Good morning, and welcome to Glencore's 2021 financial results. Presenting today will be Gary Nagle, CEO, and Steven Kalmin, CFO. Gary, would you like to join us, please?
Thanks, Martin. Morning. Morning to everybody who's come in person and all those who are attending online on the Webex. Great to once again be able to do this in person. We'll kick off on a summary of highlights of our 2021 results. 2021 was a terrific year for the company. We've printed a record Adjusted EBITDA of $21.3 billion, a record marketing performance in our marketing and trading business, a EBIT of $3.7 billion, and our industrial business, a $17.1 billion Adjusted EBITDA. All of those records across our business.
As a result of the terrific results that we have, our net debt is now significantly below our cap of $10 billion, down to $6 billion, and as a result, we've been able to announce a $4 billion distribution back to shareholders. That will be made up of cash of $3.45 billion and a buyback of $550 million. What's driven these terrific results? Well, on the industrial side, we've really seen strong demand across the world as we've seen countries emerge from COVID, and we've seen a constrained supply environment, partly COVID driven, partly regulatory driven, partly geopolitically driven. On top of that, we have very low inventories across the world and across all commodities. It's really resulted in very strong margins across our business.
When we look at our business and our competitiveness in terms of our cost base, the margins are incredibly strong and have provided terrific results for us. On the marketing side, as I said, 2022 is a record results for our business, and the strong trading performance is in fact continuing into 2022. The market conditions remain favorable. We see dislocations in the market. We see arbitrage opportunities. Going forward, we continue to see those opportunities. Fortunately for 2021, a terrific result and hopefully a good one in 2022 as well. On the ESG side, just turning to our scorecard, we have a sector-leading climate change strategy. During the course of 2021, we in fact improved on that strategy.
Going into the year, we never had a short-term target for Scope 1, 2, and 3 emission reductions. We've now introduced that into our climate change strategy. We've said now by 2026 we will be down 15% across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. We've also increased our targets for our medium-term target of 2035, where we've now increased it from what used to be a 40% reduction, now a 50% reduction off our 2019 base year. Our net zero ambition for 2050 remains. On our social side, unfortunately it's very difficult to report, but we have had four fatalities in our business during 2021, and that is four too many.
We continue to work very hard day and night, Peter and his team putting significant effort into our SafeWork program. We've revised our SafeWork program, SafeWork Two. It's being rolled out. We are seeing some excellent results, but so far, not good enough. We are not there. We do believe in zero harm in our business, and we do believe we can get there. Diversity and inclusion, and our strategy around that was launched during the year, and continues on previous efforts done around our business on diversity and inclusion, and it's a key theme for me as CEO and for the management team. In fact, we have a task force set up of which I lead to ensure we drive that through our business.
On the governance side, and I've spoken this about this before, we have a best-in-class ethics and compliance program. I truly believe it is, and it's not something that is just a standing still product. We continue to work at it day in, day out to continue to improve our business and ensure we're a responsible and ethical operator. As announced this morning, we also expect to resolve the U.S., U.K., and Brazilian investigations during the course of 2022, and we've recorded a provision for these costs in our accounts. I'll now hand over to Steve on the financial details.
Good morning, everyone here physically. It's nice to join you again after a couple of years doing these things virtually. I think by now some of our slides and presentation and the flow is very familiar to many. We obviously had our investor update in early December, and from a financial perspective, I think this is clearly in terms of record territory, but also just clean good performances across the board, both in the P&L, the balance sheet, the cash flow application, the financial statements more broadly. I know Gary's covered many of these highlight points. Of course, EBITDA up 84% to $21.3 billion. We'll show the components in later slides. Translating into equity-free cash flow, $13 billion. That's the key number ultimately within any business.
That's what drives your debt reduction, your capacity to make distributions and payouts to one's shareholders and is testament to whatever return on equity that can be generated in these businesses. That's flowed through down to net debt, getting down to 6 below the 10 that we spoke about at the Investor Day in December, and allows for, facilitates both the base distribution that would have been paid regardless.
Once the base distribution is covered, we show the formulas of how we've calculated that later on, the $1 billion plus 25%, that leaves that surplus to determine what additional distributions that we may look to make. If we look on the industrial side today, clearly the biggest part of the business, not to diminish the huge contribution that marketing's clearly done as well, but across both metals and energy, we've seen a performance up 118% to $17.1 billion. The real kicker from H1 into H2 was in the coal business. We'll show some metrics later on. You can see in the energy products, just on the coal itself went from $0.9 billion in the first half, $4.3 billion in the second half, to give a full year result of $5.2 billion.
Annualizing it, obviously high levels at the moment, even on a conservative forward Newcastle coal deck that we give as well. So $17.1 billion, good contributions across the board. Of course, commodity prices, we'll see the industrial bridge on the next slide as well. You can see we've just shown the split H1. H2 was 6.6, 10.5 in H2, and just the industrials annualizing, conservative assumptions in terms of at least revenue on the coal side at $23.5 billion. So as we pick up into 2022, we've got sort of a higher 12% annualized tailwind even going into 2022 at current macros.
If we do look at what the industrial EBITDA bridge looks like, obviously the main bar is the price by $11.1 billion. Broad-based contribution across metals was $6.2 billion of that, with the copper business $3.7 billion. Both copper and cobalt contributing meaningfully there. Zinc was $1.1 billion, our business there, and $0.7 billion each from the nickel and the ferro business. Ferro itself is almost into a podium position. They had a great result from our South African business during the year, both in production and margins. The energy business was $4.9 billion, coal $4.5 billion.
What gets lost often in the numbers and it is a smaller part of our business, but you did see a meaningful turnaround just in the oil industrial business as well, where we have some upstream and some of the refining capacity and business we have done in South Africa. There was a meaningful turnaround also from 2020 to 2021. We've highlighted some of the price increases, average year-on-year on coal, 125 on Newcastle. Cobalt, copper, zinc, nickel, ferrochrome and Brent oil averaging towards sort of 30% and 50%. From a volume side, not much to speak of 2020 to 2021.
At point 3, we've commented on the challenges in South African coal and the constraints on the export line. Kazzinc's going through a transition generally in terms of zinc production. It's phasing out of the old before Zhairem gets ramped up. Murrin went through a large major maintenance shut, which happens every 3 to 4 years. We'll see a pickup in 2022 and to pick out in terms of grades. We would hope from the volume side to turn a sort of an orange bar into green or blue as we look into 2022. With Murrin coming back, we've got some extra cobalt production out of Africa. And of course Cerrejón on some pro forma basis would clearly come in 2022.
The cost side, I'm sure we're gonna get some questions on that later on. It has obviously dwarfed by the $11.1 on the price side, but we did see $0.9 of negative cost variances. At least 50% of that was in the pure energy, direct or potentially indirect. Calling out a few examples there. On the zinc side of the business, particularly our European smelting business, was massively impacted by the surge in gas prices and challenges that came in, particularly in Q4 2020. If you look at the specific results on the European smelting, our EBITDA for the year was $71 against a prior period of $327. We've seen $256 reduction just in that business.
That mathematically recalculates back in what our sort of business zinc cost is, where we normally give a credit through the mining side. That is where we have seen some particular pressure. We'll show some of the spot analysis as we do come through. Roughly a $200 million just year-on-year impact just on the zinc smelting business. Nickel Koniambo had its challenges early in the year. It closed much stronger in production with a 7,000 Q4 performance, but there was a sort of a $100 million there. General inflation in energy, which is the balance of the $600 million roughly energy, $300 million in just other $300 million. Particular countries have started seeing higher levels of inflation towards the end of 2021.
Kazakhstan was running about 7%-8%, South Africa about 4%-5%. The others starting to catch up, and that's more of a pressing issue today as we move forward. We'll talk a bit about that later on. That currency was a bit of a headwind of about 0.5%. It's turned into a, depending on which day of the week, bubbles up and down, but we're probably slightly positive as we go into 2022 on the currency side. If we then look at a few scorecards specifically on copper was the highest contributor, $7.9 billion. EBITDA 2021 contributing 37%. Good increases across the board in copper.
You can see the same smelting impact, the more concentrated in South America, Canada and Asia in those businesses that weren't as affected on the energy situation. Whether it's Africa, whether it's Collahuasi, Antamina, all their contributions is 7.9. A good cost performance down to 66.8 on what we calculated. If we look across to 2022 on the guidance, we're down to $0.41 a pound across that business at the moment, even a bit down from the $0.45, which we updated in early December. That's much a function of the continued improvements in some of the by-product pricing, particularly on cobalt. We'll show that spot analysis later on in pages, I think 19 and 27.
Production 2022, we went through all the production guidance. Nothing's changed since we were in early December. It's effectively Ernest Henry, as we go 2021 to 2022, falling off the charts and high margins at obviously 63% within the copper business. If we look in zinc, really calling out again that surge in European power prices, it did result in suspending some production, particularly down in Italy, just to manage both the sort of situation, the margin, the general excess of power prices as well. That's, we're in good company across the board there. Of course, energy high prices, higher gas, negatively impacting this in the business. It doesn't mean it's net-net overall bad for Glencore.
This is where we obviously felt some pain, but of course, across marketing, across the general energy and prices in those things, it has to a large extent been compensated elsewhere. In the zinc business, $2.5 billion, 12%. As we go into the 2022 spot analysis, we see costs coming down again with higher prices, again, byproducts in copper, in lead and the likes. We see an EBITDA moving more to about $3 billion or so. That's on the zinc side. Still very healthy margins across our overall business where we have assets in South America, Kazzinc, and obviously Australia. In terms of the nickel business, smaller part of the business today.
This is one, a lot of focus on nickel generally, battery technology, a good commodity for the future. Some of a lot of our growth capital is going into this particular business, particularly revitalizing, extending life of the Canadian business. A little bit coming tomorrow, some big projects. We start seeing those tons and expansions. You're gonna see a little bit of dipping, both in grade and nickel over the next two or three years, at least on the Canadian side. Then you've got Raglan on a deepening, coming obviously. Shorter term, we'll see a pickup in 2022. As I said, Murrin went through a major maintenance shutdown, and you can see we were 222,000 tons of nickel in 2021. We're holding still 115,000 this year, ±5.
6 or 7 thousand of that is Murrin coming back. We're certainly positioning for Koniambo moving comfortably into the twenties. That of course all pushes our cash cost across the nickel business from $454 down to $411. Hopefully we can see a near doubling in this particular business from $868. On a spot basis, you can see $1.7 billion off to the right. Financially speaking, the star of the show on the industrial side, clearly coal in the second half of 2021, $5.2 billion. You'd recall in early December, we said $5,355 is where we saw it coming for the full year.
We did note in our production report a few weeks ago that we saw a slippage of 1.5 million tons out of Australia. Production was fine. It was just the sales volume, which would otherwise have delivered in that 53-55 range. Those sales are gonna come through this year and at higher prices. It was actually a fortuitous slip in terms of the developing of these things. We'll delay in 2021, we'll pick it up in 2022, and that's looking quite good. A lot of people like looking at sort of composition in overall business, notwithstanding its strong EBITDAs. Coal, thermal coal share of group revenue last year was 4.2% within the overall pie, and 3.8% in 2020.
In terms of looking forward for 2022 guidance, again, we'll look at those numbers later on. We see spot EBITDA a little over $10 billion. That's using a $175 Newcastle number, which it's massively backwardated. We know obviously spot prices as well into the $200s. That's what we are reporting. So although it's spot, it's an annualized 12-month period. It's not, we're not guiding 2022 necessarily, because we've obviously banked 5 weeks of profits already in coal within January, February. Of course, we'll be annualizing well ahead of these numbers in those things. Looking at $175 applying over 121 million tons, but with a pickup in costs, and I'll go through those reasons later on.
The higher you drive Newcastle at 175, there's a lot of royalties particularly that are linked to the price, as well as the energy. We're up $6, and I'll show some of the numbers later on in terms of coal. On the marketing performance, up 11%, as Gary said, to $3.7 billion. Very broad-based, strong performance throughout, all departments contributing meaningfully. The big gain really in 2020 to 2021 was in the metal side, $1.7 up to $2.5. Solid contributions throughout. Energy still very respectable, $1.4, with a reduction just reflecting the exceptional results from the oil business in 2020, and coal performing very strongly, 2021 over 2020.
$3.7 billion the second year, of course, that we've been above that range is. I'm sure there'll be a question later on as to whether the range is still appropriate. We have delivered good performance there. If you look back on the bottom right, we've seen that sort of holding within that range quite well. We've had two obviously solid years above. With also Viterra, bottom left, you can see contributing meaningfully in that number, $473 million. That's our net of their income up from $211 million. We put a slide later on page 30 just to give a few highlights on what that business does on a 100% basis. It was well over $2 billion of EBITDA.
Net income was around $1 billion, which is our pickup. In H2, we've got $150 million of dividends. That was the portion to Glencore, so they would have paid out $300. Mechanically now, that just flows straight through to shareholders, because you generate that cash, we're below the $10 billion.
We're obviously 150 better off on our debt because of that, and that's absolutely one for one now mechanically calculated in additional shareholder returns, and that will continue to be the case with that particular operation as we go forward. A few repeated slides from our December update, so no reason to spend time on this, but it was just echoing and repeating the net debt managing around that $10 billion cap with distributions periodically return. The key for us is to generate the cash, not pay out in expectation of cash generate. Generate the cash, and then continuously at six-monthly cycles, reload back up towards that ten. So we are at that $6 billion now, and culminating in the obviously the $4 billion.
As we get through to the August, we'll generate cash flow clearly over the six months of the year. The base distribution's covered. All of it then to the extent is surplus. One can be flexible again around the portion that would be additional special cash and/or buybacks to continue those at that particular point in time. Cash coverage ratios, of course, down to the lowest levels I think this company's ever had at 0.29 of net debt to EBITDA. A follow-through on the slide we had back in December. Mechanically, we just run through the base, the $1 billion plus $2.4 billion, details on page 25, that you can see there. We've topped that clearly back up with a $550 million buyback. Meaningful opportunities coming in the, obviously in the second half.
We've just run through the flowchart logic in the green that Martin's put down, and I think it's all fairly clear and understood as we do the thought process there. From a CapEx perspective, nothing really to add since December. We're holding numbers. Well, we actually, we're $100 million shy. We [were] $4.5 billion in December, we came $4.4 billion. We've just rolled that $100 million timing-wise into 2022 into five four as opposed to five three. So no change cumulatively across all those periods. Maybe just cash flow. We were less net CapEx spend than some of you might have had because of $0.3 billion sale of PPE. You can see on the bar on the left.
That was, if you recall, we sold a royalty, the Red Chris royalty stream to a third party in about August, September. They announced it. There was $165 million or so. That was sale of PPE. We also had some old surplus land from sort of refinery in Texas, the Corpus Christi when it was showing. We sold that to a company that's looking to do energy exports out of the U.S. There was about $80 million of sale of some surplus land that came through in the second half of last year as well that helped the cash flow, helped the debt reduction in the business as well.
If we look through the cost trajectory feeding into the 2022 illustrative, copper continues to sort of move down the curve. $0.41 a pound down from $0.66. Continued both in a volume and pricing impact, particularly cobalt, but all the byproducts which it does enjoy in zinc as well. The zinc business from having reduced somewhat its cost to still -4, which is pretty good in anyone's mathematical calculations. Energy, European smelting clearly having an impact there. That's not necessarily going away anytime soon. We're just getting better byproduct credits and volumes and prices the way they've freshened up at the end of January to -8 cents. Nickel improves with production coming back in Murrin.
We're clearly hoping for and planning for an improved Koniambo performance as well as we look through 2022 up to the 125,000 tons. Coal, that's where you got the big jump from $52 cost up to $59. That's up about $6 at the $175. It's always gotta be anchored around, well, what's your price assumption? 'Cause a lot of variability in royalties against that price. Just that $53 up to $59, $6, $3 is purely royalties using $175. If we were using $137, which was the average in 2021, that $3 would of course come back. So would billions of EBITDA, so we're happy with that extra royalties to the various state and governments.
Energy is $2 of that. That's permanent. Clearly now with the pricing that we see in oil and gas. There's another $1 a ton across the coal business, which is sort of $150 million or so as well. What does that all mean? $26.5 billion of EBITDA, $14.1 billion. Everything is contemporized for spot flat like we do on the metal side. Coal, we consistently take a forward average 175 on, obviously on Newcastle there as well. Marketing, we've taken midpoints. Obviously the last few years we've come ahead of this in some actual sense.
That runs it at the $2.7 midpoint of the range, and then runs tax and interest based on illustrative flow-through tax and these things. We do have some tax losses in different jurisdictions that the actual tax spend may be lower than what's implied by the illustrative sense. With that good picture, I'll hand back to Gary to give some remark, closing remarks. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Steve. I mean, after that set of results, I think just to sum up our business in a picture. An industrial business which has the leading commodities we need in the decarbonized world. As we progress down the decarbonization journey, we have the right commodities, particularly copper, nickel, cobalt, along with our zinc business, as we run down also our coal business as a transition fuel towards a green economy.
On the other side of our business, we have a best-in-class marketing business that has outperformed two years in a row and continues to outperform across the commodities, across the market, the market intelligence, the arbitrage opportunities, and that's a real value-add asset within our business. An area of growth within our business, and we've seen over the last few months, a few announcements you would've seen around recycling. We're a firm believer in the future of recycling, the circular economy, the way the world is going, the requirement to not only use virgin metal, but to use recycled metal, not only from a legislation perspective, but from a responsibility perspective. This is an area of growth. It's an area we wanna be in, and it's an area that can become quite big within our business over the short, long, medium and long term.
Added to that, we also provide carbon solutions. We have a carbon desk right here in London. It's something that provides the ability to provide synthetic and actual clean carbon-free products, whether it ranges from green aluminum or carbon-free freight, haulage or whatever it may be. This is a value add that we provide to our customers and really adds value to our business. If we look at our 2022 priorities, as I said earlier, first and foremost is always safety. Our ambition is to be fatality-free and harm-free, and we will continue working at that every single day. We've relaunched our SafeWork program. We have seen benefits. As I said earlier, we had 4 fatalities.
We've halved those from the previous year, and I think it's the lowest number of fatalities we've had in the history of this business since we've been public. However, it's not good enough. We continue to work at it and we continue to see improvements. On the climate side, a lot of work going on across the board, particularly from Peter and his team. We've identified a number of value-accretive projects along our macro curve, which both reduces carbon in our business and adds value to the business. Our Scope 3 emissions, or in fact our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, are sector leading, the way we're running down our coal business. The decline in our coal business has resulted in material improvement or decline of Scope 3 emissions into the world.
We prioritize CapEx. We're investing more than 80% of our CapEx in 2021 into transition metals, into the green metals. We're working on our supply chains, working very closely with our suppliers, to ensure that what we take into our supply chain is carbon free or low carbon. We're also looking at all technologies. As you know, in Australia, we have a pilot project at the Millmerran Power Station, trialing a carbon capture plant. That's something that hopefully with time can prove to be commercially viable. As we do that, we really take a transparent approach. It's important that we report back to not only shareholders, but all stakeholders on the journey that we take into a decarbonized future. Lastly, efficiency and discipline.
Operational, it's an area that Peter also is spending a lot of time on, where we had some challenges. We've mentioned Koniambo before. We've seen an improved performance in Koniambo in the last quarter of last year from significant work and time that Peter and his team have spent on that operation, and in fact, a good start in January. However, Koniambo still requires more work, and there's a lot of work to be done, and that is, let's call it in intensive care right now, and we'll see how that asset goes over the next 6-12 months. Zhairem, the ramp-up of Zhairem, we've had some challenges. We've spoken about those challenges before, and again, a lot of work's been put into that, and we hope to see some improvements over the course of this year.
The other challenge or the other opportunity for us during the course of 2022 on operational side is the Mutanda ramp up. As you know, we're bringing that business back into operation. We've already been processing some of the stockpiles, and work is going on at the moment in terms of bringing back the mine. On our portfolio simplification, we've already disposed of 9 assets during the course of the last 6-12 months. We have 14 sale processes underway and 13 additional assets under consideration. Now, of those last two categories, the 27 various assets, certainly they're not going to all necessarily lead to a transaction or a sale, but each one will be focused on, and we will make sure we do the right transaction for this company if we have that opportunity.
On the financial side, leading from those results, we have a strong commitment to a BBB credit rating through the cycle. Our focus right now is to maximize cash flow. You've seen the numbers that Steven's presented earlier, $14.1 billion at spot illustrative prices, which results in great returns for our shareholders. With that, we'll open up to questions.
Hi.
Who's sending the question?
Morning, Dan. Morning. This is Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. I have two questions. First one is on the looming settlement with the DOJ. Does this looming settlement unshackle you to change your capital allocation strategy going forward or perhaps increase your risk tolerance along acquisition lines, for instance? That's the first question.
They're not related. Our capital allocation framework is very strict. It's remained in place for a period of time and will remain in place. We will make smart capital allocation when we have the opportunity, and we will make sure it's accretive for our business and it's unrelated to any regulatory settlement.
Thanks. The second question is for Steve. For the purposes of capital returns calculations, do you still make the adjustment for your net debt for marketing leases?
At the current level of marketing leases, no. We would need to leave the scope that if marketing leases for some reason was to materially increase that under normal scenarios, this is just OpEx dressed up as CapEx. If there was, Alex is over here on the oil side, if we had to embark on bigger leases around the LNG business.
Which is some storage or some shipping these things, and the number was not $1 billion, which is where it is at the moment, which in the scheme of things is not particularly material. Let's say that number was $3 billion. Maybe that would be appropriate to rethink again and to pull back up. At the moment, that's why I'm not giving you. At the moment, it's small enough that I'm not sort of making adjustments for it. I think it's appropriate if it was to get bigger that you should make adjustments for it.
Thank you.
Liam.
Good morning. Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Firstly, on the settlement, some sub-questions, I guess. First of all, how much confidence is there in the $1.5 billion figure? Secondly, can you clarify which investigations are not included in this? And finally, in terms of what you know about the terms, will there be any impact on the trading business moving forward in terms of how you operate and so on? And second question, just on agri, is that included within that set of 14 assets which are up for sale, and can you outline some of the options that you're thinking about for that business? Thank you.
The $1.5 billion, Liam, is our best estimate right now. It includes our best estimate for the U.S., all the investigations in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil. It excludes the Dutch and the Swiss investigations. Will it impact our trading business? You know, our trading business hasn't really been impacted by this anyway, by the investigation so far, and I don't see why it should. Once we settle this, we wanna put a line under this investigation, move forward and continue to do good business like we have been doing. With respect to Viterra, not gonna comment on whether it's included in those 13 or 14 assets. But what I can say is that we don't believe Viterra is accurately reflected in the value of the Glencore share price.
We are looking at ideas around Viterra to be able to provide that see-through value in our share price for our shareholders.
Danielle.
Thanks. Danielle Chigumira from Credit Suisse. Firstly, on the Bluebell suggestions of a coal spinoff, it seems to inherently accept that you're the best operators of the asset, so you should maintain governance of those assets and run them down over time. Are you seeing that opinion being reflected in the broader investor base, as in an evolving acceptance that selling coal assets doesn't do anything for sustainability? That's the first question.
Hi, Danielle. Yes. I mean, Larry Fink himself says that in his letter that he sent out, three or four weeks ago. Absolutely. We've had a number of shareholders call us and express their support for our strategy, and it's reflected in our strategy that we put to the shareholders to our vote at the AGM last year, where we got close to 95% approval. The continual engagement with our shareholders certainly supports that strategy.
Thanks. That's very clear. In terms of growing the recycling business, do you have a target or an ambition for how much of the marketing business or industrial business that should represent over time in the long term?
No, we don't have a target. We just believe it's an opportunity to grow. We see legislation coming in Europe and potentially in the US where they will legislate how much recycled material needs to go into manufacturing within those territories. We believe it's a great opportunity, particularly given our footprint within those, our industrial footprint or the smelters and the likes that we have in Europe, the relationships we have, the ability to supply from our operations, the right materials. It's not a target, but we believe it's an area that we can grow in this business, and it's the right area to grow into.
Thank you.
Ian.
Hi, it's Ian Rossouw from Barclays. Just a question on the operational side, maybe for Peter or Gary to start. Could you maybe just give some details on Zhairem there? I know you've mentioned there's been challenges on the ramp-up. Maybe just give an indication of your confidence in meeting the guidance for zinc for this year. And then maybe Koniambo as well. You said it's in ICU. What's the sort of thinking around timing there for ramp-up or other decisions or alternative options?
Yeah, on Zhairem, I mean, we've given our guidance. We're standing by our guidance. It is a project, it's a terrific project, but it has some challenges within some of the state of the material, a lot more finer than we thought it would be. We did have some challenges in terms of the ramp-up. As you know, we had a fire at the plant, and we had some significant COVID restrictions. We've been able to get back on the ground. We have engineers at the plant. We're reworking parts of the construction and parts of the engineering design.
Peter believes that it of course is achievable what we've put out there, but there are some challenges still ahead, but we do see improvements coming every day. On Koniambo, as I said, has had a good fourth quarter of last year and in fact had a very good January as well. It started raining there in February, so this month perhaps not as good, but that's expected with the rainy season. It hasn't performed over time, as you know. You know, having one quarter of good performance or four months of good performance is not good enough for us. We want a steady, stable operation that provides significant sustained cash flow, positive returns for us.
If it doesn't, we will look at other options. At the same time as working on that asset and ensuring we improve it and get it to a steady state, we are looking at other options for it.
Thanks. Just a second question maybe for Steve. On the $1.5 billion provision, you were saying you expect to settle sometime this year. Would that then therefore impact your thinking around cash returns? Will you make an adjustment for that expected settlement for the second half?
Well, obviously depending on timing when and how, it would be something we would have to ultimately it's gonna come out of the coffers, and that will eat into the equity cash flow the business generates. It will clearly come at the expense of that exact amount of distributions that would otherwise afloat. Whether the timing impacts in August or towards the end of the year, we will have to be obviously mindful of it at some point. But ultimately, it's gonna be, I mean, whatever the cycle is, that will come at the expense of whatever distributions might otherwise have been payable.
Okay. You won't preempt it, you will then maybe rather impact if it's in the second half, it would, after August, it might impact the February number instead of August.
Well, you know, obviously we'll know more in August. I mean, than what we know now, and we'll see. We'll do what's appropriate.
Okay, thanks.
Patrick.
Hi, good morning. It's Patrick Mann from Bank of America. I'll take the bait, Steve. Is 2.2-3.2 still the right number to think about for the marketing business? What's driven the outperformance these past couple of years? Thanks.
You know, I think it is the right range still. I think we need to get through. Let's see what a potential tightening cycle is. Let's see what impacts that may have on sort of economic activity and the like as we sort of go through. I don't think, in terms of volatilities, in terms of sort of geopolitics, in terms of trade flows, we've seen anything in the last 2 years that can compare historically over sort of the previous 6, 8, 9 years. Our business is growing, that's the other point. That we are adding elements. Cobalt's bigger as some of the diversification in the energy side, LNG, power, carbon, various things that Gary obviously mentioned.
I think it's probably let's see through another year, see sort of 2022, and see if it's appropriate. It's nice to be, I mean, all the questions over the last 10 years is when are you gonna be at the top end of the range? 'Cause we're bouncing around the middle in 2s and 2.4s. It's nice to be able to be there and even exceed that and be thinking about the range being a bit conservative. It's a nice position to be in. I think let's just keep the range for now and go from there.
Thanks.
Operator, can we please take some calls from the line, please?
The first question is from Christian Jour from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. Just a general take on the market. You've seen that semi-ban on Indonesian exports on coal, and obviously China is trying to dig a bit more. What's your take on it? Do you think we're gonna see some ongoing shortages on the coal side, especially in China?
Well, certainly you see it already. I mean, Newcastle coal prices are close to $300. You know, the Chinese economy seems to be coming back. Let's see what happens after the Olympics. Generally across Asia, you're seeing significant demand for power, as economies recover from the COVID impacts. With that, you know, the competing fuels is LNG, which is also pricing at significant premiums to the equivalent of coal. The demand for coal remains strong. The supply side has been impacted from not only the Indonesian ban, but we see nobody building new coal mines because of the difficulty to raise funding and to get approvals for coal mines. We ourselves are closing our coal mines, responsibly running it down.
There's the supply side constraints which continue, whether it's the short-term things like the Indonesian ban, or longer-term non-investment in coal mines or new coal mines. Demand looks strong both in China and the rest of the Asian region.
Thanks. On the same line, these energy issues that you're facing or all are facing in Europe in terms of costs or potential shortages in China, do you think this will continue to interfere with production at smelters in the next quarter?
Most likely, yes. I mean, power prices are very strong. They're volatile. We won't run operations which are cash negative. It makes no sense. We've been forced to curtail our smelters in Europe or the operation of our smelters in Europe as a result. With continued high power prices, we'll continue to do that.
You've got no visibility yet on when you may be able to accelerate production again?
You know, we watch it very carefully. Of course, we have a power desk here that provides us their views on where they see the power market going. At this stage, we've got no plans to bring back that production.
Understood. Thank you.
Next caller, please.
Thank you for your question. The next question from Christopher LaFemina from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just to follow up on the $1.5 billion provision. So you didn't mention in the, at least I didn't see in the release any commentary regarding the potential for the DOJ to require a corporate monitor at Glencore. I think last October, the DOJ changed its guidance regarding corporate monitors, and I'm wondering if we should expect there to be a corporate monitor installed at Glencore. If that's the case, to the question regarding how it might impact your marketing business, what might change if there is a monitor installed at Glencore? Is that something that is negotiable between you and the DOJ? Thanks.
We can't speculate on that. All we can say is, we've put our best foot forward in terms of what we expect the provision to be, and we've advised that we expect to complete those three investigation geographies during the course of 2022. We can't speculate on anything further than that.
Okay, thank you.
Next caller, please.
Thank you for the question. The next question from Dominic O'Kane from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question. I've got three short questions all sort of quite linked. Gary, with 27 assets under review, could you maybe just talk to us a little bit how you see the long-term industrial strategy, specifically how you want to grow this business over the next 5 to 10 years? Secondly, on Viterra, you mentioned Viterra in the context of growing the business broadly. Would you consider increasing your stake in Viterra here? And then final question, as you mentioned Viterra being undervalued, we could probably make the same argument for coal, specifically given where coal prices are. Is there any reason why Glencore wouldn't undertake a settlement this year, a benchmark settlement with utilities?
Could you maybe remind us of the contract mix by % you sell in the contract versus spot?
Okay. On the sales processes, as I said, we're not going to give running commentary on each sales process, but where we're going as a business and on the industrial side, these assets that are up for sale or potential sale or being reviewed, these are assets which are subscale. They don't really move the needle significantly within Glencore. They take up management time. They bring certain risks that don't come with the kind of reward that we want. It's just a simplification of the portfolio. It doesn't really change what we are as a business or who we are as a business. It just helps management focus and management attention on the right assets at the right time.
We shouldn't get caught up in sort of the detail of what these potential 27 assets may be or what they would do to the business, because they would not fundamentally change the business. What we will continue to do is invest in our own business. As we said before, more than 80% of our CapEx in 2021 went into our metals business, our decarbonization business, so as to speak, and we'll continue to do that. We have significant amounts of brownfield opportunities within the key industrial assets or the key industrial minerals required for decarbonization. We have great brownfield projects in copper. We have nickel brownfield projects. We have cobalt brownfield projects, and those are the areas that we're gonna focus on to grow the business.
We'll only bring on those projects and those additional tons when the market needs those tons. We certainly don't wanna bring them on too early. We don't wanna be the result of a market correcting as a result of our tons. We do have those projects, and that's certainly where we can grow organically within our business. As I spoke earlier, recycling is also an area that we can grow in, and we're looking to grow in. We've become more than just a miner. We've become a bit of an urban miner. Because there we're able to harness our marketing network, harness our existing infrastructure through smelters, our supply contracts that we have in place, and use that to build a recycling business over time. Now, how big that is over time, who knows?
It is an area of growth for us and an area of responsible growth. Your second question was on Viterra. Would we go beyond our current holding in Viterra? I don't think so. We would not. We got very happy with our partners. We work very well with them. We're very comfortable. Viterra is an independently managed business, and we're quite happy with our stake as it is. What was the third question, Steve?
Coal prices.
Coal prices.
Spot recontract and
I don't. Do you know the exact split of contract versus spot? I mean, the negotiation with the Japanese utility is, you know, as you know, it's a Japanese financial year contract, so it runs April through March. Negotiations haven't yet started, but obviously we will be talking to our partners in Japan to set that benchmark. We have two sets of pricing. There's the bigger set that comes now and then the smaller set that happens in October. I don't know the exact tonnage. We can come back to you on that. I don't know if you know them off the top of your head.
Certainly not as material as it once was. I think the certainly the rolling spot and indexes are much more relevant than necessarily. I mean, last year's sort of was a little over $100. It's looking a bargain and stuff like that. That's a lag even on current coal earnings. Of course, when that rolls forward in whatever tons that means, you'll reset that at high levels of course as we go forward. It's not as material as it once was. Everyone used to hang on to what that big sort of settlement was that used to come through, but now it's just not as material, and I don't think giving those numbers exact mix is also not an exact science.
It depends what supply and demand is at the time.
Okay, thanks. Next caller, please.
The next question is from Sylvain Brunet, from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, gentlemen, and congrats on the numbers. Two questions for me, please. The first one in Chile, given the new government soon in place, could you remind us perhaps of your tax stability agreements and also whether any of the uncertainty at the moment has already delayed any of the decisions, investment decisions, I'm thinking Collahuasi or if it was still early days anyway. My second question is on marketing. When you talk about growth, I'm interested to get a sense of the underlying growth you're still able to achieve in the business and whether that is like situated on some, I mean, some geographies or some particular commodities where you still see potential to grow, and if you could quantify that versus, I don't know, GDP growth or something. Thank you.
All yours.
What's that?
On the tax stability. Do you wanna talk about the tax stability?
I mean, all of our operations have varying degrees of stability still in place. Obviously, Collahuasi is the big one. I think it's, I mean, Peter, you may... 3-4 years still? Irrespective, I mean, obviously, there's sort of stability or not stability the country needs to sort of moving through its phase now to work out how to sort of chart the course going forward between government and industry, and that'll still and that is obviously still gonna take a lot of time. I mean, we were not ready today to pull trigger on any massive Chilean expansion. There's a lot of technical work that's going on at Collahuasi and other operations.
Ultimately, it will be a factor in terms of what economically did make sense in terms of that particular regime and what projects and how you scope it up and scale it up. That will be relevant across the whole industry, whether it's ourselves and anyone else as to what the investment landscape looked like and what sort of returns and where to spend one's marginal dollar. That needs clarity, clearly, at some point, because the world needs more copper, and there is clearly deposits there in varying degrees of grades. We'll see how that all plays out. In terms of marketing growth, we have fairly mature businesses in many of our commodities. I mean, I would say in the natural gas, power, carbon areas.
I know within the historically more liquid side of the oil business, you'll see certainly a mix change over many years, just as a function of market mix as well as countries. That business for us has good growth potential, clearly in some of those other areas.
Yeah, I would say LNG is an area that we're gonna certainly grow in. We've already grown in it. You've seen us announce a number of projects or a number of partnerships. That's an area of growth within our marketing business. Obviously, we're not gonna grow for the sake of growth. We're gonna grow to make margin. Clearly, with the demand for battery metals, we certainly see growth in our nickel marketing business and our copper marketing business, and our cobalt marketing business. To an extent, also zinc. Aluminum becoming a lot more interesting these days.
Obviously, price is very good, but, you know, a significant amount of aluminum being used in the automotive industry because of the light or the light nature of the metal and the heavy batteries. Another area for growth. All of those, which are the commodities that we're strong in, that we already market in, we see potential for good growth.
Okay, back in the room. Jack?
Great. Thank you.
Hi, thank you. It's Jack O'Brien from Goldman Sachs. First question, you've talked quite a lot about various commodities being in deficits at the moment. Your own CapEx steer includes fairly limited growth CapEx. Can you just confirm sort of looking forward that, you know, you won't be tempted to invest in new greenfield? I know, you know, you've talked about various brownfield opportunities, but from your perspective, should we sort of be ruling out that larger growth CapEx on top?
Yes. We are not bringing on any tons into this market, whether brownfield, greenfield or otherwise, unless the market really needs it. We need to see sustained periods, and that's not six months. We need to see sustained periods of market deficits and good prices that incentivize responsibly bringing tons into the market that don't erode margins, but supply into a growing demand. Don't expect big CapEx on greenfield projects, wherever it may be, for some time.
That's very clear. Thank you. The second, you've talked obviously a lot about portfolio simplification. M&A spec is starting to do the rounds in the market again. You know, how would you think about sort of opportunistically adding to your portfolio, given some of the interesting growth opportunities in various commodities?
Look, we've got a very strict capital allocation framework and policy, and we follow that. We are opportunistic when it comes to things, as you mention. Our focus is on our core portfolio and what we know and where we wanna grow. Of course, commodity prices are good, and we've gotta make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves and start spending money when, you know, sort of at prices which may not be sustainable for long periods of time. We are open to M&A, and we would look at opportunities if the right opportunity came up, and we were of the view that was value accretive and strategically right for our business.
Just one final point of clarification. As the business throws off more free cash during the first half, and you get to the interims and there should be another distribution, how are you thinking about that balance between the buyback and the special at this juncture?
I think that's also something that we would. I mean, you go and talk with 100 investors, you'll get 175 different answers on this. It's another opportunity in the next three weeks to when we do engage much more and seek varying views. I think a combination is always sort of sensible. You tend to sort of just thread it sort of down the middle in terms of those things. Of course, we'd look at what market outlook was. We'd look at our own views on value. We would ordinarily have had a bias, and we've spoken about that, of just paying out the cash and let our shareholders decide what they wanted to do to reinvest.
They can treat it as a quasi buyback by just bringing their money back in. It has the same economic impact ultimately on the equity story. We'll need to obviously come back in August and think about it. We were limited now in what we could do buyback. You saw if we were at $5 billion, we might have done another $1.5 billion or something in terms of buyback. That was getting up to $10 billion. We don't want to immediately within two months of setting that policy stray from it. I think it makes sense. I think it's gonna be another balance. If our share price was GBP 9 in August, I might not be chasing that with buybacks.
Let's see where we're at in August.
Ephrem, please.
Three questions. Firstly, on coal. Can you disaggregate that $8 per ton increase in cost into how much of it is royalties linked to the price versus a mixed effect with obviously your consolidating Cerrejón 100%? How much of that is that contributing to that big increase? Because I'm trying to get a sense as to what your normalized coal costs should be once the sort of prices normalize on the other side. Second question. This is a bit of counting the chickens before they hatch. The recycling business, would that more fit under marketing or under industrial? Because I assume there'll be a lot of collecting batteries from the customers and then kinda supplying metals back. It's a closed loop.
In a sense, it fits in more with the marketing side rather than the industrial side, I would have thought. Again, just wanted your thoughts on how you think about that business. Thirdly, on the comment that you made on Viterra, the cash distributions going straight back to shareholders, just wanna clarify that's assuming net debt is below $10 billion. It's not that any cash from Viterra goes straight back into shareholders irrespective of the net debt level.
Your last one's easiest. Assumption correct. It's below 10. Once you're below 10, any cash sort of mechanically comes back. It's not just a dividend from Viterra, it's the sale of these, any of these, some of these processes clearly that have gone, that are going on as well. The increase in the coal, I think I went through those numbers. It was more closer to $6 was the increase, 21, 3 of which was the royalty linked. 2 was the energy resetting to where we are at the moment in terms of diesel and prices generally. A dollar was just general inflation across the coal portfolio.
Obviously these things goes in waves, but three of that six would revert back to other levels if prices were to, say, average last year's prices in Newcastle, which is 137. Hopefully they stay 175 and above, and it's fantastic having $60. The Cerrejón impact was worked into the numbers from last year at the sort of 53-odd number. We've already brought that in. We'll just obviously have the full year Cerrejón impact that will come in in August and just and obviously look at that number. I think recycling
Yeah, I mean, I think I'll take that one. The recycling business is. You know, when we report our businesses and we report, you know, sort of distinct business profit centers in terms of industrial and marketing, that's not how we operate in practice. Marketing works hand in hand with industrial and likewise. That is a continuation or that's always been the model of our business, and it'll continue into how we build the recycling business. You're absolutely right. Marketing will have a key part in terms of sourcing the recycled material, collecting the recycled material, redistributing and selling the product. In terms of processing it potentially through like we do now in our Horne smelter, in Sudbury, in Nikkelverk, and potentially repurposing other assets that we have, that will be done by industrial.
That's not two people who don't talk to each other. These are two people who sit right next to each other in the office and work hand in hand. That's the model that we have, and that's how we can grow this business, using the expertise on both sides.
Thanks.
Please, and Myles, please.
Yeah, thanks. Maybe first question on Katanga. Obviously had a softer fourth quarter, the weakest we've seen in a couple of years because of power issues. Is this something we need to worry about, that there may be more occurring, or is it sort of one-off and we'll be back to the 300 million ton sort of run rate?
Still doing 300 million tons, but
Thousand tons.
Yeah.
All day.
Yeah.
Problem solved.
We might have a few more tons, but the price would drop. No, we did have some power issues. It wasn't the only issue. We did have a number of other issues, and you do see intermittent power issues in the DRC. We're working closely with the power provider and the government to ensure that we do have stable supply. Yes, power does go, and we do have issues, but we're working to stabilize that issue.
It's not gonna be like the bad old days for Katanga, where power was massively impacting production each quarter.
I don't believe it will be.
Maybe just on Cerrejón as well. Now you've got, you know, full control of the asset. Do you see operational sort of synergies, sort of marketing synergies? You know, how should we think about Cerrejón production over the next sort of 2-3 years?
Cerrejón production will remain flat. We've said as part of the commitment or part of our climate change commitment, buying out the partners, we will not increase the production at Cerrejón. That was the risk of allowing our former partners to sell it to other parties. They would have wanted to increase production. They wanted to extend the life of Cerrejón. We certainly won't be increasing production at Cerrejón. We'll remain flat and then run that business down until the end of its lease life, which is in the early 2030s, and then we'll hand it back to the government. Certainly don't expect any increases in production.
In terms of synergies or so to speak, well, we do believe there are improvements in terms of mining, where we can save costs, where we can do things slightly better and improve the margins within the business. On the marketing side, we certainly believe that we can add additional value on the marketing side, given the portfolio approach that we have in our business, given the ability to arbitrage, move cargos around the world within our marketing business. Having the additional Cerrejón tons in our book does give us an opportunity to create additional margin for ourselves.
Then maybe just finally on Viterra again and the Gavilon transaction. Can you give us a sense of what multiple that is? What multiple you think a sort of trading, sort of agri trading business should be trading at, and how much hidden value there is there? Is this the transformational deal that gives Viterra kind of a life of its own, potentially on the markets?
I mean, Steven can talk on the multiple, but this is certainly transformational for Viterra. It is a terrific business. It has global reach, a global network, and was clearly missing one piece in the puzzle, which was the North American, particularly the U.S. market. Gavilon certainly fills that. Now it does punch above its weight. It's certainly up there with the ABCDs, and we see it as a real player within that agri market. A critical transaction for that business, and it is a transformational deal for Viterra.
I think rather than multiples, I'd approach it. We expect to get some good IRRs on that business. Post some synergies. Obviously, you've got to get in there and you've got to rewire the sort of flows in the business and also look at-
Mm.
At what you want to keep and maybe what's non-core also within that that you would need to do. In terms of overall return standalone good, what it does to the overall business itself in terms of its ultimate multiple that it would be able to achieve in whatever scenario that would be improved by the combination with this business in terms of geographic coverage, diversification, scale, all those factors that you would sort of attribute in that business. Clearly transformationally important and sort of financially relevant, of course.
One very last question, which is kind of going back to what Danielle was asking earlier on coal. Is it now? You know, if you look at your spot numbers, you know, coal EBITDA is gonna be over 30% of the group. Do you think that could be an issue with shareholders? I mean, or potential shareholders, that now that, you know, it's a victim of its own success, that suddenly it is a lot more material within Glencore.
What's the long-term coal prices, Myles?
Too low.
No, I don't think it will be, because our strategy isn't around percentage of profit. Our strategy is just to responsibly run down this coal business, and that's what shareholders want to see. They want to see that medium to long term, and short term for that matter, you are being a responsible operator. We are putting our money where our mouth is, which is saying, yes, we will run down this business. We are shutting three mines in the next three years. We are not keeping those mines open because prices are good. We are shutting them down, and we'll continue to do that. So whatever percentage of the earnings it is doesn't really matter to shareholders. They want to see that we're committing to our ESG commitments, our climate commitment, and that's what we're doing. Then why do we de-rate? The markets are good.
We can make a lot of cash flow out of it. We're taking that cash flow and we're either gonna give it back to shareholders or invest it in recycling businesses, copper businesses, nickel businesses, which are the backbone for the decarbonization of the world. In fact, the more money we make out of it, the better it is long term, because that will bring on more copper, it'll bring on more cobalt, it'll bring on more nickel, and it'll grow a recycling business, which is gonna be critical for the decarbonized world.
Whereas a standalone coal business would invest that, those cash flows in coal, growing coal, as you'll see in other companies.
Okay. With that, I'll hand back over to Gary to close out.
Not much more to add to that other than to say we are committed to a very good 2022. We've started the year well. We committed to a safe operation, a fatality-free operation. We've made our climate change commitment. It's set in stone. We will keep to that commitment. We look forward to a safe, responsible and successful 2022. Thank you all for joining us.