Martin Fewings
Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us here today, either here physically or online.
Welcome to our 2025 financial results. Presenting today from Glencore, Gary Nagle, CEO, and Steven Kalmin, CFO.
Gary, I'll hand over to you to begin.
Gary Nagle
Thanks, Martin. Morning to those in the room.
Morning, morning and good afternoon, good evening wherever you are dialing in from around the world. Thank you for joining us for our 2025 year-end results.
We're going to follow a similar format to how we follow each year. Martin's got a good formula on the presentation and I think it works very well.
We'll kick off as we always, as we normally do with our, our financial scorecard and where we ended the year. A very good year, particularly how we started the first half of the year.
We, we stood here this time last year and we said the first half of the year would be a weak year, or a weak half-year. It was a weak half-year.
We finished off very strongly. Those who were here for the CMD will, will remember the presentation that we gave and, and, and some of the updates that we gave then.
We finished the year off very nicely: a $13.5 billion adjusted EBITDA for the year, made up across the business. On the industrial side, close to $10 billion adjusted EBITDA.
Very pleasing result. The main thrust of that came from the metals side of the business.
In particular copper had a very good year, zinc had a good year. You've seen the second half of the year prices were much higher, our production was much higher.
I'd like to say that we did that on purpose, that we, we slow-played the first half and got ready for the contango in the second half of the year. I won't take credit for that, though.
That wasn't, that wasn't us, but it did work in our favor, sometimes better lucky than good. A particular, a particularly strong year in metals, particularly copper, zinc, by-product from gold kicking through in the second half of the year from our zinc operations.
A very pleasing result in, in, in metals. On the flip side, the energy side and, and steelmaking coal a bit weaker.
We saw prices were lower, particularly the first half of the year. It has been a tougher environment we've seen for steelmaking coal.
Fortunately, we produce a higher quality steel, a higher quality both steelmaking coal and, and energy coal, and we're still able to, to be very cash generative through that business. The second, probably the last quarter of the year, things looking a bit better, and even into this year.
We've seen this year things in both steelmaking coal and, or prices in both steelmaking coal and energy coal looking stronger. Energy coal driven largely by Indonesian cuts on exports, which has lifted prices above $120 a ton out of Newcastle.
We're very pleased with what we're seeing out of Indonesia. In fact, as Glencore, we're always one to try stay ahead and we may even consider our own cuts, despite the higher prices, we may even consider our own cuts to continue this momentum in the market.
We're very happy to see Indonesia doing what they're doing. On the steelmaking coal side, prices also higher.
We've seen spot prices up to $250, the forwards in the $220s, all look very good. Largely driven by some weather impacts in Queensland as well as stronger steel demand and steel production out of India.
That brings, that, that bring, that, that resulted in a very good result for our, on the industrial side, as I said, close to $10 billion of adjusted EBIT, EBITDA. On the marketing side, also a strong year.
You'll remember our old range of $2.2 to $3.2 billion and we're always, at the middle of that range was $2.7. Steve explained how we adjusted the range last year.
We're now back in the middle of the new range, higher than the middle of the old range, and remember the new range, or the new earnings excludes any Viterra trading profits that we had back in the day. If you look like-for-like, it's materially higher than what we were achieving previously.
So, $2.9 billion adjusted marketing EBIT for the year. Again, that was driven largely on the metals side.
Copper had a, a number of opportunities: there were trade dislocations, there were regional arbitrage opportunities, we had a very tight concentrate market, all playing in, and that was not only in copper, but in zinc, all playing into a very strong trading set for our metals business during 2025. On the energy and steel, energy and steelmaking coal side, a weaker trading set available.
It wasn't that, it wasn't, we know the prices were lower, but the, the trading set available to us was not, was not there for us. It was a year of more risk-off.
Pleasingly, we did see those opportunities coming back in the second half of the year, and in particular from about September, October, things came back. Second half of 2025 over, over the first half was annualizing closer to where we were for 2024.
We've started this year off nicely as well. On the energy side, we're seeing things coming back nicely during the year.
Our operational scorecard, this is a new slide, and on our key commodities and where we've landed up. Very solid performance.
Two years in a row, we've now achieved our guidance across our key commodities. We, Steve and I did our roadshow in, in August last year, our mid-term last year, interim results last year, and needless to say, I think 99 out of 100 people would have said there's no ways we would be, be able to put up a slide like this.
This slide is not a slide to say I told you so. It's more a slide to call out to our operational team.
Xavier's here in the room, Earl Malamud's here in our room, in the room, he runs our coal business. It's a shout-out to John Evans, it's a shout-out to Suresh, it's a shout-out to Yappi, it's a shout-out to Colin, and their entire operational team.
They assured us, they assured Steve and I they would meet our production guidance, and they did. It's a shout-out to them.
I certainly hope, other than Earl and Xavier, none of them are watching this and they're out in the field doing what they should be doing. I think this is important for us, where we're re-establishing ourselves as reliable operators, ensuring we deliver what we say we're going to deliver.
Moving on to our portfolio scorecard, and we're going to talk about copper first. We'll get onto some of the other parts of the business in a second.
We were here in December in this room on these very comfortable chairs. We made you sit for three hours.
We won't make you sit for three hours today, don't worry. We just thought we'd give you a quick update on where we are on some of the, some of the projects that we outlined during the copper, the copper, well it was mainly a copper presentation.
We obviously covered a lot of the rest of the business, but copper was the theme, the main theme of that presentation. We've had some nice advancements in many of those projects.
You'll remember our, our graph that we put up where we'll see growth back to our base million tons a year of copper production. We'll then grow to circa 1.6 million, with the potential to go well over 2 million tons, depends on which lever we pull.
We have a number of levers we can pull, and that's the joy of our business: we're not relying on one or two different operations. Multiple levers to pull and we can be able to, and we are able to increase production far in excess of where we are now, and even above the 1.6 million tons if that's what we want to do by 2035.
Working from left to right through the various projects. Antapaccay, as is our great operation in Peru.
We've always spoken about the extension and expansion in Coroccohuayco. The entire region is a very highly mineralized region.
We were able to complete the acquisition of Quechua, which is just adjacent to Coroccohuayco and Antapaccay, and that gives us two benefits. The one benefit of that is it's very highly mineralized and that could be an extension of Antapaccay in the same way as Coroccohuayco is an extension of Antapaccay.
We may choose to go into Quechua before we go into Coroccohuayco. That gives us huge optionality just within that, that area.
It also gives us optionality that if we do build Coroccohuayco first, we have access through the Quechua deposit back to the Antapaccay pit and the Antapaccay concentrator. We no longer become ransomed around any land or issues around Coroccohuayco.
It's a huge unlock for us, very pleasing result, very big step forward in the Antapaccay region. In the DRC, we've signed a non-binding MOU with a, with the US government-backed Orion CMC.
I was in DC two weeks ago to sign that. We had the Deputy Secretary of State there, we had the, the head of the DFC, we had a number of officials there.
It's a very exciting opportunity. What does this, what does this do for us?
Firstly, it's a, it's a big confidence boost for the DRC. The DRC, we've always said, is a good country to operate in.
It's a good country to invest in. Does it have its challenges?
Yes, every country has its challenges. This shows that this is a country that's open for business, that companies are ready to invest in the DRC.
It also shows how important the US is, or how important critical minerals are in the DRC is to the US, that they are backing a company like Orion to invest in the DRC. That's great.
Lastly, it's a nod in our direction about the value and quality of the mines that we have there. We've got a circa $9 billion value on the two operations we have there, KCC and Mutanda, which is something very, we've always said because of the quality of the deposit and the great way we are, the great way those the mines develop.
There's a long-life, high-value proposition for Glencore in it, and this is proven through the, through that time. Very exciting opportunity for us, still early days.
It's a non-binding MOU, but work, work has already started on that. The other thing in, the other, the other exciting news out of, out of the DRC is that KCC, we've been talking about land for, Steve, six, seven years now?
Maybe longer? Five-plus
Steven Kalmin
years. Five-plus
Gary Nagle
years we've been talking about the land. We've been promising it for five-plus years.
We've now finally delivered. Thank you to our partners, Gécamines, great partners.
They were able to unlock the land packages that we need. What does that do for us?
That allows us to be able to expand the mine as we've always said and how we explained when we sat here in December. This takes the mine back up to around 300,000 tons of copper per year.
It takes the life of the mine well into the 2040s. A very exciting opportunity.
That land gives us the chance, or the infrastructure in fact, for dumping, for tailings, for power lines, all the sort of infrastructure that will support the existing pit, be able to push the pit back and, and make, and make that operation or run that operation as effectively and efficiently as we can. Moving to Argentina, we have two RIGI approvals in place, underway at the moment.
One is for MARA, one is for El Pachón. Both are going very well.
Very constructive and good dialogue with the Argentine government, sharing a lot of information. We expect the MARA RIGI to come through before the Pachón RIGI, just the way they're sequencing it in terms of resource and able to manage the number of RIGI applications they have.
Very exciting. We expect to have, I mean with some luck, we'll get the MARA in the first quarter, but we're being a bit conservative here and saying we'll definitely have it in the, we expect it in the first half, and Pachón will come soon after that.
We've also started our work on Alumbrera, which as you know is an enabler for, for the construction of MARA later and the development of MARA, and we expect first production in 2028 in Alumbrera. NewRange is the joint venture we have with Teck, or soon to be Anglo Teck, in Minnesota.
Unbelievable deposit. The resource base through work that we've done in the extra drilling with Teck, we've increased that resource base by approximately a billion tons.
This now is a bigger resource base than Resolution, it's a bigger resource base than Pebble. It's a, in fact, and not only that, this is a deposit that is lower capital intensity than both and quicker to market than both.
Very exciting. Like the others, it also has some permitting challenges, but fortunately we're moving through those quite well.
We've met with the, with the governor of Minnesota, very supportive of, of the project. We've got a good team operating there, and we expect to unlock, I think we've got 20 or 21 of the 23 permits we need for the first phase.
Moving along nicely, and that will be a nice project once we, once we get that fully approved. Some of the rest of the business: we've done some monetization, we've done some portfolio optimization, some portfolio simplification.
Century Aluminum, for the Americans, Century Aluminium for those this side of the pond. We've, we, we've sold a part-stake of our, of our shareholding in Century.
It's a great company. Jesse runs a great company.
We're very pro the company. We'll, we want to maintain a meaningful stake in the company, but we felt that owning in the 40s, 45, 46%, whatever it was, didn't really make sense for us in terms of being able to use that cash and recycle it into other very high IRR opportunities.
We've taken some money off the table with Century, but we do, we do remain committed to the company at, at a reasonable shareholding level. We've been able to take that money back in, reinvest that at 20-plus IRRs, great for shareholders, great for returns, and you've seen the returns that we've announced today.
Portfolio optimization and simplification: a number of initiatives underway. Yappi in South Africa is doing a lot of work on the power tariffs with the South African government.
The South African government very supportive, great government to work with, looking to find a solution. We've announced that Lion has reopened under a temporary tariff relief, and we're looking to open two other ferrochrome smelters in South Africa if we get this tariff relief from the government by the end of February.
We're more than hopeful, we're confident that we'll get that. As I say, the government's been very supportive of, of that, and that, that would put our ferrochrome smelting business right up there being internationally competitive with the rest of the world.
PASAR smelter, we've, we, you'll remember when we put that on care and maintenance, that obviously comes with a cost with it. We were able to sell that to a local Filipino business.
We've moved that off the books. It's, means it takes less management time, and clearly we don't carry any of the, the ongoing care and maintenance costs.
Even something that perhaps you wouldn't have known about, but we, we have a big port, or we had a big port on the Ciénaga coast in, in, just near Santa Marta in Colombia. We built that port to service our Prodeco mines back in about 2010, 2011.
Given that our business now has moved entirely to the, to the La Guajira and we don't have operating mines in, in Cesar anymore, this was a, this was a port that wasn't really was being underutilized, didn't, costs were, normal cost of keeping these, these ports operating even for very small volume didn't make sense for us. We've sold that.
Again, funds back into Glencore and reinvested into, into the business. That's left us in a very strong position.
Balance sheet very strong. We've declared a dividend today of $2 billion back to shareholders.
Very cash-generative business, very strong, and very happy with the first half, or the, for the 2025 results. With that, Steve will take you through the financial side.
Steven Kalmin
Morning, all here. It's great to be back presenting.
I would say very clean and positive results and very good momentum in the business. What we've done on this particular chart, and we'll cover almost all these numbers later on in the presentation, is to just separate out H1 and H2, just to show the significant momentum and positivity and performance that's now going through the business and continuing on into 2026 when we show some of the spot illustrative cash flow generation and EBITDA in the business.
We just ran out of a little bit of runway to catch up on 2024, another month or two, and that minus 6% would have been zeroed out, it would have gone positive at the rate of EBITDA generation in the second half. You've seen a 50% increase half on half across the whole business.
Industrial was plus 65, and even marketing, which expect that to obviously be a more constant business throughout, had a strong second-half performance as well. Very good across the business.
We'll look at the variances and the like. Net funding, having been here 6 months ago at 14.5, explained the bridges to where we were, showed the pathway towards sort of back to 10.
Here we are back at that particular level where we started the year, notwithstanding having paid CapEx, distributions during the year, and continue to invest within the business as well. RMI, as you would expect in this pricing environment, has gone up.
Copper would have been the biggest contributor there. Start of the year was at 8,600 on copper, finished the year about 12,400 or so.
That's a 44% increase. We do carry units across copper and aluminum and nickel and zinc, but that was the biggest impact across $3 billion increase that we had across the RMI.
Then strong metrics generally. As I said, we'll cover off all these levers.
Even second half annualized over 16 billion, and you'll see it spot illustrative numbers later on at 18 billion plus or so. Strong momentum across all parts of the business going into '26.
If we look at the industrial side, Gary's given largely the reasons. It's well chronicled within the financials itself.
It was a strong performance, particularly on the metal side, as we picked up 6 billion to 7 billion. That was the zinc business, second on the podium, both in its own right in terms of business and prices and the likes, but gold definitely a significant kicker, particularly at Kazzinc.
The year-on-year increase on zinc business of that billion dollars was 800 just from zinc, of which 500 million was Kazzinc. The copper business having had a slow start for the year, both in a production and general contribution sense, did pick up year-over-year in financial performance, notwithstanding the inability to sell much cobalt during the year, which does delay the generation of earnings, cash flow, and contribution from that business.
It has been supportive for cobalt price itself, which will help even delivering units under the quota system, and we do produce some non-DRC cobalt as well out of Canada and Australia specifically, so that's clearly helping there as well. The coal business, Gary had spoken about those.
We'll see on the waterfall bridge on the next slide, you'll see where the different elements of the business come through. The momentum clearly in the business is you can see a 9.9 billion industrial EBITDA across the business.
What we'll see later on spot illustrative is at 14.6, and that's all elements of the business picking up momentum in terms of production, cash flow, and the like. Metals business at 7 billion is now spot illustrative at 11 billion.
We've got 4 billion plus there. The energy business lagging in terms of that recovery.
We do need prices to move a bit higher to have that sort of back kicking as it's done in the past, clearly, and it's performing well, but it's an earning sleeper at the moment within the business, and we do see potential from that given some positive constructs in both those markets that Gary had spoken to. So 3.7 last year on the energy of the business, spot illustrative is now at 4.2, it is picking up, and second-half performance was a little bit better.
I think the waterfall bridge, if we go to the next slide, of course, there as well. How do we go from 10.6 up to 9.9?
The negative graphs, particularly on the pricing, belies the underlying components of significantly weaker on the coal year-on-year variance, which was actually negative 2.4. Metals was a positive year-on-year variance of 1.
1.9. We're closing sort of even at the half year when we're here, that was a negative $1 billion year-on-year.
It's closed the year at negative 0.5. If you plot the two periods, you've had positive momentum build back into price variance.
Of the metals 1.9, the copper business contributed $1 billion of that. Copper prices, average prices were up 9% year-on-year.
Zinc was 0.8. Even the little custom met assets, which were not saying they're doing well, but there was a slight performance in the business through particularly zinc TCRCs were a little bit better, and we do recover quite a bit of free metal out of our custom smelting business, and that free metal tends to be in the precious space.
Whether it's some PGM, gold, silver, we do pick up, it's probably a couple hundred million that got picked up year-on-year. On the volume variance of 0.9, that was effectively all on copper, being down 11%.
We'll see later on Kamoto, the main contributor. We dropped 68,000 tons year-on-year at Kamoto from 178,000 tons this year to 246.
I think Kamoto's story during the next year or two has been well chronicled. We're going through a lower phase this year, pick up a little bit now in 2026, and then you see a snap back in 2027.
That is a high margin business when it's clearly kicking in, when you're not getting those tons, it does lead to quite a volume variance as well. The other impact was the lack of cobalt sales, which for us flows through as a volume variance.
Supportive for the market longer term, we support the initiatives of the DRC government in rebalancing and restoring value within that particular commodity. Given their sort of market share, we'll start seeing the benefits of delivering into the quotas this year, significantly up on 2026.
The cost variance of negative, actually pretty pleasing, frankly. That's not easy to deliver an outcome there.
There is inflation, just general inflation. There is some even input cost inflation that would exceed normal inflation levels.
We see it in some of our Australia, the Murrin operation, you saw higher prices across sulfur, ammonia. You've seen labor, energy, maintenance in places like Kazakhstan is a little bit up above normal inflation levels.
Reagents, asset costs within DRC, it was also fairly sort of tight markets. Off a 40 billion cost base that we have across our industrial business, just 1% on that is going to move you up 100 is going to move you $400 million.
We've been able to neutralize that to zero across our cost variance, and that's that billion-dollar cost reduction program and initiatives across 300 sites that we also announced. That is effectively done, delivered.
More than half of that was banked in 2025. We'll have all of that fully delivered by the end of 2026.
That was able to keep the variance at sort of breakeven. Would have been even positive.
We've got a few quirks in the cost line. Those ferroalloys businesses that Gary said that were in care and maintenance pending the tariff relief, they've been in a standing situation, they've been in care and maintenance, we've had to continue to pay workers and the like, there has been a cost of carry there.
Compensated somewhat by the high ore prices across the business, but some of the expenses get taken there. We did impair some of our custom smelting businesses last year, the Horne and CCR in particular, even if you've got CapEx, we have to expense CapEx now, which goes through this OpEx line as well.
That was about 100 million in each bucket, actually quite pleased with a zero variance. You've seen EVR, that'll disappear as we move forward.
This is just reflecting the fact that there was a full year of EVR compared to half a year in the previous year. Quite a busy slide, this one, but I think quite useful across all the business to give our cost, volume, and profit by key department.
I'll spend a bit of time on copper because we have changed a little bit of the presentation format to provide a little bit more granularity around two particular elements. Let's start at 2024 and you'll see what I mean by 2025.
We show the unit cash cost, this is after by-product. If you look at '24, we're at 1.74.
This is at the operating asset level itself. This is the consolidation of all the businesses as they come through: the Kamotos, the Antapaccay, the Antamina, the African business, and the like.
You've got it 1.74, and then we've had a few areas on top of that that the overall Glencore business has then had to absorb. There's been the opportunity cost historically of having done streams across the business.
It's been topical in the last week or so, Antamina and Antapaccay. It hasn't been a big opportunity cost up until this point.
It's starting to bite a little bit more with gold and silver prices the way they are. We also had divisional overhead in the copper business that was above the asset level.
All of this still went through copper, but it might be worth if we just go to page 26 quickly, and we'll come back. We've given the sort of buildup back of the industrial copper.
This was showing how our 3.9 billion of 4.1. Historically, we might have been more like 4.3, and then we would have had 300 million down in that development projects and other, because streaming as well as divisional overhead was in development projects and other.
In fact, even when we were here giving our spot illustratives in previous times, we did capture that, which just wasn't captured in the net cost post streams and divisional overhead, we always had a number about 300. We've effectively pushed that extra 200 now up into the unit cost, and now the only thing that's, when we look later on with the spot illustrative, the only thing we've got now in development projects and other is development projects.
We've used it to sort of reflect both the cost in absolute terms and to look at the unitization of those costs as well. We'll get back.
It'll make more sense then as we work through the various numbers, but we thought that was a more transparent and granularity way of looking at the various costs, just because it was becoming a number that was more meaningful, particularly on the streaming side of the business as well. On that copper side, in 2024 it was really small.
We had 10 cents on divisional. That is some of the savings of those organizational and the cost savings that we've delivered across the business.
On the copper you've seen we've gone down from 10 cents to 5 cents. The team when they did take over, they've effectively moved a lot of what was central overhead across regions, they pushed it down into the regions, and some of that 1 billion was delivered within the copper business and would reflect the 10 cents going down to 5.
You can see streaming historically very little in 2024, is 4 cents across the business as well, so that was about $75 million or so that would have been in that development projects and other line. As we go to 2025, 1.83 is the cost at the underlying operations.
Now to get it up to 1.99, there's been 11 cents on streaming. Gold and silver prices have obviously picked up.
We have cut overhead on the divisional side, so that's only 5 cents. Across those two elements, that's about $300 million, which is now captured there.
Doesn't change where we get to at the end of the line in terms of 3.9, but we think this is a sensible way to present and to give that granularity around the business as well. It'll make more sense as we look forward, because we show cost '26 and then we look forward into 2028, '29, where our copper business is transforming both in scale and in cost competitiveness around the business, and whereas the other business, zinc, steelmaking coal, energy coal, is more steady-state in the next five years or so.
I think the rest is largely self-explanatory in how that's delivered the outcomes. The progression of $3.9 billion EBITDA in copper, we'll roll into where the spot illustrative, but it's now a $6.7 billion business, slightly higher volume, and obviously better prices.
Prices clearly helped some of these. The zinc was a 2.3 billion outcome in 2023.
It's now 2.5, spot illustrative. Steelmaking coal 1.9, it's now also 2.5.
Pricing is helping on that based on spot. Energy coal, 1.5, it's still about 1.5.
You can see prices and variances, and I think it's well described. If we look then marketing quickly, we will come back to a number of those slides.
Gary's mentioned pretty much where we're at in marketing: down a little bit, but it belies the fact that year-on-year is actually quite similar across the aggregate of metals and steelmaking and energy. One's plus 4, one's sort of minus 4.
The base period did have 165 million of Viterra earnings. We stopped reporting that during 2025 because of the sale, which completed in July.
Year-on-year like-for-like is actually much closer, but a strong, pleasing result, good momentum in the second half, better performance on the energy and steelmaking side as well, and a generally good performance. We've got used to those numbers in the 3s.
It's still a very solid, very strong, very cash-generating business as well, as it converts into cash at the Glencore level as well. If we look at net debt, how we stayed still, good result of standstill, $8.7 billion of our funds from operation, that's EBITDA less interest and tax.
Maybe haven't had a chance to look through the financials, but I'm sure you will at some point. There was a big tax bill that was due.
We've been funding the UK government now for a bit of time. There was a $1 billion payment to HMRC for many, many years and legacy payments.
You have to pay everything in advance, that's the way it works, until ultimately there's resolution. It's running through a UK-Swiss bilateral resolution process around where it is.
We expect to get a significant amount of that back. They've taken the most conservative, aggressive position around how they want to send the bill, and they have assessment rights that says you got to pay, and you've had to pay.
This was the year of reckoning around accumulation of quite profitable years in the oil business, which is where this particularly translates. There was a billion dollars of tax that does come through that FFO line.
It's sitting as an income tax receivable. We expect a significant portion of that given the merits and our conviction in potential outcome there.
That's parked for now. We're lending, we're sort of funding services and NHS here for a while, it's sort of your thanks is well noted.
On the net CapEx, 6.9. We'll look at a slide on CapEx.
Investment profile was actually generating, that was primarily the cash portion of Viterra into Bunge transaction in July, 940 was the cash. Working capital had a strong reversal from H1.
We were sitting here with an outflow of 1.1, it came back 1.6. I'd say there is a bit of a sugar hit in that.
I think some of that will unwind in 2026. The Q4 price pickup, accelerated, particularly into the end of the year, did create a more of a receivables, payables mismatch in favor of releasing some working capital.
In a more normal environment, I would expect that some of that will go back into the balance sheet during 2026, but we'll take it for now. Distributions and buybacks, cash was 1.2, share buybacks 2 billion, dividends to minorities, mainly at Kazzinc, was 0.3 in Pachón, etc.
How does that translate into distributions and shareholder payments? We've done our normal calculation: a billion from marketing, 25% of industrial, that's come to 1.2 for the year.
What we introduced as well, and that if you just roll that forward, that says $10.2 billion. Pay out the distribution of 1.2, prima facie, you're not quite at your 10, says that's where we've got deleveraging required, 1.4.
This is all on a pro forma 1st of January sense that gets you towards your 10, which is our long-term optimum target. We did create the surplus capital warehousing, which I think is a neat concept around our Bunge stake.
We've said this is subject to lockup and the like that gets released in July. This is something that is non-core for the business.
We like the business, we think there's clear value. We're working with the team, we're sitting on the board, we're supportive, they performing well within their industry as well, but ultimately this is going to get monetized in some way, shape, or form for Glencore shareholders in whatever structure and form that makes the most sense to us.
That will be something that's going to be part of our thought process over the next year as we take that forward. There's no reason why we can't already ship some of that out the door in terms of preempting and distributing something in anticipation of that eventual monetization.
So 4 billion was the stake as of Friday, up already 1.4 since the close, so that's performing very well. Conservatively, we said let's reserve $1.4 billion towards the top graph and getting back to 10, but in reality we've continued to generate cash, so that 1.4 is not needed, but just graphically you say it makes sense, let's just park it upstairs.
The base business continues to generate and we're going to bring down our debt level. All of the Bunge stock is ultimately up for distribution to shareholders in due course.
For the purpose of just now and prudently, we have topped it up another 7 cents, another 0.8 billion to get to our $2 billion and 17 cents at this particular point in time. Even with that more conservative, there's still that 1.8 billion, which we've wanted to say that still represents 45% of the remaining.
Even if the Bunge stock for some reason was to decline in value, there's conservative, prudent capital management around how we're setting ourselves up in this. We did that and there was form in how we looked already post close to already do the billion-dollar buyback that we did last year was to introduce that concept as well.
On the CapEx side, $6.9 billion was the net cash for the particular year. First full year of EVR.
EVR is quite capital intensive, particularly during the next year or two, water treatments and reinvestment in fleets. I think if you look at the detailed sheet, EVR itself was a little over $1.5 billion.
Does over the next 3 years average out to more like 1.3, and then longer term tapers down more towards the billion dollars. Year-on-year it's quite interesting on the even on the 7.5 billion is what's been capitalized onto the balance sheet.
Why there's a difference between cash, but there's some leases in there. There was the big lease that we've called out over at Kazzinc, 249, that was already there at the first half.
We've signed, and this is not a multi 20-year, this is sort of a 3- or 4-year lease on a hydro facility that we've been operating, Bukhtarma in Kazzinc, for decades, frankly. Previously it was in OpEx, and now we've had to capitalize that onto the balance sheet.
Taking out EVR as well as Kazzinc, the rest of the business like-for-like was actually 10% lower CapEx at 668. We've shown a bit of a wagon wheel around where some of that CapEx is.
There's a slide later on which shows it by commodity, by category. Where's some of the biggest spend?
It's in deferred strip cost, deferred mining, which is really just capitalized OpEx in some sense, this is through our big open-pit operations. That was the biggest spend, 25% towards the left, that was $1.9 billion.
A big part in water treatment, you can see in the sort of one of the blue bars at the bottom, that was 0.9 billion. It's primarily at EVR, they're going through this really this year and peaks last year, this year, and then starts tapering off.
There was two very large projects which Earl's nodding in the background, he's confirming that we should peak out, and EVR is going to normalize as we move forward. In terms of CapEx guidance '26 to '28, no change from CMD.
Exactly sort of as you were, 6.5 average next 3 years. That's including a lot of copper, including the Alumbrera restart.
Very capital efficient, there's only 2 to 300 there on the Alumbrera restart over the next 2 or 3 years. We've also got the zinc business, we've got 450 of the 600 for the ATK, the gold expansion, which is both in a open-pit as well as an underground sense.
There you've got sort of that business, in the absence of that, would have been tapering off quite steeply in the next 3 or 4 years, and you've got sort of quite meaningful life in the gold deposit, which is kicking in very well at Kazzinc. You can see EVR, $1.3 billion average over '26 to '28 is what we expect.
That is down from where we were this year. Copper growth projects, we discussed this at the CMD, there's a real bookend of where this could come as we FID and look to bring some of those projects, and what the timing sort of makes sense.
There's the hypothetical you get on with Gary's sort of chart that he put up there in December when we go up over 2, that's staggering everything at the earliest possible opportunity. You would have had 4.2 billion spend in the next 3 years, but you get to your 1.5 billion pretty quickly of 1.5 million of copper.
With no FID, you're probably cumulatively spending 500 million just to buy the land and progress and do the studies and everything else. In reality, it's going to be somewhere in between, and we'll shed light on all that as we work through the business.
Absolutely no change on that since the CMD. Also no change in guidance '26, as you were, across all the businesses.
This is the chart Xavier I think presented at CMD. There's detailed slides 38 to 41, which does shape all the different operations across.
Largely steady across zinc, nickel steps up with OD being commissioned later on in this year, you've got your 70 towards 80. As you were across both coal businesses over this particular period.
Copper you've already got, although we flat-ish on overall copper, that copper business itself actually goes up from 752 to the midpoint of 785 because we drop copper out of our zinc business, which was the MiCo copper operation that did stop production at Mount Isa in the middle of last year. We do pick up units this year on the copper, and then you've got quite a big increase in '27, that's particularly Kamoto as that snaps back.
Africa business, even more reinforced by the land package that we've now got, was in the sort of 250s, that's across both operations, into the 300s, about 300,000 next 2 years, and then up to 360,000 by 2028. Just you go back to all the CMD slides, it's all in there.
There's no change to anything over there. In terms of the long layup earlier on around the copper, copper's got its own slide now on costs, which I think makes sense as we want to roll it forward because it is a business that is in quite a bit of transition, growth, and delivery across the business and the cobalt sort of shorter term impacts that we are having as well.
The '26, you can see the 1.85 is now our unit cash cost for determining EBITDA, and that's with nothing below it other than maybe 100 million just those development projects, because we've pushed the streaming impact that 24 cents. The reason we've separated that, it's not 24, it's not 11 cents, it's not 4 cents.
If it was still 4 cents, 11 cents, we might have kept that still down in the other area. It was just more in granularity and financial buildup, we thought it made sense and transparency just to bring it all in there.
So 1.56 is actually coming out of the assets themselves, that's where we would have been but for the streams. The streams have put 24 back in there, the overhead's nothing, divisional overhead.
So 1.85 still a good cost structure across the business, generating $6.7 billion of EBITDA, which we'll see later on. Direction of travel, which we thought is important, by '28, '29, that 1.85 is down at 1.18 and 1.08.
Now why is it there? Now you've got higher production.
Look at those numbers on bottom right. You can see the step-up in copper production, including from the copper department itself.
It tapers off more from nickel, zinc, but copper's sort of growing from the seven high 700s, and then you're at a million tons 2028, 2029. Kamoto, Africa, those are some of the main contributors, a bit of Alumbrera, some other tons may obviously come through.
There you get the denominating impact. You're starting to get cobalt in our assumptions more normalizing, that once you're out of the quota period in '26, '27, we do feel like the market that we haven't assumed that it's just back to kind of cavalier days and as much cobalt comes up.
We think it's still going to be tightly controlled to make sure that there's almost sort of a price that works within a band. These are some of the assumptions that we used, which we gave those I think in the CMD as well.
Then at current macros and a million tons in 2028, your copper business is now a $10 billion plus EBITDA business. If you just run same macros, same through that cost structure in '28, '29, it's the most transformative clearly of all the businesses as we look.
This is not in the never-never, this feels like it's tomorrow, frankly, by the time we start 2028. That's pretty good.
Even on the streaming side, yes, it dilutes because of a higher denominator. We've also got an Antapaccay stream.
By 2028, we've delivered certain volumes that we actually step back up in terms of the percentage of spot gold prices that we get. I think we get 20%, there's a step-up to 30%.
Even 10% of all that starts making a reasonable difference at that point. Thought useful slide on the copper, it'll all figure to one's thinking later on.
The other, the zinc, steelmaking coal, and energy coal all fits onto the one slide. Zinc continues to be a massive cash generator.
With these sort of by-product prices and volumes that we have, a negative 48. It's even lower than the CMD number that we put up here given the ongoing projection of macros.
We were 26 cents, we're now at negative 48. There's going to be a tick-up of earnings coming out of the zinc business.
From the two sides of the coal businesses, we've got some cost increase because of currency tailwinds. To give you some perspective, we've rolled forward Aussie dollar, we were at 65 cents early December, we've used 70.5.
The South African rand was at 17.04, it's 15.74, it's weakened a bit. Some of these probably have given back some of their sort of impact.
Canadian was at 1.40, it's now 1.35. Like-for-like at the CMD in steelmaking, we were at 118.6, we're at 122.9 now, you're up about $4 a ton across both steelmaking and energy.
That's all currency tailwinds. Not all of that has then found its way into prices.
You'd expect some of that to also, as cost curves move and respond to some of these prices as well. Earl and the team, Earl's here, they'll work on making sure that they can continue to manage as efficiently and effectively as they can and deliver some good outcomes.
If we then just finish up, we do our spot illustrative slide in the usual format. I think it's useful three, four times a year.
We've given production, no change there. We've given updated costs.
The copper business now at $6.8 billion, or 6.7 after, that previously would have been exactly as I said, we could have cut that as a $6.7 billion less 0.3, but I think this is just a better way of presenting those numbers as well. You get down to the same number, 6.7.
That's increased quite a bit since CMD days with copper price. I think it was 10,850, up to closer to 13,000 at the moment.
To put copper in the overall industrial, we're now getting to 50%. I saw there was someone that put a slide up the other day, when you start being a 50% copper contributor in your EBITDA, you should start seeing ratings, multiple, and expansion, and interest for our business.
We're at 46% and growing, back to that previous chart. You sort of roll that forward, we're going to be a copper company at some particular point in time in terms of meaningful progression portfolio shifts as we go down.
Copper business, zinc has progressed from 2 billion to 2.5 given progression again of pricing and metrics. We used gold of 4,200, it's now 49.
Zinc was 3,000, it's now 33. Macro progression.
Steelmaking coal is as you were, 2.5, 2.5. We've picked up sort of $4 in net realization of price, and costs of $4 has taken that away.
Energy coal is down because of costs having eaten more into it than the price at the moment. We're still at a reasonable Newcastle and business that generates quite a bit of money given it's in cash harvesting mode.
CapEx is quite efficient in that business as well. The other has picked up a little bit.
Nickel, of course, prices have picked up a bit, it was a 0.4, it's a 0.6, but it's just part of the other bucket. Overall, 18.1 to a 7 billion of free cash flow.
A very healthy start and good momentum across all parts of the business. With that, I'll hand back to Gary to wrap it up.
Gary Nagle
Thanks, Steve. Very comprehensive.
We'll wrap it up just a couple, a couple more slides. Doesn't seem to work there.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Our 2026 priorities: it's not only our 2026 priority, but our priority every year and every day is safety. It's what we do.
We need to keep our people safe. Zero harm is what our business is about.
Unfortunately during 2025, we had two fatalities. It's two too many, and we continue to work hard through our safe work program, through rolling out new initiatives to reduce harm in our business.
Not to belittle the gravity of having two fatalities, but just to put into a bit of perspective, it is the lowest number of fatalities we've ever had in this business on a fatality frequency rate and on an absolute rate. It's lower than the ICMM average.
We continue to trend down from previous years, and I do believe this business will be multi-year fatality-free in, in the near future. Operational excellence, it's been a, maybe a topic du jour for, for the market on us, and particularly given last year's first-half performance where we believed that we would, and we believed in ourselves that we would meet our full-year production guidance across our key commodities.
As we did. That's our second year in a row we've done that, and we've started this year off nicely as well on production side.
We've, we've delivered the discipline, the operational rigor that's gone into it from Xavier and his team, and that focus continues. Organic growth, a big part of our business given our pipeline that we have of projects, continue to de-risk and, and successfully progress all these organic projects along the value curve.
We've spoken about the copper ones earlier. We also have other projects around our business like BMA, BSOc in, in, in Queensland, a great zinc business which is moving into the feasibility stage.
Number of organic growth projects that we have in our business, and it gives us those levers to pull at the right time when we want to, when we want to expand. Balance sheet, Steve's spoken a little bit about that.
We certainly don't run a lazy balance sheet, but at the same time, we run a balance sheet that that is strong through the cycle, being able to generate cash, cash for our shareholders through dividends as well as being able to fund our business going forward. You'll remember the slide that Steve put up in December around our ability to fund our growth projects, organic growth projects, and that's that's consistent with a very strong, a strong balance sheet through the cycle.
Obviously very important is the value creation for shareholders, because that's what we're here for. We want to create value for shareholders, we want to deliver predictable base shareholder returns.
You'll have seen our, our capital distribution framework. We keep to that, we top up where we can around our $10 billion net debt target or around the surplus capital warehouse that Steve's introduced over the last couple years.
That allows continual returns to our shareholders. Been very exciting.
We've returned over $27 billion of share of of returns to shareholders since 2021. Lastly, our investment case.
We presented this in December, we'll just go through it again quickly just to remind everybody where we are: an exceptional portfolio of copper assets that positions us amongst the one of the largest. Steve talked about another presentation he had seen, I saw the same presentation.
Couple slides looked awfully a lot like some of the slides we put up in December. Terrific, it was well received.
That's great, we're very happy with that, and we'll continue to see the growth of our projects up to that circa 1.6 million tons of copper, and potentially higher, depends how we decide to use all the levers that we have in our business to become one of the world's largest copper producers. At the same time, although copper a huge part of our business, we still play a strategic a strategic role in energy, the energy and needs of today and tomorrow.
A high quality steam coal business is the world's leading seaborne steam coal business, no question. Our EVR business, which many of you here in the room were visited during the course of, was it last year?
It was last year, yeah, last year. Terrific business run by Mark Carukian.
Really high quality business, multi-decade business, low-cost operations, high quality coal, looking very good. Water treatment plant CapEx coming to an end.
I'm going to ask Earl to give a detailed presentation on water treatment plants later. Very good business and, and given the quality of that material, something that's going to be needed for many, many decades to come.
At the same time, right here in this building, we continue to grow our energy trading business: LNG, carbon, power. That marketing business is a strong contributor to the energy earnings in the business.
Our marting, our marketing franchise around the world, one of the best across multi-commodities, multi-geographies. For 50 years, we've been doing this.
It allows us to arbitrage, it allows us to take opportunities in the market that others don't see because of the fact that we have such a big network. We're across the production side, the third-party side, sales, blending, freight, you name it.
It's a, it's unique. We're we're the only major mining company that has this kind of franchise or has this kind of business unit.
Year in, year out, it delivers something very exciting for our business. It's underpinned by a number of key strategic marketing assets that help us generate those, those higher IRRs in the business.
The operating structure, it's optimized, it's simplified. Xavier spoke a lot about it when he was here in December standing at this lectern, John Evans spoke about it, and you see how that is actually delivering: costs down, production up, safety getting better.
It's all putting, sending us in or putting us in the right direction around having making sure that our we have a we are a reliable operator delivering on our, on our guidance. Then lastly, what does it all lead to?
As I said on the previous slide, it's about constant focus on value creation for shareholders. We're here to make money for our shareholders, that's our job.
We want to do it reliably, we want to do it safely, and that's what we're doing: over $27 billion of announced shareholder returns since since 2021. Steve's spoken again through the the how we get to those numbers.
There's additional cash generation coming out of the business at spot cash, at spot spot free cash flow, the numbers Steve spoke about a couple slides back. That places us very strongly to be able to continue delivering cash to shareholders while still servicing the organic growth options in our business.
With that, we'll go to Q&A.
Ian Rossouw
Thanks. Ian Rossouw from Barclays.
A couple of questions. Firstly, just I guess, Steve, you briefly sort of touched on it, but obviously we've seen a big dislocation in copper, what markets are willing to pay for copper companies versus diversified miners, and particularly those with bulks businesses such as coal and iron ore.
You've asked your shareholders a year and a half ago whether you should spin off the coal business. They said no.
Do you think it's time now to ask them that same question again?
Gary Nagle
Ian, it's a two-way discussion. It's not only us asking them, it's them asking us, or ultimately shareholders own the company.
Of course, we own the strategy that we present. We've had zero incoming around an interest to spin off coal.
They see the value of the coal business. I just spoke about the quality of both the steelmaking coal and the steam coal business, the fact that the world now is recognizing the importance of having cheap baseload power as we transition over decades.
The world recognized the importance of steelmaking coal and it's not going away for many, many decades to come. There was a sort of a euphoria back in the early '20s around, well, we can get rid of coal, we don't need coal.
Shareholders value the fact that we have these terrific businesses, they hugely cash generative, they are a bedrock for these $27 billion of returns. We haven't had any incoming or any questions in fact since that decision was made in July 2024, I think, August '24.
Since that, I can't remember in any engaged with any shareholder an inquiry around spinning off coal. As we've always said, if the shareholders want us to spin off coal or want us to reinvestigate it again, that's up to the shareholders, but we've had zero incoming.
Ian Rossouw
Thanks. Then just a follow-up on the DRC.
Firstly, just on this MOU with Orion, do you mind giving us or could you give us a bit more details on that? Just what the cash flow impacts could be once that is approved.
Then secondly, just on this land access, obviously this is seven years from the previous deal. What makes this different?
Just how some of the terms changed versus the 2019 deal as
Gary Nagle
well. Let Steve take the first one, I'll do the second one.
It's predominantly the same terms. It's changed structure.
This was meant to be an acquisition of land. We paid some money upfront and then the remainder of the money was going to be paid once we acquired the land.
It turned out that Gécamines, despite their best efforts, were unable to sell us the land under some various regulations and issues in the DRC. What we've done is we converted to a long-term lease agreement where the same financial impact, instead of paying for the land, we're going to lease the land, the exact same financial impact as we would have had if we bought the land.
It's the exact same access rights that we have. It's for the life of the mine, it doesn't expire during any course of the mine.
Like-for-like, it's virtually exactly the same. We just won't own the land, we'll lease the land, totally unencumbered, full for our use, no issue with that.
It's effectively the same deal.
Steven Kalmin
In terms of the, it's still early days, Ian. I would generally position it as if there's the EV of number, it's been put out at 9 billion, it obviously it'll be what it is, and ultimately it also there'll be an allocation ultimately between KCC, Mutanda, there's different ownerships clearly in those businesses.
I think I think our effective realization, monetization of value unlock or creation will be our sort of whatever share of our attributable share of those businesses. Whether yes, there's debt and equity and the likes.
It's, I think it's too early to know exactly how that's all going to shape up because it is early in this MOU, and DD's going to commence and the structuring and we need to get the accounting right. There could be changes in how we account for these assets as well, and again depends on the sort of governance and operating, which certainly continue to operate.
This is Orion is not an operating company, but 40% is not zero. It's a meaningful stake in these businesses, and what sort of partnership and what rights and how that all works.
None of that sort of really left the starters gate in any meaningful sense, we'll we'll sort of come back, and that'll sort of shape out both in a cash sense, accounting sense, deleveraging sense, commitment sense. There's a whole lot of wood to chop, as someone said the other day on a different transaction.
Martin Fewings
Jason.
Jason Fairclough
Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Guys, for a couple weeks there, a few of us got excited about a $300 billion EV company in the sector, and then it hasn't happened.
I don't know if you're willing to share anything. Sounds like it was value at the end of the day.
I guess the fact that this hasn't happened, how does it change your Plan A?
Gary Nagle
Look, yeah, it was value ultimately, that's what it came down to. It has to work for both sides, it didn't work for both sides, so that's fine.
It was a good interaction. All Simon's very very decent guy to work with, good team at Rio Tinto.
We just couldn't reach agreement on value, and that's fine. We look after our shareholders, they look after their shareholders.
In many cases, shareholders are the same. Different views, who knows what the future brings.
From our perspective, this was not a deal that we had to do, a deal that we'd like to do and we would have liked to do at the time, because we did believe we could create a $300 billion mining company, relevant, unbelievable assets, unbelievable projects, unbelievable management teams, that's what we wanted to create. Without that, Glencore is an unbelievable company.
You've seen what we presented today, you saw what we presented in December. We have what we believe is the best pipeline of copper growth projects in the world, our existing portfolio going up back to a million tons by 2027, 2028, a terrific copper business.
As Steve says, copper's becoming a much bigger contributor on an EBITDA basis in this business than anything else, backed up by a terrific coal business. We've spoken at length about the coal business, the best-in-class and biggest and best steam coal, seaborne steam coal business in the world, what I believe is the best steelmaking coal business in the world, given it doesn't suffer from the royalties that Queensland does and some of the weather conditions that they suffer in Queensland, what I believe is the best steelmaking coal business in the world, a marketing franchise that's second to none.
Then we have all the subsidiary businesses which are real contributors: alloys, zinc, nickel, real contributors. For many, many decades ahead, the business case for Glencore as a cash-generative, returns to shareholder business is incredibly strong, and the rerating potential continues right there as we develop our copper business.
This is why this is not a deal that we had to do. It was a deal that would be nice to do on the right terms for our shareholders, on the right terms for everybody.
We couldn't reach agreement, we continue on running our business. If another opportunity comes to us where we can create a big mega major miner on the right conditions for our shareholders, we would look at that.
Jason Fairclough
How do you address investor concerns on your credibility in terms of executing on these projects?
Gary Nagle
The copper projects? If you go through the copper projects, and there's always risk around execution, I agree with you.
Every mining company has messed up projects. Doesn't matter who you are, you can name them all, we're included: Rio Tinto, BHP, Anglo, Teck, you name them, we've all messed up projects.
That's unfortunately the reality of life. When you look at our projects, and we have talked about this before, fortunately, most of our projects are brownfields, they're expansions of existing operations.
Whether it be Coroccohuayco, which is just a new pit, or Quechua in the case of the land that we've just bought, either Coroccohuayco or Quechua, it's a new pit connected to a concentrator plant a few kilometers away. That is earth digging.
It's not new concentrators, it's not new projects. MARA, same thing, a little further away from Alumbrera, but you know Alumbrera very well.
We're restarting Alumbrera, that plant that Steve and I have spent time there, it's in superb condition. We'll start Alumbrera, it's connecting another new pit to Alumbrera, a bit further away, a little bit of civil works, but that's something that is much lower risk than the traditional greenfield project.
Mutanda sulphides, same thing, the business is operating, it's a brownfield expansion of that business. Collahuasi fourth line, well, there's three lines next to it, it's the fourth line expansion of that.
The bulk of our business, the bulk of our growth projects is brownfield, low capital intensity. Of course, we need to make sure that we skilled, resourced, properly set up to execute on these projects.
The one that isn't is the greenfield, which is Pachón. It's an unbelievable resource, and it has to be built.
There are a number of ways we can do it. We can partner up with another mining company just on the other side of the border, terrific mining company, we would love to do that.
That de-risks it materially. We will bring in a partner for that project.
Who that partner is, when we choose that partner, how much, that's still to be determined. We would like a partner that has execution skills, and in fact not only has execution skills, but will back up their execution skills where they'll take a disproportionate share of the risk in execution.
We see companies doing that now. We're dealing with companies in Indonesia, for example, right now who are prepared to underwrite brand new projects: time, capital, quality of the asset.
Now, we can bring in a partner like that who says, "I'll take a disproportionate share of the execution risk in return for certain returns or certain amount of equity or whatever it may be." That's a very nice outcome for us.
It massively de-risks the project for us instead of saying, "Today I've got a great project building team and I'm not going to be like every other single project that's been built in this mining industry before." We're not going to do that.
That's not going to make sense, because for us, we've seen what happened. My predecessor hated greenfields, I like them a little bit better, not much better, just a little bit better.
I'm certainly not going to fall into the same trap that every other mining company, including ourselves, was done before, and we will de-risk it materially to make sure it gets done properly.
Jason Fairclough
Thank you.
Martin Fewings
Chris.
Chris LaFemina
Hey, it's Chris LaFemina from Jefferies. Maybe a question Steve for you on the working capital variability.
You obviously are very sensitive to changes in commodity prices, and in a rising price environment, it's impressive that you had a working capital cash inflow in the second half of the year. First question is, how much of that unwinds?
You said some of that would unwind over the course of 2026. Secondly, as the business grows, should we expect working capital to continue to build?
Is there anything that you can do to manage that, like account receivable factoring or what do you do to stabilize the cash flow impact from working capital in a growing business that's very leveraged to changes in commodity prices, which are highly volatile? Thanks.
Steven Kalmin
It's a good question. Working capital is volatile and fine.
Many of those sort of initiatives that you said we do, whether it's sort of receivable discounting and we have a payables rough sort of days turnover about 40 days, and receivables is about 20 days, you have a mismatch there, but then that's also a float that's funding longer-term prepays and some other parts of our business where we do target to have a marketing balance sheet that's basically receivables less payables or non-RMI is basically balanced, and then you have the RMI. The big impact of working capital in both a growing business, higher prices is going to be in RMI, because the other two can largely offset each other within the business itself.
You've seen it happen now from 25 to 28, that was all prices that pushed us up. Then it's not a net debt factor in terms of how we look at the RMI.
This is all the hedged, the nickel in warehouses, the copper in warehouses, the oil that's sort of moving from A to B. That's very fungible in a very sort of short period of time.
That's a good problem, if you can even call it that. That's just a funding, it's not equity capital intensive, it's working capital intensive, it doesn't have a net debt impact.
We have over 10 billion of liquidity. Our entire balance sheet is largely it's pretty much all unencumbered.
We would have no problem funding another 5, 10 billion, just to pick any number, if it was about RMI and working capital. Maybe at some point you would start saying those sort of sizes are starting to get sort of a little bit big.
Fine for us, but just as a sort of third party, do you say, "Well, okay, your RMI is now 35 billion." Is there a level at which the sort of size of the gross and netting is just a little bit too high?
Maybe. At that point, our 18 billion of EBITDA is probably 25 billion of EBITDA, and your 7 billion is 12 billion, and your share price is 25% higher because you're generating so much cash.
This is sort of a sideshow probably in terms of working capital in the business, and I suspect in that environment, our marketing earnings are also going to be higher and you're proportionally getting the sort of returns on that. It's really about watching RMI, funding RMI.
I'm pretty confident around receivables, payables that can be managed. You do have volatility within particular periods.
That's why I said there was arguably towards the end of the year, I'm not claiming that as permanent, it was a bit of a sugar hit in terms of sort of release, and I think all things being equal, one should assume that that's going to probably be returned back to the balance sheet in '26. It doesn't have to be, but I think that's probably a prudent projection for '26 is that there's going to be a little bit of working capital going back out.
Martin Fewings
Matt.
Matt Greene
Hey, gents. Thanks for the presentation.
It's Matt Greene at Goldman Sachs. Steve, perhaps one for you.
Monetizing infrastructure has become a bit of a theme, I think, this reporting season. You would have seen and saw those presentations of your peers.
We're now seeing absolute numbers and targets being placed on this and some interesting structures out there. Steve, I asked you at the CMD and your interims, I can't recall which one it was, but you said you had private capital banging down the door on your infrastructure.
I think you referred to Collahuasi water treatments. Perhaps hoping third time lucky, can you give us some indication of what you're looking at?
I appreciate your peers are looking at non-core asset sales as well. I'd like to isolate this to infrastructure.
Are we talking a couple billion dollars, are we talking 10? Any sort of color you could think about.
Steven Kalmin
These discussions are clearly more fertile, and you're seeing outcomes that sort of translate into actual announcements. We have had some discussions and some indications, and this is across infrastructure.
Of course, streaming aside, let's park that, that was obviously a big announcement in the last few days, and whether it's Collahuasi, whether it's even at EVR, some of the water treatment, some of those sort of facilities. For us, and I think I said it back in December, we would entertain, they've got to sharpen their pencils.
That might have been the expression that I used back then, and I still maintain that. We would be a willing partner on the other side on terms that sort of made back to saying, "Well, why didn't some bigger M&A discussions has got to be on sort of economic terms that make sense."
We would be a willing partner on some of these processes as for the embedded returns that we're giving up in terms of them being able to sort of annuitize those if it was on better rates for us. It purely comes down to when there's a price and a structure that makes sense for us, we'll do it.
Matt Greene
When you look at infrastructure within the group, would you say the water treatment is the prize?
Steven Kalmin
There's a variety of things. Could be all infrastructure, can be the water treatment is a thing.
I'm just sort of throwing it out there because there's been a lot of money that's been spent. It's a good jurisdiction, it's Canada, the team there have looked at it.
You can pick their brains on it maybe during the coffee break or whatever the case may be, they have looked at some of these things. Various other things, Collahuasi.
Again, maybe once it's up and the desal plant gets up and running, your pricing also depending on that risk sharing and these things, and once something's actually up and operating, you tend to get better pricing than during a construction and a risk-sharing phase as well, maybe it lends itself down the track. These are certainly multi-billion opportunities, I wouldn't say 10, but single multi-billion dollar opportunities.
Matt Greene
That's great, thanks. Gary, in your opening remarks, you suggested you may pull back coal volumes.
Could you please expand on what options you're exploring?
Gary Nagle
Matt, we've always been willing to be supply-disciplined in a market that we see is oversupplied. Certainly, you saw what we did in Cerrejón last year, very successful cutback, and we believe in fact, after that cutback, the market did react.
Was it all us? You'll never know, but we certainly were a catalyst for that reaction or the market reaction.
Now where we would look at now, we see what's happening in Indonesia, we don't know yet how these cutbacks or export restrictions will work, which qualities it will impact. Given a big business we have in Australia, that would be probably our natural one to look at throttling if we decided to throttle the business.
Australia would be something, and it's always on the table for us, because if we see a particular quality or a particular market is oversupplied, given our size, given our scale, we can pull some of that back if we see the opportunity.
Matt Greene
More on energy coal versus steelmaking?
Gary Nagle
Yeah.
Martin Fewings
Myles.
Myles Allsop
Thanks, Myles Allsop, UBS. A couple of questions, maybe for Steve first of all.
This time last year, when we're looking at your illustrative spot free cash flow of 5 billion, it turns out at 1.5 billion. Obviously coal prices were the big step down, but then copper offset, but didn't come through because of cobalt and stuff.
When you look at the $7 billion illustrative free cash flow today, where do you see the biggest risks? That, yeah, whether we actually see that flow into shareholder returns this time next year, or whether there's going to be kind of is it commodity prices, is it on the cost side, where are the risks on that?
Steven Kalmin
I would say commodity prices, Myles. Back to those sort of variance analysis.
Costs, fine, production, of course, you need to sort of get there, marketing's in the middle of the range there as well. We've been generally been there or thereabouts or even increased sort of over the time.
This is in a notional interest and tax, also. It's actual interest, but tax is a little bit notional.
Last year we were hit with that tax, so that billion-dollar UK would have not been something I would have necessarily positioned for and put in the number at the beginning of the year last year. That would have impacted the thinking at the beginning of the year.
There's nothing like that that if anything, some of that could come back. We have a big sort of tax receivables now across a couple jurisdictions, UK being the biggest one, some of that in the next year or two is going to come back.
There's not a multi-year sort of proposition, but that's kind of below EBITDA. CapEx, it's an average of the three years.
You can sort of have swings and roundabouts a little bit. If we've said this sort of 6.5 is this year 6.7 and then the next year is 6.3, so that takes 200 out in a short term, but confident around the average.
Ultimately pricing is going to dictate sort of 90% of the variation there.
Myles Allsop
Maybe just on Kazzinc, been in the headlines as yeah, potential sort of simplification, disposal, cash return. What's the latest with Kazzinc, and is the value of the gold getting recognized by potential purchasers?
Gary Nagle
Kazzinc's a very good business, it's a core asset for us, but we've said before that if there's a transaction, we have been approached previously on Kazzinc and recently, in fact, on Kazzinc as well. If there is a transaction that and a value along with sharing in gold earnings, of course, who knows where the gold price will be, that goes to Steve's point on commodity prices, if there's a sharing of that gold price earnings and it makes sense for us, and the value was very good for us, we would think of divesting.
That goes for any other asset in our portfolio. It has to be something that really makes us sit up and look at it.
It's not an asset that we're out there selling or that we want to sell, but if there's a good value proposition around that gold price sharing and any other marketing benefits that come with it, we would always consider it.
Martin Fewings
Liam.
Liam Fitzpatrick
Good morning. First one on Bunge.
I know you can't say when or how you're going to get rid of it, but do you think this time next year you'll still own those shares? Linked to that, do you hope to return the buyback at some point this year?
Gary Nagle
I would say hard to say, Liam. It'll come down to what opportunities there are.
We want to maximize value for that stake. The lockup is until July 2nd.
I don't think anyone should expect us out in the market selling these shares on July 3rd. We will work very closely with Bunge and Greg Heckman.
He's running a great business, you see how their share price has reacted because of this transaction that we've done with them, the synergies are playing through. Steve pointed out, I think those shares are probably mark-to-market in our book today valued at $4 billion.
We would do something that made sense at the right time for both Glencore and for Bunge, whether that's this time next year if it's in our books or not. Don't know, we're in no rush to sell it, we're in no rush to exit the stake.
What we have said is over the short, medium, long term, it doesn't make sense for Glencore, a mining, commodities, marketing company, to own 16.5% of Bunge. That doesn't make sense.
It's a terrific company, terrific valuation. We want to be able to return that to shareholders in a disciplined and correct manner, and we will choose the way we do it and the timing to maximize that value.
Liam Fitzpatrick
Then just a follow-up on Collahuasi QB. It's a potentially very capital efficient project.
Any progress, changes in thinking on that?
Gary Nagle
Potentially, we do have our own route that we can go. We've discussed that we've now approved the feasibility study for the fourth line.
We've yet to receive a proposal from Anglo, until that, we continue down the road of the fourth line.
Steven Kalmin
Or from Anglo Teck, they don't own the other piece yet.
Gary Nagle
True. Point.
Martin Fewings
Alan.
Alan Spence
Thanks. Good morning.
Alan Spence from BNP Paribas. A couple questions on the dividend.
Interested to hear on the top-up portion of it why you elected to make it a special dividend rather than a buyback. Then as we think about that surplus account, should we consider Century Aluminum being in there to be wound down in due course?
Gary Nagle
I'll take the second one first. Century is a very good company and we want to retain a meaningful stake in Century.
We are not looking to sell out of Century. Whether we stay at where we are or we move around a little bit, that's to be seen, but certainly we want to retain a meaningful stake in Century.
As I said, great business, Jesse runs a good business there, they're building a new smelter in the US, Midwest premiums very high, generating cash, good business. I don't think you could expect us to sell out, we were not looking to sell out our entire shareholding in Century.
With regards to the top-up and buybacks versus cash, we've done a lot of buybacks, and we get a lot of feedback from our shareholders, and we've taken on the feedback from our shareholders. We've tried to over time get to a position where we try to please most of the shareholders most of the time.
You can't please all the shareholders all the time, we all know that, and we're trying to get a, as Steve rightly puts it, a Goldilocks solution. We've done quite significant amount of buybacks over the previous years, shareholders, some shareholders have sort of said, "Well, hold on, don't forget us, we want a bit of cash."
We've tried to pivot and get to a bit of a cash position now, but buybacks remain firmly on the table for us, we're just trying to get to that Goldilocks solution to please as many shareholders as we can.
Alan Spence
Thank you.
Martin Fewings
Dominic.
Dominic O'Kane
Hello. Could I just ask you about the conversations you're having with Orion and the US International Finance Corp?
Does that open up other opportunities for you within the group? Are you having conversations there about that they coming in as different partners at different assets?
Does that open up a broader future relationship with the Glencore Group?
Gary Nagle
Yes, it does. I was in DC to sign this MOU two weeks ago.
At the same time, we had discussions about Project Vault, which we're part of. We had discussions about a number of other opportunities with the US government and with various other counterparts.
Certainly, the US is very active in getting involved in critical minerals around the world. Where there's an opportunity that makes sense for us, a number of them are coming to us.
I had a couple calls from someone yesterday on a new opportunity. If it goes somewhere, great, if it doesn't, it doesn't, but there's certainly the flow of opportunities, the flow of ideas, whether it be Bolivia, whether it be Peru, whether it be Venezuela, whether it be DRC, whether it be Kazakhstan, we're seeing a big flow of opportunities and we'll pick and choose the ones that make the most sense.
Martin Fewings
Ben.
Ben Davis
Thanks. Question, well done on the land access, finally getting it.
Just wondering how much of the deal with the Orion, how much with the US was a factor in helping that getting it across the line finally?
Gary Nagle
Zero.
Ben Davis
Zero, okay. Then also land access, you mentioned you've got options at Coroccohuayco, MARA, is land access issues totally sorted and what are the mechanisms there?
Gary Nagle
The gating items for MARA is not land. The gating items is environmental approvals and various other approvals around, and getting our trade-off studies bedded down around how we're going to access the tunnel: are we using trucks, are we using conveyors, all those sorts of things.
Those have progressed quite a lot in the recent months. We'll be bedding that down, I think, in probably the next six or seven weeks, then we can progress to feasibility.
That allows us then to have a definitive application around those environmental permits and other permitting that we need to be able to start that construction.
Steven Kalmin
Get the one community over the line.
Gary Nagle
There's
Steven Kalmin
one community. Thank you.
Ben Davis
On Century, they are JV partner in one of the big greenfield projects in the US, and the size of the project is vastly disproportionate to their market cap. In terms of funding, and is that a consideration in your consideration for the stake sale in Century, or is that completely a independent decision?
Steven Kalmin
Independent decision
Ben Davis
for Century. Thanks.
Steven Kalmin
I'm not across those details, but I don't think that they're going to be committing huge amounts of their own equity to this project, from what I understand, but.
Ben Davis
Thank you. Then just a clarification on the streamings around Antapaccay.
Does it include the Coroccohuayco and Quechua sort of lease areas, or it doesn't?
Steven Kalmin
It does not on Quechua, it does on Coroccohuayco, but by the time that that's in play, we would have then stepped up. I said one of the slides I sort of spoke to the fact that we would have delivered a certain number of ounces already at that point, and we will at least step up in terms of our participation in the spot market.
Yes on Coroccohuayco, no on Quechua.
Ben Davis
Then just lastly on streaming in general, obviously with the benefit of hindsight, the deal was not great, but then does this kind of put you off streamings altogether, or is there a time where you say, "I just want higher participation, and I'm willing to stream a small proportion as long as I get a meaningful upside from the gold or silver streams in assets like Kazzinc in the future?"
Steven Kalmin
There's so many things in hindsight one can say good decision, bad decision. We've done some fantastic things, and some things you say that in hindsight, obviously at the time it was fine.
I'm not sure people would have quite projected gold and silver necessarily to come where they are, that's not our core business. It was having sold effectively a gold or a silver mine.
What's Glencore doing in gold and silver back in 2015, '16 when there was kind of the rest of the business, and what looked like a pretty sort of good price in terms of sort of discounting at the time, in hindsight, whatever. You can point to parallel sliding doors where we had that money, then what have we done with that money, and how you invested, and the whole Bunge sort of transaction in Viterra, and that did its thing, and then you bought MARA, you bought out minorities in MARA, and you were doing all sorts of things with that money on the side, okay, you got to run two different parallels.
I think we got enough streaming on the books at the moment. I think back to Matt's point, I'd probably rather do the infrastructure plays for now, so that's probably where we'd sort of prioritize the more kind of sort of non-traditional financing avenues.
Ben Davis
Thank you.
Martin Fewings
Alon.
Alon Olsha
Hi, morning. Alon Olsha, Bloomberg Intelligence.
Just firstly on the DRC, it sounds like the government there is looking to enforce rights around local ownership. If you could just talk a little bit about that and what this deal with Orion, if that mitigates any risk around that?
That's the first question.
Gary Nagle
Alon, we don't believe that impacts us. That's for new mines and new concessions issued post the new mining code from 2018, 2019, I think it is.
Ours is existing operations from before, it doesn't impact us.
Alon Olsha
Thanks. Then another kind of more strategic question.
You've spoken about the need for scale in mining kind of to become more relevant, like bigger index representation, and all the benefits that brings, but it also brings kind of a lot more complexity as well. Not every deal is going to bring the kind of operational synergies investors are looking for.
Kind of how do you think about the trade-off there in terms of scale and relevance, which was historically not really a motivation to do big deals, but has become now, versus the kind of complexity and downsides of bringing two businesses together that may not have the level of operational synergies to kind of justify some of the premiums?
Gary Nagle
I think if I just look at our experience recently, operational synergies are important, but they're not the only source of synergies. We spoke about our marketing business, for example, a best-in-class marketing business.
That provides meaningful synergies across businesses. If we ever did a transaction with somebody, whoever did a transaction, that's meaningful value creation.
That's not necessarily at the expense of a customer, that is just the way we run our marketing business: which is optimized logistics, optimized blending, arbitrage opportunities, taking advantage of dislocations. That's not going to a customer and saying, "Okay, now we have more volume, we want to charge you a higher price."
It's not that, it's certainly not that. Given what we do in marketing, so many mining companies, they trumpet their operational excellence, today we trumpeted a bit of ours, they trumpet their operational excellence.
What I do see, and from my experience sitting in joint ventures with other mining companies, you can sit through mind-numbing presentations for hours learning about how a haul wall can be adjusted by a quarter of a degree and it's going to save you 4 cents a bcm, but nobody pays that kind of attention in the rest of the industry to marketing. That's what we do, where we can save cents on freight, cents on logistics, cents on port use, cents on storage, blending opportunities, having qualities in the right areas of the world.
We bring that to any other mining company. They do not have that in their businesses.
Yes, they sell their product, in some cases they sell it reasonably well, not always that well. That's a huge part of synergies.
There's another part of synergies, and if you look at Anglo Teck, a big part of their synergies is just the fact that you've got two head offices and two this and two that and two HR managers and all those sorts of things: operational head office or overheads, procurement, all these sorts of things. If I look at our recent experience, operational synergies are not the big ticket item.
It's, in fact, everything else where you can do things better: you can buy trucks better, you can sell your product better, you can have less head offices, all those sorts of things, or less offices, less people, less things, and do things properly. I think that it's not about you have to have two mines next to each other that we can integrate and that's why we should do a big M&A transaction.
No, there's huge amounts of synergies that come standalone even with very little operational synergies. To me, I still think it makes sense, comes with a re-rate, synergies plus a re-rate and a re-rate on those synergies.
I think there's still opportunity.
Martin Fewings
Patrick.
Patrick Mann
Thanks, Patrick Mann, Investec. Just one clarification on the Orion investment.
I'm assuming that that's goes to Glencore, it's not primary proceeds being injected into the Africa copper business, I just wanted to double check that. Then the second question is, across the industry we're seeing companies approving or putting on the fast-track path copper projects.
At what point or is there a risk we get to the point where the industry sort of runs out of capacity to build these projects or at least we start to see capital inflation because there's just not enough EPCM, there's not enough concentrator components and parts, and the engineering skills required? Is that a risk that you're seeing on the horizon or is it too early to say?
Thanks.
Gary Nagle
Certainly for us, we don't see that risk at the moment, too early. As I said, take MARA, MARA doesn't need concentrator components, it needs someone to drill a hole through a hill, that's what we need.
That's fine, that we can do. Same for Coroccohuayco, yes, there's an upgrade of the plant, but we're not building a brand new plant.
You could say the fourth line does need a new concentrator, we're only starting that feasibility now, but we've seen no headwinds around procurement of being able to bring in the skills or the plants and equipment.
Patrick Mann
I suppose I was thinking more around Argentina where you've sort of got this copper rush with RIGI and everybody piling in at the same time.
Gary Nagle
Of course. BHP will build their Vicuña district, and First Quantum will build their operation, Taca Taca, and we'll build ours.
We're approaching it, as I said, differently. We're looking at de-risking it materially, and those issues that you raise, if they become issues at the time, of course are part of that decision process for us around who we choose as a partner and how we execute on the project.
Patrick Mann
Thank you.
Martin Fewings
With that we'll finish the Q&A and pass back to Gary for closing remarks.
Gary Nagle
Okay. I don't really have too many closing remarks.
I just want to say thank you very much, appreciate the questions. We're always available, Martin and the team is available for follow-up questions.
Otherwise, thank you very much for your time.
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