A mineral royalty is a very small sentence with a very long future. It may promise one percent of a mine’s revenue, perhaps two, in exchange for a claim once sold or capital once supplied. The percentage looks modest. The calendar does not. Years of drilling, engineering, permits and construction can pass before the first payment arrives. David Cole has built his working life around that gap - the suspense between what a geologist sees and what the rest of the world is prepared to finance.
Cole is an economic geologist by training, a founder by temperament and a capital allocator by repetition. He spent 17 years at Newmont Mining, then co-founded the company that became EMX Royalty in 2003. More than two decades later, EMX had grown from a single-asset explorer with a C$3.3 million market capitalization into a portfolio of more than 250 mineral assets across six continents. In November 2025, EMX merged with Elemental Altus. Cole became chief executive of the combined Elemental Royalty Corporation.
The corporate summary is tidy. The method behind it is boots, maps, contracts and long waits. Cole’s memorable description of his early exploration work is “the pointy end of the stick” - the place where uncertainty is still fresh, the field data is incomplete, and a persuasive geological idea can change the value of a patch of ground.
The education of a geological optimist
Cole has traced his interest in geology back to childhood gold panning with his grandfather. The adult version of that curiosity acquired degrees from Fort Lewis College and Colorado State University, where he earned a master’s in geology and studied under economic geologist Tommy Thompson. Then Newmont supplied the roaming postgraduate course.
His assignments crossed Nevada, Southeast Asia, South America, Europe and Central Asia. His work included contributions associated with the Carlin Trend, Yanacocha and Minahasa mines. He later established and managed Newmont’s exploration programs in Turkey while looking for early-stage acquisition targets in Eastern Europe. The point was not travel for its own sake. Each jurisdiction offered another lesson in what makes a discovery valuable - and in how easily that value can be consumed by the cost of proving, permitting and building it.
Cole has said his passion was always “value creation through the discovery process.” Yet he was also fascinated by which parts of mining made money and which merely consumed it. He watched Franco-Nevada’s royalty model grow from mineral interests on Nevada’s Carlin Trend. The arrangement had an appealing asymmetry: exposure to what a mine produced, without employing everybody or paying every bill required to produce it.
“My passion has always been value creation through the discovery process.”David M. Cole
Sell the prospect. Keep the tail.
When Cole helped form Eurasian Minerals in 2003, the company began as an explorer. Its eventual name, EMX Royalty Corporation, made the evolving strategy plain. EMX would acquire promising mineral rights, assemble and improve the geological evidence, and invite a partner to take the project forward. The partner would supply the increasingly serious capital. EMX would receive payments, sometimes shares, and retain a royalty on future production.
The royalty-generation loop
Cole calls this royalty generation an organic growth strategy. It asks a geological team to be good at more than geology. A prospect has to be credible, but it also has to be marketable. “First and foremost is geological prospectiveness,” he has said. Next comes the probability of selling the asset. Staking ground is easy enough. Turning it into a royalty that another company will spend money to advance is the trick.
The attraction becomes clear when costs rise. Once a project is sold, exploration spending, development studies and construction bills sit on the counterparty’s side of the table. The royalty holder keeps exposure to higher commodity prices and to fresh discoveries on the property. In Cole’s preferred word, it keeps optionality. A mine can deepen, a district can widen, a metal price can climb. The royalty is still there, waiting in the paperwork.
A cheque with comic timing
Patience is delightful after it pays. Before it pays, patience is an excellent way to discover how shareholders sound when they are annoyed. The Malmyzh copper-gold project supplied Cole with both phases.
EMX identified IG Copper and its project in Russia’s Far East as a strategic investment and put roughly US$13 million into the company over time. In 2018, Russian Copper Company bought Malmyzh for US$200 million. EMX received an initial US$65 million distribution. Then, with the relief of a geologist who had finally become a cashier, Cole observed that the cheque “did not bounce.”
He joked that the deal had done wonders for his personality. For years, impatient investors had challenged the wait. Once the money was in the bank, people approached him to shake hands and announce how good it was to see him. The geology had not suddenly changed. Neither had the strategy. Cash had simply made the old conviction sociable.
“You can imagine facing impatient shareholders for years and then when you finally crystallize a big investment and the money is in the bank, they come up and shake your hand.”David M. Cole, after the Malmyzh sale
Malmyzh was not a royalty-generation template in every detail. It was a strategic investment and a lesson in company building. It still revealed Cole’s taste for situations where technical judgment and patient capital could meet. He also co-founded Standard Uranium. Energy Metals Corporation acquired it, and Uranium One later acquired Energy Metals for US$1.8 billion. The outcomes were different; the recurring instrument was an informed claim on mineral potential.
Newmont - exploration and management work across several continents.
Co-founds Eurasian Minerals, the company later renamed EMX Royalty.
The Malmyzh sale brings EMX an initial US$65 million distribution.
EMX merges with Elemental Altus; Cole becomes CEO of Elemental Royalty.
The portfolio becomes the product
A single mine is vulnerable to nearly everything specific: one ore body, one government, one engineering plan, one operator. Cole’s answer was accumulation across metals, countries and stages of development. EMX mixed generated royalties with acquired royalties and strategic investments. Some assets produced cash. Some were being drilled. Others remained geological possibilities with contracts attached.
That variety turns the portfolio itself into the product. The early-stage interests offer discovery potential. Producing royalties offer current revenue. Copper, gold and other metals do not move in perfect unison. Projects advance on their own calendars. No spreadsheet abolishes mining risk, but many unrelated chances can alter its shape.
Cole also emphasizes people. Technical judgment decides which ground deserves attention. Commercial judgment decides how to transact it. Rick Rule, a long-time natural-resource investor, has publicly credited Cole with hiring, motivating and retaining strong geologists. That skill matters because royalty generation is not passive at the start. Before the percentage can sit quietly, a team has to find the opportunity, organize the data and persuade a counterparty to care.
A handoff does not have to be an exit. A retained royalty keeps a contractual connection to future success.
The operator funds the expensive steps while the royalty holder remains exposed to production and discovery.
Good technical work becomes more valuable when it improves the structure and terms of a deal.
Long-cycle conviction needs a portfolio and balance sheet capable of surviving an indifferent calendar.
A larger vessel for the same idea
The November 2025 merger joined EMX with Elemental Altus and installed Cole as CEO of the combined Elemental Royalty Corporation. The transaction expanded the portfolio, paired EMX’s royalty-generation pipeline with Elemental Altus’s producing and acquired royalties, and brought a US$100 million investment from Tether. In February 2026, Cole joined the leadership team to ring the Nasdaq Opening Bell. The scene was several worlds away from a field geologist studying rock, though the enterprise on display still rested on observations that began there.
The new job changes the scale more than the philosophy. Cole has framed the combined company as a broader platform spanning current and future revenue-generating assets. Greater scale can lower dependence on any single mine and provide more capital for acquisitions. It can also create a management test familiar to every collector of assets: a bigger cabinet is useful only if the contents remain intelligible.
Cole’s career suggests he likes intelligible systems. Look first at the geology. Decide whether somebody will want the project. Arrange the deal so success still matters after control changes hands. Repeat without pretending the calendar is yours to command.
Mining works at heavy scale - trucks, pits, mills, balance sheets - yet Cole’s chosen unit is a percentage point. That is the playful paradox of the royalty business. The physical work grows while the owner of a small contractual slice can remain comparatively light. The rocks do not become less stubborn. The capital burden simply moves.
For founders outside mining, the useful part is not the commodity forecast. It is the structure. What can be handed to a better-funded partner? What piece of future value can be kept? Which expertise earns a durable claim rather than a one-time fee? And can the business survive long enough for one percent to become interesting?
Cole has spent four decades asking versions of those questions, first in the field, then in the boardroom. His answer is written across a map of mineral rights: find carefully, transact deliberately, and allow time to reveal how valuable the tiny sentence on the page may become.