Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Exxaro FD preclose 2025. All attendees will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions when prompted. If you should need assistance during the call, please tickling operator by keying in star and then zero. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand over to your host, Anda Mwanda of Investor Relations. Please come ahead.
Thank you, Operator. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to Exxaro's Finance Director's preclose message for the financial year ending 31 December 2025. My name is Anda Mwanda, Acting Investor Relations and Communications Head here at Exxaro, and I will be facilitating this session. I'm joined in the room today by our Chief Executive Officer, Ben Magara, our Finance Director, Riaan Koppeschaar, Executive Head of Gold, Caroline Shirindza, Richard Lillaike, who's our Executive Head of Strategy and Business Development, Leon Groenewald, Executive Head of Energy, and Melvin Govender, Executive Head of Technical Services. Also in the room, we are joined by a relevant supporting team. Our agenda for today is as follows: Riaan Koppeschaar, our Finance Director, will take us through the FD preclose and will also chair this meeting today. After that, we will have an opportunity for questions and answers. With that, Riaan, over to you.
Thanks, Under. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's good to invite you here again on our expected financial results for the group. As always, we start off with safety. On the safety front, we're doing well. We now, as at the end of October, 38 months without any work-related fatality, and we still forecast that our lost-time injury frequency rate will be at 0.05 within our threshold that we set in the group. Also, we will later on give you a bit of more detail on some of our strategic initiatives. You may have seen we announced the disposal of the ferroalloy business. Richard will give a detailed understanding of that, as well as on the acquisition of the manganese assets where we currently stand. You will see in the announcement that certain of the conditions have been fulfilled.
Also, last week, we announced the acquisition of two wind assets that we acquired from ACCIONA. We will ask Leon Groenewald to quickly give an update on that. If I delve into the financial results or the expected financial results, obviously being impacted by firstly prices, you will see we forecast the coal price to be $89 per ton compared to $105 a ton last year. On the iron ore, $100 per dry metric ton compared to $109 last year. We are in a lower pricing environment. The results are also impacted by the pressures associated with logistical constraints, as we pointed out in the past, as well as also on variable Eskom optic that we experienced in the group.
If we look at the production and sales numbers in the announcement, you will see that the coal production is in line with our guidance and also very much in line with 2024. When we turn to the sales numbers, you can see that on thermal sales, we are also within guidance, but we are expecting a 2% increase, mainly due to a 30% increase in domestic sales and also increased sales from our Matla mine as the life expansion projects are coming to a conclusion. Also, you will see metallurgical sales, 49% lower, driven by lower demand from the steel and metals industry in South Africa. Definitely at this point in time, we're forecasting within the guidance that we gave earlier in the year. Synergy, also good performance from availability. We forecast availabilities to be above the 97% threshold.
As you will see in the announcement, also that the wind generation this year is lower than last year, mainly attributed to lower wind conditions that we experience. I'm also pleased to announce that on the capital allocation front, we've completed the repurchase program that we announced in March 2025. We bought back just over 7.3 million shares, equivalent to 2.12% of the issued share capital. If you look at capital expenditure, you will see we forecast it to be about 7% higher compared to the 2024 number. It's mainly related to the track and shovel replacement strategy that we're embarking on at the Kgabi Masia mine, as well as the double benching project at our Belfast mine. On cash balances, the cash balance as at the end of October was at ZAR 18 billion.
Also just take note that there is still a provisional tax payment in December that we forecast at this stage to be about ZAR 1.3 billion-ZAR 1.4 billion. With that, I'm going to ask Richard to quickly give an overview on ferroalloys, as well as the manganese acquisition.
Thank you, Riaan. Pleased to say we've made very good progress in our sustainable growth and impact strategy through the announcements that we've made. On the ferroalloy divestment, we're pleased to announce that on the 31st of October, we successfully concluded the transaction after all CPs having been met. We sold the company to a consortium led by EverSeed, a new BE entity, in conjunction with management and employees. A truly transformational deal in the ferroalloy space, meeting our goals of what we set out to do when we announced the transaction in 2023. On manganese, we have made very good progress on the transaction announced on the 13th of May to acquire select manganese assets from Wilson Bentley Holdings. We are pleased to say that we have received all competition authority approvals, including Competition Commission and the Competition Tribunal, for the entire transaction.
We have also received ministerial approval under Section 11 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act for CP. These are two fantastic milestones in realizing our ambition of becoming a meaningful player in the manganese sector. We still have a few outstanding conditions to be met before we can close transactions. We are still aiming for a Q1 announcement, depending on how developments go on some of these outstanding CPs.
Thanks, Richard. Leon, that overview of the energy assets we acquired.
Yes, good morning all. I'm proud to announce that we've acquired a majority stake in the ACCIONA assets of Gouda Wind Farm, which is 138 MW, and Sishen Solar Farm, which is 75 MW. In line with our services expansion strategy, we have also acquired an 80% equity stake of the O&M company. The price is, as it's stated there, ZAR 1.7 billion-ZAR 1.8 billion. These two projects are window two projects under the REIPPPP program. They are 20-year take-up pay agreements. We believe that as part of our strategy as long-term shareholders in projects, we can extract further value out of these projects because our view is not short-term. Just to run the numbers, this adds another 117 MW net because it's only a 54.9% equity stake. That brings our portfolio to roughly 500 MW of in operation and in construction.
Thanks very much. Anda, we can probably at this stage then take any questions.
Thank you. Thank you, Riaan. We're now open to questions, and we'll answer those questions. Over to you, Operator.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please key in star and then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may key in star and then two to leave the question queue. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to key in star and then one. Our first question comes from Tim McClark of SPG. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you, Tim o kay.
Thanks. Good morning. Congratulations on the results. I've got a couple of questions, please. Can I just start with coal sales? We spoke to Ngela recently, and we've seen reports recently of quite good volumes in the second half on TFR on the coal line. I wonder if perhaps you could give us some color on the Waterberg link down to the coal line. My sense is that Waterberg line is remaining a bit of a constraint and limiting your ability to take advantage of potential additional export volumes. It sounds like there might be some leasing available from other participants on the line. That's my first question. I'll come back on the second.
Okay. Thanks, Tim. We'll ask Sakkie Swanepoel to answer.
Good morning, everyone. Tim, thanks for the question. Now, Waterberg remains a bit of a headache for us in terms of increasing the flow of tons from Lephalale down to RBCT. We see sporadic increases, and then it goes back again. We are in very constructive discussions with TFR now in seeing what we can do to increase the flow of tons there, including discussions with Transnet on the infrastructure side to see what we can do there as Exxaro to assist. Yeah, Waterberg remains more or less at the same levels that it was in the first half.
Thanks, Sakkie. Does that mean that your ability to lease or to ramp up if Transnet does perform is somewhat limited, or how much capacity do you think you can get out of the Mpumalanga mines?
Yeah, look at the capacity to lease might be a strong statement because sometimes people say they will lease capacity, but it is not at an economical tariff that they are willing to lease out. At this stage, as you say, we will not take on entitlement TFR or RBCT for the purpose of the Waterberg because the constraint remains on the line. That is not going to help us there. In Mpumalanga, we are not in discussion with anybody currently on leasing entitlement.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Sakkie. Just my second question, please, is on this renewables acquisition in the last couple of days. My understanding is that there's project finance debts of over ZAR 2 billion, ZAR 2.1 billion-ZAR 2.3 billion in the vehicle. I wonder if you could just answer or help us with two things just to help us modeling it. First of all, some idea of the kind of IRR hurdles that are contractually in place. Obviously, the assets have additional optionality beyond that. Then secondly, that services element, is it material, immaterial? Can you give us some kind of steer on contribution from the services side, please? Thank you.
Yes. Tim, let me go for it. The project finance is typical around two project finance. Talking to their tenants, they were about 15 year on average. That is typical for that. I think later rounds have longer tenants. If you look at what I can give guidance to the market is to say the project finance debt has not been refinanced, and that is part of the optimization. You can assume typical rates for those assets at those margins, so probably north of 300 basis points. From an IRR perspective, it fits in well with our stated through policy of getting the portfolio IRR of between 14%-15%. That is more or less what we are aiming for. On the services side, Tim, the idea is not I think services will start small.
The value add that we want there is firstly to learn the ropes on the solar side. We are inheriting a fully-fledged solar O&M team that does the maintenance for us. What this helps you with is having a firsthand understanding of this, and this then as part of our future business, where you usually outsource some of this, we will now bring that money into the company. That is the logic there. It is not necessarily a big money spender, but I think in terms of operational efficiencies and our views of long-term optimization of the assets, where you have your own people close to operations and really understanding that, that is part of the operation. As life progresses with more assets, one can certainly look at the business case, but in isolation, the IRR still adds up. Obviously, it is a capital-light business.
From your modeling perspective, it's not going to make a significant dent in that, but it's going to add up to the operational efficiencies in due course.
Thank you, Leon. That is most helpful. Thanks. I will pass to someone else. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Dibela Bixer of Ventbank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, everyone. Can I just confirm that you can hear me?
Yes.
Okay. We've got a couple of questions. Maybe the first one is to Richard. Just in terms of those tag-along rights that you spoke to when we initially announced the manganese deal, initially, it had sounded like this could have been done much quicker. Perhaps could you just take us through as to why does it feel like this has taken that much longer in terms of getting across the line for the tag-along rights? My second question is, on the metallurgical coal, you continue to produce above 2 million tons. Yes, there's been weaker demand from the industrials domestically on the metal side, as well as also on the steel side. Just take us through as to what's your thinking of continuing to produce at those levels, but perhaps your sales are now sort of below even 500,000 tons.
I know that perhaps you do blend some of your metallurgical coal with other thermal coal elsewhere. Can you just sort of make us understand that blending and what's happening there? I will ask my other two questions later on.
Thanks, Dibela. In terms of the preemptive or waiver process, the waiver of preemptives at Hotazel Manganese Mine were fairly straightforward and followed the timeline as we had indicated on announcements. We are now in possession of all those waivers and are finalizing consents on Hotazel. What we found on Mokala is the waiver of the preemptive was straightforward, but the exercise of the tag right was not. Because of the way of the structure of the shareholding agreements at Mokala, it requires, in our view, a revised sale and purchase agreement to be agreed between the parties. As soon as that is required, the process of agreeing commercial terms on similar basis to what we've agreed with incidentally becomes more complicated and opens up a new set of negotiations, which complicates the matter.
While we have, in our mind, obtained the waiver of the preemptive from Glencore, we haven't yet triggered the tag-along rights, as that will only be triggered on agreement in a revised sale and purchase agreement, which takes time. Hence the delays on the Mokala side.
Dibela, Sakkie here, just on the question about metallurgical coal, I think it's quite important to understand or to give the message first that we are not producing the metallurgical coal and stockpiling it. We do sell it, but we sell it as a thermal coal. To just maybe help you in the announcement that we brought out, if you look at the thermal coal production forecast for the year of 37 million tons, 124, and you will see we only sell thermal as 32 , 420,000. To that, you actually need to add the exports, which is about 7 million tons, bringing you to 39 million tons, which is then close to 2 million more than the production. You can see that some of our metallurgical coal that we produce goes into the South African metallurgical sector, and the rest we blend with our thermal coal in exports.
It looks as if we're building stock, but I can assure you we're not building stock.
Okay. Thanks for that correction, Richard. My other two questions are around Eskom. It does seem as though for the second half that Eskom uptake was much weaker, especially given that Unit 4 had actually come online in the second half. If I recall well in the half-year numbers, there was a bit of optimism about Eskom's uptake in the second half. Could you perhaps take us through as to what has transpired since the results of the first half? Secondly, I seem to recall that cost, obviously, you do not talk to cost in your pre-close statements, but given sort of the weak or slightly weak-ish production numbers, what can we expect on cost, given that it does seem as though production was constrained and therefore that denominator could be limited in terms of aiding in your cost numbers?
Could you just talk us through some of those things? Thank you.
Okay. Maybe starting on the Eskom side, Medupi, maybe I must first mention, really has had a very good year. Medupi is doing better than our own internal forecasts for the year, and it's producing very well. We are very comfortable with Medupi offtake and continuity of that offtake. Matimba, this time around, at Groenewald, is the one that's struggling. There are still operational challenges. There are stockpile challenges, but I think the major contributor to the poorer performance is a major program that Eskom is on at Matimba about controlling instrumentation replacement in the different modules. That renders quite a few of the modules to be out of production for a substantive period of time. I think Matimba is the one we understand why it is. The impact is just much bigger than what we thought.
I think it is something that we can look at as it will happen, but at some stage, that will also put Matimba at a better level for performance. Overall, with Medupi, very comfortable.
Just on the cost side, as you indicated, we do not give guidance now on cost, but you are correct to the extent that the reduction again is less. It has an adverse impact on the unit. We will fully report on that in March. Just to say there are ongoing cost measures in the group where we are trying to look at all of these issues.
Okay. Thanks, everyone.
Ladies and gentlemen, just a further reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to key in star and then one to place yourself in the question queue. Our next question comes from Nkateko Mathonsi of Investec. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Look, I have a quick question on the exports. Your guidance or your forecast is now 7 million, very much flat versus FY 2024. I just want to know in terms of the mix, how much was exported via Maputo versus what was exported via Maputo in the previous year? I think that will actually help us have a little bit of a read in terms of the impact on cost.
Yeah. Nkateko, good morning, and thank you for the question. This year, intentionally, we have pulled back our exports through Maputo, specifically from our Belfast operation because trucking at the prevailing price environment just didn't make economic sense for us. We have pulled that back. We are not per se chasing the export number. We are trying to chase the most value for the company. We have pulled back that export. We will see lower exports to Maputo than the previous period, and we will see quite a bit of an uptick in exports through RBCT, where TFR, I think, is really doing quite well. Even with the current constraints they still have, we are doing quite well on the RBCT side. You may have seen in the media that there is reported about 56 million ton per annum annualized number that is currently on the table.
We still hope they're going to get to 57, but we've seen quite a few weeks of 60 million tons equivalent as well. We are quite hopeful that in the new year, we can stabilize above that 60 million tons to RBCT and very constructive discussions with TFR.
That is helpful. Thank you, Sakkie.
Ladies and gentlemen, just a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to key in star and then one to place yourself in the question queue. With no further questions in the question queue, we have reached the end of our question and answer session. I will now hand back for closing remarks.
Thank you, Opereta. I'll hand over to Ben for his closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm very pleased that we continue to deliver on our promise. We have met basically all the production, sales, and fabric guidance, which I think Riaan has covered quite well. We continue to accelerate the prudent delivery of our strategy. I think Richard and Leon have articulated this quite well. I think the markets and the headwinds of coal prices are with us right now. While we have seen a turn from just below $80 a ton to about $84-$85 now, it's still very low numbers in the kind of cost of the marginal cost of production a lot higher than that. That's why clearly in Gateko, you can see the impact of reduced exports through Maputo because of the higher logistics costs in that route.
We are very pleased that we continue to meet the requirements, and I think the defensive nature of our portfolio helps us to continue to deliver on our promise. We have in the management structure, I think since the last announcement, we have also got Portuguese Toro, who is now our Executive Head for Commercial doing the logistics and marketing side and supply chain. We are very pleased that the management structure is now fully appointed and all the teams, the guys are in place, and we continue to prudently work on our strategy to accelerate all that. The loop and turnaround that Caroline and Melvin have been talking about, I think that is basically complete. We think we are starting the new year in a very good place, and we hope that the export prices smile at us because I think Transnet's progress is very helpful.
I am looking forward to the quarter one closure of the manganese transaction to get into our stable. Thanks, Richard, and thanks everybody for joining us.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for joining us, and we'll now disconnect your lines.