Randy Smallwood: Brian, given that it’s, what I would call a sweep tax, I think it needs to operate like that in a sense to allow any other taxes that have been paid to be sort of deducted off of what that works. I’m just looking at the mechanics of it. But, until we see legislation, it’s really tough to be firm on that. But, that sounds like it makes sense in terms of them having to wait the subsequent years and you get that 18-month lag before you actually calculate it because it’s going to look at whatever as I said, it’s like a sweep tax.
Brian MacArthur: Great. That’s very helpful to think about it that way. And the other thing is in the MD&A, you talk about how it works in Luxembourg. There’s also I guess, you had stuff in Netherlands and Barbados. Is there anything there that changes going forward? I mean, you talked about Cayman and Luxembourg, but it didn’t mention the other two?
Gary Brown: No. I think we’ve outlined all of the potentially applicable jurisdictions.
Brian MacArthur: Great. Thanks very much. Sorry, to go through tax, but just trying to get this clear on a cash basis is very helpful.
Randy Smallwood: Yes.
Gary Brown: Thanks, Brian.
Randy Smallwood: That’s the only question, Brian, on tax?
Brian MacArthur: Okay. Thanks. I don’t think we want to do more tax, do we?
Randy Smallwood: No.
Brian MacArthur: Thanks.
Randy Smallwood: Thanks, Brian.
Operator: Your next question comes from John Tumazos from John Tumazos Independent. Please go ahead.
John Tumazos: Congratulations on the Page 39 table laying out the next $2 billion to invest in such good projects. In the good projects you invested in 2023. I wish I could shine the shoes of your corporate development guys. Maybe they deserve an extra big bonus.
Randy Smallwood: Well, I will tell you that it’s an entire team effort here. It’s not, Haytham, doesn’t get all the credit.
Haytham Hodaly: But I do like how you think, John.
John Tumazos: So, Randy, when I was sitting in the new discoveries, seminar last Wednesday at PDAC and a year ago, maybe half of the discoveries I thought weren’t discoveries or not documented yet. And maybe one big discovery is AngloGold silica, Northwest of Vegas, which Aldias and Origin have the royalty on, and the East Goldie Cisco has the royalty on. And in the context of sort of a not a great stream of new discoveries, your accomplishments in locking up all these deals is even more superhuman. If you can’t sustain this pace of deal generation, you’re getting bigger and generating so much cash. Do you think you’d simply let cash accumulate on the balance sheet or increase the dividend or buyback shares or buy royalties or other royalty companies? What will you do if you can’t sustain the deal generation pace? I don’t think you’re going to lower your quality standards.
Randy Smallwood: Well, and that’s, John, excellent point, and I strongly agree with you. One of the challenges this isn’t a number that’s out there, but what we have run into over the last few years is we’re putting out a lot less IOVs, Indications of Value. And so, for an asset to actually make it to the IOV level for us at Wheaton, it has to show clear standards in terms of operating margins and responsible site and suitable risks all the way across the Board in terms of getting to that stage. And I can tell you for the last four years, it’s less and less and less. We’re not seeing as many good quality projects out there. And I’m fearful for the industry in the sense that there’s just not a lot of risk capital out there, so there’s not a lot of exploration and that means there’s just not a lot of good new discoveries that we see coming down the pipe.
It’s getting to be a tighter and tighter market. I think in that space, the number of the success that we had last year where we more acquisitions than ever before, I mean, I just really do hand that to the team in terms of the work that we did on pushing that forward. A lot of those transactions were with people or companies that we’ve worked with in the past, and that really does come down to working on being a partner of choice. It’s something that we really strive to be here at Wheaton. And so, I don’t know, Haytham, you want to add any more on the opportunity set and then I’ll come back in and talk about where the cash is going.
Haytham Hodaly: Sure. Thanks, Randy. And good questions, John. I think I will say what you’re seeing now, John, in terms of a lack of quality is something we actually saw a few years ago. So, about half a dozen years ago, we had a definite focus to try and find the best development stage opportunities that we could actually get involved in. And as you saw over the last five years, we’ve got like 14 or 15 development stage opportunities right now that we’re actually involved in. And there’s three or four of them coming into production here in the next 12 months to 24 months. So, we did have a time line where we looked and said, okay, let’s work on our near-term growth, let’s work on our medium term growth, let’s have some optionality in our longer term growth.
And we’ve accomplished that. So, we do think that there’s still opportunities out there. There are far and few between, you are right. But Randy’s comment is exactly right. Building the relationships and getting that repeat business. And that’s going to be the key going forward is to be a partner for us.
