Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Ma'aden second quarter half-year 2022 earnings call. My name is Abdulaziz AlNaim, Ma'aden investor relations focal point. Today's presentation and all relevant material will be available on our website. In addition, please refer to our disclaimer on page two of this presentation, which guide our disclosure. I am joined today by Bob Wilt, Ma'aden CEO, and Louis Irvine, our CFO, who will take us through the operational and financial review of this result. As usual, we will open the floor for your questions at the end of this presentation. After the presentation, if you have any follow-up questions or clarifications, please do not hesitate to approach Ma'aden investor relation team at invest@ma'aden.com.sa. I'll hand it over to Bob.
Thank you, Abdulaziz. Before we start into a discussion on the second quarter and first half, I want to just ground everyone into Ma'aden, a company that is becoming more well-known in the industry but still bears a bit of rebranding and reintroduction. I'm enormously proud to lead this great organization, and that's why I want to spend a few minutes just bragging about it. Most of you know this, but we are a diversified, multi-commodity portfolio company headquartered here in Saudi Arabia. We're a global leader in fertilizer production, especially phosphates. We have the world's lowest integrated aluminum value chain at Ras Al-Khair. We have six gold mines currently operating across the kingdom, with one more in commissioning phase, and we serve customers in every continent except for Antarctica. We are the fastest growing mining company in the world.
Our five-year compound annual growth rate of revenues is over 30% for the last five years. We continue with growth in the short term with a strong portfolio, which we're going to discuss later. We're the largest metal mining company in the Middle East, and we're actively and aggressively developing the third pillar of the Saudi economy. More importantly, we're becoming an ESG champion as well, and a role model not only for the country, but the industry. We've got aggressive goals to decarbonize our value chain and use less water. We're upholding the highest standards of governance, taking care of our employees and contributing to the development of the ESG goals within the kingdom. We have four key values that we operate by, I'm very pleased to see that they're alive and well every place I go across the company. Integrity, ownership, care, and teamwork.
You'll see in some of our discussions today, those values are embedded in what we do. Now let's talk about second quarter and what a quarter it was. The strongest quarter and first half in the company's history. Record revenues, profits, EPS, balance sheet continues to improve. We completed the first phase of our phosphate expansion program. It's the third phase of our phosphate industry's growth. The first piece of that we just completed this year, which was our ammonia plant, which we call Ammonia 3. When you hear us talk about Ammonia 3 today, it's the third ammonia plant we have online in the system. We've institutionalized ESG targets across our operations for the next three to five years, and we've embedded those targets into our executive compensation. Maybe most importantly, aside from the great financial results, is we were able to do all this safely.
We achieved the best all-injury frequency rate in our company's history as well at 0.10. While any injury is too many, we are less than half as many as we had last year at this time. We continue to improve in that all-important dimension. We're not content there. We want to continue to improve and to drive sustainable growth. Me and the leadership team are focused on really three strategic enablers to continue to deliver these types of results. I'm going to start on the right, where we talk about core business performance. We've got a world-class asset base, but we need to continue to deliver world-class performance and reach the full capacity of all of those projects. We've got six mines, as we discussed. We're actively working to extend the life of those mines.
We're working on reliability and innovation, productivity across all of our assets to generate more cash, to wring out more working capital across the system, to leverage our scale across the supply chain with procurement excellence, and to decarbonize and improve our ESG mandate.
I'm going to go to the left. We've talked about growing to be the third pillar of the Saudi economy. We know there is a significant mineral resource endowment here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that we've just scratched the surface of with our phosphate business, our aluminum business, and our burgeoning gold business. We are committed to develop that industry, a significant expansion of exploration, which we're going to discuss. In order to do that, we're welcoming partners to join with us, partners who share the right growth aspirations and share the right values with us. Underpinning all of this, whether it's improving our core assets and improving our operations and generating more cash or embarking on a significant growth agenda, we need to have the right people systems and the right culture.
We're spending a lot of time in this first year or so together to put the right systems, structure, and culture in place so that we are the employer of choice in the Kingdom. The Kingdom is growing. It is an exciting place to live and work for young talent. There's great companies throughout the Kingdom, and we are in a significant war for talent, and we want to win that war by enhancing our brand inside the company and outside and drive a performance-oriented culture that also cares for its employees. This is what me and the leadership team have been focusing on, not only transforming certain areas of the company, but preparing the engine for significant growth down the line. As we talk about ESG, we're putting that into action.
Just this year, we've announced an MOU to build the world's largest solar processing heat plant for our alumina refinery with GlassPoint. We've improved our local content and our spending to build up an ecosystem around the mining industry in Saudi Arabia. We've committed to planting over 20 million trees in the kingdom as part of the Saudi Green Initiative, we've continued and extended our commitments to develop two schools of excellence in the North region with one more in development. A lot going on in this space. We want to be a benchmark for the kingdom and the industry in ESG. One of the most important components to ESG for me is our safety performance. As we talk about our values and we talk about the care value, we want to be the employer of choice, this is foundational.
We have got to take care of our employees. Ma'aden has a very good systems approach to safety. We've got a good system where we would find issues in that system. We're now transforming that to a predict and prevent culture, where we are focusing more on leading indicators rather than lagging indicators. We're educating employees on risk. We're taking it from a safety system to a safety system plus culture. You can see the trajectory we've been on with these systems. Now with an even better culture, I expect that to improve. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Louis, who's going to go into the details of our quarterly financials.
Thank you, Bob, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to present a very strong set of financial results. As Bob mentioned, Ma'aden delivered a record performance for the six months, with significant increases in revenues, profits, as well as cash generation, resulting in a further strengthening of the balance sheet. Our revenues grew to SAR 20.8 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase compared to the first half of 2021. Our increased ammonia production volumes following the commissioning of Ammonia 3 was supplemented by higher volumes of DAP as well as primary aluminum, leading to higher sales revenue. Improving our competitive cost base, we were able to improve our operating margin to well over 40% during the first half. Profitability reached new records, with net profit attributable to our shareholders of SAR 6.2 billion. Let's now turn to underlying EBITDA.
As noted on the slide, EBITDA was up an impressive 128% to over SAR 11 billion at a record margin of 54%. This is despite raw material cost increases globally. The net impact of higher commodity prices and increased raw material costs was around SAR 6 billion +. Molten sulfur, coke, and caustic soda prices show the highest increases year-on-year, totaling around SAR 1 billion of the SAR 1.2 billion. Excluding market factors, it is worth highlighting that overall, despite increases in operating costs and exploration expenditure, the net volume impact contributed positively to the group's margins. Looking at our cash flows now. SAR 7.4 billion of cash was generated from operating activities, resulting in an operating cash flow of SAR 16.5 billion during the first half of this year.
Depreciation and amortization of SAR 2.4 billion accounted for most of the non-cash items. There was a SAR 3 billion outflow related to working capital, mainly due to high inventories and higher price levels flowing through our receivables. We will deal with working capital in more detail in a moment to highlight notable improvements. Finance costs were up SAR 528 million, up SAR 60 million on the prior period. Just to note that 25% of our debt portfolio is fixed and the remaining 75% are adequately margined and predominantly SIBOR based. Capital expenditure was SAR 1.2 billion, with 45% of the expenditure or SAR 550 million attributed to the gold and base metals business. Out of that, SAR 376 million was spent on Mansourah and Massarah. A further 28% of capital expenditure, or SAR 333 million, was attributed to Wa'ad Al Shamal. Overall, debt reduction amounted to SAR 2.4 billion.
In addition to scheduled debt repayments, cash sweep mechanisms are in place to accelerate debt repayment from some of our affiliates. As a result, total accelerated payments amounted to SAR 1.2 billion during the first half. Now turning our attention to the balance sheet. Long-term borrowings and net debt continue the downward trend on a quarterly basis, with our net debt to EBITDA ratio reducing to 1.8x as a result of higher profitability. Our debt profile and financial positioning remains healthy, with an improvement in our interest cover ratio year-on-year to 15.4x from 10x at the end of 2021. Our current trajectory will see the group's debt profile continuously improve over the medium term. Looking at the table at the bottom right of the slide, the first half of the year saw inventories and trade receivables increase to reach SAR 7.2 billion and SAR 5.8 billion respectively.
As Bob mentioned, we are focused on managing working capital levels and it's pleasing to note that we've managed to improve our cash conversion rate from those recorded at the end of last year. Debtors and inventory days were also better than those recorded at year-end. Moving on to our individual segments now. Our fertilizers business continued to deliver outstanding operational and financial results for the first half of the year, with EBITDA and sales up 228% and 131% respectively. The segment contributed 65% of the total sales and 75% of the group's EBITDA. Compared to the first half of last year, ammonia production levels were up 76% year-on-year with the commencement of pre-commercial production at Ammonia 3 and 297,000 metric tons compared with the first half of 2021. This, including higher production from MPC, resulted in an increase of 84% in sales volumes year-on-year.
DAP production was in line with previous periods. Our ammonia and DAP realized prices improved strongly in the first half of this year. The aluminum business also achieved strong results with sales exceeding SAR 6 billion. Compared to the first half of last year, sales grew by 37% and EBITDA registered an increase of 23%. The business contributed 30% of total sales and 21% of group EBITDA. Year-on-year EBITDA margins were slightly lower as higher raw material costs were experienced in carbon materials and caustic soda as mentioned earlier. On a positive note, we managed to maintain our margins at the same levels recorded during the first quarter of this year, and that was around 38%. On the production side, volumes were slightly lower compared to the first half of last year.
As we know, aluminum prices realized for the first half were also up quite significantly on the corresponding period last year. Finally, on the gold and base metals front, performance was stable despite lower grade and recoveries. The decrease in EBITDA in the first half of 2022 versus last year had a narrow effect on Ma'aden's overall performance, as gold and base metals only contributed 6% and 4% of total sales and group EBITDA respectively. Throughout the second quarter of this year, average prices in gold and copper trended downwards. With that, I'll now hand you back to Bob.
Thank you, Louis. Let's discuss for a moment the outlook. Take you through some of the things we think about when we talk about the outlook, both short-term and midterm. First thing we'll talk about is the capital expansion that we're undergoing. I talked about our work agenda. Ammonia 3 completed on time, under budget this year. Mansourah- Massarah, the Kingdom's largest gold mine, which will produce when operating 250,000 oz annually. Commission activities have started. We'll begin commercial production first half of next year. Talked about the largest in the Kingdom. It's going to be 25% solar powered, new technology, innovation being deployed in the fleet. The first of three gold mines that we are currently in the project development phase. The other two will come online in 2025-2026. Each adding 200,000 oz per annum.
We should be at least over 1 million oz annually by the end of 2026. I talked earlier about Phosphate 3, the project that Ammonia 3 is the first phase of. The next two phases should come online in 2025 and then 2027, which will add 3 million tons of fertilizer to our portfolio. A robust portfolio of growth projects in the very near term. Beyond the near-term capital spending on growth, we're spending enormous amount of time and energy on developing the capability to explore the Kingdom. We have got a mandate to become the third pillar of the economy and to find the resource endowment in the Kingdom. We've done very significant work already on the Arabian Shield, which you can see on the left-hand side. Entire Kingdom, the shield, and the platform.
In order to do that, we are going to need new technologies throughout the project's life cycle. We're going to need to deploy big data and artificial intelligence for prospectivity mapping. We are inviting strategic partnerships to come in and join in this exploration effort. We envision Saudi Arabia to be the single most explored jurisdiction in the world this decade. In order to do that, we've got to over-deploy on the ecosystem we develop around here to make that happen. Lots of excitement on the exploration front as we build that capability, not only for Ma'aden but for the Kingdom. When we look at just the balance of the year, the production forecast, we're giving you here a range of ±5% where we think we'll end up. We've talked about P2O5 and the phosphate business.
The work at Wa'ad Al Shamal will be complete this quarter, we should be at nameplate at that facility. We both talked about Ammonia 3 coming online in the aluminum segment. The smelter and the refinery are both running above nameplate capacity. No issues there. Gold, moderate improvement due to the decommissioning, pre-commercial production coming out of Mansourah-Massarah this year. On the CapEx side, we continue to spend on growth. When we look at the drivers of the business and what we can forecast for the rest of the year, one thing I'm comfortable saying is nobody can predict the future in these uncertain times. What I can say with confidence and ease is we will continue to be excellent in the things that we can control and focus on those things.
We are certainly on the right path, as demonstrated by this quarter's and this half's results. We will continue to focus on safety, reliability, quality, cost, and delivery to continue no matter what the market throws at us. We'll focus on what we can, and we can assure you that this will be the best year in Ma'aden's history. With that, we'd like to open the floor for questions.
Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Louis. The floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions, please raise your hand, and we will unmute you to listen to your questions. Sorry, Noah seems like you have a problem. Gulhal, I know Gulhal's question. Please go ahead. You are unmuted.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Congrats on a great quarter, and thanks for the amazing presentation as well. I have three questions. The first is on the aluminum business. You've touched upon the raw material impact and being one of the reasons why margins have dropped YoY. Considering the movement in aluminum prices over the last one year, the margin drop seems to be quite a bit. Are there other reasons for the drop in the EBITDA margins on a YoY basis and also on a QoQ basis? The second question is on the phosphate business, on the outlook, actually. The supply story is undeniable, but we also have a lot of issues cropping up on the demand side, especially with all these droughts and the scale and severity of them in different regions. How do you see demand shaping up?
Do you have some sort of a template as to how demand for fertilizers sort of behaves in conditions like this, where you have such a severe drought? The last question is on the GlassPoint project. Just curious, why did you choose to decarbonize the alumina refinery and not the smelter? Thank you.
Well, thank you for the question in the three parts. I'll turn the hard one over to Louis here in a second. The phosphate outlook, Spear drip, although we operate globally, our customer base, our two biggest markets and outlets are India and Brazil. Both of them continue to see strong demand, continue to need our product. In the short term, in the outlook for the next couple of years, we don't see any impact on the demand side. Actually, we see it growing. Decarbonizing the alumina refinery, we happen to have a technology solution available to us through our partnership with GlassPoint that can do this. We're also working in conjunction with our joint venture partner, Alcoa, to reduce emissions from the smelter as well.
We don't have any definitive thing to announce like we have with GlassPoint. By all means, we're working to decarbonize all aspects of the value chain and have projects in various stages of development. It just so happens that the technology for the refinery, providing solar power to provide the process heat is further developed. I hope that answers your second two questions. Regarding the EBITDA margin, I will turn it over to Louis.
That is fine. Thank you, Bob. Thanks, Anil, for your question. I think the increases in raw material prices should not be underestimated. It was quite significant. It was around SAR 550 million or SAR 0.5 billion riyals in this half compared to the previous half. Obviously, slightly lower sales volumes also has an impact on the margins as well. I think it's also a combination of product mix as well. We've also seen higher input costs in terms of power, we have been moving in inventories as well. It's a combination of many factors.
Thank you. Now we have Wahid. Please go ahead, ask your question. Wahid, go ahead. Unmute it.
Am I audible now?
Yes.
Yes. I have a couple of questions on my side. First, starting on volumes, especially on the phosphate segment. We've seen cross products, whether being it ammonia or DAP, which were Q- over- Q. What is the reason for the volume growth in Q2 compared to Q1? The second question is regarding the finance cost. In Q2, it was flat if we compare it to Q1, even though we've seen benchmark rates or LIBOR and SIBOR reaching the 3% level. Should we expect the impact to come in the second half of the year? Lastly, on gas prices. We know Ma'aden enjoys fixed gas prices. However, with the recent rumors of removing some of the subsidies, how would that impact Ma'aden since the business is very gas intensive?
Okay. Thank you for your questions. I'm going to try and answer them in order. The first one was production-related and on the fertilizer business, correct? Okay. The increase in terms of ammonia is as a result of the pre-commissioning production levels at Ammonia 3, as we mentioned earlier. That contributed to the increased quarter-on-quarter in particular. I think, I don't have that first quarter number in front of me, but I think the IEP was in line with the quarter. In terms of the finance cost, that's a very good observation you make. I asked the same question earlier today. Our interest rates are set or fixed six months prior to the period. Our interest rates were set and agreed at the start of this half-year as well.
That's why you didn't see that later or an increase coming through as you may have expected. You could expect financing costs to be higher during the second half as we will set them at the start of July. What was the last, the third question? Gas prices. Okay. If we look at our businesses at the moment, on the fertilizer side, we have fixed gas prices for YHML that will run through to the end of 2023. We have fixed prices for MFC or the Ammonia 3 plant through to 2029. Those prices are locked in. MPC's prices are floating at the moment and will be subject to a review, I think, in the third quarter of next year. Thanks.
Thank you, Louis. Noah Sheris again. We will open the mic. Please go ahead, Noah.
Congrats for the strong set of results. I have a couple of questions. If you can take it one by one, that would be better. My first question on the CapEx. Can you share some light on the CapEx plan for the next couple of years, 2023 and 2024? When should we expect the project CapEx to start?
You can see that based on our portfolio of growth, we've got a period of capital spending coming upon us. I don't think it will be anything out of line with what you would expect based on that trend. We will be hearing by next year on the Phosphate 3 project. In addition, we will be funding the studies and beginning construction on the two additional gold mines. We continue to be in a period of sustained capital growth.
Yep. I concur. Also, at the moment, Bob and I are working through our budget and business plan, which we will have a closer look at the next five years. I think towards the end of the year, we'll be able to provide further guidance on that. I agree with Bob.
Yes. Clear. Okay. If you can share, again, sorry, that's a follow-up on the last question regarding the increase in pitch prices. Can you give us further details on what we should expect, if MPC is expected to see an increase in pitch and maybe some details about timeline?
It's difficult to comment on what to expect in terms of gas prices that we will be receiving at MPC. As I mentioned, prices are fixed at Wa'ad Al Shamal and at MFC. If you look at the other main raw material inputs to our business, molten sulfur basically tracks the price of phosphate, of DAP. There's a fairly strong correlation between DAP prices and molten sulfur prices. If I look at coke and pitch, which is essentially what coke is the main cost at our aluminum operations. That is market related, so that will be supply and demand driven, and that generally we have a frame agreement in place there that is indexed to market prices. I think those cover, caustic soda as well, that is a supply and demand driven price as well, and prices there are indexed.
It's essentially how the market is going to behave, how those actual industries are going to behave over time as well, our prices are indexed to our costs.
Okay, thank you. My final one, can you give us an update on the remediation projects for the phosphate business? Are we close to 100% utilization? When should we expect this to take place?
The final work to be done at Wa'ad Al Shamal will be commencing this month, conclude in September, we should certainly be made way by the end of the year.
For the opportunity to ask questions. It's Faisal Azmeh from Goldman Sachs. Maybe a few questions on my end. You've laid out quite an ambitious growth plan over the coming years, one that you aim to achieve. If you can just walk us a bit through how you envision this spending and capital allocation towards that growth plan to be phased out. Do you envision yourself effectively acting on your own or through JV partnerships? You have some leverage on the balance sheet and the company has deleveraged quite a bit. I would say if you look at the outlook for pricing, we could see prices moving lower next year and the year after. The net debt position could effectively move higher again. Maybe two questions in one.
How should we think about your optimal target on capital allocation in terms of net debt to EBITDA? What do you aim to be at?
Louis and I and the board are in that discussion as we speak. We've laid out a significant growth plan. We've done a lot of internal assessments of our capabilities to deliver that, and that's why I spent a few minutes early on in the dialogue today talking about our organization and our capabilities. Doing the same thing with our balance sheet. How are we going to fund this growth? We want to be responsible. We want this to be sustainable, profitable growth, not growth at all costs. We're both veterans of the industry. We've been through commodity cycles. We've both been the victims of it, so we want to be cautious, but we also want to be responsive to opportunities. We are spending a lot of time looking at capital allocation.
Thank you. Obviously, when thinking about a large entity like Ma'aden, and probably there's room for more gains to be achieved. How should we think about that quantitatively, if you have a figure that we can think about over the coming years? Maybe on the productivity side, where do you see utilization rates at on a recurring basis that is achievable? Maybe if you have 1 percentage of EBITDA or revenue that you think is also achievable over the coming two years that you can share with us today or any other KPIs that we should think about that would guide us towards how we think about cost efficiencies and operational efficiencies over the coming 24 months, that would be helpful.
Yes. Louis and I both have targets in mind. Me on my operations and him on working capital that the organization has developed for us. I'm not ready to take those public yet. They need some more refinement, but they are the cost and with the German savings. A lot of our transformation efforts revolve around that core business performance pillar. There's a couple of big numbers out there that we're not quite ready to take prime time yet. It needs more definition, but there's opportunity.
Thank you, gentlemen. Now we open the floor for questions. Lanka, please go ahead. If you want to ask your question, go on mute.
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Thank you for the detailed presentation as well. A couple of questions from my side. Just following up on the phosphate fertilizer segment performance. I think in Q1, we saw volumes of around close to 1.1 million tonnes. Obviously this 1.4 million tonnes in Q2 is closer to what we saw last year in Q2 and Q3. Just wondering if we are back to those normalized volumes, because I understand you've had multiple issues in your phosphate fertilizer unit aside from the remediation at Wa'ad Al Shamal. Could you give us some color there on what we should expect in terms of operations? You did mention Wa'ad Al Shamal remediation should be complete in September. I'm just thinking of the other units, especially at MPC. That's my first question.
The second question is obviously, I think when I look at the financials, the Ammonia 3 unit did extremely well in Q2. You had gross margins close to 93%. You did ramp up very significantly in Q2. Was there an effort from the company to make sure this ammonia unit was up and running given how high ammonia prices are? Should we expect the operating rates to only increase going forward given ammonia prices now are actually higher than phosphate fertilizer prices? That's the second question. My last question, if I may, just in terms of leverage, you hit the net debt to EBITDA of almost 1.8 x. I think a lot of this has to do with the commodity pricing cycle. Any guidance on what sustainable through the cycle leverage you would expect to be and how this would translate into CapEx versus dividends?
I know you touched on this response previously. I was just wondering if you could give us some figures on sustainable leverage ratios. Thank you.
I'll take the last one. We've talked about that already. We are working through a capital allocation target and a structure of leverage ratios that we want to be sustainable throughout the cycle. We should be prepared to be able to discuss that later in the year. Ammonia 3 is running at rate now. You can continue to expect the same level of performance out of that unit. The first question.
The step up in phosphate production was really at Wa'ad Al Shamal. As the remediation, the beneficiation plant remediation came to a close, we benefited from that in the second quarter. The step up in volumes was from 462,000 tonnes to 657,000 tonnes. The main step up there is as a result of the completion of the Wa'ad Al Shamal beneficiation remediation work.
Good. Thank you, Louis. Now we have a couple of questions in the chat. A question from [inaudible] asking about Phosphate 3. The question is, "Is it wholly owned, or a JV in Phosphate 3 project?
Right now, we have had preliminary discussions with several interested parties. We haven't made a decision yet, and those discussions are at very preliminary stages, so not prepared to discuss that further.
Another question from [inaudible]. "Given the large capital spend in upcoming projects, are you able to deleverage in the future years?
It's part of the capital allocation framework discussion that Bob alluded to earlier on.
Thank you, Louis. Another question from [inaudible] Gamsari. It's, "What's Ma'aden strategy regarding rare earth metal exploitation in Saudi?
We have obviously a massive exploration effort underway that's not just for the existing minerals in our portfolio. We're expanding to include anything that the Saudi Geological Survey and others suppose could be here, and that would include some elements of rare earth metals, some transition metals, maybe not in large quantities, but we are continuing to look.
Okay. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Louis. Thank you all for attending this call. As I mentioned, the material and the presentation will be uploaded in Ma'aden website in the investment relations section by tomorrow. If you have any follow-up questions or any follow-up clarifications, please do not hesitate to call us and send us your questions at invest@maaden.com.sa. With this, we'll be closing the session. Thank you for attending.