Steven Kalmin
Analyst · Matt Greene from Goldman Sachs
Thanks, Gary, and welcome all to today's half year results release call. I'll run through some slides, some of which should look very familiar to you as we've been through reporting cycles over the many years. The first slide on Page 8 is really some high-level numbers, many of which Gary has actually covered on, and there will be further detail at least on marketing and industrial and debt outcomes as we have later on. Maybe calling out a couple of numbers that won't be covered later on. They tend to be less relevant in terms of cash and valuation, but net income, $4.4 billion for the half was a very strong addition to the equity base within our books. We did have $700 million of significant positive items, and there was $600 million or so of gains on disposal of assets. We sold a small parcel of our Century shares during the year to bring us down to 30%, comfortable being at that level. It was around $0.3 billion. We also continue to look at accretive opportunities around the parts of the portfolio, maybe end-of-life assets. We sold the Kidd mining operations in Canada also in Q2. And with that structure, that also released some large rehab provisions that we otherwise had, and that reported a gain of also about $250 million, $300 million. The other point just to call out on this first slide is increase in the readily marketable inventories as that doesn't sort of work its way down into net debt, but you would expect an increase in this environment. Number one, prices is going to correlate with that particular -- we got certain volumes. There were price increases across many of our key commodities in which we do hold reasonable inventory positions. So price was a major factor and the major factor. Brent prices from the start of the year to June went up 20% into the $73 a barrel. Zinc prices from start to finish up 16%. Copper was also up 7%. There was also some higher volumes in some commodities. Some of the disruption across Middle East conflict has created longer journeys, different freight routes, global trade friction. So that days on hand generally in inventories has ticked up a little bit, as you would expect in this particular environment. The shape of the wagon wheel at the bottom is a good shape around the diversification contribution of the business. Copper on the industrial side was the strongest business, particularly now that we split steelmaking and energy coal into its own separate components. Marketing was obviously a large contribution as well. We're quite diversified and a very solid copper existing and growing business, particularly, as Gary said, with the expansions back to 1 million tonnes and ultimately 1.6 million tonnes. On Page 9, if we just focus on the industrial performance, I'll look at the waterfall bridge on the next slide, which is most telling around the materiality of the various movements. But overall, this business was up 72% to $6.5 billion. High commodity prices is the key feature, offset by some input cost increases, not some quite material Middle East conflict, both direct and indirect secondary effects. We'll look at that later on. Stronger producer currencies as well we had across particularly Australian dollar and the South African rand. The metals business was the largest increase and is the largest aggregate industrial business, up from $2.4 billion to $4.5 billion. The higher metal prices, we'll see the impact of that on the next slide. Positively, we also had quite a strong volume performance, contributing a positive variance across the metals business, particularly higher copper and cobalt sales now that we are able to sell some cobalt given the quotas that are now working in the DRC and we're delivering into our quotas. The copper business itself -- overall copper went up from $1.1 billion. We'll look at a slide later on to over $3 billion of EBITDA contribution this year. And pleasingly, the African business, which just 12 months ago posted very little EBITDA of only $0.1 billion was up to over $1 billion. It went from $0.1 billion to over $1 billion of EBITDA during this particular, and that was very much volume. You need the tonnes given the size and scale of those operations. We did increase production by 55,000 tonnes during the period out of Africa from 83,000 tonnes to 138,000, which was up 66% as well. We are going through a period of lower gold production out of our Kazzinc’ operation. It's transitioning to -- ultimately to an underground operation. It's also expanding deeper in the open pit. There is some investment. It's going through a lower period. And at some point, that will snap back to quite material gold production, not dissimilar from where it's been in sort of historical periods. We'll look at some of the offset from the landed prices for diesel, sulphur and sulphuric acid on some of the next slides. The energy business made up of coal, but also our industrial oil footprint that we have as well, somewhat gets lost within the overall Glencore. But if we look at the bottom there, we did post a $300 million increase out of the oil industrial. There's a small upstream oil and gas portfolio, but we have the refining business, particularly down in South Africa, around 100,000 barrels a day of processing capacity. And overall, the oil business went from $164 million to $432 million. And coal benefited largely from increases in both energy coal as well as steelmaking coal, energy coal getting a bit also from the LNG availability that we had during this particular period. The industrial bridge, as I mentioned, before, at $3.8 billion to $6.5 billion. As often the case on the slides, price tends to out feature many of the other variances given exposure generally within this industry. So $3.8 billion positive price movements. Within that, our overall copper business was $1.8 billion. The zinc business was $0.5 billion; nickel, $0.2 billion and the other $0.3 billion and the coal business added $1 billion of positive price variance. You can see on the bottom left, we've noted some of the major contributors in terms of average price increases of copper up 39% period-on-period, zinc 22%, gold 52%, 100% and the various coal complexes as well contributed. Pleasingly, and we would hope to -- hope and expect to report increasingly positive volume variances, particularly as the copper growth moves through to the '28-'29 period and then into the '30s as well. Period-on-period, there was a net $200 million positive volume contribution. That was primarily out of the copper business, which was $0.6 billion. The biggest contributors there being Africa, which I mentioned before as well as Antamina, which increased its copper production during the period 50% at the expense of lower zinc. It's going through a higher copper, lower zinc period. So large contributions from Antamina. The zinc business itself was down $0.3 billion there, primarily the gold exposure that we have within the Kazzinc’, which is a byproduct out of our Kazakhstan business. And EVR dropped $0.1 billion of volume variance in that period with being lower on recoveries and yields. We expect an H2 recovery as we'll talk later on. The cost variance, as you would expect in this environment, just given the nature and scale of our business was a negative $1.1 billion. Two major impacts to call out was the direct energy inputs, which is diesel, mainly affecting our copper and coal businesses where you have some large scale, big fleet utilization, high open pit operations that we have as well. And you had also secondary Middle East impacts, particularly at our DRC assets in relation to sulphur and sulphuric acid. We do expect much of what's in that cost variance to be relatively transient once there's resolution and [indiscernible] markets and supply chains normalize out of the -- out of what's happening within the Middle East, you would expect those prices across all those categories to return to some sensible level compared to where they traded within Q2. To give you some sense on some of those price variances within Q2 Brent price, for example, that averaged $91.3 a barrel compared to $61 at the beginning of the year. So that's up 50%. That's just on the crude side. the products were actually significantly higher as there was a scramble to secure both feedstock as well as the demand that came from inventories and the like. Within Australia, where we're a big consumer of diesel, there was record Australian diesel premiums, which is the premium both for refining capacity and physical delivery that was on top of the Brent crude that we see on our screens all the time. Within DRC asset prices compared to budget, which is where we would have thought around price points at the beginning of the year or cost points, DRC asset prices up 40% for us against budget. And sulphur price at Murrin, which is a big user of sulphur as part of HPAL process against budget, we were -- it was up 67% sulphur prices. So there has been a big cost impact, as I said, largely transient. How long this lasts for is anyone's guess at this particular point. I suspect for as long as it lasts, we'll see negatives in cost, but we're going to be compensated more out of the price impacts as that supply is generally constrained within those businesses. Currencies were Australian dollar a bit stronger. It was 0.3 of that 0.4 and South African rand was 0.1. They were both up around 10%. Positive variance within the other I mentioned before was the stronger refining contribution coming out of the oil business. If we look at marketing on Page 11, very strong contribution, $3.3 billion, as Gary mentioned, up 142%. Largely, the increased delta was out of our oil and gas business through its various products from crude to gas to refined products to freight and the likes. Just mathematically, we thought it useful. I think the graph on the bottom right is very useful around the very long-term history, 19 years track record within this business is where we've been within that range. You can see a strongly and consistently cash generator over the cycle. It's allowed material distributions back to shareholders, reinvestment within growth in the business as well. The big spike out there, the $6.4 billion was back in Russia-Ukraine period 2022. What we've done just to plot a number, we've taken the half year of the $3.3 billion and we've looked at the midpoint of the middle and top end of our current range. So our range is $2.3 billion to $3.5 billion. The midpoint is $2.9 billion. So we picked the midpoint of that and the top end, which is $3.2 billion and that's where you get the $4.9 billion. Just to put a mathematical placeholder, I think, as Gary mentioned, basis conditions, that's sort of a good sensible number that we think is neither conservative nor necessarily aggressive. We'll need to see how the world plays out over the next sort of 6 months. July started off reasonably well as well. So you can see a very strong performance, more recently, consistently achieving above the particular range. If we look at the net debt capital allocation, again, the graph that we show from opening net debt to closing net debt of $10.2 billion, a reduction of $1 billion. Strong cash flow generation, $8.1 billion that we have there. We'll look at a slide on CapEx later on, but there was cash flow of $4 billion expensed during this particular period. There was some either one-off and nontraditional CapEx, which I'll talk to. There were certain payments that we made to affect the securing of land at KCC, which we announced back in February that after many, many years had reached its resolution and that liberates and allows that business to reach its full potential as we go forward. And we're starting to also spend more money than historically around, as Gary went through those slides on the copper pipeline, something like in Antapaccay, Coroccohuayco, we're starting to secure some land and various other early works that's happening towards progressing those particular projects. So we split out CapEx later on between what's the more traditional CapEx and then we've got our copper growth projects. We're starting to spend a bit more money in copper growth, which I think is evident that there is both movement and momentum within that particular area. We generated $0.2 billion of net investment disposals. Primarily, there was $300 million small parcel of the Century shares, which we sold in Q1. Increase in non-RMI working capital. This had to be very tightly managed and watched and controlled and monitored clearly during a period of high commodity prices, increased volatility, very large margin call environment that we had as well. This was fairly modest compared to the big outturn that we had back in 2022. And the big difference here is that it's been volatility more at the shorter end of positions and shorter end of delivery of oil and gas and metals and the like. Back in 2022 was very much on the LNG story where you had movements around TTF that was many multiples of what we've seen in this particular environment. But at $0.9 billion, I think it's been quite well managed and quite controlled within that, $0.4 billion is non-RMI inventories. We've got some cobalt in Africa. I'll talk a little bit about that later on until we're able to ultimately export that and sell it into the markets. $1.2 billion, the net margin calls and physical forward transactions. We went to town across sort of how that all works in terms of the working capital cycle. That was quite well managed, quite well contained. We'll see subject to prices and variations that that may unwind. It may stay there. It's subject to obviously the trading book and the likes and volatility in prices as we move through. But I think you'll all agree, given the marketing earnings of $3.3 billion and the volatility and how much has been put on the balance sheet, that's been well managed and is relatively modest with good paybacks in terms of working capital. There's also a little bit goes through this category that doesn't necessarily sit on the balance sheet, but it just sits in working capital on the cash flow statements where we spend rehab to deliver on our rehab obligations and bring down that provision. There was $0.3 billion that was spent there. That's not coming back. That's obviously more akin to an operating cash flow. Pleasingly, it's worth noting, I know some of you track that, our rehab provision, if you look at the balance sheet actually came down $700 million or $0.7 billion. $4 billion of that did relate to disposals of subsidiaries. We had Kidd, we had Lady Loretta. We had a Colombia port, all of which had some rehab obligations that we've discharged that over to the buyer. So I think all very accretive transactions, notwithstanding that they may not have generated upfront cash to bring down the rehab liability by $0.7 billion during the period and $0.4 billion just basis disposals, and we'll continue to look for opportunities that may present themselves there. So our debt was down to $10.2 billion. If we just jump on to Page 13, how we thought about capital returns is fairly consistent with how we've approached over the last 12 months, starting at the -- taking out the marketing leases and the second shareholder distribution from the one that was declared at the beginning of the year, that would get our pro forma net debt, if you like, back to the $10 billion. But as we've done over 3 periods now, we do have the value of the Bunge stock. It's worth currently about $3.5 billion. It's out of lockup at the period, do not expect us to be doing anything necessarily tomorrow or soon or anything that's disorganized or messy. We're looking for a longer term or not necessarily longer term, but maximum value creation for Glencore over how the asset is ultimately monetized, working in coordination with the Bunge team. We're very supportive of Greg and John and the team and what they're doing. They posted good results the other day. The business looks like it's got momentum. There's good synergies. We like the thematics of everything going on. We're happy to sit on that stock for a while as we navigate the best pathway towards eventual monetization. But it's now -- it's liquid. It's a strong valuation. It's surplus capital in our view. And we think it's both conservative and appropriate from a shareholder perspective to be dispersing already or to be advancing some of the eventual monetization of that towards shareholders. That's where the $1.5 billion, we've chosen the $1 billion of cash, $0.5 billion of buyback. If you look at that in relation to $3.5 billion of value, $1.5 billion, that's only around 40%. So that's quite conservative. That's roughly a thinking that I think is sensible. We'll continue to think around in advance of eventual monetization that 40%. So it still retains $2 billion of surplus capital beyond the $1.5 billion that we have announced today, split between cash and buybacks. We look at the capital within the business as well. The main thing to call out relative to guidance at the beginning of the year, which was $6.5 billion. We've pushed that up 5% on average over the 3 years to reflect the inflationary environment that we've been in, somewhat higher than, I would say, general CPI. You've had factors across weaker U.S. dollar, high energy cost, general industrial capital goods. If you go out there and secure Caterpillar machinery, your dozers, your excavators, you want to put a construction project out there, civil engineering, you would generally find that you'd be looking at 5% over a blend of projects that we have. Some are more expensive, some are less expensive, some in different currencies, some have efficiencies. But 5% is what we've applied across having done some thinking and some work and looking at some tangible tenders that have gone out for some of these projects. The first half of the year, the $3.9 billion is what's been capitalized on to industrial CapEx compared to $3.4 billion, something to call out, which is what I referred to earlier on is that most of that increase was in respect of the copper portfolio investments, particularly to secure land access to support that copper growth and operational flexibility. So if you look at the bottom down there, $0.3 billion was spent to secure the land access at KCC. That's all been done. It's all registered. We're raring to go, and that's all part of the future sort of planning and we'll be delivering quite soon on that particular package that was secured at Antapaccay, Coroccohuayco also one of those projects as well. So $0.3 billion, some ongoing spend across MARA, El Pachon and NewRange and the like. And you can see on the top right, copper is where the big increase period-on-period. It's a lot of it is to do with those copper growth projects, but generally 5%, probably tracking similar annualized at the first half to where we are at the second half in terms of that in terms of the run rate of the $6.8 billion average, were always expected to be a little bit higher in the year 2026 over '27-'28. There is a heavier CapEx investment period, particularly at EVR. As they finish up their water retreatment projects that then tapers off in a year or 2 and finishing up a few projects, which we're wrapping up now around Onaping Depth and some of the Collahuasi growth projects that they've had in the past. If we look across to Slide 15, I think it's important to just take stock of the results where we were for first half. We'll then roll into cost evolutions and that then give you a 2026 full year illustrative EBITDA guidance. It's good at dissecting the $10.1 billion. Page 26 has all the details and the numbers within the appendix. But the copper business on the left, you can see period-on-period went from $1.1 billion to the $3 billion. And volume also helped there, particularly not -- it wasn't only prices and costs that came down, but we're up 15% in volume within the copper business. As I said, Africa was plus 55%, Antamina plus 28%, and we lost MICO, the Mount Isa copper operation, which shut around July last year. Realized prices was up about 40%. Costs actually both volume and primarily on a volume basis, we actually were down at $2.08. We were down from $2.25 in the first half of last year. So a strong margin and strong contribution on the copper side for the first half with good volume momentum coming through. The zinc business compared to 12 months ago was $0.9 billion to $0.9 billion notwithstanding that we had some volume reductions as well. Lady Loretta, another mine that's part of the Isa complex shut towards the end of last year through end of life. There was volume reductions down there, but higher realized prices, costs sort of as you were, and that's with the lower gold prices as well. The steelmaking coal and the energy coal, we've seen margin expansion across both realized prices, portfolio realized prices at $206.9/t for steelmaking coal was up 24%. Energy coal was up 19% on $93.9/t. And EVR or steelmaking coal tracking a little bit lighter in terms of volume. So you'll see a pickup in H2 when we look at the full year '26 outcrop as well. So all the details are back in -- back on Page 26, if you want to look at that. I think important to just focus on costs, and then we'll wrap up with a '26 illustrative number across the zinc business, A very strong byproduct business, of course. Yes, we produce zinc, but we produce a lot of gold. We produce silver, we produce lead as well within that business as well. Compared to the beginning of the year, earlier guidance was for a bigger negative. The main difference as to why it's still negative and slightly lower negative is to reflect the fact that the precious metals byproduct value has decreased in mark-to-market terms since where we're sitting here in February. Gold prices were $4,854 and now a little over $4,000. Silver was $82, now $58.7 as well. So that reflects in lower byproduct credits and a slightly less negative cost per tonne of zinc produced within that particular business. What we have done is reflect in the full year number, the sale of Kidd on the 1st of June 2026, which actually implied a production upgrade because we didn't change our overall zinc guidance for the year which was 20,000 tonnes of zinc. Both those extra zinc volumes as well as the fact that there is higher sales expected H2 over H1, all of that contributes towards actually a lower full year cost for zinc compared to the first half. You can see we've gone from pre-byproduct $2.83 to $2.54 somewhat counterintuitive given cost evolutions, but strong volume benefits and the upgrade also the volume that we have over there. Within the various coal businesses, relatively modest increases from cost guidance from February, notwithstanding some of the higher prices, particularly on diesel. We haven't assumed -- we've assumed going forward that there is some moderation, Brent crude in the $70s. Q2 was obviously much higher than that but that correlates with prices to some extent as well. We've had some favorable FX, particularly in Canada. And in both businesses, steelmaking as well as energy, there is some uplift in volumes from H2 to H1. So in both those commodities, you've got the full year cost performance coming below where H1 '26 is as calculated, which 2026 forecast is an average for the year. So the actual outturn for the second half will even be lower to deliver that mathematical blend between the 2. We'll look at the outturn on that also later on. The copper unit cost, Page 17, slightly busier slide, but worth just spending a few minutes on this, given where we've seen some of the biggest impact, particularly in costs having to be absorbed, bigger byproduct impacts, streaming impacts and a little change in what we're doing also around operational efficiency and value-add initiatives that we're doing within the Africa business. The first area just to call out, and we highlighted that both in the production report in Q1 and Q2 last week was that now we're increasingly not taking the cobalt production to its final salable hydroxide form. There's multiple benefits in that. There is some variable costs in doing that, but it's also more energy intensive, it's reagent intensive. It's space intensive, the security concerns around bagged cobalt. So we're releasing it more into solution, which is quite far into the process when we do come back and liberate that and produce a final hydroxide for future sale, that's quite easy to do, down the track. That's also why we're seeing reported cobalt production much lower in the levels that we're going through and you can expect that and why cobalt production -- final cobalt production guidance was withdrawn a while ago because this is a month-to-month, quarter-by-quarter proposition as to what's the most value-accretive way of doing that. The implications of that is that the cobalt in solution on the balance sheet at least is capitalized at a much lower value than what hydroxide would be. This has led to a temporary noncash increase in the derived costs of $0.11 per pound compared to the February guidance. This is clearly going to reverse as the material ultimately gets processed and sold. And when it does do, it's going to artificially reduce the cost that we then report at that point because we've already expensed the cost at this point and are capitalizing at a very low level. So there was $0.11 impact there relative to guidance that we were at the beginning of the year. Mathematically, that would have translated that's about $200 million of increased -- of reduced EBITDA and a high unit calculated cost on a full year basis of 810,000 tonnes of sales. The other key area, which we've tracked the February guidance on a pre-byproduct from $2.32 to $2.77 is very much these transitory effects around fuel, sulphur and sulphuric acid. DRC assets for us are incredibly exposed to these costs, both in its location, landlocked, freight advantages, clearing borders, taxes, impasse, everything that's logistically involved in securing and keeping critical levels of supply there. The other thing we're producing cathode and not selling concentrate. We haven't got the benefits of the low TC/RCs that comes through the Latin American portion as well that we have. So location processing methods are very relevant over there. We've shown in the graph at the bottom, $0.30 per pound of fuel sulphur and sulphuric acid. And the graph on the right shows how the evolution of those prices, landed costs across what is fuel in Latin America, fuel in DRC, sulphuric acid and sulphur in those prices. You get the triple whammy of the landed cost, not only product price, you've got to deal with freight, you've got to taxes and duties. There's all these elements that ultimately manifest. We think these are transitory. They are part of our -- part of the cost base. And the focus very much in Q2 was on security of supply. The instructions here from the teams, from copper, from the procurement teams was do what we need to do to make sure that this asset continues to focus on production, deliver production. There's no controllable losses, pay what you have to do, work out what you do, switch swap, whatever sort of was necessary at the time. And clearly, the -- that was important to get through what was a very sort of unpredictable and sort of crazy period around raw materials and the likes. All of this, if you look at the copper growth we've delivered on tonnes, you look at the EBITDA performance in Africa, for example, first half 2025, $45 million. H1 '26, over $1 billion. The key is to get tonnes out the ground there. And if it costs you a little bit more because you need to focus on the -- on just making sure that you secure these products and materials, then that is what it is to some extent. Of course, we're not going to be wasteful. We're going to be thoughtful. We're going to be sensible. We're going to create competition in the market as much as possible. That's had a large impact in where we are today, at least for a full year outturn of $0.02 or $0.03 a pound on mine cost and then you add a little bit of -- and then the byproducts and some of the streaming effect that does work its way up through the system. We think that's given those costs and the key thing out of this business in this environment, $14,000 copper, we won tonnes. In terms of how that's -- how that translates then into the illustrative 2026 EBITDA, we focus just on the copper business off to the left. So this is baking in 6 months of actuals and 6 months of indicative results for '26 basis the curve that prevailed around the end of June and the cost environment that we see for the rest of the 6 months as well. Production mix doesn't have as much of an impact around copper, zinc and energy coal, the one we'll see later on at [indiscernible] where second half, first half is 44% and 56% if you look back at our production report, which we showed as well. So copper at 840 kt production, slight upgrade given there was previously some Kidd tonnes of around 10,000 that was in there at a realized price, conservative now against $14,000. I think that was using $13,500 or so was the price. So if we ran this at a true spot number today, you'd find some high numbers within the copper business. And overall, $6.5 billion with a bit of development project coming through. On the zinc side, you're at $1.9 billion. On steelmaking coal, you're at $2.7 billion. That's much higher than what we were in the first half, which is $1.1 billion. So you got $1.6 billion in the second half, and that is very much an H1, H2 split where we had 13.5 million tonnes in first half, 17.5 million tonnes in the second half to give the 31 million tonnes full year. And energy coal is 1.1 million tonnes, again a slight tick up in terms of volumes as well. Annualized pretty much the other, which is the oil, the aluminum, the ferroalloys, the nickel and some corporate overhead. And that's where I spoke about the $4.9 billion EBIT number on marketing, which was first half plus half of the half of the top end, and that gives $5.6 billion of EBITDA. We were $3.6 billion for the first half. So you've got $2 billion modeled for the second half, all of which this shows a sort of extrapolating out pretty much 1 plus 1 equals 2, around $20 billion of our $10.1 billion, where you do have a pickup within the industrial business, some in copper and some in steelmaking coal. So with that, I'll hand back to Gary, a lot of good momentum and cash generation in the business.