The royalty does not dig the hole. It waits. Adam Lundin told Kitco the scoreboard is what shareholders keep, not how large the next check looks.
This is not a recommendation to buy or sell LunR Royalties, Lundin Gold, NGEx Minerals, Lundin Mining, or any other security. It is not personal advice. It is not a price forecast. Figures Adam Lundin gave in an interview are his comments, not filed guidance. Read the contracts. Read the filings. A young royalty company can still be a related-party story. The process he described is not a substitute for reading it.
The one idea is simple. LunR’s edge is not a bigger check than Wheaton or Franco-Nevada. It is the right to be patient. The family name can sit beside a deal. The cash has to earn the right to get larger. Adam Lundin said both things in the same breath, and he did not treat them as a slogan.
A company that is still learning its own name in public
Paul Harris met him at the 2026 Mining Forum Americas in Colorado Springs. The interview ran on Kitco Mining. Harris called the start dramatic. He was not wrong about the pace. He was talking to a chief executive whose company had not yet had a first birthday as a public firm.
LunR Royalties Corp. was incorporated on July 14, 2025, as a numbered company, 17156138 Canada Inc. It was spun out of NGEx Minerals on October 23, 2025. It began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange on December 19, 2025. On June 8, 2026, it began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The ticker is LUNR. Adam Lundin is president, chief executive, and chair.
Before the silver deal, the portfolio was two royalties in the Vicuña district. A 1 percent net smelter return on the Nacimiento I concession in San Juan, Argentina, the ground where NGEx has defined Lunahuasi. A 1.38 percent net smelter return on the concessions under Los Helados, in Chile. Those are future mines, if they become mines. They do not pay the bills today.
What pays is silver from a gold mine. On February 22, 2026, LunR agreed to buy a life-of-mine silver stream on Lundin Gold’s Fruta del Norte mine in Ecuador. The price was about US$670 million. Some news reports later called that figure Canadian. The company did not. It said the dollars were U.S. dollars unless marked otherwise. LunR did not wire the cash. It issued 50,505,051 shares. The value was set off a 20-day volume-weighted average price of C$18.18, about C$918 million. The deal closed on May 28, 2026. Lundin Gold received the shares that day and declared a dividend in kind. The shares were payable on June 11, 2026, to Lundin Gold holders of record on June 4. After that payment, Lundin Gold was not meant to keep a LunR stake.
That is a loud first act for a firm that was a numbered company the summer before. Adam did not talk about it as a stunt. He talked about the people who have to live with the next decision.
He was most pleased by the bench
Harris asked what had gone well. Adam did not start with the US$670 million. He started with the team.
Connor Mackay is chief financial officer. Trevor D’Sa is chief investment officer. Vincent Lee is controller. Lee came from Sandstorm Gold, where he was director of reporting and finance, and he holds a CFA charter. Adam also named a board he said he can lean on when the diligence gets hard. Jamie Beck, the president and chief executive of Lundin Gold. Wojtek Wodzicki, the geologist who leads NGEx. Tara Hassan, who is a LunR director.
The point he kept coming back to was scale of the room, not scale of the staff. A small management team. An engaged board. People who have seen a lot of assets and are still willing to do the work. He called that a fortunate thing. He sounded like a man who knows he is not the geologist and is not pretending to be.
That is a Lundin habit, and it is worth saying with respect. The family has never treated a mine as a one-person show. The ore is found by teams. The financing is built by teams. The communities are met by teams. Adam put the same shape on a royalty company. He wants to be nimble. He does not want to be alone.
Precious metals, and a wide but honest range
He was clear about the metal. LunR wants precious metals. He said that is where the market pays the better multiple. Gold and silver first. Not a tour of every byproduct on earth.
The deal size he named to Kitco is wide. From US$50 million to US$1.5 billion. At the same forum, in LunR’s own presentation, he also said the company would look from US$50 million to US$2 billion, and that it had put up a US$1.5 billion shelf. He said he wants to punch above the company’s weight. He also said the big royalty firms have a long head start, that they have done a phenomenal job, and that catching them will be tough. Discipline was not a footnote. It was the other half of the sentence.
A credit facility of up to US$150 million is in place. It is a US$100 million revolver plus a US$50 million accordion, arranged with National Bank of Canada and ING, and announced on August 16, 2026. As of the company’s September 8, 2026 presentation, it was undrawn. Adam’s logic is the old one, and it is the right one for this business. More cash flow can support more credit. More credit can support a larger stream. The order matters. You do not borrow your way to a multiple and hope the metal shows up.
Harris pressed him on the sweet spot. Adam did not pick a single number. He said the cash-flowing deals will tend to be the larger ones, and that those are the competitive ones. He had just watched the market digest a big byproduct stream at Antamina. His reading was that large producers are asking a new question. Is there a metal in the mill that shareholders are not being paid for? If the answer is yes, a stream can turn that metal into a separate value without selling the mine.
The silver was already in the ore
Fruta del Norte is the clean version of that question. It is a gold mine. Lundin Gold is valued, in Adam’s words, on the gold. The silver was a smaller line. He said he, like a lot of people, had not given that silver its due. The stream was a way to unlock it for Lundin Gold shareholders and to give them a piece of LunR at the same time. He does not think the gold story was diminished. The gold remains the mine. The silver became its own claim.
The contract is more precise than a caption can be. LunR buys 100 percent of payable silver until 12.2 million ounces have been delivered. It then buys 50 percent until another 7.8 million ounces have been delivered. After that, it buys 7.5 percent for the rest of the life of the mine. It pays 10 percent of the spot silver price on the first block, 20 percent on the second, and 30 percent after that. The stream took effect March 1, 2026. It covers the Fruta del Norte mining concessions. At the time of the announcement, those concessions were described at about 5,566 hectares.
Adam told Harris the first 12.2 million ounces could take something like 15 to 20 years. He also said a porphyry discovery on that land could change the clock. Fruta del Norte today is a high-grade underground mine, not a bulk open pit. Through the first nine months of 2026 the mill averaged 5,614 tonnes a day. The third quarter set a record at 5,823. The plant has been running near 5,500, and Lundin Gold has talked about a study to reach 6,500 to 7,000. He sketched what a larger porphyry might mean, including a jump toward a much higher daily rate, and he said those rocks carry silver too. If silver arrives faster, the stream steps down. He still thinks revenue can rise, because the mine would be delivering more metal.
Hold that as a picture from the chief executive, not as a mine plan. Lundin Gold has talked about a measured expansion of the existing operation, toward that 6,500 to 7,000 tonne range, and about exploration that keeps surprising people, including work Jamie Beck has described to Kitco. A hundred-thousand-tonne day is not the plan on the table. It is Adam’s way of saying the stream was written to stay alive if the district gets bigger. The step-down is the price of that option. You give up a share of the silver if the ounces come fast. You do not give up the district.
He put a number on the near cash as well. He said Fruta del Norte, on an annualized run rate, should provide about US$25 million to US$30 million of revenue to LunR. That is his comment in Colorado Springs. It is not a quarterly guidance sheet. Use it as a sense of scale. A young royalty firm with one producing interest is no longer a concept. It is a company with a deposit landing in the account.
Why a stream can live with a smaller return
Harris asked about payback. A miner wants a short path back to cash. A stream can look slow by that test. Adam did not apologize for the calendar.
His distinction is the one that makes the royalty business make sense. The miner has to carry cost inflation. Fuel, labor, steel, power, the contractor who did not show up. The stream takes revenue. It pays a fraction of the silver price and it does not staff the mill. Because the stream does not eat the cost overrun, it can accept a lower internal rate of return than the miner needs, and it can still be the steadier claim. What it must have, he said, is a long life. Long life is the option. A short mine gives you a coupon. A long mine gives you the discoveries you did not underwrite on day one.
That is the respectful reading of the Lundin record, and it fits this company. The family has made its name by staying with districts. Fruta del Norte was not a one-year trade. Lunahuasi was not found on a Tuesday and sold on a Wednesday. Los Helados has been a project for years. A royalty that clips a percent of those outcomes is only as good as the patience of the people who hold it. Adam is asking investors to want that patience on purpose.
The name is a second check, not a magic word
Harris asked the question everyone asks. In a crowded royalty market, does the Lundin name win deals?
Adam’s answer was practical, and it is the most interesting thing he said. The name helps because the family can stand beside LunR, not because a door opens by itself.
If a project is early, LunR can take a royalty, and the family can invest alongside if a field program needs more money. If a project is in development and the owner wants one financed package, LunR can be a piece of that package, and the family can be another piece. He called that a bigger solution than the royalty company can offer alone. He did not call it a right to win. He called it more ability.
That is a real edge, and it is a humble one. Wheaton can write checks LunR cannot write yet. Franco-Nevada has decades of streams in the portfolio. Adam said so. What he thinks LunR can offer, while it is still small, is a partner who is not finished when the royalty agreement is signed. The family has spent a generation showing up in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and the Canadian North. A seller who wants that continuity can see it. A seller who wants the single lowest cost of money may still go elsewhere. He did not pretend otherwise.
Harris noted that Wheaton also puts money into the communities around its assets. Adam pointed at the Lundin Foundation. He said the foundation can help with diligence. It has a process aimed at making sure a project benefits the host community and the host nation, not only the shareholder register. He said that help is not reserved for LunR. It sits with the rest of the group. In a business where the ore is in someone else’s country, that is not a side hobby. It is part of why a company is allowed to stay.
Related parties, and the rule he set for himself
Harris did not skip the hard part. LunR’s deals so far have been with other Lundin group companies. Adam is chair of Lundin Mining and of Fireweed Metals. He sits on the boards of NGEx, Lucara Diamond, and the Lundin Foundation. Jamie Beck runs Lundin Gold and sits on LunR’s board. Wojtek Wodzicki runs NGEx and sits on LunR’s board. A minority shareholder is entitled to ask who is on which side of the table.
Adam answered in the language of process, and he did not joke it away when Harris teased him. If management or the board is conflicted, those people recuse themselves. Independents cut the deal. There are independent valuations, an independent committee, and a fairness opinion. Then the market gets a vote of its own. He said the proof is how the shares trade when the deal is announced.
He also told the origin story without romance. The idea, he said, came from Trevor D’Sa. Could NGEx spin a royalty out to its shareholders without tying up the assets the explorers still need to finance? They decided they could. Lunahuasi and Los Helados went into LunR that way. Then the group looked at Lundin Gold and saw silver that was real, and small relative to the gold, and useful as cash flow for a new royalty firm. Two group companies, two transactions, one logic. Give shareholders a clean claim on value that was already in the rocks.
He gave the credit for the heavy lifting to the teams. He said a conflicted person steps back, and everyone who remains still has to believe in the transaction. That is the right standard. It is also a standard a reader should test against the filings, not against a smile in Colorado Springs. A fair process can still produce a deal you do not want. The invitation he is making is to watch the next announcement, and to watch who did not vote.
The next deal does not have to wear the family name
Harris asked whether royalties and streams will come from outside the group. Adam said yes. The field is the whole field. He knows it is competitive. His example was the same one. Look at large producing mines. Look for a byproduct the market is not paying for. Be ready if the owner wants to stream it. Accept that the owner’s timeline is the timeline. A royalty company does not get to be impatient with a balance sheet that does not need it.
He also said LunR wants to be at the table when any development company, inside the group or outside it, runs a competitive process for capital. Fireweed was named. Vicuña was named. Lundin Mining was named. Being at the table is not the same as winning the table. Cost of capital still decides a lot of these auctions. His plan for lowering that cost is dull on purpose. Grow cash flow. Grow the credit line. Then offer a full financing solution to a company that is trying to build.
Until then, he refuses the trap that has hurt other royalty firms. Harris named it cleanly. Too many of them have issued highly valued shares to buy low-return assets, just to look bigger. Adam did not give a lecture. He said what he wants the money to be able to do. Fund a development company all the way. That requires a stronger credit facility and more cash flow than LunR has today. The path is the assets already owned, plus new deals that clear a real bar, plus the discipline not to do a deal that only makes the portfolio thicker.
What doing nothing still compounds
This was the quiet center of the interview. He does not think LunR has to buy something this quarter to have a future.
Fruta del Norte, he said, should keep growing. Lunahuasi and Los Helados should, in time, come online. He thinks those two development royalties can carry revenue in the same range as the silver stream, once they are mines. Put together, he said, sitting still could triple today’s cash flow. Then he said the company will not sit still. It is in processes. It is looking. It is trying not to put itself in a box so small that it cannot grow, and not in a box so loose that it buys junk.
Triple is his word. It depends on other companies building mines LunR does not operate. It depends on metal prices, permits, capital costs, and years. A reader who treats it as a promise has not listened to the rest of his answer. A reader who ignores it has missed the design. The first portfolio was chosen so that time is a friend. Exploration at Fruta del Norte can add ounces the stream already covers. Engineering at Lunahuasi can turn a discovery into a schedule. A decision at Los Helados can turn a resource into a haul road or a pipeline. None of that requires Adam to win an auction tomorrow.
The milestones he named are refreshingly plain. At Lunahuasi, keep drilling. Publish the studies. Learn the capital cost and the schedule. He credited Wojtek Wodzicki, Bob Carmichael, and the NGEx team. Carmichael is vice president of exploration. They already know this part of the Andes from the work that built the district. At Los Helados, Lundin Mining has now bought JX Advanced Metals’ stake. The deal closed on April 7, 2026. Lundin Mining bought a 30.9 percent interest in Los Helados and a 0.62 percent net smelter return on that project. In the same purchase it bought a further 5 percent of the Caserones mine, taking its stake from 70 percent to 75 percent. The price for the package was US$215 million. Caserones sits about 17 kilometers from Los Helados. Adam said the question in front of the operators is practical. Build a plant, or move the rock toward Caserones. LunR does not make that call. It owns 1.38 percent of the outcome if the call is yes and the mine is built.
A new explorer is not a deal until someone asks
Harris had watched an NGEx investor day. The company has since set a vote, for October 29, 2026, to spin out Valle Ancho. That project is a copper-gold land package of about 109,000 hectares. It sits on the eastern side of the Maricunga belt, in Chile and on into Catamarca, Argentina. The Chilean side of that belt already produces. Catamarca has its own mining history. Bajo de la Alumbrera was there. Alumbrera is not this belt, and it is not this spin-out. Adam said he is glad to see a pure exploration vehicle get room to work. He is not out shopping a royalty on it.
If that company, once it is standing, wants capital, LunR can do the work and say what a royalty would cost. The choice, he said, belongs to that board. Plain equity, or a royalty that leaves more cash in the ground program. He is not going to force the family story into a royalty the explorer does not want. That is patience again. A royalty taken too early can burden a discovery. A royalty offered when the drill program needs fuel can be a service. He left the difference in the other company’s hands.
Big checks can be shared
Banks syndicate loans. Royalty firms usually do not. Harris asked whether the tickets are getting large enough that they will. Adam said yes, that is possible. He has already partnered. He told Harris that LunR teamed with Tether on one stake, and that he was happy with it. He has done deals, in other seats, with Wheaton, Franco-Nevada, and Orion. If a fully financed solution is too big for LunR alone, he said, the company will not shy away from sitting with another royalty firm.
That is a grown answer from a company this young. The ego play is to stretch for the whole asset and issue the paper Harris warned about. The Lundin play, as Adam described it, is to be in the room with enough capital to matter, and to bring a partner when the room is too big. Shareholder returns, not sole sponsorship, are the point.
Five years, and the only scoreboard he accepted
Harris asked what success looks like in five years. Adam did not say “sixth-largest” and stop, though the company’s September 2026 presentation described LunR as the sixth-largest precious-metals royalty and streaming company by market cap, with a basic market cap of about C$2.7 billion as of September 8, 2026. Rank is a snapshot. He waved it off in favor of a harder test.
The scoreboard, he said, is shareholder returns. How much are you delivering? Market cap can rise because you issued shares. The share price has to rise as well, and it has to rise for a reason. The reason he wants is more cash flow, including royalties that can pay sooner rather than in a distant study. He will be excited, he said, if the business is simply larger in the right way. Growth of the claim. Not growth of the press release.
The catalysts he offered for the next 12 to 18 months follow from the same modesty. LunR does not run the mines. Its news is other people’s news. Watch NGEx move Lunahuasi and Los Helados toward a plan that can become cash. Watch Fruta del Norte add exploration results and, if Lundin Gold chooses, more throughput. Those milestones belong to the operators. They land on LunR because the contracts were written that way.
He added one item that is LunR’s own. He thinks LunR is one of the few royalty and streaming companies without a U.S. listing. He wants to study whether that listing makes sense. Study is not a filing. It is a door he is willing to open if the cost of capital on the other side is truly lower.
What an investor can hold onto
Royalty math is easy to romanticize. You do not build the camp. You do not meet the payroll on a wet Tuesday. You also do not control the drill, the permit, or the mill. Adam said that out loud. The key success of the next year and a half is tied to companies he does not manage. That is not a weakness he tried to hide. It is the product.
The product, in his telling, has three parts. A silver stream on a mine that is already running, written so that new ounces on that land package still count. Two royalties on discoveries the Lundin group already knows how to work. And a name that can add a second check when a seller wants more than a royalty. Around those parts he has put a small team, a board that has built and sold and operated, a foundation that looks at the host community, and a rule that conflicted people leave the room.
None of that is a reason to buy a share. It is a reason to understand what he thinks he is building. He is not trying to look like Wheaton by Christmas. He said Wheaton and Franco-Nevada have a head start and have earned it. He is trying to deserve a smaller version of their multiple by owning precious metals, long-life metal, and metal he did not have to overpay for with the company’s own paper. The first test is already in the market. The silver is being delivered. The next test is whether the second deal is as clean as the first.
Patience is not the same as standing still. He said he is in processes now. Patience is the refusal to buy a weak return so the map looks busier. If he keeps that refusal, the Lundin name is doing the job it has always done. It stays long enough for the rocks to matter. The check gets bigger only when the cash says it can.