Royal Gold Cuts Revolver by $425 Million as Stream Volume Jumps
Royal Gold's stream segment sold 69,000 gold-equivalent ounces in the quarter, up from 64,000 in the prior period, as the company also announced its first share buyback and slashed its credit line by $425 million.
Royal Gold (RGLD) reported its first full quarter of results incorporating the Sandstorm and Horizon acquisitions, with stream segment sales rising to $311.0 million on 69,000 gold-equivalent ounces (GEOs), up from 64,000 GEOs in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 48,000 GEOs in the third quarter, before the deals closed.
The volume gain came with a cost. Stream cost of sales rose to $871 per GEO, up from a blended $809 per GEO on the legacy RGLD Gold AG portfolio and $496 per GEO on the Sandstorm assets in the fourth quarter, and from $653 per GEO in the third quarter. Gold ounces sold in the stream segment climbed to 54,500 ounces from 53,100 ounces in the prior period and 38,600 ounces a quarter earlier, tracking the broader ramp in acquired output.
The company used the cash generated to accelerate debt reduction. The revolver balance, which stood at $1.225 billion when the Sandstorm deal closed on October 20, 2025, fell to $825 million by January 12, 2026, and to $400 million by June 30, 2026, a $425 million paydown in the second quarter alone. Undrawn capacity on the facility rose to $1.0 billion from $575 million in January.
Royal Gold also disclosed its first share repurchase activity, buying back and cancelling 147,205 shares for $30 million at an average price of $203.80 a share, a capital-return step absent from any prior-quarter release. The buyback arrived alongside continued deployment of capital into development-stage royalty and streaming assets: the company funded $70 million to the Hod Maden project and advanced $50 million to Solaris Resources for its Warintza project, a shift from the fourth quarter's focus on rationalizing non-core positions at Bear Creek and Highlander and the third quarter's emphasis on integrating the Sandstorm and Horizon acquisitions.
The quarter also included a one-time accounting item: $12 million of additional depreciation, depletion and amortization tied to the settlement with Americas Gold and Silver over the Relief Canyon stream, under which Royal Gold swapped a fixed gold delivery obligation for immediate delivery plus an equity stake in the counterparty.
For the current quarter, Royal Gold guided royalty segment sales to a range of $137 million to $142 million, continuing the estimate-range format introduced with its 2026 guidance in March, in contrast to the more granular unit-level breakdowns given for stream sales in the third and fourth quarters of 2025. The company's full-year 2026 sales volume guidance, issued in the first quarter, calls for gold, silver and copper midpoints running 32%, 8% and 40% higher than actual 2025 volumes, guidance that was not revised in the anchor release.
The combination of rising throughput, a shrinking credit balance and a newly initiated buyback marks a shift in posture from the integration-heavy quarters that followed the Sandstorm and Horizon deals toward a phase focused on deleveraging and shareholder returns.