Wheaton Precious Metals - Refining forecasts ahead of results

On 7 February, Wheaton announced attributable production and sales statistics for FY21 plus guidance for FY22 and beyond to FY31. While (implied) production for Q421 was within 1% of our prior expectations, sales lagged production by c 12%. This is quite normal for a ‘typical’ quarter, but is slightly unusual for a fourth quarter, in which a ‘flush through’ effect is often observed as underlying operators look to clear out their sales pipelines. This under-sale of metal in Q4 has caused us to reduce our basic EPS forecast for FY21 by 2.9% to US$1.31/share, albeit we note that the consensus forecast has remained at US$1.34/share.