Metals and Miners: Opportunities in the Strategic Resource Race

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June 23, 2026 | (62 mins 45 secs)

Webcast Overview

As nations race to secure the metals critical to economic growth, energy security and technological leadership, the outlook for the sector is being shaped by powerful macroeconomic and geopolitical forces. In this webcast, Ryan McIntyre, Paul Wong and Ed Coyne provide a timely mid-year outlook on the key drivers influencing gold, silver, copper, uranium and other strategic metals. From the tug-of-war between monetary policy and geopolitics to the surge in AI-driven demand for critical materials, we examine the trends shaping markets and investment opportunities in the second half of 2026.

Webcast Transcript

Ed Coyne, Slides 1-4, Introduction

Natalie: I'm pleased to introduce our first speaker today, Edward Coyne, Senior Managing Partner of Global Sales at Sprott. I will now turn the webcast over to Ed to get us started. Welcome, Ed. The floor is yours.

Edward Coyne: Thank you, Natalie, and thank you all for joining us today on our webcast. Again, my name is Ed Coyne, Senior Managing Partner at Sprott, and with me today are Paul Wong, CFA, Managing Partner and Market Strategist at Sprott Inc. and Ryan McIntyre, President of Sprott Inc. and Senior Portfolio Manager at Sprott Asset Management.

For today's webcast, we're going to cover a couple of things. I asked Paul Wong to join us to provide an overall market overview and technical outlook on both gold and silver, as well as the critical materials side for copper and uranium.

Then we'll turn the webcast over to Ryan McIntyre, who will cover gold, silver and critical materials, as well as fundamentals and portfolio positioning, to explore ways to allocate capital to these precious metals and critical materials.

Finally, we'll wrap up and open the call for Q&A to address any specific questions you may have. Rest assured, those we don't get to on this webcast, we will follow up with via phone call and/or email.

For those who aren't familiar, Sprott is a global leader in precious metals and critical materials. Through the end of the first quarter of 2026, we managed over $26 billion in assets under management. We are a publicly traded company, trading on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SII. Of the $65 billion in assets under management, the bulk is in our exchange-listed products, where we offer investors the opportunity to allocate directly to physical bullion, uranium and copper, as well as a full suite of ETFs that give you exposure to individual mining companies, whether it's in the precious metals side or the critical materials side.

Last but not least, we have a private suite of bespoke credit investments, allocating capital to mining and resource companies at around $2 billion. With that, I'd like to now turn the webcast over to Paul Wong, who will give us a macro overview and technical outlook on gold, silver, copper and uranium. Paul, take it away.

Paul Wong, Slides 5-11, Macro Overview and Technical Outlook on Gold, Silver, Copper and Uranium

Paul Wong: Thank you, Ed. Starting with some of the main points that we see developing in the precious metals and critical minerals area. Basically, it points to a long-term, probably almost a decade-long, combination of resource scarcity and debasement. We're calling it a "supercycle" because it's just the sheer scale of this cycle. The last major one was the China cycle. That came out of nowhere. It turned out to be significantly larger than anyone had anticipated. When we go through some of the charts, we will see echoes and repeats of the prior cycle.

But this time around, there is something different in this cycle. It starts with what we're seeing: monetary instability and debasement. It seems markets are reaching a point where rising debt and deficits are really starting to impact them. You can probably see that most evidently through the rising bond yields you're seeing globally. Basically, if you take G7 yields as an average, some of them are hitting 15- to 20-year highs. We're well past the zero-interest-rate environment. We're moving rapidly higher as inflation and unsustainable debt are starting to take hold and affect the marketplace.

We also have rising energy security needs and the need for electrification. We're seeing a need to build up the grid for electric vehicles, renewables and battery storage. You're just seeing large-scale demand for all sorts of metals, particularly those related to electrification: copper, lithium, nickel, silver and rare earths.

Driving this at the forefront is the AI and power infrastructure build-out. Data center expansion is accelerating demand for electricity transmission and advanced electronics, and it's taking along with it demand for all the other metals there. Just to put it in context, there's a major race between China and the U.S., and China has an advantage over the U.S. through its electricity grid. They actually generate about three times as much electricity as the U.S. does.

The scale and the pace of their build-out are just astonishing. Last year, China built roughly seven times the electrical capacity that the U.S. did in 2025. If the AI race is lost, it'll be through the electricity. I don't think anyone will argue that data centers are becoming quite contentious in the U.S., raising power costs amongst communities.

On the supply side, we see structural supply constraints. It reflects a decade of underinvestment. Every major cycle you see always ends with a decade or so of underinvestment. You see, during those periods, mining companies are trying to stay alive by basically high-grading. You end the cycle with high-grade ores and begin it with low-grade ores, creating a challenge in supplying metals and minerals.

Geopolitics and resource nationalism. This is new, compared to prior cycles. We're now seeing unprecedented market fragmentation. We're seeing a reshoring of industrial policy as everyone tries to secure their critical minerals. You're driving up competition across different regions and now into countries as well. In the prior cycle, the U.S.-led global order was essentially that if you needed a commodity, you had to be willing to pay the price, and chances are you could trade with anyone. Case in point: imagine China as it is built today compared to the last cycle over 20 years ago.

Along with that, we're seeing a multipolar commodity system, driven by the erosion of the U.S. dollar-centric system. We're seeing more and more alliances, fewer strategic alliances, and more transactional alliances. Basically, it just reinforces the need for gold or real assets as a neutral store of value amongst trading countries.

On to gold. The first thing you'll notice is that gold has been in a secular rise since the lows in 2022. I marked some periods when you could see significant developments in the gold market. The first one is the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia invades Ukraine. Western governments seize or freeze Russian FX reserves, roughly $300 billion at the time. The important point is that, at that point, U.S. Treasuries are no longer considered a neutral reserve asset. If you had an adversarial or semi-adversarial relationship with the West, you would start thinking about switching your treasury and U.S. dollar holdings to gold.

By Q3, so summer in 2022, we started seeing very large buying by central banks, 1,200 tons on a rolling basis. You'll see that gold dropped through '22, early '22 from the peak. This was also the time when rates were rising and the U.S. dollar was soaring. But as that was occurring, you saw central banks really start buying gold.

The next event happened in the summer of '23, when China really began its gold-buying spree. Then, the Chinese property market, on a market-value basis, I think, was the largest asset class on the planet at that time. But the property market started to crack, overbuilt, overvalued, and the financial stress has started to develop. At that point, the PBoC, China's central bank, decided to devalue the Yuan relative to gold and monetize its debt. The original case is that they decided to debase it relative to gold, which was interesting at the time. I remember reading a lot about that, and people were debating whether it worked. The short answer is that it worked really well. China begins its gold buying spree. You can see that the gold rose, almost uninterrupted. The drawdowns were typically 10%-15% max.

Underlying China's gold buying was not only lower rates but also a falling U.S. dollar. Again, you had a perfect cycling of both buyers, central banks, sovereign entities and investment funds.

Into Q3 of '25, the debasement trade comes alive, and that's the last big rally we had. A lot of people were thinking about the debasement trade. Still, really, I think it was just around Jackson Hole: the Fed signaled that it would cut rates despite inflation well above its 2% target, even as the CBO was revising upward the level of debt and deficits. That triggered the last big rally in gold. Peaked out at the beginning of the U.S.-Iran war. A good example would be the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait. They were big buyers. Because their revenue shut off, they had to stop buying. There were some gold swaps involved along the way. Turkey was the biggest, so the other part is the emerging markets. They typically were the largest group of buyers. But if you were an emerging market that had to import oil, fertilizers and other foodstuffs, you probably slowed or stopped your gold purchases.

But based on the data we have, central banks are still buying. Sovereign entities have most likely slowed. The hard data we do have for selling comes in the form of swaps, meaning you get your gold back as long as you pay it back. Usually it's fees, interest and whatnot, and you get your gold back. The next leg of the gold rally probably began this month, with the signing of the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), I think these are the early days. Things are still developing, but you're likely to see the erosion of the petrodollar system.

A quick summary: what is the petrodollar system? It's basically, for example, Saudi Arabia. They would price their oil in U.S. dollars. What that does is create demand for U.S. dollars and U.S. Treasuries, keeps U.S. rates, and keeps the U.S. dollar as the main reserve currency. In exchange, the U.S. provides security guarantees. You can see the issue happening right now. The GCC does not sell much oil to the U.S. The U.S. security guarantee is now highly questionable, given the fact that the Iranians were able to attack a lot of their infrastructure. Also, under the MoU, a $300 billion restitution fund is set up that Vice President JD Vance has said the GCC will pay.

You can see there's a strong incentive to move away from the petrodollar. What does that mean? It means you'll have fewer U.S. dollars, so you'd want more gold. There'd be more multi-currency settlements of oil. Your favorite currency is probably oil. There are also signs that OPEC is starting to break. GCC itself is starting to move and bifurcate the two camps. That means, typically, when you see OPEC, which has been around for a long time. Every time there's stress in OPEC, they try to front-run each other on oil production. Typically, when you do that, it's a rush to produce oil. It's also about securing a lot of your neutral reserve asset, which means converting it into gold right away.

Long-term outlook, we still think we're in a structural market. Essentially, the central bank buying that began with the Russia-Ukraine war is still ongoing. China is still buying. The debasement trade is, I would say, more alive than ever. Because the debt situation continues to grow, and we're seeing bond stress developing across the G7 in terms of yields, 30 years, 2 years. We're seeing bear flatteners across the G7, which tells you stress is building. But along the way, all these components are... Sorry, in petrodollars, last one. Again, they continue to stack. It's just that one has not disappeared. They're all building one on top of another on an unsustainable debt and monetary instability.

Moving quickly to silver. All right, so a little bit of history on silver. Silver really only took off around the debasement trade. That was August 2025. Before that phase, even though we saw gold markets soaring, silver was rising, but not as positively as gold. We saw photovoltaic demand absolutely soar. With that, we saw the balance of supply and demand, including exchange for physical products, enter its seventh year of deficits. Really, what happened was that your inventory of silver, free trading silver, somewhere along that point, disappeared. Don't know exactly when, but basically, you pretty much consumed all that free-floating inventory.

Also, by Q2 of '25, during the peak of the tariff wars, the gold-silver ratio spiked to its highest level in decades. It's one of three major spikes, if you look back. From Q3, in a matter of months, silver basically made up for a huge rally. A massive trade asymmetry was created and then exploited. But it was mainly exploited through extensive extreme positioning via options and leveraged products. That's what drove a lot of that massive run-up and also the big, volatile down spikes.

The good news is that, from here, it looks like many of those extreme positions have cleared. The supply and physical deficits continue to grow. Energy security is becoming paramount. Typically, after an energy crisis, there's a push for renewables because people realize how vulnerable they are to oil shipments.

They start thinking about renewables. It's a secure form of electricity generation. Also, along the way, silver continues to maintain its hybrid value as a monetary asset. We continue to see silver in a bullish phase as long as gold is bullish and industrial demand for silver ties back to the AI build-out. We see bullish trends for silver. We still see inventories decreasing.

Copper-wise, it's actually my personal view that copper has one of the most attractive risk-reward charts I've seen out there. For all chart nerds, you can probably see the nice cup-and-handle setup for us. It's a really good-looking chart. Let's look at copper. Pre-Q2 '25, copper recovered from its 22 lows. Remember, the Chinese property market was really soft. That knocked down demand for copper.

But beneath it, you saw strong demand for copper in China, driven by electrification. Remember, China has built up three times as much electricity generation as the U.S. That was part and parcel of that. Underneath the visible weakness in copper demand was a copper buildup, which I don't think many people noticed.

Fast-forward to Q2 '25, at the beginning of the debasement trade, we see a significant surge in copper prices. Initially, it was driven by tariff concerns. That starts the initial move off the trade lows. Then we saw a whole number of mine disruptions across Chile, Africa and elsewhere.

Then we start seeing rising grid spending and eventually realize that copper is becoming an increasingly strategic resource. We see the grid being built out to continue to drive structural demand.

If you want to win the AI race, it looks like electricity generation will be a key component in the U.S. I can't see the U.S. basically surrendering the AI race because they won't build enough electricity generation, which segues nicely into uranium.

Uranium: again, a bullish chart with a rising trend. There are two lines here: the spot price, which equities follow. There's the green line, which is the long-term price. That's probably what we should follow more. Just a note on the term price. It's rising by $93. If it's not at the all-time highs of 2007, it's within about a dollar or two of that range.

The key point is that utilities are essentially consuming more than they're contracted for. This line is likely to continue to rise. Quick history. Pre '24, utilities surged, producers, and financial buyers stepped into a thin market. A lot of supply disruptions. From Q1 of '24 or '25, you have this consolidation phase. We're consolidating this big price spike, even though term prices are steady. Turned out to be a buying opportunity. Again, post-Q2 2025, you see strategic scarcity start to emerge. You're seeing growing policy support and more fuel security concerns.

In terms of energy security, uranium is probably the most secure energy source. It's a size scale. You can base load your entire electrical network. You can't blockade, you can't seize it. We are heading towards, we are probably one of these big secular uranium, secular bull runs here.

Just a quick summary, again: you're tight; you see massive underinvestment in supply; rising demand for combined electricity for AI and energy security; and a deficit we seem likely to see for the next several years, at the very least.

Moving quickly to the summary page. Long-term, we maintain a very positive outlook for gold, silver, copper, and uranium. Again, there is a massive macro regime shift we've seen in deglobalization, starting in 2000 and accelerating in 2022. Every year, we see increasing acceleration towards deglobalization. We see fiscal dominance.

Again, monetary policy is now subordinate to fiscal policy, so we will continue to see fiscal stimulus supporting growth on this metal side. Geopolitical fragmentation means it'll create more inflationary shocks, more resource-constrained markets, and more branching out in this multipolar system.

Combined, we're seeing a demand shock with constrained supply across several different areas, whether you're talking about electrification infrastructure alongside energy security. You're just seeing this accelerating demand for metals, and hard assets are being revalued.

Underlying all this is the currency, the debasement we're seeing. It's the side effect of fiscal dominance, declining trust in fiat systems. We're seeing more and more commodities being priced in non-U.S. dollars. It reinforces the need for gold as a neutral reserve asset.

If you need to settle, multi-currency settlements mean a greater need for neutral reserve assets to settle into gold and silver. It's a very bullish structural structure. We're just seeing driven by central banks, debasement: volatility and portfolio diversification amongst central banks. You've left the old US-dominant system, and you're moving to something new.

The greatest need right now is a neutral reserve asset. Copper, uranium, electrification and grid expansion. I think Ryan will probably touch on it. But what China did during this last little energy crisis was pretty impressive in terms of the ability to make different hydrocarbon sources fungible into electricity basically.

In terms of investment implications, we have, again, a long-term bull market driven by scarcity and debasement, and precious metals and critical minerals will lead it in this cycle. With that, I'll pass it back to Ryan.

Ryan McIntyre, Slides 12-30, Gold, Silver and Critical Materials Fundamentals and Portfolio Positioning

Ryan McIntyre: Thank you, Paul. Let me start with portfolio positioning first. I think it goes without saying that any exposure to precious metals or critical materials is not a one-size-fits-all. It obviously depends on everyone's risk tolerance, objectives, time horizons, and the overall financial situation.

That said, we believe that these assets can play a meaningful role in most portfolios because they offer diversification, potential inflation protection, exposure to structural demand growth, and the benefit of being tied to tangible real assets, which, as Paul mentioned, we believe will become increasingly important in the future.

As a framework, we recommend that everyone have at least 10% exposure to gold, complemented by 3% to 5% allocations in silver and other critical materials, depending on suitability and opportunity.

Let's start with gold. As you can see in the chart on the left-hand side, most of the demand comes from holding gold as an investment or a store of value, which is why it's best understood as a monetary metal. It has been used as a store of value for thousands of years, and that role remains highly relevant today. Its key differentiated attributes are very straightforward.

Historically, it's had low correlation to most other asset classes. It's been used as an inflation and currency-devaluation hedge, attracts safe-haven demand in periods of uncertainty, and provides deep liquidity when needed. It's also unique in that it's the gold standard, no pun intended, in protecting against sovereign risk, which I think is going to come more into play as Paul highlighted earlier.

Shifting over to silver. Silver is a little different from gold because it has a dual role. It's viewed as both a monetary metal and an industrial metal. Like gold, silver can serve as a store of value, but a much larger share of demand comes from industrial applications, including electronics, solar panels, medical devices, and other technologies.

Notably, the industrial sensitivity makes silver prices more volatile than gold's, but it also creates greater upside potential in bullish cycles. We think of silver as both a precious metal allocation and a leveraged expression of electrification and technology demand.

Slide 16 is a great chart that shows the long-term returns of various asset classes, including gold and silver. Over the past 25 years, gold and silver outperformed U.S. stocks, bonds, and the dollar.

It's not as if the S&P 500 is inexpensive; it's currently trading at over 2X historical levels that have proven reliable value indicators for future returns. The point here is not that precious metals move in a straight line. There are long cycles, consolidations, and periods of volatility. The key is that, over full market cycles, precious metals have historically provided strong returns and diversification benefits, particularly during periods of monetary stress, inflation concerns, or geopolitical uncertainty.

This slide examines what happens when gold is added to a traditional 60/40 portfolio. As you can see in the chart on the left, the more gold is added, the better off the portfolio is, both in terms of returns and volatility. This is obviously a Nirvana-type problem, and we think it's why everyone should have a permanent 10% position in physical gold.

This analysis, I would note, is especially relevant today, as the classic 60/40 portfolio is under pressure amid greater stock-bond correlation and a wider range of potential future outcomes.

Now, turning to some of the fundamentals for gold. The gold supply picture is becoming increasingly challenging. The chart on the left shows the amount of gold discovered in millions of ounces each year, which is declining despite increasing exploration spend, as shown by the blue line trending upward to the right. At the same time, production has trended only modestly higher, as shown on the chart on the right.

However, the ore quality has become much more marginal, creating a structural issue. The industry needs new high-quality deposits, but those are becoming harder to find and more expensive to develop. In our view, this supports the long-term gold price environment because sustaining supply likely requires higher gold prices and continued investment.

Moving to slide 19, this chart highlights the significant disconnect between gold bullion and gold equities. Gold bullion has performed very well, obviously. But gold equities have lagged somewhat, as illustrated by the gap between the gold and the blue lines.

Historically, there have been periods, including after the GFC, when gold equities have caught up sharply with bullion. The simple reason here really is operating leverage. So once the gold price moves higher, producers can see margins expand meaningfully if costs are controlled.

For example, for every 1% change in the gold price, we'd expect to see roughly a 2% change in profitability, reflected in the share prices of gold equities.

What's also interesting about rising gold prices is that they highlight the hidden optionality in gold mining companies' portfolios. Higher gold prices often lead to production increases and mine life extensions as additional material becomes economic to mine.

Today, we believe there is still significant catch-up potential for gold equities, particularly for companies with strong assets, disciplined capital allocation and improving balance sheets and switching over to Silver's fundamentals.

Silver's demand profile has really changed in recent years. Industrial total demand stood at roughly 650 million ounces in 2025, and electrical and electronics accounted for a major share of that total. The key drivers are all tied to the modern electrical economy.

Things like photovoltaics, AI data centers, power grids, automotive electronics and associated infrastructure. This is why we think silver deserves attention beyond its role as a precious metal. It is becoming increasingly tied to the structural growth, electrification, and digital infrastructure.

On the supply side, silver has remained stagnant over the past decade at approximately 1 billion ounces per year despite rising demand. This combination has not surprisingly put the silver market in deficit over the past 7 years, as shown in the chart on the left.

One reason silver supply is less responsive to price is that most silver is mined as a byproduct of other metals, such as zinc, lead, copper and gold. Even if silver prices rise, most miners do not necessarily increase production unless the economics of the primary metal also justify it. In combination, we think this creates a really powerful setup. Rising industrial demand, constrained supply, and persistent market deficits, and therefore, shrinking above-ground inventories, as Paul mentioned.

Let's turn to slide 22 and focus on gold and silver equities. I guess, in short, we've got a positive outlook on both gold and silver miners. For gold miners, the setup includes strong bullion prices, improving balance sheets, and disciplined capital allocation. For silver miners, it's really the demand side that's particularly compelling, obviously with structural growth from solar, electronics, AI, infrastructure, EVs, and grids.

Really, the broader point here, as it relates to precious metals equities, is that they offer leverage to the underlying metals. That leverage, however, cuts both ways. The key is that selectivity matters. But in a strong bull market and strong metals environment, miners can potentially outperform the physical commodities.

Moving to slide 23, we can now shift from precious metals to critical materials. Just to baseline the definition here. We define critical materials as raw materials that are vital to the global economy, national defense, and modern technology. These include materials used in nuclear power, solar batteries, electric vehicles, transmission infrastructure, electronics, and defense applications.

The investment case for critical materials relies on four different pillars. Industrial importance, technological advancement, supply constraints, and inflation sensitivity. In short, these materials are becoming foundational for economic growth, energy security, and national security, which is why everyone should pay attention to them.

The chart on the left-hand side of this page is one of my all-time favorites. It shows electricity consumption on the Y-axis, plotted against GDP per capita for each country. The conclusion is really simple. Economic growth requires modern energy, and modern economic growth requires more electricity.

As countries urbanize and industrialize, electricity demand rises. In the West, we're obviously also seeing a new layer of demand from AI and data centers, and then reshoring, and obviously, grid modernization. Slide 25 shows the scale of projected demand growth across various critical materials related to energy, let alone other technological needs.

The key takeaway here is that it's a significant shift in likely demand that's not a single-metal story. It's really focused across a broad range of metals that we've defined as critical materials. So these include things like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, rare earths, copper, uranium, and even silver.

They all play a different role across batteries, nuclear power, solar, transmission, and electrification. It's the magnitude of demand growth here and the reflexive nature of supply chains that will need to expand meaningfully over the coming decades to meet this demand.

Critical materials aren't just an economic issue; they're also becoming a security issue. The chart at the bottom of this slide shows that China dominates the refining and processing of many key materials. What's interesting is that this concentration actually creates vulnerability and supply shocks. We've already seen export controls used as a policy tool not only by China but also by other countries. This is why governments today are increasingly focused on domestic supply chains, strategic partnerships, and alternative sources of processing capacity.

In addition to most countries not being self-sufficient in producing the critical materials they need, there are very few existing stockpiles as a safety net. This chart structures this vividly. It shows that only a handful of countries in the world have a critical material stockpile. This is in stark contrast to oil stockpiles, which exist in more than 60 countries.

In our view, we're in the early innings of governments around the world rebuilding emergency response and energy security frameworks, including commodity stockpiles. This is a huge shift from the era of globalization, when efficiency and low-cost sourcing were often prioritized over resilience. Today, really, the focus is moving towards the security of supply. For investors, really, that means critical materials are very likely to benefit from policy support, strategic procurement, and long-term government-backed demand.

Now, I'd like to highlight several specific commodities, starting with copper. Copper, I highlight first because it's central to this entire theme. It's required for power transmission, data centers, EVs, renewables and industrial infrastructure. Historically, copper has been viewed as a barometer of global economic activity. But in the future, we believe its growth drivers may increasingly come from electrification, AI infrastructure, and grid investment.

The challenge here for copper is supply, because it's difficult to bring on quickly. New mines require long lead times, think plus or minus 15 years, significant capital, and also social license to operate. So really that sets up a likely imbalance between rising demand and what we view as probably constrained supply. 

Uranium is another critical material where energy security is central to the investment case, as Paul mentioned. Nuclear power provides reliable baseload electricity, and global policy support has been improving meaningfully over the last several years. At the same time, uranium supply is geographically concentrated.

As shown in the pie chart on the left, a significant share of production comes from Kazakhstan, and supply chains are also exposed to geopolitical risks, including transportation routes through Russia and fuel cycle infrastructure. With reactor restarts, life extensions, and new builds, amid increasing demand, we believe uranium will remain well positioned for a structurally tighter market going forward.

To close this section, I wanted to briefly touch on rare earths, as they're a clear example of why critical materials are about much more than clean energy. Rare earth elements are a group of 17 chemically similar elements that are particularly vital to high-performance tech. They're essential for EV motors, wind turbines, advanced electronics, AI infrastructure, and also defense systems.

Now, demand is expected to grow meaningfully, but the problem is that supply chains remain highly concentrated, particularly in processing, as we showed in an earlier slide, with China producing about 91% of all rare earths globally. This obviously creates a significant strategic vulnerability for Western economies. As a result, we're seeing increased investment by governments and companies to diversify supply chains. For investors, rare earths represent a highly strategic market where security of supply may become just as important as price.

I guess to bring this all together, gold and silver continue to play important roles as precious metals and portfolio diversifiers. Miners can offer leveraged exposure as fundamentals improve and critical materials become increasingly central to energy security, electrification, AI infrastructure, and geopolitical competition. With that, I'll turn it over to Ed and maybe do a little Q&A.

Edward Coyne: Thank you, Ryan. Before we move on to the more formal part of the Q&A, I do want to go back to page 19. I'm going to take us back there real quickly because I think there's something there that you pointed out that's worth exploring a little further. That is when you talk about the physical market versus the equity market, and when you talked earlier about how much you should allocate to precious metals in general. Within that allocation, Ryan, what have you seen as far as how much should be in the physical market, and how much should be in the equity market? Could you walk us through that? Then I have a follow-up question to that as well.

Ryan McIntyre: Sure. Generally speaking, we recommend that clients hold a permanent 10% position in physical gold, which can be supplemented with gold equities, anywhere from 0%–5% on the gold equity side. I think, really, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the investor's risk appetite here. Gold equities are much more volatile than the underlying commodity itself. To me, that's one of the biggest differentiators on the risk side.

But the interesting part on the gold equity side is that you can get it into a good situation when gold mining equities start adding value independent of the gold price. If people are building high-return projects on a good risk-adjusted basis. They're judicious with capital spending and that kind of thing. They can really create real value over and above gold bullion.

I think if you rewind 15, 16 years ago, as you can see on this chart here on slide 19, you did see catch-up gold equities, and then they lost that relative race in terms of performance due to gold bullion, due to some, I would say, poor capital allocation decisions. What's interesting about today is that we're not seeing aggressive capital allocation decisions beyond what you'd logically do.

Ryan McIntyre: Back 15-16 years ago, you saw a lot of M&A for the sake of growth, where there really wasn't much industrial logic behind it. Today, there's a clear valuation gap that, in our opinion, slightly favors gold equities. I definitely have an allocation there, but I'd permanently have at least 10% position in gold bullion.

Edward Coyne: The follow-up to that is, what do you think it will take to see the gold equities catch up to the physical market? They've clearly been profitable for some time now, as the price has gone up. What do you think will be the catalyst there?

Ryan McIntyre: I think the main catalyst for them will continue to be disciplined capital allocation because they are earning significant free cash flow at these levels. To me, it all comes down to what they're going to do with the capital, so I think if they're disciplined, they'll be rewarded. If it's not an overt reward with future multiples, the cash will show up on the balance sheet and might also be used for buybacks.

Edward Coyne: Thank you, Ryan. Before I turn it back over to Natalie to go into the more formal part of the conversation, for those that want to speak directly to Sprott and learn more about our suite of products, I encourage you to reach out to your respective senior investment consultants, as well as our sales associates, to learn more about who we are, what we do, and more importantly, the types of products we offer to help you diversify your portfolio. With that, I'll turn it back to Natalie before we open it up for some formal Q&A.