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Antofagasta plc
8/13/2026
Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I am Ivan Arriagada, Chief Executive Officer. We are pleased to report another set of strong financial results, with 27% higher EBITDA and a 72% increase in profit before tax, which are the result of higher realized prices, productivity improvements and continued cost discipline. At the same time, our major growth projects are advancing towards completion in the year 2027, positioning us well for the future as demand for copper continues to be supported by a range of long-term structural trends. Before we review the results, I would like to take a moment to summarize who we are and why we believe our investment case continues to strengthen. At Antofagasta we combine pure plate copper production today with growth for tomorrow. Our projects currently under construction are expected to increase production by around 30% while adding resilience to our portfolio and all of this is supported by our position as an established operator in Chile, the world's leading copper producing country. The fundamentals for copper remain compelling and the metal has an increasingly important role in modern society. As economies continue to invest in energy security and deploy modern technologies, copper's role in enabling this process is becoming increasingly important with applications throughout daily life. In addition, there is a growing demand from themes such as energy security, electrification and emerging modern technologies such as data centers and artificial intelligence. By contrast, the supply side is increasingly constrained. With long lead times for permitting and mine disruption contributing to a slower pace of growth than global demand. Against this backdrop we believe Antofagasta is well positioned with a strong portfolio, a clear growth pathway and additional opportunities to create value over the long term. As always, safety remains our first priority and the foundation of our strategy. Nothing is more important than ensuring our people return home safely each day. I am pleased to report another fatality-free period, while our lost time injury frequency rate remains below one, continuing our strong safety performance across the group, including five years without a fatal accident in our operations and projects. Safety also guided our response to the severe and very unusual weather event at Los Pelambres in late July, which, while affecting other regions in central Chile, had its most extreme records in the region where Pelambres is situated. The precautionary shutdown and the subsequent resumption of operations were completed in a safe and orderly manner, which is a testament to the resilience of the operation and the commitment of our teams. The impact of this event has been incorporated into a production guidance range for the year. The first half of 2026 was characterized by strong financial performance, supported by favorable market conditions, disciplined cost control and strong execution on projects. Copper market fundamentals remained attractive, while stronger realized prices for copper, gold and molybdenum combined with our focus on productivity and efficiency helped deliver robust EBITDA growth and margins towards the top end of our peer group. At the same time, we continue to advance our growth program, maintain a resilient balance sheet, and today announced an interim dividend in line with our long-standing capital allocation framework. Here we highlight the progress we are making against our strategic pillars as we continue to realize our purpose of developing mining for a better future. Competitiveness remains a key focus area, with our program continuing to deliver meaningful savings and productivity improvements across the business. We are also investing in innovation and sustainability. The investment recently approved at Saldívar is a strong example of this approach, securing the long-term water supply for this operation. Permitting work also continues at Los Pelambres, with the second addendum of the permit for a life extension to the year 2051 now submitted, in line with our expectations and plans. Now, our CFO Mauricio Ortiz will walk you through the financials.
Thank you, Ivan, and good morning everyone. I will now take you through our financial performance for the first half of 2026. Before reviewing the numbers, I would like to highlight how our financial strategy supports both growth and shareholder returns, enabling us to maintain strong balance sheets while continuing to invest in our portfolio. Over the years we have maintained a consistent and disciplined approach to capital allocation and, by using innovative financing solutions, we have been able to fund our major growth projects, supporting future production growth and, at the same time, to continue to deliver returns to shareholders. The first half delivered another strong financial result. Revenue increased 18% to $4.5 billion, reflecting higher realized prices for copper and our byproducts. Evita increased 27% to 2.8 billions and our Evita margins expanded by 5 percentage points to 63.4% driven by higher revenue and cost discipline, maintaining our position towards the top end of our pure play copper producers group. Despite our continued investment in growth, our balance sheet remains strong and today we have declared an interim dividend in line with our policy. Here we can see recent movements in the commodity market and how our portfolio is well positioned given our exposure to copper and byproducts such as gold, silver and molybdenum. Copper remains the principal contributor to our group revenue, representing 77% of the total, while molybdenum, gold and silver together accounts for a further 22%. During the first half, we benefited from the significant higher real life prices across copper, gold and molybdenum, with full exposure to our by-products pricing being a key strength of our business. Copper production was slower than the first half of last year, primarily due to lower grades at Sentinella and Los Pelambres. Importantly, part of this year-on-year movement relates to the build-up of concentrate inventories at Los Pelambres, related to the timing of maintenance work requirements on the concentrate pipeline. Close to 7,000 tons of copper in concentrate processed in the first half of the year are expected to be recognized as production and sales during the second half of the year. On cost, we deliver an 8% lower net cash cost, supported by 10 cents per pound benefit from our competitiveness program and significantly higher by product credit, which more than offset the impact of the lower production and inflationary on consumables and other inputs. Following the severe weather event at Los Pelambres in July, we have updated our production guidance to reflect the impact of this interruption and subsequent ramp-up of activities, especially in the mine. While we experience higher prices for key consumables, particularly diesel and sulfuric acid, group guidance for net cash costs remains unchanged. given their robust pricing for our by-products of gold, silver and molybdenum. While these external cost pressures remain, we continue to focus on mitigation measures within our control, including operational efficiencies, productivity improvement and disciplined procurement. Capital expenditure guidance remains unchanged. Our competitiveness program continues to be an important contributor to operational excellence and financial performance across the globe. During the first half, the program delivered 67 million dollars of savings and productivity improvements, keeping us on track to achieve our full-year target of 110 million dollars. Importantly, this program has now been delivering value for more than a decade. It is embedded in how we operate, helping us to improve productivity, strengthen our competitiveness and offset inflationary pressures throughout the cycle. Through initiatives such as this, we have maintained our strong margins, which continue to remain towards the top end of our pure plate copper crop. This bridge shows how the principal driver of EBITDA growth in the period was the strength of prices for the metal we produce. Higher realized prices for copper, gold and molybdenum more than offset the impact of lower sales, volume and higher operating costs, demonstrating the benefit of our commodity mix. The remaining contribution from other factors shown here was smaller and therefore we were able to deliver a Vida growth of 27% and maintain margins towards the top end of our peer group. Turning now to the balance sheet, our financial position remained strong and resilient despite the significant investment taking place across the portfolio. Capital expenditure during the period was in line with the expectation as we continued to advance the Sentinela II concentrator projects and the future growth enabling projects at Los Pelambres. While net debt increased during the period, this was primarily reflected our growth expenditure together with the recognition of new lease liabilities associated with Sentinella Water Infrastructure, following the completion of the first water project milestone. Regardless, our net debt to EBITDA ratio remains at a low level of 0.68 times. This chart demonstrates how we are benefiting from our consistent approach to investment and the strength of our margins. On the left, we continue to see earnings growth from our portfolio. On the right, we have our expanding margins and how Antofagasta has consistently delivered margins towards the top end of our pure play copper pre-growth. This reflects not only supportive commodity markets but also disciplined cost control and the quality of our asset base. This combination of high margins, strong cash generation and resilient balance sheet provides the foundation for our growth program and gives us confidence as we continue to invest in the future of the business. Our capital allocation framework continues to guide all our financial decisions and has remained unchanged for a number of years, enabling our consistent approach. We maintain a disciplined business model, prioritizing a strong balance sheet, sustaining capital and mind development, while continuing to invest in attractive growth opportunities. Over the years, this has allowed us to invest billions of dollars in our future growth while also delivering consistent shareholder returns, including the interim dividend we announced today.
Thank you Mauricio. I will now turn to discuss our growth projects and how we are building resilience across our portfolio. Our strategy remains focused on discipline, low risk growth through brownfield expansions in our existing mining districts. These investments are expected to increase production, strengthen margins and maximize the value generated from the sizable resources at each of our operations. An opportunity for growth begins with discipline, with each project in our portfolio assessed through our project delivery system and capital allocation framework. In the immediate term we remain focused on completing the construction of the Sentinela II concentrator and the growth enabling projects at Los Pelambres, including the expansion to the diesel water supply and a new concentrator pipeline. As we do this, we are now evaluating further potential increases in capacity and production for what could be the next phase of growth at Sentinela and Los Pelambres. With respect to our long-dated growth projects and exploration, we continue to see encouraging results at Cachorro and Encierro. We also continue to progress industrial-scale leach pad design and configuration to demonstrate the potential of our cuprochlor-T technology across our portfolio and with third parties, considering the particular ore types at each site. These opportunities provide important long-term optionality for the group. Today, however, our primary focus remains on brownfield projects that offer attractive returns. As shown on the right hand side of the slide, this means prioritizing opportunities within our existing districts, where we believe we have a clear competitive advantage and the strongest pathway to value creation. Here we have highlighted the projects that have made material progress during the first half of 2026. We hit a number of key construction milestones in our current phase of growth and development, and I'll discuss those in more detail next. At Saldívar, the long-term water supply project has now progressed into construction, and through the potential development of the primary sulphides, we could see an extension of mine life through to year 2051. The key permitting progress in the first half was at Los Pelambres, where work continued on the preparation of the second addendum for the development options project, and we have now submitted this to the authorities. The Sentinela II concentrator project remains the largest growth project within our portfolio and is central to our strategy of delivering profitable copper growth through a low-risk brownfield expansion. During the first half, construction and pre-commissioning activities continued to advance across the project, with key milestones achieved in areas including the milling circuit, fine ore stockpile and conveyor systems as we moved progressively closer to commissioning. Looking ahead, our focus remains on completing construction safely and efficiently, with the commissioning set to complete in year 2027, after which we will begin ramp up. As it stands, Sentinella is one of Chile's largest gold producers, and once the expansion is fully ramped up, we look forward to it becoming the second largest gold producing operation in the country. At Los Pelambres our future growth enabling projects are designed to strengthen the long-term resilience of this operation and provide the foundation for future growth beyond the current mine plan. Construction continues to advance at both the desalination plan expansion and the new concentrate pipeline with significant progress made on major infrastructure installation activities and supporting electrical systems during the first half. During the period, we approved the investment required to secure the long-term water supply for Saldívar. This project will use reprocessed water from the city of Antofagasta and is an important demonstration of our long-term water strategy and circular economy approach. It also provides the foundation for the potential extension of the mine live through year 2051, allowing us to realize the full potential of this operation's significant resource base. To summarize the key messages from today's presentation. We delivered a strong financial performance in the first half, with earnings growth, continued margin expansion and strong operating cash flow generation supported by favorable market conditions and disciplined cost control. Our major projects at Sentinel and Los Pelambres continue to advance towards completion in 2027, providing a clear pathway to approximately 30% growth in copper production while also strengthening the resilience of our portfolio. The recent investment decision at Saldiva represents an important milestone in our transition towards increasing our reliance on sustainable water sources. And we continue to develop our longer-term organic growth pipeline, which will ultimately deliver our next phase of growth. Let me finish by reminding you why we believe Antofagasta remains a compelling investment proposition. We offer direct exposure to copper, a commodity that is becoming increasingly important to the globally significant trends of energy security, electrification, digital infrastructure and economic growth. This is supported by attractive attributes, including a strong growth profile, high margins, a disciplined approach to sustainability, and a clear commitment to shareholder returns. Underpinning all of this are the strong foundations of our business, including a high-quality asset base, a resilient balance sheet, and a proven track record of delivery. Taking together these positions as well to continue delivering profitable copper growth and creating long term value for all our stakeholders. Thank you.