Daniel Earle, CEO of Solaris Resources (CVE:SLS) joins correspondent Paul Harris; editor Neils Christensen; and mining audiences manager, Michael McCrae, to discuss M&A and this season's outstanding Q3s.
During a gold bull market, you need to go with growth, said Daniel Earle, CEO of Solaris Resources (CVE:SLS).
On Friday, Earle recorded Kitco Roundtable podcast with correspondent Paul Harris; editor Neils Christensen; and mining audiences manager, Michael McCrae.
At the 121 Mining Investment conference this past week, Earle noted comments from a mining CEO who said seniors need to be disciplined with their capital allocation during this up cycle and not go out and buy things at a high valuation.
"I think that that's a terrible mistake. I think the problem [during] the last cycle is that they were buying at the end of the cycle," said Earle.
Earle warns that seniors are running out of resources.
"If you look at how to create value in this business--it's a depleting business. You need to be buying up through the troughs in the cycle. In a gold bull market, you need to go with growth. That's where the outsize returns are going to be. Whereas within the seniors, they're playing a defensive game of not making mistakes. And I think that may appeal to large institutional investors, but that's not the square that we play in."
The panel also discussed the outstanding quarters that the gold miners are having now that they are mostly out from under COVID-19 work disruptions, and gold traded above $1,900 for most of the quarter.
This past week Newmont announced today a 60% increase to its dividend, its second dividend increase in 2020. It also recorded its best quarter in history. It realized an average gold price of $1,913. With an all-in-sustaining cost of $1,020, it was realizing over $900 on every ounce sold.
Agnico Eagle doubled its net income in the first nine months of the year at $306 million compared to the previous year. On top of the good results, the company increased its quarterly dividend by 75%.
At Yamana, gold cash tripled, and dividends are up 425% over the past 16 months.
Links mentioned during the podcast.
Daniel Earle Twitter
Neils Christensen Twitter
Paul Harris Twitter
Michael McCrae Twitter
Dave Lowell video
despite preelection precious metal turbulence, the gold miners are filing some very nice quarterlies. You're listening to kick a round table. I am your host, Michael McCray with me as editor news, kneels Christianson. How you doing? Nails? Happy Friday. Happy Halloween guys. Correspondent Paul Harris. How are you, Paul?
Well, good afternoon. And our special guest is Daniel Earl president and CEO of Solaris resources. We're delighted to have Daniel on the pod. Solaris has its roots in two of the biggest heavyweight center sector, Ross BD, and the recently past Dave Lowell. Daniel, can you tell us about Solaris and Augusta group?
I mean, I'd love to, uh, so Solares, uh, the way I describe it is as a copper gold growth and discovery story, and it's managed by the Augusta group, which of course has a totally unrivaled track record of value creation specifically in this niche of exploration and development in the mining sector. And so that totals over four and a half billion.
Dollars of exit transactions the last decade. And as you mentioned, the company is backed by Ross BD, but then we also have Lucas Lundine vacuum the company and together with Richard Warrick, you've got three of the most successful players in the mining industry. Uh, so our principal project. That's the David Lowell discovery in Ecuador and it's called and this is a project that's special because it's got a high grade open per resource.
And we're now growing this in leap it's leaps and bounds with the drill results that we've been putting out. And then even beyond Lorenza, you've got a whole portfolio of grassroots exploration projects. These are also David Little projects, uh, but these are David moles targets for future discoveries.
So we've got a large portfolio in this company, but then we've got over 20 million in cash. And we're very, very well supported with the group that we have. So we're very excited about it. We're delighted to have you on, because we want to have a longer discussion about copper and then obviously with, uh, Dave Lowell's, uh, discoveries around that, uh, really just, uh, being responsible for a jump-starting or being such a huge part of that industry.
But first. We lead with gold, uh, kneels. , it looks like a Peter hug was correct. That is , the precious metal division head, at Kitco he was warning us that, uh, as we lead up to the election, uh, gold was going to have a tough time of it. Well, yeah, you gotta, you gotta take stuff off the table and I think butts.
Um, if you look at our, you,
you, but if you look at it, so yeah, gold had a sell off, but we haven't tested it. Any major support levels. Yes. We broke through 1900. Um, but we've been flirting around with that for weeks, nearly months now. Um, you know, so, I mean, this is, this is just profit taking and, and positioning ahead of the election.
I mean, Everybody says, you know, like all the pundits say that there's going to be a blue wave. Uh, you know, Democrats are gonna take the Senate, uh, and they're going to take the white house, but there's that memory of 2016 and it's just, anything can happen. You just, you have no idea what's in store when the votes are counted and, and if it's going to be con uh, contested by either party.
Um, so it it's prudent that, that, um, uh, investors take some money off the table. I think one thing that's showing up is this election is going to have a very high voter turnout compared to previous elections. I think there's already been some 80 million. Votes cast by, by mail. So they expecting very, very high turnout this time.
No, it's just the, you know, just how many of those boats actually get counted. I mean, there's, you know, uh, uh, court battles back and forth about, you know, when, how, when these ballots get counted, how they get counted, everything like that. Um, But the thing though, too, is that I think we really need to start looking past the election.
Doesn't matter what party is in power. Um, you looked at GDP numbers that came out this week. Uh, third quarter, they Rose, uh, 33%. After a 31% decline in the second quarter, we're still down. You know, people are expecting a 4% decline for 2020. That means no matter who's in power, stimulus is coming. And that, that is what gold investors need to pay attention to forget about this politics now.
Um, it's all, it's all about inflation and stimulus. Daniel, what is it? What is it that the opportunity meals? I mean, there's, you know, exactly. If you look at the, if you look at the indicators, like, you know, the polling that's been done, not withstanding 2016 as an outlier where the polls were, you know, were incorrect, but what polling and the betting markets and saw, and there's broad agreement around what the outcome is likely to be.
Obviously we have the anxiety in the market. The position squaring and people taking money off the table. And then we had some potential volatility with the contested, they'll come and whatnot, but there's broad agreement around the outcome that this is going to be, you know, in a most likely event, a blue wave.
And I think there's the opportunity for investors to position themselves because I don't see any way that that's not going to be massive and positive for gold investors. If you think about the amount of stimulus is going to come through. Uh, the pressure that that's going to put them in the U S dollar and therefore the opportunity for gains in gold stocks.
I completely agree, but even, and, but this is what I'm saying too, is that even if it's not a blue wave eat, you know, like the Democrats and Republicans, you know, who matter, whoever controls, Congress is still going to have to do something to support the economy that's looking at at a 4% decline. So I agree.
I think the blue wave is probably the best scenario for gold. They're going to just pump. Trillions of dollars into the economy in the next four years, you know, but you know, whatever it is, I think you, you, you buy now and just ride the wave higher. The only problem is, is that, you know, the, you know, do you get a $2 trillion stimulus?
Do you get a hut? A half, a half trillion stimulus. Yeah. And that's, and that's where that's where people are sort of hedging their bets now. I just wonder if the Republicans hold onto the Senate. Um, I saw at five 38, I believe that a blue wave where you get the house, uh, the presidency and the Senate was a ranked at over 70%, uh, per five 38.
Um, but uh, if, uh, the Republicans do hold onto the Senate, why wouldn't they just say no? Why wouldn't they just sit on their hands? And then, uh, we just don't get that, uh, other stimulus. Well, cause again, they're, you know, they're steering in another election two years, so they can't, they can't just sit on their hands.
Like they can't just, you can't not do nothing. And after the election stimulus does not become a political football to be punted around anymore. There's no, there's no partisanship left. Yeah, it's just too dire a situation with the second wave. Now, taking the total is higher than the first wave. I mean, it's really critical.
So I think either way you get stimulus with a split government, you, you definitely still get stimulus. It's just with a blue wave. You'd get way more. Exactly. We're going to have the election, uh, Tuesday night, uh, please, uh, stay tuned to Kitco. It's going to have huge ramifications which are happening, uh, to precious metals and, uh, yes.
Uh, we're all eagerly looking forward to that. I think I also saw in a note with, uh, Jim Wyckoff that, uh, he was talking about, uh, probably, uh, more choppiness on the Monday and Tuesday. Uh, just kind of leading up until we get, uh, maybe. Some clarification on Tuesday. Sorry. I want to move it along. We should switch to Jr's.
Uh, Paul, um, Falco resources made a deal with Glencore. Yes. Falco resources. I'm spitting. It agreed to deal with Glencore. Um, for base metals, offtake fruits, horn fight project in rural Noranda and Quebec. Um, That's got an estimate in my life around 15 years and getting that, uh, offtake agreement was seen as one of the crucial things for that project to go ahead.
Um, the base metals there will be processed at Glencore's horn smelter, which is just down the road. So very positive piece of news there. Uh, you also liked the drilling hit that pure gold. Yes. Pure gold with its Madsen project, which is now called, um, the. The pure gold projects, confusingly enough in the red Lake district of Ontario.
And they're due to start producing, um, before the end of the year. And they're doing a lot of underground drilling to expand the resource and they put out a great hit this week of, uh, 1.2 meters grading 1147.1 grams per ton. So a lot of stuff's due and we found there at Mattson. Uh, we're always lucky to have on Paul Harris because he seems to get invited to everything.
Uh, he's always sending me notes on the latest panel that he's been at. Uh, can you tell us that the panel you're at and what you learned about, uh, M and a in 2021, Paul. Yes, this was, uh, I w I wasn't on the panel. I was watching this or listening to it. So the panel, the one-to-one conferences week, and they had a panel on M and a, and things of that with some, uh, some very, um, wise people, such as John Goodman from dumb D Warren, Erin from Rosseau asset management and for heart Tariq of credit Swiss, and, uh, for heartset, you know, um, That they don't see big scale emanate coming, not with the majors, not with the tier one gold producers, but they see the action coming and the mid tiers and the juniors, um, And I think it's really going to take off next year.
There's a lot of conversations are happening. The one thing holding things up is the inability to do site visits because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. So they expect things to really take off next year. Um, in part. Because of that, but also just the, the lack of resources out there. The message basically was the meatiest.
You've got to start buying, um, Warren Irvin. He mentioned, uh, one major that, um, you know, he's going to be out of resources in six years. And, uh, I think we all know who that is. Although we sort of don't say the word and say the name, but, um, yeah, I mean, it's, I think there's going to be a lot of smaller companies bought up next year.
Daniel, what are you saying? Well, no, I think that's exactly right. I mean, if you, if you look at the comments actually, uh, at the same conference coming out of Sean Boyd from Agnico, I mean, he was saying that, you know, what the seniors need to do this cycle is be disciplined with their capital allocation and not go out and buy things that at the high operations that we have.
I think that that's a terrible mistake. I think the problem, the last cycle is that they were buying at the end of the cycle. But if you look at how to create value in this business, it's a depleting business. You need to be buying up the troughs in the cycle. And so you look at the mid tiers, like Equinox being a great example of this run by Ross Beaty.
Who's one of the most successful people in the industry. Well, his last dash acquisition of the Mesquite mine that was, you know, only a couple of years ago, but the gold price was $700 announced slower. And so, you know, that asset it's simply, uh, at the time it was challenged in, in new Gold's portfolio.
And of course, new gold had its capital issues. W w uh, delivering the rating river project at the time. That's what creates the opportunity, you know, I mean, that kind of, that kind of in-house, it would be spinning off free cashflow in this price environment and simply wouldn't be available. So I think, you know, th seniors are pointing to a different audience than I think retail investors, retail, investors, understand that.
In a, uh, in a gold bull market, you need to go with growth. That's where the outsize returns are going to be. Whereas within the seniors, they're, they're playing a defensive game of not making mistakes. And I think that may appeal to large institutional investors, but that's not the, the square that we play.
Well, I was going to ask how do you, how do you sort of, uh, square the circle in like, or balance out. The need for, for investor, um, to give back to investors and to grow your, your, your pipeline. Um, you know, like, I guess, like you look at, you look at some of the had earnings come out and, um, we haven't yet really seen, uh, the investor reaction to some of these really, really good earnings.
And I think like, you know, like it feels like the mining companies really need to give back to investors to get them drawn in again. So we, we have sort of this new capital flowing in instead of just search recirculating, all of this, all this old money, um, is how do you, how do you balance that out? I don't know it feel, I don't know what Paul thinks, but it feels to me like deja VU, where, you know, in the last cycle we instituted these dividends across the space, not just in golds, but silvers as well.
And Pan-American, and the other silver companies brought in dividends. And I don't remember that bringing in generalists in, in, in, in droves. And enter the space. And certainly if they did come in, we didn't stay with us all the way through the trough. So I think gold companies need to be gold companies. I re I reject the idea that they need to become like utilities or something.
It doesn't fit with the actual business dynamics that we have. I think the, the, the panel commented Elon. It said in the last cycle, when the generous in generalist came in very late and they were left holding the bag when the prices just fell away. Um, so these are things that. Inevitably continue to perpetuate the fact that it is a sick coop business.
Um, the bigger companies is Daniel said perhaps too defensive when they should be more aggressive, they missed their opportunity and end up having to buy later in the cycle at higher prices. This time around there seems to be more, um, Stock transactions rather than getting the checkbook out. So, you know, companies boosting their dividends.
They're trying to get their stock prices up. Perhaps one of the outcomes of that is there'll be able to do more transactions with their own paper, rather than putting out big money. Are we still waiting for the generalist?
I'm waiting to go to. Yeah. I mean, you can see it in the valuations. These, these gold companies are incredibly cheap. I mean, even, even when we had, um, you know, in $2,000 gold price back in July, when these companies were trading off 1400, 14, 50 gold at the time, you know, whereas whereas peak valuations where you have general is already in the place in size, uh, to generate those peak valuations, gold companies will be trading at a premium.
So the spot gold price at the time. So, so we're nowhere near that kind of environment with what we see in the market today. Let's uh, talk about those numbers. Uh, we had, uh, the biggest negatives a week was the quarterlies that came out. Uh, we finally got out from underneath the COVID-19 disruptions. Oh.
And we had gold trading, mostly at 1900 for this quarter. Uh, the companies are doing themselves with superlatives record this and record that, uh, the world's largest gold miner. Uh, that would be a Newmont, uh, Announced a 60% increase to its dividend. Uh, that's a sick, that's a second dividend increased in 2020.
It also recorded its best quarter in history. It realized an average gold price of 1913 and with an all-in sustaining cost of a 10 20, that was realizing over $900 on every ounce it's sold. Agnico Eagle doubled it. Net income in the first nine months of the year at 306 million compared to the previous year, Agnico took a hard hit.
When Quebec shut down on top of the good results, the company increased its quarterly dividend by 75%. Yamana just had us results today. Cash tripled dividends are up 425%. I believe going back from 18 months, uh, the company also shook off. COVID-19 getting record production from some of its operations.
Uh, you also noted, uh, news about, uh, mal Arctic and Humana Paul. Yes. Um, you might've put out a very bullish announcement on the East Cody potential of the, to expand the extend the mine life of Canadian Malartic. And they said the mineralization is currently defined over 1400 meters of strike length, and 1200 meters.
Vertical interval, um, drilling is made into see up to 700 meters below surface down to 1900 meters below surface with the grades of up to about a seven grams a ton. So looking like there's many, many years more to come there. Go ahead nails. So I just wanted to say, if Tesla came out with a headline saying it tripled its cashflow, um, how many investors would be jumping into that stock?
Like, I'm just, I'm amazed that, you know, we're still wondering where the generalists are when we see some of these numbers and we, and this wasn't even a really big surprise. We were, we were expecting this, um, you know, two months ago. No. I mean, the timing's terrible right now just because what's happened with the market.
It's uh, so, um, you know, there's probably going to be, uh, you know, Barrack might be better timed when they actually release, I believe probably about, uh, the second week in November or something like that. Sorry, Paul. Yeah. But, um, a lot of the companies are saying they, they fully expect to hit their, their guidance for the year and they fully expect.
Fourth quarter results to be similar to third quarter results. So obviously they're going to come out after the, uh, the U S election. So there's a lot of potential there for them to sort of really start writing up when people are focused on things other than the presidential election, uh, Paul, anything in the quarterlies that stuck out to you.
Um, a couple of things. I mean, you've mentioned some of the companies, everybody seems to be putting up their dividends and a lot of companies are clearing debt, uh, coal mining for one, uh, Alamos gold, also clear their debt. One thing I've noticed on the results so far, um, All-in sustaining costs pretty much across the board is increasing by one company so far that's Eldorado gold.
As far as I'm aware, they're the only people that are the only company that's seen a reduction in Seoul in sustaining costs. They reduce their use by 11% in the quarter. I did notice that, uh, across, um, uh, the all-in sustaining costs seemed a little higher on, um, on that, uh, what happened with Eldorado gold that they're able to get it lower.
Well, they've been bringing on new production expanding. So they're producing more ounces. That's a key thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, that of course, uh, headed up by, uh, George Burns, uh, Daniel, uh, enough about gold. Uh, we had you on to talk about that more exciting metal and that, that would be copper. Um, I believe we've been hitting a two-year high.
We're seeing also what is happening with Evie metals? How is copper looking right now? Daniel? Well, copper looks great. I mean, it's always, uh, I always find it funny with them when I speak to retail investors and tell them that copper is actually massively outperformed gold and it, and it usually comes into the total surprise.
I mean, copper is up over 15%. I mean, it's up over a dollar, a pound. Once the March loans gold is looking at something like a, you know, kind of a 30% move to where we are today, but even at the peak for gold, it was still well below where copper is gone. Um, and, and that's, you know, there's of course, two sides to the story and supply and demand on the supply side.
Uh, you've got major production centers for copper over a third of world supplies coming in and Chilean grew alone and they've been hit really hard by COVID. If you look at the numbers, particularly in Peru, they're just terrible. Um, so you've got production down quite a bit. And then on the demand side, you've got half of the world's demand from China alone, China and China exited the COVID pandemic all the way back in March.
And if you look at most parts of the country outside of blue Bay, and some of them were just in shin Jong and so on economic activity is all the way back to pre COVID levels. And you can see that in the, in the stock market, which is at new highs, it's fully broken out. I mean, the currency is surging. The central bank has to intervene to attempt that deal.
It's just, I'm going all guns blazing in, in China. So that's basically what you have and what brings you to the copper price today? But you, you gotta remember, this is the beginning of the global economic cycle. We're just coming out of a global recession right now. And so as we start to get into next year where you see a stimulus pouring in, in the different, um, um, kind of those economic regions, we get a vaccine at some point next year.
And the benefits from that, we're going to go back to synchronized global growth. And that's when you're really going to start to see corporate takeoff. That'll be next year and the following year. And that's even before you get in. To be electrification megatrend, which really starts to have an impact, uh, 20, 24, 2025 and beyond Paul.
And I'd say for Daniel's point about Chile and Peru, but then they've both experienced COVID in a very different way. Um, Chile pretty much managed to keep his minds operating and, uh, the state copper company get Elko released its results and, uh, they're making super profits, um, renounced the profits of 1.1 billion through the first nine months of this year, an 86% increase over last year.
So, um, despite the difficult conditions there. Copper company and Chili's Dubin out to put the red metal out. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're, they're, they're certainly making a lot of money. A lot of the, uh, the major copper miners are, are making tons of money at the moment, but, you know, Codelco, if you recall, in 2017, they had a $25 billion capital program.
They've been sloshing that left and right. There is no way that they're going to be delivering on their copper production targets over the next decade. Just a up on that Daniel, um, in, in the news release, they put out, um, the Turkey commander Shuki commander underground mine that said it's 99.5% complete.
And they think that will come in $700 million under budget. But yeah, else across the board they're being slashing or reducing their budgets.
Um, Daniel is, is there some concern though that, um, this COVID, you know, how does that impact growth going forward? I mean, we're, we're starting to see the second wave. I mean, um, I know Quebec, uh, they're they're um, Virus cases have actually are higher now than they were back in the springtime. And I'm sort of wondering, I mean, is there concern that copper is getting ahead of itself or is, is the growth still there?
It just gets pushed back until, until COVID gets under control. Yeah, like it, I mean, in terms of economic growth in North America and in Quebec or, I mean, uh, you know, in North America and Europe rather, you've got. Yeah, you've gotten a serious resurgence of COVID. And so the numbers are actually higher than you were during the, uh, the, kind of the, um, the, the first wave peaks.
Uh, but also we've gotten better. Uh, dealing with cultural. Great. So we understand a little bit more about COVID now. And so we're better able to, uh, mitigate against the risks of COVID with mass spring and so on rather than going back to the full scale locked in. So the economic impact is less the mortality and so on with some of the therapeutics and treatments and Simon have come through his last.
So I don't expect that we're going to see the same sort of full scale shutdown with double digit, you know, cutting economic declines for the second week. And we are, we are kind of coming in now with, uh, we stimulus and so on, which is helping to support the economies and the governments tend to respond slowly, but when they respond, they're responding for us and we're seeing them play in as well.
Our, uh, those, uh, Daniel Hauer, some of those, a large, um, a large delay in minds looking at for copper supply over the long-term. What is the, what's the supply picture? Well, it's a dire situation. I mean, the, the, you know, chill like Chile in particular in parade to a lesser extent. I mean, you're, you're looking at these, um, Uh, basically the mega minds of the world, you know, the top 10 global copper mines accounts for about 25% of the world's supply.
These mines have been expanded and expanded. Again, some of them have been expanded multiple times. Like Sarah Verda is working on its fourth expansion. Um, and so they're, they're basically tapped out in terms of what their growth potential is. And they're starting to run up against the, the, kind of the natural constraints of, uh, resource depletion, grade declines, water scarcity is becoming a huge issue for these projects, power supply issues, and so on.
So the outlook for, you know, kind of the main minds that have been supplying the copper industry is not good over, you know, over the, over the balance, uh, over the, over the next decade or so. And even beyond, so you, so you, you've certainly got, whether you're looking at when McKenzie data is here and you, or whoever your favorite forecaster is, you really start to see the copper supply rolling off, uh, over the course of this decade.
And, uh, and, and, and then how are we going to replace that supply? Well, if we've already expanded all the big minds, it's got to come from new minds. And so where are those new minds? I mean, there's maybe a handful. Paul knows more of them than I do, but there's maybe a handful of copper explorers and developers out there that legitimately have a shot at bringing the project online in the next 10 years.
That's not nearly enough. We need something like a hundred new minds to meet the challenges of supply to meet the electrification and decarbonization initiatives and announcements that we've seen globally. So it's a really daunting challenge. And, and to add to that, um, last Sunday, the people of Chile voted in a referendum to re to draft a new constitution.
Um, and that is widely expected to include various elements that will be. Will impact mining in potentially in a negative way. So things about indigenous people's rights, um, about water usage of water rights, uh, potentially greater rent seeking for governments, the national and local government, uh, to help repair the damage of the COVID economic crisis.
Um, so the, the mining sector in Chile is. Moving into a period of sort of uncertainty for the next year. The constituent assembly is going to be voted on in April. Um, they'll have about a year, nine months, 12 months to draft a new constitution. And then Chile faces a mandatory election of all citizens to vote on that.
And so there's potentially some changes coming down the pipeline for the mining sector there. We mentioned it at the start of the pod, uh, Daniel, but, uh, just, uh, I think we should just finish on that. Uh, who was that? Dave Lowell. I mean, Dan Dannon was an absolute legend in the mining industry. I mean, this is, you're talking about the most successful copper Explorer of all time.
So he co-defined the porphyry copper model, uh, way back in the sixties, which is now by far the most important deposit type or copper it's it's. You know, 60% of the world's resources are represented in that deposit class. Uh, so that's where it began. And then, and then he basically took that model out into the field and went and made more discoveries of greater consequence than anyone in history.
And these include, um, you know, discoveries like, uh, you know, Zelda, Lara Ballo Ellenboro, which was the biggest mine in Argentina until recently. Uh, you know, and then the greatest discovery of them, all Alaska data. I mean, this is the world's largest. Copper mine, uh, by just a massive margins. It's more than twice the size of the next largest mine.
So there's, there's no understating David's, um, significance in terms of the copper industry. Uh, there was a nice video. It's quite, it's a, it's a little old, but, uh, that was, uh, by Tommy Humphreys. And it was just a short documentary on Dave. But, uh, if you're not familiar with his contribution to the sector and just also kind of capturing kind of the excitement.
That you can have in the sector, it's just kind of worth, uh, it's just worth a watch. I'd like to move on to our number of the week. That is a figure that, uh, stuck with you that, uh, was illuminating of the industry. We always start with a guest, Daniel, what's your number? You know, I don't even think it's about industry, you know, given where we are on the calendar.
My number is two 70, which is the number of electoral college votes. You need to win that. That's everything right now. You can just see it in the markets. People are sitting on the sidelines, just waiting. We need that result, and then we can move on Neil. What's your number? Um, so mine is, uh, mine is 29. Um, more specifically 29%.
That's the decline that jewelry sales saw in the third quarter, according to a world gold council. And I bring that up because I'm on the same day that the, uh, the world gold council released this figure, uh, Tiffany and LVMH, uh, LV. M H announced that their historic, uh, deal there, there, the, the buyout is back on at a lower price, uh, 15, uh, uh, over 15 million versus six, 15 billion versus, uh, the, the initial offering around 16 billion.
Um, So, yeah, so that's terrible time to be in the jewelry business. I was, uh, you know, the odd times that I drop into that, I just love looking at that chart because you can see the amount of gold that is demanded by ETFs is just, it's almost entirely inversely correlated to jewelry demand. Yeah, well, yeah.
And it's, and this is, and this is the only real thing that matters for gold. And that probably will matter for gold for at least the next couple of years, as long as we have. Uh, zero interest rates, as long as we have the fed balance sheet growing at record pace, um, you know, investor demand for gold is, is, is going to be massive.
I think we'll probably have on the upside though, you'll have all that pent up demand once a, you know, of gold starts to soften. Uh, cause I can't imagine, you know, it's, it's, it's such a sought after commodity. Well, yeah, and actually to point this out, actually, the WGC did also. Say that up boy, a barn queen demand Rose in the third court and that Rose as prices, uh, hit all time highs.
So I think there is some physical demand out there. It's just jewelry to such high premiums on, on that, on the markup. Um, it, yeah, it it's, it's not, you'd rather you'd the pure play would be bars. It'd be bullion, bars and coins. Paul your number. I have two numbers this week. I have a fun one and a serious one.
Which one do you want? First serious one serious one. Okay. 2.7%. I know that number. What is it earlier? 2.7% is the yield of a Newmont's dividend. Now that it's increased it to $1 60, a share, which Newmont says exceeds the median of the S and P 500 index. And I think why it's significant is it's perhaps per the evidence.
That the gold industry is growing up and working really hard to attract investors back to the space. Um, so the, the phone one, and it's perhaps the largest number we'll ever have on this podcast is a 10 quintillion psycho,
but that's the cycle. That's the cycle meteor. Well, this is a follow-up to the asteroid number from last week as is another asteroid. And this one is estimated to have 10 quintillion dollars worth of iron and nickel. Wow. Apparently it's just made entirely of iron and nickel is called 16 psyche. It's about 140 miles wide and it's flowing around out there somewhere.
That would be an awfully big battery, if you could actually hook up to it.
My number is 19.9% and, uh, that is, uh, Darrell Canada's, uh, projected deficit as a percentage of GDP. Uh, it shows you that, uh, everybody is doing some, uh, Uh, how would you say, uh, there all the Western economies are worldwide or, uh, propping up their economies as they deal with this COVID-19 and then also that creates, uh, the, um, creates a narrative for gold.
Doesn't it Neils. If you listen quietly, you can hear the moon, the printing presses collectively around the world, kneels, uh, we're rebooting the gold survey, uh, with Peter hug. Can you tell us how people can find out more? Um, kiko.com. Actually, we just published it today. Uh, but yeah, Peter's talking about it.
He's giving his, uh, his, uh, 2 cents on the survey. Um, both this week, both wall street and main street are bullish on gold wall street, more so than, than main street, I think. And this is, this is all to do with the election wall streets looking way past the election. They're looking at inflation, they're looking at all this.
All the stimulus that's going to be pumped out. Um, retailers are just, are really focused on who is going to be, who's going to lead. Who's going to be in Congress and who's going to be in the white house. Um, so yeah, so they, you know, um, 67% of analysts we talked to are bullish on gold, but only 50, right.
2% of retail investors, uh, that took part in the online survey. Are bullish on, on the metal for next week. I did invite our listeners to drop in on Friday, sent a check out, uh, the gold survey. It's very valuable in terms of, uh, information and, uh, outlook, uh, a good trend line for what is happening in the precious metal space.
I do believe that it is the only short term sentiment forecast out there in the gold market that you can get on a weekly basis, you know? Uh, Paul, you have a conference coming up. Yes. Uh, the 10th to the 13th of November at the Columbia code symposium. And, uh, we're gonna have Danielle, um, on the projects they talking about or answer Daniel, uh, is there any news that we can look forward to out of Solara?
So over the next 12 months, tons of news, I mean, the most important of which is just going to be the drilling that we're doing. So investors are looking forward to. No more intervals of long, long intervals of high grade copper mineralization from wordsa. Uh, this is in the central zone where we've been no good drilling and we'll continue to draw.
But I think one of the things that, um, that, that they should absolutely be paying attention to is the drilling that we're, we're about to start at the West zone. This could be a new discovery for us, and we'll start drilling there in the next month. And then finally, towards the end of the year, we're going to be testing our first large scale gold target.
Um, so I'd love to have them discovery that are talking about before you were here. Terrific. Uh, Daniel, what's your Twitter handle, or if they want to follow you or they want to follow Solaris? It's my name. Daniel Earl three. Okay. And that's with any at the end to ease and Earl. Yeah. That's correct? Yes.
You can reach me at, uh, Michael MacRae and that's with two C's on Twitter. Niels is at Neil's underscore C and Paul is at a coal, I think that's called gold letter for a Columbia gold letter. Is that correct? Or Columbia gold symposium, Paul, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we are now on iTunes. Uh, we're rolling out this, uh, podcast.
Uh, we're getting ourselves more index, please subscribe, please rate us. And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend. Uh, you can also subscribe to other shows such as Keiko interviews, where we reprice, um, our favorite video interviews. I want to thank, uh, Daniel, Laurel, uh, for joining us for the podcast.
Thank you very much for being with us. Thanks so much. We're going to reprice our interview with David Garafalo, former CEO of Goldcorp. Who's going to talk about consolidation in the intermediate space. Thank you very much.