South32 Limited

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me is our Chief Financial Officer, Sandy Zimbala, our two COOs, Jason Economides and Noel Pelé. I'll give a short summary of our results before handing back to the operator for questions. Before I go into detail about our results, I'd like to talk about safety. Nothing is more important than the health, safety and wellbeing of our people. Tragically, two of our colleagues, Tonello and Alfredo, lost their lives in the fatal incident at Moselle Aluminium in November. Our deepest sympathies remain with their families and colleagues. In response to the incident, we continued our work to fundamentally shift our safety performance and implement our multi-year safety improvement program. Turning now to our FY23 results. Our teams delivered strong production results during the year, achieving annual production records at Hillside Aluminium, Australian Manganese and South African Manganese. We also embedded our recent portfolio improvements in copper and low-carbon aluminium, key metals needed for a low-carbon future. This underpins strong growth in aluminium, up 14%, base metals up 17% and manganese up 4%. This growth, coupled with our focus on cost efficiencies, has resulted in one of our largest underlying financial results to date, with underlying EBITDA of US $2.53 billion, despite a challenging backdrop of declining commodity prices and industry-wide inflation pressures. A record US $1.2 billion was returned to shareholders during the year, equivalent to 11% of our market capitalisation. And today, we have announced a fully frank ordinary dividend of US $140 million or US $0.032 per share in respect of the June 2023 half year. We have also increased our flexible capital management program by US $50 million to US $2.4 billion, leaving US $133 million to be returned by the 1st of March 2024. Looking ahead, The improvements we have made to our portfolio are expected to deliver further growth in commodities critical for a low-carbon future. With low-carbon aluminium production expected to increase by 12% in the financial year 2024 as Brazil aluminium continues to ramp up and we increase volumes at Moselle Aluminium. And Ceragor is expecting... projects to increase future copper production with the plant de-bottling project underway and a final investment decision for the fourth grinding line expansion expected in the second half of the 2024 financial year. We also continue to advance our portfolio of high quality growth options to further increase our exposure to attractive markets. Our Homosa project in Arizona presents a significant opportunity to sustainably produce commodities for a low-carbon future from multiple deposits for multiple decades, with Tomoza recognised as the first mining project to be added to the FAR 41 process in the United States. At the Taylor Zinc-led Silver Deposit, we're on track to make a planned final investment decision towards the end of this calendar year. And separately, we confirmed the opportunity to produce battery-grade manganese and Hermosa's Clark deposit and have signed multiple MOUs for potential customers for future potential supply to North American markets. We also continue to unlock value from Hermosa's highly prospective land package, recently returning our best copper results to date at peak. We are continuing to invest in greenfield exploration options to discover our next generation of base metal mines. During the year, we consolidate our position in Argentina's highly prospective San Juan exercising our earning right to acquire a 50.1% interest in the Chittor Valley copper prospect and acquiring strategic interest in out-of-the-brand resources. In closing, we continue to prioritise a strong balance sheet to fund our growth into structurally attractive markets while retaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation. The outlook is positive as we continue to execute our strategy and our portfolio is leveraged to the increasing commodity demand required for the global energy transition. Thank you, and I will now hand back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Raoul Anand with Morgan Stanley Australia. Please go ahead.

Hi, morning. Thanks for the opportunity. Look, first I wanted to start with perhaps the industrial action that's been talked about re-append. Now, just wanted to get you a bit more colour because we've seen some numbers around the increase that's been offered around 6.5%. But the strike seems to be still going ahead. I wanted to understand in terms of your production guidance for this year, what type of an impact have you already accounted for? And is there any further risk that we should be aware of for this year?