The Northern Miner June 27 2022 Issue 13

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PDAC 2022: CANADA HAS LONG JOURNEY AHEAD TO BUILD A BATTERY ECOSYSTEM / 3 Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM

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Investment bankers Pierre Lassonde touts copper over lithium as key to green transition see capital returning to | Oil is here to stay, unless lithium batteries improve, says mining legend and Franco-Nevada co-founder

SPEAKER SERIES

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BY NAIMUL KARIM

s one of the world’s leading gold-focused royalty companies today, the roots of Franco-Nevada (Franco Nevada (TSX: FNV)’s successful journey lie in the purchase of its first royalty on the Goldstrike mine in 1986. But ask Pierre Lassonde, the company’s co-founder who planned the purchase, and he will tell you that he “didn’t really know what he was doing.” In fact, soon after the purchase, his partner, Seymour Schulich, went “ballistic” on him after Schulich heard that Lassonde had agreed to spend $2 million, or all of the company’s money in the treasury for the royalty. Shortly after Franco’s investment though, Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) purchased the mine and revealed a 50 million oz. orebody which kickstarted Franco-Nevada’s royalty business in the best possible way. While Lassonde was confident of getting his money back, he didn’t expect to earn it back by such a big margin. “That’s optionality for you,” said Lassonde at the Mining Legends Speaker Series, organized by The Northern Miner, the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame and Young Mining Professionals, on June 8 in Toronto. The recurring Mining Legends series pairs CMHF inductees with accomplished young talent — in this case Orix Geoscience president and CEO Ashley Kirwan, who will be the subject of a separate article — to bridge the knowledge gap in the mining industry and discuss the future of mining. “What I mean by that is that with one drill hole, we can create a billion dollars… it’s one in maybe a million drill holes, but it’s happened to me three times. And that’s unique to our business…if you can put your hands on a property with tremendous optionality, I can make you very wealthy,” he told Anthony Vaccaro, president of The Northern Miner Group, who moderated the program. Over the 20 years since Franco was founded in 1982, the company provided its shareholders with a 36% annualized rate of return before being acquired by Newmont (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT) in 2002. In 2007, Newmont decided to divest its royalty assets and Lassonde and his team launched an

mining — once market risks abate PDAC 2022

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Franco-Nevada co-founder Pierre Lassonde, left, and Northern Miner Group president Anthony Vaccaro in Toronto. TNM/ERIK ROTTER PHOTOGRAPHY

“WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE ‘GREENIFICATION’ OF THE WORLD, IT’S ALL ABOUT ELECTRICITY… AND THAT’S WHERE WE’RE GOING TO NEED A LOT OF COPPER.” PIERRE LASSONDE CO-FOUNDER OF FRANCO-NEVADA

initial public offering to bring back the company for US$1.2 billion. Today, the company, of which Lassonde remains chair emeritus, has a market cap of about $35 billion. Lassonde is also chairman and CEO of Firelight Investments. Entrepreneurial spirit Lassonde, who was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2013, credits the immense freedom that he enjoyed as a child behind his desire to become an entrepreneur. As a 14-year-old in the 1960s, Lassonde recounted how he had gone hitchhiking with his friends for a month and was barely in touch

with his family during the period. “When I came back, I remember walking up the stairs… and all my mother said was, ‘what would you like for dinner?’ I’d been gone for a whole month… I wouldn’t say my parents couldn’t care less but they gave us the freedom to really be whatever we wanted to be,” he said. But it wasn’t always his plan to enter the mining industry. Growing up, Lassonde dreamed of owning a construction company and so he ended up studying engineering and working for a construction firm. As it happened, his first project at the job was at a mine site. There, Lassonde met a geologist speculating on junior stocks and he began investing. “As luck would have it, the very first one I bought, I made ten times my money in a space of about three months, and I thought I was God’s gift to finance,” he laughed. “Of course, the next one I bought, I lost everything. But I was hooked.” And so, in 1982, together with Seymour Schulich, who came from the oil and gas industry, the duo started Franco-Nevada with an aim to be one of the first royalty businesses in the mining sector. While the team of two did See LASSONDE / 16

| Awareness of metal supply constraints growing

BY ALISHA HIYATE

espite strong commodity prices, money has not been flowing into the mining sector — and that is likely to be the case as long as market volatility and uncertainty continue, according to a panel of mining-focused investment bankers at this week’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention. The June 13 conversation, moderated by Northern Miner Group president Anthony Vaccaro, took place in the context of a market sell-off with the market reacting to higher than expected inflation numbers in the U.S. and growing recession fears. Michael Faralla, head of TD Securities’ Global Mining Group, noted that financings on the Toronto Stock Exchange are down roughly 60-70% from last year. “That’s not a mining issue per se — that’s a broader market volatility and risk-off attitude amongst investors issue,” he said. “The mining sector has been caught up in that, even with high commodity prices.” “The concern is the data is all over the place,” said Chris Gratias, managing director of mining investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets, adding that there has been a lack of consensus on how the U.S. Federal Reserve will respond to rising inflation. “The fact that we had close to 9% inflation in the U.S. surprised a lot of people,” Gratias said, pointing to inflation numbers, released on June 10, as the reason for the market fall on June 13. “All of a sudden you go from the Fed changing rates from 50 basis points in the next meeting to people saying 75, which is huge.” Summing up, he said: “I think that’s just the environment for a while yet... and in a period of volatility and uncertainty, what do people do? They sit on their hands.” Although producing companies are in a healthy position now, thanks to previous years of cost cutting and robust commodity prices, they now face the challenge

DIAMONDS: NWT LOOKS TO FILL ECONOMIC VOID AS MINES AGE / 13

of inflation — in wages, consumables and other input costs. “We’ve seen over the last half a dozen years mining companies doing a really good job of containing costs and returning free cash flow to the shareholders, and now we’re seeing a countervailing trend of costs going up because of external factors,” Faralla said. “So I think that’s another headwind for the mining sector generally.” ‘Uptick in capital’ Despite the current aversion to risk, concerns around electrification and decarbonization have “radically awoken” people to how much demand for metals is actually growing, said Ryan Latinovich, global head of mining and metals at RBC Capital Markets. See BANKERS / 16

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