YMP’s Peter Munk Award: Royalties are elemental, company founder Bell says 

It was after the market hollowed out two of his mining startups that Fred Bell landed on royalty financing as the idea for a firm now valued at $1.76 billion and listed on Nasdaq.   

First the 2011 Fukushima disaster levelled an Australia-focused uranium company, then the 20-teens commodity slump sidelined a West African gold explorer.  

“The only business model I can see where you can get cash flow early and protect yourself against the cyclic penalty of the space is in the royalty model,” Bell said from the London office of Elemental Royalty (Nasdaq, TSXV: ELE), where he’s founder, president and chief operating officer.  

“That’s how it started: a private company, really lean, getting diversified cash flow to protect the downside from day one, and with the basis that if you can do that, then you can scale the company up over time.”  

Now all that growth in eight years has earned him the 2026 Peter Munk Award from Young Mining Professionals, a group backed by the mining industry’s major players such as Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX, NYSE: AEM), B2Gold (TSX: BTO; NYSE-A: BTG) and Kinross Gold (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) among many others. Along with the Eira Thomas Award this year for Vicky Liu, the YMP honours go to industry leaders under age 40.  

Saloon 

“I am 39 so I guess it’s last-chance saloon, you know,” London, U.K. native Bell said. “I was not expecting that. And in terms of some of the previous winners, I mean some really high-profile people, so, yeah, it’s a very big compliment to get it.”  

Bell started Elemental in 2017, took it public in 2020, then within 18 months faced a hostile takeover from Gold Royalty (NYSE-A: GROY) which pushed Elemental to merge with U.K.-listed Altus Strategies. After taking over EMX Royalty in November, Elemental has 16 producing royalties and 34 on advanced development stage projects and is ranked among the top 10 royalty companies by stock market value.  

The Altus transaction gave Elemental a large pipeline of development project royalties while EMX delivered three cornerstone assets: a 1.3% net smelter return (NSR) on Lundin Mining’s (TSX: LUN) Caserones copper-molybdenum mine in Chile; a 0.36% NSR on Zijin Mining’s Timok copper-gold mine in Serbia; and a 1% gross smelter return royalty on Nevada Gold Mines’ (Barrick Mining TSX: ABX; NYSE: B and Newmont TSX: NGT; NYSE: NEM) Leeville mine.  

Another main asset is a 2% NSR on Capricorn Metals’ (ASX: CMM) Karlawinda gold mine in Australia, Bell said.  

Industry option 

Bell, who earned a history degree at the University of Edinburgh before landing in mining by accident, said he was attracted to the background about the industry. The royalty industry has ballooned from a niche market two decades ago to be valued at more than $200 billion now as an increasing number of developers come to rely on its financing to avoid share dilution, uncertain capital raisings and debt burdens.  

Wheaton Precious Metals (TSX, NYSE, LSE: WPM) added streaming, then arbitrage derivatives, while more recently commodity-specific companies have emerged such as Lithium Royalty (TSX: LIRC) and Uranium Royalty (TSX: URC; Nasdaq: UROY).  

“It’s incredible how it has grown, not just by itself, but as a percentage of the mining industry,” Bell said. “Ultimately, we’re all wanting to grow the mining space. We want to get investors in. And the more different structures, opportunities and ways to play the mining space, it’s great.”