Copper pipeline can open more metal streams: Wheaton
- 10 May 2025
Randy Smallwood says global metals streaming heavyweight Wheaton Precious Metals is keen to “add accretive high-quality streams into our portfolio” rather than pursue corporate M&A with its growing cash reserves.
Speaking after the Canadian company posted record 2025 first-quarter revenue, earnings and cash flow, Wheaton’s CEO said the gold and silver sectors were presenting a long line of opportunities – many smaller projects and several US$500 million-to-$1 billion options – and “our preference is to go down that path”.
“This run up in gold prices is really starting firm up enough that people are starting to make commitments into building and so what we are seeing is a lot of gold streams on gold mines or silver streams on gold mines. There’s lots of activity there,” Smallwood said.
“I’d love to see a bit of strength in the copper space, because there are some pretty promising copper projects out there that are waiting for, I think, a bit better cost base to make decisions to go into construction.
“There are lots of predictions for stronger copper prices but unfortunately with some of the deglobalisation efforts around the world it’s having an impact on demand and therefore pricing in copper. And we just haven’t seen people making the commitments in terms of going into construction. I think they want to see a stronger market for copper before they make that decision.
“So talks are ongoing but they’re nowhere near as advanced as what we’re seeing in the precious metal space [and] the gold space specifically.”
Wheaton, which has seen a circa-48% run up in its share price so far in 2025 (to May 9), capitalising the company at about $39 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, reported Q1 net earnings of $254 million on $470m revenue, up 55% and 59%, respectively, on the same time last year. Higher metal sales and prices drove the increases.
Wheaton has streaming and royalty agreements on 18 operating mines and 28 development projects and is guiding for 350,000-390,000 ounces of attributable gold production in 2025, up to 22.5 million ounces of silver, and 12,500-13,500 gold-equivalent ounces of other metals. With its current portfolio the company is forecasting circa-40% growth in annual production by 2029.
“Wheaton delivered a strong start to 2025, with our core assets exceeding production expectations and driving record quarterly revenue, adjusted net earnings and operating cash flow,” Smallwood said.
“In times of economic uncertainty gold is viewed as a reliable store of value and these results demonstrate why we believe Wheaton offers one of the best low-risk opportunities for investors seeking exposure to precious metals.”
He said 2025 was shaping as a “catalyst-rich year” with four development projects due to come online starting with Artemis Gold’s c400,000oz-a-year Blackwater gold mine in British Columbia, Canada, starting commercial production this month.
The company grew its net cash from $818m to more than $1.08 billion in the quarter and also had $2b of credit unused at the end of March.
Wheaton corporate development senior vice president Haytham Hodaly said the company had outlaid an average $900 million a year on new streaming and royalty deals over the past decade, “so we’ve never had an issue deploying capital accretively”.
“Given the number of opportunities that we have in the pipeline right now, and it’s definitely double-digit, we’re seeing a lot of different development stage opportunities looking for funding, we’re seeing higher commodity prices have prompted the sale of existing secondary royalties, we’re seeing balance sheet repair opportunities and we’re also seeing rationalisation of assets by larger seniors,” Hodaly said.
“So there’s so many opportunities right now for the potential expenditure of capital towards streaming projects and then some larger royalty opportunities as well.”
Smallwood said Wheaton’s 2023 acquisition of Orion Mine Finance streams for $530m showed it kept an eye out for corporate opportunities.
But “as soon as you start looking at corporate transactions, what you’re doing is acquiring someone else’s challenges”.
“We’ve been at this business now for over 20 and I think a good old Wheaton stream has a lot of benefits, a lot of strength in terms of how it’s structured,” he said.
“What we’ve seen is a lot of people will give up weaknesses in terms of structure or how a deal is put together to try and get their foot in the door. And that means it just doesn’t have the same strengths.”
