Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) (TADAWUL:1211)
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65.60
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Apr 30, 2026, 3:18 PM AST
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Earnings Call: Q4 2025

Mar 9, 2026

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Ma'aden Earnings Call for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. Thank you for joining us. My name is Abdulaziz Al-Harbi. All participants on today's call will be in listen-only mode initially. Once the call has been concluded, the presentation and all relevant material will be available on our website. Please refer to our disclaimer in the second slide, which applies to all disclosures made in today's presentation. Kindly note that all discussed figures in this presentation are in US dollar unless otherwise stated. I'm joined today by our CEO, Bob Wilt, our new CFO, Gilberto Antoniazzi, who joined us in the first of March of 2025, and our acting CFO, Saulat Sultan.

As usual, we will open the floor for your questions at the end of the presentation. This chat function, however, is open. Please post your question during the call. We hope to go through as much as possible in today's presentation. However, if you have any further questions, please email them to us. With that, let me hand it over to Bob.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Abdulaziz. Before the end of the year, I would like to personally, officially welcome Gilberto to Ma'aden as our new CFO. He actually joined just this week, not 2025. We haven't been keeping him in hiding for a year. He brings more than 30 years of global finance expertise across lithium, agrochemicals, automotive, and manufacturing sectors, and is gonna be a great addition to our team in the next phase of our growth. Welcome, Gilberto. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Saulat Sultan, who has done an excellent job over the last few quarters in an acting capacity. He will continue in his role as SVP of Corporate Finance and Group Treasury. Now I would like to address the ongoing developments in the region before we move into the analyst call.

Rest assured we are monitoring the situation closely and working with all relevant government authorities. This is a fluid situation, and we'll be making any relevant business updates as and when required. First and foremost, that is focused on ensuring our people are safe and our operations are running smoothly. We have brought together the ethos of the new Ma'aden brand, our ambitious strategy to truly instill a team Ma'aden environment. This means bringing our values to life and embedding them meaningfully in everything we do, that we create a world champion. We want our people to feel it, strive for it, and understand how each of them individually contributes to our success. That is never more important than the time such as this. Now let's look back at the success of 2025. We recorded the highest ever DAP production.

We added 7.8 million ounces of gold resources to our books. Phosphate 3, Phase One is delivering at pace on time and on budget. We kicked off our Ar Rjum Gold Mine project and recently secured the final investment decision for our aluminum recycling project. We secured gas allocation for Phosphate 4, one of our next growth projects in current feasibility study. We also announced a binding term sheet to establish a joint venture with MP Materials out of the US to build and operate a rare earth refinery here in Saudi Arabia. Partnerships were and will continue to be a driver for our growth. With the end of the year announcement of a joint venture with Australia's Hancock Prospecting to further accelerate our exploration efforts.

Also in 2025, we became the first Middle Eastern company to join the International Council on Mining and Metals, ICMM, demonstrating our commitment to holding ourselves accountable to the highest international standards on all fronts. For our foundational business, 2025 was a solid year. As mentioned, we achieved record DAP production levels. We produced just under 1 million tons of aluminum. However, we believe there is further upside in gold and operational value to be unlocked. Last year, our exploration program added 7.8 million ounces of gold reserves. The Central Arabian Gold Region delivered 4.7 million ounces of these resources. Wadi Al Jaww delivered a maiden 3.1 million ounce resource. In total, the gold business now has 26 million ounces of resources and 11 million ounces of reserves.

The heart of our operations in the Central Arabian Gold Region is Mansourah Massarah. Mansourah Massarah comprises of two open pits with a shared processing facility. Our exploration efforts in Mansourah indicate that the ore body remains open on multiple fronts. We are now building an exploration decline to further study that ore body and define it. The same decline will be used for the eventual underground mine. At the same time, we are studying the opportunity to scale the existing processing plant in order to fully realize the value of the various resources we have in this region. With the success of our exploration program in 2025, we're scaling this further for the year ahead. We expect to spend up to $400 million in 2026, with an increased focus on copper.

We have identified an area of interest of over 160,000 square kilometers and are targeting 980,000 meters of drilling in 2026. About half of our budget will be focused across the Central Arabian Gold Region and the Shayban Belt. In addition, through our partnerships with Ivanhoe Electric, Barrick, and Hancock Prospecting, we can increase the scale at which Ma'aden is exploring and discovering. Project delivery is also progressing across all three business units. Phosphate is expected to see an additional 4.5 million tons of capacity within the next five years. That's equivalent to about 75% growth compared to our nameplate capacity today. Similarly, aluminum is progressing studies on two capital projects that will more than double their annual capacity to approximately 1.6 million tons by 2031.

Finally, at gold and base metals, we have an ambition of achieving 1 million ounces of gold produced annually by 2030. With the scale of our capital growth program, we are ensuring that Ma'aden is building a sustainable business for the future. We have partnered with Hatch, a leading global EPCM provider, as our project delivery partner across all of our capital projects. Core pillar of this partnerships is the combined commitment to develop capabilities, skills, and a future workforce. This brings together hands-on project delivery with expert technical collaboration, ultimately to build a sustainable industry that fuels the industrial future of the kingdom. This partnership will ensure we can scale up faster, install best practice, and upskill our teams. We will strengthen our in-house project teams capabilities, add headcount quickly, and transfer skills to a growing national workforce.

Throughout 2025, Phosphate 3 Phase 1 tracked on time and on budget, with completion and commissioning expected towards the end of this year. What the team here has achieved here is an example of the level, scale, and pace of work we expect to deliver at Ma'aden, especially as we increase the number of projects in the coming 3 to 5 years. Second project underway is the Ar Rjum Gold Mine, located in the Central Arabian Gold Region. The mine is expected to produce 3.6 million ounces over its 12-year life and will be a key part of us achieving our ambition of annual production of 1 million ounces by 2030. With all permits in place, early work has included the completion of an extensive site fencing to ensure native wildlife is protected.

The teams have placed long orders for long lead items, with deliveries expected in the second half. We recently secured FID for our aluminum recycling project. This project ensures efficient low carbon production to meet growing local demand. We have secured 50% of the scrap requirement through a unique regional supply agreement with key collectors so far. This asset is expected to produce 200,000 tons of billets and slabs each, for a total production of 400,000 tons annually. Initial construction works will begin early this year, and production is expected to start in late 2028. We posted strong financials in 2025. Our revenue increased 19% to over $10 billion, and our EBITDA grew 30% to over $4 billion. The business generated $4.3 billion of EBITDA, up 30% over last year.

Our run rate sustaining free cash flow, ex working capital, also grew by 30% over last year. This is a new metric for us, and Saulat will take you through the details, but it shows the robust cash generation of our underlying business. Our balance sheet further improved with our net debt to EBITDA declining to 1.3 times versus 1.7 last year. If I look at our business this year versus last year, it's also notable to see how our gold business has increased its contribution. Now I'll pass it over to Saulat to take you through the financials in detail.

Saulat Sultan
Acting CFO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob, and welcome aboard Gilberto. During the fourth quarter of 2025, revenue increased by 7% year-over-year, reaching over $2.8 billion, driven by our strong operating performance and favorable market conditions. EBITDA rose 30% year-on-year to $1.3 billion in Q4. Excluding the impact of one-off items, EBITDA increased 23%. As we continue to invest in our strategic growth initiatives and look to add additional resources via exploration, it's also important to point out the true underlying cash generation capabilities of our business, which Bob was alluding to.

We believe that run rate sustaining free cash flow metric provides a good measure of cash flow generation potential for the business and is a good proxy for discretionary cash flow that could be used to return capital to shareholders via dividends or deployed in other value accretive ways if we were not investing in strategic growth as part of our capital allocation framework. Our sustaining run rate free cash flow came in at a strong $1.3 billion for the quarter. Despite high commodity prices impacting working capital metrics, our efficiency focus resulted in cash conversion cycle improving significantly from 58 days at the end of 2024 to 49 days at the end of 2025.

In terms of EBITDA breakdown by business, Q4 2025 also saw a more balanced contribution across our portfolio. 2025 was characterized by supportive pricing across our portfolio, reinforcing the strength of Ma'aden's diversified commodity exposure. DAP prices remained robust in 2025. During Q3, the phosphate business benefited from favorable market dynamics in key agricultural markets, including in India, and was also supported by continued lack of export from China. For aluminum prices, the year was more dynamic. Prices softened in the first half amid trade uncertainty and macro concerns, also driven by tariff-related developments. However, sentiment improved in the second half as trade uncertainty settled, rate cuts were implemented, and the overall commodity complex re-rated, driven by strong demand. Gold was the strongest performer in our portfolio in terms of pricing benefit.

Gold prices increased significantly throughout the year, reflecting ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and investor positioning towards safe haven assets. Overall, commodity tailwinds in 2025 provided a supportive earnings environment, and our operating performance allowed us to capture these favorable market conditions. Here we lay out the EBITDA bridge from full year 2024 to full year 2025. Our robust EBITDA growth was driven by stronger sales volumes in phosphate and aluminum, further supported by overall higher pricing across the business. Higher volumes and stronger prices more than offset increased raw materials and volume-related costs and increased exploration spending. The main driver of raw material increases related to the prices of molten sulfur.

Our share of profit from JVs increased by $275 million, driven by a $200 million bargain purchase gain related to our investment in Alba and our first full year of inclusion of Alba's results into our financials. One-off items amounted to $183 million, the largest underlying component of which related to insurance proceeds that Ma'aden received in the aluminum business in the prior year. Overall, EBITDA improved 30% for the full year. Excluding the impact of one-off items, EBITDA actually increased by 34%. Here we lay out in more detail a walk of our 2025 EBITDA to our sustaining free cash flow metric, which represents the cash generation capability of our business if we were not investing in our strategic growth.

This measure is a proxy for the cash flow that could be used to return capital to shareholders via dividends or deployed in other value-accretive ways. The main adjustments we make to exclude growth-related items such as growth CapEx and exploration spending, which represent usage of cash flow in the current period to create shareholder value in future periods. We include sustaining CapEx in the metric, which was approximately $800 million in 2025. In addition, we removed the impact of change in working capital, which is impacted by the higher commodity price environment. As shown here, the business generated almost $3 billion of sustaining run rate free cash flow, excluding the impact of change in working capital, and was up 30% versus 2024. This was driven by strong operating performance and a favorable commodity price environment.

In 2025, we continued to strengthen the balance sheet and diversify our funding sources. Despite making significant strategic investments such as our acquisition of a 20% stake in Alba and continued spending on Phosphate 3 Phase One, our net debt to EBITDA declined to 1.3 times at the end of 2025 compared to 1.7 times at the end of 2024. We also made significant debt repayments, including an early payment of $600 million at our Waad Al Shamal asset and a $900 million repayment of our MPC Sukuk facility. We also diversified our funding sources by executing our inaugural international debt capital markets issuance in February 2025, which was extremely well-received. Post-period, we raised $1 billion in additional dollars in international Sukuk format in January 2026.

This is a clear demonstration of the confidence investors have in our business, specifically as the issuance was 70% distributed to investors outside the GCC. We continue to optimize our group capital structure by also repaying a facility in our aluminum business of $300 million in Q4, and post-period we refinanced our alumina business by repaying approximately $400 million of outstanding debt and refinancing the balance with a 6-year bullet maturity, which replaces an amortizing facility. Overall, these actions have led to a meaningful improvement in our debt maturity profile and increased the weighted average life of our debt by approximately 2 years to 6.5 years, including our post-period financing activity. We remain committed to a prudent financial framework supported by a strong balance sheet, low leverage, ample liquidity, and a strong investment-grade credit ratings.

As a result, we are well-positioned from a credit profile perspective to support the execution of our growth strategy. Moving to the businesses, let's begin with phosphate. We had a very strong quarter and achieved our best year ever in DAP production. While Q4 2025 ammonia production was impacted by the unplanned shutdown at one of our plants, the plant did resume operations in mid-January. From a pricing perspective, DAP prices remained strong both on a quarterly and a full year basis. Ammonia prices increased during Q4 2025, partially as a result of multiple supply disruptions in the industry. Revenue was flat during the quarter as the increase in DAP volumes and product prices was offset by lower ammonia sales volumes.

For the full year, revenue increased 17%, driven by higher DAP sales volumes and higher DAP prices, offsetting lower ammonia volumes and prices. Molten sulfur prices have increased materially year-over-year. Together with the ammonia shutdown, the increase in sulfur prices offset the positive debt reduction and debt pricing in the fourth quarter, impacting the business's margins and led to a small decline in Q4 EBITDA. Full-year EBITDA increased by 21% given the improved volume and pricing. Turning our attention to the aluminum BU. In 2025, we continued to achieve strong operating performance in the aluminum business. During the fourth quarter, aluminum shipments increased 5%, while for the full year shipments increased by 3%. From a pricing perspective, realized prices increased for aluminum by 6% on the quarter and 8% for the year.

Alumina prices materially decreased over both the year and the quarter. Looking at the full year 2025, revenue increased 9%, principally driven by higher aluminum prices, with Q4 revenues impacted by lower alumina prices. As part of our continuous effort to improve financial disclosure, we are also sharing unit costs in the aluminum business. Unit costs in our alumina business increased principally as a result of higher caustic soda and gas pricing. Unit costs for aluminum improved 15% on the quarter as a result of lower alumina prices, but were up 1% on the year and principally due to increased energy prices. In 2026, there are no increases in our natural gas prices, which drive our power prices.

Excluding our JVs and the investment in Alba, as well as the one-offs, for the full year, EBITDA improved 18% but experienced a 16% decrease for the quarter, again due to the alumina price halving over the quarterly comparable period. Full year and Q4 EBITDA was positively impacted by a $200 million bargain purchase gain related to our acquisition of Alba stake and the impact of the inclusion of full year of Alba results into our financials. Moving to our base metals and new minerals business unit, EBITDA for both the full year as well as Q4 2025 increased significantly, driven mainly by stronger gold prices. However, production was slightly down in 2025, driven mainly by our efforts to improve our understanding of underlying ore body at Mansourah Massarah. We continue to remain focused on maximizing long-term value from our resource base.

We have also improved the disclosure for our gold business, and there are additional details provided in the backup to the earnings presentation, including historical AISC numbers as well as the underlying drivers to the presented AISC information. For the full year, AISC increased by 4% to $1,291 per ounce, driven principally by increased maintenance spending, especially notable in Q4, related to fuel costs and G&A expenses. I'll now hand it back to Bob to take us through the outlook and conclude the presentation.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thanks, Saulat. I would like to reiterate my point at the beginning of the call. We are currently operating within a very fluid situation across the region, which we are monitoring closely. That said, we provide a range of guidance through February 28, 2026. This will be reviewed and monitored in line with the situation. The upper end of our phosphate guidance reflects the possibility that we could start seeing commissioning production from Phosphate 3 Phase One this year, but it will depend on the final completion timing for the project. We're scaling the business, and with that, we're increasing our investment in growth projects. We expect $3.4 billion of our total CapEx, of the $4.2 billion to be related to growth.

In addition to the Phosphate 3 Phase 1, which we expect to start commissioning this year, Ar Rjum and our new recycling project account for the majority of our growth CapEx spending. A portion of our growth CapEx is related to technology and project studies for future projects. As discussed, we'll ramp up our exploration program further this year. We expect to spend up to $400 million on exploration efforts in 2026. In addition, project delivery, the deployment of technology, and the focus on the development of our people and our talent pipeline all remain ongoing 2026 priorities. With that, I'll pass it over to Abdulaziz for the Q&A session.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Saulat Sultan, for this presentation. Now, we'll open the floor for questions. I see a couple of hands. I see Jason from Bank of America. Jason, you are unmuted. Please unmute yourself and ask your question. Jason, you need to unmute yourself and ask your question, please. Moving on. We'll go to Ravi. Ravi, you are unmuted. Please ask your question. Unmute yourself and ask your question.

Speaker 8

Can you hear me?

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yes, we can. Go ahead.

Speaker 8

Yeah. Thank you. So, I appreciate the guidance is on a pre-February 2026 basis. Looking forward, where do you see the main potential pinch points if the current situation continues? I'm especially kind of interested on the logistics side. Is there going to be, you know, sufficient raw material inventory for your businesses, especially the alumina business and also in terms of outbound logistics of DAP, et cetera, you know, do you think you are sufficiently well covered from alternative sources of logistics perspective, especially through the Red Sea? Thank you.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah, listen guys, I will answer this one time and one time only. Rest assured we are monitoring the situation closely and working with all relevant government authorities. It's a fluid situation, and we will be updating you with all relevant business updates as and when required.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob. Moving on to Faisal. Faisal Al-Azmeh, you are unmuted. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Faisal Al-Azmeh
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yes, hi. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I just wanna ask a question about the recent comments that you've made, kinda like for long-term growth. I recall, Bob, there was a conference back in the first quarter, and I think back in January, I think, and you've mentioned that you're looking at a sizable amount of spending over the next decade. Maybe if you can just, you know, shed some color on how to think about medium-term growth versus long-term growth. I know you've outlined a few projects today, but just so we can kind of understand some of those comments and how does Ma'aden play into that in the long term? Thank you.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Our growth strategy is predicated on our existing resource base and what we discover. That includes, you know, a resource base of 45 years of phosphate resources that we can develop. We will be developing 2 additional phosphate projects here in the next 5 years. Aluminum, we've got similar lifespan of our bauxite reserves. We've got the natural advantage of logistics, power, and ports to build our aluminum business. You've seen we announced the recycling project. We are in the study phase of another two-potline smelter before the end of the decade. In gold, we talked about Ar Rjum, Mansourah Deep is next, and then I think predicated on our success with exploration efforts, the development of the rare earths value chain with MP Materials.

Those are the next five years that we have in serious study phase now. Depending on our exploration success and how fast we want to continue to develop the phosphate and aluminum businesses, depending on market conditions, capital allocation, we could see, you know, continued growth, significant growth, post-2030. We've got, you know, a very clear near-term focus on those identified projects that are either in construction, early works or advanced studies, and then great optionality to continue growing at the same pace beyond.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob. Syed Akhtar, please ask your question. You are unmuted. Syed, please go ahead. Moving on.

Syed Akhtar
Senior Financial Analyst, Global Investment House

Hello?

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

There we go.

Syed Akhtar
Senior Financial Analyst, Global Investment House

Hello? Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah, we can. Go ahead, please.

Syed Akhtar
Senior Financial Analyst, Global Investment House

Yeah. First of all, congratulations for this outstanding result in 2025 to the management. I have a question regarding the performance of the company during 2025. As we all know that the growth in the company was mainly because of the, you know, the increase in the prices of commodities. However, on a volume basis, year over year, we haven't seen any, you know, noticeable increase in the volumetric growth, other than gold segment.

How does the management see that the company will continue to maintain or sustain the current performance given the prices of commodities assuming it will not come down, but it will stabilize at the current levels. What would be the company's standing in terms of cost? Because in past it was Ma'aden like gold was the costing of the gold was in first quartile and these sort of things. How do you see the company going forward with same level of pricing in next 5-10 years?

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Well, I'll refer you back to the presentation and our results. I mean, we set record DAP production last year, continue to exceed prior year performance in DAP. Aluminum had a second-best year ever, so very, very solid performance there. I would agree with you on gold. We have some upside on understanding the ore body in Mansourah and we'll continue to sweat that asset and push that mine. I think it's... I'm very happy with the production output of the phosphate aluminum businesses year-on-year and relative to historical performance. Both are in the lowest quartile on the cost curve. Both will remain there. When you talk about our technology focus, that is where the emphasis is right now. Debottlenecking pit-to-port operations, digitizing, automating, taking costs out where we can, improving throughputs and efficiencies.

We've got great cost positions in phosphate, aluminum, and we want, and we intend to stay there in the lowest quartile. Gold, I can let Saulat give you some more color offline. On the AISC, the movement we're seeing, you know, we do have several legacy assets, short-lived, small units, that do hamper our overall. The base of our operations, Mansourah and Massarah, as well as Ad Duwayhi, you know, we're very happy with the performance on the cost side. We will continue to invest in exploration. We will continue to invest in study costs. We will continue to invest in growing capability for a future mining champion. The cost structure is, you know, all the cost increases associated with the growth and the execution of our strategy we're offsetting by efficiency through technology.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob. Going back to Jason. Jason, you are unmuted if you would like another chance to ask your question.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

Folks, can you hear me this time?

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yep. Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

Yep. Fantastic. Well, look, first on the disclosure, I just wanted to thank you for the increased disclosure in the gold business, and maybe just a question or a comment for Gilberto. Gilberto, as you come in and you start to take a look at the business and reporting, I would love it if you'd consider continuing to increase the disclosure, particularly in the gold business. It's been a bit of a struggle to model this one based on what's been disclosed in the past. Thank you for the increased disclosure, but we want more.

Gilberto Antoniazzi
EVP and CFO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Jason, I never heard that from an analyst before in my life, I think. Of course, we're gonna provide as much disclosure as we possibly can to help you guys better assess the value of this company.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. That's great. Thank you. Second question was just on partnerships. Bob, you kind of alluded to the partnerships and sort of leveraging other people's capabilities, maybe leveraging other people's balance sheets. I'm just wondering, do you feel like you have all the partnerships that you need? Any partnerships where you feel like you maybe need to be using them a little bit more than you are doing today?

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

I'll answer the second part first. I think our partnerships, you know, Hancock's just getting off the ground, so we'll see. As far as Barrick and Ivanhoe, really pleased with the dedication to the kingdom and to Ma'aden, the amount of talent and resources they're devoting. You know, I think you've seen some of the drill results from Ivanhoe Electric. A lot of exciting prospects they're working on with us. I do believe there's room for more partners in our exploration portfolio, at least one. You know, we've got a vast portfolio of exploration licenses that we wanna get through quickly. You'll probably see an announcement in the next quarter about an upcoming partnership that's been previously discussed.

You know, we think there's more room for at least one, maybe two more on the exploration side. We continue to talk to folks that are interested on the development side. Once we start bringing these resources beyond Inferred into feasibility studies, I do believe that the capability that is evident across some of the sector, we can help the kingdom develop faster by bringing them to bear, and we have those conversations all the time. You know, it's. We've done it with Alcoa, we've done it with Mosaic in phosphate. We'll do it with somebody else in copper.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thanks, Bob.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

Can I just be a bit cheeky here? Maybe have a third one.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

If that's okay?

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Sure.

Jason Kalamboussis
Analyst, Bank of America

Yeah, just on permitting. I mean, elsewhere in the world, what we're seeing is that permitting is taking longer and longer. What we're hearing from a lot of other companies is there's a problem with the government bureaucracies. Basically, the government bureaucracies are just not staffed up enough to get the permits through quickly enough. Can you talk a little bit about what your experience is in the Kingdom?

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah. I think, you know, one of the competitive advantages Saudi Arabia has as a mining jurisdiction, you know, the obvious ones are the logistics, the centrality, the ports, the infrastructure, the low cost energy. I think the advent of the mining law in 2020, the cooperation with the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, the acceleration of the exploration and the mining permitting process. You know, we say it takes 180 days, where it takes the rest of the world 18 years. I don't know if either of those are accurate, but they're both directionally correct. You know, the kingdom wants to diversify its economy, and mining is a cornerstone of that. We've got full government support to accelerate that.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Bob. We have a question from Anup also. Anup, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Anup? Moving on. Yusef, please ask your question. Unmute yourself and ask your question, please.

Speaker 9

Hi. Can you guys hear me?

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yep. Yeah. Go ahead.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation on the call. Just a quick one. Most of my question's been answered. Just wondering, in the aluminum segment, you guys had a pretty strong reduction in cost year-over-year. I think it was around 15% in the fourth quarter. Just wondering, what were the main drivers of that, and how sustainable is that going forward? Thank you.

Saulat Sultan
Acting CFO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah, I think the main driver was stronger performance in alumina. While that is, you know, driving a big part of the improvement, you know, we will continue to keep a focus on the cost side as well. We can certainly go into more detail on the alumina side, offline, a separate conversation.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Okay, great. Thanks.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you, Saulat . I think we'll take one more question then, we'll conclude. Tanya, please ask your question. Unmute yourself and ask your question, please.

Speaker 10

Yes. Can you hear me now?

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 10

Yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much for the presentation. Very comprehensive. Let's see if you can answer my questions. I'm seeing as you pursue significant production expansion while targeting the carbon neutrality by 2030 or by 2050, could you provide a bit more clarity on how absolute emissions, maybe water use, energy sourcing are expecting to evolve throughout maybe midterm to this goal? And which technology or energy sources will play the largest role in supporting the transition? And maybe what part of outlying CapEx is dedicated towards that? That would be good to understand. Thanks.

Saulat Sultan
Acting CFO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Sorry, if you don't mind, please repeat the question. Is your question about energy transition?

Speaker 10

Yes. Sorry, I was very quick in asking that. Yes. As you pursue the production expansion and you're also targeting the carbon neutrality by 2050, a little bit more clarity on how the absolute emissions, maybe water use, given your main geography operations and energy sourcing, how they expect it to evolve, especially throughout like midterm, maybe 2030. Which technologies, energy sources will play the largest role in supporting the transition. Also when you talked about CapEx today, I haven't really heard if there is any specific CapEx allocated towards your carbon neutrality.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Obviously, Saudi Arabia has natural advantages of sunlight and wind, and there's a huge build out of renewables in the kingdom. That will be connected to the grid, and we will take full advantage of that as part of the grid pricing. We will not be necessarily building standalone power plants, but we'll be taking advantages of the renewable energies that the kingdom is building. Further to that, our aluminum expansion, most of our aluminum products now, 70% have a domestic use. A lot of those will be going into data centers as the kingdom builds out its AI data centers and computing capacity. From value chain, from renewables in the kingdom all the way through data centers, we play an integral link. Our sustainability strategy is really focused on water.

We operate in a desert, obviously, so water reduction and water efficiency is huge for us. As well as waste to value. How to turn tailings and habitual problems for the industry into value for us. We've got an in-depth sustainability strategy. Be glad to walk you through it, but it's comprehensive, not just focused on renewable energy.

Speaker 10

Thank you so much. I would love that. Would love to get in touch with the investor department. I will do that after the call. Thanks so much.

Bob Wilt
CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thanks.

Abdulaziz Al-Harbi
Former CEO, Saudi Arabian Mining Company

Thank you. Thanks, Tanya. With that, we're gonna conclude our today presentation. Thank you all for attending this call. All material will be shortly uploaded on our website and on Ma'aden IR app. If you have any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to share them via the email invest@maaden.com.sa. With that, we will conclude today call. Thank you and have a good evening.

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