Source: Maurice Jackson for Streetwise Reports 07/10/2020
David Cole, CEO of EMX Royalty, sits down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss the dynamic value proposition the royalty generator presents to the market.
Maurice Jackson: My guest today is David Cole, CEO of EMX Royalty Corp. (EMX:TSX.V; EMX:NYSE.American).
Mr. Cole, as a very proud shareholder, let me be the first to say congratulations, as EMX Royalty recently rewarded shareholders with a nine-year high. What an accomplishment.
David Cole: Thank you. We have 6X’d the stock price in the last four and a half years. It’s good to see the market recognize the portfolio growth.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s discover what distinguishes EMX Royalty and why, for the second year in a row, I plan to match my bullion purchases with shares in the royalty generator. Mr. Cole, for someone new to EMX Royalty, please introduce the business model and the opportunity the company presents to the market.
David Cole: It’s always good to focus on the business model of EMX Royalty Corp. because it is different than our royalty company peers. The bulk of the royalties in our portfolio were generated using the royalty generation method, which is the prospect generation business model focused on the royalty component.
We acquire large tracks of prospective mineral rights around the world utilizing our geologic talent, add value by building up geologic models to illustrate the prospectiveness, sell those onto an industry that’s hungry for new discovery opportunities for a combination of cash, shares, work commitments, annual payments, and always a royalty on the back-end.
We’ve been doing this now successfully for 17 years. We’ve sold 46 projects, created 46 new royalties, just in the last two and a half years, as an example.
The one thing that I’m proud of about EMX is the deal flow that we have on the generative side, through that royalty generation methodology.
But we don’t stop there. We also buy royalties to augment that portfolio and the integration of generating royalties, utilizing our geological expertise, and having those same entrepreneurial geologists identify royalty acquisition opportunities is very powerful. Some of the key royalties we have in our portfolio we were able to acquire because we found out about it and because we had feet on the ground and ears to the railroad tracks.
The third thing that we do to round out our unique business approach is to make strategic investments, where that same team of entrepreneurs is identifying strategic investment opportunities. Our return on invested capital on our 17-year history is a 40% internal rate of return on invested capital. It’s fantastic. That’s helped maintain our treasury throughout our history, puts us in a situation today where we have nearly as much money in the bank as all the money we have raised in the history of the company, plus 150-some mineral property positions around the world.
Maurice Jackson: One of the things that resonated with me in our last interview, you said that royalties are powerful financial instruments. They certainly are and we’re going to out exactly why here in today’s interview. EMX Royalty has a commanding global property bank (