Royal Gold History

The Company began in 1981 as Royal Resources Corporation, an oil and gas exploration and production company. After 4-5 years of increasing prosperity, oil prices collapsed causing the company to falter and shift its focus from oil and gas to gold. At the time of this transition, Mr. Stanley Dempsey was a director of Royal Resources, Inc. and co-founder of Denver Mining Finance Corporation (“DMFC”), a merchant bank providing merger and acquisition and funding services to mining firms.

Mr. Dempsey’s newly formed firm, DMFC, developed the strategy for Royal Resources to become a gold mining company. Royal Resources acquired DMFC in 1986 and Dempsey and his DMFC partner, Mr. Edwin Peiker, were then asked to manage the new Royal Gold. Management of Royal Gold quickly pursued their new focus of becoming a gold operating company. By September 1987, the Company was actively pursuing acquisitions of gold producers and prospective exploration properties to achieve its goal of being a substantial gold producer and explorer.

The stock market pullback in October 1987 caused Royal Gold to again refocus its business strategy and retreat from being a gold producer. Instead the Company looked for partners for its properties and focused on being a minority owner of interests in significant gold properties operated by major mining firms.

In the long run, this final tactic proved to be a very successful strategy. After several lean years, Royal Gold came into possession of a marquee royalty on the Cortez Pipeline Mining Complex in Nevada which became the platform for today’s efficient royalty business model.

Today, Royal Gold is a leading precious metals royalty company, owning royalties on several of the world’s most attractive gold mines. The Company has grown significantly and has a royalty portfolio consisting of 21 producing properties, 12 development stage properties, 25 evaluation properties, and 60 exploration stage properties. At the end of calendar 2008, total precious metals reserves subject to the Company's royalty interests included approximately 64 million ounces of gold and 1.2 billion ounces of silver.