and yet we can make even more material deals and financings for operating companies. And so I see that as another avenue. That will be the fourth avenue of growth for our business. And so what I like is we are finding new ways to continue to grow our company even though we're a $7 billion market cap company today. [indiscernible] other question?

What's your total capital or cash commitments for 2014 and 2015 right now?

We have -- we're estimating $200 million for Cobre Panama, and oil and gas will be at $4 million in terms of capital requirement. And beyond that, there's nothing else, except the $400 we'd pay on some of our streaming ounces. So we'll pay our streaming requirements. And then, I have to pay salaries, I guess, for management, but we're going to be down 10% this year. So we're very proud of it. So cash-wise, we're down to about $15 million all-in to run this company, and we got actually a great lease on these new offices here. So it doesn't -- it's not as expensive as it looks. 2015 is $280 million, I think. Yes, we're guessing about $280 million the year after, I think, based on the First Quantum schedule. I suspect we'll get more refined as First Quantum refines their spending plans as well. And so it will change, but it's the best estimate we can give you right now. So nice thing about it is at least this year, we're funding Cobre Panama just on a cash flow. And next year, it might be a bit more than our free cash flow dividends, but it's really a future investment for us. What I'd like to do is if there's no other questions, I'd just like to thank everybody. I think there's been a new arrangement. We've invited people to participate essentially in our conference call in our board room to take advantage of our -- the large rental space that we have here. So I think it's worked very well, and we'll consider doing it again in the future. As well, we don't do a really extended analyst day or investor day dissertation because we think everything's in the book that's come out today. So I encourage everybody. It's much more valuable than the annual report. Please take one of those. It'll answer most of your questions. Management's available after this call. We have a few refreshments out here for the people that are in our board room. And then, we're inviting everybody for our next quarterly results. Our first quarter results will be released after the market close on May 7. And on the same day, we're having our annual general meeting, which will be at the TMX Broadcast Centre here in Toronto. So all of you are invited for that. And we'll have some refreshments after that as well. So thank you very much, and we look forward to the next call. Bye-bye

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.