Murray Stahl's Horizon Kinetics Comments on Royal Gold Inc

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Dec 22, 2014

An idiosyncratic security with benefits – a diversifier

Let’s find a contrasting investment to a utility index or a REIT index, which are front and center as bond substitutes or asset allocation building blocks. They are therefore closely governed in valuation and price behavior by the asset flows of index investors and, so, might be particularly vulnerable to a rise in interest rates. Consider, instead, a very distinctive security like Royal Gold, Inc (RGLD). It is categorized in financial securities databases like a gold mining company. Yet it does not do any mining, and on a balance sheet and income statement basis has as little in common with gold mining as Microsoft (MSFT): it has virtually no property, plant, or equipment, it carries no net debt, it has extremely high after-tax cash flow margins—well over 50%. Microsoft’s are roughly 25%. Its financial statements and casually observable economics say that it really does not belong with the gold mining group.

Royal Gold is one of several publicly traded precious metals royalty companies. They solve a unique problem of miners, which must find a way to fund the massive capital costs of developing a new mine yet cannot afford the risk of taking on too much debt, since such a project might not be productive for many years, during which time input and output costs can drastically alter the anticipated profitability. The standard alternative, issuing more shares, is often too dilutive. The royalty companies extend cash to a miner in exchange for a percentage of the production. The royalty company is not directly exposed to the operating costs or liabilities of the miner and earns its revenues even if the miner produces at only a breakeven level of profitability.

However, the royalty business is far better than merely that. When Royal Gold purchases a revenue interest, it might be for the life of the mine, which could exceed 20 years. But the purchase price is calculated as the present value of the future estimated revenues, based on the current gold price. As an example, if the interest rate used to calculate that present value is 10%, and if the mine will start production next year, then the price paid for the first year’s production will be 10% less than the gold price. So, if today’s gold price is $1,300 per ounce, Royal Gold will pay only $1,170 for next year’s gold production. But the 2nd year’s production will cost 10% less than that, or $1,050. The 20th year’s gold price for Royal Gold would be only 15% of today’s price, or $193. In total, Royal Gold would advance $11,068 for what will be $26,000 of gold production ($1,300/year x 20 years).

There are other aspects to such a contract that provide additional financial benefits. But staying with this information for the moment, one can say that Royal Gold has the safety of paying drastically less than the current price of gold for its future production. There is a great deal of protection from downward volatility in gold prices in that contract. Additionally, the royalty percentage is often of the sliding variety: it might start at 1% of mine output, but with scheduled increases as the gold price rises above certain levels, up to 5% or more. Accordingly, there is positive operating leverage for Royal Gold in the event that gold prices rise.

Viewed this way, Royal Gold is better described as a merchant bank than a gold mining company. In a sense, it has as much in common with the activity of gold mining as JP Morgan Chase (JPM) has with an automobile manufacturer merely because the bank might have lent money to the car company. In actuality, the comparison with JP Morgan Chase is a poor one, since banks operate with extreme debt leverage, and Royal Gold operates with none. A further differentiation of Royal Gold’s business model from that of wither Microsoft or JP Morgan Chase: While Royal Gold has a $4 billion stock market capitalization, how many employees do you think it has? The answer is 20. For what it’s worth, the company states that none of them are subject to a labor contract or a collective bargaining agreement.

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In a portfolio context, Royal Gold has long-term growth characteristics, because it does add new contracts to its portfolio of interests, and its earnings are positively associated with whatever economic conditions might lead to higher gold prices, one of which is inflation or the anticipation of inflation or geopolitical risk. Yet, because of its contract structure, it is remarkably well-insulated from price declines in that commodity. Accordingly, its profitability is not closely tied to the factors that impact the typical industrial or financial company and it should be a diversifying element in a portfolio. Its remarkably low correlation with the S&P 500 over the past half-dozen years, at 0.1334, is the statistical evidence. The visual evidence, from the pre-crisis date of mid-2008, is shown in the accompanying chart of Royal Gold relative to both a gold mining company index (Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, GDX) and the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which holds gold bullion.

Both Royal Gold and Silver Wheaton, which acquires primarily silver royalty interests and manifests somewhat different price patterns, are new holdings in the Core Value strategy. These follow, as mentioned in last quarter’s Commentary, additional investments in land companies such as Tri Pointe Homes and Brookfield Residential Properties. They also exhibit the characteristic of trading at prices well below the long-term realizations they should draw from their asset portfolios. They are, in practice, idiosyncratic securities that, much more than the large-cap companies that comprise the asset allocation index and ETF building blocks, will exhibit stock prices tied to their own financial development rather than to the public flow of funds. A portfolio comprised of such companies will be a more effectively diversified investment.

From Murray Stahl (Trades, Portfolio)’s Horizon Kinetics 3Q 2014 Commentary.