We're very pleased this morning to host Julian Andrews, the Managing Director and Chief Executive of Deterra Royalties. Deterra is a fairly young, maybe three-year-old company, spun out of Iluka Resources. They have over a $1 billion US royalty on BHP's iron ore Mining Area C that drives their Australian $2 billion market value. I'll let Julian tell the great story.
Great. Thank you, John, hello to everybody this morning. I'll just put some slides up on the screen that I can speak to. As John said, you know, I think... I'm sorry. I might just make the point to begin with, the numbers that we have in these slides are Australian dollars. I'll try to make the conversion as we go, but just bear that in mind. As John said, we are an Australian-listed royalty company. We are the largest and only really significant royalty company listed on the ASX. We were created four years ago, as John suggested, through a spin-out from Iluka Resources, which is a mineral sands miner.
Iluka held a small collection, half a dozen royalties, that it had collected largely by happenstance and, you know, made the decision to spin those assets out into a specialist vehicle listed on ASX. We have a market capitalization of about AUD 2.1 billion, so that's, you know, give or take, $1.4 billion. Just to give a sense of the scale, you know, we are cash flow generating and profit generating, and in our most recent financial year, we generated AUD 155 million of net profit after tax, so that's about $110 million. You can see down in the bottom right-hand corner of this slide, our share register. We have Iluka on the register for 20%.
When we were spun out from Iluka, they retained a 20% holding. But setting that aside, we have a, you know, very solid basis of, institutional, you know, good quality institutional basis to our register. As I said, we are, you know, well aware that the royalty business model is one that's very well established, and obviously there are some very good quality companies that have been very successful in this space. We're looking to do something similar, but to do it with some important points of difference. And probably the two key points of difference from our perspective are: one, we are listed in Australia. We are Australian-focused, so we provide our investors with exposure to the royalty model through ASX.
And the second key difference is really in our focus in terms of the type of, commodities we're looking to gain exposure to. So, you know, on our estimate, about 90% of the public market by market cap of our peers are focused on precious metals, either solely or largely. We focus in other commodities outside of precious metals. The key elements of our business are that, you know, we have a high-quality core of assets that have been delivering really strong financial performance over the past four years since we were listed. And in that regard, you can see here, we've generated more than AUD 850 million of revenue, so call it $580 million. And consistent with the royalty model, we've been able to do that at a very high margin.
We've typically been reporting EBITDA margins in the mid-90s%. You can see on the right there that EBITDA has been growing over the past four years and really in line with the expansion of the underlying assets, and I'll talk a little bit further to that in a moment. You know, we have a record of delivering cash returns to our shareholders, and in fact, in the four years since we've been listed, we've declared AUD 560 million of dividends, fully franked. At the same time, we've been busy building a platform for further investment and growth. We have a business development team based here in Perth that is focused on finding high quality, value accretive investments. We have the financial capacity to support those investments.
We have AUD 500 million in bilateral credit facilities. We've drawn down a bit over AUD 300 million of those recently to fund the Trident acquisition, which I'll talk to in a moment. But clearly, we have the capacity and the appetite for further investment. I mentioned the Trident acquisition, and you know, we've seen our portfolio grow significantly with that. We were originally endowed with six royalty assets, three of which were cash flow producing. One in iron ore, being the Mining Area C royalty, a couple in mineral sands, that were generating revenues, and then three longer-dated options that were not in production.
In terms of the Trident acquisition, what we saw in the Trident portfolio that was particularly attractive to us was 22 royalty and royalty-like assets that really gave us three key things. One was it gave us exposure to lithium, and not just exposure to lithium as a commodity, but exposure through a really high-quality project. So it's the quality of the exposure that you get to commodities, it's just as important as the commodity itself. It also came with a group of cash flow producing gold offtake revenues. So it's always nice to have assets that are already generating cash flow. And those gold offtake contracts were generating last year, they generated about $7 million over the course of the year. So they go, that goes towards helping pay for-
Is that revenue or margin, Julian?
That's margin. When I talk about revenue on those gold offtakes, and you know, happy to talk to them in more detail, but that is the margin. It's a net revenue number, so that's margin. Perhaps just to be clear on that, in terms of those gold offtake contracts, the way they work is that we're entitled to receive certain number of ounces driven by production out of these operations, and the price we pay for those is set over a, depending on the contract, anywhere between six- and eight-day quotation period. We pay the minimum price within that period, and then obviously we're in a position to sell them at whatever point within that period and generate a margin on it.
So that $7 million is the margin that was generated on them. And, you know, we've seen, you know, in the first half of this year, we saw some good quality revenue coming out of those offtakes. So the Trident acquisition has really given us a much broader scope in terms of commodity exposure. So, you know, we now have exposure to six commodities in iron ore, obviously, lithium, mineral sands, gold, silver, and copper.
What was the third group, excuse me, Julian, that Trident brought you in addition to the lithium and gold?
Sorry. Yeah, so it and then it brought a nice little tail of longer-dated development project royalties over longer-dated development projects. So as you'd appreciate in any portfolio, it's always nice to have a mix of assets that are in production, assets that are in development and sort of coming into production in the near term, and then some assets that are a bit longer-dated and just add some optionality and some longer-term growth potential to the portfolio. So, as I said, it you know, the portfolio really enabled us to bring some real diversification to the portfolio by commodity, by geography. As you can see here, we now have assets in 11 countries. Previously, we were exposed only to Australia and to a number of other commodities.
Yeah, that being said, it's worth remembering in all of this that the scale of the Mining Area C royalty is such that although we're bringing a lot of in additional assets to the portfolio, we still remain very heavily weighted towards the iron ore revenues coming out of Mining Area C. So depending on how you look at it, we're still, you know, somewhere in the order of sort of, you know, 80, 85, or 90% weighted towards iron ore.
And maybe just to talk a little bit more about that Mining Area C asset, you know, it really is a world-class cornerstone asset, and it provides us with a top-line exposure to what we think is, you know, one of the best iron ore mines in the world in terms of scale, its cost position, you know, the quality of the operator, and really importantly, the length of operation. I, you know, it has recently just completed an expansion to the operation. The addition of the South Flank mine, which took its nameplate capacity from 65 million wet tonnes a year to 145 million wet tonnes a year. At 145 million wet tonnes a year, that makes it the largest iron ore hub in the world.
Just to put that in context, at 145 million tonnes, that is about 9% of the total global seaborne iron ore supply. It's a very long-life asset. You know, BHP has talked about it going at least until the late 2040s and potentially into the 2070s. You know, it's operated by BHP, who are a very high-quality operator, and I think really importantly from our perspective, you know, we were, you know, the South Flank mine, which more than doubled capacity, was a $3.6 billion US investment in the mine. To be clear, we didn't contribute a cent of capital to that.
It's one of the great attractions of the royalty model, is you get that free carry into expansion and extension, and that's certainly, you know, demonstrated by our experience with Mining Area C. But they delivered that expansion on time and on budget. You know, they talked about having reached nameplate capacity. Started construction in 2018, started commissioning in 2021, and at the time, they said they expected to hit nameplate capacity on a run rate basis by the middle of 2024, and they did exactly that. They announced that they'd reached nameplate capacity for a period of time in the June quarter of 2024. In terms of our exposure to that operation, you know, there are two legs to the royalty.
One is a base royalty, which is a traditional gross revenue royalty, in which we receive a payment of 1.232% of the Australian dollar-denominated revenue from products sold out of Mining Area C. And you can see in the chart on the bottom right-hand side of this slide, the size of those capacities, of those payments rather, in the teal and the blue, first half and second half. And you can really see the increase in royalty receipts that we've received over the past six years, really driven by, you know, first and foremost, by that volume growth that I talked about, that more than doubling in production capacity at Mining Area C, but also strong iron ore pricing over that period.
So you can see over the past three years, in terms of the revenue royalty element, we've received in the order of AUD 220 million of revenue. So let's call it $150 million odd US. There's also a second leg to it, which is the capacity payment. You can see that's shown in the orange on that chart. And essentially, this is almost, you know, I talked about having a free carry into capital that's being spent by the operator to expand production. And in fact, this capacity payment element is almost like a CapEx payment that comes to us.
So for every 1 million dry tonne increase in annual production achieved over a 12-month period, we receive an AUD 1 million payment. That's sort of a ratchet arrangement so that resets a high watermark. But you can see that as those additional tonnes came on from South Flank, not only did we get an increase in the revenue royalty, we also received some capacity payments. Look, a lot of this, I think the information on this slide is probably a bit of a repeat of what I just talked about on the previous one, but it's worth just pausing on the map here on the right. That just shows how the royalty area operates.
So to be clear, the royalty payment is due on any product that comes out of a defined geographic space, and that's shown in this chart, just in that orange outlined polygon. On the eastern side of that or the right-hand side of the map, you can see the orange blobs. On the top side there, you've got the North Flank, and at the bottom side, it's the new operations in the South Flank. As I said, you know, those are. They have the potential to continue for many years, certainly for 2025 years and beyond. But over in the western side of the royalty area, there are some other deposits that have been identified by BHP.
You know, whether or not those ever get developed, and if they do, when they get developed, obviously is beyond our control. That'll be BHP's decision to make. But to the extent they ever do, they will also generate royalty revenues for us. So there is still some potential for you know, extension of the mine life, should those deposits be developed. The other... You know, I mentioned earlier, just in terms of our acquisition of the Trident portfolio, that one of the key attractions for us is the royalty that Trident held over the Thacker Pass project. You know, we see this as being a really important, potentially a very important asset for our portfolio.
One that can be sort of a flagship asset for many years to come, and in fact, has some MAC-like characteristics, if you like, in terms of providing some good quality, long life exposure to the underlying commodity. You know, the project itself, it's, as I mentioned earlier, it's not just about exposure to the commodity, it's about the quality of that exposure. And we really like the Thacker Pass project in the sense that, you know, it's a scalable asset, and it has some extension potential. So Lithium Americas has talked about a potential 40-plus year mine life. So again, another multi-decade asset.
It has, you know, it's very large scale, even in phase one, you know, 40,000 tons a year in the initial operation, with the potential to double that to 80,000 tons a year in phase two. It is an advanced project. Early works construction is complete, and Lithium Americas has talked about expecting to reach a notice to proceed decision by the end of this calendar year. It's had really strong stakeholder-
... Sorry, sorry, really?
Sorry.
We're not yet permitted?
No, I believe it's permitted, and certainly, it's permitted. Yes, it is.
What is the notice to proceed?
That's a final investment decision, essentially. That's a point at which they will commit the funds and begin construction of the project.
So Lithium Americas awaits board approval before spending how much money?
Yeah, so it's a AUD 2.9 billion project. They've spent money to date in terms of some of those early works construction, and obviously there's engineering costs and broader development costs that have already incurred.
That's $2.9 billion?
That's correct. So, you know, to be clear, that funding for that is largely secured. They have a conditional commitment from the DOE, in terms of their advanced vehicle technology program, a $2.26 billion loan. They have commitments from General Motors for $650 million investment in two tranches. The first tranche of that has been made, and that's tied to an offtake arrangement. Then earlier this year, they conducted a $275 million equity raise to help fund the project. So it's largely secured the funding. So it has very strong stakeholder support in terms of, you know, clearly customer support in the form of those offtakes from General Motors. Government support in terms of that conditional funding commitment.
The permits are received. So it's a well-advanced project. And it is pretty significantly de-risked over the past several years that the project's been quite significantly de-risked. You know, they're now more than 30% complete on the detailed engineering. I mentioned the permits are in place. They've been running a test center for a couple of years out of Reno that's been producing samples for testing. And I think from our perspective, you know, what's really important is it's in a good mining jurisdiction in Nevada. It's well located, being close to its end users and its domestic lithium supply in the U.S.
Is it U.S. Forest Service land?
I don't believe so, but I'd have to confirm that, John. Sorry, I can't be certain about that.
Is it private or federal land?
I believe it's federal land, but as I said, I'd have to confirm that. Yeah, look, yes, it's federal land, John. Yep.
Thank you.
In terms of the sort of the royalty itself, we have 60% of a royalty that's in place over the project. There's some complexity around it in terms of step downs and buybacks, but broadly, you know, the way we think about it is we would anticipate our 60% interest would equate to a 1.05% gross revenue royalty, following exercise of a buyback right, from which we would receive AUD 13.2 million to get us to that point.
I'm sorry, so it's-
So-
There, one of your slides says 8%.
Yes, yes. So that's, as I said, it's complex, in that, it starts at 8%, but there's a step down that occurs after receipt of certain payments, and there's a buyback option that Lithium Americas has as well. And we would expect that buyback to be exercised, and hence, that would bring the royalty rate down to 1.75% on a 100% basis. We have a 60% interest in that royalty, so that would equate to a 1.05% interest on an attributable basis. But clearly, we would get the benefit of 60% of that buyback payment, which would be $13.2 million coming to us.
So after you get 13.2, your lowest participation is 1.05% of that?
That's correct.
Thank you.
As I said, look, we thought, you know, we really like this asset. It's a, you know, it's a core part of the Trident portfolio, and we would see potential for it to be a, you know, an important part of our portfolio going forward as well.
Would it be too much of a simplification, Julian, to say that you paid AUD 300 million essentially for Thacker Pass, with the other bits and pieces as a throw-in?
I think that would be a bit too much of a simplification, John. You know, it is the most important single asset in the portfolio. But you know, in terms of the other assets, as I said, you know, there are three other assets that are currently producing revenue. Three other royalty assets producing revenue. But there are also the gold offtake contracts that, as I said, last year produced AUD 7.5 million, I think, of revenue. And there's you know, it's a portfolio, so there are always ups and downs, but you know, those have some meaningful value in their own right. Yeah, we've talked about those gold offtake contracts as being non-core to us.
So, you know, to be clear, we, you know, we would be open to divesting those, if the offer were right. But by the same token, they are cash flow producing. It's always great to have additional cash flow within the portfolio, so we'd also be very happy keeping them. Yeah, we'll be driven by value in that consideration. So I mentioned earlier, you know, we have a strategy that's built around growing our portfolio around the Mining Area C asset. Clearly, the Trident acquisition is a start of that process.
Mmm.
It's a, you know, it's an important first step, but, you know, we're still, you know, we're still focused on growth and continuing to grow. And our focus in that regard hasn't changed. You know, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we see the opportunity for us in areas where there's less competition, and we have a competitive advantage. So, you know, from a commodity perspective, that really is outside of precious metals, so that's a focus on bulk base and battery metals. And by bulk, you know, we obviously have iron ore exposure. We like iron ore, but we'd also, you know, we also look at some of the fertilizer commodities such as potash.
In the base metals, you know, you see copper, nickel, and zinc, and battery metals, clearly lithium, rare earth, cobalt, graphite, you know, those type of commodities. Within those parameters, we're relatively agnostic. We tend to be driven very much by value, so depending on where those commodities are in their own cycle, you know, we'll see more or less value, and that will really drive where we focus our attention. In terms of geography, our preference is to focus on those that are more developed mining jurisdictions: Australia, North America, South America, Europe. You know, that's really just driven by our desire to introduce additional risk into the portfolio in a fairly sort of incremental way.
So we're not looking to introduce too much jurisdictional risk as we add additional operators and commodities at this stage. Our preference is always for production or near production, but, you know, to be clear, we'll also look at opportunities that are a little further down the development curve that are perhaps a little bit earlier. And from a size perspective, you know, we see our liquidity and our ability to invest and write reasonable-sized checks as being an important point of difference for our business. We talk about having a sweet spot of, you know, AUD 100-300 million. Call it, you know, $70-200 million.
You know, to be clear, that's really just, you know, that is guidelines rather than any hard and fast rule, and clearly, we'll look at investment opportunities above that or below that. In terms of how we source those opportunities, you know, there, there's really three main sources of those. You know, one is really what we call the primary market, where we will go out and provide funding to third parties for whether that's for development of a mine, or whether it's for their own M&A activity, or whether it's for their balance sheet repair, but we provide funding in exchange for writing a new royalty. The other major source of opportunities for us is what we call the secondary market, which is really where we go out and look to acquire existing royalties.
And that, you know, Trident is an example of that. And then the third one, which is much more opportunistic, is, you know, that clearly, there are M&A opportunities from time to time, and Trident also falls within that bucket broadly. So as I said, we still very much have the appetite, we still very much have the capacity to look to continue to grow. To be clear, we're not sitting back to digest the Trident portfolio before we look to make further acquisitions. We're very much of the belief that there, you know, in all markets, there are times when you should be looking to actively invest, and there are times when, perhaps you're better off waiting.
We've been through a period where we didn't see a lot of value, so we weren't active. We are now moving very much into a period where we see, you know, a richer environment of opportunities, and so we're keen to act on those, you know, as and where we find them. In terms of how we fund those opportunities, clearly, you know, we think that we have strong funding capacity through the cash flow that we're generating. As I said earlier, you know, we're generating. We have over the past three years, generated more than AUD 200 million in revenue. That provides a lot of balance sheet strength and a lot of liquidity.
We also have the existing debt facilities that we have in place, and so we feel we have strong capacity to fund investments, and like all companies, we obviously have access to other sources in particular. You know, we could go and introduce more debt into the business, or we could go to our shareholders for equity financing, and perhaps just to put a little bit more color in terms of that capital management framework, we really focus on three key elements when we think about how we allocate capital. The first one is liquidity, and that's really ensuring that we have the flexibility to invest as and where we see value, and particularly countercyclically.
So it's important for us to maintain a strong level of liquidity within the business, and that's really, as I said, that's those facilities we spoke about, that's the cash flow we spoke about. And in terms of the facilities we have in place, just to get a sense of the cost of capital there, we pay about a 135-point margin over BBSY, which is our bank bill swap rate here in Australia. So, you know, we have access to significant capital at good cost. You know, consistent with the broader royalty model, we're not looking to overly leverage the company. So we talk about a target net debt range of 0-15% of enterprise value. It's important to us to maintain a strong balance sheet.
And then in terms of how we think about allocating excess capital, you know, we have in the past, when we haven't had a need for investment, we've been paying out 100% of our net profits. As we move into an environment where we see more opportunities, we're conscious of the need to manage our liquidity and our leverage going forward, and so we've indicated to the market that, you know, we will be targeting a minimum payout ratio of 50%. We'll look at what our cash flow needs are going forward in terms of investment or balance sheet management, and, you know, that will determine where we land in terms of a final dividend payout ratio.
And the surplus cash we don't need for those will be returned to shareholders. So look, that's an overview of the business. And I guess just to close out, you know, the key points that I'd like to leave you with are, you know, we're an ASX-listed company with scale and substance. We're a member of the ASX 200 index. We have with a market capitalization of over AUD 2 billion, and in the last financial year, AUD 240 million of revenue. We have one of the best royalty assets in public ownership in the Mining Area C royalty. It provides us with exposure to, you know, one of the core elements of one of the best miners' iron ore operations.
And we have a building portfolio that's providing us with high-quality exposure to other projects, including domestic lithium supply. And finally, we have a well-defined strategy to invest in additional assets to the portfolio, and we have the capacity and the liquidity to do so. So, thank you very much. I'll just stop there and obviously very happy to take any other questions.
Anyone may submit a question through the question box, and we welcome them. Julian, do you have a share repurchase authorization, and what is your and the board's attitude towards such a facility?
We don't have a formal program in place. We did recently put in place a dividend reinvestment program, which allows shareholders to reinvest their dividends in shares, but I think you're more focused on the potential for buybacks, and that's something that clearly we always have that as an option against which we test other uses of capital, but yeah, I think it's fair to say that share buybacks are much less common in an Australian context, and part of that is really driven by the franking credits that can be generated from Australian earnings, so you know, by using surplus cash to pay dividends, we're able to return franking credits to shareholders, which is not typically possible through a buyback program.
But it's certainly something we think about and test other options against.
So your acquisition may not have been well understood by the market or coincided with the change in dividend payout, and the stock fell almost 30%. Isn't that a perfect opportunity to reduce volatility and reduce risk by buying back stock?
Yes, so look, you know, as you say, I think, you know, to your point about the reception of the acquisition, it. You know, there's a lot of things going on. Iron ore had been, until recently, under a bit of pressure this year, where obviously with our exposure to iron ore, there's some impact of that. And clearly, you know, we announced that some update to our guidance around payout ratios at the same time. But, you know, in terms of where we're trading, as I said, we're always thinking about what's the best use of capital. But from our perspective, you know, dividends do give us the opportunity to return franking credits to shareholders. And many of our Australian shareholders do see value in those franking credits.
Julian, the U.S. is widely considered to be a little more stable than Mali or Niger. We don't have the Wagner Group running around. And unlike Burkina Faso the other day, the leader doesn't talk about changing the mineral tenure. But things aren't necessarily stable in the U.S. as to legislation or permits. So Donald Trump refers to the Inflation Reduction Act as the green scam. So if he's elected, his budgets wouldn't fund Thacker Pass. And most commentators expect the Republican Party to collect fifty-one or fifty-two Senate seats. If the Republicans have the White House and the House of Representatives, that legislation will get repealed entirely. And just an anecdote-
Yeah.
I have range anxiety sometimes when I travel in terms of renting an electric versus a gasoline automobile, or sometimes I'm on a schedule where I don't have time to find a charging center to charge the car. So, if I don't specify, Budget Rental might give me an electric car. If I specify that I want gasoline, the price is 50% more for the daily rental. And if you have a gasoline car, you have to pay for the fuel, but if you rent electric, they don't charge you for recharging. So it's actually the consumer preference against an EV is requires them to have that large of a differential in order to move the electric cars. In terms of, maybe that's a poor example, because when you're a businessman on a schedule, you can't stop to charge.
Even the General Motors commitment or offtake is not considered safe. General Motors has closed more factories than it operates.
Yeah, so look, you know, I think there's a few things in that. But, you know, there's. You know, and I think, you know, broad sentiment around lithium reflects many of the issues that you've raised. But from our perspective, you know, lithium, like all commodities and, you know, electric vehicle technology and other applications of lithium, clearly they, you know, it's still a relatively immature space, and there's some volatility around expectations. But, you know, when you look at the fundamentals of supply and demand, you know, I think that demand has not grown as quickly in the last year or two as perhaps it was being projected.
We've seen supply come on, but, you know, by the same token, we're seeing some supply start to come out of the market. So, you know, the market signals are working. And, you know, from when we look at it, we're really looking at something like Thacker Pass as a forty-year-plus exposure. So we're thinking about, you know, what will this project deliver over, you know, a multi-decade life? You know, it's, you know, Lithium Americas has talked about it coming into production in 2027 . You know, there's always, you know, we I think we all understand that there's always a little bit of movement around dates in projects. But the point being that our exposure to the lithium price really doesn't begin until it goes into production.
So we're less focused on where spot pricing is for lithium, and we're more focused on where medium and longer-term pricing is and what does medium and longer-term production so supply and demand balance look like. And really importantly for us from the Thacker Pass project, it is a large scale. It is, you know, Lithium Americas talk us about it as being a low-cost producer. It is domestic U.S. supply. And to your point about the political drivers, I think, you know, as you say, who knows, and you know, it's from the other side of the world, we do what. You know, we do a lot of work to try to understand what the different scenarios might be.
But, you know, I don't know that, you know, domestic supply, domestic mining activity, domestic jobs, I think generally, you know, tend to have political support across the aisle. And, you know, so we think that, you know, the Thacker Pass project is well-positioned in the medium to longer term under a range of different scenarios.
Julian, did you go to the federal office in the county where Thacker Pass lies before you made the acquisition?
Sorry, the what office?
There might be an office for the Bureau of Land Management-
Oh.
or the U.S.
All right
Fish and Wildlife Service or the U.S. Forest Service.
You know, clearly I did not, but we certainly had. Our advisors did visit the appropriate agencies and conduct due diligence, as you'd expect.
When you say your advisors, would that be your attorneys in Australia, your investment bankers?
No. So we, you know, the nature of the model is that we have a core team, and then we bring additional help on as we need. So we certainly had local legal advisors. We had local technical advisors helping us with the due diligence exercise.
I'm just gonna share some anecdotes. One time I had breakfast in the diner in Lincoln, Montana, with the Forest Service ranger, sort of where the Unabomber hung out. He would lock the gates to the national forest to facilitate private poaching expeditions. He didn't honor the legislation for multiple land use. He locked the public out of the public lands. I represented a geologist that had a gold deposit outside of Ely, Nevada, where he spent $2 million drilling it. When the Bureau of Land Management asked him to spend $20,000 to have biologists with night vision goggles go down the old workings every night for three weeks to look for rare bat species, he refused.
I represented a rancher who had an interest in 82 acres adjoining the Morenci pit, the copper pit of Freeport. He has a 60,000-acre ranch near Fort Thomas, Arizona, and his family over 100 years. It's no longer fashionable to have white cowboys. The consideration is that the cattle graze the land, and there's not enough vegetation for other wildlife, so they wanna. The BLM wants to run him off his land. So there are many examples of arbitrary, capricious, or illegal behavior in federal land management. I had a niece that was on the White House staff for 46 months under Trump. She was in the Monday morning briefing of the Interior Secretary, and when I would tell her these stories, she wouldn't believe me, and she asked me if I was a paid lobbyist.
People in Washington sort of can't imagine the capricious nature of what happens out West, so that it probably is better than Mali or Niger, but it's not a lot better.
Yeah, I mean, look, I, as you say, there's the, you know, there's. I'm sure there are always examples of things. You know, when we did our brief, you know, our diligence on the project, we, you know, we certainly looked at the permitting process. You know, that permitting process was challenged, that went through the courts, and was resolved in Lithium Americas' favor, so that permitting process has been held up by the courts. They, you know, I think the other element is with, you know, there is significant funding support that has been committed, conditionally committed by the DOE.
So there is, you know, it's a $2.9 billion project, so, you know, there's a lot of structure and a lot of momentum around projects like that that you'd think that for a 40-year investment, you know, the alignment is there.
In your next acquisition consideration, do you wanna stick to projects that are already in production as opposed to developmental projects at a discount?
Look, you know, we'd love to get cash flow producing projects or ones that are in production. And that's always, you know, the ideal, but we recognize that often you can get better value by investing a little bit earlier. You know, that may be when they are in sort of late study phase or as they're moving towards a final investment decision. So we're certainly comfortable looking at those kind of investments. And then, you know, in any portfolio, it's always useful to have sort of a bit of a, you know, a tail of sort of longer-dated options as well. So, you know, we're comfortable introducing a few of those as well.
But, you know, the core focus is really on things that are either in production or have a clear line of sight to production. But, you know, we'll sort of take value where we see it to an extent.
On this continent, there's some concerns as to whether there's enough engineers to build mining projects. Sometimes it feels like there's five or ten promoters for every engineer. In Australia, Fortescue spent $4 billion on the Iron Bridge project, and it produced 2 of 22 million tons its first full year, and the target is 7 of 22 million tons the second year. The water pipeline of plastic, 200 kilometers leaks. The ore is more abrasive, and machinery wears out faster than it brings issues. I was citing Fortescue in Australia because it's a fabulous company in your backyard. They also had the incident on December thirtieth, where the temperature was 49.3 degrees Celsius at Marble Bar, and the railroad derailment was attributed to the rails melting. From there, they load 67 tons per axle.
The trains are two and a half kilometers long, so it's enormous force and friction. Do you think it's too conservative to limit yourself to major companies as just rule out juniors, given we are-?
Yeah. So to me, and perhaps just to respond to comment, and you know, it just highlights that you know, I think how comfortable we are with the operators that we have, and particularly with BHP operating Mining Area C. You know, that was a $3.6 billion project that they delivered on time. They said they would get to nameplate capacity in three years, and they did. So you know, they were able to deliver successfully. But yeah, I think... you know, to be clear, we're not limiting ourselves only to large operators.
So we recognize that particularly in the primary space and sort of, if you like, the project financing space where we're a source of capital, we're gonna be much more in that junior and intermediate sort of space because the large companies don't need capital from people like us. So if we're gonna be providing funding to get projects built or to help balance sheet repair or to fund M&A activity, it's gonna be in the smaller end of the market because those majors don't need us. You know, at the end of the day, you know, what is really critical for us when we look at an investment opportunity is what's in the ground. It's the quality of the deposit, because that's the one thing that can't be changed.
And that ultimately is what's gonna drive the success or not of the project. Then clearly, you wanna make sure you've got a good quality operator who's able to develop that, to operate it effectively, and to make the investments that's needed in the operation to keep it producing. You know, I think that clearly when you've got a top line royalty, your exposure is to that top line. It's not to the bottom line, you don't have the... It's a qualitatively different risk profile. So you're not exposed to operating margins, you're not exposed to capital blowouts. You know, it's a pretty binary situation. Is it producing or not? And then if it's producing, you know, what are the volumes and what's the price? And that's really what drives your returns. So, operator's obviously very important.
Are they able to develop the mine effectively and responsibly? Are they able to operate it effectively and responsibly? But, you know, that's, it's a slightly different perspective we put on that than we might if we were investing at the equity level.
Let me just check the question box. Oh, we do have something. "Is there a withholding tax on your dividends paid to U.S. shareholders?
Look, I'm not really in a position to comment on-
Let me try to explain.
... individual tax outcomes. Yeah.
For owning my Fortescue shares, there's no US withholding tax, but there's a $60 charge from the ADR sponsor. Are your shares ordinary shares on Nasdaq or an ADR, Julian?
They're not on Nasdaq, no. So...
When I bought your shares in an account, it was a five letter ticker from Nasdaq, and I don't recall-
Okay
... there being a withhold-
Yeah
... there being a fee. But I own other ADRs where there's fees. The other question is for you to explain the share price collapse.
Yeah. So look, you know, as I said, there's a lot of things going on and, you know, if you look at how we've traded historically, we have clearly given... You know, historically, 99% of our revenue has been derived from Mining Area C, which is iron ore price driven. We typically trade, you know, quite closely with iron ore price. You know, we were down, we've had a, you know, I think there's been a bit of a bump in the last couple of weeks on Chinese stimulus talk. But, you know, broadly, you know, we were down about 30% over the course of the year from the first of January. But so is iron ore. So iron ore has also had a pretty significant fall over that period.
As I said, we've seen a bit of a recovery over the past couple of weeks but so have we. You know, we've seen our share price recover a little bit over the last couple of weeks. You know, many of the iron ore focused companies have had a similar impact from the decline in the iron ore price. And more broadly, you know, we've seen resource stocks on the ASX have been off over the course of this year. So that's a broader contextual element that you know there is a you know an environmental impact around commodity pricing, a macro driver.
We've also, you know, clearly, we announced an acquisition, and we announced a change in our potential payout policy going from 25 forward. That certainly received some commentary. You know, we've been very clear right from the time that we were floated, that our strategy included growth as a very important part of it. But at the same time we would be disciplined with our capital, and if we didn't need it, we'd return it to shareholders. Certainly, you know, we've demonstrated that capital discipline, I think, in the first three years of the business. We've now seen what we think is a really high-quality investment opportunity at a good time in the commodity cycle to be making that acquisition, and we've acted on it.
We think that it's a high-quality collection of assets that we've acquired, and we think that it will demonstrate, you know, its value over time.
Super. I want to apologize for my, some of my skeptical questions. I root for the abolition of the U.S. federal income tax, and I would like to limit the role of the federal government to repaying the debt and the military, and abolish the rest of the portions. So I'm a little bit skeptical of a lot of our government.
Sure. But, you know, it's the, it's, as I said, you know, we see a good quality investment opportunity. You know, we think it's significantly de-risked. There's, not that there's no risk, there's always risk in everything, right? That's what drives returns. But we think that this project is significantly de-risked, and we're really pleased that we have it in our portfolio, and we're pleased that we were able to acquire it at the time and the price that we did.
Super. Thank you very much, Julian, and congratulations on the company. Mining Area C is just tremendous legacy.
Thank you. I appreciate your time and your interest. Thank you.
Thank you.