Anglo American plc

Okay well good morning everyone and welcome to our half year results and as some of you know by now over the years my tradition is to kick off the full year results I don't normally come at half year but there are a couple of reasons why I wanted to introduce today and I'll come back to those but as ever let's start with safety and I must say how delighted I am and all of the board are I know this will continue to be at the top of mind of Duncan and his team as he moves on and as he takes over indeed the helm at Anglo Tech in due course. I'm also very pleased, as I hope you are, with the solid performance of the current business and the benefits of our major portfolio restructuring, which is starting to come through in the numbers. Returning now, why do I want to introduce this session, albeit briefly? Two reasons really. Firstly, if things go to plan, which I'm pretty confident they will, the close of Anglo-Americans merger with tech to form Anglo-Tech will happen. And this could mean, therefore, if the timing is as we expect, that it will indeed be my last chance to introduce. So that's one reason. The second reason is I did want to say just a couple of things about Anglo-Tech. and you know an enormously exciting endeavor which is going to bring you know really strong benefits to all of our respective shareholders and eventually collective ones and all of our wider stakeholder groups. I have spent nine years as chair at Anglo and I will be handing over that baton to my oppo at tech, Sheila Murray, and on the closure of merger of course, not before, but I'd like to say just a couple of things about Duncan, our CEO, who will become CEO of AngloTech. Now in him we have a CEO which I can tell you is utterly determined to deliver all that he has laid out for us and will set out to deliver over the next several years and indeed delivering on all of the cost and the industrial synergies which we have already announced to you. Post closure I'll be watching from the sidelines as he does that and I will of course He'll be ably supported by John as the CFO and Jonathan Price who will join the, as previously announced, Duncan's executive team. That's all from me. Thank you very much for your continued interest in all that Anglo American is doing. Let me now hand over to Duncan and then John to take us through the results today. Duncan.

Thank you Stuart. I am indeed very determined to deliver this. All right good morning everybody for those that I haven't seen outside. It does of course continue to be a very busy time here at Anglo American and I think the overall headline is that we have made yet more progress on our operational, our financial and our strategic plans over the last six months. We delivered another period of solid operational stability and that translated into operating results being on plan across the business despite a number of external challenges particularly related to weather. Market conditions were pretty tough in diamonds but De Beers delivered a very robust operational performance and our steel making coal business continues to make great progress with higher production rates now bedding in at Moranbah. We also made progress on two of the lowest capital intensity copper opportunities of scale in the industry and we received final approvals for the Los Bronces and Dino joint mine plan and have now advanced early stage preparatory work for the integration of Coyowati and Quebrada Blanca. In terms of our strategic plans, we took a big step forward on the outstanding portfolio work with the announcement of the sale of our steelmaking coal business to Dilmar for up to $3.9 billion. We continue to pursue the sale of De Beers and I'll come back to that a little bit later on in the presentation. The planning for our merger with tech has been moving ahead well in parallel and once we receive our final approvals the two companies will come together to become a strong global mining champion with a compelling set of lower cost long life copper assets alongside high quality iron ore and zinc. This will be accompanied with a track record and the resources to grow the supply of the metals and the minerals that the world is counting on for decades ahead, led of course by copper. Now safety remains the foundation of absolutely everything that we do at Anglo American. While our injury frequency rates have stayed at record lows, I believe that there is still room to bring them down further by focusing our activities on planning, Thank you very much. Turning to sustainability, we launched our updated sustainability strategy and targets for the simplified portfolio in February of this year and we're now embedding that strategy and the businesses are making good progress to delivery against their plans. We are beginning to start to see now the benefits of a model that balances group level ambition and direction with locally relevant targets tailored to the priorities of each of our underlying businesses. This approach allows us to deliver consistent outcomes at scale while creating value and driving tangible impact and value on the ground in our countries of operation. We are now three years on from moving the accountability of our assets performance closer to the site and the evolution of that operating model is an important driver in consistently achieving our production targets. We also kept costs under control despite inflationary pressures stemming from the knock-on impacts of events in the Middle East and John's going to unpack those costs for us just a little bit later on today. The copper business produced 344,000 tons in the first half and we're bang on track for our full year guidance of 700 to 760,000 tons with higher volumes half and half to come from both Koyawase and Kiwako. Los Bronces was a real highlight for us. The restart of that second plant has added profitable tons and the mine is gaining more flexibility with each quarter. In May, the permit for the desalination plant at Kwewasi was set aside by an environmental tribunal five years after it had been granted. Production, however, from Kwewasi has not been affected because we do currently have access to alternative water sources. We are hopeful that a review of the Environmental Assessment Services or the SEA's decision will allow us to restart the ramp up of that plant later on this year. We do continue to work very hard with the Chilean authorities to make that happen. Still at Coyahuasi, the team is managing the variability as we transition through the lower grade and oxidized stockpiles and indeed the recoveries have improved in the second quarter of the year. The mine is on course to access the fresh ore from the fourth quarter which will be an inflection point after two years of limited flexibility. Now next year the mine plan is characterized by much higher grade benches but also some more complex faulting that we will need to navigate. But the mine has worked through this many times before and we remain confident in our 27 and our 28 copper guidance. Beyond that, this oil body has so much potential and I'm going to come back to that a little bit later on in the presentation. Kiweco remains the leading contributor of cash flow to the group and it is great news to be able to report that we have now paid back the initial investment that we made in building that mine. They had another very strong quarter, recoveries have picked up well and we've also benefited from very healthy by-product revenues there. Our iron ore business posted another period of steady performance despite some big challenges with higher costs from both diesel and freight. Performance at Coomber was notable insofar as it had to manage through some of the highest rainfalls that both the mines, Sishen and Colamella, have seen in decades. And they suffered that over April and May. Over in Brazil, Ministrio continues to have some of the highest productivity rates that we have in the group. Now one of the management team's main priorities since the start of this year has been working with tech on planning the integration for our merger. We are cracking on at pace here with all of that integration work and there is a lot of work to do as you can imagine. We're particularly focused on getting the business position to stand up on its own on day one post closing and getting ready for the two new listings in New York and Toronto and all of those associated regulatory processes. We set up an integration management office very early on, essentially a team of senior leaders from both companies that can work closely with me to drive the planning and the state of the readiness forward. They have done an excellent job so far and we still have plenty to do of course, but I'm very confident now that we will hit the ground running on day one. As the combined portfolio comes together, we will be ready to realise the material value and the synergies that we have identified, and I am clear that all of the assets can play a meaningful role in doing that. As far as the future growth path is concerned, we will get into that once we have full visibility of all of the information of both companies post completion. Clearly, that's not possible to do currently given the antitrust and gun jumping rules. So in terms of what that means for market disclosure going forward, we'll start out with the details of the essential architecture that we need to manage the business from day one, and then get through the more detailed planning that is enabled by full integration. So the initial disclosure will likely cover organizational structure, the group's key financial policies and accounting, as well as the disclosure frameworks. We will then update the market in the ordinary course thereafter and continue to evolve as we have more information. On the timing of completion, the final regulatory approval we need is, of course, as everybody knows, from China's State Administration for Market Regulation, or SAMR. And we've been continuously engaging with them and cooperating with them over the last six months. We are of the view that the formation of Anglo-Tech can only be positive for increasing global copper supply, and it is therefore also a positive for our customers. We believe that we will be on track to complete later this year or early next as we announced at the outset of the merger. I am conscious that many of you are going to have loads of questions related to the detail of these interactions and what that might mean but as I'm sure you can appreciate this is a confidential process and a really important one and we don't want to misstep anything in the way to getting these final approvals so I'm afraid I'm really not going to be commenting anymore on that at this stage. As I mentioned, we have moved forward on the portfolio transformation. The sale of our steelmaking coal business to Dilmar for up to $3.9 billion was an excellent outcome from a highly competitive process that gives us both cash upfront and the ability to participate in price upside over the coming years. We are working towards satisfying all of the closing conditions and targeting close by Q1 of next year. On nickel, we are continuing to work through the EU antitrust process on the proposed sale to MMG for up to $500 million. This has taken a lot longer than we had anticipated but we now have some positive momentum following that protracted delay. and we believe that there are no market supply issues that arise from this transaction and supply has increased and diversified in fact further since we agreed this deal and so we are optimistic now that we will receive this final regulatory approval and complete in the coming months. Now that takes me on to the last leg of our portfolio transformation which is the sale of De Beers. Now the team there has been working incredibly hard in a terribly complex environment over the last few years to achieve a responsible separation of that business and I am pleased to say that things are advancing. That said we are now in the final phases of our process and that also is the most challenging phase of our process given the number of parties that we need to take along to the final point and get signing of the final agreements. Our focus remains on bringing this process to a conclusion within an acceptable terms during the second half of this year and with that I'll now hand over to John who'll take us through the financial results.

Thank you Duncan and good morning everyone. I'm once again pleased with the financial performance for the first half of the year. We remain on track to deliver our annual production guidance, we've managed costs well in what's been an inflationary environment and we've further strengthened the balance sheet. As we continue to progress through our portfolio transformation the financial reporting of course remains complex. As we've done at our recent results on this first slide, I've set out as simply as possible the basis on which our numbers are presented. As a reminder, our continuing operations include both the simplified Anglo-American portfolio and De Beers. Our discontinued operations include steelmaking coal and nickel. Our simplified portfolio focused on copper and premium iron ore delivered EBITDA of $4.1 billion, an EBITDA margin of 46% and underlying earnings of $1 billion, all showing significant improvement on prior year, driven by favourable commodity prices and good cost control. De Beers incurred a marginal EBITDA loss of 0.1 billion dollars reflecting the continued challenging market conditions mitigated by our restructuring actions. Discontinued operations reported a loss during the period mainly due to lower volumes at SMC as a result of poor weather and the ramp up of Morneby North which is now again operating at normal levels. Combining continuing and discontinued operations the group delivered total earnings per share and a dividend of 23 cents per share in line with our 40% payout policy. Net debt has continued to decrease ending the period at 8.2 billion dollars down from 8.6 at the end of December last year although that does reflect some favourable timing which I'll come back to later. I'll take you through each of these items now in a little bit more detail. Starting with the simplified portfolio. Our basket price was up 22% reflecting significant increases in copper partly offset by small reductions in iron ore. Iron ore price realisations were impacted by the diversion of Middle East bound product to other markets due to the Iran conflict and rising freight costs on an FOB basis. Production increased 1%, as Duncan mentioned, with slightly higher copper offset by lower iron ore. The higher prices supported a 22% increase in revenue and a 31% increase in EBITDA to $4.1 billion, with around 70% of this EBITDA being driven by copper. The tax rate in the simplified portfolio was 40%, slightly lower than last year, due to the relative mix of profits and reduced impact from loss-making businesses following our restructuring programme. This all resulted in a 60% increase in underlying earnings to $1 billion and return on capital employed improved by 4 percentage points to 19%. It's pleasing to see these higher margins and higher return on capital materialise as that was exactly the basis of our portfolio restructuring. Turning now to costs where we've got quite a lot to unpack with actual costs increasing due to macro factors and volume while copper unit costs reduced significantly due to by-product credits. Starting with total operating costs for the simplified portfolio you can see here total costs increased by 0.6 billion dollars to 4.8 with the most significant factors being fx cpi and fuel there were then a number of smaller impacts including freight as well as movements in peru related to the rehabilitation provision and employee profit share provision Finally, the restart of the Los Bronces plant and the return to higher activity at Manganese had an associated impact on costs. But of course, both of those were EBITDA positive. Moving on to unit costs, we saw a gross 13% increase. However, that is before the impact of by-product credits and TCRCs. The combined effect of which was a credit of 0.6 billion dollars compared to 0.3 last year with all of that benefit in copper. The 0.6 billion credit is roughly evenly split between Chile and Peru and is driven by molybdenum and silver. Given the scale of the relative cost bases with Peru gross unit cost being about half that of Chile this meant that the credits had a much more material impact on Peru than Chile. Copper unit costs with the credit benefit therefore reduced by 12% from 155 cents to 136 with copper Peru at 45 cents and Chile at 206. Iron ore unit costs increased by 17% to $41 per tonne reflecting the underlying cost position that I've just described with most of the FX impact being related to iron ore. This left total net unit costs up 4% versus last year. Bring everything together now in the EBITDA reconciliation for the simplified portfolio. As you can see, the vast majority of the increase from $3.1 to $4.1 billion is due to macro factors. Our favourable basket price driven by copper and by-product credits resulted in a $1.2 billion price benefit, partly offset by FX on the South African Rand and Brazilian Real, as well as CPI to take EBITDA before controllables to $4 billion. Moving on to the controllables, sales volumes were slightly lower, mainly reflecting timing of shipments in copper. The lost bronzes and manganese cost impacts from the plant restart and increased manganese activity respectively totaled £0.2 billion and are spread across each of volume, cost and the other category. These and the other incremental costs I described previously are then offset by the final corporate cost savings, lower TCRCs and manganese volume to leave this controllable side of the chart a small net positive in the first half of the year taking EBITDA to $4.1 billion. Moving now to our exiting businesses and starting with an update on the actions we're taking at De Beers. The diamond market continues to face both cyclical and structural challenges but we have taken and continue to take proactive action to preserve value and reduce the net impact to the group. This is evident in the results which show an EBITDA loss of 0.1 billion dollars compared to 0.2 last year even as prices have moved lower. This reflects the impact of cost savings but more materially a lower cost inventory base as recent purchases have been at lower prices. Although the losses have been stemmed we're not resting and restructuring action continues while ensuring that we retain upside optionality as markets recover. The most significant action is at Venetia where production will be paused for around two years and capital expenditure on the underground project will be re-phased. This protects near-term cash flow and will allow us to reduce capex in 2026 by $300 million, while preserving the long-term value and future production potential of the asset. Phoenicia was also contributing loss-making carrots in the first half, so pausing this production will also assist forward profitability. Alongside this, De Beers is reshaping its corporate structure, simplifying the organisation and reducing the central cost base. This builds on the progress already made to remove overhead costs and improve efficiency across the business. Overall, these actions demonstrate a clear emphasis on cash preservation, cost reduction and value protection, while also setting the business up for a successful divestment. Briefly now on discontinued operations. EBITDA was a loss of 0.2 billion reflecting principally driven by steelmaking coal while nickel was broadly breakeven. I'm pleased with the operational progress at steelmaking coal with Moranby as I said having a successful ramp up and now effectively back at normal operating levels. The equity shareholder's loss of $1.2 billion reflects the underlying earnings plus a $0.9 billion impairment of SMC to reflect the terms of the Dilmar transaction. Applying a consensus based annual pricing to a DCF calculation doesn't attribute any value to the price link consideration when in reality of course we would expect there to be option value from price volatility with payments being calculated on a quarterly basis for five years. Meanwhile we've initiated arbitration proceedings against Peabody in respect to the previous transaction which is ongoing. Capital expenditure reduced to $0.1 billion, primarily reflecting the removal of PGMs from the portfolio. And the net debt impact was a $0.2 billion outflow, including the cash received from the steelmaking coal deposit from Delmar. Looking at capital expenditure, we've maintained a disciplined approach, with CapEx and continuing operations decreasing by 6% to $1.5 billion. This reduction was driven primarily by lower sustaining capital expenditure as the Ministerial Filtration Plant completed and the Colawassee Desalination Plant approached completion. We do expect higher capital expenditure in the second half but we've made some cost efficiency gains which I'll touch on in the guidance section shortly. Growth capex increased modestly year on year reflecting investment in a small number of projects including the first phase of the Koiwasi de-bottlenecking initiative and Coomba's UHDMS project along with Woodsmith. Moving now to cash generation which as always remained a priority during the period. EBITDA of $4 billion translated into $3.5 billion of cash flow from operations. Working capital remain flat with the adverse impact of rising prices largely offset by a number of timing benefits across multiple categories including receivables, payables and marketing activities. I wouldn't expect all of these timing benefits to endure and therefore anticipate an increase in working capital through the second half. The £0.3 billion outflow from other operating cash flows is primarily due to timing of market derivative settlements which offset in EBITDA and working capital. Cash tax and interest payments distributions to minorities and sustaining capex totaling $2.3 billion resulted in a £1.2 billion of sustaining attributable free cash flow up around 90% compared to last year. Similar to working capital where we will see some increase in the second half, both cash tax payments and distributions to minorities were lower than the income statement charges and this will reverse to an extent in the coming periods. Nonetheless, it is pleasing to see the business continue to generate increased cash flows. Looking at net debt, we've seen a further reduction to $8.2 billion. The $1.2 billion of sustaining attributable free cash flow during the half was more than sufficient to fund growth capex of 0.4, the dividends paid to Anglo-American shareholders and the outflows from discontinued operations. And I'm pleased that our net debt to EBITDA ratio is now at one times while the group continues to maintain a strong liquidity position. Looking ahead now for the balance of the year the business remains in a strong position with all operations and controllable costs trending as planned. The only change to unit cost guidance relates to a reduction in copper unit costs which is a reflection of the by-product credits which I described earlier. As I noted in February, our original guidance was conservative on by-product pricing and foreign exchange, given we were in the very early stages of the Middle East conflict and the associated macro uncertainty. In Peru, with updated full year guidance of 65 cents compared with the first half of 45, we continue to be somewhat conservative on pricing of molly and silver relative to current spots, reflecting the sensitivity of unit costs to the size of the credits in Peru as I described earlier. In Chile, where the size of the cost base means their unit costs are less sensitive to those credits, we've guided full year at 210 cents compared to 206 in the first half. In iron ore, we've kept cost guidance the same for the second half, however we would note that these businesses are more susceptible to oil price movements and do not benefit from the by-product credits in the same way as copper. As you will see in our usual sensitivity analysis, which is in the appendix, for every 10% move in oil prices, we would expect a 43 million impact to six month group EBITDA. Moving on to CAPEX, our projects team is continuing to deliver optimised outcomes and the work on both the filtration plant at Minas Rio and the plant de-bottlenecking at Kiev Echo have come in under budget. which allows us to reduce our capex gains for the simplified portfolio by 0.1 billion dollars And as I mentioned before, now with the temporary suspension, Phoenicia, we've reduced our expected spending at De Beers in the second half by $0.3 billion. Therefore, collectively, for the continuing portfolio, this amounts to capex savings of $0.4 billion, bringing our total 2026 capex guidance now to $3.2 billion for the year. Finally as I've mentioned previously for 2026 we will incur 0.2 billion of special costs for the restructuring and merger and we will have 0.5 billion of non-cash increase in our net debt arising from lease for the infrastructure related to the Los Bronces desalination plant which will complete in the second half of the year. So to finish let me briefly recap on those key financial messages. We delivered strong profit growth with EBITDA from our continuing operations up by 35% to $4 billion, aligned with our portfolio restructuring and a higher exposure to copper. We managed the controllable costs well and stronger by-product pricing enabled us to reduce copper unit cost gains by 12% to 136 cents per pound. Our focus on capital management and project execution has allowed us to reduce planned 2026 capital expenditure by $0.4 billion which should further underpin higher return on capital employed which is now at 19% for the simplified portfolio. The balance sheet also continues to strengthen with net debt reducing to $8.2 billion and leverage reducing to one times EBITDA while of course retaining significant liquidity. Overall the simplified portfolio continues to provide resilient earnings with attractive exposure to copper-led growth and delivering higher margins and returns. Thank you very much and I'll now hand back to Duncan.

Thank you John. So one of the biggest differentiators in our portfolio is the potential for us to deliver meaningful copper growth with higher returns and lower complexity relative to peers with the benefit of building from some of the best copper assets in the world. Now as the slide shows bringing new copper production online is becoming ever more expensive. The rate of inflation for capital intensity is running at almost double the increase in CPI. Capital is therefore now a bigger part of the project's economics than ever before and returns need to be higher just to justify those elevated costs. As capital inflation continues, the economics of many growth projects are at risk without higher prices and this is why we believe the copper price has to be structurally higher. It's also taking a lot longer to actually build and deliver these projects. Back in the 1990s, it took about seven years from the time that you discovered an ore body to bring it into production. Now, over the last decade or so, that has stretched out to almost 18 years. And if that carries on, the cycles will take longer to move from trough to peak and we'll see much bigger swings in price. This is especially true when so much of the demand for copper is coming from strategic buyers who really aren't all that price sensitive. So in that kind of world, projects that you can deliver in the short to medium term without spending a fortune to build them become hugely valuable. Now you'll have seen this slide before, but it makes this point well. Our key copper growth options rarely stand out where it matters the most, on complexity and on capital intensity. Over the last 15 years, the industry's capex estimates have mostly come in far worse than what was promised at the study stage. So in that world, low complexity and low capital intensity is exactly where you want to be. Starting from lower capital intensity projects, our returns, starting from lower capital intensity protects our returns and it leaves us really well placed to benefit from price upside that the supply dynamics should drive. And that's on top of a demand outlook that is structurally strong. Now, with all of that in mind, the integration of Koyawase and Quebrada Blanca is a really exciting prospect. Arguably, it is one of the industry's best options for capital efficient copper growth at scale, and that is actionable in the near term. Now, as a reminder, there is a potential to add an incremental 175,000 tons of annual copper production at around $2 billion of capex. So that's about $11,000 of capex per ton of copper growth. Importantly, the integration would still allow for further growth from both assets, and this also provides increased flexibility for future options, including leaching and other plant expansions. We're busy putting the building blocks in place to make this integration a success. We are focused right now on the technical groundwork and on engaging with shareholders across both assets. And just like any other adjacency that we've bought over the last few years, it is important that we take our time and we do this properly. Much of what drives the extended schedules for copper projects is the time needed for permitting, planning and stakeholder alignment. So we want to get that right from the outset. We continue to believe that this is, by far, the best way forward for both Koyawasi and Quebrada Blanca. It sits right in that sweet spot. Low capital intensity, relatively low execution risk, high confidence and near-term copper growth at real scale. And I'm genuinely confident about the potential here. We can build something pretty special. One of the largest and most competitive mining complexes in the world with decades of accretive growth ahead of it. Now last month we announced the final regulatory approval for the agreement to form a joint mine plan between Los Bronces and Cadalcos and Dena mine right next door. Now if you'll forgive the pun, it's really groundbreaking work there. A very thoughtful and innovative structure that meets the objectives of both sides without compromise to value creation and it allows the respective shareholders to participate in the upside on a pro-rata basis. Now, as we've said before, this joint mine plan will add another 120,000 tons of annual average copper production, which will be shared equally between the parties. When we announced this deal, we identified around $5 billion of pre-tax value uplift to share with Codelco. and that was at a copper price of around five dollars a pound so this is probably the clearest example of us benefiting from exactly the copper dynamics that i've just been speaking about Now that we're through completion, the teams are moving into the joint mine plan integration design work. We've got a governance framework in place and we're now working towards the environmental permits where we're aiming to have them done by 2030. And just like Cuyahuasca and Quebrada Blanca, there could be more growth to come down the line. For example, here at Los Bronces, we've kept the right to develop the underground if the markets can support it. We're really excited about our future as Anglo Tech and the upside that we can unlock from this in terms of the synergies and the growth. Now, as I've said just now, it is going to take some time before we can talk to the deal aspects of project sequencing. However, that should in no way detract from the core of the value proposition because it will continue to be primarily driven by Anglo American and Tech's current portfolio of assets. The key value driver for us going forward therefore remains operational excellence. Now that we've built a more stable operating platform we've got a solid place to plan from and we're continuously working on systematically optimizing productivity, costs and stability. We're also looking further out to see how we can best manage the natural variation that occurs over the lives of mines as well as the inevitable pressures on grades over time. So at Kiveco we've just completed a de-bottlenecking program at the plant, recoveries are up and the mine is operating very well. Now this stability gives us the ability to focus on maximizing the future value and in this context we're continuing to shape the production profile over the next decade. As you know over the next few years we're going to be moving from the supergene into the hypergenol body and the hypergenol body is characterized by lower grades. Now the work that we're doing there is looking to smooth out the production profile during that transition period. and as a consequence we may take an earlier step down in annual production volumes towards the end of the decade in order to sustain that rate over a longer period of time to maximize value rather than taking a much bigger step down a little bit further out. although to be clear these changes should not impact our current production guidance and we are continuing to pursue new ore sources that could come into the mine plan over time as we look to optimize give echoes value it is a highly profitable business highly cash generative and is well set to be a cornerstone of the anglo-tech portfolio through the next decade and more and we will continue to push for further options to enhance its value At Coomber, what we're doing there with the UHDMS technology is already setting us up to get more out of Sisham. It's going to treble the share of the high-grade product, and that is exactly the quality of product that plays into the key demand trends over the medium term. and we're getting more optimistic about what we can deliver from Sishen over time. However, there is scope for other upsides from Coomber's performance in the near term and Mpumi is spearheading a full potential program there to improve productivity, costs and return on capital. Minas Rio is another mine that is operating well and as we look forward we remain excited about the full potential of Serpentina which is an excellent ore body. Now our focus at Minas Rio is therefore now working through the most capital efficient and value accretive pathway to the Serpentina resource with a particular focus on confidence in execution in the context of what we now see as a very much increased challenging and permitting landscape. We have the time to do this work and to be clear it does not impact our guidance and the operating stability that's now in place creates a solid platform for us to unlock the full potential of that serpentina adjacency. So we are continuing to work hard on how we optimize the long-term potential across the portfolio and through the merger we will continue to challenge ourselves as to how we can strengthen sustainable performance even more over time and allow us to make the most most of what I see is shaping up to be a fantastic company. So to close Operational excellence is right at the heart of how we're driving better performance across the business and there's definitely more to come as we set ourselves up to understand and then to deliver that potential from the merged business. After two years of hard yards the portfolio work at Anglo American is nearly done and we're in great shape to start life as Anglo Tech with a focused set of assets. In addition to that we've got near-term growth, We've got medium term growth and a whole suite of assets and project options to keep us delivering well into the long term. And on a personal note, I am properly energized by how Anglo American is performing right now and by everything that lies ahead. I am really looking forward to seeing this merger through and to leading Anglo Tech over the coming years to deliver its huge potential. I am determined, Stuart. And with that, John and I are happy to take your questions now. Tyler, you're going to moderate.

All right. Thanks very much. I think what we'll do is we'll start with Mac, as I promised last night, and then we'll do the traditional analyst conga line of questions.

Thanks, Tyler. Good morning, Duncan. It's Mac Green of Goldman Sachs. I just want to touch on your COPPA, probably the near term. Congratulations on the Los Brancos and Andina agreement there. But when we think about this preparation period between now and when this JV kicks in in 2030, what needs to be done to get this asset ready? You know, you've touched on the tailings, the decels ramping up, but anything else that we need to be considerate of here? Anything?

No, I mean, the critical path now at Los Brancos and Dena runs absolutely through the permitting process. You know, we've got a very good view of what the shape of the mine should be from the The agreement work that we did. We've got to keep doing what we're doing in terms of the removal of Peris caldera so that's pretty important because as soon as Peris caldera is moved we can bring back the second plant because you know the Los Brancos plant comes down again to move Peris caldera. but we need that plant when we start the joint operations with Andina. So that's part of the critical path but all on track and making good progress there. Just as far as the permitting process goes, look it's complex permitting environment. Generally in South America it's complex, in Chile it's quite complex particularly in and around where Los Bronces is because it's so closely located to the city of Santiago. So normally these sorts of permitting process can take three or four years but we have a very front-footed forward-looking government there who's very excited about the prospects of good and responsible copper growth in the country and so look I'm expecting that we've got a number of legal processes that we need to go through but this is a good outcome environmentally, it's a good outcome in terms of utilization of resources like water and land so the environmental impacts are much better than two standalone growth options in the same place so I'm expecting that we'll have a reasonable ride through that permitting process but it'll probably still be around about three years to get it done.

that's great and then just longer term cave echo outstanding first half of the year so congratulations on the performance there when you when you scope this the concentrator you were limited by water you've been able to manage that you're pushing to 140 42 000 tons a day by the end of this year i think there's scope to move to 150 beyond that um where do you see this as well the concentrator tapping out and then how do you think about the next leg here for for cave echo

Yeah look I mean I think this is a great example of continuous improvement and innovation all at the same time. You know the ore body is the ore body and it has the grades that it has and of course we were limited by water in terms of what we could produce at the time. I think when we permitted the project originally we could only process 127,500 tonnes a day. As you say we sort of managed to iterate ourselves to around about 140 and now probably have liberated the possibility of processing almost 150,000 tonnes a day. So how did we do that? Well, first of all, it's a complete optimization of the internal water balance within the plant, making sure that we're recycling as much of that water, not allowing it to evaporate, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a whole bunch of processes that go in around that. Of course, we implemented our first full-scale coarse particle flotation unit there, and that made a very big difference in terms of the application and use of water. and then there's been a little bit of de-bottlenecking. In every plant that you have you really want your primary constraint to be your sagmo and so to the extent that you can de-bottleneck anything around that sort of gives you the benefit. So the primary constraint here will continue to be water. We're not using any more water than we were going to use for 175,000 tonnes a day and I think given Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Maxime Koch from UdoBHF. So, first question is on Colawasi because it's a bit difficult to understand the situation there with regards to the diesel plant. I mean, a lot of money has been invested, more than 3 billion over the last few years. It has required three years of investing and yet we had at this 11th hour this stoppage. So, what are your views, assembling books there in your discussion with the administration and when can you give us some sense of the timeline before we start there?

As I say, this is a permit that was granted by the SCA more than five years ago and was granted off the back of a fully-fledged consultation process with all the stakeholders that were involved in it. What has subsequently happened is that a stakeholder group has taken the permit on review. It then escalated through a number of steps to get to the environmental tribunal who suggested that the SEA who granted the permit will need to review it. So it's just the components associated with the desalination plant. So this is the whole of the EIA for Kauiawasi. So it's just the component of the desalination plant that was taken under review. And this is a process that now the government has to reset, including the consultation process. but we are hopeful that within the next six months or so we should be able to get back on track and be able to restart that plant. As I said earlier it's had no impact in terms of production so far because we have a number of alternative water sources but in terms of the long term we will need the desalination plant to come back on which we're expecting it will do.

All right and just a second question on copper yet just about the big spike we've had in sulfuric acid prices was wondering what was the net balance for you because on the one hand you have this melter and chagas on the other hand you have some consumption in leaching ops so is it net positive balance and yeah do you see opportunities in terms of smelting going forward and and conversely some some some hindrances in terms of leaching production um yeah

Yeah, look, I mean, as far as smelting is concerned, I mean, we have the Chagres smelter is one of the one of the best operated smelters in that region. So so continues to perform very well. It's an integrated smelter for us, right? So we don't we don't take custom material through it. It's it's really our own material that we put through it. Of course, there are very interesting views today on the role of smelting in the system, but as we see it at this particular point in time, we're really not looking to expand our smelting capacity within the group. It is quite capital intensive. We're very happy with the capacity that exists in the market today. If that environment changes, then we would re-look at it. But right now, so long as Chagres continues to perform in the way that it does, it's a very viable component of our portfolio. In terms of leaching per se, another technology that's getting a lot of favour, it's one of these things that the mining industry has been poking at for a very long time in terms of a technology breakthrough and many mining companies have got various different views of which technologies are good and which technologies are not. I am very clearly of the view there isn't a silver bullet in terms of leaching technology that applies to all mining. Leaching works in varying degrees on different types of ore bodies and there are many different types of leaching that you would pick appropriate to a specific ore body. Generally, leaching technology has been at the point where it works very, very well on oxidized ores, but not as well in terms of recovery basis on sulfidic ores. The technology does seem to be changing and moving, so much higher recoveries on some of these technologies are coming through on the sulfidic ores. That would be a very big positive if you had an ore body that was amenable to that sort of leaching. because the capital intensity of leaching plants is just so much lower than the capital intensity of concentrators. It does come with other environmental permitting issues and so on but I think to the extent that you have operations like Koyawase who has a leaching operation already and it's a shuttered operation but we can bring it back on, it gives you a lot more opportunity to make use of a technology Thank you very much.

Ian Rousseau A second question, just on the steelmaking coal business, obviously the unit costs were pretty high, obviously a large fixed cost component within that as Maraba ramps up. How should we think about profitability in the second half? I know you don't give guidance on unit cost and volumes, but just how we should think about that. Thanks.

Okay, so Los Brancos plant. Remember when we shut Los Brancos down, the plant down, it wasn't making any money at all. And there were two key drivers of that. One, it was just the fundamental underlying base of Los Brancos per se, but that plant specifically. and secondly the quality of the ore that we were able to feed to it. The mine was very very constrained in those days you'll remember we were monophasic stuck in infinity of five really really struggling at the bottom of that phase to get the volumes at a quality That could support both of the plants, Confluencia and Los Bronces. And so the decision was an economic one. So value over volume was a very important drive for me. It still is today. And hence the decision to shut that plant down. What has changed subsequently is that the mine has progressed extremely well on their cost management focus. They have really focused on where the real numbers need to be and they've implemented a number of programs that have sustainably delivered better cost performance across the whole of Los Bronces. But secondly and probably far more importantly is that the progress that they've made on the development of Dinosaur 2, which is the phase that will ultimately replace Infineo 5, is ahead of schedule. And the consequence of it being ahead of schedule means that one, we have access to more ore, two, that ore is softer and processes better through the plants than the harder ore that comes out of Infineo 5, and thirdly is slightly higher grade just given where it is in the mine. It's higher up in the mine than where Infineo 5 is. So the combination of those things then made the restart of course in the back of some very robust copper prices a materially viable value solution. So we started up. Now the constraint is absolutely the removal of that Paris Caldera tailings dam. So this is a commitment that we have, as you know, that this all sort of emanated from actually a very long-standing commitment, almost back to the Exxon days, to remove that tailings dam, but even more important in terms of what we understand about tailings dams under the GISTM process. So we are going to move that tailings dam. It needs the water because we're so water constrained in that region that we're currently using in that plant. So that is what we're going to do next. And the rate at which we can move that dam, of course the big prize here is to have everything back up and running when we've combined Andean and Los Bronces so we can We can optimize the copper production from the combined asset at that point in time. So the real critical path now runs through the removal of Peres Caldera. That, as I said earlier, is on track. It's running very well. I'm not sure whether we can accelerate it yet. It's a little bit early days, but to the extent that we can and optimize the way that we extract it, There is a small probability that we can either delay, but I'm talking about months, not years, the shuttering of the Los Bronces plant or starting it up a little bit earlier if we get the permits back.

and then Kwewasi Liching and Metgol.

What was the Kwewasi Liching question?

Just how we should think about the timelines for potentially bringing that in.

The team is working very hard on that right now. I think there is a view that we might be able to bring some of that in during the course of next year. We have a plant there, so it's obviously going to have to be refurbished a little bit. It's a specific process. I think what we're also looking at is what the full leaching potential of Kauai is. Leaching at Kauai Sea you might think about in two phases. One is the restart of the current plant because current copper price environment probably substantiates and supports the restart of that plant. The guys are busy doing the feasibility study now as to when that might come on. The second phase is actually an application of one of these new technologies that is amenable to We have two options here, which is an absolute pleasure. One is we've got this massive mineralized waste pile, which is a stockpile that the mine's actually been running off for the last 18 months, which is probably more amenable to leaching than it is to concentration. and, you know, if some of these sulfidic technologies work in leaching, you know, we have the Ukhina pits and we have a portion of the Rosario pit that would probably be amenable to that. So it's probably a little bit further out, but that's the, you know, that's the technological dream and the optionality that we have embedded in Koyawasi. Then you asked on steelmaking coal and the unit costs. So look, the guys had a pretty rough start to the year with weather. We had three mega weather events across the group. One is in Australia at the beginning of the year where the open pits were completely inundated with water. Honestly, Ian, I've never seen anything like this in my life. We had conveyors that are already 10 metres above the ground that were submerged. So all the resilience things that had been put in place were beaten by Mother Nature this year round. So probably a one in 400 year flood that they had there. So it took them some time and so some of that... that is embedded in the cost base. And then we had to be very cautious in how we were ramping up Morimba and so a bit slower to get it right but I'm thrilled to say that over the last two months or so the guys are absolutely consistently hitting their straps Thanks, this is Alan Gabriel at Morgan Stanley.

Duncan couple of questions one is on the integration with tech your teams are clearly doing lots of integration planning what have you learned so far that has surprised you either positively or negatively given the limitations of what you can and cannot say and the second question is on the B is probably for for John what are the standalone provisions and pensions and long-term liabilities for taxes as well that you can share with us at this stage thank you

So on the integration I'm thrilled to say no big surprises so you know the challenging work is the volume of work at this point in time because of course you know we're prevented from seeing commercial data on either side the companies are actually competitors until the day that we close and that's the really cool stuff that I really want to get my teeth into big time But I can't do that until we've completed. But on the other hand what we do need is, I mean we've got a very clear view of where the synergies are that we've announced and we need to set the organization up now to be able to hit the ground running hard in terms of the rapid delivery of those synergies. and secondly we've got to have an operating model for the company that everybody knows and everybody understands from day one and that's a lot of work. So just understanding what the asset bases are, we rely very heavily on how tech think about certain things and they have to rely very heavily on how we think about certain things and then we've got to put the right operating model in place. So that's all been very good progress. and then of course the company has to actually operate. It's got to have a management system on that day. We've got two new listings in New York and Toronto. What you're required to do in terms of the statutory information, the financial reporting, the Sarbanes-Oxley stuff and so on that's an enormous amount of work to one understand and then plumb systemically through the businesses both in tech and Anglo so that's the volume of work so not the most exciting work well unless you're Siobhan she loves this sort of stuff but very important work to get run to get right if we're going to have a chance of driving those synergies out in the time that we said

What are the long-term provisions and pension liabilities that are sitting in the De Beers entity? Oh, and De Beers. So the pensions in De Beers are in great shape, like they are across all of Anglo-American. So very well funded. We're in the process of moving the majority of those long-term defined benefit plans to buy in or buy out, which effectively means we transfer those liabilities to to insurance providers. On taxes, nothing of concern on De Beers on long-term tax liabilities, all pretty in the ordinary course, so no unusual long-term liabilities. Of course the big long-term liabilities in De Beers as they are with with any mining company is the closure provisions and rehabilitation provisions etc but all in the ordinary course.

And are you able to quantify these long-term provisions?

No, not at this time.

Miles also at UBS a few quick questions maybe for John to start with could you give us a sense of how much you are looking to get from Peabody is it 500 million is it a billion is it one and a half billion obviously you've got Thank you very much. But how are you thinking around the dividend policy for Anglo Tech? Is it more likely to be aligned with the current Anglo policy or a more North American structure? And maybe for Duncan just on manganese, obviously you've done most of the heavy lifting on the restructuring and is that now kind of on the list of things to tidy up?

Okay, good morning Miles. On your first question on Peabody, obviously the arbitration, as I said, has been initiated. That's a confidential matter and therefore I won't comment any further in terms of quantums or amounts, but as we've said consistently, we are very, very confident in our legal position on that case. and your second question on the dividend for Anglo Tech you quite rightly say that will be a decision for the Anglo Tech board which of course is not yet formed and so that would be one of the things when Duncan talked about the phasing of communication that we'd hope to be able to clarify that very early post the post completion of the merger.

And then on manganese, Miles, you probably wouldn't expect me to say much different from, you know, we look at all the assets in the portfolio all of the time and to the extent that we can see more value for them in a different way or in a different format, we would deal with that and manganese would just be one of those. So nothing specific planned on it, but absolutely, you know, in line with how we think about asset management and planning for the whole of the business at a portfolio level, it will be looked at in the same way.

Thank you. Tony Robson, Global Mining Research. Possibly a question to Duncan. The $4.5 billion special dividend being paid out just prior, so we're talking days, weeks prior to the formal unification issuing of shares to take and so on. And was there any thought about AE doing that as a buyback rather than a special? Surely that's in terms of the weighting of the assets, the ratio you require as a merger of equals would have the same impact and reduction in shareholders' equity. I would assume.

John can comment on the detail of this but I can assure you when we were looking at the merger ratios of the company and what we needed to do to put it together we considered all of the options. The best option for us was the return of some capital to the Anglo-American shareholders and so that was the decision we took. So it's not going to change now. It is a return of $4.5 billion just prior to completion. John, do you want to add anything to that? No, that's it.

Thank you.

Felicity Robson, Bank of America. The steelmaking coal disposal is valued at up to $3.9 billion with 2.3 up front. How can we think about the likelihood and the timing around any of the contingent payments?

John may have to help me with the timing, but the key contingency is just all price-related. I think it's probably over a five-year period or something. Over the next five years, depending on where the steelmaking coal price is, I can't remember the term that we look at it.

It moves around a little bit but on average it's in the high 250s.

Yeah high 250s but it's quarterly or quarterly review tested you know we'll get any participation in the upside of that. Thank you.

Thanks, morning Richard Hatch from Berenberg, just a few quick ones, firstly it's been a while since byproducts were this attractive or got this much time in the limelight so can you just remind us how much silver you're producing, how much moly you're producing so we can John Bradford,

yeah first of all on the byproducts i mean um i mean there's a number of things in there so a bit of silver a bit of gold bit of moly bit of acid um and so and of course it moves around depending on where you're at in your body so so we're not uh giving uh volumes on that just now we i think for the first time given the quantum felt it was appropriate to give the the the number which was i said 0.6 i think 575 to be to be precise in terms of the the uh the revenue so um yeah no no more detail to give on that given the variability and of course it changes by mine in terms of working capital um Thank you very much for joining us. and then as I said there was a number of timing benefits so we got some some some some receipts from customers a little bit quicker there was a number of capital creditors that were delayed out a little bit etc etc to answer your question in the round if you what would you have expected working capital to go up by in the first half of the year if we didn't have these offsets then the price impact as you saw in my waterfall was 1.2 billion dollars If you took your receivable somewhere between 30 and 60 days it's probably somewhere between two and four hundred million dollars of a sort of timing benefit that we had in the first half of the first half of the year. And in terms of the non-controlling interest then of course yeah there will be and again I mentioned this in my speech that there'll be there is a difference in timing between the earnings coming through and then when those dividends are actually paid out so yeah I would expect to see over the course of the second half of the year in respect of not only Kiaveco but also EA Sewer some dividends paid out to those minorities.

There's a pattern how Tyler's doing this.

He's broken the pattern. Good morning, it's Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Just one question on the Koloassi QB JV. Have discussions advanced much in recent months with Glencore and the other partners at both sets of assets? And in order to meet that 2028 construction start timetable, when would you need to reach an agreement and make the relevant permit applications? Thank you.

So look discussions are ongoing right so it's not only with Glencore it's with all the other stakeholders too in terms of of how we can shape this up you know fundamentally this is is going to rely on the standalone options that that exist in both of the assets and getting those to a level Thank you very much. So that work is ongoing. Those conversations have started, definitely not concluded at this particular point in time. I think we do need to get that technical work done properly. That is the bit that actually takes the time to get done. But we should absolutely have that done at a point in time where Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Hey Duncan, it's Chris Lefamina from Jefferies. Hey Chris. So just some questions on Kaliwasi. So back in 2020, 2021 coming out of COVID, you had two fantastic years. Grades were up, production was up materially, when workers weren't showing up to work, which was impressive performance, but it was also somewhat surprising. Here we are five, six years later, and you're having these geotechnical issues. It was transitional or this year, these complex faulting issues they need to deal with next year. So I'm wondering first, if some of these problems that you're having today or some of these challenges today, are a consequence of changes to the mine plan coming out of COVID and then secondly the complex faulting issues that you said you need to work through again next year I think you said you've dealt with these in the past but just wondering what sort of risks there are to your 2027 production you have to slow down mining rates

Great questions Chris and of course you know my adage is you know once you stop mining to the plan you pay the piper at some particular point in time and certainly there's no doubt that Koyawase is not immune from this. They have a little bit more Thank you very much. It played out about two years ago when they had to catch up the stripping for the next phase of the mine. This is phase 15, I think it is, at the mine. In the back of their mind, in their defense, they do have the stonking stockpile here. It is a 0.6% grading waste pile. There are many, many fresh oil mines that would love to have that as their primary grade. What they miscalculated here was the rate at which this material was going to recover. So the grade is actually very consistent. It is there. The trials that they did and the tests that they did during that period of time gave them some confidence that when they processed the stockpile, they would get the recoveries that were consistent with the plan that they had put forward. So this wasn't like They completely screwed this up. They had a plan. What they miscalculated was the homogeneity of the refractoriness of that ore source. so so you know they have to kind of crack on and get that done and so that's been the focus for that management team over the last uh over the last two years which is okay we know what we've got to live with now when does it get sorted out back end of this year is when we should have opened up those phases and uh and we're already starting to switch into you know a higher proportion of fresh or compared to uh to to the stockpile door So that's all good. As far as the fault is concerned, the complex fault is concerned, of course, you know, all mines have faults, right? If it wasn't for the fault, there'd be no mine at all because that's how copper porphyries are formed is through the fault. The complexity of this particular one is just the facets that exist within it. So as we get into this phase 15, we are going against the grain, if you like. So instead of mining straight into the fault, we've got a number of cross faults that creates a bit of wedging, you get a bit of fallout. The geotechs are trying to work out whether we need to slack the angle on that slope. I don't know whether that's going to be needed at this particular point in time, but it is something that we have to consider. I'm pretty confident in our copper guidance. What it means is maybe we just get a bit of lumpy production out of Kauai C4A period, but there are other alternative sources of oil. and so on and so on. So, you know, just nothing untoward here, but just to know that we are moving into that phase of the mine now.

Hi, it's Grant Sporer from Bloomberg Intelligence. Question probably for John. You called out the net debt being $6.6 billion Excluding shareholder loans, and I'm guessing you're referring to the Mitsubishi Vale shareholder loans of 1.6 billion if memory serves correctly. Is there any specific terms for those loans when you have to pay them back? I'm just curious as to why you called it out in the presentation specifically.

yeah yeah um thanks grant um the reason for calling it out is that there there is um some judgment and whether you you consider that to be you know true debt or whether it's more of an equity and and in reality um you know it's just how those shareholders chose to fund their share in the those partners chose to to fund their share in the project which is more efficient from a tax perspective etc whether it's a loan whether it's a Thank you very much. The important thing is that when you're comparing the debt number with an EBITDA number in terms of the leverage in the business, that you're comparing like for like, i.e. it's either 100% of one and 100% of the other, or if you take an attributable EBITDA, then it would be fair to take the shareholder loans out. So that's the reason for showing it.

Is there any sort of specific terms? Are you expecting to have to pay that back?

or are you sort of seeing it more as a as an equity they do they do get paid back over time um and and they and they have been paid back so that that those balances on the on the uh the most significant one is in key of echo with uh with Mitsubishi and that that balance is coming down quite quickly over time given the strong performance of the of the business

And then perhaps just a follow-up one, just in terms of your copper cost guidance, is it a case that you've obviously lowered it? Is it a combination, I'm guessing so, of better by-product realisations in the first half and then also higher assumptions in the second half that has allowed you to drop that guidance?

When you say higher assumptions, higher assumptions in the second half on?

Well, higher assumptions versus your initial setting at the beginning of the year.

Yeah, when you look at the make-up, then effectively, take Peru as an example, 45 cents in the first half. Moving up to 65 for the full year guidance then that would imply you can see it's not the second half's not quite at the original guidance level of 100 and therefore our assumption on pricing as I said is not quite at current spots but it's probably somewhere between our previous conservative assumptions which was based on last year's pricing and what we achieved in the first half so it's still a little bit of opportunity there through the second half.

Thank you. Good morning, Alan Spence from BNP. Just actually following up on the unit costs, you mentioned the more conservative byproduct assumptions into the second half, but is there anything on a gross basis, and just talking about cave echo here, that you see inflationary or a headwind to costs into the second half?

Into the second half, yes. The main one would be what's happening with oil stroke diesel. We saw that through the first half of the year that the oil price on average was about 20% higher than the first half of the prior year. I've given the sensitivity for what would come through there. I think it Thank you very much.

Back to Peabody, without asking you any kind of dollar amount, what are the pockets of compensation you'll be looking to go to? Is it what care and maintenance you had to do? Is it what a typical break fee would have been if there had been one? Or what are the little pockets you'll be going for?

Yeah I mean listen it's a complex legal process to go through so again I wouldn't want to comment on any live legal dispute and I think take us at our word that we're very confident we're initiating we're pursuing and when we have something to say we will say it so nothing more I can really say at this point. Okay thank you.

Patrick Mann from Investec. I've just got one quick question left that hasn't been asked already. Just on the beer sale, are you still considering the capital market options that you were talking about before or are you progressed far enough with the sale that you're I'm confident this is going to be the exit mechanism.

One, we don't think that the market has capacity for a listing of the beers at this particular point in time. We probably got there a good few months ago to be honest with you and that was also helpfully supported by the fact that we had some real traction in the divestment process with a number of parties that were all deeply strategic type of partners so we drew some confidence from that. So there is no work going on the listing at this particular point in time. But to the extent that we ever did need it, we'd have to revisit it at that point. So right now it's a trade sale that we're looking at. Thanks.

Ben Davis, RBC. Just two quick questions. One on possible Canadian indexation proposed changes with the S&P. Does Anglo Tech qualify with a Canadian nexus? And then also just quickly on to beers, assuming Botswana does give its blessing, any regulatory hooplas after that?

Okay. We have a czar. Thank you very much, Ben.

And thank you, Duncan, for bestowing the czar status on me for that. Let's all pray for me, especially it doesn't go wrong. So what's happened is that the S&P TSX has come out back in April. They came out with a market consultation, so they were asking the market for feedback. on the potential for adding companies that have material business in Canada but are not domiciled in Canada to the TSX index, which is obviously very relevant for Anglo Tech. And I think there's a very widespread base of support within the financial markets in Canada across the country for wanting it to be in the index. And so this is what the consultation was for. They finished that consultation a few weeks ago. I think it was last week. They've now come out with an official rule change consultation. So it's the same thing, but this one is based on a specific rule. It would mean that it would be 50% attribution to Anglo Tech within the index, but I think from a binary perspective, just being part of that index means we'll be part of the Canadian capital markets infrastructure, which we're very excited by with some great investors and obviously the whole analyst cohort there. it is expected that that will finish at some point over the course of the summer and there will be a determination on a rule change at the start of September and from that point I'm not sure exactly how the mechanics would work with the timing of close and what we go right in but we would be in theory eligible if that rule change was to go through so it should be early September we get an update there and back to you Duncan

Very good answer, Tyler. Good job. So on the statutory approvals for De Beers on a sale, of course they will be. To some extent it does actually depend on the final makeup of the consortium that we put together. I think we can probably expect the likes of the US, China, Europe and so on to be involved at very least in this thing. I mean the estimate is about a year but yeah we'll confirm that when we when we do the transaction.

All right and with that Miles I have the mic now and therefore that is the end of the Q&A session. Duncan has to go off to do some more interviews so we'll have to close it there but yeah just I don't know if you have any last words Duncan or should we just close?

No, Tyler, thanks everybody. It's a good half, I think, building off some tough work that we had to do in terms of resetting the portfolio and changing the accountability model within the business. It's mining. There are always going to be ups and downs in it, but I am confident that we've got the right people in the right place to deal with that and very pleased with where we are, both from an operations point of view and from a transformation point of view. and very excited by ultimately getting the merger complete so we can build on the strengths of both of these companies.

Thanks. And any other further questions obviously we're around so thank you. Thank you.