Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Next up, we have a session with South32, and I'd like to welcome Graham Kerr, CEO. Before we kick off, though, I just want to remind everyone that please use the poll in the BMO app. The commodities team have put a lot of questions in there, and it'll be great. You get live feedback on what everyone's thinking about during the conference. Welcome, Graham.
Thanks, Alex.
I'm gonna kick off. Obviously, you know, you're coming up towards the end of your tenure at South32. The you and the company have made a, you know, a lot of changes over the years. Maybe you can just start by saying, you know, what are you most proud of within South32?
Look, good question. I mean, I think without a doubt, it'll be the people and the talent that we've built in the organization. To your point, over 11 years, the team has managed to achieve a lot of change. You know, when we started 11 years ago, geographically, we had 45% of the value in Australia, 40% in Southern Africa. Our commodity split was about 50% thermal met coal, so the bulks. Then we had about 50% base metals, predominantly aluminum, a little bit of zinc. You know, if you look at where we are today, we've sold Illawarra Metallurgical Coal, we've sold out of South Africa Energy Coal, sold our two manganese alloy businesses, one in Australia, one in South Africa, sold our nickel business in Colombia, but we've bought in copper via the Sierra Gorda acquisition.
We've got the Hermosa complex, which is a series of projects I'm sure we'll talk about. We've got Ambler in Alaska, we've got probably about 25 exploration projects, as a consequence, today, we're about 90% of our exposure is to base metals, within two years, more than 50% of the value is in the Americas. Quite a change in the portfolio, and that's really happened through the team executing that over a period of time.
I came on the site visit when South32 was spun out of BHP, and at the time, I think one of the big discussions was around Cannington and its life.
Yep.
I think what has been incredibly surprising is the, you've managed to drive a quite a big extension to that asset. Maybe you can just talk about, you know, where you are now with Cannington, and, you know, is there any other opportunities in terms of more life extension, do you think?
I'm gonna show my age here. I was at Cannington as a graduate when we actually built it in the first two years of operation. The silver price was $4.50. Everyone was criticizing that $4.50 was too expensive to, you know, take forward the project. Cannington itself now has been running for almost 29 years. It still achieves average margins between 40%-60%. We did extend the underground this year to another two years, which takes it out to FY 2033. The team are doing some work to see if we can extend it out to FY 2035 next. As well as this year, we'll do a study on an open pit concept, which potentially could take you beyond FY 2040. We'll have an update on that towards the back end of this year.
It has been an amazing asset in terms of that journey and the cash flow generation it's made for shareholders. For us, that's really what we were targeting when we actually went after the Arizona Mining business, which gave us Hermosa and predominantly Taylor.
If you touched on Sierra Gorda in your comments. Again, that's actually been, it's been a really good asset to pick up and strong cash returns. Can you just talk through some of the options you've got there for copper production? Obviously, there are a few studies on go.
Look, absolutely. I mean, the timing of that acquisition's worked out really well for us. It would be much more expensive today. We have a 45% interest in Sierra Gorda, jointly controlled with KGHM, who have been a really good partner for the journey so far. Between the two of us, we certainly see a lot more potential in that operation about what we can do with it. The first project we're focusing on at the moment is a fourth grinding line. The fourth grinding line gives us a possibility to lift actually throughput through the processing plant up by about 20% to 58 million tons, increase your copper production, lower your costs.
We're going through, if you like, the technical review of that at the moment and expect to take it to both of our respective boards by the end of this financial year and then approve that to go into execution. That's the first one. We also have about 110 million tons worth of oxide material sitting on the surface, average grade around 0.36%. We've got the opportunity there to build, you know, a low-cost leaching facility ourselves or look at the option of toll treating that to some of the neighbors who have spare capacity. On top of that, we've just announced Cannington North East, where we've got a very large resource target right next to the existing pit, which potentially is still open at depth and multiple directions.
We've planted a whole series of step-out drillings this year, but it's a really exciting opportunity.
If you make a investment decision towards the end of this year, when do you think you would have the first production from the next line?
Typically, if you're doing something like the fourth grinding line, you're looking at somewhere between three to four years to actually build it. Probably around that timeframe it would take to build it from the time you get the FID decision, and then production follows pretty quickly after that.
Maybe we can turn to Hermosa. You know, it is a significant investment. What have you learned about the project as you've been building it? You know, are there more opportunities, do you think, beyond the kind of current plans?
Yeah, look, absolutely. When we bought Arizona Mining, which we now call Hermosa, we always talked about three sources of value, with one being the Taylor projects: lead, silver, zinc. Similar kind of mining method, processing method to Cannington, so we know it well. We talked about the Clark project, which sits above the cross of Taylor, at top of Taylor, much shallower, manganese-rich. And then, you know, we talked about the broader land package, where there's roughly 15-16 targets on the site. It's certainly been a rollercoaster through owning that business in terms of, you know, understanding what the water looks like, how you're going to access the ore body, but it's been an amazing ore body. Even now, we see that Taylor itself is still open in multiple directions.
You look at Peak, which is a copper resource we're exploring at the moment. We've got about 25 million tons. Through some of the work we're looking to do, we're looking to materially increase that over the next 12 months. Taylor itself, you know, will probably end up with a mine life in excess of 40 years when you look at the combination, be at the lowest point in the cost curve. From our perspective, it's been a great place to do business. We're on track to get a federal approval this calendar year. The construction is about 48% complete. The teams now are super excited about what's in front of them.
Once we get that federal approval, we really have the opportunity to explore a broader land package, where there's about, you know, 12-15 targets we wanna target, both in zinc and copper. The other one, obviously, at the moment is Clark. Clark is the one which is really designed to produce manganese of the quality to go into batteries. We've just finished a decline on that ahead of schedule and budget. We had support from the Department of War for about a third of that capital expenditure in the form of a grant, and if we take that to the next stage of actually building the processing facility, we've got support there to build, you know, a facility where we get about a third of that in the form of a grant as well.
Sticking to Taylor, you know, you are undertaking an assessment at the minute. Maybe you just talk about what's driving that and, you know, what are you considering within that?
We earmarked that we'll be completing an assessment in the back end of this financial year. That's really triggered by how much of the work would have been spent, committed. Today, we're about 48% spent. Over the next couple of months, we expect to have the last of the processing packages coming in terms of the construction for the concentrator. We also expect to have the quote in for lateral development. We're about halfway through sinking the shaft. We will have made more progress in that space. By the time May comes around, we'll probably have sevenish, maybe a little bit more of that committed, which is a good time to look at what does it look like for final cost to complete it. Part of that really will be you've just got enough information to make an assessment.
If we're doing it now, when you've only spent 48% of the money, you're really updating your own estimates without testing the market. We would have tested the market and locked in most of the contracts by then. You know, what has worked well to date is the continued growth of the resource. What's also worked well for us is we expected to be handling about 4,000 gallons of water per minute. We're probably doing about 2,000 at the moment. It's been considerably less. You know, what have we got our eye on? As someone who's been in the industry for many decades, never feel comfortable till you got to the bottom of the shaft. We're only about halfway. Never feel comfortable till you dewatered everything in front of you.
It's been progressing well, but we've still got a long way to go on that space. While initial packages in the surface look good, you know, we are watching the impact of tariffs. For example, we get a lot of equipment that comes out of India, and in the space of the month when I talked to my board, the tariff was 50%, then it went to 75%, then it went to 10%, then it's 15%. What it looks like is hard to know, and probably the other one we're watching is, you know, with the tariffs in place, the cost of domestic steel in the U.S. has, you know, risen quite sharply over the last quarter. Lots of positives on the resource progress to date. It's more about completing the shaft and just watching what the market does.
You raised an interesting point. You know, it looks like we are seeing some cost inflation just in the industry as a whole. Maybe you can just talk about, you know, you've got a big geographical spread where perhaps the, you know, cost inflation is hitting the hardest.
Yeah, look, without a doubt, at the moment, I'd probably say the area we feel it most acutely is Chile. Chile, if you talk about project execution costs, equipment costs, essentially had a strong push up in price there. I'd say we're starting to see now some of the impacts of tariffs coming through on the U.S., particularly on steel, piping, et cetera, sort of flowing through. Where we operate in Australia has generally been pretty good, particularly in the southwest of WA, because it's not a FIFO workforce, they're quite happy with the lifestyle choice down there. In other parts of Western Australia, particularly in the gold industry, you're starting to see prices run quickly. One thing we'll have to watch is some of our specialist skills, like jumbo operators we use at Cannington.
You know, some of the sign-on bonuses and pay increases they're now getting offered by gold is something we'll have to watch closely.
We've seen, you know, the reshaping of your portfolio towards some of the higher margin businesses. You know, we've seen a general trend amongst other miners as well, you know, streamlining portfolios, but also trying to monetize assets and including some streams now as well. How do you think about other opportunity to, well, basically monetize the significant portfolio that you have?
Yeah. Look, there's a couple of things that we need to think about in that space is, we have talked very strongly about, you know, 90% of our exposure today is base metals. Of roughly, depending on price of alumina and aluminum, about 35%-50% is the aluminum value chain. That has been a very good business for us for a long time. It's a business that we focus on running it the best we can. It provides the cash flows to invest in Sierra Gorda, to invest in Hermosa, in our growth projects, and that's been critically important. As we have seen with Mozal, you know, the availability of affordable energy will be a challenge long term in that industry that you need to keep on top of.
While we're actually realizing really high prices in the aluminum space at the moment, in the alumina side, the prices are quite depressed. I think that's an area we've just got to keep an eye on how we protect our energy supply sources for that. The other one that people have been asking about this week is obviously, BHP announced a big silver streaming deal. We have a large volume of silver in Cannington. We have a large volume of silver that will come out of Taylor. Probably more than half the revenue at the spot price now would actually come out of silver, and we've also got silver and gold also at Sierra Gorda. You know, probably like everyone, we look at the streaming options all the time. It's a question of what does it do to you on the cost curve?
Is an arb on different costs of capital between precious metals and a diversified miner? The other piece for us is, you know, what are you gonna do with the cash flow at the time? Does it make sense? We've certainly evaluated those, looked at those options, but to date, we haven't probably seen a sweet spot that allows us to do that. Particularly as we think about the underground at Cannington, if we can extend the life of that, how do you take advantage of a higher silver price at the moment to perhaps give you some protection to take that forward?
GEMCO, you're back to full production again. I guess it was a challenging few months there. What were the full impacts of that cyclone that came through, and, you know, has it made any impact to the outlook for the project? Is it all back to normal?
Yeah. GEMCO is a business noted on Groote Eylandt, Northern Territory of Australia. It would probably average four or five cyclones a year. We're used to that. The team's well prepared. Cyclone Megan, when it came through, probably had the highest rainfall we've ever seen in our life. We would normally, and the numbers aren't quite right, but we would usually deal with about probably somewhere between 12 GL - 16 GL of water coming out of a wet season. We had to deal with 39 GL that basically almost occurred, like, in a weekend. It was the biggest swell, highest winds we've ever seen.
It did knock our berth, ship loading berth out, and it also, if you look at some of the damages to infrastructure, like bridges, it looked like you'd been hit by a bomb, and the island was virtually covered in water. I think the team's done a great job in recovering that. The insurance proceeds we got in actually covered all the property damage and equipment, so that was good to see that recognized. The team certainly have done a good job getting back up to where we, you know, where we need to be in terms of production and building stockpiles. I think we still do carry a bit more water than we normally would have on-site, but the team are managing that well. We're about halfway, a bit over halfway through the wet season at the moment.
We're watching what the cyclones look like. You know, clearly, there's some lessons out of that. It was the biggest cyclone we've seen by magnitudes, but it did mean when we built the port, we thought about what the biggest cyclone possibly could be. Some of the lessons that we learnt about how do you manage your pits, your infrastructure, have been incorporated into the rebuilds. The reality is GEMCO is still probably the, if not the best asset, or probably ties with Cannington for the best asset in the industry. It's got the highest grade, it's got low costs, it's close to the port, the port's close to your customer, all the things you need to do. It has a life at the moment in the reserves of about six years.
We have about another two years in the resource of southern leases, which we think we can convert, and that takes you out to about eight-year mine life. We also believe that, you know, there's a whole area called the northern leases that we've never explored before, that we've just been granted access to by the traditional owners. Our intent is to actually start an exploration program over a couple of years, starting there this year.
Maybe we can turn to Mozal. I think it's been a good asset, but obviously, the situation around power means that you are actually running it down pretty shortly. Maybe you can just update on the reasons behind having to idle the asset and, you know, if anything changes in the future, could you see a case where it comes back again?
I'd probably start by saying, you know, Mozal contributes about 1% of the aluminum market. It has been, to your point, an asset that's been, you know, one of our high points over the journey as part of the demerger and South32 creation. That and Hillside, you know, those smelters probably run. If you look at their type of technology, they're always one or two, if you like, in the benchmarking in how they perform. It's had a good impact for many, many years, multiple decades, in Mozambique. It's about 3.9% of the GDP. Directly, indirectly, there's probably about 5,000 contractor in, together with some of our employee jobs. The multiplier impact's probably about 25,000 people. It's a significant part of, if you like, the Maputo or Mozambican economy.
The challenge is we use about 940 MW of power, and it's continuous power. That power itself has normally come out of the northern part of the country, called the Cahora Bassa, which is a hydro system which the government of Mozambique owns. After two years of severe drought, they can only provide us with 10% of the power. Effectively, they can't give us power. You don't have power, you don't have an aluminum smelter. We go across the border and talk to Eskom. People are aware, they've got their own power challenges at the moment. You know, the reality is there's probably only two or three smelters in the world that operate, if you like, on a power contract in the aluminum space outside of China, that are above $50 a MWh.
At the moment, you know, the chrome industry is screaming out to get a price of $52 in South Africa. Eskom's telling them, well, they can't do that because basically, they'll be losing money on every megawatt they sell. We have no power, so we have no choice but to put Mozal into care and maintenance. The government of Mozambique believes, you know, as rain comes back, as they do some refurbishments in, you know, maybe that period of somewhere over the next four years, towards the back end of the four years, they would expect to be able to provide the power that could feed Mozal. There's always a chance to restart, but the reality is, restarting an aluminum smelter is never easy, and it's also very expensive.
How much will the asset cost to keep on care and maintenance?
To keep it on care and maintenance is about $5 million, 100% terms. It's not a huge amount of money to sort of park it there for a while, to see what happens in the energy marketplace. That's our intent at the moment.
Right. More of a general comment on the performance of your assets over the last few quarters. They've been pretty strong, I'd say very consistent across the portfolio. What do you think you've achieved, or what are the factors that have kind of fallen into place to see a good last few quarters?
Look, I think it's a combination of issues when you think about stability is, you know, we need to recognize that Illawarra, in particular, which we sold about 12 months ago, because it's two long wall operations, Appin itself was the deepest, scariest mine in Australia. It always had variability, and that was very hard to forecast and manage. Taking that out of the portfolio itself managed the variability. The other one, which we're very, you know, very firm on, is Cannington, because of its age, will have variability from quarter to quarter and month to month because you're mining a set of stopes in a particular order that you can't change, and the grade fluctuates quite dramatically.
I think we shouldn't underestimate, if you look at the rest of our suite of assets, such as Worsley, which is alumina, GEMCO, pre the cyclone, Hillside, Cannington, Mozal, and HMM, our South African manganese business. Over the journey, the majority of those assets have always hit their production guidance. It's been a couple on the edge that sort of skew it out, plus as well, the weather event you've had at GEMCO, which is very hard to forecast. I think the teams have concentrated very much on, you know, how they deliver safe, stable, reliable operations because that gives us the basis to actually grow the rest of the portfolio.
Maybe we can turn to cash flow and your capital allocation policy. You know, given where commodity prices are now, you know, even though you do have a fair bit of investment at the minute, you know, how are you thinking about managing the balance sheet and potential shareholder returns?
Look, I'd start by the fact, been in the industry for many decades, the one thing we've been very clear about from day one at South32 is the strength of your balance sheet matters. You know, the combination of financial leverage and commodity leverage can be a dangerous game when prices turn against you, and in particular, when you're in our position and you're spending more capital than ever on growing your business. The next 18-24 months will be peak CapEx for us. Beyond that, we're in a much stronger cash flow position with cash flow coming out of Taylor on a consistent basis. When we talk about an investment-grade credit rating, for us, it's about running our balance sheet through a low, sustained low period for a period of time and testing that we can actually keep that investment-grade credit rating.
We have a super strong balance sheet today. We still believe in capital management. We continue to buy back our shares. We added another AUD 100 million this year. We bought back about 15% of our stock over time, and the average price has been around AUD 3. We still think at today's prices, it's valuable to buy back.
Sticking to balance sheet management, one of the questions that's come in is about M&A. You know, you have been active in the past. You've changed the portfolio, as we've already discussed. You know, what commodities are you still interested in keeping an eye out on opportunities? If so, what are the commodities and jurisdictions?
I think as an organization, you've got to keep one eye on what's happening externally and those opportunities that present themselves. For example, Sierra Gorda probably sort of came as a bit of a surprise to us. We weren't expecting it to become available, nor were we expecting it to be as quite as attractive after we did the work on it, as it's turned out to actually be. We have a strong team that I think is very match fit because of all the transactions they've done over the journey. They're continuously looking at screening options. It's always through the lens of value, not just about scale. In that space, you know, we continue to focus on copper and zinc are the two commodities we have a preference for.
There's a question around power again, but in South Africa. Previously, power was constrained, but it looks like there are emerging new sources of power. You know, you're a big consumer, you know, what are you seeing in terms of, I guess, to paraphrase, would be, energy resilience?
Certainly, South Africa is investing a lot more time and money into actually improving their energy system. In saying that, I think because of their poor performance over the last period of time, a number of major people have jumped off their energy grid, so there's actually less demand at the same time. They put out a chart that shows residential and business demand is sort of sliding down at scale. Hillside actually uses 1,140 megawatts. It's the largest paying customer on the network. And even though the energy situation is improving, we still have record load shedding despite the rest of the country doesn't, and they use Hillside as that battery to try and manage that load shedding up and down. As a consequence, we have a very strong relationship with Eskom.
We also, obviously, have a big impact on South African jobs, probably more than 25,000+ when you use the multiplier impact. On top of that, we sell about 30% of our product at market price downstream in South Africa, in KZN, which is an important region, if you like, for the ANC. We're very confident about when our next contract expires in 2031, we can get an extension, but also the composition of that power is changing with nuclear renewables that we're looking to seek, so we have a greener contract going forward.
We're coming up against time here, but I'm going to ask you a similar question to how we started. Obviously, Matt's in the audience. He's going to be taking over shortly. You know, what is it that you know, what piece of advice would you give to Matt, and what is it that about South32 that really kind of, I guess, you know, you'd be excited to see about in the future?
Look, I mean, I think what I would say over the journey, I'd always go back to people. I think we have really high-quality people who are very much aligned with our purpose, and I think that makes a big difference about getting everyone, if you like, heading in the right, same direction and very focused on what we're trying to achieve as an organization. I think my advice to Matt would be, obviously, to come in, meet our people, listen to what's on their minds. Matt is an experienced operator, a long time in different organizations such as Glencore, Anglo, cut his teeth at Mount Isa, which is very similar to the mining method we have.
I think after we've reshaped the portfolio, and there's still more work to be done in that space, I think what he brings in that technical expertise will set us up even better for the future as you optimize the operations we have.
Great. Thank you very much, Graham.
Thank you.