OR Royalties (OR)

The Mid-Cap That Prices Like a Senior

OR Royalties is the cleanest evidence in the royalty peer set that valuation multiples are not a size ladder. It is a mid-cap with the second-highest asset concentration in the group, and the market pays more per ounce of its production than it pays for Franco-Nevada or Wheaton.

The company, formerly Osisko Gold Royalties and renamed OR Royalties (TSX/NYSE: OR), is a royalty and stream hybrid. As at May 2025 the portfolio held 196 assets: 178 royalties, 14 streams, and 4 offtake agreements. That mix sits between Franco-Nevada's royalty-dominant book and Wheaton's pure streaming model. Royalties carry no cost of goods. Streams bind the company to an ongoing delivery payment. Offtakes are purchase rights on production at market-linked terms. The blend matters because each instrument behaves differently when metal prices move.

OR is a fraction of the size of the three seniors, yet, as the valuation section below shows, it does not trade at a fraction of their multiple. In FY2025 it earned 80,775 gold equivalent ounces (GEOs, the whole portfolio's output restated at what it would be worth in gold) on $277.4 million of royalty and stream revenue. Market capitalisation stood at roughly US$7.1 billion at 31 March 2026, per the company's own disclosure.

Canadian Malartic Carries the Book

One mine generates two fifths of OR's production, the highest single-asset share in the mid-cap peer set. Canadian Malartic, the large Quebec gold mine operated by Agnico Eagle, contributed 32,105 GEOs in FY2025, 39.7% of the total. Add Mantos Blancos and CSA and the top three assets account for 65.2%.

A disclosure caveat first: these shares are stated on a GEO basis because OR does not disclose per-asset revenue. Peers such as Franco-Nevada and Royal Gold publish asset-level revenue, so their concentration figures are revenue-based and not perfectly comparable. The picture is still clear when the peer set is lined up on its top-3 share for FY2025.

We flag a top-3 share above 60%, and OR sits above it alongside Wheaton. We flag any single asset above 30% too, and Canadian Malartic runs well past that at 39.7%. The mitigating argument is quality. Concentration in a long-life Quebec gold mine run by a senior operator is a different proposition from concentration in an asset where a government can shut production, as Franco-Nevada's shareholders saw at Cobre Panama. But the heuristic exists for a reason: whatever the jurisdiction, a single operating problem at one mine would move OR's revenue more than at any peer except Wheaton.

Concentration also raises the stakes on contract detail. When one royalty drives 40% of GEOs, the contract rate, the revenue base it applies to, and whether that rate moves with metal price matter more than they would inside a 400-asset book. Price-linked structures break the simple linear-with-price assumption most screens rely on; our guide to sliding-scale royalties covers how to model them off the contract rather than a generic rate.

EV/GEO: OR Trades Above the Senior Band

OR screens more expensive per ounce of production than the seniors; that gap is the valuation story. An enterprise value of roughly $7.01 billion against 80,775 FY2025 GEOs puts OR at about $87,000 per GEO. The senior working band sits at roughly $75,000-80,000.

Read down that table and the size ladder disappears. The two mid-caps span $54k to $87k, one well below the seniors and one above them, and the juniors screen dearest of all, because a few thousand trailing ounces make the multiple a measure of growth expectations rather than of assets. What the market prices is ounce quality and duration, plus how fast the book compounds, not the tier on the label.

One caution before leaning on the ranking. Every company converts its silver, copper and other metals into gold-equivalent ounces at prices it chooses, and even the verb differs: OR reports ounces earned, Franco-Nevada ounces sold, Wheaton ounces produced. The denominators are not built to a common standard, so EV/GEO tells you where to look rather than who is cheap. OR's higher EV/GEO reflects how the market weighs the ounces behind it, anchored by a tier-one Canadian gold mine. How much weight those ounces deserve is the valuation question; the framework for answering it is in our EV/GEO and $/GEO guide.

The same multiple doubles as a deal discipline test. A royalty company creates value when it buys ounces below its own EV/GEO and destroys it when it pays above. At ~$87k, OR has the widest accretion headroom in the peer set: recent deal pricing has run from roughly $15.4k per annual GEO (Franco-Nevada's Casa Berardi stream) to $61k (Wheaton's Antamina stream), both 2026 deals and both comfortably below OR's own multiple. That headroom only matters if the portfolio keeps delivering ounces of the same quality.

Renard: The Stream That Stopped Paying

OR's 9.6% diamond stream on the Renard mine barely moves the numbers, but it shows what happens when a stream's mine stops producing. The mine is on care and maintenance, and OR excludes the stream from its producing asset list. A stream is a claim on production, not a bond: when production stops, the cheque stops with it, and there is no coupon to chase or covenant to enforce in the meantime.

Renard also shows why commodity mix belongs on the diligence list. Diamonds lack gold's terminal market, futures curve, and buyer depth, so a diamond stream carries marketing risk that a gold stream does not. Within a 196-asset portfolio the position is immaterial to the investment case. Still worth remembering that a stream can go to zero while the contract survives.

What to Watch in the Financials

The Canadian Malartic share. The single most useful number in each results release is whether the 39.7% is rising or falling. New producing assets that dilute the anchor would soften the concentration flag; depletion elsewhere that raises it would sharpen the risk.

Disclosure granularity. Per-asset revenue is not disclosed, so analysts work from GEO splits. Any move toward asset-level revenue reporting would make the concentration picture directly comparable with Franco-Nevada and Royal Gold, in either direction.

What it pays for new ounces. The implied price per annual GEO on each deal it signs is the number to track, and it moves with what is being bought far more than with when. Casa Berardi and Antamina were both struck in 2026 and landed roughly four times apart, because one buys 6,500 fixed ounces a year for five years and the other buys silver from a producing giant for the life of the mine. So a cheap headline price is usually a short entitlement or an unbuilt asset. OR's multiple leaves it room to buy accretively at either end; whether it does is a question about underwriting, not about the market's price level.

Renard's status. A restart would restore a paying stream; a permanent closure would convert a suspended asset into a dead one. Either resolution is information about how management marks and manages non-performing positions.

Key Risks

Single-asset concentration. Canadian Malartic at 39.7% of GEOs breaches the 25-30% single-asset cap most portfolio screens apply. The operator and jurisdiction are first class, but quality reduces the probability of disruption, not the magnitude. A mill outage, a permitting dispute, or an operator decision to resequence the mine plan would flow straight through two fifths of OR's production.

Valuation leaves no slack. At ~$87k per GEO, OR trades above the senior band. Multiples built on quality and growth compress quickly if either disappoints, and a mid-cap that loses its premium has further to fall to the other mid-cap marker (Triple Flag at ~$54k) than a senior has to fall within its own band.

GEO-basis opacity. Without per-asset revenue, the concentration and margin contribution of each asset is partly inferred. That is a thinner evidence base than the seniors offer, and it cuts both ways: the book could be better or worse than the GEO splits suggest.

Reinvestment risk. Every royalty portfolio depletes. Replacing high-quality Quebec gold ounces at today's deal prices, with more capital chasing the sector than a decade ago, is the structural challenge behind the headline multiple. Paying senior prices for mid-tier assets would erode exactly the quality premium the market currently awards.