Good morning, everybody. I'm Jason Fairclough. I run metals mining research for Bank of America here in EMEA. Very pleased to welcome our next company, BHP. BHP have also been long-term supporters of the conference, so thanks very much for that. Mike and I were just reflecting. We've known each other for, I think, over 20 years. Yep. Mike's gone on to greatness. Mike has chosen the hybrid format. He'll be presenting a few slides, and then we'll have a fireside chat. Mike, over to you.
Thank you.
Jason, and good morning, everyone. It is great to be back here again. Thanks, Jason, to the Bank of America for hosting the conference. There is a theme that you always choose for the conference. This year, the theme is navigating uncertainty. It feels like a bit of an understatement. There is certainly more than our fair share of uncertainty out there. This has become a central challenge. It is a challenge not just for the mining and metal sector, but for governments and businesses all over the world. One of the key points that I want to make to all of you this morning is that amidst all of that uncertainty, all of that volatility, BHP provides a point of resilience and stability. We have a very simple strategy.
I've been here, I think this is my sixth time presenting to this conference, and it feels a little bit like I'm saying exactly the same thing every conference with a little bit of added flavor. We do have a simple strategy, and the strategy has proven itself over many years now. We continue to execute against it. We continue to demonstrate our focus on operational excellence with our disciplined approach to capital allocation. When you combine those things with our portfolio of high-quality assets in the right commodities, that gives us real resilience. BHP remains positioned strongly for success for the years and decades to come. I do want to unpack that a little bit.
Before I talk about how we positioned ourselves, I think it's worth us taking stock of where we are today and how things could play out from here. Even before the election in the U.S. a few months back, there was already a multi-year trend underway of more industrial policy. This is globally, more tariffs and more volatile trade conditions. This has taken a marked step up in recent months, and we're seeing U.S. tariffs higher now than they've been since the 1930s. That has pretty significant implications for the global economy. Where trade policy goes from here, as we've seen in the past week, is highly, highly uncertain, obviously. If we look at a range of potential scenarios, there are a couple of bookends on how things could play out from here.
At one extreme, we see, notwithstanding some green shoots or positive signs over the course of the past week, we see an escalating trade war globally, tariffs, counter tariffs, and that would slow global growth for the remainder of this decade and beyond. That is one bookend. The other bookend, of course, is that there is some grand bargain in the offing here and that against the backdrop of everything that we are seeing play out in the near term, a realization or a resurgence in the realization of the importance of free and open trade. There is a grand bargain reached that results in global trade picking up again and supporting growth. I have to say, that scenario feels pretty far-fetched at the moment. I think the reality is that it is going to land somewhere in between. There will be ongoing tariffs, but some bilateral agreements.
The key point I want to make here is that regardless of where all of that lands, the commodities that BHP is in are particularly resilient. In fact, one of the key drivers of our decision-making around which commodities we want to be in and which we do not want to be in is the resilience under different scenarios. We do not want to be dependent on any single policy outcome or any single end use. We want the end use for our commodities to be diversified across a range of different markets and resilient under a range of different economic scenarios.
Now, even in the case of an escalated trade war, I think we can all agree that it's reasonably likely that fiscal and monetary stimulus will be actively deployed by governments around the world, and that will support economic growth, and it will certainly support demand for steel and copper. We see limited impact on steel and copper, even under a more aggressive trade war scenario. The impact on potash is expected to be minimal, thanks to this being less correlated to economic growth in the other commodities. Now, if trade deals are executed, BHP's commodities stand to benefit even more. We have the foundations in place to support a winning business. We're in the right commodities. We hold great resources. We operate them excellently, and we apply discipline in how we go about allocating capital.
The combination of these factors underpins enduring value creation, and it also enables our resilience through the cycle. While our industry is cyclical, BHP's focus on operational excellence supports our ability to reliably deliver strong performance, sector-leading margins, and consistently high cash flows. As you can see on this chart, we have generated over $15 billion per year in net operating cash flow in all bar one of the past 15 years. This is a real significant differentiator for BHP. It is not just generating cash that makes us resilient in these uncertain times. It is also how we allocate it, and we will remain disciplined in our approach. Our capital allocation framework will continue to guide us to ensure that we maximize value. According to that framework is a strong balance sheet.
Our balance sheet positions us not just to weather the uncertain world we face today, but also positions us to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. We ended the December 2024 half year with net debt of just under $12 billion. With our expected cash flows in the second half, including our investment and growth, we expect this to increase to around the top end of our target range by the end of this financial year. We are pretty comfortable with that. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.4 x is low, both in absolute terms and relative to the competition, as it has been for most of the past decade. Even at the top end of our net debt target range, this is just 0.6 x.
This is a conservative balance sheet, and it provides protection at all points in the cycle. We have further levers at our disposal to manage net debt within our target range. As we move to deliver BHP's next phase of growth, our focus is going to be on maintaining a strong balance sheet while keeping our commitment to delivering attractive shareholder returns. For 140 years now, one of the things that's made BHP successful is how we have continuously reshaped our business and our portfolio to meet the demands of an evolving world. Today, we have a simple portfolio comprised of a number of large, long-life assets, and the vast majority of these are in OECD countries. These world-class resources provide a strong pipeline of attractive organic growth opportunities, which leverage our proven strengths.
In the near term, our iron ore and steelmaking coal businesses provide low capital intensity growth, while Jansen represents the entry into a new commodity for BHP. We know the world will need to produce a lot more copper as well over the coming decades to meet the significant growth in demand. With our projects, BHP is well placed to help meet this. However, you cannot invest in growth unless you have confidence and stability in your existing operations. You have heard me talk previously about our BHP Operating System, or BOS. We are pretty proud of the impact that BOS is having on our operations, and Western Australian iron ore is a good example of why. Our focus on operational excellence has enabled us to establish ongoing industry-leading performance.
Many of you in this room, Jason included, have been tracking BHP for long enough to know that this was not always something that BHP could stand up and claim credit for. We have become the best iron ore business in the world, and we have held that position now for five years running, consistent with the strategy that we set out in 2020. Whale is now the lowest-cost major iron ore producer in the world. We are consistently generating greater free cash flow per ton than our competitors, with an $8 per ton higher cash margin than our closest competitor in the last financial year. Now we are taking what we have learned, and we are applying it across the whole of the BHP business. This is already delivering strong results at Escondida, but we are not stopping there.
Even at the assets where BOS is most advanced, there are still further opportunities to improve. In the other assets, where implementation is less advanced, the potential is even more significant. Productivity remains our single biggest lever to create value. Now I want to dig into our commodities in a bit more detail, starting with iron ore. Whale is the leading iron ore business in the world. Over the past five and a half years, it has delivered average EBITDA margins of 69%, an average return on capital of 62%, and very high free cash flow. It is an asset with significant structural advantages: 30 billion tons of ore, 95% of it within 50 km of existing infrastructure. That allows us to use fewer processing hubs with simpler operations and low sustaining capital requirements.
Combined with the team's focus on operational excellence, Whale will continue to deliver strong margins and cash flow well into the future. We do see market fundamentals as well supported in the near to medium term. China is going to maintain 1 billion tons of steel production for several years to come. What is more, supply has a high-cost bench of 180 million tons at between $80 and $100 per ton, the majority of which is sitting above $90. That helps to provide cost support. Depletion will also have a big impact on market dynamics, with independent consultants putting depletion at 250 million tons between now and 2035. That, of course, contributes to a more resilient outlook for iron ore.
Turning to steelmaking coal, where we've consolidated our portfolio onto higher quality products, we expect these will be increasingly preferred and valued by our customers due to the role quality plays in reducing greenhouse gas emissions intensity of steelmaking. Today, BMA has the largest exposure to premium hard coking coal of any major producer at over 90%. Demand for that higher quality product is expected to grow significantly in India and Southeast Asia over the coming decades, and BHP is well positioned to benefit given these countries form the majority of our current sales. Now to copper, a pretty exciting story here. We're already the world's largest copper producer. While others speak about the potential for high levels of copper production in the future, we're delivering it today.
The chart here shows that we started in 2020 with the highest absolute copper EBITDA amongst diversified peers. Off that high base, we have generated the highest level of EBITDA growth. Copper now delivers 39% of our EBITDA, one of the highest percentages among major diversified miners. We are not standing still. By the end of this financial year, we expect to have grown copper production by 24% over a three-year period. We also have the largest copper resources globally, which underpins our attractive organic options. We are committed to pursuing this growth with a focus on value through our projects in Chile, South Australia, Argentina, and the U.S.
Pleasingly, as you may have seen in the announcement last night, we continue to progress our early stage efforts, notably with a new exploration agreement with Máximo and Codelco to explore the Anillo property located in the Antofagasta region of Chile, so fairly close to Escondida. In terms of our more advanced options, I'll touch on a couple of these, starting with Escondida in Chile, where we're advancing a number of projects across multiple time frames. Some of you may have been on the Chilean site tour last November. We mapped out Escondida's attractive growth program, which includes projects such as the expansion of the Laguna Seca concentrators and the construction of a new concentrator. Since then, our team has worked hard to optimize that program and further improve the potential production profile that we spoke about at the time.
We now expect to extend the life of the Los Colorados concentrator beyond financial year 2029 and to minimize the time between its removal and access to the high-grade ore beneath it. We have also accelerated elements of the Laguna Seca expansion project. As a result, these initiatives have the potential to deliver an extra 400,000 tons of copper production over the five years to financial year 2031. This allows us to fill the dip in our production profile and extend our medium-term guidance of 900,000 tons-1 million tons per year over financial years 2027-2031. There is positive momentum building around the Escondida growth program. It is expected to support annual copper production from our Chilean assets, including Pampa Norte, of around 1.4 million tons on average through the 2030s. That is 500,000 tons per year more than if we did not invest further.
Just across the border in Argentina, the Vicuña Joint Venture, established in January this year to develop the combined Filo del Sol and Josem aria projects, is coming together well. This JV is part of an exciting long-term alliance with Lundin Mining, which brings together shared values and complementary skills to what has the potential to be a top 10 copper producer globally. Just last week, Vicuña delivered a comprehensive resource update, including the first-ever sulfide resource estimate for Filo del Sol. The total resource at Vicuña contains 38 million tons of copper, 81 million ounces of gold, and 1.5 billion ounces of silver. Filo del Sol is the largest greenfield copper deposit discovered in the last 30 years, so something pretty significant there.
Filo and Josem aria each have a high-grade core that will support the initial phases of development, including over 1.5 billion tons of resource, averaging 1% copper equivalent at Filo. Vicuña is progressing integrated development plans for the combined projects, including targeting the highest-grade mineralization early in the life of the operation. We're very excited about this project, and we're on track to release an integrated technical report for the combined project in Q1 of 2026. Almost 10,000 km to the north, we're excited to be entering a new commodity with attractive long-term fundamentals, potash. If I look across our portfolio, Jansen has many of the same strengths as iron ore. It's a bulk commodity. It will have a low-cost position driving high margins across a long-life asset, and it has expansion potential. Like Whale, Jansen is a world-class asset.
It's an investment in a friendly jurisdiction and is expected to generate cash at all points in the cycle. Potash is going to be increasingly required for agricultural use as a growing population seeks more and better food production from constrained farmable land. The multi-decade market opportunity here is pretty significant, and we already have MOUs in place with buyers around the world to cover sales as Jansen ramps up. It's going to position BHP amongst the leading potash players in the global industry. Putting it all together, why BHP? For a mining company to deliver long-term value, it needs to have exposure to the right commodities, strategic clarity, and excellence in operations and capital allocation, and that's the BHP of today.
While we recognize the near-term outlook remains uncertain, we believe that the megatrends of urbanization, population growth, and the energy transition are going to underpin demand for our commodities over the medium to long term. Our assets are world-class, low-cost, and we operate them pretty well. Over the past decade, BHP's EBITDA margin has averaged 55%, and that's over 10 percentage points higher than the average of our closest major competitor. Importantly, the embedded optionality in our assets, together with our disciplined approach to capital allocation, means that we can make smart choices about how we unlock the further optionality to grow and maximize value. In the face of global volatility and policy uncertainty, BHP is poised to benefit from a flight to quality with its tier 1 assets, industry-leading margins, and high-return organic growth opportunities, which will underpin value and returns through the cycle.
I hope that that makes us the go-to investment for those seeking long-term value in the mining sector. Thank you. Thanks, Jason.
Thanks. Okay, we're going to do a couple of fireside chat questions, and then we'll go to the audience. Since no one's raising their hands, I'm going to be cold-calling people. Just be aware of that, George Chiefley. Okay, let's jump into a little bit here. We've had a volatile start to the year on markets, the economy more generally. Mike, navigating uncertainty, what feedback can you share from your conversations with your customers?
It's been interesting, hasn't it, Jason? In that in spite of kind of all the newspaper headlines and the uncertainty that we know is there, we've seen demand holding up pretty well.
If you look at what's been occurring in China, and Yakov referred to having been there a month ago, and a number of us were there around the same time, there was a real quiet confidence on the part of the Chinese. If I compare that to a year prior, when it almost felt like they were selling a little bit too hard, how they had things under control, this year, there was real confidence there. They were able to talk fluently about some of the green shifts that they're seeing. Those align with what we've been seeing by way of demand for iron ore, demand for copper, and so on. That's been positive.
Now, I think people are clear-eyed about things potentially becoming more complex and challenging over the medium to long term if there is not a pullback from some of the current trade tensions. We are looking at it and saying, okay, in one scenario, if those trade tensions escalate, that is going to put a wet blanket on global growth. Direct exposure for us into the U.S., for example, minimal. Our concern is not so much about the U.S., it is more about what happens to global growth. As I tried to point out in my speech, the commodities that we are in are particularly resilient amongst the basket of commodities. Given where our assets sit, where we have got margins, as I said, that are well ahead of the competition, we are best placed to deal with volatility and any dips in the cycle if that is where things go.
In fact, because of how we position the balance sheet and the broader business, we're actually able to continue to invest in growth through the cycle and pursue any opportunities that may arise.
Just to turn it back to BHP, again, if we think about the tariffs, if we think about the volatility, these question marks, how does that feed into your calculus on capital allocation?
We start with one of the lessons of the past has been that there's real value to be created by being able to invest through the cycle. If you think about our net debt range and how we've thought about wanting to have a very strong balance sheet, it isn't just to protect ourselves against the downside or potential excessive pressures at the downpoint in the cycle.
We go beyond that and say, we actually want to be able to continue to invest through the cycle. Now, of course, the reality is, if we saw a major dip in commodity prices, we'll have to flex how we think about the sequencing of our growth projects. We put a lot of thought into not just balance sheet resilience, and we model that against different scenarios. We also put a lot of thought into how do we go about where are the levers for us to be able to pull in terms of flexing some of our CapEx, sequencing it out, other opportunities to, or other levers that we have available to us to manage the balance sheet.
I wouldn't say that under these scenarios, well, the point I would want to make is that even under these scenarios of heightened volatility and uncertainty, we're able to, because of the way that we've thought about our strategy, the assets that we hold, the commodities that we're in, we're able to continue to invest in growth, where even in a situation where others may need to pull back.
Since you brought up the balance sheet, some investors say it feels like BHP is going to be CapEx higher for longer, for quite some time.
We said $11 billion medium-term average.
Yeah. Dollars.
Or the dollars, yes.
So $11 billion medium-term, how does that feed into dividends and capital return?
What shareholders can take comfort in is the 50% minimum payout ratio that we put in place a number of years ago.
Now, that's not to say it will always be 50%. It's to say, look, that's the chalks under the wheels. But as we've shown over the past decade, in periods in which commodity prices are higher, we're generating excess cash flow. We don't shy away from pursuing opportunities to return more of that cash to shareholders by way of further dividends or buybacks. Of course, under the capital allocation framework, all of that gets weighed up against the opportunity to invest in high-returning organic growth within BHP. That's something that now is markedly different than it was, say, five years ago, where the cupboard was looking pretty bare. We now have attractive copper growth projects in Chile, South Australia, the U.S , Argentina, with more projects being developed. We have this magnificent pipeline of potash growth as well.
It is a different set of choices that we have to make. At all times, buttressed by the 50% minimum payout ratio, with opportunity for further returns and buybacks and so on in the event we are generating excess cash.
Okay. Let's see if we can take a question from the floor. Anybody have any questions? Really not kidding. I am going to start cold-calling people. Lindsay Taylor. Come on. Could somebody give him a microphone? Sorry to put you on the spot, but I owe you a beer later.
Hi, yes. Lindsay Taylor, Drummond Asset Management.
Thanks for the question, Lindsay.
Thanks for asking. I guess my question is, BHP has actually done a really good job of developing a copper pipeline in the sort of 2030 plus kind of era. You have got Argentina, Escondida, South Australian copper. What about in the medium term?
BHP has been talking to us for a very long time about how the copper market is the future-facing commodity, the commodity that they want to be in. Is this not the opportunity and time for uncertainty to step in and buy some cash flow-producing copper assets to help fill the gap between now and 2035?
Yeah, and thanks for the question. First of all, I do just want to come back to how much we have grown EBITDA and copper production over recent years. Having said that, I recognize there is this period of flat or where the growth for us only really takes off in the 2030s. Yes, we have been positive on copper. We have also been super positive about needing to stay disciplined and only investing for value.
Frankly, right now, the opportunities to create value for shareholders through acquisitions of current producing assets or assets that have near-term growth look pretty challenging given where multiples are at currently. If I weigh that up against the organic opportunities that we have, yes, slightly long-dated, but we are a long-term business. Our focus is well and truly on bringing that pipeline through. You see with what we have done with Escondida, we are constantly looking for opportunities to optimize within what we currently have to bring a bit of that forward, albeit I acknowledge it is not quite as strong a growth as we would all love to have, but which we certainly unlock when we get to the 2030s. That is in copper. Outside of that, we have got potash, which we see near-term production growth starting from.
Thanks for the question, Lindsay. Any other questions?
Okay, I've got one last, maybe slightly philosophical question for you. A member of former mining executive said to me once, "Jason, the market underestimates the capital that these assets need on an ongoing basis." In a way, that's kind of what we're going through with Escondida. What do we get wrong? What are we not understanding? What does the industry get wrong in terms of explaining this to people?
It's always hard to generalize, first of all, because you see some in your space who really understand things well and totally get the declining nature of the resource, the need to invest more capital, how challenging some of these projects can be. Of course, the investment community is big and not everybody will understand the mining sector and the difference between different commodities.
With copper, with its declining grade, will require more kind of CapEx on an ongoing basis than the equivalent iron ore business, Mike, for example. Now, the market is catching up on that. That's why you see consensus prices rising. I think as the awareness grows around the amount of capital that needs to be invested, the escalation in CapEx costs, and so on, that then sees consensus outlooks for prices creeping up. From a BHP perspective, what we focus on is, where do our investment opportunities sit relative to the CapEx that's going to have to be deployed by others? Where do we sit on the inducement cost curve? One of the numbers that we gave everybody at Escondida back in November was this $23,000 per ton per copper ton capital for the Escondida growth program. That's a pretty attractive capital intensity.
Now, we still haven't released numbers that for copper South Australia, Vicuña is even a little bit further away and so on. We are always thinking about this in terms of where do we sit relative to acquisition opportunities, but also relative to the organic investments that others are making.
Okay. Folks, could you join with me, please, and thank you, Mike, for his presentation?
Thank you.