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

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Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Geoff Kwan of RBC Capital Markets.

Geoff Kwan : Just had 1 question. I was just wondering with both on the Private Strategies side as well as your other products, kind of progress or where you’ve seen shifts in terms of the mix of investors. So for example, in the Private Strategies side, I mean you had some of them where you’ve had multiple fundraises. Kind of how has that mix of LP investors changed whether or not it’s a type of investor geography? And then also with some of the other strategies where you do get insight, are you noticing any difference in mix of institutional versus retail? Any sort of geographic differences or trends?

Whitney George: I’ll start answering that and then hand it off to John, because he’s really been on the front lines. Our private credit strategies are really designed for very large institutions. They have very high minimums and long lives. So they continue to be invested in by a fairly narrow group of very large institutions. Where I think things get really exciting is when we start talking about uranium. And John, why don’t you give a little color on that?

John Ciampaglia: Yes. Sure. Yes, I think it’s fair to say that our investor base has transformed enormously in the last 2.5 years, and it was really driven by the uranium franchise. What we have experienced is very high levels of institutional engagement on a global scale. Uranium is a category that has a lot of following right around the globe, primarily family offices, hedge funds, other specialty funds that focus on energy transition, clean tech, et cetera. What we’ve experienced in the last 2 months or so has been a broadening of that interest to more generalist funds. And a lot of these people are looking around for new investment ideas. They’re looking at uranium and saying, why is this thing up 50% year-to-date when everything else has been down.

And a lot of them have been reaching out to us directly or participating in different marketing events that we do to learn more about the category because in many cases, they don’t know a lot about it. And because of our expertise and our involvement in the sector, we’re usually their first call to help them through that learning process. So very global, very institutional. In the uranium equities, we’ve also noticed a shift from predominantly retail investors in the last few months to more, I’m going to call it, advice channels. Those would be like broker-dealers, RIAs in the United States as well as institutional investors that are now rotating capital into the uranium mining ETFs and that’s been very positive for our franchise as well.

And the last thing I would say is compared to our traditional precious metals type investors, the demographic is much younger. We often will be talking to people in their 30s or 40s that are interested in energy transition as a very large thematic versus precious metals investors, which typically tend to be 50 plus. So more global, younger, I would say, more institutional is a good summary of how our audience has changed in the last 2.5 years.

Operator: Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Whitney George for closing remarks. Sir?

Whitney George: Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for participating on the call. We appreciate your interest in Sprott and look forward to speaking to you again after our year-end results. Have a good morning.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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