Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

March 10, 2023 11:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Wheaton Precious Metals 2022 Fourth Quarter Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded on Friday, March 10, 2023 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Patrick Drouin, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Please go ahead.

Patrick Drouin

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in today's call. I'm joined today by Randy Smallwood, Wheaton Precious Metals' President and Chief Executive Officer; Gary Brown, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Haytham Hodaly, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development; and Wes Carson, Vice President, Mining Operations.

Please note that, for those not currently on the webcast, the slide presentation accompanying this conference call is available in PDF format on the Presentations page of the Wheaton Precious Metals website.

I'd like to bring to your attention that some of the commentary on today's call may contain forward-looking statements and I would direct everyone to review Slide 2 of the presentation, which contains important cautionary notes regarding forward-looking statements. It should be noted, all figures referred to on today's call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. And in addition, reference to Wheaton or Wheaton Precious Metals on the call includes Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. and/or its wholly-owned subsidiaries as applicable.

Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Randy Smallwood, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Randy Smallwood

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Wheaton's fourth quarter and year-end results for 2022.

During 2022, we remained extremely active as we added more streams, optimized our current portfolio and made several industry-leading commitments on the sustainability front. While gold held historically high levels throughout the year, inflationary pressures had a significant impact on traditional miners, resulting in their margins being compressed. Wheaton, however, continued to deliver cash operating margins of 75% in the fourth quarter, reflecting the resilience of our business model.

From a financial perspective, in the fourth quarter, Wheaton generated $236 million in revenue, $172 million in operating cash flow and $166 million in net earnings, as Gary will discuss shortly. This solid performance contributed to our record annual dividend distribution of $237 million to shareholders.