In short: Came into the financing ~4 years ago alongside Rick Rule. Alexandra Woodyer Sherron built it from scratch to cash-flow positive on four producing assets — "chapter one" done; chapter two is deploying the cash at a lower cost of capital, including longer-dated royalties. Endeavour Financial (chairman David Rhodes) sources deals worldwide, which is the competitive edge. "Still somewhat undervalued… a great exposure at the early side of the royalty curve."
Empress is a royalty and streaming company. Instead of digging anything, it hands a miner cash up front in exchange for a permanent slice of that mine's future production or revenue. The attraction is that the royalty holder's costs are fixed at the moment of the deal — if the mine's operating costs blow out later, that's the miner's problem, while the royalty keeps paying. Franco-Nevada and Wheaton, which Phillips holds passively in retirement accounts, are the giant versions of this; Empress is the small, early one.
His view is that Empress finished its hard first phase — Alexandra Woodyer Sherron built it from nothing in about five years to the point where four producing assets generate more cash than it spends — and is now in phase two, redeploying that cash. Being cash-generative matters because it lowers the company's cost of capital: it no longer has to sell shares cheaply every time it wants to do a deal.
The structural edge he emphasises is deal flow. Chairman David Rhodes runs Endeavour Financial, an advisory firm that arranges billions in mine-building finance and therefore sees deals worldwide before anyone else. Small royalty deals that never reach the big players get shown to Empress first. Phillips came in with Rick Rule's financing four years ago and thinks it's still somewhat undervalued — though less so than three years ago.
19:11I liken it to that she executed the first chapter and she's on the second chapter now. So the first chapter was becoming cash flow positive and they have four main assets that actually are producing that cash and again they're sitting on a lot of money that they haven't had before. Their opportunity now is to cut some more deals.
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