Anglo American plc

Well, good morning, everybody, for those of you I haven't spoken to in person. Welcome, and thanks for joining us again today. So a pretty busy first half, following on from a pretty busy last year, but a very exciting one nonetheless for us, and I think definitely marking the transition as we deliver this accelerated strategy for Anglo-American. On a go-forward business in both copper and iron ore, I think we continue to deliver excellent operational performance, which is building now on the groundwork that we laid over two years ago. This focus on operational excellence is by and large driving stable and cost-effective production. In a world that is just getting more and more complex with some unprecedented volatility, it is more important than ever that we remain focused on what we can control, which includes driving operational excellence to get the most out of our business. I really am very pleased to say that completing the first and the biggest component of our portfolio simplification, which was the demerger of Valterra, has been really successful, unlocking material value for all of our shareholders. It took a tremendous effort from both the Anglo and the Valterra teams, and this was a really big step forwards towards the goal of becoming a focused, high-quality copper company. and premium iron ore producer with substantial growth options. We're going to talk a little bit later today about the coal transaction with Peabody. But regardless of the outcome of this specific deal, the portfolio simplification is progressing well, and we continue to work incredibly hard to unlock what we believe remains substantial inherent value within this company. The new Anglo-American provides an exceptionally high quality base and sets us up to benefit from high return growth in the right commodities with our collection of Tier 1 mines, our vast resource endowments and further long-term asset optionality. Safety is, of course, our number one priority and the primary focus in everything that we do. So, of course, it saddens me greatly to report the loss of two colleagues in two separate incidents in the first half of this year at our managed operations, one in Brazil and the other at Unki in Zimbabwe. This is a profound reminder of how deeply safety matters. Although we still have a lot of work to do in this front, we have indeed though made some significant progress in reducing our injury frequency rates across the whole of the business. In the first half of this year, these rates were reduced by 24% from the end of last year and have actually almost halved in the last three years. At the same time, our high potential incidents have continued to decline which is a result of disciplined execution, some strong risk analysis and mitigation, and the commitment of our teams on the ground. As a result of our efforts to simplify and prioritize work, our leaders are able to spend much more time now in the field, engaging directly with their teams, fostering this accountability that we were after, and encouraging now a culture of proactive reporting. Our commitment to safety is unwavering. It's a journey. We still have a long way to go, but I am confident that we are making progress. And we intend to end up with an environment where it is safe to come to work and leave work every day in the same way in which you arrived. Our operating model is the foundation of operating excellence. It is a structured approach which underpins the development and the delivery of our plans by connecting our strategy directly with the underlying assets. This disciplined execution ensures that we deliver the right work at the right time, but more importantly, in the right way. It also allows us to better understand potential problems much sooner and lets us address these proactively in order to maintain and drive longer-term value maximizations. The operating model is underpinned by our commitment to sustainability and also extends into our capital management capabilities. And this enables us to translate our endowments and our wider exploration program, of course, into value at the right time. Our operating model translates more into stability and in turn supports safety in the operations and options to pursue incremental improvements. And this helps us to generate the higher margins that we're now seeing and a return on capital employed, as well as enabling the delivery of value accretive growth and capital returns. I really am delighted by the performance of both our copper and iron ore businesses during the first six months of this year, and our guidance is unchanged for the rest of the year. In Copper Chili, we've seen some strong performance from Las Bronces, which has come in actually ahead of our plans as we continue to open up the Denoso II area and put that mine back into the right shape. The strong performance at Las Bronces is increasingly setting us up well as we head into an even better version of this mine once it adopts a joint mine plan with Next Doors and Dena as part of our agreement with Codelco. We'll continue to work on getting that agreement finalized and hope to do that later on this year. Los Brancos' performance, and in fact El Soldado's performance alongside Los Brancos, has fully offset the variability in the grade and the recoveries that we saw coming out of Coyahuasi. which is, I think, a remarkable achievement in and of itself, considering that both of those mines are overall lower grade, and it shows how much the team have turned both of those assets around in the last couple of years. Lower copper production was planned at Koyawasi for 2025, as the mine transitions between phases in the main pit, which is Rosario, and this is expected to be complete by the end of 2026. The stockpiles, which we had planned to use to supplement production during this period, turned out to be quite a lot more refractory than was expected. And as a result of that, we ended up with lower recoveries. This was compounded in the first half by the variability in the metallurgy and the water constraints that the mine suffered, which affected both throughput and recoveries. Now, in terms of the water, Koyawasi has started to receive additional water, so we've just commissioned our own desalination plant, and as of the end of June, we are now using that water, and of course that plant will ramp up. during the course of this year and on into 2026. And this should help to mitigate this issue of lower grades as we go through the development work on the mine itself for the rest of this year. So, therefore, we are expecting significant improvements in the second half from Koyawase. We're also now having a look at next year's plan from the independent joint venture team and are working with our partners to see how we can best optimize the ore feed and minimize the impact of these recoveries until we get that next phase into production later on in 2026. Now, this may include having to accelerate the mine development to manage ourselves through this transition. But let's not forget that Koyawasi is one of the world's very best copper endowments. With over 2.6 billion tons of reserves at almost a percent copper, it is an outstanding asset by any measure. Now, our newest mine, Queveco in Peru, continues to perform very well. In just its third year operation, it's still reaching above capacity throughput rates. Great cost management from the team on the ground there, and strong byproduct credits help to bring the costs in at Queveco at just 88 cents a pound, which shows the very high margin nature of this particular asset. Our high throughput rates are now unfortunately putting some pressure on the recoveries from the coarse particle recovery plant, and we are continuing to work on de-bottlenecking and drive improved stability and recoveries there. And then, turning to our premium iron ore assets, these assets underpin a very solid business, generating strong cash flows with upside optionality as the world steel industry moves to higher quality iron ore as an input to help them manage their own emissions. Our Brazilian iron ore operation at Minas Rio is delivering stable production, showing continuous improvement quarter on quarter. In South Africa, Kumba's performance benefited from improved rail availability and port performance, supporting very strong sales volumes. We also are continuing to realise the benefits of the reconfigured mine plan there. with some excellent cost control by Mpumi and the team. And we still have, of course, the UHDMS margins to benefit from as that project is going into implementation. So turning now to our portfolio simplification. Really pleased that we've delivered the biggest single element of this transformation journey with a successful demerger of Valterra on the 31st of May this year. And that was, as we remind ourselves, only just a year after having announced the accelerated strategy. We worked extremely hard to structure this demerger, including the prior distribution of part of our holding, the retention of the 19.9% stake, and in parallel, an Anglo-American share consolidation. The Valterra team has also been on an extensive marketing campaign, including global shareholder engagement and a capital markets day, which I believe showcased that business extremely well. All of the elements here, structurally and proactively, have addressed the flowback concerns and have helped, I think, to set Valterra up to succeed in the capital markets. I'm delighted. that we've also been able to share directly in their success alongside our shareholders, with the residual stake having benefited now from quite a material rise in PGM prices in the last couple of months, increasing by value of about half a billion dollars to around $2.6 billion as of yesterday. Now, as previously stated, we are looking to responsibly exit that position over time, and hope that the Valterra team can continue to move from strength to strength. The PGM's demerger was clearly a major milestone on our simplification journey, but our efforts continue unabated on the remaining processes. In Nickel, we signed the definitive agreement with MMG back in February of this year for proceeds of up to half a billion dollars, and we are now working through the final regulatory approvals. And in steelmaking coal, we completed the sale of Jelenba for a billion dollars at the start of the year too. Now, as you know, at the end of March, we had this unfortunate incident underground at Maramba. Most importantly, the mine was safely evacuated with all of our processes and procedures working exactly as they should have. The incident itself caused no damage to the mine, and there's no damage to any of the equipment in the mine either. And we are now going through a very rigorous process to work out the right approach to restarting the mine with all the appropriate regulatory approvals and safety considerations every step of the way. Our team in Brisbane has gone about this work in an excellent manner, I believe. So, you know, we have now over two decades of experience in operating this mine and the team in Australia combined with the technical capability team and the experience across the group are working diligently on the restart in partnership and in collaboration with all of our stakeholders. So as part of that process, we've set up a tripartite industry forum. So that's basically a forum that's constituted of business, government and labour stakeholders to discuss this incident and be sure that we are transparently sharing the learnings from this incident. This is a first, I believe, for the mining industry in Queensland and sets a new benchmark for both transparency and industry collaboration. We will continue to work very closely with our workforce here, with the industry safety and health representatives, as well as with Resources Safety and Health Queensland under a commonly agreed set of principles to progress a staged approach to recommencing production as soon as is feasibly possible in a fully risk-assessed manner. Now I want to be very clear that as we have worked through the different options, our primary lens, as it always is, has been safety. We got back underground in mid-April and we developed the plans for a staged restart. We had approval to start maintenance and development activities in early June. and work is now well progressed to prepare the long wall panel for a restart. Just last week, we received the approval to move the shearer from the tailgate, which is where it was at the time of the incident, all the way back to the main gate, and that is in order for us to undertake some specific long wall maintenance activities. And in so doing, of course, we're going to get the benefit of of the provision of some very useful data for validating our control systems as we move towards a safe and a structured restart of production. Now, subject to the final approval from the regulators, we intend to use remote operations at the restart for a period of time just as part of this plan. In regard to the sale process for steelmaking coal, Peabody was, as we know, the successful bidder and signed a definitive sales agreement at the end of a highly competitive process. While the Moranba incident is unfortunate and we are working constructively with Peabody, knowing what we know today in terms of the condition of that mine, the equipment, as well as the progress that we are making on a daily basis with the various stakeholders, as I've described, we remain confident in our belief that the event does not constitute a material adverse change under the sales agreement. We have been constructive, flexible and open with Peabody as we work towards completion and should Peabody ultimately decide not to complete, we remain confident of that legal position under the contract. We ran a very competitive process last year and the strong inbound interest that we have received over the last few months I think is a reflection that these may very well be the last Tier 1 steelmaking coal assets to come to the market for the foreseeable future. And I think it also underpins the fact that the supply-demand fundamentals remain very attractive for that industry. Therefore, if we are forced to remarket the assets, we are confident in a successful sale process, but this would potentially push back completion into 2026. Lastly, on the beers. Our commitment here to exit De Beers is unwavering and we are progressing with both a trade sale and listing options in parallel. Primarily due to the complexity of the shareholding agreements and more importantly the challenging diamond markets over the last couple of years, this was always expected to be the final step in the portfolio transformation journey. We continue to make good progress here on both tracks. The finalization of the sales agreement and mining licenses extension for Debswana with the government of Botswana back in February was a critical enabler to move forward with the separation process. On the trade sale route, we are currently engaging with a credible set of interested parties in a formal process now. In parallel, we have been engaging with the government of Botswana in respect of its interest to increase its shareholding in WS. A trade sale absolutely remains our preferred exit route for the business, but only if we can find the right buyer on the right terms. In parallel, we are progressing preparatory activities for a capital markets process should that become the preferred route for our shareholders. As far as diamond markets are concerned, we have started to see the early signs of stabilization. We certainly hope so anyway over the last six months. I think this is notable considering the increased volatility in the sentiment from potential tariffs. We continue to monitor the situation really closely and remain focused on managing De Beers' business to optimize the cash generation of that business while at the same time preserving the value of the iconic nature of this business. The De Beers team has a clear response plan ready to ensure that cash generation would be preserved should the market take a lot longer to recover. De Beers is such an important company to the country of Botswana and indeed to the other countries where De Beers operates. And so throughout the process, we are of course engaging with all of these stakeholders with regards to pathways forward as you would expect us to do. With some of the best diamond mined resources and best marketing capabilities in the world, De Beers, I believe, is well positioned to emerge and thrive as the market recovers. We continue to believe that there is significant upside potential in this business for the right combination of owners, and we will continue to keep the market abreast of developments as appropriate. And with that, I'll hand over to John, who will help us make sense of some of the financials in a really noisy half, and then I'll come back and close out. Thanks, John.

Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased with the underlying operating and financial performance during this period. But, of course, as we transition to our new end state, the financial reporting does become very complex. And so I've tried to set out on this first slide, as simply as I possibly can, the basis on which our numbers are presented. Firstly, accounting rules require us to present our businesses as either continuing or discontinued, depending on where in the sales process they sit. At this period end, that means that PGMs, SMC and nickel are discontinued, while De Beers continues to be a continuing operation. I've then set out our own defined pro forma, which is our best estimate of the ultimate end state for Anglo-American, including business. the divestment of De Beers and associated corporate cost savings. The results are clear. Our discontinued operations have suffered losses in the period, and this reflects the South African flooding earlier in the year affecting PGMs in the five months before demerger and the non-operation of both Grosvenor and Moranbah in SMC. Meanwhile, our continuing operations have performed well, albeit down slightly on last year, with that shortfall being almost completely due to De Beers and the continuing weak diamond market conditions. The combination of continuing and discontinued operations resulted in total group earnings of 15 cents per share and a dividend of 7 cents per share in line with our 40% payout policy. This lower payout reflects the losses from those discontinued operations. Looking at our results on a pro forma basis clearly shows the higher margin nature of our go forward business. Lastly, on this slide, on net debt, there's been a slight increase in the period to $10.8 billion. And with EBITDA from discontinued operations excluded from the calculation, this results in net debt to EBITDA of 1.8 times. Of course, that ignores the expected proceeds from the sale of our remaining 19.9% stake in Volterra and sales proceeds from SMC, Nickel and ultimately De Beers. Adjusting for those would see our net debt to EBITDA below 1 times. Moving on and starting with the results for the continuing operations. Production was down 9%, mainly due to De Beers managing production to match lower demand and the second plant at Los Bronces being on care and maintenance since the middle of last year. Our basket price was down 1%, largely due to lower iron ore prices. While EBITDA at $3 billion was lower than last year, largely due to De Beers, with margins similarly impacted. And that translated into a continuing earnings per share of 32 cents. Drilling into a little bit more detail now on that continuing EBITDA. You can see De Beers had a $0.5 billion negative impact compared to the first half of 2024. This reflects the prior year inclusion of a royalty sale of $0.1 billion and ongoing challenging market conditions. Our focus on reducing inventory in the period also resulted in some diamonds being sold at lower margins. But while De Beers overall EBITDA was negative $0.2 billion in the period, our focus on working capital meant that the business was cash neutral. The lower volumes that you can see here were mainly in copper. due to the smaller lost bronzes plant being on care and maintenance, together with lower volumes at Kolowasi as the mine transitions phases and realises lower recoveries on the ore from stockpiles. I was delighted once again with the strong cost focus. Commercially, our supply chain teams are doing well to manage CPI, while our cost savings are coming through exactly as planned. The net 0.2 billion cost benefit shown here reflects 0.3 billion of gross cost savings offset by 0.1 of higher costs, mainly at Kolowasi, as we accelerate development work to ensure we minimise this period of lower recoveries. Staying with costs, you can see here that we remain firmly on track to deliver our committed $1.8 billion of cost savings. In February, I said we would realise an incremental half a billion savings in 2025. 0.3 from run rate savings achieved in 2024 and 0.2 from new savings to be delivered as we further streamline our corporate costs. At the half year, we've realised 0.3 billion of that full year target of 0.5. And with restructuring activities continuing, we're exactly where I would want us to be. Standing back, you can see here that all of our EBITDA in the period came from copper and iron ore. Copper EBITDA represented $1.8 billion, with margins at 48%, as higher prices largely offset lower sales volumes. Notably, Kiaveco delivered a standout performance, with unit costs at 88 cents per pound and an EBITDA margin of 68%. Iron ore EBITDA was £1.4 billion flat on this period last year, but this hides a strong underlying performance, considering that lower prices were offset by higher sales and a strong cost performance at Ministerial. And as you can see here, the cost focus that I've just talked to is evident in our unit costs, with iron ore down 5% and copper just slightly higher, reflecting the reduced contribution from the lower cost kolowasi in the period. The underlying effective tax rate for the continuing business for the first half was 49%, reflecting the mix of profits with a higher proportion from Peru, where effective rates inclusive of mining taxes are around 41%, while still carrying corporate costs in the UK, and we expect the full-year ETR to be between 44% and 48%. Over the longer term, we expect the ETR for the end-state simplified portfolio to be somewhere between 38% and 42%, as Colowassie gets back to normal volumes and UK corporate costs are reduced. Touching briefly now on discontinued operations. Firstly, PGM said a weak first five months before demerger, mainly due to the flooding in South Africa in the first quarter. The insurance costs associated with that flooding will also result in a cash cost to Anglo-American in the second half of around $0.25 billion, given that it was self-insured. Secondly, SMC was loss-making in the first half, reflecting the fact that Grosvenor was not operating throughout the period and Moranbah is not operated since the incident at the end of March. And finally, you should note the loss on the demerger of PGMs. This reflects a gain of $2.9 billion on the assets demerged, being the market value on the date of demerger less than net asset value at that date. This gain was then offset by a recycling of historic foreign exchange losses of $4.6 billion on the translation of RAND underlying assets to dollars as required by accounting standards. as well as taxes and transaction costs incurred of £0.5 billion. And all of that was in line with our previous guidance. You will also note on our balance sheet that we have a financial asset investments of $2.3 billion in respect of a residual non-strategic 19.9% holding in Valterra, which was the value at 30 June. The net debt impact from discontinued operations was an increase of $0.1 billion, and I'll come on to that in a little bit more detail shortly. Looking next at our cash generation from continuing operations, which is another area of focus of mine. We again saw an inflow from working capital of $0.4 billion. As expected, our go-forward businesses managed to maintain the good working capital position achieved at the end of 2024, with the inflow largely driven by a reduction in diamond inventories in De Beers. This reflected a combination of diligently matching production to demand and a focus on selling down all categories of diamond inventory, even if some lines were at lower margins. While we continue to manage the situation closely, De Beers' diamond inventories are getting closer now to normal levels. The working capital inflow and close management of sustaining capex resulted in conversion of operating profit to cash of 108%. After tax, interest and distributions to non-controlling interests, our sustaining attributable free cash flow was $0.6 billion. From the sustaining attributable free cash flow from continuing operations, we then funded growth capex of £0.3 billion, mainly comprising the de-bottlenecking initiatives at Colomassie, the UHDMS project at Coomba, and the woodsmith spend to progress the critical studies. We then also paid the 2024 dividend. Proceeds from the Gellanbad disposal were $0.9 billion, while the impact of the PGM's de-merger was an increase in net debt of £0.4 billion. This reflects a neutral outcome on the demerger itself, reflecting the net impact of the debt demerged and the special dividend received. We then paid taxes and transaction costs of 0.4 billion in the first half, with a further 0.1 billion still to come, all in line with the guidance that we gave earlier this year. There is then a net 0.5 billion impact from discontinued operations. This reflects the trading results and capex for SMC and nickel, as well as plats up to the point of demerger, offset by the transfer of SMC and nickel finance leases to held for sale. So, this all left net debt at $10.8 billion and net debt to EBITDA at 1.8 times. And as I mentioned earlier, this is largely an arithmetic output rather than indicative of the group's position. This excludes EBITDA from exiting businesses and the proceeds for those businesses have yet to be received, including the monetisation of the £2.6 billion as at today's value stake in Valterra. As those transactions conclude, I would expect to see leverage come down below one times. Just touching briefly now on CapEx. We took decisive action last year to reduce the CapEx and you're seeing that come through here in these numbers. CapEx at $1.6 billion is half a billion lower than this time last year. We've been rigorous in our capital allocation and prioritisation of spend without, of course, compromising on safety or the underlying asset integrity. And with the exit of De Beers expected in due course, we would see that come down lower on a pro forma basis to around $1.4 billion for the simplified portfolio. And looking ahead, we expect sustaining CapEx at around $2 billion per annum, with LifeEx and growth options on top of that subject to meeting our hurdles, of course. Finally, it's worth briefly looking at the pro forma results for the go forward group without De Beers and including the full benefits of our cost savings. As you can see, it continues to show strong margins, cash conversion and return on capital employed, demonstrating the positive outcomes from our transformation strategy. So, rounding out then on the key points. Our go-forward businesses are performing well, delivering strong EBITDA margins. Our focus on cost is unrelenting and we're perfectly on track to deliver our committed $1.8 billion of cost savings. We continue, of course, to focus on cash generation. Our attention to detail on working capital and capex has ensured another period of very strong cash conversion. Our net debt will benefit significantly from transaction proceeds and the sell-down of our remaining 19.9% stake in Volterra, after which our leverage will be below one times. We continue to be excited by the financial outcomes from our simplified portfolio, higher margins, higher cash conversion and higher return on capital employed. Thank you. And I'll now hand back to Duncan.

Thanks, John. So there are a number of elements here which make our simplified portfolio stand out from the rest. the first of which, of course, is our commodity mix, which is now entirely future enabling products. We are fortunate in that we have some of the best copper assets in the world, which are set to represent more than 60% of EBITDA by 2027, all of which have significant expansion potential. Our iron ore business supplies premium iron ore to the steelmaking industry, and that positions us well as that sector decarbonizes and as new steelmaking centers emerge. The newly positioned Anglo-American, as John has just pointed out, will be higher margin and more cash generative. We are continuing to prioritize value accretion over volume growth, as at the end of the day, it is the value that you are creating from a unit of capital that should be the measure, not just simply the tons of production. And I think that the Los Bronces and Dina joint mine plan that we announced in February of this year is a great example of that. By working to solve for value and to generate meaningful synergies, we have created an outcome that is designed to provide substantial benefits for all of our investors. Our strong market base of assets, which are all competitively positioned on the cost curve, and in many cases set to improve their relative positioning over the next few years, will be key to generating higher free cash flow. This should support consistent capital returns for our shareholders over time. Now, you've seen this chart on the left before, and we continue to believe that it's a really important one, and the underlying story in it is important. It helps us to understand why, despite an optically high copper price, industry returns remain modest. The cost and the capital of building new projects has grown faster than prices. This lack of a price response is very unlikely to continue in the coming years considering the challenges that the industry is facing just to keep up with the expected medium-term demand trends. This will also, we think, shine a brighter light on those few companies that have long-life, high-quality, expandable assets with lower capital, lower risk growth options, which will be able to then generate higher returns. And it is not just the longer-term growth that will drive improving conditions for Anglo-American. As Koyawasi recovers from its current lower-grade phase later this year, and at Los Bronces, as it improves on its own before we even do the tie-in with Andina, industry consultants would, Mac, expect that by 2030, we will have seen the biggest improvement in the cost-curve positioning of the business as compared to our main peers. Our high-quality endowments also underpin our growth optionality. As this chart shows, we remain well-placed to deliver copper production in excess of a million tonnes per annum. Now, all of these projects in this slide are advancing in both the studies and the permitting processes. Rest assured that we remain very focused on optimizing for value rather than simply production growth at any cost, as I said. The Los Bronces plant decision, the prioritization of Los Bronces and Dena Joint Venture, amongst others, are examples of that. And we'll keep chasing down those adjacencies. Kiveko's pathway in the short run will be throughput of 140,000 tons per day all the way up to 150,000 tons per day, and we have now got the permits for that. Sakati in Finland has also seen an optimization that, and at the low end of prices, will see copper equivalent production of around 60,000 to 80,000 tons per annum. We continue to evolve and progress our studies on all of these projects and this alongside our substantial copper endowments and any further adjacency optionality I think reinforce a real pathway to a million tons and beyond. Turning to our premium iron ore business, now while we understand that there is a real focus in the market on copper these days, iron ore, specifically the premium quality iron ore segment, is one that we fully expect to generate substantial returns for shareholders. The material produced at Minas Rio and Kumba is high-grade and high-quality and compares favourably to our peers. Not only that, but the quality of our products is also improving over time. At Kumba, the UHDMS project will treble the proportion of premium quality production volume at Sishen from 18% all the way up to 55% and serves as a valuable addition to the mix of products already produced by Kumba. At Ministerio, the Serpentino resource provides us with the option to potentially double our production there, and that would be production of high-quality DR grade iron ore. While there may be some temporary short-term pressure on pricing as new sources of iron ore supply come into the market, When considering the declining grade in the Pilbara, coupled with China's commitment to decarbonisation, we continue to have conviction in the long-term fundamentals of iron ore. The optionality in our iron ore portfolio only enhances our ability to drive value from it. At Woodsmith, we are continuing to progress the three conditions that we need to be met before we would proceed to FID for this project. We have had some great learnings to date from the SBR moving into the Sherwood Sandstone, and the team have embedded these learnings and are setting us up very well, I think, to continue to sink one of the two main shafts. We are also making good progress with the syndication, with discussions going well with a number of strategic partners. And lastly, our balance sheet must be appropriately deleveraged at the time that we would be prepared to take this to the board for an FID approval. And on the market development front, we are continuing to see very positive market sentiment and strong inbound interest from the agricultural industry. Now, while Woodsmith remains a compelling opportunity, and has the potential to be a flagship asset in this portfolio, we only see these three conditions being fulfilled by 2027 at the earliest. In conclusion, our focus on operational excellence is delivering stable performance in our simplified portfolio, with both our copper and our iron ore businesses tracking to full-year guidance. Our cost savings targets remain on track, and we continue to drive efficiency through capex and working capital. We remain committed to our portfolio simplification and reached another milestone with the successful demerger of Altera earlier this year. We are continuing to progress our respective exits from the remaining businesses as expediently as we can and will continue to focus on optimizing value. Looking forward, we remain on a clear pathway to transform this company and are set to emerge as a highly differentiated business that is well positioned to deliver consistently through the cycle with significant growth optionality. And with that, I think John and I are very happy to take your questions. And Tyler is going to moderate just so that I don't call you by the wrong name. But Miles, I saw your hand.

And I think as well, I'm going to take the easy way out here and not pick a favorite and just go with the geographic question snake, I guess, is what it'll be called. So Ian, if you'd like to ask a question. We do have some questions online as well, which I'll come back to when the mic gets back.

Ian Rousseau from Barclays. Just a question on De Beers. Around the $2 billion of inventory, John, you've mentioned previously, it looks like that you were saying the inventory release of 0.6, a lot of that was from De Beers. Could you maybe give a bit of details where we stand now and what is normalized levels per your comments?

Don't do that, John. Yeah, sure. No problem. Thanks, Ian. Good morning. So when we look at the total inventory in De Beers then at the end of 2024, then that was about 2.3 billion, something like that. And, you know, as you say, the majority of that working capital inflow for the group was in respect of De Beers' inventory. So when you roll that through, then the sort of inventory that remains in De Beers is probably about 1.8, something like that. Not all of that, of course, is rough diamonds. There's various other things in there across the industrial businesses and retail stock and so on and so forth. But when we look at the rough diamond inventory, then that's pretty much getting down to about the levels that we would consider normal for De Beers.

And is that all carried on the balance sheet or the sum of balance sheet? All on balance sheet. And how does that impact the book value of the business overall?

Well, it's within the carrying value of the business. So relative to the $4 billion that we had before, then there'll be a movement in that to reflect the reduction in the inventory in terms of what sits on the balance sheet, not necessarily a material difference in the overall valuation of the business in a willing buyer, willing seller scenario. But yes, what's on the balance sheet would be lower by the reduction in inventory.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Good morning. It's Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. First question, just on Metco and the sale process there, just trying to gauge your level of confidence on completing with Peabody. And I think their position has been that they need to see a return to sustainable longwall mining to complete. Is that a shared position? Do we need to see some sort of restart before completion can happen?

Yeah, no, Liam. So look, fundamentally under the contract, there's no real damage at all to the ore body at all. Obviously, the cash flows are delayed in terms of the restart. And what I am very confident on is the process that we followed to get it to restart and that the progress that we're making within that process. So on that basis, we believe that the contract should complete under the normal conditions, and we've been working quite hard with Peabody to make that a reality.

Just a quick follow-up on the costs. The 500 million remaining, how much of that will flow through into the unit costs that we eventually see for 2026 versus general overhead?

In terms of the £0.5 billion, the majority of that that's still to come through sits in corporate costs, so I would say that less of that will be coming through in unit costs, more sits corporately. Just by nature of where we're at in the restructuring, that of course we've divested these businesses, we still have a corporate centre that has to service all of that, do all the accounting, the legal, the treasury, while working through that process, and then once those businesses are divested, the corporate costs come down commensurately.

Good morning. It's Matt Green from Goldman Sachs. Duncan, I have a question on Koyawasi, if I may. You touched briefly on the challenges around refractory material and the variability of the ore feed. I appreciate you've guided this year as a trough production year, but this is a world-class tier one asset. So I'm quite surprised to see it end up in this position with such little operating flexibility. So if we could take a step back, what have been the contributing factors that have led to this, and are you comfortable that the JV can deliver operational excellence over the medium term, and I guess to go ahead with the fourth line expansion?

Yeah, sure, Matt, and it's a great question, of course, and the short answer to that is yes, I am confident that the JV management can deliver sustainable and good outcomes, but if we step back to specifically answer your question, You know, KUIC fell behind in its stripping. I mean, we knew that, you know, from a while ago, so it wasn't immune from any of the issues that we were dealing with in Anglo generally at the time. So it was hard yards to push to catch up, and generally they've been making good progress on doing so. However, this year they had planned, to utilize that low-grade stockpile. Now, for many of us, of course, we say low-grade stockpile, and we think it's really low-grade. At Koyawasi, the stockpile there is running grades higher than some of the biggest copper mines that are sitting in the industry today. Unfortunately, when they got into that, stockpiles are notorious in terms of their homogenization and your ability to effectively assay them and so on and so on. The grade is clearly there, but the recoveries are not. So it's more oxidized than they expected it to be. And then they did have that double whammy effect of the fact that they ran out of water. So very cash-strapped part of Chile. The solution there was to build our own desalination plant. For years, we've been struggling with water abstraction there. So the desalination plant was very well-progressed. but wasn't in time to cover off the deficit of water in the first half. So, as I say, a bit of a double whammy effect. That shouldn't exist in the second half of the year. What will continue to exist in some way, shape or form is the fact that our reliance in this bridge period on the stockpile means that we're likely to get lower recoveries from it going forward. So what do we do now? We work really hard with the management and try and help them to find ways to accelerate that stripping so that we can just open up the back end of the mine again. To that extent, both Glencore and Anglo have found equipment that we've got at our existing operations that we're not utilizing. that we're happy to send up to Koyawase to help them get going with that. But that's the fundamental background to it.

Duncan, Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Two quick ones. First, in terms of the costs associated with the coal mine not being running, can you frame that for us? I mean, you mentioned earlier 250 million costs associated with the Volterra problems. I mean, is this hundreds of millions of dollars that it's costing you to not have this run?

Yeah, Jason, so I think roughly the dimensions here are it's about $45 million a month to keep Morimba on hold, and it's about $10 million a month to keep Grosvenor on hold. So that That is the shape of it. Still looking to hopefully get a restart later this year, early next year on Maramba and, of course, making some quite good progress at Grosvenor too. So in the next couple of weeks, hopefully we'll get the permission to go back underground and so on. But that's sort of the dimension of it.

Okay. Just a small other one. Did you guys used to have a manganese business?

We still have a manganese business doing really well. So the recovery of the Krita A-Land resource and the port infrastructure and so on has been doing good. So hopefully looking forward to some really positive cash flows from that.

Where does this all, where does it fit into this? Because I don't really see it being mentioned on any slides today.

Yeah, no, it's because it's not a fundamentally main part of the business going forward. So we hold a minority stake in that, in cement core, as you know. At the right time, we'll decide what we need to do with it. But, you know, we've got a lot on our plate right now. And so it's pretty much focused on dealing with the major elements of the portfolio change.

Okay. Where, Tyler? Okay.

Thanks. Ben Davis, RBC. Quick question on Valterra. Obviously, it's quite a sizable stake for the 19.9%. Can you give any sort of preference, envisage how you're going to dispose of that? Is it going to be a series of consecutive blocks, a strategic sale, Valterra buying back stock? Any ideas? This would be interesting. John, do you want to take that?

Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, as we said, the whole reason for holding the 19.9% was to was to manage the flow back. That's worked pretty well with a 90-day lock-up period, which obviously comes to an end around about the beginning of September. You know, we're open-minded on various options, but our primary objective and priority on this has always been to ensure the successful trading of Valterra. So we'll look at our options. You know, clearly we sold down previously through some accelerated book builds. That's probably... an option that would be the simplest going forward, but that's not to exclude any other options. And then we'll consider the conditions as we move through later this year and into next year for when exactly the right time to do that is.

Thanks.

Thanks, Alex Pearce at BMO. Duncan, could you provide us an update on the situation with Transnet and Cumba at the minute? Next year is a lower production year for the assets And I see in the results you got some penalties from a take-up pay situation from Transnet, I believe, this half. Are you able to comment on the kind of levels at which that could be triggered going forward?

You mean the penalties to us or the penalties to Transnet?

Yeah, yeah, to Transnet paid you.

Yeah, yeah, Transnet paid us. So, no, Alex, I think really positive progress being made within Transnet on the restoration of those assets. Still slow, you know, if I'm perfectly honest with you, but certainly much better availabilities this year than we've seen in previous years. So they went through a very big maintenance program at the end of last year, which was by and large successfully completed. And we're now seeing some of the benefits of that. Of course, you know, the next major step for this particular corridor is very likely going to be some form of concessioning. The government is in a process right now of running an RFI process, request for information process, so they're gathering a lot of... inputs from various infrastructure players, industry players, et cetera, et cetera, as to what a concession line would look like. And then depending on how that all rolls out in their analysis, either later this year or early next year, they'll issue a request for quotation, an RFQ, for people to bid on a concession. So I think that that's sort of the pathway of travel. In the meantime, the mine in amongst the other user groups, so four or five main users on that line, working really, really closely with Transnet to manage all the reliability and the safety issues on that line, and so far so good. We'll have to see what happens when the RFQ comes out and what the interest is, but hopefully we get a, We get a very solid operator who knows what they're doing in terms of running infrastructure projects to take that over and run it. As far as the penalties are concerned, it was a technical issue, so we will get the money back, if you like, in terms of the tariffs on the way forward.

Good morning. Alan Spence from BNP. It's an election year in Chile, and some candidates seem to have some very different views of what Codelco should look like. Any early thoughts on maybe some new options for you in the country?

No. Look, I mean, elections every four years in Chile, and government does change every four years in Chile. I think the most important thing for us to do is just being a good company within Chile, and generally that's been the The secret of success, we haven't heard anything specifically that would materially impact what we're doing there or what Codelco is doing, particularly on the Andina Los Ponsos asset. So hopefully still, as I say, looking forward to getting that deal fully inked before the end of this year.

Thank you. And in Sakati, what drove the downside and the kind of scale of the opportunity you see there, and does that do anything to the timeline?

Yeah, I think the timeline is good, so real material progress with Finland and the derogation for the permits. Particularly having had the project declared by Europe as a strategic project for Europe, I think that was a really material milestone forward, so probably a little bit more optimistic now on timeline than we were the last time we spoke. The delta in the number is predominantly driven actually by the nickel price because that's a copper equivalent number. Understood.

Thanks. Morning, Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Just a question on Koyawase. You've talked about accelerating the mine development. Just noting in the costs, you mentioned this in your commentary, that the costs have stepped up there, about 480 million a half now from 420 in H2. So how long should we think about this kind of period of increased costs at Koyawase? And then the second one is, can you just remind us on the capital intensity aspect of the fourth line, my mind isn't good enough anymore. Thanks.

Okay, John, can you do the capital intensity one? My mind's not good enough for that anymore. Just as far as the QEOSC costs are concerned, as I said, we're going to be be working pretty much through to the end of of next year and if we're going to accelerate stripping that's going to be more trucks so i think probably through to the end of next year is what you should be figuring on there does it does it step up from this level or does it stay at this level no we're going to work really hard not to let it step up from this level okay um and capital intensity i mean obviously we're not at sort of final final decisions or anything on on fourth line but you know we know it's

as a sort of very straightforward brownfield expansion, then it's going to be at the lower end of the typical range. So I'm not putting a number out there right now, but I think the returns on that project will certainly be attractive from what we can see today. Okay, thanks.

Hi. Grant Spora from Bloomberg Intelligence. It's actually just a follow-up on Alex's question. The way you answered it on Transnet and the operator, it sounds like Anglo-American wouldn't be interested in or CUMBA wouldn't really be interested in becoming an operator of that line.

Grant, I think I'll digress. very, very strong preference is that an infrastructure operator gets that concession and runs it. Obviously, we don't want to be too far away from whatever's happening there because it is important. It's one of the most important lines in South Africa. But absolutely, our preference is that an infrastructure operator who knows about running train sets and ports, et cetera, et cetera, is the successful bidder there. Thank you.

Great, thank you.

A couple of questions, maybe firstly on the joint ventures. Could you give us a sense as to, with Serpentina, when will we see the benefit coming through? What the kind of impact on unit costs and realized pricing in theory could be, just to help us model it out as we look out over the next kind of five years or so. Also, I mean, with Andina and Los Bronces, how should we model that? Should we just assume that volumes go up and unit costs go down? That was the first question around joint ventures.

Okay. On Serpentina, you know, the critical path here is running through getting the permits, Miles, for opening up that ore body. And as you know, the first step there is just to displace the ore from the existing ministry of mine with this wire. because this ore is definitely not as hard as the material that we're going to be moving into by the mid-30s, and certainly is of equivalent or potentially slightly higher grade than what we've got. So that's a full-on permitting process, and in Brazil that takes four or five years to kind of get that done, but the team is on with it. But I just think that the... What we are offsetting by that is potentially a couple of billion dollars of capex, which would be needed to adjust the front end of our current operations with additional crushing, additional milling, et cetera, et cetera, because we can just put this material, which is much more equivalent to what we're operating now, through the plants. Again, a really important date there is kind of middle of the next decade. So that's what you should be thinking of. And that should enable us to kind of keep the cost pari passu in terms of where they are today in real terms.

And with lost bronzes?

Yeah, and at Los Bronces, so how to think about this? So steps going forwards, we hopefully finalize the agreements with Codelco later on this year. We then go immediately into a set of processes around standard regulatory approvals and so on, following which we have to start permitting the combined mine. In Chile, the conventional wisdom is that permitting of mines of this nature, just given the work that you need to do on them, is three years plus or minus for the EIA, one year for the sectoral permits that happen after that. But of course, the fundamental logic of this is not only just the value associated with the deferral of significant components of CAPEX on both sides, and access to ultimately that big locked up wedge of copper that sits between the two mines. But also environmentally, it's a much friendlier solution too, because you're sharing a lot of infrastructure, you're managing more effectively the inputs such as water and so on and so on. So, you know, hopefully, you know, we can do a bit better than that four years that I've just described. And Chile is one of the countries that is putting an enormous amount of effort into the acceleration of the administrative processes of permitting. So that's the big benefit there. So massive deferrals of capital. So Los Bronces Underground now then, you know, whilst it's still a fantastic asset, don't forget that that... that resource still is 1.3% copper. There are not many ore bodies out there that are still that level of copper. It would go a bit further back in the queue in terms of its development, of course, unless copper prices went through the roof and we could substantiate its own plant, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can just imagine... the efficiencies that we've brought about, what is effectively running one pit rather than two pits. So, you know, I'm expecting a material cost benefit at a unit cost basis as a result of doing that. And we try and bring that on as quickly as possible. The rate limiting step will be the permit.

Will the old concentrator be restarted broadly at the same time as you move into the joint venture?

We continue to run options on when and how to restart that concentrator. As I said, it was predicated on a number of things. The first thing is the right grade of ore going into it. The second thing is water. You know, we are now using some of that water that we've got there to remove Peres Caldera, which is a tailings dam that we want to relocate. And so the combination of those two things and copper price ultimately determine when it's going to start. All things being equal, in terms of where we are today, we were planning to start it closer to the back end of this decade. You know, unless, as I say, copper prices went through the roof and, and this is an and, we'd removed enough of Paris Caldera to satisfy ourselves that it was going to be compliant without any further hassle as far as GISTM considerations and so on are concerned.

And just maybe one quick one for John on the balance sheet. So one time is kind of broadly where you look to be, so $6 billion in net debt. Is that kind of the top end of the range, or how should we think about where you want new Anglo leverage to sit, and when can we expect kind of cash returns to step up even more aggressively?

Yeah, thanks, Miles. I mean, the reference to one times was really the arithmetic of saying, you know, we're at... 1.8 today, you take the proceeds across, you know, assumption on steelmaking coal, on nickel, on Valterra, on De Beers, then, you know, very, very clearly you can see a strong pathway towards sort of, as you say, net debt of sort of six and therefore one times. Where would I want to run the balance sheet? Clearly, our policy at the moment talks about, you know... sort of not beyond 1.5 times at bottom of cycle. Clearly, we've said as you go through that temporarily, that's fine. We'll take action to bring back. That's clearly where we are just now. As we think about new Anglo, somewhere between 0.5 and 1 times, I think, is a good place for the company to be running. Of course, at certain points, it'd be right to be a little bit lower, right to be a little bit higher. But I think that's the right place. Why is that? That's commensurate with a good investment-grade credit rating, which I think is the right thing for a company such as ourselves to have and just ensures that you've got access to liquidity at all points in the cycle and allows you to be strategically consistent at top of cycle and bottom of cycle, which, again, for a mining company in the markets they're in, is really important.

Thanks, Bob, for the five questions.

Hey, Duncan, it's Chris Lefemina from Jefferies. I just wanted to ask some follow-ups on the coal sale. So you use the word flexible in your ongoing discussions with Peabody. And is that flexibility about timing of the transaction? Is it about structure? Is it about price, maybe all the three? And maybe second to that, in the initial agreed deal, you have contingent deferred payments on Grosvenor for that mine potentially restarting. Is that the kind of structure you might consider on Moore & Byrne North? Because it sounds like the timing of a restart on Moore & Byrne North is far past the kind of determination date of the transaction. So how does that, how does it work? I mean, the deal's got to close in September, right? And If you're not restarting the mine until early next year, it's not clear to me how this actually progresses from here.

Yeah, Chris, look, as I say, I mean, I don't want to get into too many details of the commercial discussions that we're having with Peabody today. Suffice it to say that I think that it is both of our preference that this deal can complete. And so, you know, we're going to work really hard to try and make that happen. As I say, to the extent that it can't happen for whatever reasons, it won't be because we don't believe that this mine can restart and that there's real value in the mine going forward. So this will ultimately end up being a Peabody decision, not an Anglo-American decision as to whether they choose to complete or not.

It may be too hypothetical to answer the question, but let's assume that it goes to arbitration. You indicated earlier that there's interest in these assets from other potential buyers. If you were to sell... to another buyer at a large discount to what you've agreed with Peabody, doesn't that strengthen their argument that it was a MAC because it's kind of evidence potentially that the value of the assets is lower due to the incident more? But even if it's a function of coal prices being lower, I would assume they could use it as an argument that this did indeed have a material impact on the value of the assets.

I'm sure they'll prosecute many arguments if we end up in arbitration, Chris, and I definitely don't want to try and preempt what those might be at this particular point in time.

And just one last one on this. In terms of the timing, can you just walk us – You know, what happens next? What is the timeline of getting this to the finish line? Thank you.

Yeah, so as I said, you know, we've now got all the way to the point where the regulators are really happy with the fact that we're back underground. You know, we're doing some meaningful maintenance. We're doing the development work. in terms of the future panels of the mine and so on and so on. We have also cleared that belt, and we've done a whole lot of roof repairs with Roxul, et cetera, et cetera. We've addressed the cracks in the face, which happen as a result of the mine standing for a really long period of time. We've spun the shearer, we've moved it out of where it was located so we can get access to a gearbox that we want to do some big maintenance on. So you can see by and large all the steps of what it takes to operate the mine are in place and progressing. What happens next is we do a number of risk assessments with the regulators that go through the operating processes and procedures of the mine going forward. This is all manifest in a document that's called the Second Workings Document. It is, by and large... the rules against which you run your mine by, and you do that in agreement with the authorities. So that's the process that's underway with the authorities at the moment. But as I say, physically, we're in good shape.

Thanks, Duncan. Alan Gabriel at Morgan Stanley. Back to Matt's question on Kolawasi. You mentioned you're working with your JV partners on optimizing the mine plan into next year. Are you able to share with us some of the key parameters that you expect for the mine, the latest parameters in terms of grades, throughput or production? What's your latest thinking there?

Well, so, look, I mean, as I say, fundamentally, you know, no major changes at all. What we've got is this period now where, same as Los Brancos in a way, you know, Denosa II had to open up so that we could get access to faces that would then provide the material into the plants. Koyawasi's got exactly that. The only difference is Koyawasi now has a really big stockpile that it can use as an offset as we go through this. This is work that they've been doing for a couple of years now. Got caught short a little bit by the fact that the stockpiles are not going to perform as they thought that they were going to perform. But that said, the work that's actually going on with the guys on the mine and Glencore and so on now is saying there are other places in stockpiles we might be able to go to. Could that make a difference? There are other places in the mine that we could go to. Does that make a difference? What we really don't want to do is fundamentally change the shape of that mine because that mine is set up for very, very good high performance in the long run. So very important we don't make short-term decisions here that compromise the viability of the mine going forward, and so I think all of us are very focused on doing that. I reckon through 2026 is where all this development work needs to complete, and from 2027 we would be sort of back on track exactly where we had planned to be.

Thank you. And the follow-up is Kulawacik. And your neighbors, they are up here now more keen on moving this adjacency forward. What are the remaining stumbling blocks in your view, and how realistic is it to expect a... a deal announcement in 2026?

I think what's really good news is that everybody realizes that there's material value locked up there and it's definitely worth chasing down. Those discussions are ongoing and we need to find a way to do that. As I said to you before, when you think about this, what is the playbook? Step one is recognize that there's value. So I think that's check. Everybody now recognizes there's an enormous amount of value here. Step two is a lot of work. You put a lot of effort into working out what this would look like, how it would look, what the value deltas will be. I mean, you understand that it's big because industrial synergies are huge, but what these value deltas would be, then how they distribute amongst the parties and so on. So I don't believe any fundamental stumbling blocks, but an enormous amount of work to happen to make it happen. Thank you.

Maurizio Carulli from Quilter Civiot Investment Management. We are shareholders. First of all, congratulations for the progress that you have done on the transformation of the company in the past 12 months, which has been really significant. I have two questions about the beers. One probably for Duncan and the other one probably for John. Can you give us, because there has been a lot of news about the bidders, is it possible to get more color on the characteristics of some of the current bidders for the beers? And also separately for John, how have you valued the inventory component in the beers, the 2 billion, roughly 2 billion?

Okay. Thanks for those questions. Without giving anything away in the context of actually who the buyers are, as you can imagine, just as a bit of background history when we made the announcement yesterday, that we were planning on divesting our stake in De Beers, we had a number of inbound interests. How do we sift through those interests? You look for people who genuinely understand the market, who are serious buyers, who absolutely have the wherewithal and the backing to be able to complete a transaction like that. That then sort of sifts down into a much smaller group of people that you would take through into a formal process. So that's where we are now with this smaller group of people that we take through into a process. All of the players that we have in our process at this particular point in time are absolutely credible in terms of A, their understanding of the industry, and B, their ability to be able to run and operate a business such as De Beers. So they are associated with and aligned to and have experience of industry and markets in this space. And that fills me with a huge amount of joy. So that's the type of buyer that we've got. Of course, this is a very big business, and therefore probably will need multiple balance sheets to support the acquisition of it, and therefore I think probably reasonable to assume that in the process there will be consortia and consortia formations that ultimately hopefully would prevail at the end of the day.

Thank you. Okay. And in terms of the inventory, then we're required to carry all of our inventories at the lower of the cost, i.e. what it cost us to get those inventories, or the realisable value, i.e. how much could we sell that inventory for. So on the basis that the majority of our diamonds are mined by ourselves, then the cost is clearly higher. relatively low compared to what we could sell those diamonds for. Of course, we buy some diamonds as well, and we buy diamonds from Dibs One, our joint venture, with a margin on them. But at every period end, we look and see for those diamonds, as with any inventory, is the cost that we have those on our balance sheet at more or less than what we could sell them for. And as long as it is less than what we can sell them for, then that's the carrying value. So we're very comfortable with what the carrying value is. Thank you.

To be able to ask the operator if we could go to the phone lines if there's any questions on the phone.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session live on the phone. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Bob Brockett with Bernstein Research. Your line is open.

Good morning. In the context of Woodsmith, you mentioned some great learnings involving the Sherwood Sandstone. In my personal life, great learnings have sometimes come with painful lessons. In that vein, can you give us an update on progress there?

Okay. Thanks for the question, Bob. Yeah. So, look. Sherwood sandstones, always recognised as a really, really tough part of the strata that we have to navigate to get to the bottom. Fundamentally here, this was for every metre a day that it took longer to get down there, you were kind of adding like a year to the production, right? So we had a base case... that said that we could navigate this at around about a metre a day. And if you could only do half a metre a day, well, you could add a year to the production, to the project. If you were able to progress at two metres a day, of course, you make massive capital savings. So these are the learnings that we were hoping to get. And this is not just the rate at which you can penetrate that strata. It's the full cycle rate, i.e., You go down a certain number of meters, then you have to tub the shaft, line the shaft, basically. You have to dewater it, et cetera, et cetera, and keep going. So these are the learnings that we've been going today. So when we started off on this thing, we had a really difficult time with the picks on the head, so just like a head on a continuous miner. rock was so hard it was sort of beating the picks up but then we did a lot of work with De Beers and ended up with lab grown diamonds as one of the abrasives in the pick just can't think of a better use of lab grown diamonds and you know The penetration rates improved phenomenally. We've also now done a cycle or two of understanding what the tubbing rates, the dewatering rates, et cetera, are going to be. Some lessons definitely in terms of the dewatering, but we're now at the point where I think we feel relatively confident that we are not going to be below our baseline one meter per day rate through the mine.

Very clear. Thanks for that.

Our next question comes from the line of Dominique Ocani with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hello. I have three questions. So going back to De Beers, could you maybe also give us an insight into what the net debt position is at De Beers currently? My second question on Murambar is, You mentioned that a restart would contemplate remote operations. Could you just give us an indication of what capacity utilization you can run at using remote operations? Can you run at the full previous long-haul capacity utilization? And then my third question relates to strategy. So, I mean, Anglo over the last 12 months has done a remarkably good job in being a master of your own destiny. Arguably, the hard yards have now been completed. And so looking forward, do you think as a management team, you have the headspace to consider other strategic future options, including potential M&A options that might be available to you?

Okay, thanks. John, do you want to deal with the net debt?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, the net debt under beers is sort of a function of how we internally finance. So I'm not sure it's really a sort of relevant number. It's not as if there is standalone financed business today. So if you're trying to work between an enterprise value and equity value, then, you know, it's not really a relevant number. measure to look at. So it's really all inter-company financing. There's a small external revolving credit facility that sits at various levels within De Beers, but I wouldn't say that in and around the debt number that sits in De Beers today is a tremendously important number.

And on Moranbar, in terms of the remote operations, so the short answer to the question is no, they are not as productive as the combination of remote and manual operations, only simply because... You know, you need a part of a crew underground at all times to deal with maintenance and so on. And as we go through the restart here, you know, we want to be appropriately cautious as we determine what the atmosphere is in the Gulf behind us. Going forward, and on that basis, we'd prefer not to have anybody underground, including the maintenance crews, while we take the first few runs at the face. But we don't expect that that will be the end state of this thing. This will always end up as a combined automated production, manual production facility. but it'll just be moderated in its ramp-up by the fact that we'll run it on an automated basis. We'll then have to stop the shearer. We'll have to then wait for all our terminology to tell us that we've got a stable atmosphere down there. We'll get the crews down. They'll do the maintenance that they need to do They'll do whatever else the crews do down there, and then they'll come back up again and we'll take the next cast. So that just sort of, hopefully in a little bit of detail, gives you what that... We've had some great success with this, by the way. I mean, we created this system, we developed this system. It's been implemented at Aquila for a number of years now and is working extremely well. I mean, the productivity out of this system when it's in automatic mode is just improving every day. So... So it'll be good on all fronts in terms of our ability to convert this into sort of a more stable operating method for the mine on a go-forward basis. So yeah, a little bit slower from a productivity point of view to start, but the intention is that that then gets back into normalized operations in the same way that we're running Aquila today. And then on strategy, do we have the headspace? We've got loads of headspace. There's a lot going on. There has been a lot going on. But, of course, we are always looking. at what we can do in terms of improving value in this company. Absolutely, our number one priority was operational excellence and remains operational excellence. It doesn't matter what you have in your portfolio. You have to run all of these assets extremely well all of the time. And that remains a number one priority for us. The second, of course, is there is a lot of work to deal with these transitions. And of course, while we have these businesses under management, we still have a key responsibility in terms of the proper management of these. And so we absolutely remain focused on on doing that. But very important for us to be sure that this transition concludes as successfully as possible. And of course, with that came a massive reorganization of the company, both just in terms of the shape of the company as a result of the number of assets it was going to have, but also in terms of our own operating model. You know, what makes us genuinely effective? You know, how do we continue to underpin our operation excellence, our project performance excellence, our marketing excellence? And so that also remains a very important part of management's mindset at the moment. And then, of course, you know, we have a number of wonderful projects endowments, all of which have real organic growth options and possibilities on. Many of them are now in relatively advanced stages of studies and permitting processes, and so that's tangible in our control, deliverable, and that's where we're putting an enormous amount of effort to the extent that there's anything else available there. We will, of course, look at that and understand that relative to the rest of our options at the time that we need to do it. And I can promise you that if we needed to make headspace for it, we absolutely would. But I think that there's a lot going on that's highly value accretive at the moment that we're very focused on doing. Thank you.

That now concludes the question from the phone line, and I hand you back to the room for Tyler's closing remarks.

Great. Actually, I will hand it back to Duncan for Duncan's closing remarks.

Yeah, that went bad quick. Thanks, Tyler. Look, thanks, everybody. Really do appreciate the time and the questions. We really are focused on delivering our strategy. Every day we're making really good strides in doing so. Of course, there are a lot of things that we don't control, but if we don't control them, we'll find a way around them and get the results delivered. So thanks very much. Have a good day.