Altius Releases Inaugural Sustainability Report
Altius Minerals Corporation (ALS:TSX) (ATUSF: OTCQX) (“Altius” or the “Corporation”) is pleased to report the release of its inaugural Sustainability Report, which will become an annual disclosure item. The report includes the following introductory letter that is addressed to Altius’s many valued stakeholders:
Dear Altius Stakeholder,
We are delighted to provide you with our first formal sustainability report. Within this you will discover the many ways in which Altius is a leader and innovator in terms of its environmental, social and governance, or ESG, responsibilities.
While much has been said in recent times of the risk factors that poor ESG adherences represent to investors and other stakeholders, which we generally concur with, we also believe that strong ESG practices are a path to outsized long-term business opportunities and growth.
Being a strong steward of the environment, respecting the rights and needs of the people our operations touch and going the extra mile to ensure that our governance policies and practices exceed the expectations of those whose investments we have been given the privilege of overseeing, is not a box ticking exercise at Altius. It is our culture, and it is good business.
Societal level ideals and capitalism are more aligned than ever before as evidenced by the extraordinary migration of investment flows towards asset managers and businesses that preferentially invest with a focus on global sustainability best practices, while increasingly shunning those that resist adaptations that science and society believe are necessary to ensure we leave a positive legacy for future generations.
Within Altius, our clearest example of this type of adaptation relates to our strategy to reinvest the remaining proceeds from our phasing out coal power generation based royalties into a new renewable energy royalty business. 2020 has been a pivotal year, as our internal estimate of the value of the renewable royalties has eclipsed the remaining value of the coal royalties. Renewables now represent a rapid growth area, while coal is quickly becoming a “rearview mirror” component of our portfolio.
Society is speaking loudly and clearly with its collective capital in saying it wants change to happen now - if not yesterday. We believe that businesses that quickly embrace these transitions as opportunities to innovate will prosper.
In the pages that follow you will hopefully come to understand that Altius means to be part of the group that prospers and that it has been squarely positioning itself for some time to do just that. We also understand that capturing the full opportunity that these macro-trend transitions offer will require continuous innovation and adaptation.
To this goal, we welcome your feedback on the content of our inaugural sustainability report as we continue to strive to develop Altius as the leading natural resource royalty company – as defined by both its long-term sustainability record and its investment returns profile.
Brian Dalton, President & CEO
The Sustainability Report is available on the Corporation’s website at www.altiusminerals.com, and will be emailed to shareholders and ratings agencies.
About Altius
Altius’s strategy is to create per share growth through a diversified portfolio of royalty assets that relate to long life, high margin operations. This strategy further provides shareholders with exposures that are well aligned with sustainability-related global growth trends including the electricity generation transition from fossil fuel to renewables, transportation electrification, reduced emissions from steelmaking and increasing agricultural yield requirements. These macro-trends each hold the potential to cause increased demand for many of Altius’s commodity exposures including copper, renewable based electricity, several key battery metals (lithium, nickel and cobalt), clean iron ore, and potash. In addition, Altius runs a successful Project Generation business that originates mineral projects for sale to developers in exchange for equity positions and royalties. Altius has 41,464,462 common shares issued and outstanding that are listed on Canada’s Toronto Stock Exchange. It is a member of both the S&P/TSX Small Cap and S&P/TSX Global Mining Indices.
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