Sprott Inc. (NYSE:SII) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And our proposal is a standard trading lot of uranium, which right now is USD 7.4 million. So all of these attributes that I just outlined have been proposed, have not been approved, but we’ve had initial dialogue with our regulator, and we’re hoping for some more concrete feedback on that. We are not contemplating to try the cross list in the U.S. for a few reasons. One, we do not want to have an open-ended redemption option, which may be a requirement. Two, I think it’s fair to say that it is a very politically charged commodity right now with 15 different bills working through the house that have something to do with the nuclear fuel supply chain or uranium. Obviously, a lot of these have to do with the desire to transition away from Russian suppliers, but it’s something that we just don’t want to get entangled with and distract us.

And finally, and the most important point, is that we’ve been able to raise over $2 billion in the trust, having it listed on the TSX without any trouble. And finally, the fund is also listed in the United States through the OTC Best Market, where retail investors can readily access the trust. So we don’t really think we’re losing anything by not being cross-listed and we don’t think the downside is worth the distraction right now.

Rasib Bhanji: Yes. That’s good color. I had maybe one or two quick questions. The quarter had a tax reversal this time. Could you give the context as to what led to the reversal?

Kevin Hibbert: Sure. So the — that reversal relates to the item that Mike touched on around the previously unrecorded contingent asset. Basically, a few years ago, we did an acquisition. It was a share for share exchange. And the long and short of the matter is we recovered some of those shares that were never taken up. We determined or concluded rather, the tax planning around that number this quarter. So last quarter, when we booked it, we had to set up a preliminary provision, knowing that we would potentially adjust it to the extent we were successful in our strategic tax planning, which we were this quarter. So essentially, we’ve been able to convert the accrual to a tax accrual against taxable capital gains versus ordinary income, which was the original booking that we did last quarter. So that’s the reversal you see there to bring down the effective tax rate against that tax basis.

Rasib Bhanji: Okay. Understood. This might be a stupid question, but are there any more, I guess, tax credits that you could use down the road?

Kevin Hibbert: Say that again. Are you asking if there are future tax credits coming down the road?

Rasib Bhanji : Yes, from the contingent asset.

Kevin Hibbert: No. Yes, nothing from this specific asset. Now in the past, when you looked at our numbers, you would have seen that we had some pretty meaningful future tax assets and tax pools that we could take advantage of. Those are all gone now because those were related to primarily the Private Strategies business when we first started that out, and we had acquired some pretty good tax pools we could carry forward as we generated earnings. But now that the company is now on its fifth or sixth year of consecutive earnings growth and much of the same for the foreseeable future, I don’t see a lot of meaningful tax pools coming unless there’s something we can squeeze out of future inorganic growth opportunities, but those we’re not talking about at this time.