They’re Piling Into GOLD (Uncut) 03-20-2025

They’re Piling Into GOLD! Insider Warns De-Dollarization Fear is Real

Hi, this is Daniela Cambone on the road here in Toronto. We are covering the 10th annual gold and silver reception taking place during the PDAC. The PDAC is the largest mining gathering in the world.

I think over 20,000 people come every year for this event. How long have we been covering it, Michael? We’ve done this 10 years, so that’s 10 years. I’m with my great friend, Michael Stein.

It’s always good to be back with you, CEO of Pan American. How have things been? Really good. This is the perfect combination, right? After we absorbed the integration of Yamana, strong metal prices, strong production, and strong control of our costs.

The result we’ve seen for last year, the best year of our company history. The best year? Last quarter, we did $200 million free cash flow, strongest revenue, strongest earnings. The Yamana acquisition was a complete game changer.

It was absolutely for us. Of course, when you buy a company with a lot of good assets at $1,800 gold or $1,750, and gold goes to nearly $3,000, of course. When we did the analysis for the acquisition, we looked at $1,750, $1,800.

It made a lot of sense at that price. Of course, it makes even more sense now. I’m really happy.

It took time to work through to sell all the assets that didn’t fit. I would think that was not an easy acquisition to negotiate. Are you still hungry for more? You know me.

You know me for a long time. I started with Pan American when it was a very small company, about 21 years ago. I just entered my 10th year as CEO, and I’m not done yet.

Absolutely not. I think we need to continue to build bigger and stronger companies, especially in the silver and gold space, and provide that silver investment for really large institutional investors. We have huge volume.

People can get in and out in our stock. That’s what I want to provide. Not just to the specialists, but to the really big institutional shareholders as well.

We’ve seen a lot of merger and acquisition activity in the silver space. Do you welcome that? Is that a sign of a healthy space? I think so, yeah. Single asset companies are very risky to have.

I understand that they get bought out, and that will continue for sure, but it’s very difficult to find these good silver assets, as you know. There are not many out there. Silver space is very small.

I cannot just grow only in silver. You can’t find silver on its own anyway, but you have to have a mix of base metals, gold and silver, when you want to be a big company like us. You were pounding the table last year saying, Daniela, we need lower interest rates to have a favorable price environment for gold and silver.

Yes. We’ve seen President Trump be very clear that he wants the lower interest rates. Will the Fed cave? We will see.

We’re seeing rates come a little bit lower, do you think we’re going to get those rates that you want to see? I missed a few things when I was pounding the table. Obviously, I was just looking at the interest rate. I didn’t know that Mr. Trump’s going to win the election again, and everything that happened after, which pushed the gold price up anyway.

I don’t need low interest rates anymore right now. It would be nice. It would be a double effect on the gold price.

The fear of all these countries that are de-dollarizing, and all the central banks that are buying gold, and that’s the reason why we see the all-time high gold price happen without actually lowering interest rates too much. It’s pretty incredible what we’re seeing on the gold front. I mean, there’s so many news headlines tied to gold.

I mean, we’re talking about an audit in Fort Knox. I should be asking you this, as a former investment banker in Switzerland, that the flow of gold from Switzerland into the US is at a 13-year high. All the gold flying from London to New York.

The argument is that they’re looking to avoid potential tariffs. Do you believe that? Or is that just a ruse? It’s a tough one. I don’t really know.

But what I see is that after a big craze in crypto and a lot of talk over the last five to six years that we don’t really need gold, that it’s something antiquated and old, and we can look at new things like cryptocurrencies. You know, when it gets tough in the world, everybody wants to own gold. And that’s what we see.

All-time high movement of gold through Switzerland. As you say, you have to remelt and make smaller bars for the US and send them to the US because people ask for them. And all that helps the gold price because people read all that.

They see all these movements. Right. Funny enough, though, the equities are actually not reacting very strongly to that.

Well, I was going to say, why this lag? We’ve seen actually outflows on the investment side on the gold ETFs. It’s just about flat, but at the beginning of the year, a lot of outflow. And it’s really the central bank buys gold and central banks, lots of them, like you said, Turkey, Poland, India, they’re buying gold, push the gold, of course, and many others.

They use their dollars. They’re buying gold. They don’t buy equities, of course, and they don’t buy silver.

So that’s why they disconnected the silver price and disconnected the equity. Because as gold is making all time highs, and as we’re speaking, who knows, by the time this video airs, maybe it will have hit $3,000 an ounce. But silver hasn’t had that moment yet.

Yeah, it’s pretty good. I mean, if you look back, I’m not sure anymore what it was last year, but we were probably mid 20s. So now we are more like mid 30s.

For sure. But still, you know, there’s a huge gap between its all time high of $50. Of course, we’re still far away.

Because as I said, minimal investment demand on both, but obviously no interest from central banks. And what you see in the silver side is really supported by industrial offtake, which is pretty amazing. Well, you know, I mentioned this to Keith, that TD just had a report.

They’re projecting the fifth consecutive supply deficit of silver. Because I think we often hear, there’s so much silver. What’s the real deal? Well, look, there’s so much silver, like there’s so much gold in the world.

But that silver is obviously tied up. And a lot of it is tied up in long term infrastructure. That’s, you know, solar panels, electronics, systems.

So you can’t use that. And then the old silver, when you go back, is either tied up in whatever religious objects or bullion. And people hold those bullions and they’re not going to let them go.

They said the TD report that we could potentially see a liquidity crisis. I mean, there was about 1.6 billion ounces above ground that we knew, like in London a few years ago. So when you count back the deficits, I think by about next year, if these numbers didn’t change, we’re probably pretty close done with that.

There will be more above ground storage somewhere. The question is, at what price would these people let their bullion go? And, you know, when I talk to some real silver bucks, they’re not going to let that silver go at 30 or 35 or 40 or 50. So we’ll see.

That’s going to be an interesting time here. Michael, I need to ask you your forecast for gold and silver this year. Well, I think it’s a given that we’re going to see gold north of three thousand dollars.

You know, everything going on in the world is just pushing gold. We see it today again. We see it every day.

There’s some security. There’s big problems. We have to have a trade war on top of it.

How are you navigating that as a CEO? I mean, I also ask the other CEOs this, especially if they have operations in Mexico and how they’re going to get around that. Do you think we’ll see tariffs on gold and silver? Probably, probably so, especially on dore. I think maybe refined gold.

I don’t know. But, you know, for us, we send a little bit of dore to the U.S. for refining. We can send it to Canada or to Switzerland or Germany.

So you’re not seeing it as a huge… Well, I think there’s maybe going to be impacts that we don’t count on yet, right? I mean, that’s going to be counter tariffs and higher tariffs. The impact on the costs may be going to come through here in a few months. I don’t know yet.

We don’t know how it’s going to play out. And by the time this airs, who knows? Maybe there will be no more tariffs. Let’s hope so.

Let’s hope so. Michael Simon, I wish you continued success. Enjoy the evening, 10 years of this event.

Yes, no, it’s amazing. Good sentiment. I think it’s good, good mood here.

Yeah, I mean, the whole year has been very strong. Well, continued success. You deserve it.

And we’ll see you. We’ll see you real soon. Thank you very much.

And thank you for watching. We’ll have more great content coming your way. So be sure to stay tuned to the Daniela Kambodian Show here on ITM Trading on the road in Toronto.