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Newmont Corporation (NEM)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 30, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Newmont Mining First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. All lines will be on a listen-only mode until we open for questions and answers. Today's conference is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'd now like to turn the call over to Meredith Bandy, Vice President Investor Relations. You may begin.

Meredith Bandy

Management

Thank you, operator, and good morning everyone. Welcome to Newmont's first quarter 2015 earnings call. Joining us on the call today are Gary Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Laurie Brlas, Chief Financial Officer. They and other members of our Executive Team will be available to answer questions at the end of the call. Turning to Slide 2, please take a moment to review the cautionary statement shown here or you can refer to our SEC filings which can be found on our website newmont.com. And now, I'll turn it over to Gary, on Slide 3.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks Meredith, and thank you for joining us this morning. Newmont made a strong start to 2015 and I appreciate the chance to tell you more about our performance. In a nutshell, we continue to deliver safe and steady production at lower cost. We increased our free cash flow by nearly $400 million compared to the first quarter of 2014. We advanced projects in Nevada, Surinam and New Zealand and announced plans to build a new mine at Long Canyon and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet as the improved performance allowed us to prepaid debt and fund our best growth prospects. I will turn to Slide 4 to begin with safety. Safety performance is the best way to gauge the health of the business. A strong safety culture goes hand in hand with efficient operations and an engaged work force. We reduced total injury rates by 9% compared to the prior year quarter and two of our operations Akyem and Waihi have worked with auto reportable injury so far this year. We also had the lowest total injury rates among ICMM member companies in 2014. While these statistics show that we are heading in the right direction, we are not where we need to be. In January, a contractor named Brian Holmes suffered a fatal injury during a shaft maintenance work at Leeville in Nevada. Our thoughts are with Brian's family and his colleagues. We'll continue to work in our performance until we can send everyone home safely everyday. Let's turn to Slide 5 for quarter one highlights. Our strategy has proven successful and we’re continuing to follow through on our commitments. The first part of our strategy is to improve the underlying business. We lowered gold all-in sustaining cost for the third quarter running and by 18%…

Laurie Brlas

Management

Thanks, Gary, and thanks everyone for joining us today. It was a strong first quarter for Newmont and I'm pleased with our performance. First turning to Slide 11, as Gary mentioned, we continue to see strong cost performance across the portfolio. Our first quarter cost applicable to sales per ounce and all all-in sustaining costs per ounce were both nearly 20% favorable to the prior year. These improvements drove free cash flow expansion as seen on Slide 12. We delivered $344 million in consolidated free cash flow in the first quarter and generated a $445 million improvement in cash from continuing operation compared to the year ago quarter, as cost savings more than offset the 7% drop in a gold price. Also included in our free cash flow was a tax refund of about $100 million received during the quarter. We've reported adjusted net income of $229 million in the quarter or $0.46 per share compared to $121 million or $0.24 per share last year. Adjusted EBITDA was up 65% from the prior year quarter benefiting from lower cost applicable to sales due to lower direct operating cost, lower fuel prices, a favorable Australian dollar, U.S. dollar exchange rate and lower exploration advanced projects and other expenses. We continue to fund dividends from free cash flow, and early this week our Board approved a quarterly dividend of 0.025 per share in line with our gold-linked dividend policy. Turning to Slide 13, we'll walk through the Q1 net income adjustments. The largest adjustments to our GAAP net income during the first quarter included a $0.06 per share gain related to asset sales, $0.07 per share related primarily to impairments of our marketable securities, and a $0.09 per share adjustment related to tax valuation allowances that's coming from foreign tax credit. After…

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks, Laurie. I'll shift gears now to cover outlook. Turning to Slide 18, we're maintaining our long term guidance which calls for gold production increase from between 4.6 million and 4.9 million ounces in 2015 to between 4.7 million and 5.1 ounces by 2017. In North American we expect gold production to increase over the three-year period as we complete the Turf Vent Shaft and enter a period of lower striping at Carlin. Long Canyon Phase 1 represents additional upside in 2017 that is not included in this guidance. We're managing our Austria, New Zealand and Indonesian asset as a single Asia Pacific region in 2015. At Batu Hijau we forecast steady gold and copper production increases through higher grade Phase 6 ore, and higher gold grades and productivity at Tanami. In Africa, we expect production to decline primarily lower grade ore at Ahafo and we're accessing and we're accessing Ahafo Mill expansion to help offset that trend. In South America, production is forecasted to decline in 2015 and 2016 before rising in 2017, as the impact of maturing operations at Yanacocha. We're also working on an integrated approach to developing oxide and sulfide deposits that could extend profitable production at Yanacocha. Our guidance also calls for continuous costs improvement. Turning to Slide 19, we remain on track to meet our near term outlook for gold and copper costs and to keep gold all-in sustaining cost below $1,000 per ounce at our managed operations. Our global outlook remains the same, but we've made some changes at the regional level, specifically we are lowering our 2015 outlook for the Asia Pacific region by about 3% and keeping with favorable oil prices and exchange rates. This is offset by a slight cost increase in Africa as we address the power shortages. Our…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mr. Andrew Quail from Goldman Sachs. Sir, your line is open.

Andrew Quail

Analyst

Good morning, Gary, Laurie and team. Congratulations on a very, very strong quarter. A couple of questions from me. First, at Batu, excellent quarter. Obviously, we're going through the phase 6 ore, as you suggested, Gary. When we look at throughput and grade, is this like the benchmark this quarter, or do you expect further improvements from here going forward into 2015?

Gary Goldberg

Management

At this point I'd expect us to see some improvement later in the year, most likely in the third quarter, Andrew, but we're really as you saw on the first quarter we just got into it, it will pick up in the third quarter and then be steady going forward.

Andrew Quail

Analyst

Great. And one on Merian. Obviously, you received some money from the Suriname government. When do you expect to receive the balance of that?

Gary Goldberg

Management

We received all of the moneys for the initial acquisition of their 25% interest, basically the end of last year, and we made cash calls on a regular basis and that continues. Basically based on what our spent is each month. They make their proportion of the cash calls along the way, so basically they're right up to speed as we go forward.

Andrew Quail

Analyst

Great. And maybe last one, more on strategies, with Turquoise Ridge, you guys obviously earn 24%. What you see for Newmont going forward? Do you guys have a strategy to maximize that investment?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yes I think from our standpoint we'll continue to work with our joint venture partner to see how we can best achieve the best value overall for the parties out of that investment. We currently have an agreement to process the ore from the mine at our Twin Creeks facility and we're looking at how we can make sure that we get the best mix going forward between both operations and value for both parties.

Andrew Quail

Analyst

Thanks very much Gary.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mr. John Bridges of JPMorgan. Sir, your line is open.

John Bridges

Analyst

Congratulations, Gary, Laurie, on the results. Just to dig a bit deeper into Batu Hijau. The last time you were in the good stuff there, you had issues with access because of rain, the pulling at the bottom of the pit. How can we model access to this high-grade material over the next two, three years? Are there going to be periods in the monsoon when you're not going to be able to access that and you're going to use stockpile material?

Gary Goldberg

Management

As we put together our plans here as we're into the higher-grade material over the next three years we've taken into account periods when we may not have access and I say, may, because for instance this year we're about 150 feet lower in terms of the water level than what we expected, because we had lower rainfall and we've installed some additional pumping capacity to help us along the way. So, next year we would have a period, and as we get into the next year we'd give more detail as to when specifically you could expect it, but we'd have a bit of a period in 2016 and then a little bit in 2017. Just fall, when we'd expect to be working in higher areas of the pit.

John Bridges

Analyst

Okay. So we can expect, this sort of grade or better each quarter of this year?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yes. This year we're basically through the rainy season that starts later this year and we're in good shape for this year.

John Bridges

Analyst

Okay. Well done. On Yanacocha you mentioned initiatives down there, could you elaborate a little bit on that? Thank you.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Sure. We're looking, I guess, the word would be holistically at a number of different projects that include potentially the bioleach where we continue to go through testing for at least another year or so to confirm the economics and the value of that portion. The other elements are how we can carry forward primarily the Verde deposit but there is other deposits there that contain gold and copper and either producing a copper-gold concentrate and selling that or potentially further processing that on site whether it’s through an autoclave or some other concentrate leach process. We’re looking at basically all these options to extend both oxide and sulfide life at Yanacocha and look to be in a position, I’d say later next year to make a decision on which path or paths make the most sense to develop.

John Bridges

Analyst

There seems to been better performance from some of these leach process that is down in sea level compared to high altitude. Have you tried out some of these things or altitudes?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yes. That’s one of the things we’re taking into account as we look at it. Whether we would want to locate those facilities somewhere else or do it at altitude.

John Bridges

Analyst

Okay. Good luck with that and congratulations again. Thanks Gary and Laurie.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Great. Thanks John.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Brian MacArthur of UBS. Sir, your line is open.

Brian MacArthur

Analyst

Good morning. I just want to go back to Batu Hijau to just given the timing of shift of Freeport ramping up at Gresik but now you’re obviously in the high grade ore over the next three years. Do you see any challenge of it being able to place that concentrate from Batu Hijau because obviously they were pushed back from originally picking in 16 and 17. I just want to make sure you don’t see any problem placing all that concentrates so then it gets taxed at a higher rate outside of not going to Gresik.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Well. It’s actually a smaller percentage Brian of our concentrate that does goes through Gresik, we try to put as much as we can but the rest goes to export and with that we have no problem placing that concentrate. I think working through we’ve got the extension on our export permit which allows us to you need to export through the basically towards the end of September and we’re working actively now with the government to pin down the changes on the contract of work get those agreed so that we can get into a process and of more certainty in terms of what goes on when each of these six month extensions come up.

Laurie Brlas

Management

The cost of the export duty is built into the guidance that we have given as well.

Brian MacArthur

Analyst

Okay. That was my next question. Just roughly like how much goes to Gresik is obviously it makes up huge difference going forward as we get into this high grade, is it like 10% or 20% of it that goes there roughly just for my modeling purposes?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yes I’m going to have to follow up to give you an accurate answer on that one. I just don’t recall it. It’s been a little higher this year than what we anticipated for reasons you’ve seen in terms of other supplying to Gresik and we help to fill in this lack.

Brian MacArthur

Analyst

Right. Okay but if that happens that is just kind of option value upside rates to go through – they only pay the export tax.

Gary Goldberg

Management

That’s correct.

Brian MacArthur

Analyst

And just on Turquoise Ridge, can I just confirm and I can’t remember I should know but just your deal to process Turquoise Ridge at Twin Creeks. Is that like for the current size mine that is to say if that were expanded substantially. Do you still have that right it all has to be work through there? How that actually work?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Basically we’ve got an agreement that runs through 2018 to process the ore and we’re working with them in terms of how we’re looking at potential expansions at Turquoise Ridge to increase their throughput how we would process it. But we clearly have the processing capacity at Twin Creeks to be able to handle some additions.

Brian MacArthur

Analyst

Great. Thanks very much, Gary.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks Brian.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Yu from Citi. Sir, your line is open.

Brian Yu

Analyst

Great thanks. Hey Gary, Laurie. Question is just on Ghana and then the permanent power that you’re going to install there, when it’s fully running how much of the power are you going to source captively versus from the grid. Is there going to be a meaningful change in your power cost?

Gary Goldberg

Management

I’m going to have Chris Robison, our Chief Operating Officer to cover up some of the details around the power capacity.

Chris Robison

Analyst

Yes right now the plan as Gary mentioned earlier is by mid-year we will have temporary power in place which will provide – which will fill this gap for the 33% load shedding and then by year end, we will have permanent capabilities in place to offset the 33%. Obviously if power generation in country increases or starts returning to normal levels then we would back off on our generation. So cost impact is about $10 million or $11 million a year and additional cost with our own generation.

Brian Yu

Analyst

Okay, so you’re going to have the spare capacity in case you still get this 30% load, but then it is higher cost. So – to pull more from the grid, you will do that in just.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Absolutely yes.

Brian Yu

Analyst

Okay. And then so is this – how should we think about this load shedding. Do you see this one-off type event. Or is it going to impact your decision on somehow with the Ahafo mill expansion?

Gary Goldberg

Management

It’s a good question Brian. As we look at both the Ahafo mill expansion and the Subika underground, we’ve got to assess the power availability, question it’s an issue that needs a longer term solution, we’re working with the government and we’re looking at different options because ultimately it needs more reliable capacity. Clearly it’s a drought that has affected some of the availability. So getting back to normal conditions will help there, but that takes – that won’t happen in a period of month, that could take through next year to see that sort of a change. We will take that into account as we look at the economics of these expansions and that will be an element that will have to make sure we address as we bring those forward for approval.

Brian Yu

Analyst

Okay. All right, thank you.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks Brian.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. And our next question comes from the line of Ms. Tanya Jakusconek from Scotiabank. Ma’am, your line is open.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Great, thank you. Good morning everyone and congratulations on a good quarter. Just wanted to come back to two operations, Yanacocha and Ahafo. Maybe Gary, can you talk a little bit about what you see happening at Yanacocha in the next couple of years? I think you mentioned that you definitely see production declining and if we don't go ahead with some of those options that you talked about, when do we start getting into the stockpile? That's my first question.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yanacocha and thanks Tanya for the question. Right now under current production we're kind of this is the last peak year in roughly million ounce per year. Next year not quite half it's about 600,000 consolidate ounces. We maintain that for the next 2 to 3 years after and then 2019 were down into basically going through the leach pads and what's remaining if we are to do nothing else. So that's the current basically base case scenario.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay. And then I guess [Kinshasa] [ph] we just seem to forget about that for now?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Kinshasa is still a resource that’s there, but as we continue to do with Conga and continue to work in that whole region to improve our social acceptance that is clearly one that didn’t have the social acceptance and we took a step back there and would require those changes as well before we consider it.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay, and may be moving to Ahafo. I mean you had a very strong Q1 and even if you look at the upper end of your guidance for operations you’re really looking at production fall into may be 77,000 ounces of quarter. Is this all going to be grade related or is there something else in the mind plan may be you’re just being conservative, I don’t know may be just talk about how you see the operation through the year?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Basically in, I can have Chris chime in here as well. But we do see the grades declining through the course of the year. And so that's what we've laid out in terms of our guidance at this stage. And that's why we're looking at these expansion projects of the Ahafo mill and the Subika underground to be able to help offset the lower grade going forward. Chris we got it covered.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Yes I just wanted to make sure that the great decline started in sort of Q2 or do you see yourself being a little bit and then sort of tapering off towards the end of the year, I don’t know.

Gary Goldberg

Management

I think specifics we would see, we are starting to get into some of that lower grade. I think the other piece is just whether anything changes around the power situation. Right now, we’re still running the basically six days on, two days off sort of a process and working through that.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay. And then just my last question is really on M&A and I think we went through your balance sheets getting stronger and stronger. You got a lot of liquidity available may be you could touch a little bit on your M&A strategy. You have a lot of internal growth that you can push forward, but how do you balance that versus externally?

Gary Goldberg

Management

I think clearly we've got as you acknowledged a very good internal pipeline. We've got the best understanding of those deposits and their potential and we're able to time how we bring those forward in an effective way. You’ve seen how we’ve handled the cash by paying down debt and also looking to carry forward the best projects. M&A and how it fits, we kick the tires on things and look them over and if we see an opportunity that would add value to our shareholders, we will pursue that.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Is the focus more on early stage development or are you looking at producing assets?

Gary Goldberg

Management

At this stage, I really tend to focus more on producing or close to producing types of assets.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay.

Gary Goldberg

Management

I should say gold assets.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Yes, okay thank you. It’s just easy to mix with gold and our copper focus. Our gold copper would that still be a focus?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Gold primarily copper gold or gold copper would still fit within there.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay. And maybe the potential to pay down $750 million in additional debt this year. What minimum cash balance would you keep on the balance sheet for you to be able to do that?

Gary Goldberg

Management

I’m going to have Laurie pick that one up.

Laurie Brlas

Management

Sure. I think clearly we would get down below $2 billion maybe a $1.5 billion to $2 billion we would try to keep on the balance sheet to make sure that we have coverage and we aren't bringing things back to we don't need to.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay. So if we were to just think about it conceptually whatever the gold price will be you know if there aren’t any opportunities for M&A or other investment we can just keep paying off that $219 debt, but keep the cash balance of $1.5 billion to $2 billion would that be fair?

Laurie Brlas

Management

Yes. That would be fair and we will also be paying down. We have some project levels that in Indonesia and that's also targeted for this year, we would hope to pay some of that down as well. And as Gary mentioned with certain projects in places like Peru and Ghana, we would probably rather leave the cash there and redeploy it on projects if we see that in the near term basis rather than bringing it back and paying down debt.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay. But of the $750 million potential repayment would the majority of that be what was due in 2019?

Laurie Brlas

Management

Most of it will be the term loan yes.

Tanya Jakusconek

Analyst

Okay, perfect. Well thank you very much and congratulations.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks Tanya.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Jorge Beristain and he is from Deutsche Bank. Sir your line is open.

Jorge Beristain

Analyst

Hi, good morning, Gary and everybody. And again congratulations on the strong results and I think we're really seeing a differentiated performance in your stock vis-à-vis your peers in the last two years which reflects that. My question is really on the guidance. So it seems that your cash cost guidance is still maintained in the 660 to 710 range for full year 2015. You printed 609 in Q1 obviously there's some great issues going forward, but it seems you're being fairly conservative there. So could you just talk about around those numbers and why we’re seeing such a sort of implied steep ramp in the rest of year or is it simply conservatism?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thanks. Thanks first of all for your comments, Jorge very much appreciate the recognition. On guidance, what we've done we've stuck basically with where we were in the original guidance for the year here at Q1 and given - you see the portion of that that comes from the oil and FX, so you can make those adjustments. I wanted to emphasize that we will be making the spend on the capital, so people don't start modeling a lower amount there. Think in terms of the overall performance what we'll do at the mid-year is take a step back and just make sure it's fully reflective of what we've experienced through the first half of the year. So we just figured rather than trying to make a big adjustment on the cost numbers we're comfortable with where productions coming in. Let's adjust that. We've made a little tweaks in Africa to account for the power and the tweaks in Australia for what we've seen on changes in oil and exchange rate but we look as we give the second quarter results to update the rest of our guidance.

Laurie Brlas

Management

As Gary pointed out, the oil and FX that we experienced year-to-date we haven't brought those down to the level that we’ve seen year-to-date. So that's definitely something that you could model into your numbers and get to a lower number than what we are currently sitting at.

Jorge Beristain

Analyst

Right. But that does seem to be roughly 100 million-ish if one was to mark-to-market on an annualized EBITDA basis so didn't see that material, but where it's lacking. My other question was also just on the moving forward on Indonesia and we heard some comments from Freeport yesterday on their call that the amount of equity investment in a smelter would be really paired back in and also very much back end loaded to the second half of this decade. Could you comment as to where you stand now having had your export license renewed in terms of actually being an equity investor in a potential smelter out there, because it does seem to be a fairly diminimus amount of potential equity and if you’re involved in talks with Freeport to contribute capital they have mentioned many partners are talking with them and if you could just comment on that?

Gary Goldberg

Management

Yes, would probably be considered one of those many partners with the different view, because we bring concentrate into the mix. Our position has been we don’t stand in a good position to build the smelter. We support the country's policy on in country smelting, we work with Freeport or others, because we’re talking with the few other parties that are looking to build the smelter. When you look at our production profile, you see over the next three years there's a peak and then we go through a low range before we would get into phase 7 out in the 2022, 2023 timeframe and that’s when having a smelter would be of more impact to us since we go through the phase 7 or so. We’ll continue to keep people updated as we work through those various discussions and also work through with the government I’ve had - I should comment I was out in Indonesia last month and had a number of meetings with different government officials and I was pleased for meeting with government officials in any country. When you have meetings that start on time and I think what I heard there and what I saw demonstrated in the extension of our export permit what people say they do commit to and it’s good to see. They’d like to see things wrapped up on this soon so would we, but there’s complexities to work through that we’ve got to get completed.

Jorge Beristain

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thank you, Jorge.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And at this time there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call over back to your host. You may proceed.

Gary Goldberg

Management

Thank you. Thanks again for joining our first quarter earnings call. Our team continues to drive stronger performance across the portfolio sustaining the cost improvements we’ve achieved over the last year progressing new ways to work more efficiently and generating nearly $400 million in free cash flows. This performance has given us the financial flexibility we need to pay down debt, expand our existing operations, open perspective new districts, and create value for our shareholders. With that, I’ll close the call and wish everyone a good weekend. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.