Alternative finance companies enjoyed a strong 2022 – and remain well-positioned to take advantage of growing opportunities in 2023, according to Mining Journal Intelligence’s (MJI) Alternative Finance Report 2023.

While the value of new primary deals by the top five market cap royalty and streaming companies slipped 6% from 2021, the total of US$830 million remained far higher than the US$300 million in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

Nine out of 11 of the biggest royalty and streaming companies saw their share prices increase during 2022, pushing up their combined market cap by about $5 billion to $66.46 billion. In the Discussion section, all 10 alternative finance companies – comprising both royalty and streaming and private equity (PE) firms – who responded to our questions said opportunities in the mining industry held steady or improved last year.

This improvement was underpinned by two key factors – constraints in access to traditional debt and equity finance on attractive terms, related to market volatility and weak company valuations – and a growing acceptance of the role of alternative finance in the mining sector.

Respondents also agreed that opportunities in 2023 and beyond will grow, as demand for the battery and base metals the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels surges ahead – with the new mines needed to meet this demand requiring vast amounts of capital.

Against this positive backdrop, alternative finance companies have already secured a key role in funding mine development – so much so that there was significant pushback against our use of the term ‘alternative finance’ in the report title, particularly among royalty and streaming companies.

This is the first year in which the Alternative Finance Report has been spun out of the Global Finance Report (GFR), in which it featured as a section in previous years.