Fortescue Ltd

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fortescue's annual results presentation. Joining me today in Perth is Mark Hutchinson, Fortescue Energy Chief Executive Officer and Apple Padgett Chief Financial Officer. For those who have participated in our calls before, you know about our program called CEO for a Day, where we have aspiring leaders work with our leadership team to learn about the business. So I'm thrilled to welcome a true Fortescue legend, Angus Lane, a drill operator at Elewina, who joins us for CEO for the day. Angus is a proud Baramaya, Yamaji, Wukuri, Wurrumunga, and Arundo man. He joined Fortescue through our Vocational Training and Employment Center program, or VTEC, in January last year. Since completing VTEC, Angus has become an integral member of our Elewina Drill and Blast team, and I've been fortunate enough to see Angus in action while visiting site only a few weeks ago. We're really fortunate to have you here with us, mate. Welcome. Yeah, good morning.

Thank you, Dino, for having me. I look forward to what CEO for a day has stored for me today, and, yeah, very much keen to see what goes on. Thanks, Angus.

So our full-year result builds on a strong operational performance that we shared at our quarterly results only a few weeks ago. We achieved full-year shipments of 191.6 million tonnes while maintaining our industry-leading cost position with a hematite C1 of 1824 per tonne. Most importantly, we did this safely with our lowest ever trip for metals of 1.3, 28% improvement from the prior year, a truly amazing result. This coming year, we're aiming to build on this performance with FY25 guidance for total shipments of 190 to 200 million tonnes, which includes five to nine million tonnes from IronBridge. On the financial results, which Apple will talk to in detail shortly, our operating performance and focus on cost discipline contributed to the third highest earnings and second highest free cash flow in the company's history. Reflecting this strong performance our commitment to delivering shareholder returns, the Board has declared a final divvy of 89 cents per share. This, along with our interim dividend, equates to total dividends of $1.97, which is a payout ratio of 70% of full-year MPAT and represents distributions to shareholders of $6.1 billion Australian dollars. We continue to advance our metals portfolio during the financial year, with first ore from our flying fish deposit at Ellawanna and at the haul hub at Christmas Creek. We also ramped up commissioning of Ironbridge, our most innovative iron ore project yet. Despite some challenges with the raw water pipeline, we've had a strong start to FY25 and full production capacity is still targeted for the September quarter next year. On exploration, we advanced drilling and studies on various near mine and greenfield development opportunities. And that's within our portfolio of over 13 billion tons of hematite mineral resources. And outside of Australia, we successfully completed early stage mining from the Belinga iron ore project in Gabon, with focus now firmly on exploration, drilling and studies. Globally, we have an exciting exploration pipeline with programs underway in Argentina, Peru and Brazil, amongst others. Turning to green metals, which we see as a significant growth opportunity to rethink the entire iron and steel value chain and develop a new green industry here in Australia. Just a few weeks ago, we commenced works on our $50 million green metal project at Christmas Creek, which marked a new milestone in our mission to build a green metal supply chain. We're aiming to produce more than 1,500 tonnes per annum of a higher than 95% green metal with first production anticipated next calendar year. Moving to sustainability, which has been at the heart of Fortescue since our founding 21 years ago. And as we accelerate commercial decarbonisation of industry rapidly, profitably and globally, it will be our pathway to success in the future. Today, we released our annual reporting suite, which includes our sustainability report, and outlines our commitment to giving back to the communities in which we operate. Our economic contribution totaled 27.5 billion Aussie dollars this year in payments to employees, suppliers, shareholders and government. We're also proud to be Australia's third highest taxpayer, contributing 6.1 billion Aussie dollars in corporate taxes and state royalties. We continue to see the benefits of initiatives such as our Billion Opportunities Programme, where only a few weeks ago we celebrated more than $5 billion in contracts awarded to around 200 First Nations businesses since it was launched, with only one in 2011. And through our Vocational Training and Employment Centre initiative, more than 1,500 First Nations Australians have been employed with Fortescue. My mate Angus here is only but one of them. Through our diversity and inclusion plan, we're building a workforce that reflects the communities in which we live. There continues to be steady growth in gender equality with females holding 24% of total roles and 37% of senior leadership roles. Our ambition now is to increase gender diversity to reflect 40-40-20, where 40% of our roles are held by women, 40% are held by men, and the remaining 20% are represented by any gender. Our First Nations workforce is also growing, with First Nations Australians comprising around 15% of our Pilbara workforce. Turning to decarbonisation, where we remain resolutely committed to meeting our real zero target by 2030. Doing this will see us eliminate fossil fuels from our operations without any reliance on carbon offsets. Momentum is strong, with several milestones achieved during the final year. financial year and we're well on track to meet our commitment by 2030. This includes this year a commissioning of our gaseous and liquid hydrogen plant at Christmas Creek, which is the largest of its kind in Australia. We also tested our battery electric haul truck prototype Roadrunner at our Green Energy Hub and a few weeks ago we were there to launch a hydrogen battery electric truck to undergo similar testing in the Pilbara. And we're only just getting started. Our mission is to accelerate commercial decarbonisation of industry rapidly, profitably and globally. And on that note, I'm going to hand over to Hutch for an update on the energy business.