Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:WPM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Randy Smallwood: Thank you, Brian.

Operator: [Operator instructions] Your next question is from Ralph Profiti from Eight Capital. Please ask your question.

Ralph Profiti: Good morning. Randy and Haytham, I’d like to get your thoughts on Ecuador. With Cangrejos, it’s not your first venture into the country, but just wondering how you were sort of factoring in country risk and country factors into the analysis. Is this sort of like 100 basis points type of thing when you’re looking at returns analysis on countries that sort of are still developing mining law and mining codes?

Randy Smallwood: Yeah, it is a factor that we always bring into our own valuations in terms of looking at country risk. Ecuador has obviously, even just recently, some challenges. However, it does actually have a relatively strong history on the mining side. More recently, there’s successful operations ongoing right now. Lundin Gold has had great success in the country. And so I think it really comes down to, as in a lot of places around the world, country risk is important, but also community risk is important. That’s one of the things that we saw with the Cangrejos project is that it’s got strong community support in the area, and that goes a long way towards ensuring that you’re going to get strong support at the federal government or national government level in places like that.

It is a factor that we feed into our own valuations to adjust that. If you look at our portfolio of assets, you can tell that it’s a factor that feeds into it because we don’t have a lot of investments in risky jurisdictions because that’s how we factor it in. and so, Ecuador depending on the project, we’re very comfortable in certain areas in Ecuador, as in any country. It’s always one of the more important things, and I think society is moving that way, is making sure you have strong community support.

Gary Brown: Ralph, I would just add to that. I think it’s really important to recognize that we don’t advance the vast majority of our upfront payments until there’s a construction decision made. We would expect that that would only be made in a stable political environment.

Ralph Profiti: Yes, well said. I appreciate that color. We are going to get a HUDBay Copper World Pre-Feasibility Study in Q3, and this obviously follows on the PEA. It’s looking like a very different project from the original deal that valued the stream. I’m just wondering, does the delivery of the PFS trigger renegotiation in some way on that quantum versus the original stream? Could we see something bigger or smaller depending on what the PEA looks like?

Randy Smallwood: Well, HUDBay is an important relationship with us. Peter and the team, we do a lot with them. Constancia, of course, is doing very well for us right now. We’ve had good history with HUDBay, and we intend to continue having a good, strong partnership there. The original stream was, of course, focused on the Rosemont deposit, and it had a vision in terms of production rates and stuff like that. Copper World is definitely — I think it looks like it’s probably going to wind up being slightly less, probably around two-thirds of the level of production, but one has to remember that those ounces weren’t even in the original forecast. And so, Rosemont is still in the background waiting to move forward and I think once HUDBay proves that Copper World can be operated in a safe and sound, environmentally and socially responsible manner, which we know they have the capability of, we’ve had that experience with them in numerous other locations.