Pierre Lassonde: Gold Is Replacing the Dollar & Will Hit $17,250 by 2030
Summary
Gold as a Reserve Currency: Pierre Lassonde discusses the resurgence of gold as a reserve currency, predicting it could reach $17,250 by 2030, driven by central banks increasing their gold reserves and a declining role of the US dollar.
Market Dynamics: The podcast highlights the similarities between the current gold bull market and the 1970s, emphasizing deteriorating US finances, anti-dollar sentiment, and declining Fed credibility as key drivers.
Global Monetary Regime Shift: Lassonde suggests a potential shift in the global monetary regime, with central banks, especially in Asia, reducing dollar reserves in favor of gold, signaling a move away from the dollar standard.
Gold Royalty Model: The Franco Nevada gold royalty model is praised for its powerful business model, offering exposure to gold price increases without the associated costs of mining operations.
Silver Market Outlook: Lassonde views silver as the "poor man's gold" and predicts it will outperform gold in the final phase of the bull market, driven by both industrial demand and its role as a monetary asset.
Investment Opportunities: The discussion touches on the undervaluation of gold stocks despite rising gold prices, suggesting significant potential for increased public and institutional participation in the sector.
Company Insights: Lassonde shares insights on strategic investments and partnerships, highlighting the importance of land optionality and long-term resource potential in mining ventures.
Transcript
It took 50 years to get to come back. But we are living through a lifechanging period where gold is coming back as a reserve currency. We will see gold at 17,250. [Music] If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest in physical gold and silver, check out Hardass Assets Alliance at hardassetsalliance.com. Greetings and welcome to our Wealthy on Show. My name is Trey Reich and we're visiting today with Pierre Lassan. Pierre's contributions in the gold space stretch from co-founding Franco Nevada in 1985, I believe, with partner Seymour Shoulick and in the process essentially inventing the gold royalty space all the way to developing the autonomous Land Curve, which has become the industry standard and explaining at least on the back of a napkin the investment cycle of developing a gold mine. Um, one of the most overused monikers I think in the investment business is legend. Uh, and all I can say is Pierre is not legendary in the gold business. He transcends that title. Pierre is the gold business. So Pierre, thanks for joining us today. I appreciate it. I agree. Pleasure. A tree. Always a pleasure. Uh, because you're so generous with your time uh, and you're sort of a defender of the gold industry. ambassador would be a better word. You do a lot of interviews and I've watched some of them recently and I really enjoyed the one with Jimmy Connor uh where you talked about your first $2 million gold investment. It was a little bit like a Gisham novel. I was sort of on the end of my chair and we won't go into that because you just talked about it. But for wealthy viewers, I really recommend that you tune in to Jimmy's interview. So I wanted to start with sort of a different bent maybe maybe a little lighter and uh I thought of a bench clearing statement that I could ask you since you've been doing this for four decades uh and you've seen a lot of gold bull markets on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate the current gold bull market? How does it stack up against prior cycles? So the 1970 1980 bull market was uh one of the greatest in the last 100 years and uh as you know the gold price went from $35 in 1971 in August 1971 to $800 in January 1980 and uh most of that occurred in the last four years. what we're living today through is very very similar to that bull market. So it's, you know, when you think about it, it it took 50 years to get to come back, but we are living through a lifechanging period where gold is coming back as a reserve currency and we're seeing it with the central banks. We're seeing it with uh you know uh the China, the Shanghai gold exchange. uh the devaluation of all the currencies against gold and um the fact that the the US is not the US dollar in particular is not fulfilling its role as the reserve of last currency. So the if you look at the last four years 1976 1980 of the 70 bull market gold went from $90 to $800 and I think we're in the equivalent year 1976 right now of that four-year bull market. I think we have three years to go and the price is going to go a lot higher. Interesting. Now over the decades and you and I have talked about this you know both in writing and in person there's really the three big fundamentals I call them and that are driving the gold trade and they're anti-doll sentiment deterior deteriorating US finances and declining Fed credibility and we've all been talking about them you know for 20 years and we got a good run and obviously 2011 but after all these years it certainly certainly feels different this time. Do you do you agree? Yes, I agree. And it reminds me of the quote from Ernest Hemingway when he was asked, "How did you go bankrupt?" And he said, "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." Mhm. And what you're referring to is for the gradual. It it takes years and years and years to get to a point where you go bankrupt. Now, the US is not going to go bankrupt because it can print its own money. But the point though, Trey, is that it's not just the US. It's the entire G20 who the amount of debt that they've generated over the past, you know, five years is absolutely unprecedented and not a single one of them can deal with it in the long run. Take the US. Okay, the US GDP in 1980 was 7 trillion and they had less than a trillion dollars of debt. They had $98 billion. 20 years later in 2000, the US GDP doubled to 14 trillion and the debt barely well the debt went from 1 trillion to 5 trillion. Mhm. Okay. Since 2000, the last 24 years, the GDP has again doubled to 14 trillion. The debt has gone from 5 to 37.2 trillion. Okay. But it's not as I said just the US, Canada is in the same deep car. France and like just look around all the countries have the same issue. Entitlement is taking up 80% of the budget. Interest is now adding up to it and they're getting squeezed everywhere. and they double down by increasing on the debt. If you look at the US deficit for the next four years as you know the big beautiful bill of Mr. Trump, it's going to add another 1.6 trillion of debt. Well, the and he's pushing the federal federal chairman to drop interest rate. Why? Because he, you know, he's trying to refinance all this debt at one or 2%, not at five or six or 7%. M but you can be sure the long end of the the yield curve is going to go up and it's called financial repression you know that's what he's doing and they're all in the same boat all the country and that is why gold when you look at gold against all currency it's in a bull market against all currency and that's the definition of a pure gold bull market wealthon together with SCP resource finance will be hosting a global silver conference this October in Toronto Eric Sprat will be delivering the keynote and it promises to be a landmark gathering for silver investors. You can find out more in the details in the description below. Do you think it's too much to say that we're on the cusp of developing a new global monetary regime? That the dollar standard system is in the rearview mirror in terms of dominance. Not that it'll go away, but you know, we've read about the bricks for 20 years. We've read about I remember the GGC remember the Gulf Cooperation Council and nothing's ever come of this stuff and there's Shanghai Accords and all this stuff but nothing ever happens but it certainly feels that since the freezing of Russian FX reserves that that we really are developing a new global monetary regime. Do do you think that's overstating it? No, it's not overstating it in a sense that if you look at central banks, they have been huge buyers of gold. Uh, you know, about 1,200 tons for the past three years, which is a third of mine, new mine production. It's enormous. Has an enormous impact on the gold price. And at the same time if you look at the percentage of dollar in central bank's reserve it's gone down from 72% back in you know like four years ago 5 years ago 2020 down to less than 58% while the gold reserve have more than double o over that same period of time. So the central banks particularly China, India but it's also true of Turkey, Poland you know most of the central banks particularly in Asia they're getting rid they're getting rid of their dollars and they're buying gold because they don't want to have you know like uh a a reserve currency that's the debt of another country. Mhm. The beauty of gold is that it's a currency that is not the death of someone else. It's by itself. So that's what they're doing. And in that respect, there's a new world order. At the same time as the Chinese are developing a competing system to the Swift system to try to get out of the American grips of the of the entire world monetary system and that is getting you know traction from countries in Africa in India and uh so yes the the the there is a change in the world order and you know the uh uh current administration is trying to put the boot to everybody And you know, nobody likes it. Nobody likes to be kicked in the shin and um they try to develop some alternative to, you know, what's on offer. So other than uh central bank gold reserves, do you believe and I'm leading question here as I do that gold could actually play a role in the new monetary regime, say a cover clause to balance sheets or something like that? um not in the US. Uh what they may do is I call it a sleigh of hen is that the gold that's in Fort Knox which is held by the treasury uh may be passed on to uh another arm of the government and they they can declare a $1 trillion one-time benefit so that like the their books are like you know in in the positive but it's a sle of hand. it it doesn't mean anything and in in which case they would revalue uh their gold to you know I don't know 35 or 3000 3,800 whatever the number is um I think that would give gold even more of um the shine of a you know like a reserve currency but in terms of uh an alternate currency um you know the shackles of gold like there's not one politician that will want to have the shackles of gold because at that point they can't spend money anymore. You know, all the poor barreling that they do and everything else, they can't spend it. So, I don't think that's going to go that way. Right. And uh before we change directions a little bit, I just interpolated from what you said about being in 1976 sort of what inning are we in? That sort of implies that you wouldn't be surprised if gold exceeded 10,000 bucks an ounce over the next three years. No, actually uh yesterday I gave a speech at the grants conference in New York and I predicted that we will see gold at 17,250 and and did you put a time frame on that or that's just between between now and 2030? Wow. Incredible. Did was there a murmur in the room? Yeah, sort of. Um, you know, some people don't quite believe me, of course, and I know it's hard to comprehend, right? But when you've lived through the 1970s, it was hard to comprehend $800 gold as well, right? Okay. And and what happens is a bit of a mania in the last 6 months to a year. I don't think that you're going to have 17,250 for 2, three, four, five years. Uh but I think you will have that number posted somewhere sometime. Excellent. And um you know part of it is has to do with China with the Shanghai gold exchange becoming so prominent and so much of the gold moving to China. I think that at the end of the day what will decide the gold price is not going to be America anymore. It's going to be China and the Shanghai gold exchange will turn out to be more a bit of a casino type atmosphere. And in that kind of atmosphere, you could see prices well above 17,000. That's incredible. Um I uh sorry I missed the conference. Uh you'll have to we'll have to have to tell me about it a little later. So, because it's silver week here at Wealthon and I scheduled you in the middle of uh silver week because you were available, I have to ask you, I I have never really heard you talk about silver, but I've read a little bit about uh some of the things that you've said. What's your view on silver? Is it an important asset? Well, silver has always been uh the poor man's gold, as they call it. Okay. And uh in the last phase of the the the gold bull market, it actually outperforms gold. So I think that over the next four years, silver is going to do really really well. Um you know, as a as a a commercial metal, it has application. So you know, like people use them actually for solar panel and all kinds of different usage. uh but also it's used as a monetary asset but not by the central banks. Okay? Like you know people want to own it on a as a as the poor man's gold because you know it's much easier to buy a silver a silver bar than a gold bar. The price is like a little different. Um but it is not per se a monetary asset. Gotcha. And are you uh in the slingshot camp? In other words, if you think gold's going that high, there are a lot of people who uh are silver enthusiasts who think once we get through 50, 100 is, you know, a couple of heartbeats away, you know, in the slingshot concept that it comes up slower, but then it it whips out faster. Yeah, I would not discount it at all. I I think that there's a good possibility that that happens. Indeed. Terrific. Well, for folks who are interested in silver, uh I want to remind everyone that we're hosting an all day silver conference at the Shangrila Hotel in Toronto on Thursday, October 23rd, and we'll be playing a virtual replay of that. So, for viewers who are interested in silver, uh please uh go to the description below and check out the links on how you can register uh for the silver conference both in person and virtually. Uh, additionally, we'll be publishing a silver report which is on my desk right now and I'm finalizing uh to bring everybody up to date on how we're looking at the silver market over the next two to three years. So, um, you probably get tired of this question, but it's difficult, uh, when we're exposing you to a viewing audience not to ask. Could you just give me, you know, a few minutes on the beauty of the gold royalty model and uh, you know, the brilliance of the Franco Nevada approach. Um, certainly with with great pleasure. I mean, um, I talked a bit about it, uh, yesterday as well, and, um, uh, you know, not because I and my partner invented it, but I I think it's the b the best business model ever ever invented. Mhm. And uh, why it is so powerful and it took me probably five to seven years to understand how powerful that business model was. So it was not like, you know, it was on the first day like ding, you know, it it it took a while to really understand it. It's the power of optionality. So when you buy a pure royalty like a 4% NSR on Gold Strike, your first money is your last money ever, ever, ever. There's no capital cost. There's no capex. There's no operating costs. There's no drilling cost, exploration cost. There's no cost whatsoever. And yet you get exposed to upside in the gold price, which is your price optionality. If the gold price goes up 50%. Your revenue goes up 50%, your bottom line goes up 50%. It's direct there. There's no cost. and you get exposed to land optionality. And this is what happened at Ghost Strike. You know, the original resource was about 4 500,000 ounces of resource. They had a couple hundred thousand of reserve and then they found 50 million ounces. All right. So, what I paid 2 million became a billion dollar overnight and it's already paid out a billion, too. And it's probably another billion left to be paid. And that kind of optionality is worth enormous amount of money. And yet no one no analyst has ever been able to calculate what it's worth for the shareholders. But the shareholders have figured it out. And that's why the stock is trading at two times NEV because it's not just the stream that you get, but it's that optionality that is embedded in the 10 million acres of land that the company has. So the and you can operate the whole company. The company today is worth the c market cap is 42 billion US and we have 42 employees. So think about this. Each employee is worth US1 billion in market cap. Give me another company that's got that kind of ratio. Mhm. It's absolutely unbelievable. Is David Harquil still one of the 42 or have you taken out of Yeah, David is chair. Uhuh. He gets he gets my vote. So So yeah, he's a fabulous guy. He's the guy that in 2015 16 realized that the big companies like the Glen Core, the tech were all overinded and the banks had called the loan and they needed to repay and he went to see all of them and said, "Can I offer you money?" Mhm. And they said yes. And we ended up with royalties on some of the best I call them gold mines of the world because uh these copper gold mine they last for 50 years. So they turn out to be the best gold mine in the world because of duration and duration expose you to price optionality over 50 years. Right. And that's the beauty of duration. Mhm. This was about what seven years ago when he was making the very big uh deals, you know, the multi multi-deade deals. Seven and eight years ago. 2014 15. Yeah. We we did Cobbury Panama. We did um Candelaria uh with Londinine Mining that they were buying from Freeport because Freeport needed money. Mhm. Uh we did the Glen Core deal in Peru and Tapakai. We did uh also in Peru with tech um uh what's the uh um the mine uh they will come back to me. But yes th those were incredible deal uh and they all happened within a two three-year period. And just for a footnote, how have you been pleased with the uh the oil sands uh program that was also about a year or two? Uh I think that the oil sand uh investment has been very good. Uh again, because it's got a long duration, you don't have to put any money in exploration. It's all there. And uh the returns have been good. uh with $62 a barrel, you know, the differential of course in Canadian dollar is like $90. So, we're still getting like really good return. Um and uh but we are very careful not to increase that to more than 15, maximum 20% of our revenue. If you have any questions about how to navigate the current environment, Wealthon can help connect you with a vetted advisor to get a free portfolio review. Just click the link in the description below or head to wealthon.comfree. There's no obligation and it will just take a few minutes of your time. Again, that's wealthy.comfree. Gotcha. So, um, gold averaged in 2024 about 23.89 and in the first quarter it was 2858. in the second quarter 32.86 86 and now in the third quarter 3455 and you know Agniko Eagle and some of the other really well-run companies are showing the leverage I think to the gold price uh in earnings and and performance but I am a bit surprised that as a whole the industry hasn't started to put up box car earnings numbers and I'm familiar with the concept of h highgrading and having to get all that back in balance and eating through some of the ways that uh earnings were sustained in the past. But aren't you a bit surprised that uh the we haven't had the earnings breakout that those types of gold price increases would uh project? Well, I think you're going to see that this quarter because the be my question. When are we going to see it? You think? I think this quarter because the margins are now close to $2,000 an ounce net. So you take, you know, Nikico Eagle, I they're gonna post like probably two three billion of free cash flow this quarter. Like, you know, some really impressive numbers. Mhm. And that will be throughout the industry. What what actually surprised me the most is the fact that uh public participation is still incredibly low, right? When you look at the GDX number of shares outstanding, it's at an all-time low. I mean, think about this. The gold price has gone up like three times in the last like eight years. And yet the GDX and the GDXJ shares outstanding is at an all-time low. That to me blows me away. Mhm. Like the picture in my mind. I can see the graph. It basically is the opposite of uh uh garden. It's like this. Okay. And it's like right at the bottom here. And you say like so these people probably bought the GDX and you know like four, five, six, seven years ago and it's gone down and now that it's gone back up they're selling and I don't know what they're buying crypto or whatever but like all it tells me is that public participation is incredibly low, right? And also in June I did a road show for um Orla in Europe. I went to Paris, London with management and I had not done a road show in probably like 10 years. I wanted to connect directly with portfolio managers, see what they're looking for, understand uh you know their how they managed, how they think about gold and I was really surprised out of the 20 that I saw only one had any gold stocks in their portfolio in the company or the personal portfolio? Uh no no these were all institutional portfolios. Uhhuh. And they didn't have any gold stocks. No. Except for one. Uhhuh. Wow. That's incredible. And so when we when ano sold their Ora, you know, shares like a few weeks ago, they were all buyers. Mhm. Okay. Like they were all they love the story. They they were all buyers. But it just goes to show you that not only the public is not in the goal but if you look at all the institutions in Canada and like even more in the US the participation is like that much and it won't require that much to come in the sector to really blow out the value as you know it's still a small sector I mean the whole gold sector is like a couple hundred billion or I don't know what the number is today but it's not that big right and it doesn't require enor enormous amount of money to like, you know, really go to the moon. So, I guess if you add up all the royalty company and everything else, we're probably at 500 billion. Uh, but it's still like not even the market cap of Tesla. And it's about onetenth of Nvidia. So, yeah, if if uh you know, gold stocks have moved and I think viewers are conscious of the fact, I'm sure you're aware, the GDX and GDXJ are up about 120% this year. So early in the year at a 5% discount rate, which is what the street uses and we know is a really bad number. It should probably be two or three times that to properly adjust for risk, especially where mines are these days. But using the Wall Street standard of a 5% discount rate, you know, the medium tier producers were probably at 0.5 of NAV at the beginning of the year and they're approaching one times NAV as we speak. Um, do do you think they're still cheap? They're they're not onetime NEV at $3,800 gold. Oh, they're not. Okay. No, no, no, they're still cheap. Okay. So, and if you look at their power if you look at their power of cash generation, it's even more. So, they're trading at like, you know, three times cash flow. Okay. Well, you know, every other industry is trading at anywhere from 10 to 12 to 15. So, it's just that the $3,800 gold price hasn't been factored in yet. That is correct. And and the cap capacity of the industry to generate enormous amount of cash flow at $3,800. That's not in the in the price yet. Okay. And so, this is something we have looked forward to for third and fourth quarter earnings this year. That is correct. So I, you know, you talk a lot about optionality and I'm sure you know Dave Iben at Copernick and uh I think he's one of the smartest gold investors out there and you know he favors really really large deposits. I think he owns most of them. You know, if you take the very largest deposit, even pebble, you know, which is had a lot of difficulty, but he doesn't care. It's a large deposits he thinks and he has a unique way of thinking of things that the discount methodology that the street and many investors use. You mentioned the professional investors in Europe. Um, and his view is that that's the wrong way to look at it. that if you use discount models on these super gargantuan size deposits, you're missing the point because by 10 years from now, they're all valued at zero. Mhm. Do do you agree with that that the you know the industry way of looking at it is kind of backwards? Uh it's been a a recurring problem in the mining industry for 50 years. Okay. And uh you know the MBAs they go in there and they do NEV and uh because they they look at it as just another industrial business. Mhm. The reality is that a 50 to 100year deposit the NEV will be the same next year, the year after, the year after and you go on and on and on because they have duration that is way beyond anything that an NAV can figure out. Right? So, he's absolutely right that, you know, a a 50-year deposit ought to be worth a lot more than just the NEV discounted at 5% today's gold price, right? The problem is nobody's going to pay for it because of the standards or because no one wants to take the risk or because the sector is unpopular. Well, mostly because, you know, it's almost impossible to go to a board and say, "Well, this deposit's going to last 100 years and we're going to pay, you know, like two times NEV." And they're going to say, "Well, why?" Because like the cash flow we're going to get is only like this for the next 20 years, and that's what it's worth. And at the end of the day, they don't trade for what they're really, really worth. And BHP actually did a study of their deposit that have lasted 50 to you know over 50 years and what they've shown is that whatever internal rate of return they use to put them in a production the reality over 50 years they got twice that much. Mhm. Okay. So what was a 15% rate of return turned out to be a 30% rate of return because of price optionality and duration and not to even mention land optionality. Now just just price and duration, right? Interesting. So yeah, uh we I thought we'd wrap up with just a quick sort of scoot through what you've been doing lately and my partners at SCP Resource Finance, most of whom I'm sure you know, Mr. Wargo and Mr. Martins and Mr. Grosskoff have been whispering in my ear that you stole coffee from Pneumont. So that's usually a a pretty good compliment. Um but it it can you talk a little bit about what you see there and what uh investors may be looking for for the next three to five years. Yeah, you know, you have to understand that um I have a privileged relationship with Pneumont. Um I was president of pneumont for 7 years in the early 2000 and um I've helped them over the years with different things and um they just took out 650 million of profit on their investment in Ora uh like seven-year period and um the the deal that we structured with them yes it's like you know only 10 million up front but they have a third of our new company and they believe that we can build this company into you know what we call Orla.2 or you know point2 and uh make it a very successful company and they would rather bet on you know someone that they've worked with in the past that they know has created shareholder value and that's why we were able to get the deal that we have. U we're very very keen on that deal. It's um uh it has some challenges mostly logistics. Um it it's not exactly uh there there's no road, there's no infrastructure. So it has some logistic um but it's well on its way to getting permitted. There is, you know, at least in terms of open pit, we recognize that there's probably 2 and 1 half to 3 million ounce uh that would be open pit heap leachable. uh and uh there's plenty of indication that there's more and so we will be doing more drilling. Uh we will be firming up a uh a starter pit and uh hopefully we'll be in a position by this time next year to formulate a plan going forward. But for now it's all about you know making sure that we have a starter pit that holds together. There's a lot of drilling. It's not there's been 600,000 meters of drilling. Uh but when we look at where to start the mining, there's not enough drilling. Gotcha. Uh to really understand like what we're going to be mining at what grade in month by month. So we need to do more drilling. We need to finish the permitting uh get all the agreement with the various land owners around and uh that will take a year to 18 months. I think it could be longer but you know I think everybody is reasonable. I'm going up to the White Horse to the Yukon Mining Chamber annual conference in uh November. I'll be speaking and meeting everyone there. And so um I'm very encouraged and uh just for viewers, it's called Fuerte. How do how do you pronounce that properly? Yeah, Fuerte. We'll be changing the name, but for now it's Fuerte. F U R T E. Excellent. Um, and Ora has certainly been a fun one. I I've heard you talk about it in the past and it when I heard you talk about it, it came to my mind now that you've been doing this for four 40 years. Can you look at a deposit, visit the site and sort of know if it's going to work or or or does that it's never that obvious. You have to really do numbers uh and dig deep. Do you have a do you have like a sense you know a six sense about this stuff now? Well you know if you start with in the case of Camino Rojo there was already an inventory of about 7 million ounces. So it's not a question whether it you know it will go into production or not. It's like what makes sense. I mean there there is enough there to you know make something economic. So it's how you do it. Mhm. And in that case we do in in every case we do spend quite a bit of time looking at the the resource the reserve how we going to mine them what's economic what you know the metal energy um and uh to to put it all together you know it it takes time it's not like you you know you stumble on it and it's evident it's never like that but it requires real work in the case of Orla that would be a prime example of land optionality So is the land optionality thing a little bit of luck? Is that where the luck comes into it? Henry Higgins. Yes. There's no question that uh luck play has played a huge role in my life as you know. Uh you know they my my partners always call me lucky Pierre. I I've been very lucky and also I've been very lucky to put people around me particularly geologists that have like the lucky nose. Okay. Mhm. Uh and uh so uh you know like we have really uh you know great people around us and um that's how it works like surround yourself with great people look at asset but in the case of coffee like in the case of Camino Rojo or you know I'm also working we have a private company Kur Addison well there's already like 6 million ounce there okay so we should be able to make that work but It's going to require a lot of work before we can take that company public. It's, you know, we just raised almost 100 million privately to see how does it work. Well, all I can say is there are a lot worse nicknames than Lucky Pierre. So, with respect to AEX or Prime or Caliber, is there anything you want to talk about or those are all in the case of a in the case of AEX? It's interesting. the the geologist who came to see me is a guy that when I started Metallica 40 years ago, he was the chief uh geologist and I said, "Look, go find me an open pit e- pleach in Mexico to put in production and for very cheap and we'll start to build a mining company." Mhm. And he did. He found me one. Okay. And we put it in production for 80 million. The first year we cash flowed 100 million and Metallica became new gold. Okay. like that's how we got it. And then he went on to find two three very very large deposit. And then three years ago he came to me. He had a company. The whole market cap of the company was $6 million. Okay. He said, "I think I've got something really interesting here." And I I put together a couple million dollars. I said, "Go drill a hole and if uh or two and if you can substantiate your theory, we'll leave what gets you more money." and he came up with like a kilometer a.9% copper. I said, "Okay, I think we're on our way." Because a kilometer thick, it won't die within, you know, 100 meter. It's got to be like a big big um formation. And now we're at 2 billion ton. Wow. And and uh like 23 billion pounds of copper, 13 million ounce of gold, and it's wide open. And we found areas of 2% plus copper which will be the starter mine. So we're it I'm I I could not be more excited. Correct. Yeah. At AEX. Yeah. Yeah. And uh anything about Prime or Caliber or Well, Prime we just uh sold a company to Torx. Oh, I didn't know that. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, we just sold the company to Torx. They're buying it for shares. And in fact, the amalgamation was yesterday was 99% voted in favor. And uh I I love uh you know the CEO of Torx, Jody, she's a ball of fire. She's done an incredible job for this company. The stock is still way undervalued to my mind. I mean way that stock should be $80. Okay. I mean, she's producing the same number of ounces as Londine gold that has a 20 billion market cap and she's sitting here at like four. Mhm. Well, give me a break. and the uh the uh the uh political situation's pretty calm there these days or you know she has done and her team have done an incredible job of integrating with the local and they're not getting push backs and like they've got everybody working with them. Uh like she's just done a magnificent job. That's all I can say. It's one of the few mines that I've actually done the helicopter routine and the village that they built there is pretty pretty impressive in terms of the standards that they've instilled there. So, I would think people would fight pretty hard to protect that. I I think that that's what's happening there. So, uh I'm I'm thrilled to be working with her. I think like you know she's going to do great things with it. Terrific. Well, you've been very generous with your time and we've given viewers a lot of things to look at. I would remind viewers one last time about our silver conference coming in late October uh and encourage folks to try to attend at least virtually. We have Pan-American and First Majestic and 12 other presenters. And of course we have Mr. Silver himself, Eric Sprat. And uh I've seen him speak I don't know probably five times in my life and I've never been disappointed. He's a very entertaining spal like figure in silver and I'm sure we're all going to learn a few things. So, uh, Pierre, thank you so much for your time and please let uh us check in with you in a few months to see how you're doing. Um, my pleasure, Trey. And, uh, you know what? I wish all your, uh, viewers, uh, you know, a fabulous, uh, next three years. Excellent. Have a good day. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest in physical gold and silver, check out Hard Assets Alliance at hard assetsalliance.com. [Music]
Pierre Lassonde: Gold Is Replacing the Dollar & Will Hit $17,250 by 2030
Summary
Transcript
It took 50 years to get to come back. But we are living through a lifechanging period where gold is coming back as a reserve currency. We will see gold at 17,250. [Music] If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest in physical gold and silver, check out Hardass Assets Alliance at hardassetsalliance.com. Greetings and welcome to our Wealthy on Show. My name is Trey Reich and we're visiting today with Pierre Lassan. Pierre's contributions in the gold space stretch from co-founding Franco Nevada in 1985, I believe, with partner Seymour Shoulick and in the process essentially inventing the gold royalty space all the way to developing the autonomous Land Curve, which has become the industry standard and explaining at least on the back of a napkin the investment cycle of developing a gold mine. Um, one of the most overused monikers I think in the investment business is legend. Uh, and all I can say is Pierre is not legendary in the gold business. He transcends that title. Pierre is the gold business. So Pierre, thanks for joining us today. I appreciate it. I agree. Pleasure. A tree. Always a pleasure. Uh, because you're so generous with your time uh, and you're sort of a defender of the gold industry. ambassador would be a better word. You do a lot of interviews and I've watched some of them recently and I really enjoyed the one with Jimmy Connor uh where you talked about your first $2 million gold investment. It was a little bit like a Gisham novel. I was sort of on the end of my chair and we won't go into that because you just talked about it. But for wealthy viewers, I really recommend that you tune in to Jimmy's interview. So I wanted to start with sort of a different bent maybe maybe a little lighter and uh I thought of a bench clearing statement that I could ask you since you've been doing this for four decades uh and you've seen a lot of gold bull markets on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate the current gold bull market? How does it stack up against prior cycles? So the 1970 1980 bull market was uh one of the greatest in the last 100 years and uh as you know the gold price went from $35 in 1971 in August 1971 to $800 in January 1980 and uh most of that occurred in the last four years. what we're living today through is very very similar to that bull market. So it's, you know, when you think about it, it it took 50 years to get to come back, but we are living through a lifechanging period where gold is coming back as a reserve currency and we're seeing it with the central banks. We're seeing it with uh you know uh the China, the Shanghai gold exchange. uh the devaluation of all the currencies against gold and um the fact that the the US is not the US dollar in particular is not fulfilling its role as the reserve of last currency. So the if you look at the last four years 1976 1980 of the 70 bull market gold went from $90 to $800 and I think we're in the equivalent year 1976 right now of that four-year bull market. I think we have three years to go and the price is going to go a lot higher. Interesting. Now over the decades and you and I have talked about this you know both in writing and in person there's really the three big fundamentals I call them and that are driving the gold trade and they're anti-doll sentiment deterior deteriorating US finances and declining Fed credibility and we've all been talking about them you know for 20 years and we got a good run and obviously 2011 but after all these years it certainly certainly feels different this time. Do you do you agree? Yes, I agree. And it reminds me of the quote from Ernest Hemingway when he was asked, "How did you go bankrupt?" And he said, "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." Mhm. And what you're referring to is for the gradual. It it takes years and years and years to get to a point where you go bankrupt. Now, the US is not going to go bankrupt because it can print its own money. But the point though, Trey, is that it's not just the US. It's the entire G20 who the amount of debt that they've generated over the past, you know, five years is absolutely unprecedented and not a single one of them can deal with it in the long run. Take the US. Okay, the US GDP in 1980 was 7 trillion and they had less than a trillion dollars of debt. They had $98 billion. 20 years later in 2000, the US GDP doubled to 14 trillion and the debt barely well the debt went from 1 trillion to 5 trillion. Mhm. Okay. Since 2000, the last 24 years, the GDP has again doubled to 14 trillion. The debt has gone from 5 to 37.2 trillion. Okay. But it's not as I said just the US, Canada is in the same deep car. France and like just look around all the countries have the same issue. Entitlement is taking up 80% of the budget. Interest is now adding up to it and they're getting squeezed everywhere. and they double down by increasing on the debt. If you look at the US deficit for the next four years as you know the big beautiful bill of Mr. Trump, it's going to add another 1.6 trillion of debt. Well, the and he's pushing the federal federal chairman to drop interest rate. Why? Because he, you know, he's trying to refinance all this debt at one or 2%, not at five or six or 7%. M but you can be sure the long end of the the yield curve is going to go up and it's called financial repression you know that's what he's doing and they're all in the same boat all the country and that is why gold when you look at gold against all currency it's in a bull market against all currency and that's the definition of a pure gold bull market wealthon together with SCP resource finance will be hosting a global silver conference this October in Toronto Eric Sprat will be delivering the keynote and it promises to be a landmark gathering for silver investors. You can find out more in the details in the description below. Do you think it's too much to say that we're on the cusp of developing a new global monetary regime? That the dollar standard system is in the rearview mirror in terms of dominance. Not that it'll go away, but you know, we've read about the bricks for 20 years. We've read about I remember the GGC remember the Gulf Cooperation Council and nothing's ever come of this stuff and there's Shanghai Accords and all this stuff but nothing ever happens but it certainly feels that since the freezing of Russian FX reserves that that we really are developing a new global monetary regime. Do do you think that's overstating it? No, it's not overstating it in a sense that if you look at central banks, they have been huge buyers of gold. Uh, you know, about 1,200 tons for the past three years, which is a third of mine, new mine production. It's enormous. Has an enormous impact on the gold price. And at the same time if you look at the percentage of dollar in central bank's reserve it's gone down from 72% back in you know like four years ago 5 years ago 2020 down to less than 58% while the gold reserve have more than double o over that same period of time. So the central banks particularly China, India but it's also true of Turkey, Poland you know most of the central banks particularly in Asia they're getting rid they're getting rid of their dollars and they're buying gold because they don't want to have you know like uh a a reserve currency that's the debt of another country. Mhm. The beauty of gold is that it's a currency that is not the death of someone else. It's by itself. So that's what they're doing. And in that respect, there's a new world order. At the same time as the Chinese are developing a competing system to the Swift system to try to get out of the American grips of the of the entire world monetary system and that is getting you know traction from countries in Africa in India and uh so yes the the the there is a change in the world order and you know the uh uh current administration is trying to put the boot to everybody And you know, nobody likes it. Nobody likes to be kicked in the shin and um they try to develop some alternative to, you know, what's on offer. So other than uh central bank gold reserves, do you believe and I'm leading question here as I do that gold could actually play a role in the new monetary regime, say a cover clause to balance sheets or something like that? um not in the US. Uh what they may do is I call it a sleigh of hen is that the gold that's in Fort Knox which is held by the treasury uh may be passed on to uh another arm of the government and they they can declare a $1 trillion one-time benefit so that like the their books are like you know in in the positive but it's a sle of hand. it it doesn't mean anything and in in which case they would revalue uh their gold to you know I don't know 35 or 3000 3,800 whatever the number is um I think that would give gold even more of um the shine of a you know like a reserve currency but in terms of uh an alternate currency um you know the shackles of gold like there's not one politician that will want to have the shackles of gold because at that point they can't spend money anymore. You know, all the poor barreling that they do and everything else, they can't spend it. So, I don't think that's going to go that way. Right. And uh before we change directions a little bit, I just interpolated from what you said about being in 1976 sort of what inning are we in? That sort of implies that you wouldn't be surprised if gold exceeded 10,000 bucks an ounce over the next three years. No, actually uh yesterday I gave a speech at the grants conference in New York and I predicted that we will see gold at 17,250 and and did you put a time frame on that or that's just between between now and 2030? Wow. Incredible. Did was there a murmur in the room? Yeah, sort of. Um, you know, some people don't quite believe me, of course, and I know it's hard to comprehend, right? But when you've lived through the 1970s, it was hard to comprehend $800 gold as well, right? Okay. And and what happens is a bit of a mania in the last 6 months to a year. I don't think that you're going to have 17,250 for 2, three, four, five years. Uh but I think you will have that number posted somewhere sometime. Excellent. And um you know part of it is has to do with China with the Shanghai gold exchange becoming so prominent and so much of the gold moving to China. I think that at the end of the day what will decide the gold price is not going to be America anymore. It's going to be China and the Shanghai gold exchange will turn out to be more a bit of a casino type atmosphere. And in that kind of atmosphere, you could see prices well above 17,000. That's incredible. Um I uh sorry I missed the conference. Uh you'll have to we'll have to have to tell me about it a little later. So, because it's silver week here at Wealthon and I scheduled you in the middle of uh silver week because you were available, I have to ask you, I I have never really heard you talk about silver, but I've read a little bit about uh some of the things that you've said. What's your view on silver? Is it an important asset? Well, silver has always been uh the poor man's gold, as they call it. Okay. And uh in the last phase of the the the gold bull market, it actually outperforms gold. So I think that over the next four years, silver is going to do really really well. Um you know, as a as a a commercial metal, it has application. So you know, like people use them actually for solar panel and all kinds of different usage. uh but also it's used as a monetary asset but not by the central banks. Okay? Like you know people want to own it on a as a as the poor man's gold because you know it's much easier to buy a silver a silver bar than a gold bar. The price is like a little different. Um but it is not per se a monetary asset. Gotcha. And are you uh in the slingshot camp? In other words, if you think gold's going that high, there are a lot of people who uh are silver enthusiasts who think once we get through 50, 100 is, you know, a couple of heartbeats away, you know, in the slingshot concept that it comes up slower, but then it it whips out faster. Yeah, I would not discount it at all. I I think that there's a good possibility that that happens. Indeed. Terrific. Well, for folks who are interested in silver, uh I want to remind everyone that we're hosting an all day silver conference at the Shangrila Hotel in Toronto on Thursday, October 23rd, and we'll be playing a virtual replay of that. So, for viewers who are interested in silver, uh please uh go to the description below and check out the links on how you can register uh for the silver conference both in person and virtually. Uh, additionally, we'll be publishing a silver report which is on my desk right now and I'm finalizing uh to bring everybody up to date on how we're looking at the silver market over the next two to three years. So, um, you probably get tired of this question, but it's difficult, uh, when we're exposing you to a viewing audience not to ask. Could you just give me, you know, a few minutes on the beauty of the gold royalty model and uh, you know, the brilliance of the Franco Nevada approach. Um, certainly with with great pleasure. I mean, um, I talked a bit about it, uh, yesterday as well, and, um, uh, you know, not because I and my partner invented it, but I I think it's the b the best business model ever ever invented. Mhm. And uh, why it is so powerful and it took me probably five to seven years to understand how powerful that business model was. So it was not like, you know, it was on the first day like ding, you know, it it it took a while to really understand it. It's the power of optionality. So when you buy a pure royalty like a 4% NSR on Gold Strike, your first money is your last money ever, ever, ever. There's no capital cost. There's no capex. There's no operating costs. There's no drilling cost, exploration cost. There's no cost whatsoever. And yet you get exposed to upside in the gold price, which is your price optionality. If the gold price goes up 50%. Your revenue goes up 50%, your bottom line goes up 50%. It's direct there. There's no cost. and you get exposed to land optionality. And this is what happened at Ghost Strike. You know, the original resource was about 4 500,000 ounces of resource. They had a couple hundred thousand of reserve and then they found 50 million ounces. All right. So, what I paid 2 million became a billion dollar overnight and it's already paid out a billion, too. And it's probably another billion left to be paid. And that kind of optionality is worth enormous amount of money. And yet no one no analyst has ever been able to calculate what it's worth for the shareholders. But the shareholders have figured it out. And that's why the stock is trading at two times NEV because it's not just the stream that you get, but it's that optionality that is embedded in the 10 million acres of land that the company has. So the and you can operate the whole company. The company today is worth the c market cap is 42 billion US and we have 42 employees. So think about this. Each employee is worth US1 billion in market cap. Give me another company that's got that kind of ratio. Mhm. It's absolutely unbelievable. Is David Harquil still one of the 42 or have you taken out of Yeah, David is chair. Uhuh. He gets he gets my vote. So So yeah, he's a fabulous guy. He's the guy that in 2015 16 realized that the big companies like the Glen Core, the tech were all overinded and the banks had called the loan and they needed to repay and he went to see all of them and said, "Can I offer you money?" Mhm. And they said yes. And we ended up with royalties on some of the best I call them gold mines of the world because uh these copper gold mine they last for 50 years. So they turn out to be the best gold mine in the world because of duration and duration expose you to price optionality over 50 years. Right. And that's the beauty of duration. Mhm. This was about what seven years ago when he was making the very big uh deals, you know, the multi multi-deade deals. Seven and eight years ago. 2014 15. Yeah. We we did Cobbury Panama. We did um Candelaria uh with Londinine Mining that they were buying from Freeport because Freeport needed money. Mhm. Uh we did the Glen Core deal in Peru and Tapakai. We did uh also in Peru with tech um uh what's the uh um the mine uh they will come back to me. But yes th those were incredible deal uh and they all happened within a two three-year period. And just for a footnote, how have you been pleased with the uh the oil sands uh program that was also about a year or two? Uh I think that the oil sand uh investment has been very good. Uh again, because it's got a long duration, you don't have to put any money in exploration. It's all there. And uh the returns have been good. uh with $62 a barrel, you know, the differential of course in Canadian dollar is like $90. So, we're still getting like really good return. Um and uh but we are very careful not to increase that to more than 15, maximum 20% of our revenue. If you have any questions about how to navigate the current environment, Wealthon can help connect you with a vetted advisor to get a free portfolio review. Just click the link in the description below or head to wealthon.comfree. There's no obligation and it will just take a few minutes of your time. Again, that's wealthy.comfree. Gotcha. So, um, gold averaged in 2024 about 23.89 and in the first quarter it was 2858. in the second quarter 32.86 86 and now in the third quarter 3455 and you know Agniko Eagle and some of the other really well-run companies are showing the leverage I think to the gold price uh in earnings and and performance but I am a bit surprised that as a whole the industry hasn't started to put up box car earnings numbers and I'm familiar with the concept of h highgrading and having to get all that back in balance and eating through some of the ways that uh earnings were sustained in the past. But aren't you a bit surprised that uh the we haven't had the earnings breakout that those types of gold price increases would uh project? Well, I think you're going to see that this quarter because the be my question. When are we going to see it? You think? I think this quarter because the margins are now close to $2,000 an ounce net. So you take, you know, Nikico Eagle, I they're gonna post like probably two three billion of free cash flow this quarter. Like, you know, some really impressive numbers. Mhm. And that will be throughout the industry. What what actually surprised me the most is the fact that uh public participation is still incredibly low, right? When you look at the GDX number of shares outstanding, it's at an all-time low. I mean, think about this. The gold price has gone up like three times in the last like eight years. And yet the GDX and the GDXJ shares outstanding is at an all-time low. That to me blows me away. Mhm. Like the picture in my mind. I can see the graph. It basically is the opposite of uh uh garden. It's like this. Okay. And it's like right at the bottom here. And you say like so these people probably bought the GDX and you know like four, five, six, seven years ago and it's gone down and now that it's gone back up they're selling and I don't know what they're buying crypto or whatever but like all it tells me is that public participation is incredibly low, right? And also in June I did a road show for um Orla in Europe. I went to Paris, London with management and I had not done a road show in probably like 10 years. I wanted to connect directly with portfolio managers, see what they're looking for, understand uh you know their how they managed, how they think about gold and I was really surprised out of the 20 that I saw only one had any gold stocks in their portfolio in the company or the personal portfolio? Uh no no these were all institutional portfolios. Uhhuh. And they didn't have any gold stocks. No. Except for one. Uhhuh. Wow. That's incredible. And so when we when ano sold their Ora, you know, shares like a few weeks ago, they were all buyers. Mhm. Okay. Like they were all they love the story. They they were all buyers. But it just goes to show you that not only the public is not in the goal but if you look at all the institutions in Canada and like even more in the US the participation is like that much and it won't require that much to come in the sector to really blow out the value as you know it's still a small sector I mean the whole gold sector is like a couple hundred billion or I don't know what the number is today but it's not that big right and it doesn't require enor enormous amount of money to like, you know, really go to the moon. So, I guess if you add up all the royalty company and everything else, we're probably at 500 billion. Uh, but it's still like not even the market cap of Tesla. And it's about onetenth of Nvidia. So, yeah, if if uh you know, gold stocks have moved and I think viewers are conscious of the fact, I'm sure you're aware, the GDX and GDXJ are up about 120% this year. So early in the year at a 5% discount rate, which is what the street uses and we know is a really bad number. It should probably be two or three times that to properly adjust for risk, especially where mines are these days. But using the Wall Street standard of a 5% discount rate, you know, the medium tier producers were probably at 0.5 of NAV at the beginning of the year and they're approaching one times NAV as we speak. Um, do do you think they're still cheap? They're they're not onetime NEV at $3,800 gold. Oh, they're not. Okay. No, no, no, they're still cheap. Okay. So, and if you look at their power if you look at their power of cash generation, it's even more. So, they're trading at like, you know, three times cash flow. Okay. Well, you know, every other industry is trading at anywhere from 10 to 12 to 15. So, it's just that the $3,800 gold price hasn't been factored in yet. That is correct. And and the cap capacity of the industry to generate enormous amount of cash flow at $3,800. That's not in the in the price yet. Okay. And so, this is something we have looked forward to for third and fourth quarter earnings this year. That is correct. So I, you know, you talk a lot about optionality and I'm sure you know Dave Iben at Copernick and uh I think he's one of the smartest gold investors out there and you know he favors really really large deposits. I think he owns most of them. You know, if you take the very largest deposit, even pebble, you know, which is had a lot of difficulty, but he doesn't care. It's a large deposits he thinks and he has a unique way of thinking of things that the discount methodology that the street and many investors use. You mentioned the professional investors in Europe. Um, and his view is that that's the wrong way to look at it. that if you use discount models on these super gargantuan size deposits, you're missing the point because by 10 years from now, they're all valued at zero. Mhm. Do do you agree with that that the you know the industry way of looking at it is kind of backwards? Uh it's been a a recurring problem in the mining industry for 50 years. Okay. And uh you know the MBAs they go in there and they do NEV and uh because they they look at it as just another industrial business. Mhm. The reality is that a 50 to 100year deposit the NEV will be the same next year, the year after, the year after and you go on and on and on because they have duration that is way beyond anything that an NAV can figure out. Right? So, he's absolutely right that, you know, a a 50-year deposit ought to be worth a lot more than just the NEV discounted at 5% today's gold price, right? The problem is nobody's going to pay for it because of the standards or because no one wants to take the risk or because the sector is unpopular. Well, mostly because, you know, it's almost impossible to go to a board and say, "Well, this deposit's going to last 100 years and we're going to pay, you know, like two times NEV." And they're going to say, "Well, why?" Because like the cash flow we're going to get is only like this for the next 20 years, and that's what it's worth. And at the end of the day, they don't trade for what they're really, really worth. And BHP actually did a study of their deposit that have lasted 50 to you know over 50 years and what they've shown is that whatever internal rate of return they use to put them in a production the reality over 50 years they got twice that much. Mhm. Okay. So what was a 15% rate of return turned out to be a 30% rate of return because of price optionality and duration and not to even mention land optionality. Now just just price and duration, right? Interesting. So yeah, uh we I thought we'd wrap up with just a quick sort of scoot through what you've been doing lately and my partners at SCP Resource Finance, most of whom I'm sure you know, Mr. Wargo and Mr. Martins and Mr. Grosskoff have been whispering in my ear that you stole coffee from Pneumont. So that's usually a a pretty good compliment. Um but it it can you talk a little bit about what you see there and what uh investors may be looking for for the next three to five years. Yeah, you know, you have to understand that um I have a privileged relationship with Pneumont. Um I was president of pneumont for 7 years in the early 2000 and um I've helped them over the years with different things and um they just took out 650 million of profit on their investment in Ora uh like seven-year period and um the the deal that we structured with them yes it's like you know only 10 million up front but they have a third of our new company and they believe that we can build this company into you know what we call Orla.2 or you know point2 and uh make it a very successful company and they would rather bet on you know someone that they've worked with in the past that they know has created shareholder value and that's why we were able to get the deal that we have. U we're very very keen on that deal. It's um uh it has some challenges mostly logistics. Um it it's not exactly uh there there's no road, there's no infrastructure. So it has some logistic um but it's well on its way to getting permitted. There is, you know, at least in terms of open pit, we recognize that there's probably 2 and 1 half to 3 million ounce uh that would be open pit heap leachable. uh and uh there's plenty of indication that there's more and so we will be doing more drilling. Uh we will be firming up a uh a starter pit and uh hopefully we'll be in a position by this time next year to formulate a plan going forward. But for now it's all about you know making sure that we have a starter pit that holds together. There's a lot of drilling. It's not there's been 600,000 meters of drilling. Uh but when we look at where to start the mining, there's not enough drilling. Gotcha. Uh to really understand like what we're going to be mining at what grade in month by month. So we need to do more drilling. We need to finish the permitting uh get all the agreement with the various land owners around and uh that will take a year to 18 months. I think it could be longer but you know I think everybody is reasonable. I'm going up to the White Horse to the Yukon Mining Chamber annual conference in uh November. I'll be speaking and meeting everyone there. And so um I'm very encouraged and uh just for viewers, it's called Fuerte. How do how do you pronounce that properly? Yeah, Fuerte. We'll be changing the name, but for now it's Fuerte. F U R T E. Excellent. Um, and Ora has certainly been a fun one. I I've heard you talk about it in the past and it when I heard you talk about it, it came to my mind now that you've been doing this for four 40 years. Can you look at a deposit, visit the site and sort of know if it's going to work or or or does that it's never that obvious. You have to really do numbers uh and dig deep. Do you have a do you have like a sense you know a six sense about this stuff now? Well you know if you start with in the case of Camino Rojo there was already an inventory of about 7 million ounces. So it's not a question whether it you know it will go into production or not. It's like what makes sense. I mean there there is enough there to you know make something economic. So it's how you do it. Mhm. And in that case we do in in every case we do spend quite a bit of time looking at the the resource the reserve how we going to mine them what's economic what you know the metal energy um and uh to to put it all together you know it it takes time it's not like you you know you stumble on it and it's evident it's never like that but it requires real work in the case of Orla that would be a prime example of land optionality So is the land optionality thing a little bit of luck? Is that where the luck comes into it? Henry Higgins. Yes. There's no question that uh luck play has played a huge role in my life as you know. Uh you know they my my partners always call me lucky Pierre. I I've been very lucky and also I've been very lucky to put people around me particularly geologists that have like the lucky nose. Okay. Mhm. Uh and uh so uh you know like we have really uh you know great people around us and um that's how it works like surround yourself with great people look at asset but in the case of coffee like in the case of Camino Rojo or you know I'm also working we have a private company Kur Addison well there's already like 6 million ounce there okay so we should be able to make that work but It's going to require a lot of work before we can take that company public. It's, you know, we just raised almost 100 million privately to see how does it work. Well, all I can say is there are a lot worse nicknames than Lucky Pierre. So, with respect to AEX or Prime or Caliber, is there anything you want to talk about or those are all in the case of a in the case of AEX? It's interesting. the the geologist who came to see me is a guy that when I started Metallica 40 years ago, he was the chief uh geologist and I said, "Look, go find me an open pit e- pleach in Mexico to put in production and for very cheap and we'll start to build a mining company." Mhm. And he did. He found me one. Okay. And we put it in production for 80 million. The first year we cash flowed 100 million and Metallica became new gold. Okay. like that's how we got it. And then he went on to find two three very very large deposit. And then three years ago he came to me. He had a company. The whole market cap of the company was $6 million. Okay. He said, "I think I've got something really interesting here." And I I put together a couple million dollars. I said, "Go drill a hole and if uh or two and if you can substantiate your theory, we'll leave what gets you more money." and he came up with like a kilometer a.9% copper. I said, "Okay, I think we're on our way." Because a kilometer thick, it won't die within, you know, 100 meter. It's got to be like a big big um formation. And now we're at 2 billion ton. Wow. And and uh like 23 billion pounds of copper, 13 million ounce of gold, and it's wide open. And we found areas of 2% plus copper which will be the starter mine. So we're it I'm I I could not be more excited. Correct. Yeah. At AEX. Yeah. Yeah. And uh anything about Prime or Caliber or Well, Prime we just uh sold a company to Torx. Oh, I didn't know that. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, we just sold the company to Torx. They're buying it for shares. And in fact, the amalgamation was yesterday was 99% voted in favor. And uh I I love uh you know the CEO of Torx, Jody, she's a ball of fire. She's done an incredible job for this company. The stock is still way undervalued to my mind. I mean way that stock should be $80. Okay. I mean, she's producing the same number of ounces as Londine gold that has a 20 billion market cap and she's sitting here at like four. Mhm. Well, give me a break. and the uh the uh the uh political situation's pretty calm there these days or you know she has done and her team have done an incredible job of integrating with the local and they're not getting push backs and like they've got everybody working with them. Uh like she's just done a magnificent job. That's all I can say. It's one of the few mines that I've actually done the helicopter routine and the village that they built there is pretty pretty impressive in terms of the standards that they've instilled there. So, I would think people would fight pretty hard to protect that. I I think that that's what's happening there. So, uh I'm I'm thrilled to be working with her. I think like you know she's going to do great things with it. Terrific. Well, you've been very generous with your time and we've given viewers a lot of things to look at. I would remind viewers one last time about our silver conference coming in late October uh and encourage folks to try to attend at least virtually. We have Pan-American and First Majestic and 12 other presenters. And of course we have Mr. Silver himself, Eric Sprat. And uh I've seen him speak I don't know probably five times in my life and I've never been disappointed. He's a very entertaining spal like figure in silver and I'm sure we're all going to learn a few things. So, uh, Pierre, thank you so much for your time and please let uh us check in with you in a few months to see how you're doing. Um, my pleasure, Trey. And, uh, you know what? I wish all your, uh, viewers, uh, you know, a fabulous, uh, next three years. Excellent. Have a good day. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest in physical gold and silver, check out Hard Assets Alliance at hard assetsalliance.com. [Music]