The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Jackie Przybylowski - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research - Analyst
: And I want to apologize in advance for asking you guys this, but we don't cover Centerra Gold at BMO so I'm maybe a little bit removed from the
story. I believe there was a technical report that was expected on Mount Milligan in the first half of the year. And I checked the other day, and I
haven't seen it yet. Can you give me some sort of update if you have one on the progress there? And if you have any expectations that would be
material to Mount Milligan?
Question: Jackie Przybylowski - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research - Analyst
: Okay. No, that's fair. I appreciate it. I know it's not a fair question for you guys. And if -- I don't know if Bill's not on the line, maybe it's a tough
question as well. But with your growth pipeline, I realize you've got quite a bit of liquidity at quarter end, but you do have the contributions or
subsequent at Cortez and at Great Bear assuming that transaction closes. How is Royal Gold thinking about growth from here and the liquidity
that you have available to fund that growth? And if there was a big opportunity, what would your options to fund that be, I guess, would you look
to extend your revolver or something like that?
Question: Jackie Przybylowski - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research - Analyst
: Okay. Appreciate that. And if I could sneak in one other question. I was going to ask you, you sort of addressed this already, I guess, I was going to
ask you about your effective tax rate because it seems like you're running kind of below your guidance range. But I think you clarified that your
guidance range is excluding those discrete items. Is there any opportunity for Royal Gold to bring that tax rate down, I guess, compared with maybe
a couple of your peers that are more stream focused? Is it a bit of a higher tax rate? Is there any tax planning or anything that can be done to kind
of bring that down to a lower level? Or is that kind of already pretty well optimized?
Question: Matthew Murphy - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division - Analyst
: Just wondering if you could help me at all on the way this Cortez Royalty interacts with your existing royalty. So the way I look at it is your current
royalty, I mean, sliding scale, call it a 3% to 4% impact in terms of percent of Cortez complex revenue obviously varies depending on where they're
mining and what the gold price is. But is that kind of the right order of magnitude? So that 1.2% new royalty, you can effectively reduce that 3%
to 4% to understand the full impact for Royal Gold?
Question: Matthew Murphy - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division - Analyst
: Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then, I mean, just thinking about the price you paid on Cortez, are you sort of embedded in your assumptions? Is
it just satisfaction with that level of return? Or are you counting on production growth, resource growth? What are your -- what's your investment
thesis on the acquisition?
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