Sprott - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Sprott Inc.'s 2025 fourth quarter results conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions.

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, February 19, 2026. On behalf of the speakers that follow, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation and the responses to questions may contain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws.

Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are implied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements.

For additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations or material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements, please consult the MD&A for the quarter and Sprott's other filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities regulators. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Whitney George. Please go ahead, Mr. George.

Whitney George (CEO)

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me today is our CFO, Kevin Hibbert, and John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management. Our 2025 fourth quarter results were released this morning and are available on our website, where you can also find the financial statements and MD&A.

I'll start on slide 4. In short, it was a banner year for Sprott in 2025. Our core positioning in precious metals and critical materials investments allowed us to navigate volatile market conditions and deliver outstanding results for our clients and our shareholders. Our AUM increased by $10.5 billion during the fourth quarter and closed the year at $59.6 billion, up $28.1 billion from December 31, 2024.

Subsequent to year-end, our AUM has continued to grow by another $10.5 billion to reach $70.1 as of February 13, 2026. Investor interest in multiple different metals contributed to strong net sales in 2025, primarily in our exchange-listed products.

Our ETF business has been on a growth trajectory since 2021 and accounted for more than $4.6 billion of our total AUM as of year-end. This business is off to a strong start in 2026, with AUM now approaching $7 billion. Our managed equity and private strategy segments also delivered excellent results in 2025, generating more than $54 million in gross performance and carry interest fees. With that, I'll pass it over to Kevin for a look at our financial results. Kevin?

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Thank you, Whitney, and good morning. Good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 5, which provides a summary of our historical AUM. To Whitney's point, AUM finished the year at $59.6 billion, up 21% from $49.1 billion as at September 30, 2025, and was up 89% from $31.5 billion as at December 31, 2024.

On a 3- and 12-month ended basis, we benefited from market value appreciation across the majority of our fund products and positive net inflows to our exchange-listed products. Subsequent to year-end, as at February 13, our AUM stood at $70.1 billion, up 18% from our December 31 AUM. Our performance subsequent to year-end was the result of $7.7 billion of market value appreciation and $2.8 billion of net inflows, primarily in our exchange-listed products.

Slide 6 provides a brief look at our three- and 12-month earnings. Net income this quarter was $28.7 million, up $17 million from $11.7 million over the same three-month period last year. Basis, our net income was $67.3 million, up $18.1 million from $49.3 million last year.

Our net income performance was primarily due to market value appreciation and inflows to our precious metals physical trusts, and carried interest and performance fee crystallizations in our managed equities and private strategy segments. These increases were partially offset by a change in accounting requirements brought on by our new cash-settled stock plan that took effect this year.

As we mentioned in previous quarters, cash-settled stock plans, like the one we implemented this year, require the use of mark-to-market and graded vest accounting under IFRS 2, which creates the dual impact of accelerating the amount of vesting that occurs each period and adding market volatility to each vested amount.

In our case, this nearly doubled the amount of RSUs subject to the accounting expense methodology versus what will actually vest in the year, and at a time when our stock has appreciated 18% in the quarter and 132% on a full year basis. In contrast, in 2024, we had an equity-settled stock that's to be valued at the original grant date fair value on a constant basis over the amortization period. Moving forward, in 2026, there will be less amortization hitting our IFRS P&L relating to the 2025 three-year grants-...

Less shares being added for our 2026 three-year grants. However, we do expect continued increases to our stock-based compensation expense on a comparative basis for at least the first half of 2026, since our stock did not begin the majority of its ascent until the summer of 2025. This means, to the extent our stock price remains at current levels, the second half of 2026 should begin to produce lower period-over-period volatility, as the trading range of SII in the second half of 2025 is a little closer to where we currently trade.

Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes quarterly volatility from items like stock-based compensation and intermittent carried interest and performance fee crystallizations, was $42 million for the quarter, up 88% from $22.4 million over the same three-month period last year, and was $121 million on a full year basis, up 43% from $85.2 million earned last year.

Adjusted EBITDA on the quarter and on a full year basis benefited from higher average AUM on market value appreciation I described previously, and inflows to our precious metals physical trust and ETFs. Finally, slide seven provides a few treasury and balance sheet management highlights. As you can see, due to our improved earnings, our cash and liquidity profile strengthened this year, and we raised our dividend by 33% in November.

For more information on our revenues, expenses, net income, adjusted EBITDA and balance sheet metrics, you can refer to the supplemental information section of this presentation, as well as our annual MD&A and financial statements filed earlier this morning. With that said, I'll pass things over to John.

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everybody. Just turning to slide 8. Sprott has held a bullish thesis on most metals and miners for the past few years. Over the past 5, we've invested heavily in our team, made timely acquisitions, developed a broad suite of differentiated offerings that incorporate our knowledge and expertise, and developed new partnerships to broaden our distribution reach.

We think it's fair to say that the world is catching up with our view, that we are in a new metals-driven commodity super cycle, and capital is finally on the move. Investors are looking for new investment ideas where long-term fundamentals appear durable and compelling. In 2025, our physical trusts fund suite generated significant growth with a 97% gain in AUM to $47 billion. Momentum continues with another $7 billion added year to date.

As we've mentioned in the past, growing AUM and liquidity begets AUM and liquidity, as ever larger institutions allocate to the sector. And price signals are bullish. Of the six metals we offer in physical form, gold, silver, platinum and copper have all recently reached all-time highs, while uranium touched a two-year high.

Moving to the next slide, which is net flows into our physical trusts. We saw a record sales year in 2025. Flows in Q4 were very strong, and they've continued into January. Our gold, silver, and uranium trusts accounted for the bulk of the flows, but I'd like to highlight an emerging contributor, which is our Physical Copper Trust. While sales in 2025 were modest at only $4 million, the copper trust has already generated $54 million year to date, as copper, as I mentioned, recently, hit a new high.

We recently received approval by the SEC to cross-list the trust on the NYSE Arca exchange, and subject to unitholder approval, we expect the copper trust to begin trading there in early Q2. Once listed, this will be the first physical copper fund to trade in the United States. Investor interest in copper is growing as copper's strategic role in electrification is becoming better understood.

Along with our copper mining ETFs, assets in our copper suite of funds now stands at approximately $800 million. And two years ago to yesterday, our assets in the category were only $6 million. Moving to the next slide, which is our ETF suite. 2025 was a breakout year with a 94% gain in AUM. Assets have gained another astonishing 45% year-to-date, as growing scale creates a flywheel effect.

A few items to highlight, over the past year to February eighteenth, Sprott has 6 ETFs in the top 25 in performance out of over 4,000 U.S.-listed non-lever ETFs. The Sprott Physical Silver Miners and Physical Silver ETF, NYSE Arca, ticker SLVR, has been a huge win for our investors and shareholders. SLVR surpassed $1 billion in assets in its first year of trading.

This has been our fastest-growing ETF launch to date and illustrates the value of our brand, expertise, and relationships. Flows into our copper mining ETFs are accelerating, driven by superior performance to our competitors. And finally, our relationship with HANetf, which is our European distribution partner, continues to grow, and assets now stand at $650 million. Moving to slide 11.

Sales were solid in 2025, excuse me, in 2025, despite some outflows from our uranium mining ETFs in the second half of the year. Since the year-end, we've seen a sharp pickup in sales momentum, with flows matching cumulative sales in all of 2022, 2023, and 2024.... A number of our ETFs just achieved three-year track records and highlight to investors that not all indexes are created equal.

Our index construction focuses on pure-play companies and utilizes a dynamic universe approach to provide a differentiated offering that is translating into superior investment results. For example, our Critical Materials ETF, ticker SETM, and our Copper Mining ETFs have outperformed their closest competitors since their inception dates. And I'll now pass it over to Whitney to talk about managed equities.

Whitney George (CEO)

Thank you, John. We'll move now to slide twelve for a look at our managed equity segment. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our managed equity strategies delivered strong performance in 2025, with AUM increasing by 97% during the year to $5.7 billion.

Our flagship gold equity fund gained 18% in the fourth quarter and was up 148% on a full year basis, and some of our private partnerships did even better. Despite their strong performance, these strategies reported modest outflows in 2025. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the sub-advisory agreement of our silver equities fund was opportunistically terminated by our client, despite being up 175% as of December 1.

We continue to leverage our strengths and our investment team through our recently launched actively managed ETFs. The Sprott Active Gold and Silver Miners ETF and the Sprott Active Metals and Miners ETF continue to scale, with AUM reaching $202 million and $105 million, respectively. I'll turn now to our private strategies on slide 13.

There's not much we're allowed to say about private strategies, but what we can tell you is we continue to monitor and harvest investments in our second fund, a lending fund. We're actively assessing new investment opportunities as we invest up our third lending fund, and we have a process of ongoing monitoring of portfolio investments in our streaming product. We're hopeful to be in a position sometime this year to be talking about our next fund. Slide 14.

I'll move to slide 14 with some closing remarks. In summary, with our core strengths in precious metals and critical materials investments, we're well positioned for the current market conditions. For 2026, we expect more volatility in the markets, certainly as we've seen recently.

For example, in January, we experienced a very, very violent sell-off in precious metals following an exceptional run-up for gold and silver prices. In our view, this was a healthy and overdue technical correction triggered by speculative investors and algorithmic traders, while the fundamental drivers of the rally remain intact. I think it's an, you know, excellent opportunity for those who feel they've missed those rallies to have a better, more sensible re-entry point. Demand for critical materials investments is growing.

Governments are becoming increasingly involved in these markets to secure supply and reduce reliance on foreign sources, and we expect this trend to accelerate in 2026, which should drive even greater investor interest in our critical materials strategies. We're very pleased with what we've accomplished in 2025 and remain focused on executing on our growth opportunity, the growth opportunities ahead of us.

We will continue to drive scale in our physical trust while also exploring new ETF launches. At this point, we hope to announce at least one new ETF in the first half, and a continuing expansion of our product offerings through our partners HANwtf in Europe. We expect the rotation out of AI stocks to continue and investor allocations to natural resource investments to increase.

It's early, but we are already seeing a definite pickup in interest in our managed equity funds and private strategies. We're optimistic this interest will translate into meaningful sales in 2026. That concludes our remarks for today's call, and I'll now turn it over to the operator for some Q&A. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are on a speakerphone, please lift your handset before doing so. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star two. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one now. We will take a moment to gather questions. Your first question comes from the line of Etienne Ricard at BMO, BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Etienne Ricard (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, and good morning, team. So the improvement in margins this quarter was a highlight for me. Given your ETF platform still represents a relatively small but growing percentage of your assets, how should we think about incremental margins on your ETFs relative to the trusts?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Yeah. Hi, Etienne, it's John. Yeah, the beauty of the ETF platform is obviously scale is really helpful in terms of, you know, putting funds on platforms and obviously raising larger amounts of capital. The way those funds work is they have unitary fees. Unitary fees are basically fixed fees that don't change for investors, so that's one of the benefits. You have total predictability.

The benefit for us is that as the assets scale, we're able to capture additional margin because many of our service providers and partners have pricing arrangements with us that fall with assets.... and it really helps the overall block of assets, but the other thing it really helps with is incremental new funds, which are very costly to launch. They are heavily subsidized, so to speak, with kind of our collective assets.

So bringing new funds to market will become less and less expensive, and we're starting to see the benefit of that. Finally, I think we have almost every single fund in the lineup now above its break-even AUM level, which is very important. It's very common to have to subsidize a fund in its early years, until it hits those break-even levels, and I think we've got all but one still, below break-even. So that was a really important milestone. So, you know, the fund lineup is growing very quickly, and we expect, you know, that to fall to the bottom line, and, you know, every basis point kind of counts in ETF, so it's all working nicely together.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

And I would just probably add to that. That was a good summary, John. I'd also add to that, generally speaking, again, I think you're trying to make the connection between the ETFs and the physicals. The ETFs tend to have higher margin opportunities than the physicals, just given that the fixed cost structure there is a little bit lower than their physical counterparts in that segment. So, everything John mentioned is correct, and would actually add a little bit more torque to the bottom line to the extent it becomes an increasingly larger portion of the total AUM in that segment, if that helps.

Etienne Ricard (Equity Research Analyst)

Interesting. And where would be the break-even level for the ETFs?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

So every ETF has a different break-even level, but the primary driver is obviously its management fee. And then secondarily, you have to think a little bit about what market it's listed in, whether it's in the U.S. or Europe. Generally, our break evens can range anywhere from about $25 million upwards of $75 million. So that's kind of a wide range, but once you get through those break-even AUMs, you start to actually generate net positive revenue. And that's why it's very important to get the ETFs up to break even to start and then scale from there.

Etienne Ricard (Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thank you. And, switching gears a little bit, given precious metals had been out of favor for quite some time, are you now seeing greater competition from other asset managers coming to market with new products that are focused on your end markets?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Yeah. Well, I think it's fair to say that the ETF market is mature. In the precious metal space, there are a lot of offerings. I think I would highlight that the later entrants that came into the market, say, 5, 6 years ago, had to come in with a very low price point to compete and gain market share.

I'm talking about price points for, let's say, gold ETFs that are, you know, 15, 17, 18 basis points. You know, in comparison, we're at 35. So these, you know, late entrants had to heavily discount. We have never had to discount our pricing because we believe our product is a premium product, given the attributes of it. We don't really see too many new competitors come in the ETF space in the precious metal segments.

They're already pretty crowded. We do see new competitors coming in on the mining space, which has been less crowded, and I would say it's been a similar playbook where people tend to come in at lower price points.

We also noticed that many of these entrants don't know anything about metals and mining and produce, I'd say, fairly unsophisticated offerings, which is starting to, I think, be noticed by investors because they're underperforming. So we're finding that we're in a good position to compete. And as I mentioned, even though we run a lot of passive rules-based index strategies, there are clear differences between the two. Our critical materials fund has handily outperformed all the competitors that we track against. Our copper mining ETFs have outperformed 10%-14% the last two years per year.

You say, well, you know, sooner or later, investors are gonna notice that something is going on with these Sprott funds. Why are they, why are they performing differently? And that's just because we've taken a different approach to our index construction. And, we think that's one of the reasons why we've been able to build market share in some of these categories very quickly.

Whitney George (CEO)

I'd throw one last thing in, on our active ETFs, both METL and GBUD. They are the first offerings of their kind. As an investor, I think the mining industry really offers an opportunity to manage risk actively, and there is no other organization that I know of on the planet that has as deep a bench of analysts, portfolio managers, geologists, and technicians that are covering this space. So, I'm very excited about those launches and the progress we're making there.

Etienne Ricard (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Lee with CGF. Your line is now open.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe want to start on, sorry, very interested in performance fees. Nice contributor this quarter, something we didn't model in.

... Can you maybe talk about what drives that? And, you know, if we do expect the funds to perform well in 2026, is it assumed that we should receive a similar benefit next year, or is it more nuanced than that?

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Matt, can you just repeat that last part of your question?

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. I mean, should we be thinking about a similar kind of performance fee and carried interest to revenue line-

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Oh, okay.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

in 2026, or is it one and done? Yeah.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Okay. Okay, gotcha. Well, it certainly is episodic and it's coming from really two areas. One is the carry, the other side is the performance. On a full year basis, I would say the large chunk of the carry and performance fee that you saw was coming from managed equities and specifically on the performance fee side. But there was another good chunk that was coming... It came in the second half of the beginning of the second half of the year from a legacy exploration LP that we had.

So it's kind of difficult to look at this and try to get a sense of where things will be this year, because a big chunk of it was legacy, and we just harvested it, so that's not gonna recur, much of that Q2 number. And then the rest of it is just largely based on how the markets are doing in the case of our active equities, or when we get to a point where we're ready to harvest on our private strategy side. So I don't know what to tell you other than to give you that type of background into just how episodic it can be, but can't really give you a lot of insight from there, unfortunately.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, that's fair. And then maybe one on the private strategy side. I know the portfolio has a lot of, you know, fixed income like investments in it, but I'm surprised to see market value there literally only increased by about $5 million, just given how good the macro has been. So can you dig into that a bit and help us understand if anything can drive value up, other than net inflows in private?

Whitney George (CEO)

Okay, those are private credit funds, and what you're seeing is a function of a strong market where the credits get paid back, because, you know, the mining companies can raise capital that is much cheaper than what they're paying. And so it's always a balance between deploying capital into new investments versus what you get back. As I mentioned, you know, Lending Fund 2 is coming to the end of its life, so that's going to reduce AUM. But again, this is a long cycle. They're 10-year lockup products. And so it's, this is a transition year, I'd say, for the private strategies.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

All right. That's helpful.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Matt, were you asking about the gains on investments in that segment?

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, I'm kind of thinking about that from the perspective of, you know, net inflows and market value change, right? So I think, you know, you guys answered the net inflows question well. I just, I'm wondering if anything changes the market value of those funds as well.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Yeah. So it's exactly as Whitney said. These are, these are loans, and so we have to use amortized cost accounting, so we wouldn't, we wouldn't be marking them. So it's really just, any increase you see there is probably from equity kicker, enhancements, for example, offset by whatever gains we get when we pay off the loans. Yeah.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

All right.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Sorry, when the funds have the loans repaid. Apologies for that.

Matt Lee (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mike Kozak from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.

Mike Kozak (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, good morning, guys. Congrats on the record quarter. Two questions from me. First, just at a high level, and I think, Whitney, you kind of alluded to it a little bit, but I mean, gold and silver prices, they set multiple new all-time highs in the quarter. They're, they're consolidating now, which I agree is healthy, but obviously seem likely to reset here at, like, a much higher base. And my question is, my first one is: against that backdrop, like, how do you guys think about special dividends or maybe even some sort of, like, dividend linked to a basket of metal prices?

Whitney George (CEO)

Okay, we have mixed investor opinions about special dividends. I've committed that we're not gonna run a money market fund here. To the extent that we have non-recurring sources of income, that's something we will consider. But you know, I'd like to continue to grow the regular dividend along with our underlying, you know, growth. So, dividends, buybacks, opportunistic buybacks, obviously our stocks look very strong. And then ultimately, a special dividend if the first two don't get us where we wanna be.

Mike Kozak (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thanks. And then, second, maybe just, like, given the extreme volatility in silver prices, both on the upside and the downside, in January and February, you know, I'd love if you could give me some color on what the physical market was like. Like, where was it tight? Where were the metal flows jurisdictionally, and how are these dynamics, like now, post-correction, versus, call it, a month ago during that parabolic move to the upside? Thank you.

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Oh, that's a fun question, Mike. John, hi. Yeah, I mean, we've obviously seen pretty extreme volatility in silver. We've never seen those kinds of moves. I think it's fair to say that, you know, the physical market was really the catalyst for the move, meaning we saw huge amounts of silver being purchased by investors in India in the fourth quarter. They continue to buy lots of silver. We've seen lots of silver buying in physical form in China in the last few months, and up until very recently, the flows into Western silver-based ETFs was quite strong. So physical buying kind of was driving the move.

Obviously, in the last, I'd say three weeks, that's flipped around, and the paper markets, i.e., options on ETFs and the futures markets, have been pushing the price back the other way. So it has been a real tug-of-war between physical buyers, who are thinking more long term, and have been waiting for this re-rating of silver for many, many years, and then other powers that are trying to smash the price down. We see some very abnormal selling behavior, where people are dumping huge amounts of silver through paper products and derivatives and, you know, two minutes of trading or periods of time when markets are closed or on holiday or whatever. So there is some, some kind of funny business going on.

But in terms of the physical, you know, our procurement, we bought a lot of silver, and we're finding there's enough silver to buy in North America. Silver is definitely more scarce in London and India and China. China has also recently implemented export restrictions on silver, which I think is gonna make the market more tight.

The physical market is definitely a little bit mismatched in terms of demand versus interest. And more recently, you know, the large competitor ETF, silver ETF, that's listed in the United States, has gone into outflows in the last few weeks, so it's been very volatile. Silver's trying to find a footing here. But it's been very paper-driven versus physical-driven, for sure, the last few weeks, but it's definitely moderating.

Some regulators have stepped in to kind of rein in some of the speculative activity, namely in China. The CME has raised margin requirements on silver futures contracts multiple times, and that all seems to have some effect here.

Whitney George (CEO)

Yeah, ultimately, you know, we think it will settle down. Ultimately, you know, the inflation-adjusted all-time high for silver would be somewhere between $180-$200 an ounce. It's a small market. It's been in supply deficit for five years, and it's critical. So, you know, I think what we're seeing now is a great opportunity somewhere in these, in the, this neighborhood for new investors to get involved.

Mike Kozak (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, that's, that's very helpful. I appreciate the color. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Graham Ryding with TD Securities. Your line is now open.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Maybe you just touch on those new ETF product launches. Will those be actively managed ETFs or passive strategies around your sort of proprietary indexes or a combination of both? How should we think about those?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Yeah, the ones that are in the hopper are both proprietary passive-based indexes. One is a clone of an existing fund that we'd like to bring to Europe. The other one is a brand-new fund that I don't think we're allowed to talk about because we're in a quiet period, but it's on EDGAR, so it is in the public domain. And yeah, so we're being very selective. Obviously, we've been pretty aggressive the last few years, building out the suite and filling in gaps. And right now, our number one objective is to scale what we have because that represents the best opportunity to attract assets.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

Understood. And is there any commodity that you would call out right now that you sort of feel is positioned to break out, or are you sort of equally constructive across your main commodities?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Yeah. You know, I think our response to that has changed a lot because, as I mentioned, multiple metals have all hit all-time highs at all at once, which is very abnormal. You know, we're pretty constructive on all of them. They're all taking a bit of a breather right now and consolidating the recent gains, but we think we're still in the early innings. And I think what's really highlighting the value of these metals is the fact that governments are now intervening and talking about strategic stockpiles and price floors and these kinds of mechanisms to basically re-shore supply chains away from China.

So it's hard to know how government policies and whatnot are going to affect commodity prices, but I think it's fair to say that most investors have little to no exposure to commodities. And the commodities that we're most bullish about are in the mining or in the metal space, as opposed to traditional, you know, energy and agriculture-type commodities, which have obviously underperformed big time.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Maybe just jumping to your sort of the cash on your balance sheet, it's obviously built up quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year in a fairly healthy way. You also have some compensation payable sitting on the liability side. What's the timing around that piece? Should we expect your sort of cash balance to be coming down in Q1, as you pay out some of that or most of that comp payable?

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Well, basically, it would be the following month for the most part.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

... Okay, and then capital allocation, any obvious uses for net cash build, or are you sort of happy to keep your cash or, you know, your powder dry and your balance sheet strong?

Whitney George (CEO)

We're gonna keep a strong balance sheet. That's one of our principles. What we're trying to do is deliver operating leverage without financial leverage to the parts of the world that we operate in. As I mentioned, we'd like to continue to grow the dividends. You know, I'm the second largest shareholder, so I really appreciate that. And again, we will buy back stock, depending, and be opportunistic, and depending on the value that we can get will depend on how much we can deploy there. And then we'll reuse it where we are later this year.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. And one more, if I can be greedy, just on the private strategy side. You talked about looking at doing some fundraising. Would that be to replace that LF 2 Fund, or are you looking to add incremental AUM to that overall part of your business?

Whitney George (CEO)

Yeah, we wanna continue to cycle through our lending products, but we also have some very interesting private strategies that are starting to scale. One is in physical commodities that do not trade on any exchanges run by Ryan McIntyre.

We have introduced an evergreen version of our lending product, which I think is a concept that's gaining traction in the private credit world. And we continue to get people's attention now with our mining, special metals and mining fund, given its performance, not just last year, but over five years. So, there are lots of opportunities on the private part of our business, and we are, you know, increasingly heavily engaged with family offices and large high-net-worth investors.

I didn't mention that our wealth management business more than doubled in assets last year, a lot on the back of performance. But again, we are getting call-ins and things like that that we haven't seen in years and years from high-net-worth investors. So that part of our business, which has been sort of a, you know, a rounding error, is, you know, starting to grow nicely as well.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

Then my last one, just on that lending fund, too, you talked about, sort of it's in a harvesting phase. Does that sort of imply that 2026 could generate some carried interest around that fund?

Whitney George (CEO)

We're not allowed to say anything.

Graham Ryding (Equity Research Analyst)

I'll take that as a yes. Okay, thank you. That's it for me.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Bart Jersky from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Bart Jerszynski (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thanks, and good morning, everyone. Wanted to ask around the net comp ratio. You know, it's about 45% last year, it's 40% this year, and it was lower than that in Q4. Just trying to get a sense, what run rate should we assume for that ratio going forward? Thanks.

Kevin Hibbert (CFO)

Hey, Bart, Kevin here. You know, we don't provide forward-looking information, you know, obviously the kind of standard statement. But what I can say is, you know, the key drivers for us are one, obviously, revenue growth, obviously as the denominator, but also, just keeping in mind that there's not an awful lot of torque to the cash comp side, as it relates to our net revenue growth. So. And you can just see that when you look at the MD&A, just explanations that we give around compensation, pre-stock-based, relative to the net revenue growth.

So whatever you're seeing now, you know, if you wanted to keep that and maybe kind of flatter it throughout the year, and then maybe only toggle it down, commensurate with any future net revenues we may or may not report, then, you know, you're welcome to do that. I can't imagine you'd be massively off if you took that approach. But I can't actually specifically give you anything to rely on.

Bart Jerszynski (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. No, that's helpful. Thanks, Kevin. And then, John, in your prepared remarks, you talked about AUM and liquidity begets AUM and liquidity, and, you know, it's an interesting point that we probably underappreciate. So can you maybe elaborate a little bit on that? And then tying into that, you know, you're saying on the back of it, you're seeing more and more institutions allocate. So, you know, just more color on what institutions, where, and the momentum you're seeing there. Thanks.

John Ciampaglia (CEO)

Yeah, sure. Hey, Bart. So yeah, I guess I would view it from two perspectives. One is, from a product shelf placement perspective. So, for example, some distributors won't turn your ETF tickers on until you hit a threshold of AUM. Sometimes it's $25 million, sometimes it can be even as high as $100 million. So, you know, that's thing one. You need to hit those milestones for distributors to turn them on. And then secondarily, institutional investors obviously have some limitations in terms of, you know, their comfort level, in terms of owning a percentage of a fund. So as these funds get bigger, they trade more, and institutions feel more comfortable putting on, you know, positions of size. So it does create a bit of a flywheel effect.

You also tend to see bid-ask spreads tighten, which helps with trading. And you just have to be patient because, you know, you could have a fund that's sitting there at $10 million for months and months, and then all of a sudden, somebody's interested in it, and it'll, it'll jump up to $100 million in no time.

And, you know, we've recently seen that with our nickel miners ETF and our, our lithium miners ETF as well. So, and, you know, I think where we see the real big flywheel effect is obviously in the multi-billion dollar funds, and that's where institutions that we talk to, pension funds, family offices, hedge funds, et cetera. That, you know, that's where they can get, you know, materially positioned with large, large positions.

So, those are the kind of the workhorse funds for us. The Uranium Trust is a good example that has the highest percentage of institutional ownership amongst the physical products. And as that fund gets bigger, you know, you get to talk to bigger and bigger institutions that can allocate to it.

Bart Jerszynski (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Very helpful. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, I will turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Whitney George (CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for participating in this call. We appreciate your interest in Sprott and look forward to speaking to you again after our first quarter results. Until then, we'll remain contrarian, innovative, and aligned. Have a good day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. We thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect your lines.