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Wheaton lends miners money upfront and gets the right to buy their silver and gold cheaply later.
Wheaton Precious Metals doesn't dig anything out of the ground. Instead, it's a middleman with a twist. When a mining company needs cash to build a new mine, Wheaton hands over a big lump sum up front. In exchange, Wheaton gets the right to buy silver or gold from that mine later at a very low fixed price — often around a fifth of the going market price — and then sells that metal at full price to refineries and banks. Think of it as prepaying a farmer for years of eggs at 50 cents a dozen, then selling those eggs at grocery-store prices. The miner wins because it gets construction money without taking on debt, and Wheaton wins because its costs are locked in low. Customers are essentially the global metals market; anyone buying physical gold and silver ultimately funds Wheaton's margin.
The business runs on two main streams: silver and gold, with gold now the bigger slice of revenue, roughly two-thirds, and silver making up most of the rest, plus a small but growing slice of other metals like cobalt and palladium. Revenue moves with metal prices, so when gold and silver prices rise, Wheaton's profits jump far more, because its purchase costs barely budge. Its costs are also surprisingly fixed, since it pays the same low price per ounce no matter what the market does. Wheaton owns a portfolio of streams across working mines in places like Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Peru, plus a pipeline of future projects that could add metal down the road without buying whole mines.
The company started in 2004 as Silver Wheaton, a tiny outfit built around one silver deal, and grew by doing more and bigger streaming deals with miners, eventually renaming itself Wheaton Precious Metals in 2017. Today it spends its spare cash in a few ways: signing new streaming deals, paying a dividend, and buying back shares. Its real edge is that it never has to run a mine, deal with strikes, or dig holes — it just collects metal and sells it. When gold and silver prices are high, Wheaton is one of the cleanest ways to own them without the headaches of mining.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026