Sprott Inc. (SII) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sprott Inc.'s 2026 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, August 5, 2026. On behalf of the speakers that follow, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation and the responses to questions may contain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of the applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are implied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements, please consult the MD&A for the quarter and Sprott's other filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Whitney George. Please go ahead, Mr. George.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me today is our CFO and Co-COO, Kevin Hibbert; and John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management. Our 2026 second quarter results were released this morning and are available on our website, where you can also find the financial statements and MD&A. I'll start on Slide 4. With some second quarter highlights or maybe you might call them lowlights. The second quarter was a challenging quarter for precious metals with significant volatility across commodity, currency and interest rate markets. Sprott gold declined 14.1% as investors adjusted rapidly to changing geopolitical and monetary policy expectations. Silver fell more dropping 22%. Rising oil prices strengthened the dollar during the quarter, which tightened global liquidity and created a challenging environment for gold. While the metals second quarter correction was severe, we believe it was driven primarily by cyclical factors rather than any deterioration in its long-term fundamentals. Many of the forces that have supported gold over the past several years remain firmly in place, rising government debt burdens, persistent fiscal deficits, ongoing monetary debasement and a growing demand for reserve assets outside the traditional sovereign debt system. Our AUM decreased $9.5 billion in the second quarter to $55.6 billion, and we reported $400 million -- $0.4 billion in net redemptions, primarily from our precious metals physical trusts. Our critical materials ETFs were a bright spot, delivering net sales despite a tough environment. Our most recent ETF launches have continued to scale nicely, hitting AUM and liquidity targets more quickly than our previous launches and expanding our audience in both the broker-dealer and institutional channels. With that, I'll pass it over to Kevin for a review of our financial results.

Thank you, Whitney, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on Slide 5, which provides a summary of our historical AUM. AUM finished the quarter at $55.6 billion, down 15% from $65.1 billion as at March 31, 2026, and down 7% from $59.6 billion as at December 31, 2025. On a 3 and 6 months ended basis, our AUM was negatively impacted to Whitney's point, by market value depreciation and net outflows from our precious metals products, partially offset by net inflows to our critical materials products. Conversely, average AUM was $63.9 billion for the quarter, up $26.3 billion or 70% from $37.6 billion this time last year and $66.6 billion on a year-to-date basis, up $31.2 billion or 88% from $35.4 billion this time last year. Our average AUM was positively impacted by a combination of net inflows and market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products since the second quarter of last year, which more than offset the impact of the June pullback in precious metals valuation. Slide 6 provides a brief look at our 3-and 6-month earnings. Net income this quarter was $34.3 million, up $20.8 million from $13.5 million over the same 3-month period last year. On a year-to-date basis, net income was $63.5 million, up $38 million from $25.5 million this time last year. Our 3-and 6-months ended results were primarily due to higher average AUM in our exchange-listed products and managed equity segments with our 6-month ended results, in particular, also benefiting from carried interest crystallization in our Private Strategies segment in the first quarter of the year. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes quarterly volatility from items like stock-based compensation and intermittent carried interest and performance fee crystallizations was $50.8 million for the quarter, up $25.3 million from $25.5 million over the same 3-month period last year. And it was $108.7 million on a year-to-date basis, up $61.3 million from $47.4 million this time last year. Adjusted EBITDA doubled in the quarter and on a 6 months ended basis due to an increase in average AUM attributable to the combination of net inflows and market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products since the second quarter of last year, as I just mentioned, which more than offset the impact of that June pullback in precious metals valuations. Finally, Slide 7 provides a few treasury and balance sheet management highlights. And as you can see, our cash and liquidity profile remains strong, and we continue to repurchase shares opportunistically. For more information on our revenues, expenses, net income, adjusted EBITDA and balance sheet metrics, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation as well as our quarterly MD&A and financial statements filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John.

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everybody. As Whitney mentioned in his opening comments, we experienced a sharp correction in precious metals in the second quarter. This resulted in an $8.2 billion or 16% decline in our AUM in the physical trusts. Precious metals prices have since stabilized and despite the correction, our AUM is still up over 40% over the past year. Critical materials fared better in the quarter. The uranium price remains resilient, supported by a structural supply deficit, while the copper price is near an all-time high due to tightness in the physical market and speculation the U.S. could impose tariffs on a broader range of copper forms in the new year. Turning to Slide 9. After 8 consecutive quarters of inflows, we experienced outflows in the second quarter. Profit taking in precious metals drove the redemption activity. Our uranium trust bucked the trends with positive sales reported in the quarter. And a quick look at Slide 10. Our ETF product suite fared better in the quarter with an AUM decline of 10%. AUM was helped by positive gains in copper stocks in the quarter. Moving over to Slide 11. Despite the challenging market conditions, net flows were positive in the quarter, reflecting broadening interest in uranium, critical materials and rare earths. Over the past couple of years, we have seen interest evolve from specialists to generalist investors who are looking to capitalize on several trends, including electrification, growing electricity requirements from AI data centers, energy securities and defense technologies. Investors are increasingly recognizing the role critical commodities like copper, uranium and rare earths play. And then finally, on Slide 12. Over the past 4 years, our team has been focused on growing our product suite organically to capitalize on the secular trends mentioned earlier. As we grow our product suite and investor base, we are experiencing the benefits of scale. On this graph, we have plotted the number of days it took each of our ETFs to reach $50 million in assets. As you can see, the timelines continue to decline, helping us to reach profitability faster and meet product approval thresholds with distributors. Our latest ETF, the Sprott Rare Earths ETF Ex-China symbol REXC, took just 32 trading days to reach this $50 million mark. I will now pass it over to Whitney to update you on our managed equity segment.

Thank you, John. I'm on Slide 13. Our managed equities AUM contracted by approximately $0.7 billion during the quarter as lower precious metal prices weighed on mining equities. On Slide 14, you can see we reported modest net redemptions during the quarter. However, we did see positive flows in our Sprott USA business as we completed the final phases of converting legacy brokerage client accounts to AUM. I'll turn now to Slide 15 on our Private Strategies. Private Strategies AUM was $2 billion as of June 30, 2026. We remain committed to growing our Private Strategies segment and are evaluating new strategies and extensions of existing offerings. Fundraising for our fourth private lending fund is underway, and we expect to close that fund sometime in 2027. Slide 16 is a reasonably new slide. Before I get to my closing remarks, I'd like to just point out that the reason I love this business so much is that we can deliver operating leverage without financial leverage. Our adjusted EBITDA margins have steadily increased from 53% to 71%, creating significant leverage. As a result, we are now debt-free and generating significant free cash flow. This is the power of our business model, the ability to deliver on the promises we made half a decade ago. I'll move to Slide 17 for a quick recap. Despite the pullback in precious metal prices, as of June 30th, our average AUM was up 70% from the same period last year, demonstrating the resilience of our business model. Current geopolitical and trade disruptions have put short-term pressures on prices, but the structural elements of the precious metals bull market are intact despite recent volatility. Critical materials are top of mind for investors and governments globally with security of supply being the primary driver of interest and investment in this space. We continue to invest in our business to support our growing client base, adding new talent in sales and marketing. We've also expanded our technology capabilities to address new productivity opportunities. And finally, we've created a team to monitor and better understand the rapidly evolving landscape of digital offerings. That concludes our remarks for today's call, and I'll now turn it back to the operator for some Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Lee at CGF.

Nice quarter overall despite a tougher environment. I wanted to touch on how you guys think about growth for the ETF business if we don't see another step-up of material prices. Maybe asked another way, if underlying resource prices remain flat for the next year or so, what level of AUM growth should we be expecting?

John, do you want to answer that one?

Yes, sure. Yes, I mean, that's a tricky question to answer. Obviously, this is part of a really large secular trend. This is part of a geopolitical puzzle that's going on right now among superpowers. These critical materials are obviously very important for a lot of technologies, defense technologies, in particular. And we think this is part of a much larger re-rating and long-term secular trend. We think this trend is obviously going to take years and years to play out. And the reason is, obviously, we need to build massive amounts of capacity in both mining and refining of these metals in the West to derisk the reliance that we currently have on China, particularly for rare earths. And that was really the key reason why we launched the Rare Earths Ex-China ETF to really play this thematic. So we think commodity prices have more room to grow. The reason being we need higher incentive pricing to reshore and incentivize more build-out of capacity in the West. I think the other point is we're still very early in the cycle in terms of allocation, meaning most general investors are just starting to learn the words critical materials, rare earths and recognize how important they are in the supply chain. Rare earths is a really good example. It's a relatively small industry relative to some of the bigger segments like steel and iron ore and copper. But if you shut off rare earths, you literally cripple trillions of dollars of the economy. And so investors are finally starting to realize the importance of some of these supply chains. And this is why we spend so much of our time at Sprott educating investors about these different markets, how they operate. They're all very unique. They're all on different kind of time lines and cycles. So we think this is still very early in terms of investor awareness and more importantly, allocation. And it doesn't take a lot of money moving from large capital pools and generalist buckets from things that they're, I would say, largely exposed to or overexposed to, say, technology companies to critical materials and obviously, precious metals-oriented investments to really keep money coming into our sector. So despite the air pocket we hit, we still think we're in the very early part of the cycle.

Okay. That's a robust answer. And then maybe on the profitability side for the exchange-listed products business, net fees were down almost 20%, but margins actually have been at all-time highs. I'm just trying to think about, is that primarily due to better cost structure than prior years? Or is there maybe a cost timing element to it as well?

Yes. I mean the beauty of ETF is about scale. As you build scale in these products, given they have unitary fees, unitary fees for the -- like the 40 Act funds that we have and the funds we have in Europe are a fixed fee. So the investor has complete predictability and consistency with respect to how much they pay. So as you grow those funds, the variable costs, obviously, the variable costs, but the fixed costs obviously come down as a percentage of AUM, and that helps to flow down to our bottom line. So scaling ETFs is really important in terms of fixed fees, but they also on the variable fees have a benefit because with most service providers, you tend to pay them less as a percentage of the fund as the AUM goes up. So there is a scale effect there as well. And as we showed you on that chart, we just arbitrarily picked $50 million. That is not a breakeven on a fund. Every fund is slightly different. But for many of our 40 Act funds, we think our breakeven is closer to $25 million per fund. Costs in Europe are different. They're higher. But for many of the funds we've been focused on in North America, we can get down to breakeven around $25 million. So that's very good. It helps us, it gives us confidence to launch new funds and get them to at least breakeven, and that's obviously helping the overall product suite in terms of profitability.

Your next question comes from the line of Graham Ryding at TD Securities.

John, maybe I'll just stick with you on that theme of critical materials. Energy security and rising demand for electricity or some themes that you flagged in your comments. What commodities specifically would you call out that would be best positioned to benefit from that theme?

Yes, sure. Good to talk to you, Graham. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of commodities that play critical roles in these thematics. Obviously, copper is really the linchpin in terms of anything to do with moving electrons. Copper is really your go-to metal. And I think it's reflected in the current pricing. I mean copper is floating with an all-time high in an environment where we've obviously had a pretty severe correction in some other metals and commodities. And that's really, I think, reflecting the recognition of the strategic importance of copper, but also the scarcity of copper. I mean, just yesterday, Codelco, which is the largest copper miner in the world, announced that they're having seismic issues at one of their key copper mines. So we obviously are benefiting from demand drivers around electrification, AI, electric vehicles, all these kinds of things. But on the supply side, it's been very challenging. We've had a number of disruptions at some of the biggest copper mines in the world. And bringing new copper mines to market is underway, but these are very long lead projects often involving investment decisions of spending $10 billion or $15 billion to build these projects. They are in very challenging environments, usually at high altitude and with scarcity of water, and I'm referring to the Andes. And then the second one, obviously, is uranium. As the world kind of pivots back to nuclear energy, given its incredible energy density and base load characteristics, you really need to underpin your grid with baseload power. And that's what nuclear energy and obviously some thermal supply sources provide. The world has built an enormous amount of solar capacity over the last 10 years, but we're at saturation points in terms of how much more capacity grids can add given the variability in capacity factors, which are only about 25%. So we're very bullish, obviously, on copper for energy transmission, electricity transmission and uranium for electricity production. And obviously, there are a whole bunch of others supporting metals, but those are the two big ones that we're most excited about.

Okay. Great. And then Whitney, just looking at precious metals from a macro perspective, what are you watching for most closely that you think is going to have the biggest impact on the direction of precious metals prices over perhaps the near term or into '27?