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Sprott Inc. reported its Q2 2025 earnings, revealing a mixed financial performance. The company’s earnings per share (EPS) slightly missed forecasts at $0.52 compared to the expected $0.53. However, revenue significantly exceeded expectations, reaching $65.17 million against the forecasted $47.03 million. Despite the revenue beat, shares fell 5.22% to $67.5 in pre-market trading, reflecting investor concerns over the EPS miss and broader market volatility. According to InvestingPro data, Sprott maintains excellent financial health with a perfect Piotroski Score of 9, though current analysis suggests the stock is trading slightly above its Fair Value.
Key Takeaways
- Sprott’s revenue surpassed expectations by 38.57%.
- The company launched two new ETFs, enhancing its product lineup.
- Net income and assets under management grew year-over-year.
- Stock price fell 5.22% following the earnings release.
- Market sentiment affected by minor EPS miss and geopolitical tensions.
Company Performance
Sprott Inc. demonstrated strong performance in Q2 2025, with net income rising 1% year-over-year to $13.5 million. The company’s assets under management increased by 14% from Q1 2025, reaching $40 billion. This growth was supported by the launch of new ETFs and strategic investments in metals, positioning Sprott as a market leader in physical metal trusts. The company’s robust financial position is evidenced by its impressive current ratio of 3.47, indicating strong liquidity with assets well exceeding short-term obligations.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $65.17 million, up significantly from the forecasted $47.03 million.
- Earnings per share: $0.52, slightly below the forecast of $0.53.
- Adjusted EBITDA: $25.5 million, up 14% year-over-year.
- Year-to-date net income: $25.5 million, up 2% year-over-year.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Sprott’s EPS fell short of expectations by 1.89%, though revenue exceeded forecasts by 38.57%. This mixed performance highlights the company’s ability to generate substantial revenue despite missing EPS targets.
Market Reaction
Following the earnings report, Sprott’s stock declined by 5.22% to $67.5. The stock had appreciated 54% in the quarter and 64% year-to-date, indicating that the current dip may be a temporary reaction to the EPS miss and market volatility. InvestingPro data reveals an impressive 74.69% return over the past year, with the stock trading at a P/E ratio of 33.28. For deeper insights into Sprott’s valuation and growth prospects, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively to InvestingPro subscribers.
Outlook & Guidance
Sprott remains optimistic about its future, with plans to launch at least one more active ETF before the end of 2025. The company anticipates increased activity in the uranium market and continues to focus on its metals and mining expertise. Supporting this positive outlook, InvestingPro notes that Sprott has maintained dividend payments for 18 consecutive years, with a current dividend yield of 1.75%. The company’s revenue growth of 17.97% in the last twelve months further reinforces its strong market position.
Executive Commentary
Whitney George, an executive at Sprott, noted, "Metal markets are experiencing a new kind of scarcity," highlighting the company’s strategic positioning. CEO John Chapaglia remarked, "Utilities are finally starting to emerge from their hibernation," indicating potential growth in the uranium sector.
Risks and Challenges
- Geopolitical tensions affecting global trade and inventory systems.
- Metal market scarcity impacting supply chains.
- Broader market volatility, with a recent 20% correction in the S&P 500.
- Dependence on the performance of new ETFs and strategic investments.
- Potential disruptions in the uranium market.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the dynamics of the uranium market and the potential for new ETFs in the nuclear fuel cycle. Sprott executives also addressed questions on accounting for private strategy valuations and potential dividend strategies, indicating a focus on capital allocation.
Full transcript - Sprott Inc (SII) Q2 2025:
Conference Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sprott, Inc. Twenty twenty five Second Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session.
Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, 08/06/2025. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Whitney George. Please go ahead.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: Good morning everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I’m starting on slide three. On the call with me today is our CFO, Kevin Hibbert, and John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management. As you can see from slide three, all the turmoil has not aged us a bit. Our twenty twenty five second quarter results were released this morning and are available on our website where you can also find the financial statements and MD and A.
Slide four. 2025 continues to be an eventful year. Since the April 2 Liberation Day tariff announcements, we have witnessed extreme volatility in all markets. A 20% correction in the S and P 500 index, followed by a full recovery to new highs in one quarter is extreme, but not unexpected. As I noted in this quarter’s letter to shareholders, we expect more of the same going forward.
In the short term, we don’t know what comes next, and we will avoid making any predictions. Turning now to our facilities report that our assets under management increased by $5,000,000,000 in the second quarter to $40,000,000,000 Net sales continued to accelerate during the quarter due to the rising interest in multiple metals. In addition to strong AGM share of Prednisar Metals Physical Trust, we also completed two capital raises in the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, which John will speak to more about in a few minutes. Our competitive advantage strategies continued to perform well, delivering strong results in the quarter and over the 2025, and we also benefited from carried interest and performance fees crystallization in our managed equities segment. Earlier this year, we launched two new precious metals ETFs, and we are very pleased with the early results from these strategies.
The SPRAT Active Gold and Silver Miners ETF, our first actively managed ETF, and the SPRAT Silver Miners and Physical Silver ETF, have been two of our most successful ETF launches to date, hitting key AUM thresholds more quickly than any of our previous. With that, I’ll pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results. Kevin?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Thanks Whitney, and good morning everyone. I’ll start on slide five, which provides a summary of our historical AUM. AUM finished the quarter as Whitney noted at $40,000,000,000 up 14% from $35,100,000,000 as at 03/31/2025 and up 27% from $31,500,000,000 as at 12/31/2024. On a three and six months ended basis, we benefited from positive market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products and positive net inflows to our physical trusts. Slide six provides a brief look at our three six month earnings.
Net income this quarter was $13,500,000 up 1% from $13,400,000 over the same three month period last year. On a year to date basis, net income was $25,500,000 up 2% from $24,900,000 this time last year. Our flat net income performance was caused by a change in accounting requirements brought on by our new cash settled stock plan that took effect this year, largely offsetting much of the net income we otherwise generated on market appreciation and flows into our physical trusts and carried interest and performance fee crystallizations in our managed equity segment. By way of background, cash settled stock plans like the one we implemented this year require the use of mark to market and graded vest accounting under IFRS two, which creates the dual impact of accelerating the amount of vesting that occurs each period and adding market volatility to each vested amount. In our case, at a time when our stock has appreciated 54% in the quarter and 64 on a year to date basis.
In contrast, last year we had an equity settled stock program that required each vest to be valued at the original grant date fair value on a constant basis over the entire amortization period. Adjusted EBITDA on the other hand, which excludes quarterly volatility from items such as stock based compensation, FX volatility and intermittent carried interest and performance fee crystallizations was $25,500,000 for the quarter, up 14% from $22,400,000 over the same three month period last year and was $47,400,000 on a year to date basis, up 12% from $42,100,000 this time last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter and on a year to date basis benefited from higher average AUM on market value appreciation and inflows to our precious metals physical trust. However, offsetting these positives was our finance income being down due to last year’s higher syndication fees and our net commissions also being down due to last year’s copper trust IPO and higher ATM activity in our physical uranium trust. Finally, slide seven provides a few treasury and balance sheet management highlights.
And as you can see there, our cash and liquidity profile remains quite strong. For more information on our revenues, expenses, net income, adjusted EBITDA and balance sheet metrics, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation, as well as our quarterly MD and A and financial statements filed earlier this morning. With that said, I’ll pass things over to John.
John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management, Sprott Inc.: Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. We enjoyed a very strong operating results in the second quarter. As Kevin mentioned, with significant asset growth in our physical trust product suite, A combination of market appreciation and net flows contributed to this growth. Gold, silver, platinum, palladium and uranium were all solid performers in the quarter.
AUM was 31,000,000,000 as of August 1, which represents an all time high for the physical trust product suite. As the funds continue to grow in size, benefit from an important scale effect, which drives liquidity, which in turn begets liquidity. This is critical in order to attract more institutional capital as they begin to reallocate to the metal sector. Next slide please. We enjoyed our strongest sales quarter in the past three years driven by renewed interest as we said in multiple metals.
Our business tends to produce the best results when multiple metals are working at the same time. As we discussed in previous quarters, metals like silver are finally experiencing a catch up trade with gold. Silver remains undervalued relative to gold and is still well off its 2011 high. Since the beginning of 2021, our physical silver trust has captured over 100% of net flows amongst US listed peers, allowing us to grow our market share of assets meaningfully. Shifting over to uranium, our uranium trust completed two novel capital raises, which were well supported by institutional investors.
With the proceeds, SPOT has accumulated another 2,000,000 pounds of uranium, bringing our overall stockpile to 68,400,000 pounds And since the inception of SPOT four years ago, we have now purchased a total of 50,000,000 pounds of uranium. Moving to slide 10, shifting to our suite of ETFs. We’ve seen a nice recovery in AUM since the market lows in early April, assets have rebounded to 3,000,000,000. We have been extremely pleased with the initial market reception for our two latest ETF launches, the Sprott Silver Miners and Physical Silver ETF, thicker SLVR, is off to a very strong start with assets approximately $170,000,000 And just for context, there are so many new ETFs coming to market. ETFs, new ETFs in their first year of life, attract somewhere around $5,000,000 just to put it into context.
Our first actively managed ETF, the Sprott Active Gold and Silver Miners ETF is also gaining traction and is approaching $50,000,000 We believe there are strong opportunities to grow our market share with both of these new ETFs and obviously they’re very scalable. Moving to slide 11 to talk about ETF flows. Overall, it was a solid quarter despite mixed results by product type. The precious metals mining ETFs are driving most of the flows while the uranium mining ETFs have been under some redemption pressure of late. We attribute this to some investors shifting to the downstream segment of the nuclear energy sector as more market participants understand that we are entering another nuclear renaissance period.
We expect this to be transitory as the price of uranium still remains quite low in our opinion and uranium mining stocks represent good value to capture that upside. And with that, I’m gonna pass it over to Whitney.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: Thank you, John. We’ll move now to slide 12 for a look at our managed equity segment. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our managed equity strategies have performed well this year. Our flagship gold equity fund was up 15.5% during the quarter, has and gained 46% year to date. However, flows continue to lag performance, and we reported $61,000,000 in net redemptions during the quarter and $81,000,000 on a year to date basis.
One of the reasons we launched Sprott’s active gold and silver miners ETF was to capitalize on investors’ current preference for ETFs over mutual funds. GBUG allows strength of our investment team in an active strategy within an ETF wrapper, is more transparent and tax efficient for investors. We are pleased with the early response to this new strategy, which actually yesterday just surpassed $50,000,000 in AUM. Looking ahead, we expect to launch at least one additional active ETF before the 2025. I’ll turn now to the private strategies on slide 13.
Private strategies AUM was $2,100,000,000 down slightly from 03/31/2025. The decline reflects a net decrease in investments quarter over quarter, new investments less distributions to our partners across the lending and streaming and royalty segments. The team continues to assess new investment opportunities for Lending Fund III, and is actively monitoring our streaming and royalty portfolio investments. Slide 14. To recap, we’re pleased with our results over the 2025.
AUM has increased $8,500,000,000 year to date, driven by rising metal prices, as well as $1,600,000,000 in net sales. Metal markets are experiencing a new kind of scarcity, which is placing upward pressure on prices. The global trade and inventory system for some metals is starting to break down due to geopolitical tensions, protectionist trade policies, and resource nationalism. The result is greater volatility in spreads, higher regional price differences, and a long term premium on strategically essential metals. Gold has set a new series of record prices for growth this year out to a twelve year high, and platinum was recently at its highest level in ten years.
Prices may stay elevated even without significant changes in traditional supply demand metrics because it’s become harder for metals to flow freely around the world. At Sprott, we’re fortunate to be extremely well positioned to create value for our clients and our shareholders with an asset base divided between precious metals and critical materials investments. We look forward to reporting to you on our progress in the quarters ahead. That concludes our remarks for today’s call, and I’ll now turn it over to the operator for some Q and A. Operator?
Conference Operator: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press 11 again. Please stand by.
Our first question comes from Matt Lee from CG. Please go ahead.
Matt Lee, Analyst, CG: Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe starting with a housekeeping one. Can I just ask you how you determine the market value changes in private strategies? Like is it that market to market or is it recognized when underlying investments reach maturity?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Hey, Matt, it’s Kevin here. Good question. So the accounting requires because they’re loans, we have to use pull to par accounting. So it’s basically amortized cost, but we also believe that amortized cost is a reasonable proxy for market.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: But some of them
Matt Lee, Analyst, CG: have like equity components, In the private strategies and inevitably, you know, if it’s gold related and given how well the gold market’s done, you know, in theory, there’s some market appreciation that’s not captured in that market value change.
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Well, the market, so when you’re dealing with those types of equity kickers, those equity kickers actually come out and then you have the pull to par accounting that’ll get you back up to that ultimate amortized cost value. So in times like this, to your point where the market value has gone up a fair bit, you will see some of that, but the equity kickers tend to make up us relatively smaller portion of the overall value of those loans. I got it. That’s helpful. And then maybe can you just give
Matt Lee, Analyst, CG: us an idea of what you’re seeing in the uranium market in general? Spot market does seem to have pulled back a bit in the last month. But if you read the news, U. S. Executive orders, international demand both seem to point towards kind of an upswing.
Is that kind of what you mean when you’re saying there’s gonna be a nuclear renaissance on the way?
John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management, Sprott Inc.: Yeah. Hey, Matt. It’s John. Yeah, sure. I’d love to pick up on that.
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say that the there’s been kind of a disconnect between the physical uranium market and the overwhelming shift of energy policy support back to nuclear energy over the last three years. Most of that disconnect has been in the last twelve months and it’s been related to largely uncertainty around obviously the incoming administration. It was also in part to the price of uranium jumping very sharply in 2023 and early twenty twenty four, which I think made some utilities cautious about chasing the price. Now that we have some clarity in terms of the Trump administration’s position with the four executive orders, which were incredibly holistic and beneficial for the sector, as well as clarity on tariffs, which were not applied to uranium products or related fuel services. I think it’s, we’re really set up right now for utilities to come back to market.
And I’ll just share a quick stat with you, which I think is very important. The industry basically operates through long term purchase agreements and to August the fourth year to date, the industry has signed a grand total of £30,000,000 of contracts for future delivery. That’s about one third of replacement rate so far year to date. So it really signals that utilities have not been actively buying. They’ve been on the sidelines because of all the distraction and noise.
But we just yesterday got an early sign that a Korean utility came to market through a public RFP process for almost 9,000,000 pounds, of uranium that they’re looking for. And we’re now moving into the seasonal start of the contracting cycle, which starts with the World Nuclear Association Conference, which is gonna start the September. So we think that the utilities are finally starting to emerge from their hibernation and the price and the term market and the spot market should respond accordingly to that.
Matt Lee, Analyst, CG: Okay. That’s very helpful. Thanks for the robust answer.
Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Etienne Ricard from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Etienne Ricard, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Thank you and good morning. I’d like to cover copper. The physical trust is trading at quite a discount to NAV. I’m curious, what do you think needs to happen for this discount to narrow? And more broadly, how is the current volatility to trade policies impacting demand for the copper trust?
John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management, Sprott Inc.: Yeah, hi, Jan, it’s John. I’ll cover that. Well, the most notable thing about the copper market, which I’ll start with, is obviously been up until a few days ago, the dislocation between CME and LME prices. And that was obviously due to uncertainty and tariff threats where CME prices meaning copper stored in The US warehouse was trading about 30% higher than copper sitting in a European warehouse. That obviously is unwound since in the last few days as tariffs were not applied as broadly as considered.
So that dislocation between the two markets is now unwound. That has obviously created a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress for traders and end users. With respect to the Copper Trust, yes, we acknowledge it is trading at a discount that we’re clearly not happy with. It’s approximately 20% discount, which is a real anomaly and outlier relative to our other funds. One of the initiatives that is underway right now is that we have filed with the New York Stock Exchange an application to the SEC to duly list the vehicle.
And part of the dual listing would envision a more robust and flexible redemption option. And that physical redemption and cash redemption option, if approved, would in our opinion, in our experience act as a very powerful incentive to close that discount to NAV. So we are obviously still in kind of a quiet period with the SEC, but that is our best effort to address the product and help to tighten that discount. We have had an institution that has been under some stress that has been selling shares that has also, I think exacerbated the situation.
Etienne Ricard, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Thank you, John. And the question maybe for Kevin, on operating expenses, can you remind us what incremental margins Sprott could achieve given the rising net flows?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Sorry, I don’t understand the question.
Etienne Ricard, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Well, so currently you’re generating about 60% adjusted EBITDA margins. How do you think about incremental margins as you raise more AUM?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Okay. Got you. Okay. Thanks for that. Well, I think one of the things that can help you or any analyst or investor looking at the story to get a sense of what’s left as far as margin expansion opportunities.
As the earnings base grows and to the extent that that growth is coming primarily from our exchange listed product segment, what will just happen is you’ll see a greater proportion of that business making up the consolidated results. And if you just look at the margins of that business, it’s a little north of 80%. So, other words, as that business continues to grow and make up a bigger proportion of our overall consolidated results, you should see that 60% margin climbing higher. In theory, if the exchange listed products segment made up a significantly bigger portion of the overall business, then you’d see the number getting closer to that 80% number there. But as Whitney’s mentioned, over the last few quarters, we do reinvest in the business to continue to achieve that growth.
And so that will offset that climb a fair bit as well. So basically, if there was a high end, you’re probably looking at somewhere a little closer to where the exchange listed businesses right now, which is I think it’s page 14 of the shareholders report. And then the low end would be to the extent the managed equities business became a bigger portion since that’s the lower margin segment that we’d have.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: I’d add to that, we would like to grow the lower margin businesses because they carry higher fees on AUM. So we would trade off margin expansion for absolute net income growth for sure. But we’ve been blessed by having these physical trusts do very well, and it’s certainly our hope that other divisions catch up at some point.
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: And then sorry to pile on with that, that was another good point on Whitney’s end that those businesses are also where all the carry and performance fees come from.
Etienne Ricard, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Thank you very much.
Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Graham Ryding from TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Hi. Good morning. Maybe I could start on that carried interest performance fees. Can you just give us some color on like maybe what the contribution was in the quarter from I think there was one fund that you, that it was sort of in a windup and then there was also some contribution from your active mining equities fund. Can you maybe give us some color on the mix?
Yeah,
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: sure. It’s Kevin here, Graham. How’s it going? So, I’d say probably roughly about sixty five percent sixty five to 70% -ish would have come from that legacy exploration LP. And the rest would have come from our resource exploration and development and active equity fund.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay. And then on that, it looked like the sort of the payout or the compensation payout was quite low relative to the, I think 15,000,000 in total carrying interest performance Any reason why that was so low?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Yeah, because it’s from that, the majority of it was from that legacy LP when we reimagined and restructured the business and exited those areas, we were left with those exploration LPs that we’re now harvesting for cash and in the process of closing down. So the folks that would have otherwise had a bigger claim on that P and L are no longer here. So, we’re in the enviable position of retaining it for our shareholders. And that’s pretty much the reason.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And then my last question on this theme is just, can you give us any sort of color on sort of outlook, maybe multiyear or next year, how you’re thinking about, you know, the outlook for current interest or performance fees? Because if I look historically, you know, I think you’re averaging about 3% of your net fees would come from carried interest or performance fees.
But this quarter was obviously a big outlier, so, it doesn’t feel like we should be using this as a run rate. But can you give us any sort of color on what your expectations are?
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: Do you want me to take that, Kevin?
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Yeah, sure, Whitney.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: So generating performance fees carried interest in the second quarter is a bit unusual. We have one small fund. It’s an exploration partners fund that crystallizes performance fees semi annually, but most of our funds in managed equities calculate them and get them at year end. So that’s kind of the timing of where most of these come, and then of course there’s the lending franchise, and those are long term partnerships, and we earn those fees at the end of those partnerships. So iWending Fund II will wind up sometime maybe late next year, and that’s when those lumpy performance or carried interest would show up, but I think it’d be very hard, I certainly wouldn’t try and model them in on a long term basis.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay. Understood. And then my last question, if I could be a bit greedy here, just flows quarter to date. It looks like I’m estimating about a 100,000,000 or just north of a 100,000,000. Does that sound right?
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: I
Mike Kozak, Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: don’t John, do
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: you want to take that?
John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management, Sprott Inc.: Yeah. Hey, Graham. I don’t have the number in front of me. You know, I I I think it’s fair to say that with heightened volatility in metals markets, which is what we’ve been experiencing, obviously, for the last few months, that does put us in a stronger position to issue new equity, because of the requirement we need to, achieve, which is issued above NAV. So that volatility while markets and traders don’t like it, it’s actually positive for our business.
And we have seen pretty consistent sales and it seems as though platinum carries the baton for a few weeks and then it goes to silver and then it goes to gold. And I think that’s what’s really helped our business is that we’ve had multiple metals kind of pulling the load and contributing here. So I think that’s why we’ve had such good sales in the last four months or so.
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Okay. And just remind me, Graham, you were saying, what number did you say, Graham? You said a 100, you have roughly?
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Yeah. For your exchange listed products, had just over a 100,000,000 recorded, like, basically through July.
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Yeah. We’re we’re we’re probably we’re probably a a little higher than that.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: On the other hand, we have had redemptions in some of our ETFs, particularly uranium ETFs. So that’s a little bit of an offset that might bring you down a bit.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay.
Kevin Hibbert, CFO, Sprott Inc.: Yeah. So, the offset that Whitney sorry. I was just gonna say, Graham, with the offsets Whitney talked about and what you’re probably missing, you probably want to be a little closer to 150.
Graham Ryding, Analyst, TD Securities: Okay. Sounds good.
Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.
Mike Kozak, Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Yes, good morning, Whitney, John and Kevin. Just two questions for me. The first one maybe just at a higher level. You kind of got John, alluded to it just now, but you have multiple metals kind of firing on all cylinders, gold at all time highs. Silver, I think made a fourteen year high a couple of weeks ago.
And then you guys reported a very nice cash build in the second quarter, I believe about 20,000,000 in free cash flow in Q2. How you think kind of at the corporate level about the dividend policy? Would you ever consider a special dividend when you have multiple metals running like this?
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: We brought that up with a lot of our shareholders. Most of them don’t like special dividends. I’ve always thought that if, particularly when we’ve got performance fees or carried interest or one off kind of windfalls, might be a way to distribute to shareholders. But I think the current thinking is that we’re going to continue to maintain a high payout on our earnings. And if things persist and continue to grow, certainly you should expect the dividend to grow.
We are coming into a difficult period for markets in general, and so we remain committed to buying shares back opportunistically, and there are always a few items worth looking at in the acquisition area, but none significant, I would say, at this point.
Mike Kozak, Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay, thanks. And then my second question, John, you kind of mentioned on the call and I would agree with you that rightly or wrongly the interest in the last couple months has been elsewhere in the nuclear fuel cycle, specifically with the conversion enrichments, some of the SMR tech companies. My question is, you know, would you consider an ETF that tracks that section of fuel cycle? I certainly think it would be well received in current market conditions.
John Chapaglia, CEO, Sprott Asset Management, Sprott Inc.: Yeah. Hi, Mike. Nice to nice to chat. Yeah. Look, I mean, we’re we’re obviously very opportunistic and innovative at Sprott.
I I think our track record confirms that and we’re always looking for new ideas. You know, we have strict criteria around what we will do and not do. ETFs are very crowded. So the last thing we wanna do is to create another me too product. But we do acknowledge that the interest in space has shifted somewhat.
Some of those stocks have gotten way ahead of themselves. So we have to be kind of mindful of what people are chasing, but yeah, we’re always open to different ideas, but we don’t also want to stray out of our lane, which I think has been very helpful. And it allows us to really build on our core strengths and our competitive advantages.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: Yeah, if we could find a way to make something better that brings our mining expertise to bear, that’s certainly something we’d look at. But again, we want to be focused on what we think we’re best at, and that’s in metals and mining.
Mike Kozak, Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay, very good. Thanks. That’s it for me. I’ll turn it back.
Conference Operator: Thank you. Please stand by. Okay. I’m showing no further questions at this time. This concludes the question and answer session.
I would now like to turn it back to Whitney George for closing remarks.
Whitney George, Executive (likely President/Chairman), Sprott Inc.: Thank you everyone for participating in this call. We appreciate your interest in SPRAT and look forward to speaking to you again after our third quarter results. Have a great day.
Conference Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.
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