Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Glencore 2025 half-year results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question-and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Martin Fewings, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for joining us wherever you are. This morning, from the Glencore side, Gary Nagle, CEO, Steven Kalmin, CFO, and our Chief Operating Officer, Xavier Wagner, will be presenting today. I'll hand over to Gary now.
Thanks, Martin. Good morning, everybody, and good afternoon for those dialing in from other parts of the world. Thank you for joining us for our first half results presentation for 2025. The presentation is up on the website. Some of you will have it already. I think Martin sent it out to many of the analysts. We'll skip straight to slide four, which is a familiar slide to all of you. We kept it the same format so it allows for easy understanding of our presentation and our results and give you our 2025 first half scorecard. We all know this year it started off with weaker commodity markets, some economic uncertainty around geopolitics, around tariffs, and we've seen, despite that, a very pleasing financial result for Glencore.
Our adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year, $5.4 billion, made up between our industrial asset business and our marketing business. Focusing a little bit on each separately first. The industrial asset business and an adjusted industrial EBITDA of $3.8 billion. That, despite very low, in particular, coal prices, period on period, we've seen Newcastle coal prices down more than 20%, and we've seen hard coking coal prices down as much as 33% in the first half of the year versus the first half of last year. Naturally, we would expect to see a lower adjusted industrial EBITDA. On the positive side, we've had a very, very strong result from our zinc gold business. In particular, the zinc gold business out of Kazakhstan, which has benefited from strong zinc exposure in our Kazakh and our Kazakh operations.
We've also had a slight disadvantage in the first half of the year, which will come back in the second half of the year, simply because we have a mismatch in the weighting of production of copper in the first half versus the second half. As you would have seen from our production report last week, our copper production is heavily weighted towards the second half of the year. In fact, 60% of that will come out in the second half of the year and only 40% in the first half. It's a temporary change in weighting. These are largely expected operational factors which will come back in the second half of the year, much of it related to grade, one or two other things, and we can do a deep dive into that a little bit later. Xavier's here, who can help a lot with that.
We're also very, very happy to have EVR as part of our reporting suite for the first half of this year. It wasn't part of our reporting suite for the first half of last year. It contributed an adjusted EBITDA of $786 million. Those of you who joined us on our EVR site visit a month ago would have seen the top-class Tier 1 asset that we've now brought into Glencore, the amount of value creation and synergies that we're bringing in. We have a superb operational team there, a very exciting multi-decade, low-cost, high-quality asset in an excellent geography. That rounds out the highlights and sort of main issues that have impacted our industrial adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year. Moving on to marketing, a very pleasing result given the type of uncertainty we've seen.
We spoke a bit about this at our previous results presentation where a lot of the uncertainty and volatility within the market is not always something one can capitalize on from a marketing perspective because these are not structural arbitrage opportunities where things like tariffs are being announced on Monday, changing on Tuesday, and being scrapped on Wednesday. These are not areas where one can position yourself for an expected arbitrage in the long term. With that said, we've had a very pleasing marketing result coming in at $1.4 billion adjusted marketing EBIT for the first half of the year. That is annualizing above the middle of the range, our old range, and I'll talk about the new range in a second. That's annualizing above the middle of our old range of $2.2 billion- $3.2 billion. It's been challenging energy market conditions.
However, the metal side had done particularly well, and in particular, we caught our copper with the very low TCRCs and a very tight concentrate market that's allowed our copper department to have a very healthy Q1 marketing result. With regards to our marketing range going forward, we've had a number of questions for many years around when are we going to adjust the marketing range. Steve's been quite clear that we wanted to make sure that, A, we had moved into a new sort of era of where we're comfortable on the marketing range, and also to have a bit of clarity once we knew that the Viterra earnings were moving out of our marketing business on the sale of Viterra to Bunge. We concluded that sale on the 2nd of July this year, and therefore, the marketing earnings come out of that range.
The old range of 2.2 - 3.2, in fact, if you remove the marketing earnings from Viterra, let's call it an average $200 million a year, maybe a bit higher in some years, a bit lower in other years, was ex-Viterra probably $2 billion- $3 billion. We've now, on an ex-Viterra basis, increased the range from $2.3 billion- $3.5 billion going forward. The midpoint part of the range has now moved up to $2.9 from effectively a $2.5 ex-Viterra, which is a 16% increase in the midpoint of the range. We're very comfortable with that, and we look forward to achieving that profitability in the years ahead. Before we move on ahead, on our net debt to adjusted EBITDA, we're coming in slightly over 1, 1.08. Just to point out, we did close Viterra a few days later than we expected to.
That was meant to close just before the year end. It closed on the 2nd of July, as I noted. Had it closed on the 29th or 30th of June, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA would have been 1, which is a very comfortable position to be in. Our cash generated by operating activities is a very healthy $4.3 billion. As we've announced previously, we are repaying our shareholders handsomely, $3.2 billion of announced shareholder returns. We have our base dividend under our very clear and transparent capital framework. We've also already completed a $1 billion buyback, and we've announced another up to $1 billion buyback to be completed by our annual results. We are paying back our shareholders for their continued loyalty and very comfortable and happy to be able to return those, make those returns to shareholders.
Moving on to slide five, we have announced with our production results last week and a little bit more granular detail today around some organizational reviews that have resulted in approximately $1 billion of cost savings, sustainable cost savings on an annualized basis across the business versus our 2004 baseline. What we've done is a comprehensive review across our industrial portfolio. We have streamlined our operating structures. We've optimized our departmental management. We've identified opportunities to support enhanced technical excellence and operational focus across all the businesses that we run. As a result of that, certain changes have been made, including the creation of a combined nickel-zinc department. As you know, there were two separate departments previously. They also have management oversight over our overall custom metaprocessing asset portfolio, which has created a lot of synergies and a lot of cost savings for us.
I mean, that's just one sort of initiative. There's close to 300, or I think a little over 300 different initiatives and programs on the go. All of those have led to approximately $1 billion a year of recurring cost savings across these initiatives and across the entire business. These include optimization and savings of headcount, energy, consumables, contractors, maintenance, admin functions, and the like. We expect to have at least 50%, in fact, quite a bit more than 50% of that achieved and banked during the second half of this year. We'll have the remainder of that done for the full year 2026. If you move over to the right-hand side of slide five, you'll see a little bit of split by department and split by level.
Starting by the split by level, it is heavily weighted towards the assets, where we've got 3/4 of the savings coming out of the assets. Obviously, corporate and department overheads have kicked in their share. If we drill down a little bit more on the first wagon wheel on the right-hand side of slide five, most of the savings are coming from the coal, copper, and zinc-nickel divisions, with alloys and oil putting in their fair share and corporate as well, streamlining, making use of technology, and ensuring that we save this billion dollars in the business going forward. With that, I'll turn over to Steve on the financial performance.
Thanks, Gary. If we look at page seven, and again in fairly usual format that you've become familiar with over the reporting periods of Glencore, various of our financial headline numbers, most of which are covered later on in more detail in slides. I'm not going to dwell too much on this, but adjusted EBITDA Gary spoke about at $5.4 billion, down 14% for the reasons have been noted, primarily in the industrial side, lower coal prices, although that have turned from Q2 lows. We'll show you some spot generation numbers also in cost structures later on in the business. We are running around, look, we produced our spot illustrative EBITDA at $14.2 billion. To put the half in context and also expected large recovery in both earnings and cash flow into H2, if we hold at these macro levels.
Balance sheet-wise, we did move higher to $14.5 billion net debt. We'll talk about that later on. You've seen just a one or two-day unfortunate timing around closing of the Viterra-Bunge transaction just on the 2nd of July. There were circa $900 million of cash and received the Bunge shares on that day. That would have brought us into sort of the mid-13s. We'll show the clear pathway back towards $10 billion by the end of the year and the prospects of significant additional top-up returns by virtue of our Bunge shareholding that we also have, which we'll talk a bit later on as well. With the pro forma, the net debt EBITDA with those Bunge proceeds at 30 June around one time still shows significant financial strength and headroom. If we go across to slide eight, then we'll drill into the various numbers.
We can see the adjusted EBITDA in the industrial side at $3.8 billion, down 17%, really a function of two areas, lower coal prices. We'll see that on the waterfall bridge slide on the next slide, which we'll run through, as well as the lower timing-related operational factors within our copper industrial business across various operations there, Kazzinc, and Tampakan, and to PASAR and Katanga, all of which are expected to see significant additional volumes in H2. We'll see through the leverage on both cost structure as well as pricing cobalt. You've also got the lags in the stockpiling currently going on in DRC. We're not in our cost structures later on. We're not assuming that Q4, as soon as the ban gets lifted, it's all going to sort of flow through. It's going to take time to work its way through the system.
That has impacted, obviously, earnings and cash flow during that period. On the metal side of the equation, on the industrial side, we saw a lowering of EBITDA $2.9 billion- $2.4 billion. That was down $0.5 billion. All of that was in the copper earnings, contributed was down $0.8 billion. $1.9 billion- $1.1 billion of EBITDA for the half and year. We need to think in the context, particularly on copper and industrial, as being a half-time score that we expect the full year to be significantly better. If I think of that business on an annualized basis, it's a $4 billion+ EBITDA business at the sort of volumes and cost structure that we would expect. That 40/60 split around volume and production impacts on the copper business, particularly at all those four operations that we're talking about, has really lagged in terms of how that flows through.
We'll show how that sits this half year in the context of what a full-year spot illustrative number looks like and what our cost structures look like also later on. Offsetting some of that drop in the lower copper earnings was a very pleasing increase in zinc reported earnings, which was up $400 million from $0.5 billion- $0.9 billion. A big part of that was our gold production out of one of Kazzinc's units over there. We saw a big increase in realized gold prices. Spot prices we'll see later on are even higher than the average. There is momentum, both pricing and volume, significantly into H2. On the energy steelmaking coal side, we've seen a drop of $0.4 billion from $2.1 billion- $1.7 billion exclusively in pricing. We'll see that on the slide.
Gary spoke about a Newcastle average price down 21% period on period and the premium coking benchmark down 33% period. Pleasingly, EVR, it's the first period it's come in in the H1 period. That contributed $786 million for the first half. It'll become clear as we work through the slides later on. The $3.8 billion for the half-year on industrial EBITDA is sort of positioned and should be thought of in context of a spot illustrative industrial contribution of $10.9 billion that we'll see later on. That is, which itself was higher than the full year 2024. That does sort of augur well for the contribution and earnings prospects of this business, both in H2 and beyond as well. The waterfall bridge on slide nine, the themes have come through in previous slides. $4.6 billion was the first half of 2024, a billion down in price variance.
$1.2 billion of that $1 billion was in energy. $1.1 billion was coal, a little bit lower on the oil side where we have a little bit of upstream oil and gas exposure in our oil business. The prime contributors there are both steelmaking. Average hard coking benchmark was $277 the previous year to $185. That was down 33%. You can see that average of $185. We have seen the last four to six weeks a pickup in pricing there. We'll reflect that later on in our spot illustrative on the Newcastle side, average $131 in the previous period to $103. Forward curve is over $120 now. We'll look at the contribution there. The zinc business was a + $0.2 billion contribution. That's with gold prices having averaged from $2,200 to a little over $3,000. Significantly trailing spot price at the moment. That was up 39%.
That volume variance is turning and has turned since 30 June. We'll see that through cash flow generation. On the volume side of that $1.1 billion, $0.9 billion of that was in the copper business, including $160 million from the cobalt variance period on period in terms of having to stockpile cobalt since February and the impact that has in terms of capitalization and inventory that's not otherwise being able to be sold and contributing to both cost alleviation and EBITDA generation. That's a big turning a little bit on the ferro side as well as we've shut down some ferrochrome production. Cost variance was zero. Pleasing performance there. We'll see that. That should develop positive as we go through this year, particularly as we deliver some of those cost savings that Gary mentioned. FX was a small tailwind through first half.
That should moderate a little bit as we've seen a bit of U.S. weakness creep in towards Q2 relative to Australian dollars and the Canadians. EVR, we've separated just for the purpose of this period. You can argue that that's a volume variance, but that's the business that's come in that was only acquired in July 2024. At some point, that'll cease being separately presented. We'll just feed in the various categories that we do have. The other was a small positive contribution, just to call out the aluminum business that for us, the more recent acquisition of the Alunorte. We have our stake there. We also have our stake in Century, both associates, equity accounting, good flow contributors, and good financial performances from both those businesses. That should start seeing cash flow benefits through dividends and the likes coming through. They've both massively improved their balance sheets and strength.
We're very happy to be investors in those two businesses. If we look over to page 10, very busy slides, which provides at least across our four main businesses that we give specific guidance on in copper, zinc, steelmaking coal, and energy coal. We've got all the cost, volume, profit aspects of how everything is derived with some commentary and various changes period on period, as well as full year 2025 updated guidance both around cost and the various aspects that you can revisit some of your modeling. That's for both copper, zinc, byproducts, and the steelmaking and energy coal is updates for latest macros six months forward as of this particular period. I think before we come back and finish off slide 10, I'd just like to jump forward to slide 16.
I think it's worth spending a few minutes on the various costs of those particular businesses as well. On page 16, you can see copper off to the left of how that's developed from 2024. 2025 is very much a sort of an outlier now by virtue of sort of mathematical denominator and asymmetry effect on those H1, H2 production. It's dragging performance and mathematically distorting the true potential and competitiveness of that business with a net cost structure of $2.25 for the first half. That's a gross of $2.80 with $0.55 of byproduct credit. You can see from a full year to full year 2024 - 2025, which is where we expect it to perform once the H2 volume recoveries are there, will be flat net at $1.74 against $1.74 and flat basically even at a gross level, notwithstanding it is slightly lower production against 2024.
Some savings are coming through. We'd expect by the years 2026, 2027, our cost structure in copper to go down into more like the $1.40s once production recovers back over 900,000. We've spoken to a pathway back to the million tons by 2028 when the cost structure will be more in the $1.00- $1.20 or so per pound back at that particular period, given denominator effect and some assumption of some high cobalt prices in the more medium term. That's it on the copper side, very much reflecting the 40/60 split and deriving where we were with our reported EBITDA for the first half. The zinc business has seen tremendous savings, cost improvement, and earnings contribution during that period. From 2024 to full year 2025, we can see a $0.44 per pound reduction in unit costs before byproduct.
With the significant gold byproducts that we're generating from that business together with silver and other credits, we're now into negative post-byproduct costs on a full-year basis of $0.12. At spot, the half-year was down at $0.02. That's contributing significantly to that business and is expected to continue. Its production is roughly evenly split 48/52 for those businesses. On the steelmaking and energy coal, for the first time, we've got EVR now coming through for this particular period. In 2024, full-year EVR was only half a year. 2025 half-year and 2025 estimate is reflecting the full pro forma of that business now at the sort of over 30 million tons down at around $110 per ton. Significant margin still in that business. You can see with the new construct of that business at that particular structure. Good cost focus. There is the impact as we go through revenue-linked royalties.
We don't mind higher prices, higher costs sometimes if it's a function of higher revenues and higher margins by virtue of how revenues are calculated in both Canada and Australia in particular. Pleasingly, the energy coal business has been able to keep its costs around that $65, even with Cerrejón having lowered its annualized production, that 5 million- 10 million announcement that we gave recently. They have managed that process very well of reducing production and ensuring that the cost impact of that has been something that is working for the overall business in terms of efficiencies. I think with that, we can get back to page 10, and it'll just logically flow through as to how copper has contributed $1.1 billion of EBITDA with that cost structure and that volume.
On a spot illustrative basis, which we'll look later on page 17, that business will be at $4.1 billion of illustrative annualized. You can see the significant additional both profit contribution we expect in H2 and where that business we see leveling out at the end of 2024 and beyond. Our zinc business was $0.9 billion for the half-year with a spot illustrative of $2.1 billion. Again, that's with lower costs and higher zinc and gold prices that will be coming through on that particular business. The steelmaking coal was $0.9 billion, and that was worth an average $184 hard coking premium or benchmark for the year. Spot will be at $2.3 billion with a price that's now on a forward basis has picked up over $200 a ton. Forward six months, which is the full year 2025 update, which is relevant for where we expect 2025 to come out.
You can see we're basing a realized price of $188 for the full year, which reflects the first half actual delivery against the full year. The same on the energy coal. $0.7 was for the first half. A spot illustrative at $1.8. That's with the forward strip 12 months Newcastle price of $121 now, which we'll see later on. I think the explanations are fairly self-explanatory. If we go into slide 11, the marketing outturn $1.4 billion, 8% down period on period. It really was a period in which the metals contribution was the star and the shining contribution $1.2 billion previously up to $1.6. We've called out copper in particular for all those that may want to get ahead of themselves thinking this was all COMEX and the likes. That was actually a relatively minor part of that contribution.
It was generally overall copper markets globally around TCRCs, regional dislocation tightness in markets, and then the full array of supply and customers that we have across intermediaries, concentrates, cathodes, final products, and value add. Of course, there was a little bit around some sort of U.S. noise, but that was by no means a material contributor during that particular period. It would reflect the fact that there's been an unwinding of that trade. We were just fine through how that occurred in the last few weeks with no impact on the country. That business has continued to perform very well since 30 June as well. On the energy and steel market, it was a very modest contribution. We saw very well-supplied markets, geopolitical uncertainty. That's across coal, gas, crude, and the likes.
Very little actionable arbitrage or volatility, but collectively shows the strength of the overall marketing business across headline segments, but also underlying numerous profit contributions and commodities that we are active in. There is a bit of a quirk sort of accounting-wise where we have to pre-recognize a lot of accounting provisions across portfolio exposures. We almost have to function like a bank. So we have receivables. We have pre-pays, notwithstanding that you're expecting performance. We have to take our provisions against uncertainty of sort of potential credit losses that you may realize. Even one of the pre-pays that we talk about in working capital, there was an outlay of $165 million in June. Towards the end of June, it's a very good business, but you're forced to make a day one credit adjustment of $35. So you take a day one hit even before these contracts kick in.
There's been quite a bit of provisioning accounting for various overall portfolio that's gone, particularly into the oil and gas business, a large part which we expect to sort of flow through. There is a bit of a timing lag in performance that we expect from the energy part of the business. As Gary mentioned, we've upgraded the range to $2.3 billion- $3.5 billion with the Viterra business now having been sold. I think a few key slides as we look at the balance sheet and how we're thinking about positioning, shareholder returns, cash flow generation in the business. Page 12 is just the, if you like, the flow, the bridge from where we were at the beginning of the year to the 14.5. These are all including marketing leases and acquisitions and EBR debt that we assume, the various factors that have come into the business as well.
$11.2 billion FFO, which is EBITDA, interest, tax. We were, and it's something that is worth considering for future, again, H1, H2 modeling outcomes. Our net interest from a cash perspective is increasingly getting more heavily weighted towards H1 over H2, particularly the last few years, this year, a previous year, maybe the year before that. When we do our various bond issuances, it's very concentrated around the March, April, May period. Once we've signed off on annual reports, we've done issuance in quite big size. These are annual coupons. Our net cash interest for the period was $1.3 billion, where full-year outcome will be less than $2 billion in our estimates. You are looking at a 2/3, 1/3 split in terms of cash that does come through that FFO. We'll have a very light period in terms of interest paid over the second half of the year.
Something to consider in modeling, and it's something we'll incorporate more in guidance. It's becoming a more material item in terms of, again, timing of cash flow movements. The net CapEx, $3.2, those two then canceled each other out. The investments, the only significant one to call out was the Singapore refinery, the Brooklyn refinery that we bought with Chandra Asri from Shell. We have a minority 20% stake, our equity contribution to that business, which is performing very well, meeting targets, very comfortable with it. It provides a big boost to our Asian oil business in the supply of crude and the offtake of product of a good-sized, important located business. That was $147 million on the equity side.
Associated with that was also $300 million in working capital contribution to that business, which is then part of that next $1.1 billion that you see an increase in the non-RMI working capital. We're expecting good returns out of that business as well. Various other oil Africa opportunities, some aluminum opportunities. Quite a bit of that was in Q2, in fact. Very few of those benefits have been accruing in terms of marketing performance as well, but they're all very closely critiqued within the business to ensure that we're allocating capital proportionately correctly and delivering the right returns. Distributions and share buybacks was $1.1 billion in shares. This first tranche of the dividend at $0.6, there was a $0.1 of minority dividend associated primarily with Kazzinc, in which we don't own 100%. We've got 70%.
Something just to call out in the other category of that added on to our debt. One of the quirks of the lease accounting standards that came in a few years ago is it does catch various items that historically just would have been part of your OpEx structure in business. Our Kazzinc business has been operating and leasing a hydroelectric power station, which is part of its energy mix over many, many years. It was just part of its cost structure. It expired a few years ago. We were looking at various renewal options, short, medium, and long term. We've extended a five-year lease or so on that particular asset within the business, which is a certain annual charge. It now gets capitalized onto the balance sheet as a finance lease within Kazzinc , non-cash. It's part of the quirks of how accounting works these days as well.
Finishing 14.5, we'll jump up for the next slide, which I think is obviously a key slide as to how we think about debt progression, shareholder returns, and evolution, if you like, of sort of capital returns and net debt levels in the business. Of course, $13.5 billion is where we're starting as of 30 June. That's taking out those marketing lease liabilities, which we do with the $1 billion. This is ordinary course parts of the business in how we project or pro forma out towards the end of the year. What things are happening in the next month? Of course, the 2nd of July, we got $900 million from Viterra. That's the first of the pink blocks that's there. We're obviously positioning for the second tranche of the base distribution, which is payable in September. You roll those forward.
The $3.2 billion is just a mathematical A + B + C. How do you get to $10, $3.2 billion? We do in both in our expectations and modelings, and we show you how we triangulate all those numbers. That's the part of how we see significant cash generation and deleveraging the balance sheet as we roll out to the end of the year and back towards our $10 billion, from which we would ordinary course think about base distributions, top-ups, and surplus capital generation within the business as well. Some unwind of working capital, that 40/60 split in the copper, that'll supercharge earnings in the second half of the year. Spot annualized cash flow doesn't have that H1, H2 split, but that's showing $4 billion of free cash flow. We'll look at that later on. You can see a clear deleveraging pathway back towards $10 billion.
What we put separately over there is just to show how we think about the Bunge shares that were received on 2nd of July. Now, these are, you would have seen our announcement back on 2nd of July. We said we closed the transaction, very pleased with that. We got $900 million of cash, $2.6 billion of shares valued at the time. There was also the value as of last Friday. Today, it's worth something like $2.7 billion. These are now shares that are in very liquid NEOP listed with the largest shareholder of 16%. Agricultural for a long period of time has been, if you like, non-core to the broader Glencore industrial energy and mining part of the business. At some point in time, that will be monetized appropriately for the benefits of Glencore shareholders at some point in the future.
We have some lockup conditions, which are 12 months. It's now 11 months. Obviously, counting down doesn't mean on day 365 that there's going to be some sort of placement of those shares. We're going to work with Bunge itself. We're very excited about that business and its prospects, the synergies, that sector itself. We think that there's a lot of opportunity and potential for that share boat to re-rate and to deliver significant value to shareholders at times. We're going to do it sensibly, but over time, almost cash-like given liquidity and ability to monetize that particular investment. What we did then do back on 2nd of July is we thought it was appropriate and still exercising sufficient financial prudence was to say, shareholders, you've been patient. This has been something that we've been actioning for long periods of time.
We thought it was appropriate that we can do an early payment or a buyback of $1 billion related to those shares, underpinned by those shares. That's the crux of the current buyback that we've been doing that we launched back on 2nd of July. That will be ramping up very shortly under this new structure that we've agreed was a more efficient form of buybacks, which we announced also at the AGM last year. Those we've put in a separate bucket, if you like, that will be focusing, reporting it separately, tracking separately. As those shares ultimately get monetized and distributed in some way, shape, or form back to shareholder, that full $2.6 billion, hopefully much more over time, $1 billion coming back now. If you like, there's that gap that we'll always track between that the pink bar, the yellow bar.
That's what's there to play for over a period of time. We'll continue to report these separately and how we think of the balance sheet separately in terms of debt, surplus capital, ability, and timing of distributions to shareholders. With that extra buyback of that $1 billion, as Gary mentioned, that would take us up to $3.2 billion of announced capital and significant strengthening in balance sheet, liquidity of overall balance sheet, and ultimate capital returns that we expect to flow through in the near future. In terms of page 14, nothing particularly new here. This is just an update on our CapEx numbers, industrial CapEx. No change to guidance over 2025 to 2027. Currently, we said $6.6 billion per annum. That was elevated for EVR, which was $1.4 billion with some nearer term requirements around fleet and water treatments. Once that period's done, EVR reduces to $1.1 billion.
Many of you on the analyst side were there on the visit towards the end of June. You could see the good work that's happening. You could see some of the synergies and the focus of the team and also looking to optimize both around mining and infrastructure generally. For now, we've held $6.6 billion. That's tracked for the first six months. Tracking okay, $3.2 billion was our cash. Below 50% of that full $6.6 billion number, if that was the number for 2025. We've called out that $2.9 billion Kazzinc lease non-cash, which still gets capitalized. It is part of our $3.4 billion, but it is not a cash item at $3.2 billion. Everything else is, so as you were, pretty much in that business.
You can see a lot of, on the copper side, a lot of work has gone into deferred stripping across those particular operations and certain fleet renewals. Some of that explains also some of the sequencing and the grades that we are going through and how that also expects to evolve into the second half and beyond as well. We call that up to $400 million earmarked for MARA, El Pachón, and some KCC studies. That is still a lot of work happening on that. It is harder to capitalize some of that at the moment, so more of that is getting expensed rather than capitalized. There is only $20 million of CapEx that was spent on MARA and El Pachón. On the OpEx side, there was $70 million of negative EBITDA in terms of what that contributed.
Cash flow-wise, still as expected, but a little bit more in OpEx rather than CapEx, which would be neutral from a shareholder perspective. Just to wrap up before we get to the spot illustrative update, visually, it is useful to see how that sort of production H1, H2 sits across our various commodities. Copper is the one we all know about with the big step-up required between H1 and H2 to get the 500,000+ in H2. That is not relying on any one asset. It is sort of contributions across the board. We have explained where those sort of factors and bottlenecks and timing sequences have been across KCC, KCC, and Antamina, and Toquepala in particular. We have already started to see pickup in H2.
Some of those cost structures I spoke to earlier is then with being in the higher rates, we then tick over into the lower 9s in 2026, 2027, and then pathway towards 1 million tons by 2028. All the other commodities are pretty straightforward as you look, whether it is on steelmaking between H1. They are all in the 52/48s or 58/42s. The production outlook, page 17, just to wrap up before we hand back to Gary, a slide that you would all be very familiar with, our spot illustrative. This is not a forecast for 2025. This is as if we were starting the year, 1st of January. Did not have a period that was already baked in.
Looking purely on cost structures, guidance, this year's production guidance, and cost structures as it has been reset, re-macro, looking at both costs and sales on a sort of an unconstrained fashion. We have got our copper at $4.1 billion. That's after continuing to expense in some overhead and some of those development projects. H1 was only $1.1 billion. You can see the sort of catch-up there that we fully expect. Zinc at $2.1 billion. Steelmaking coal $2.3 billion. Energy coal $1.8 billion. That's using a strip of, on the net coal or steelmaking coal, $201, 12-month average forward. That brings us down to, you can see, portfolio mix adjustment on energy coal. That's $121. Those numbers year to date were significantly lower. That's where you can see the step up to $4.1 billion annualized across our coal business from $1.6 billion for the first half.
The various other businesses in the other category, that's marketing at midpoint of new range, $2.9 billion. You can see we rolled down to illustrative free cash flow of $4 billion. With that, I'll hand back to Gary to wrap it up.
Thanks, Steve. One more slide to go, slide 19, before we turn to Q&A, which is also a familiar slide to you. It just really outlines how we deliver our strategy and our priorities for 2025. As I've said on every call before, and will most likely, in fact, definitely will say on every call going forward, our number one priority in this business is safety. It is not only our drive, but it's our obligation to ensure that our people go home safe every single day. It's nonstop work. It's something we continue to redouble our efforts period in, period out. Hats off to Xavier and Lucy, who's driving a cultural change across our business. Pleased to report we've gone the first half of the year fatality-free. It's nothing to celebrate. We just continue heads down, working hard, and making sure we keep our people safe every day.
A key part of the Glencore DNA, the Glencore culture, is to ensure we remain supply disciplined. We believe in markets. We don't believe in oversupplied markets. We want to see higher margins for our products. We don't want to run businesses which are loss-making. Where it makes sense, we will curtail or shut production. You've seen us do that historically. During the course of the first half of this year, we've cut coal production at Cerrejón, as Steve mentioned, 5 million- 10 million tons, we've shut various of our ferrochrome smelters in South Africa, and we've also shut some of our copper and zinc smelting, custom smelters, where we've seen these operations turn negative. We continue to monitor all our operations to ensure that we run profitable operations and where we can keep markets in balance or even in a supply deficit.
The copper department continues to go through a transition where 2025 is expected to be the floor for the copper department production volumes. We have a pathway, which we've outlined to you previously, back to 1 million tons a year by 2028. It's not just getting back to the 1 million tons. It's also the significant growth potential getting back above 1 million tons through our very low cost, low capital intensity brown and greenfield projects going forward beyond that. The two highlights of that, in fact, there's more than two highlights, but we're only calling out the Argentinian ones at this stage, which is MARA and El Pachón. MARA, as you know, is effectively an extension of Alumbrera. It's a 200,000, 250,000 ton copper equivalent brownfield project.
El Pachón is a two-phase project, El Pachón, and then what we're calling our Grand Pachón, which will be a two-line, and then ultimately going to a four-line project, starting at 350,000 tons and moving to probably 700,000, 750,000 tons, multi-decade project in Argentina. We are very excited for these two projects. We are expecting to submit our RIGI applications in the very near future. On the marketing side, as I mentioned earlier in the call, we have some near-term macro uncertainties, but as we know, this also presents opportunities for us. We have seen those opportunities present themselves, in particular in copper in the first half of the year, and to some extent also in zinc. We expect to see some other dislocations in some of the energy markets going forward.
Each time we see these dislocations, these arbitrage opportunities, and these uncertainties, it does often present us with an opportunity to profit from that. We continue to do that. Along those lines, even the U.S. tariffs across the commodities can create these dislocations. We now have a bit more certainty around the tariffs. Although certain for today, we don't know what happens tomorrow, but there does seem to be a little bit more certainty in terms of some of the tariffs and therefore assessing the trade flows and routing of various commodities and what makes the most logical sense. That often presents opportunities for us, and we will capitalize on that through our world-class marketing business. Our key driver in this business has always been to create value for shareholders. That's what we're here for, and we're driven to do that.
One of the ways we do that is through these billion-dollar a year recurring cost savings by end of 2026. I talked a little bit in detail around these more than 300 initiatives which are underway. A lot of them are already banked. We will have more than half of that billion dollars banked by the end of this year and be able to deliver the full billion dollars, if not more, by the end of 2026 on an annualized basis. It keeps us fit. It keeps us lean. It keeps us mean. That saving ultimately then is a value creation for shareholders. Our second half cash generation is expected to be stronger based on a stronger second half operational performance. That will contribute as Steve talked around our deleveraging by year-end. That will all result in maximizing our free cash flow generation.
Again, just pointing back to the start slide Steve took you through of $4 billion of free cash flow generation at spot illustrative prices. We've mentioned earlier or in earlier presentations, and we did mention on a media call earlier that we've completed our analysis of potential listing jurisdictions and exchanges. We've done a comprehensive review of the various exchanges around the world. Clearly, the U.S. capital markets remain the unrivaled leading markets to explore. We've done a deep dive on that, the costs, the benefits, the flowback impacts, the amount of the ability for indexation. Where we sit today is we do not believe that becoming a U.S. domestic issuer or having a sponsored ADR program will be value accretive for shareholders at this point in time. However, we do continue to market, we will continue to monitor the market developments.
This will be a watching brief for management and the board going forward. Lastly, returns for shareholders. We've announced for 2025, $3.2 billion of returns to shareholders. That's what we're here for, is to ensure our shareholders get their returns. We've paid our base dividend in two, well, the first tranche of our base dividend was paid in the first half of the year. The second half will be paid in September, $1.2 billion. We completed the first tranche of our buybacks, our $1 billion announced buyback, which we announced in February. We've already completed that by end of June. On the closing of Viterra, we announced an additional up to $1 billion of buybacks going forward. That brings our announced buybacks or announced capital returns to shareholders to approximately $3.2 billion for 2025. With that, we'll move to Q&A.
Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To read your question, please press star one one again. List and bar will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. We are going to take up the first question. The first question comes to the line of Jason Fairclough from Bank of Amer ica. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yep. Good morning, guys. Thanks a lot for the presentation. Two questions for me, one for Xavier, one for Steve. Xavier, lots of investors sort of asking questions on these copper grade uplifts into the second half. It feels like it's a bit of a big ask. I guess, you know, thoughts on the risks here. Are you having to do selective mining to hit your production numbers in the second half? Steve, question on RMIs, and I guess this idea of non-RMI working capital. For me, I used to think about this as RMIs was effectively moving working capital from the operations into the trading business. I always struggle a little bit with the idea of non-RMI related working capital. I'm just wondering, can you give some color and maybe a bit of an indication of what the absolute level of non-RMI working capital is today?
Thanks for that question. I'll go first and just speak through the copper uplift in the second half. I think what you're seeing is exactly the opposite of doing selective mining. The first half is really about setting ourselves up to actually access holes which were better created to start with. Part of that is remediation from some of the geotech events we had last year and actually sticking to the mine plan and working through those areas to remediate the paths. That process has gone relatively well. If you look at KCC and DRC, for example, we're up 15% year-on- year on material movement as we go through those areas. The ore required to deliver the second half of our plan for this year is available. It's in front of us. We're not having to change or do anything dramatic to actually deliver a different performance.
This was really mining in sequence, accessing the holes as they become available. It's a function of the ore body itself. This is about having that discipline to execute the plan as it was intended.
Okay. Thanks, Xavier.
Jason, just on, I mean, RMI by its very name is readily marketable inventories. It is the suite of the physical inventories that you can both, you can kick, you can touch, you can inspect, you can look at, and is sort of going through our business roughly with a conversion cycle of every 30 days or so. This is all the aluminum. This is the oil on boats. This is the copper. This is the different shipments. These are all price risk has been largely fixed there. This is either through hedging. This is through physical price contracts and the likes as well. The other part of the non-RMI is not inventory. It is your suite of receivables. It is your classic normal discharge of vessels, receivables. They're paying 15 days, 30 days. You've got your payables. It is your various hedging. It is your mark-to-markets.
It is your margin calls. It is the whole suite of what's left in the business. The differentiation of, now it's all part of working capital. It is all part of generating earnings within that business and the high ROEs, ROIs that that business has generated over the years. RMIs has been the one that has been, if you like, developed over many, many years as the appropriate adjustment to look at more comparisons across industrial leverage in the business, some offset against net funding from which to track net debt EBITDAs and cash flows and looking at balance sheet structures. The non-RMI will then, of course, go up and down depending on what else is happening. This will affect things like pre-pays or other movements in working capital, mark-to-market.
A few years ago, we had a massive buildup through the gas shenanigans in Russia, Ukraine, where we had some big mark-to-markets physical with some of our large LNG. You had the TTF Henry Hub dislocations. We had various terms with non-Russian business that all changed all that. Broadly, we're flat in the marketing business on non-RMI. Receivables, payables across all those various categories is broadly flat. It obviously changes every day, what that working capital. One is by definition inventories, and the one is non-inventories.
Steve, if I could just follow up. You're building up an inventory of cobalt. Where does that sit? Is that an RMI?
No.
It can't be marketed.
No, no. That's sitting in the industrial businesses. That's part of KCC, MUMI kind of balance sheets.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning, Gary and Steve. Two questions from me as well. Firstly, on the industrial portfolio review that you've recently done, did it identify any non-core assets? Specifically on Kazzinc, it's an asset where there's been a lot of talk over the years over a full or a partial exit. Given the country risk profile, the gold exposure that it has now, how does this fit into your longer-term plans? The second question is on Koniambo and QB. This could be a big area of value unlock, and you've potentially got a big investment decision at Koniambo from 2027. Can you give us any color on whether talks are progressing between yourselves and Teck in any meaningful way?
Thanks. Hi, morning, Liam. On non-core assets, over the last few years, we've moved through a number of assets or moved a number of assets out of the portfolio that we've deemed non-core tail assets, which are just really subscale for Glencore, and we've largely completed that process. Of course, all assets, as markets move and as things change, one has to continue to review our portfolio. You know we wouldn't say we have a bucket of non-core assets that we're trying to get out of. Specifically around Kazzinc, Kazzinc is a core asset for Glencore. It's a top-class business. As you mentioned, produces gold as a significant amount of gold, close to half a million ounces of gold a year, which is a big cash generator for Glencore and Glencore's partner in there, the Kazakh government, Samruk, who's a close partner of ours and we work very well with.
The zinc business in particular, jarring and the smelters. Smelters are a little bit different at the moment, but they are sort of integrated smelters within the Kazzinc business. Jarring is starting to ramp up and reaching anthraic capacity. Our team's done a great job there. No, that business is very good and core to Glencore. With that said, within some of our businesses around the world, for example, within Kazzinc or within our South African coal business, you sometimes have one mine, one operation, which within that business may not be fit for purpose. We do happen sometimes that happens, and we may sell one mine or deem one of those non-core. It's probably something that you would never see because it would be below the sort of materiality threshold, but it does make sense for us in some cases to sell that.
There may be some of those sorts of businesses which do exit the portfolio, but as I say, it's probably something that you wouldn't see at your level, and it's not material for the group, but it does help streamline these asset bases in the various geographies around the world. Kazzinc generally, as I say, is core. It's not that, but any business in our operation is in our company is for selling at the right price. We've said that before. We're not out looking to sell Kazzinc. We don't want to sell Kazzinc. If someone wants to bet us a huge number for it, that would be the only reason why we would consider sort of selling Kazzinc. On Collahuasi QB2, we continue to believe that a merger of those two operations will achieve huge amounts of synergies for shareholders on both sides.
Anglo did a very good job as well as Codelco. Codelco and Anglo did a great job together, putting together two operations in Chile, and we've seen the results of the synergies coming out of that. Well done to both parties. We believe that a QB2 Collahuasi merger can achieve even bigger synergies than that. We're very eager to do it. Maybe you can ask Duncan tomorrow because I've tasked him with the job of trying to get that one done.
Is there any kind of momentum in the talks, Gary, or anything you've heard?
Not at the moment. Not at the moment, but we're very eager to engage. You know whenever we can engage on that, we will.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Myles Allsop from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, great. Thanks. Just a couple of things. First of all, on cash returns in 2026, how should we think about the Bunge shares? Would you potentially look to sort of use more non-recourse debt and monetize more of that to sustain the buyback if the business doesn't generate more than $3.2 billion of returns? Maybe a few comments around met coal in terms of the market. Do you think it's inflecting or is it still looking reasonably oversupplied? How are you thinking about M&A in the met coal space?
Maybe I'll answer the second one first. I'll leave the first one for Steve. On the met markets, the met markets picked up, as you know, it's picked up on sort of $10, $15 over the last few weeks. We've seen some of the anti-involution initiative coming out of China, which is effectively cutting out some of this loss-making production, which has been positive. We've also seen for the first time a step down in the growth rate of steel exports out of China. What we've always said is that the steel exports out of China have been really the overhang in the steelmaking coal market because that's being produced by domestic coking coal and Mongolian coking coal. Those exports are a proxy for Chinese met coal exports.
As we've seen this step down in the growth rate in June, and we're waiting for the July stats to come through, but we expect that to continue dropping, that should then start helping bring the steelmaking coal market into balance. We've seen some production cuts in the U.S. We continue to see, even with this increase in price recently, we continue to see U.S. producers cash negative and won't be able to last much longer. Therefore, we see the market coming into balance in the coming months.
Miles, on that second question, I think it would be, obviously, all the value of the Bunge shares that will obviously sort of fluctuate with its own sort of prospects. We're very excited about the prospects for that business and a very supportive shareholder and are working sort of well with management. We had board representation there as well. All of that ultimately is going to be up for grabs and is there for distribution to shareholders at the appropriate time while being very conscious of maximizing the value and returns and being sort of sensible. We thought it was appropriate to already get moving with $1 billion, how that yellow catches up to the red or the pink, and hopefully, the pink goes higher. In the meantime, it's also got a nice dividend yield, that company as well. Even at current share prices, I think it's 3.56% or something.
We're getting paid to just sort of sit around at the moment, $100 million a year or so is the dividends, being the shareholder there, which is not bad at all. We haven't built that in anywhere, but that sort of trickles in and is sort of not bad to sort of buy that time. Everything ultimately will, the yellow will catch up to whatever the size is of the pink, and that'll play out over the next couple of years. Exactly 2026, 2027, how it all works out, can we sort of increase some of the either non-recourse or other forms of funding against it? These are all things that we've got to play very sensibly, and you would hope we would do that.
We're very mindful of acting as both good stewards and working very well with the Bunge management team and supporting that business in its own sort of prospects and value creation.
Thanks. On the M&A part for met coal, would you consider still in the position, obviously, you've got the best assets in the world currently? Would you look to buy more assets if they became available?
Yes, we would. If it's the right quality asset in the right geography with the right cost structure, we would consider it.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Christopher LaFemina from Jefferies . Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi, Gary. Hi, Steve. Good morning. Just a couple of questions on steelmaking coal. First, in the market, Chinese met coal prices are up, I don't know, 70% in the last two months. We've seen some recovery in the benchmark seaborne met coal price, but it has definitely lagged what's going on in China. I'm wondering why that is the case. That's my first question on the steelmaking coal market.
China, I mean, at the moment, the Chinese domestic market is tight. That's why, through some of these production cuts that you've seen in the domestic provinces, that's pushed up the domestic price. The reason largely for the lag in the seaborne is China is effectively buying the last ton into the market. They're not buying, when they're buying seaborne hard coking coal, they're actually not buying at the first ton in which you're setting the price. They're, in fact, the ones dragging the market down. You'll see a slower catch-up of the seaborne market. It's more related to the fact that the other markets will then start to be able to buy the seaborne met coal.
That will start to increase steel production as the Chinese slow down steel production, and that will drive the price up for seaborne met coal rather than the Chinese market itself or the Chinese buyers importing seaborne met coal.
Okay. Thanks. On quality discounts in the met coal market, we've seen some of the U.S. producers have had really weak price realizations on lower quality coals. It's hard for us to get visibility as to the outlook for those coals. There's not really a liquid forward curve to track. Are you seeing some recovery in those lower quality coal markets? In your spot illustrative table, those portfolio mix adjustments, is that based on historic relationships with the benchmark, or is it based on what you're seeing in the market today? How do you derive those numbers? The question really relates to whether our discounts for lower quality coal are so wide that your risk on the portfolio mix adjustment is to the downside.
I mean, the numbers that. The
Gap, Chris, was sort of recut last week in July, working up forward of sort of 201 average at the 19.6, which is higher than at most times when markets are healthier, let's just say. With markets a bit weaker, you have seen a sort of an increase in some of that discount reflecting market conditions at that point in time. Now, we are seeing improvements in that market, and we would sort of expect that to again contract to more normal, at least for our qualities. We obviously had our site visit towards the end of June. People are very familiar with the various sort of aspects of our grades, qualities, and the sort of desire for certain blends and the like. We feel like we're sort of competing in the right place in terms of realizations.
This just reflects the market at a sort of point in time that has increased somewhat in terms of those discounts and realizations. We look at it and rerun these sort of every month. We probably are sort of reflecting point in time, higher high discounts. Hopefully, that narrows over time again.
Okay, good. Thanks for that. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes from the line of Ephrem Ravi from Citi . Your line is open, please ask your question.
Thank you. Two questions. First on the marketing business. Obviously, metals had a stomping quarter or half in the first half, but energy and steelmaking coal had less. Your earlier comment on the spreads between different coal qualities, etc., should we expect significantly better market conditions for the energy and steelmaking coal marketing in the second half? Those kinds of quality jobs are where you guys really do well historically. Would we see a big kind of step up from the break-even to maybe close to $1 billion of contribution from that business? Secondly, on the impairments in Cerrejón, can you just remind us what's the remaining carrying book value of that asset in your books right now? Thank you.
Thanks, Ephrem. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to forecast sort of what type of marketing earnings we will see second half of the year from energy coal and steelmaking coal. I need to say that we've obviously seen price recoveries. Energy coal, Newcastle has gone from sub $100- $115 in the last contango. Met coal has also gone from sort of mid-$170s to close to $190. That's driven largely, and in fact, it is, it's driven purely by supply demand.
If you look at the energy coal supply demand from being in quite a material oversupply earlier in the year, we've seen that market come into close to balance now, largely through the reduction in exports out of Indonesia, which we predicted because we had said earlier that a lot of Indonesian, particularly low-quality producers, were underwater, have now started to pull back exports, have started to shut mines. We've done our own share by taking 5 million- 10 million tons of exports out of Colombia. We think we, in fact, we started off that trend of people being supply disciplined. That's working very nicely for us. We've seen drum and pull back some production and exports as well. As that market now has tightened, we've seen a $20 improvement in the market for high-quality Newcastle coal. Now, as you know, you can't just look at one market in coal.
There's markets within markets. There's qualities. There's geographies and the likes. As the whole market has moved up in the Newcastle side, we would, and some tonnages particularly come out of Indonesia, would expect to see some volatility within the premiums and discounts. That will give us some opportunity to make some third-party marketing earnings in the second half of the year. Same for met coal. As I say, we've seen some production cuts in the U.S. Depending on what the Chinese finally do in the second half of the year around steel exports, that could be very promising for our metallurgical coal business.
Efrem, Cerrejón's been marked down to around 700 or so.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my question. I have just one question on the cost savings program. You have probably been among the most restrained on spending among peers. What gives you confidence that these deep cuts won't increase operating risks, especially for the assets that have faced quite a bit of challenges in the first half? A follow-up on this one is, are there any restructuring costs or one-off costs associated with these savings? Thanks.
Xavier will take the first one. I'll just quickly cover the second one. The restructuring costs are not material at all. In some cases, there may be some people who are leaving and there'll be some sort of redundancy payments and things like that. Those would be payments one would be making to, and these people are not being replaced. Those are costs that would be paid out to people anyway. The friction costs of this are not material at all.
Thanks. To the first question, there isn't really any material change to the operating risk in the business. What we've done is taken, in the first principle, a review of overheads and how the departments are structured. Gary spoke through the merger of the nickel and zinc departments, which in itself gives us synergies. We've looked at regional synergies as well for things like back office, the use of consultants, for example, and using more of our own resources to complete some of that work. None of these really introduce operating risks per se to the business. It's about doing more with our existing resources. For each of the operations, what we've done and really paid a lot of attention to is what is required for that business to operate reliably more than anything else, what is superfluous work and what is nice to have.
That in itself has identified better ways of working and some of those synergies across operations that we've spoken about before, none of which goes to the way we operate those businesses. It doesn't introduce operating risk in and of itself. We don't expect any negative downside from these cost savings that we've identified in this phase of the work.
I mean, on the contrary, some of the work on restructuring has been to refocus and reduce risk on those, and some of the cluttering and moving custom processing under dedicated rules and projects team is also separate, I think.
Yeah. I think harmonizing the operating model has been a key part of reflecting, speak to custom metallurgical assets. Being able to leverage what our scarce resources are on processing capability, for example, is key. Mind blank technical capabilities, where those skills are updated, how we assign ownership and accountability for the work. All those ultimately serve to improve operating reliability.
Thank you. Very clear.
Thank you so much. I will proceed with our next question. The next question comes to the line of Ian Russell from Barclays. The line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Morning, team. Just a couple of questions, firstly just on the cobalt situation in the DRC on the ban. If you can maybe just give us a sense of what you've assumed within your guidance in terms of sales versus production and what the potential impact could be if that ban is extended. Just maybe a follow-up on the cost savings side. How much of that is real cost savings? How much could be offset by inflation? I guess if we look at, let's say, 2027 numbers, is that if you do revenue minus EBITDA, will that be a billion dollars lower versus 2024? I'm just trying to get a sense of how much comes through in the unit costs and other segments. Thank you.
Thanks, Ian. In terms of cobalt, we've been quite conservative in what we've assumed will get sold this year. We're still assuming, I think we made a point somewhere that a significant portion remains sort of unsold because there's numerous uncertainties around when, how, and on what basis that obviously plays out. Even in some of the payability assumptions and the like, we've been quite conservative in what we've built into some of those costs for the full year. Even if we are unable to sell anything this year relative to numbers that we've given, it wouldn't be a material variance. We've obviously had to make some assumption that some cobalt is going to flow, and I think that's reasonable, but it's not material one way or another.
I think it should present more upside if there's able to, depending on volumes that one's able to move at some point in time. It's not going to be material one way or another. In terms of your second question, was that just in terms of these cost savings you were saying, sorry, Ian, can you just repeat?
Yeah, just trying to get a sense of how much is it sort of real cost savings. I mean, how much of that is offset by inflation? I mean, is it all coming through the sort of revenue minus EBITDA line? Just will that be $1 billion lower in a couple of years' time versus 2024, which is the base?
Yes. Yes. No, it will be. It will be a straight sort of cost reduction through the various layers that we've given some sort of indication of what's at asset level, what's at asset, but in the kind of asset overhead that's set above the assets in terms of their regional models and sort of head office structures and support for the business around that. There's some corporate as well. Yes, you'll see like for like. Now, some of that's already, we've sort of spoken to at least 50% already being expected to come through in 2025. I would say sort of half of that is probably already baked into some of our unit cost numbers because it's already been achieved. It's banked in and it's now starting to be part of bottom-up submissions that people do every month as the numbers sort of come through.
Most of it would then come through in 2026 and will come at the end of the year again, as we normally do when we look at longer-term guidance. Cost assumptions will then reflect that. That's not to say there won't be some inflation and the likes on the other side that this will at least offset that part, but this will go a sort of a long way to moving our costs in the right direction.
You can see the backup company at a certain moment, really, actually quite a lower denominator, but we're still seeing actual cost savings.
Okay. Sorry, maybe just on the EVR, sort of $9.5 per ton, sort of synergies from integration and the other cost savings on sort of deep dive operational benefits, does that all flow into this $1 billion number?
Some of it's in there, yeah.
Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Matt Greene from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thanks very much. Good morning all. Just to follow on this cost savings program, just to confirm, is this on a continuing basis? It excludes any savings related to assets that have been or you're planning to sell, close, or place on current maintenance?
That's correct.
Okay. Thanks.
Just ingenuous to Matt, just ingenuous to shut an asset and not have cost savings claim from savings. It's completely separate to that.
Okay. Got it. Thank you. Just on the buyback program, you know obviously being funded by asset disposals to date, Steve, you touched on the Bunge stock option. I guess just following on from Liam's question, are there any further non-core assets such as infrastructure that you know the market is not placing any value on today that you could look to monetize to expand or extend the program?
It's a good point you actually raised. There is lots of banging down the door from different funds and the likes that would love to sort of bid and look at some infrastructure that we have within the business. That would free up potentially capital. Part of all that is to think about whether there's sort of cost-of-capital type arbitrages around those sort of businesses. Me and Gary were just in a meeting the other day where there was a lot of interest in these sort of things. That should be something we want to look at quite seriously. You need to sort of think about how that sort of interacts with flexibility of business and long-term planning and how that all kind of works going forward. You are starting to see sort of more and more of these, and management teams should be sort of open towards that.
I mean, something like maybe the Collahuasi Diesel Plant, just to throw something out there, may well sort of lend itself to sort of such a play potentially over time. Whether that's cash gets released or that itself funds its future expansion, that sort of still unlocks and liberates sort of cash that otherwise would be able to go to shareholders. It is quite topical.
That's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Ben Davis from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thanks for the presentation. A couple of questions from me. One, would you be able to give some color on what you expect from the RIGI application process just in terms of the timeline to then getting greenlighted and how important it is for either of the projects for MARA, El Pachón in terms of the go-forward there? Secondly, just quickly, any exposure to the coin mix of collapse in copper earlier in July and any implications for the marketing business in H2? Thanks.
Thanks, Ben. Morning, morning. On RIGI, the timeline is in the near future. Our application will be in the near future. It's a very...
For both?
For both of them. We'll put them both in most likely at the same time. We're working on them at the moment, and we're working closely with the Argentinian government to ensure that they meet all the various requirements and it's as robust as it can be at this stage in the project. Obviously, we're not at feasibility. We're not at a stage where we can be 100% comfortable with the kind of capital estimates that go into it, but we do have order of magnitude numbers and those need to go in. In terms of timeline, that will go in in the near future. That gets then assessed by the Argentinian authorities. It takes them some time. It's obviously quite a detailed document. We would look forward to an approval of that soon after they finish their reviews.
Once that's in place, that allows us an extended period of some minimum spend, which is not regret capital. It's all regret spend. It's spend that we would be spending anyway and allow us to move into a position where we can FRD these projects and move ahead for construction and gives us certainty over the regulatory environment, the tax environment, the ability to distribute cash offshore, all those sorts of things for multi-decades as we operate these businesses. Very important for the businesses, not only from a financial perspective, but from a regulatory and fiscal certainty perspective because that's key. There's always been some nervousness around Argentina, but President Milei has done this very smartly where this protects investors beyond the current Milei administration, going forward for those many decades.
Look, we've operated successfully in Argentina without this before, but this obviously gives us a lot more certainty, a lot more protection. Having some of the financial benefits of it is very important for us, particularly with the capital that we would commit to building these projects once we can get them to FRD. Very exciting. The two projects we have in Argentina are really world-class. You've got, as I said, 250,000 tons copper equivalent out of MARA and up to 750,000 tons copper equivalent coming out of the full extended El Pachón. There's a million tons alone, and that ignores some of our other copper projects around being the Collahuasi fourth line, being Mutanda, being New Range, being Koniambo. Very exciting copper portfolio for us in Argentina, and obviously RIGI part of that as well.
With regards to the COMEX exposure, look, that's an area where one had to be very careful around, and we were very careful because we're not the kind of company that sits around and just takes a punt on whether we think tariffs will be 50%, 25%, or 0%. It's a fool's game to try and bet on what a politician will do or what it will be. That's not how we position ourselves. We positioned ourselves around ensuring that we would be profitable around any outcome, regardless of what the 232 showed. We now know what it was, and we came out of it just fine.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes to the line of Dominic O'Kane from JPMorgan . Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thanks. I have two questions. You've completed your review of the primary listing, and you're making no changes. Did the formal review make any conclusions with respect to the appropriate listing for your coal assets? My second question, if I look at the production profile, clearly very dependent on the copper ramp-up in the second half, and the KCC guidance implies more than 100% uplift in H2. Could you just maybe talk us through some of the key milestones at Katanga over the next six months? Can you give us maybe some comments around what your level of confidence is that Katanga can stay at nameplate capacity on a sustainable basis? Thanks.
All right. I'll let Xavier take the second question. On the first question, no, we didn't do any work on the coal assets because, as you know, originally, our intention was to spin out our coal assets onto the U.S. exchange if it was something our shareholders wanted. We consulted widely with our shareholders during the course of the first half of last year, and we concluded that, and our shareholders concluded overwhelmingly that they wanted to keep the coal assets at that stage as part of Glencore. Of course, we can always revisit that at some point in the future. There was no point, given the recent consultation with our shareholders, to be looking at what exchanges for our separate coal asset business, as we have no intention at this stage to spin out our coal business.
Thanks. Just on Katanga's second half production, you're right in terms of the step-up that's required there. The first half was predominantly, or the concentrator was predominantly fed off low-grade ore stocks. The second half is predominantly fed off fresh ore from the pit. We needed to access those two areas. As you recall, late last year, we had a geotechnical event in that pit, which we needed to remediate. That deferred access to those ores. Both of those blocks, block three in the carpet of block five and block three in Mashamba, are both accessible now. They're currently being mined. The ore access required for H2 is largely in hand. As we feed those ores, obviously, the plant becomes bottleneck for the second half of the year, principally the electrowinning circuit. We're quite confident we can make those numbers. We've done them before.
We're not having uncharted territory over there. It is a step-up and something that we need to manage on a daily basis. The access to the ore is right in front of us, and the plant is performing well at this stage. I'm reasonably confident. I think going forward in future periods to sustain that level of throughput really requires us to continue the remediation up underground. That work's underway at the moment.
Some of that land access long-term to just get concerns.
Do you think that throughput momentum that you're going to have in the second half of the year can be maintained into 2026?
Yes, absolutely. I think if you compare to historical periods, the limit on that, you know, other than land access, as Steve rightly says, has been a total material movement, our ability to actually move material in the pit. Year-on- year, we are at 15% in terms of material moved input. The performance in the first half of the year is not necessarily a reflection of poor performance. What it is, it's really accessing the ore bodies that presented themselves at each of the two open caps. We've seen really a sustained performance in total material movements throughout each of the months this year. Certainly no flash in the pan or benefiting from weather or anything like that. We have made significant leadership changes and changes to structures within that business as well over the last six months.
We've got a revitalized leadership team there with a lot of focus, and we've seen the fruits of that coming through in these results as well. A lot more focus on operating reliability than necessarily just metal per se. Of course, metal plays the role, but what we want to see is plan compliance and that focus on the basics, which is coming through now. That's what we expect to see going forward as well.
Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, thanks. Morning guys. A couple of questions. Firstly, just on the industrial business, I sort of count eight parts of the business where the CapEx is higher than the EBITDA. I appreciate that the H1 is going to be less than H2 just in terms of volumes. Just on KCC or on African copper even, how should we think about margins going into the second half? Should we expect that business to be cash flow positive in the second half and into 2026 or not? That's the first one.
You should expect it to be. With those volumes at that cost structure and these prices in margin, yes, it should be.
Okay. Steve, sorry, if I can just push you, like the EBITDA margin, again, I appreciate H1 was softer, right? EBITDA margin 5%, H1 2024, 11%. Should we expect still like that kind of teens EBITDA margin or do we expect more? I appreciate you can't export your cobalt, so that's going to hurt you.
There are a few factors that need to go in favor of that tick up, which is obviously being able to move cobalt. Cobalt pricing, which if you look on the screen today, it's not bad. Now, where does it settle post quotas or bans? That remains to be seen. That will ultimately sort of feed into those numbers. Getting up to this back above 200,000 tons copper in the next sort of couple of years, part of our getting back over 900,000 and eventually towards sort of a million tons is sort of Katanga being back fully sort of annualizing 250,000- 270,000 tons of copper. At that level, it's generating quite significant... I mean, there's not massive CapEx programs. This asset has been well capitalized over the years across the various phases. It needs... Its cost structure is very heavily...
It's not fully fixed, but it has a heavy cost structure and it needs units to flow through and generate both cash and those margins to improve. That's the sort of pathway which H2 should certainly see. Beyond that, you can sustainably perform at better levels. It needs volume. Cobalt is a nice kicker, of course, both in volume and pricing ultimately.
Thank you, Richard. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes to the line of Bob Brackett from Bernstein Research. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning. Two questions in keeping with the theme. The first is a fairly simple one. The illustrative spot annualized free cash flow of $4 billion for the year. Can you talk about what, by your definition, the free cash flow was for the first half results? The other question is a bit more broader and philosophic. The new marketing range could benefit from tariffs, and it could potentially benefit from a higher RMI run rate. Can you talk about the desire to increase RMI into the marketing range and maybe talk about do tariffs create arbitrage opportunities? Are they a true tailwind?
Sorry, what was the last part? Which arbitrage opportunities, Bob?
General, in a world of tariffs, are tariffs creating complexity in market? Does that create a tailwind for your marketing business?
Got it. All right. I'll let Steve take the first. Let me take the second one quickly in terms of the new marketing range. Even that last question, you know, tariffs would create opportunities for us, provide that sort of, you know, as those tariffs, they're not changing every two days. We have seen the first half of the year where you had tariffs that were not really set for a long period of time. It does seem that the current administration or the current approach towards tariffs is that now that they're in place, there may be some changes here and there, but it does seem to be in place across the board.
That does mean that various commodities and various trade routes will realign and arbitrage opportunities will come up that one can then take advantage of in a bulge market that does take some time to capitalize on those opportunities. We do believe that in the current environment, as tariffs remain, but things are less volatile around the moving of the tariffs, that there are some opportunities that will come up in the second half of the year, which bodes well for our marketing business. With respect to the higher range and higher RMI, of course, I mean, to the extent that we can, or non-RMI, to the extent that we can deploy capital into high IRR, very good return business that capitalizes on these volatile markets that allows us to be able to make good returns on that money, we would certainly deploy more capital into that.
If that means it's an increase in non-RMI, that's fine. We're happy to do that to put our money where our mouth is and make those returns on that money. That's what the job of the marketing department is to do.
Yeah. In terms of, I mean, under, it's not under our definition. It can be anyone's definition. Our free cash flow in the first half was basically flat. That does reflect a small amount. Interest is more weighted towards first half and second half. You've got two contributing factors of H1 against a spot illustrative is very much in copper. At that sort of cost structure for that sort of volume going through, that was generating $1.1 billion. Whereas we've got a $4 billion+ business on an annualized basis. We expect that even more than half of that to then kick through in the second half as you sort of catch up and even get more tons proportionately second half over the first half. H1 EBITDA industrially was $3.8 billion. Spot illustrative $10.9 billion.
You can see the dissymmetry between those two and why you go flat to sort of $4 billion on an annualized basis. Some of it was pricing, of course. Coal was more trophy in H1 compared to a spot illustrative. We just used the forward curve. We were $1.6 billion coal contribution in the first half. You've seen those prices drop 33% and 20% respectively. Averages were then on Newcastle was $103. That's significantly higher than where they are at the moment. Spot illustrative is $4.1 billion on the combined coal business. Flattish. You can see FFO less CapEx was flat first half. $4 billion now is illustrative annualized. Second half should even be better than that on a divide by two because of the copper catch-up in the second half of the year.
Yep. Very clear. Thanks for that.
Thank you. We are going to take our final question for today. It comes to the line of Daniel Major from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Great, thanks. Just a couple of final ones. You've curtailed the PASAR smelter and potentially the Townsville smelter. Can you give us an update on the Australian smelter? Also, how much working capital is in both of these assets, and is there potential to release that working capital as the assets are wind down?
I'll let Steve talk on the working capital. PASAR, as you know, is shut down. That's fine. We've announced the sale of that smelter to a local Filipino company. The smelter is actually Mount Isa, the refinery is in Townsville. The Mount Isa smelter is cash negative at the moment. We've been engaging with the Australian government, the federal government, and the state government, the Queensland government, for six months now. We've had constructive engagement with them over the last little while. We're meeting them again this week. We hope to be in a position where we can work out a sensible path forward for Mount Isa and hopefully have a future for Mount Isa with everybody contributing towards a future for that smelter into the next few years.
I think it would be, just on that note, I think it's premature to start thinking about anything around the sort of ISA processing complex. Of course, if you have more smelting refinery, you do tie up more working capital in the business, but it's all hands on deck to see if we can keep that going for longer.
At PASAR, have you released any working capital in that facility?
Yeah, no, there was. There was absolutely. It sort of went in Q1. It started phasing down first in stopping cathode, ultimately anode. That's been all sort of wound back. I mean, that did contribute to some RMI release during the period. Yep.
Okay. Thanks. Just one more, if I could. You talk a lot about your project pipeline with respect to the two most advanced projects, MARA and El Pachón. Can you give us an indicative timeline on when you would expect FID for both projects based on the current timeline that you see?
Daniel, the timeline is dictated both by having the work and being ready for FID. Koniambo comes first. We probably would be in a position by the second half of next year and MARA probably the year following that. It's not only dictated by when it's ready in terms of us taking to FID. It's dictated by the market. Does the market need the material? Will we get the returns that we want? We see a pullback in the copper markets. There are some uncertainties and headwinds around global growth. We want to ensure that we're bringing those tons into the market. I know it's not exact that you don't bring on a mine at a moment's notice and that you're not going to simply time it perfectly.
We want to have comfort that we continue to see the steady growth in demand for copper, that supply is struggling, and that we can feed into that continued supply deficit into a market where prices continue to improve. That's what we want to do. We'll combine the two, the timing of the FIDs and then bringing the production on with our views on when the market needs those tons.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. The speakers are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Gary Nagle for any closing remarks.
Thanks very much for your participation today, for your questions. Great questions as always. Martin, Steven, I, and Xavier are around to answer further questions as we engage in the coming weeks and months ahead. Thanks very much for your time.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.