Unprecedented Gold Market Discrepancy: The Worst in Decades – Ross Beaty

In this exclusive interview, Ross Beaty, the Chairman of Equinox Gold, dives into the gold market, revealing insights from his 39-year career with Kitco News Anchor Jeremy Szafron. Beaty discusses the unprecedented discrepancy between gold prices and equity valuations, describing it as the most significant he’s witnessed in decades. He also explores the broader commodity space, including copper’s vital role in the green energy transition and the evolving dynamics of silver. Beaty shares his bullish outlook on gold and silver markets, reflects on his transition towards environmental philanthropy, and offers valuable advice for investors navigating the current economic cycles in the mining sector.

VRIC coverage is sponsored by Snowline Gold —

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00:00 – Introduction to Ross Beaty
01:41 – Ross Beaty’s Macro Thoughts on Gold
04:28 – Disconnection Between Gold Prices and Equities
06:24 – Gold Market Predictions
07:51 – Investment Advice in Current Market
09:44 – Equinox Gold’s Challenges and Strategy
11:35 – Predictions for Market Movement
14:02 – The Role of Copper in Green Energy Transition
16:49 – Consolidation in the Gold and Silver Market
18:41 – Ross Beaty’s Involvement and Predictions

#gold #silvermarket #miningstocks #equinox #commoditiesmarket #copper #energy
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Kitco News special coverage of the Vancouver resource investment conference is brought to you by snowline Gold hey everyone welcome back to Kito news I’m Jeremy saffron at the Vancouver re resource investment conference I should say and today we’re joined by a legend he’s the chairman of Equinox gold and also kind of a legend in the sector right commodity space we got Ross Bey

Only in my own mind thanks for joining us I’ll toot your horn here uh I want to talk a littleit about what you were talking about yesterday on the stage I mean this is a very active show Commodities seem to be in a very interesting place where there could be

Some corrections taking place particularly in Gold could be could be are they have I hope that they continue to let’s give uh the audience your macro thoughts on gold right now and where the sect is going sure sure well I’m a gold bull I have to tell you I mean I I’ve

You know I’m so bullish on gold that that that really you know after having retired from a big Renewable Energy company that I I sold in 2016 or 17 um I decided I had one more company left in me and I decided to go big with started

A brand new gold company from scratch trying to become one of the world’s senior producers ASAP yeah so I did that started in 2018 it’s now 6 years old uh last I also was the chair and founder of panamerican silver which became a really big silver mining company but with

Equinox being my last company you know we’re really trying to shoot big and the reason that I want to go big is because I’m very bullish on gold and when you’re bullish on something that goes up in price you know every day the value proposition gets better if you can build

A significant producer so we started with nothing today we have seven operating mines we produce just under 600,000 ounces last year we’re building a huge Mine in Northern Ontario called greenstone which is going to produce 400,000 ounces a year one of the biggest in Canada and it’ll you know it’ll get

Us to the Target we’ve got right now which is close to a million ounces of of gold and plus uh with other growth opportunities so that’s our mission and um you know when you’re bullish on the metal like I am you expect that the equity price is going to rise with the

Metal price so when we started equino gold was 1350 right beginning of 2018 today it’s 2,000 and change that’s done pretty well I mean that’s a a good call the thing that is crazy right now I mean border un ridiculous is the equity prices in the last year they were doing

Fine for a while you know they trct gold as they usually do but for some reason in the last say 15 months gold and gold equities have just disconnected and I have to say in my entire career I’ve been in this game for running public companies nownow for 30 can it be 39

Years we won’t say seem like a long time 39 years I I can’t say that I’ve seen this in my entire career you know typically you have Cycles we all know that this is a cyclical business there are days to buy and there are days to

Sell and right now you have metal PR PR is trading at close to record highs like gold the equities are trading to record low valuations low price to asset value price to gold price price to uh production it’s it’s nuts eono schol is a good example of that just in October

The gold price hit I think it was 1830 1830 today it’s 2030 up 200 bucks equo stock has gone down 20% since then how does make sense there’s if anything the fundamentals of the company are better because we’re closer to the finish line and our biggest gold uh construction project at $1.6 billion

Construction of the greenstone mine on time on budget everything’s going well the rest of the company’s doing well the Stock’s cheap so that’s just an example of the entire Market what’s your reasoning behind that though you know when you look into it I mean the buyers aren’t there but yeah the buyers just

Aren’t there that’s really the the bottom line Jeremy I mean normally this true if if you enter if you leave a a cycle which is a we which is a uh a quantitative easing cycle and you tighten interest rates go up the gold price goes down if the US dollar gets

Stronger the gold price goes down typically and thirdly if you’re in an inflationary cycle typically Equity values go down so we had all of those but you know what happened in that world last year the gold price went up why because central banks around the world

Were the biggest buyers of gold as a store of value right as an alternative to the dollar they get it they bought hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tons and it wasn’t just China who bought I think 600 tons of gold it was Russia Poland turkey

Like I could just reel off the countries that went long gold they’re smart so that’s why the gold price went up so much and and so going forward from today you have Equity prices everybody sold off the equities expecting the the gold pricer crater it didn’t it went up

Nowadays uh you have to ask yourself what’s going to change why this disconnect which is the biggest to me the biggest weird Delta I’ve seen in my career uh it’s either that the gold price will crash or Equity prices are going to rebound and I’m going to bet on

The latter right simply because I don’t see what would change with the gold price going down much I mean likely US dollar is going to enter an easing cycle this year dollar will weaken a little bit typically interest rates will go down to Ally we’re through our big inflation cycle inflation’s moderated

And it’s actually down now that’s helping out valuations across the board so if anything there’s a very compelling argument for gold going higher right and so somewhere along the line and I’m going to guess it’s going to be this year don’t know when don’t know when the

Bottom is but it’s got to be close across the board of course there’s going to be every every company is a bit different there’s going to be some kind of a trigger and we’re going to wake up like we did at the early part of

16 a gain in 2021 a gain in 2009 a gain in 2001 like all of these are Big inflection boys and when we wake up and we’re out of that bare cycle boom you get this beautiful pop and people who sell making 5 or 10% on their money

Think they’re very clever believe me the stocks will double they’ll double or triple I mean just like we did then it’s interesting when you talk to investors because they’re almost wanting to be incentivized to hold a position whereas in this market you can’t do that so what

What’s the advice out there how do we the advice is to hold and buy yeah it’s a it’s everything’s on sale pick your stocks get a basket of them not one or two get a portfolio at all stages from you know producers like Equinox gold is the lowest risk but it’s also doesn’t

Have the reward potential that the higher risk companies do buy some Junior explorers buy some Junior developers that’s my sweet spot typically it’s done really well Junior developers that have assets that can be sold but to bigger companies that’s a that’s a real nice

Spot to be in cuz then you got a A Beautiful lift and a nice premium and then like a handful of producers um because they’re all going to go up the the tide coming in will will float All Ships yeah some more than others we talked a little bit about the

Evaluations and how low they are within the equity space and commodities uh when you’re looking at Juniors compared to say mid tiers or even the bigger guys out there uh why and is there a disconnect to how difficult juniors are having access to Capital right now I I

Mean it’s really a crunch time it really is a crunch time and it’s part of the reason they’re so cheap um and all I can do is say I’m I haven’t been in the investing side for quite a few years I’ve been trying to exit and do a lot

More environmental philanthropy which is my big thing going forward because I’m kind of getting long in the tooth in this and Equinox is my best last big gold play plus a junior called Lumina gold that I’m I think we’re going to be able to sell Fair soon so you know I’m

I’m kind of exient so I haven’t been really investing much I I I get a happy ending like I did with the Cino and and in uh in December that dunde bought it and I’m going to eventually take that take those gains and roll them back into

The market today rather than just roll it into my my environmental Foundation that I usually do I just can’t help myself yeah it’s just one of those times when you know everything’s on sale it’s a buyer’s market and I’m a buyer yeah and the opportunity is there to continue

To support it’s it’s right now and you know so those poor companies that are struggling that have over high overheads and and drilling programs that are active it’s just a real tough time my only advice to them is to try to pair down your overhead as much as you can

Get through this and when things change they’re going to change quickly and you’re going to be there and there will be a ton of money available from Equity investors for your space yeah good well said uh let’s talk a little bit Ross about Equinox because yesterday on stage

You were talking about how difficult it is to scale an operation up it’s Capital extensive obviously and it’s team heavy how important is the team oh to the asset the team there’s a whole pile of things that are important and it’s a risky business right so there’s so many

Things that can go wrong even with the best team in the world you know you can still fall in your face there’s the the industry is replete with examples of uh of that happening and by the same token even an idiot can discover a mine and

Make a billion dollars I mean it’s just that’s also happened doesn’t happen very often but it’s the nature of the business um so you know everything in the middle from the from the deposits and ID account SC up to the deposits that a genius cannot make money on

Everything in the middle is about management right and and I have to say team is is just Stellar uh they’re great mind Builders they’re great uh operators they’re great explorers it’s just a really good team and they’re nice people it’s a pleasure to work with them I

Really enjoy it do you see that the retail audience has shifted in the past few years obviously away from the Commodities but they’re going after you know these quick trades almost instead of the long term so when you’re looking at an asset you know how important is it

To be permitted like what are the what are the things that make you most bullish on that as the quick trade success is always a bare Market strategy it’s a trading strategy you know some little bit of news you sell you buy back when it goes down that whole strategy

Unwinds when you have a secular move the way I expect it’s going to happen this year secular move you blow through that that selling and then it just goes up and up and up and anybody who’s sold is is going to kick themselves for doing it

So that’s I think what goes on when you have these big moves that are that are catalyzed by things that kind of just come out of the blue it could be a black one it could be a a bunch of discoveries you know this snow line Discovery is so

Is so generational that you know it’s going to attract a buyer uh in a big way and that Capital that people make from that trade will get redeployed into the market and that kind of stuff is what bills to move or people get sick of the

The big seven in the on the on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ driving value in the US they get tired of those they get toppy they start selling and they go down market and some general investors look at you know with fairly good-sized Capital they look at

At this whole space and they say let’s let’s start buying and that’s when things change that’s what I’m looking forward to interesting in terms of Commodities has been there been anything that surprise you this year I mean obviously uranium prices shot up that could again be cyclical but copper

Supply and demand where are we at with them well copper is a great medal you know my my favorite three medals are gold for sure silver certainly silver is a great beautiful beautiful metal and it’s it’s in demand right now it’s a good solid medal I I I like silver I

Don’t have the same bullishness of silver that I do for gold uh but I have bullish which is so interesting because usually they should move together well they do move together to a degree but silver is always buffered by the fact that it’s an industrial metal as well so

Over the same token you can have no movement in Gold but if you have movement in the base metal Silver’s going to move with that right so it’s sort of in the middle it’s sort of a I always call it a schizophrenic metal and then you have the classic base Metals

Copper you know zinc lead those sort of metals but copper is for sure I mean it’s it’s you everybody if they have have a mining portfolio has to have some copper exposure copper is a really good metal it’s got solid strength across the board they call it Dr copper for a

Reason follows the general economy but it also these days is the most important metal for the energy transition the most more important than nickel and Cobalt and lithium all of them why because it’s used not just in storage like all those other metals it’s used in transmission and generation wind farms solar panel

They all use a huge amount of copper transmission copper Lin end use batteries Motors you name it has copper so it’s a great metal I’m not saying copper is going to go to the Moon actually copper price is 375 right now not bad copper companies are making some

Pretty good money but uh and there’s lots of copper around there’s no shortage of copper in the world there’s lots of copper so I don’t think it’s going to do anything crazy but it’s a good metal to be in and copper explorers are going to do well copper developers

Are going to do well it’s a good metal you talked about that green energy transition I’m I’m curious is how important that is going forward with some of your companies I mean you’re involved in it in your own time but what is the evolution been like on this side

I mean people are investing into it yeah is it there yeah so first of all you mentioned uranium I mean all of these medals have had a ton of hype around them and typically the hype is promoted either by smart people who have an agenda like promoter of mining companies

Or exploration companies have to kind of take take a little bit with a grain of salt what they say but more importantly it’s promoted by a bunch of people who just have no clue about the mining indust economists that would be number one Global Economist yappity Yapp on

Demand side they don’t have a clue about the supply side yeah politicians same thing oh we need five times more copper in Canada let’s go and develop carer bins everywhere uh we need 35 times more lithium and 65 times more Rare Earth elements it’s just not going to happen

They don’t have an understanding of the fact that it takes you 20 years to go from Discovery to develop to operation of most finds it cost billions and billions of dollars and today there’s no money for the junior sector so forget it in terms of aggressive development in a

Way that would that would bring on too much Supply it’s just not going to happen and the other thing is demand won’t be there either we’ll substitute we’ll economize we’ll have new technology um yes there will be healthy demand but it’s not going to be insane

And it won’t be anywhere near what those what those so-called pundits prognosticate there’s lots of those but it’s there’s lots of them and what they lack is a knowledge of the Mind industry when you’re long when you’re very long in the tooth like me in the mining

Industry you know you just know how how the game works you know I’ve seen Cycles like four or five big Cycles in my life and you know there it’s it’s it’s a wonderful thing to be on a bull run it’s a glorious thing if you’re exposed if you’re

Long but typically an awful lot of people are exposed and forget to sell when it’s at the top right and then we ride this horrible time down but the happy times are when you can go in and you can actually almost with just about any investment that’s reasonable make

Money I think that time’s coming it’s interesting you know across the board across the board you know almost across the board because we’ve had these incredible Corrections in lithium stocks Cobalt stocks nickel stocks R the stocks um and and you’re likely to see that kind of flattening and improve off of

The low base um copper solid silver solid Gold’s really solid that would be my TR it’s interesting with the evaluation so low on the junior side some people would say okay maybe some of the larger companies can come in and do some Acquisitions here and consolidate

The market but it’s so low know I know that nobody wants to make those deals happen Y and and the other thing that’s happened in the well what sector or what what commodity do you want to talk about I mean let’s let’s do gold and silver okay gold and silver there’s so few

Large companies now they’ve Consolidated a lot you know numont now has Consolidated nous was a huge company gold cor huge company so there’s one out of three that used to be buyers now there’s one and yle’s done a lot of Acquisitions it’s it’s it’s grown by acquisition there’re smart Acquisitions

It’s a great company but it’s it’s it’s got a lot of stuff to digest uh baric has been out of the game for four years 5 years just hasn’t been there uh I’m not sure what they’re going to do yeah I just don’t know uh you know Mark

Bristo has a certain strategy and you know he’s a smart guy uh we’ll see what happens there I my guess is Bar’s going to do something in one of these days it might be in Gold it might be in Copper we’ll see but um there’s just not that much deal

Activity than than there could be right um I expect it’s kind of like a a bit of a pend up Dam it will come uh the one aggressive company that I’ve been closely involved with has been panamerican which bought uh bought uh Tahoe a few years ago and bought um just

Well just recently sold up yo large acquisition but it hasn’t gone anywhere I mean if anything investors have have punished it for doing that so you’ve got all that Dynamic so it’s kind of hard to say what uh what’s going to happen with the the large company small company you

Know dynamic uh but I can tell you for sure that the thing about this industry because it’s non-renewable right every single day mining companies eat their future every day they must replace it by one of two ways Discovery or purchase most of them are not discovering very much it’s hard it’s

Risky takes a lot of time they’re doing it the easy way they’re going and buying companies so that’s what dunde did with Lino you know I’ve had all sorts of Happy Endings on that kind of a deal and I’m expecting Lumina gold for example which is my my the one I’m most actively

Involved with it’s a huge coer copper it’s copper gold it’s mostly gold a little bit of copper in enormous deposit in in Ecuador it’s 20 million ounces you know that’s another that’s a good example yeah it has a it has an or body that’s gone through a PR pre feasibility

Study company’s doing a feasibility study right now its market cap today is around 150 million Canadian it did a prees a couple of years ago that came out with a $2.2 billion US Net Present Value at $1600 goal it’s it’s just do that arithmetic I’m telling you it’ll produce 300,000 o

A year for 21 years $600 an now operating cost all all all-inclusive cost so that that’s just an example of the of the value proposition you have today buying that kind of company you can’t get any low risk on that yeah yes Equador could blow up yes gold pris

Could collapse yes you know turmoil could happen but it probably won’t we’ve had lots of turmoil in Ecuador the Project’s been going along perfectly there’s no fatal flaws just that’s this here there’s there’s 50 50 companies here probably 30 of them offer Great Value propositions interesting it’s just

One of those times in the market so is it your diligence and I’m going to leave you at this because I know you’re a busy man uh and everyone wants to hear from you today but I’m curious if you were speaking directly to investors and educating them right now that look for

Guidance in this space what do you say I actually am speaking to investors today because I think it’s you know I haven’t done an interview like this for for a number of years and I just thought you know this is a good time to just tell people my conviction I don’t care if

They buy or sell or do nothing it doesn’t matter to me but I I really believe that it’s a great time to be and so any of your audience if they’re investors you know I could just advise them from my own experience you know I might be wrong might be you know

Everything I said might be crazy but in my experience a time like today is really a golden opportunity to to make money in this Equity business in this business of of Junior resource companies copper companies uh across the board almost especially gold silver companies really there’s really good value and I

Expect a year from now maybe I’ll come back back and I’ll say you know you can ask me how how do we do love it because because I’m actually going to be investing my own money as well right now right uh something I haven’t done for

Four years or so and uh and and we’ll see how we do there’s a reason you’re walking around here I’m going to hold you up to that next year we’ll see how you did Ross than for being than very much my pleasure thank you for tuning in

I’m Jeremy saffer with Kito news at the Vancouver re resource investment conference can’t believe I’m having problems saying that today and we’ll see you next time getco news special coverage of the Vancouver resource investment conference is brought to you by snowline Gold