Streaming has moved far beyond its origins as a niche financing tool for cash-strapped miners, with multibillion-dollar deals and a growing secondary market turning rights to future metal production into an asset class of their own.
The scale is increasingly difficult to ignore. Wheaton Precious Metals (TSX, NYSE: WPM) this year agreed to pay $4.3 billion (C$6.1 billion) for a silver stream on BHP’s (ASX, NYSE: BHP) share of production from the Antamina mine in Peru, while a series of smaller transactions has drawn private-equity firms and specialist companies into buying and selling existing streams and royalties.
Under a stream, a financier provides upfront capital in exchange for the right to buy a share of a mine’s future metal production at a fixed or discounted price. A royalty typically gives the holder a percentage of mine revenue or production without requiring further capital.
The appeal for miners remains straightforward: streaming can provide large amounts of capital without issuing as many shares or over-levering with conventional debt. But as the market has grown, so has the sophistication around how streams are valued, traded and packaged, creating a business that increasingly extends well beyond mine financing itself.
Against dilution
Generation Mining (TSX: GENM; US-OTC: GENMF) shows why project owners use them. The Canadian developer assembled a C$1.3-billion construction package for its Marathon copper-palladium project in northern Ontario, with a metal stream from Wheaton forming a significant part of the package.
“We do still encounter investors who are opposed to streaming . . . because it’s taking away some of the upside down the road,” Generation Chairman Kerry Knoll told The Northern Miner. “But I don’t agree with that because the alternative for us is to sell more shares and dilute the shareholder down. And once those shares are out, they’re out forever. Even if we have another mine, those shares will be out there.”
The trade-off Knoll describes is hardly new. What has changed is the size, breadth and active market for the claims miners are selling. Even Australia, where miners have traditionally been wary of streaming, is showing signs of greater acceptance. Wheaton recently completed its first Australian stream with KGL Resources (ASX: KGL) for gold and silver from the Jervois copper project in the Northern Territory.
At the same time, transactions such as Empress Royalty’s (TSXV: EMPR; US-OTC: EMPYF) $62-million purchase of a Tongon stream from private-equity firm Appian Capital Advisory show that streams are no longer simply written and held to maturity. They can themselves be bought, sold and repriced, raising a larger question for the mining industry: how did future production become a multibillion-dollar financial asset?
Making the most
The first answer on everyone’s lips is that metal prices are at near-record levels.
“This is almost an unprecedented time right now in the mining industry, the amount of capital that is being raised through streaming, through banks, through equity, through everything,” Knoll said.
Numerous junior projects that weren’t economical at lower prices are now suddenly able to provide reasonable returns, all competing for financing. The bigger financiers with the cash to meet demand may be reluctant to engage.
“The total addressable market is not that big that it would excite a generalist like Blackstone to jump in and start doing lots of mining,” Tim Mister, head of Appian Credit and Royalties, told MINING.COM‘s sister publication The Northern Miner. “Mining is very complex with lots of different risk areas. There is a liquid market to hedge gold, of course, and copper at least a few years, but for other commodities there’s really not.”
At the same time, some traditional sources of mining capital are looking elsewhere, pushing developers to consider alternatives such as streams. In Australia, superannuation funds have been an important source of capital for miners but are increasingly diversifying overseas. The National Australia Bank reported that 2025 was the first year in which international investment allocation topped 50% as funds moved into the U.S. tech sector.
Tight economics
Mining developers are left to find the lowest-priced capital in an extremely competitive field. Protecting against dilution is the well-known reason to consider royalties or streams, but Mister said the costs of equity go further.
“You’ve seen metal prices rise and you haven’t necessarily seen junior mining companies’ share prices rise at the same pace,” he said. “If investors believe their share is undervalued, they really don’t want the management team going out and issuing a lot of shares to go find a solution.” The trade-off, he continued, is the commodity price upside and gains from resource expansion.
Streams can also be cheaper than debt with the right generator.
“When interest rates rise that doesn’t actually change how much we’re looking for in terms of our cost of capital on a transaction and what kind of internal rate of return we need,” Wheaton CEO Haytham Hodaly told The Northern Miner, referencing borrowing rates for smaller mining companies potentially around 9% to 12%.
“We internally have a threshold, a weighted average cost of capital, let’s call it between 6% and 7%, just roughly. And for a good stream that doesn’t have any additional risk, it would probably fall into that avenue.”
Debt covenants tighten with rising rates, requiring strict repayment schedules and returns, Hodaly explained. Meanwhile, streaming has become more flexible, often including step-downs later in mine production, which free up additional capital for resource expansion. Royalties often allow miners to buy down the size of the royalty.
Valuing capital
Rising metals prices have made streams and royalties cost-effective capital options, but there is a limit. Wheaton reviews more than 100 opportunities a year in great detail but may only make three investments, Hodaly said.
“We also have to have a view on pricing, if we thought spot prices were going to tank we would not be buying streams,” he said. “Between 2010 and 2012, silver prices had skyrocketed and the expectation on the other side in terms of what prices people wanted us to pay were unrealistic. So, we didn’t do a deal for two years.”
Private equity has taken a major role in generating royalties and streams, introducing a nearer-term view of returns that has jolted the secondary market to life.
Appian often combines debt with a stream or royalty just before mine construction, avoiding complex inter-creditor agreements while creating another monetizable asset for its shareholders. Once the mine is producing and some development risk has fallen away, Appian can sell that interest to a royalty or streaming company willing to value decades of potential production. In effect, private equity can create the asset at one stage of a mine’s development and sell it at another, after its risk and value have changed.
“Royalty and streaming companies are happy to buy at that price because their business model is to acquire assets forever,” Mister said. “They can price in long-term resources growth upside and, typically, the winning bidder for those has the strongest price deck and a differentiated view on the life of that mine.”
De-risking
Appian has gone so far as to provide Empress with a $75-million debt financing tied to its $62-million Tongon acquisition. The arrangement includes an initial $55-million draw at closing to partly fund the purchase. Deals like this are rare, Mister said, but can help financially de-risk the best bid for the asset.
Mister said there’s a very deep and healthy secondary market and the numbers seem to back him up. Franco-Nevada (TSX, NYSE: FNV) spent $1.05 billion to acquire an existing Côté Gold royalty from a private third party in June 2025. Versamet Royalties (TSX, Nasdaq: VMET) paid Appian $125 million upfront in September last year for a silver stream and a polymetallic net smelter return royalty, with up to $45 million more in contingent consideration.
Empress agreed to its $62-million Appian deal this month. Together, transactions like these show that a stream or royalty can develop a financial life of its own after the original mine financing is done.
Hodaly agrees that there will always be an active secondary market but argues there is still a lot of due diligence required before investing, limiting liquidity, no matter how many takers private-equity firms may have for their assets.
“We’ve only ever bought like a handful of those in our existing portfolio,” Hodaly said. “And we have over 50 different streaming opportunities right now.”
Power trio
The big three — Franco-Nevada, Wheaton and Royal Gold (Nasdaq: RGLD) — have the resources to negotiate new streams at reasonable prices or outright acquire other royalty and stream holders, such as Royal Gold’s $3.5-billion Sandstorm acquisition last year. Wheaton can string together a series of $200-million streams and get strong returns because of its negotiating power over smaller streams, Hodaly said.
The second-tier royalty and streaming companies, which Mister identified as Versamet, OR Royalties (TSX: OR) and Empress, lack some of that purchasing power and have been more active in acquiring secondary-market assets from private-equity firms and each other.
As long as private equity and top royalty and streaming companies remain bullish on commodities, the wave of new assets, financing deals and secondary-market activity is likely to continue. A reversal in metal prices could slow new transactions, but the secondary market itself has become a more permanent feature: existing streams and royalties can continue to change hands even when fewer new ones are being created.
Wheaton, meanwhile, says its existing growth allows it to remain selective.
“We do transactions because we’re a growth company and if we find a high-quality asset, we’ll do it,” Hodaly said. “But we have a 50% growth profile between now and 2030, that’s if we do absolutely nothing.”
