Royal Gold sees big reserve increase

Royal Gold (RGL-T, RGLD-Q) has more gold under its belt .

Gold reserves for the company’s royalty interests have increased by 30% while silver reserves are up by 16%.

In total that works out to 64.2 million oz. of gold and 1.2 billion oz. of silver.

Royal Gold attributes part of the gain to buying royalty interests in Barrick Gold‘s (ABX-T, ABX-N) Cortez Pipeline mining complex in Nevada, which added 72 properties, including eight producing mines, two development stage properties, 19 evaluation stage properties and 34 exploration projects.

In addition, Royal Gold said that significant reserve boosts at Goldcorp‘s (G-T) Pensaquito project in Mexico, Osisko Mining‘s (OSK-T, OSKFF-O) Canadian Malartic gold project in Quebec, Alamos Gold‘s (AGI-T, AGIGF-O) Mulatos project in Mexico and at the Cortez also played a part in the increase.

On May 7, the company announced net income of US$4.1 million from record royalty revenue of US$20.8 million for the period ending March 31. A year earlier, Royal Gold reported revenue of US$18.7 million with a net income of US$6.9 million.

Increased royalty revenue was largely driven by stronger production from High River Gold Mine‘s (HRG-T) Taparko project in Burkina Faso and from some of the properties acquired in the Barrick transaction.

Net income decreased due to a US$4 million increase in depreciation, depletion and amortization charges, due to increased production from Taparko and new production from other projects.