Gold Royalty Targets $100M Free Cash Flow by 2030 at Spot — With Flat Costs and a Possible Dividend

## From origination story to harvest

Interviewed on Mining Network at the Precious Metals Summit, Gold Royalty president John Griffith — employee number one, by his telling, and a three-decade investment banker before that — framed the company as past its portfolio-building phase. Gold Royalty now holds 260 royalties. Nine produce, and about a dozen more are in development. Griffith, who has led corporate development since the portfolio held just 18 royalties, described a business that has moved from origination story to a maturing one, ready to harvest.

The headline claim is 500% growth over the next five years, which management argues is unusually low-risk. Of the assets expected to deliver that growth, Griffith said 70% are already permitted and built, at least to first phase — a share that rises to about 90% once associated satellite deposits are counted. He also pointed to the operators behind those assets: Barrick, Agnico Eagle and IAMGOLD.

## The numbers behind the $100 million target

Gold Royalty produced just over 5,000 GEOs (gold equivalent ounces — output from a royalty converted into ounces of gold at prevailing prices) in 2025. The company's 2030 guidance midpoint is roughly 32,000 GEOs, about a six-fold increase. At spot prices, Griffith said that should generate approximately $100 million in free cash flow (cash left after all costs) by the end of the decade.

His margin argument is structural. SG&A (selling, general and administrative — the fixed overhead of running the company) runs between $7 million and $8 million and is flat. The royalty agreements carry no escalation clauses, and Griffith said the company needs to spend not a single cent beyond that overhead to deliver the growth, so incremental revenue "is all going to flow to the bottom line."

He then did the re-rating math (a re-rating is the market paying a higher multiple for the same cash flow) himself: at the midpoint cash flow multiple for the sector, that free cash flow implies a $2.5-3 billion market capitalization, about three times the current level. Both figures are management's own projections, not Pixys's view.

## Where the growth comes from

No single asset drives the path to 32,000 ounces, Griffith stressed. Growth is spread across the ramp-up of REN, the continuation of Cote, the ramp-up of Vares, a potential expansion elsewhere in the portfolio, and Odyssey coming online. The cornerstone royalty over the Malartic complex — acquired through the Golden Valley and Abitibi deals and once framed as a 2028 event — is now "literally around the corner." Griffith called Odyssey a multi-decade asset, a rarity in royalty portfolios today.

## The Vares detour, and a 2025 guidance miss

Vares is the cautionary tale in the growth story, and Griffith told it plainly. The predominantly copper deal was struck about a year and a half ago, when Adriatic owned the asset. In 2025, Vares' first production year, control passed to Dundee Precious Metals (DPM). DPM judged that mining the deposit top-down was suboptimal and resequenced it bottom-up. The cost to Gold Royalty was a roughly six-month hiatus in revenue — the main reason the company missed its 2025 guidance.

Griffith said the trade-off now looks worth it. Vares has reached commercial production and should reach nameplate capacity (its designed output rate) by the end of the year. He called the episode net-net positive: short-term pain for a better long-term asset under a better-capitalized operator.

## A gold company with a copper kicker

Roughly 90% of net asset value (NAV — what the underlying portfolio is worth) sits in gold assets, but near-term revenue will run about a quarter copper, through Vares plus royalties on Cozumel and Pedra Branca, where the company holds two royalties. Griffith's tagline: a gold-focused royalty company with a copper kicker. He is open to more copper asset by asset, said the company is comfortable with LME-traded base metals, and drew the line at lithium, which he called outside the company's competence.

## Dry powder and an open deal market

Corporate development is "drinking from a firehose." Gold Royalty holds roughly $200 million of dry powder (cash available to spend on deals) — more than 20% of its market capitalization, Griffith noted — with no debt and a growing cash balance, enough to transact without issuing equity. A funding arrangement with the Australian private equity firm Taurus lets it participate in larger deals than its size would allow alone.

Griffith also credited Wheaton Precious Metals' stream transaction with BHP with sweeping away large-producer skepticism about royalty and stream financing, especially in Australia, historically a skeptical market. On the capital stack, his framing: royalties and streams sit between equity, the most dilutive tool, and senior secured debt, the least — a useful middle ground for operators who want capital without heavy dilution.

## The Tether question

Tether holds between 14% and 15% of Gold Royalty, alongside similar stakes in Metalla and a third royalty company, and a larger position in Elemental, where it has board representation including the executive chair role. Griffith said Tether's intentions are "not entirely clear," while acknowledging that consolidation would make sense: scale lowers the cost of capital, and in the royalty space the correlation between scale and valuation multiple is, in his view, the strongest in mining.

His line in the sand: no handover at a low or no premium. "There was always a takeover premium," the former banker said, though he conceded that a substantial premium "and I think we have to have that conversation."

## Dividend or buyback?

With cash building and no debt, allocation is the open question. Griffith sees buybacks as uncompelling at only a modest discount to NAV, and says they would need to be sizable to matter. The live internal conversation is a dividend — sustainable and growable, and subject to board approval. If assets perform and prices hold, he said, "I wouldn't imagine it'd be too long before we think about instituting a dividend."

## The investor takeaway

This is management's case, laid out in a summit interview, not a verified forecast. The $100 million figure assumes spot prices hold and third-party operators deliver — the Vares hiatus shows how quickly someone else's decisions can dent guidance. But the interview offers a checkable scorecard: GEO ounces tracking toward 32,000, SG&A held flat, cash compounding without debt, Vares at nameplate, and a dividend decision that would mark the portfolio's arrival at maturity.