Ninepoint Co-CEO on Building an Energy Independence ETF

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Wilson, it's time for our ETF watch list, and joining me right now, John Wilson, co-CEO and portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners. And now, we're making the case and talking about American energy independence, the Iran War continues, we have headlines today which have us with elevated oil, oil's up over $3 today. And you launched ENRG about a week ago, and I wanna talk about some of the themes. Before we get into the ETF itself, let's talk about some of the themes that we're seeing on ENRG.

You sat down and you said, well, we just don't have enough. I think that's a good starting place, John.

John Wilson (0:35)

Absolutely. The world is short of ENRG. We need more. If you look at all the dynamics driving the need for ENRG, whether it's AI and data centers or just electrification generally, everybody needs more ENRG. The real challenge that Iran and Ukraine have taught everybody is you not only need ENRG, but you need to have a stable source of supply and you need to have it close to home. So that's really what we're focused on.

SPEAKER_1 (0:57)

I mean, we're getting a lot of news that a lot of the same oil is now, it's almost back up to par, not quite, but maybe not going to the Strait of Hormuz, but out and around in different production rates.

What do you say about when you see that? Are we getting similar oil production and deliveries as we did?

John Wilson (1:16)

So the challenge, there's really two challenges with that. Number one, the cost of all these other alternative ways of getting the oil is substantially higher than it used to be when it went through the Strait of Hormuz. So even if you're getting the oil, you're getting it at a much more expensive price in markets like Asia and Europe.

And then, secondarily, beyond just the cost of that, it's, you know, you still are at threat of having another interruption almost any day now. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (1:43)

I actually heard a couple of stories about that because you triggered it now. And one was the longer routes that they have to take. That costs more, right? Instead of X hours, it's double X hours. Also having multiple ships, one that brings to another one and having smaller ships because they have to meet up.

John Wilson (2:01)

They have to pay their people more to go on the ships.

SPEAKER_1 (2:05)

So, it costs more to get everything from point A to point B. So, at this point now, your ENRG fund has not just the Exxon and Chevron, it really has a lot of different things in there that we need for power. Tell us some more about it.

John Wilson (2:20)

Yeah. So, it leverages the, we have decades of experience managing both energy and mining. And so, what we wanted was to bring all that into a single product that allowed investors to access investments across the energy spectrum in North America, all of the elements that make North America energy independent. So, Canada and the US are so fortunate. They have abundant resources between them, and they have a connected infrastructure that allows those resources to be delivered to where they need it. So, the fund actually invests not just in upstream oil companies that should mention like Chevron, Exxon, Diamondback, or even large Canadian producers like Suncor and Cenovus and CNQ, but also the midstream infrastructure that delivers that oil and gas to where it's either refined or processed or shipped.

We also invest in the critical minerals that are used for electrification. I think nickel, copper, silver, zinc, those types of things, all again abundantly in North America. And finally, even nuclear and uranium. You know, Canada being one of the largest sources of uranium in the world. And of course, nuclear desperately needed for data centers.

SPEAKER_1 (3:23)

Yeah, it's such a variety here when you talk about the critical minerals, right? It's not what we're thinking of when we think of an energy fund, but we should be.

So as you noted, it does have the big names that we know, but also so many others here, nuclear, uranium. And so at this point now, do you think we change the way we power? I mean, we keep hearing about the electrification of things. Do you think power sort of shifts how we do it?

John Wilson (3:49)

I think we need power every which way we can get it.

SPEAKER_1 (3:52)

However we get it.

John Wilson (3:53)

Yeah. So that's renewables, that's nuclear, that's traditional fossil fuels. And there's a great story on the weekend about developing new technology in solar that'll be much more efficient. So any which way we can get more power, we're going to have a way to use it.