Teck Resources Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to TEC's fourth quarter 2024 earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. To join the question queue, press star then one on your touch-tone phone. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. This conference call is being recorded on Thursday, February the 20th, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Emma Chapman, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Tech's fourth quarter 2024 conference call. Today's call contains forward looking statements. Actual results may vary due to various risks and uncertainties. Tech does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to slide two for the assumptions underlying our forward-looking statements. We will reference non-GAAP measures throughout this presentation, and explanations and reconciliations are in our MD&A and the latest press release on our website. Jonathan Price, our CEO, will start with an overview of our fourth quarter and full year results, Crystal Prestai, our CFO, will follow with a financial and operational review, and Jonathan will conclude with closing remarks, followed by a Q&A session. With that, I'll hand the call over to Jonathan.

Thank you, Emma, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with highlights from 2024 on slide four. Last year was a transformational year for tech, and we made significant advancements in our value creation strategy. We completed the sale of our steelmaking coal business for value, enabling tech to reposition as a pure play energy transition metals company focused on copper and zinc. With the 8.6 billion US dollars in proceeds from the transaction, we announced the largest cash return to shareholders in our history, and we began executing the return immediately. In 2024, we returned $1.8 billion in cash to shareholders, including $514 million in dividends or approximately $1 per share and $1.25 billion in share buybacks. We also enhanced our resilience by further strengthening our industry-leading balance sheet. We reduced our debt by $2.5 billion and retained funding for our near-term value-accreted growth projects. We currently have $11.3 billion in liquidity, including $7.1 billion in cash. This includes our sustainability linked revolving credit facility, which we've recently reduced by $1 billion to $3 billion and extended for a five-year term to October, 2029. We were in a net cash position of $2.1 billion as of December 31st. In 2024, we generated $2.9 billion in adjusted EBITDA, more than double the prior year. We set a record for annual copper production with a 50% increase from the prior year to 446,000 tons. In zinc, Red Dog had strong performance, increasing zinc in concentrate production while improving our net cash unit costs by 16 US cents per pound. We continue to have a strong focus on cost discipline and managing the controllable costs across our business. We are starting to see the positive impact of the structural cost reductions that we have implemented across our business following the sale of the steelmaking coal business in July. Over the full year, we reduced our corporate costs by 21% or $88 million compared with 2023. We did all this safely. with a high potential incident frequency that remained low across the operations that we control. Finally, we progressed our value accretive near-term copper growth projects. We completed construction of QB in Chile and ramped up the operation to design throughput by the end of the year. And we continue to lay the foundation for our next phase of copper growth by progressing our near-term copper projects. Overall, we made significant progress across the four pillars of our strategy for responsible growth and value creation. Now looking at our fourth quarter highlights on slide five, our strong full year results were enabled by our fourth quarter performance. This was our third consecutive quarter of record copper production as QB ramped up the design throughput rates by the end of the year. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 160% to $835 million compared to the same period last year. We reduced our debt by a further $275 million and returned $549 million in cash to shareholders through share buybacks and our base quarterly dividend. And we continue to advance our near-term copper growth projects towards potential sanctioned decisions this year. Turning now to an update on safety and sustainability on slide six. We remain committed to ensuring the health and safety of our people operating responsibly and building strong relationships with communities. As I mentioned earlier, we maintained a low high potential incident frequency of 0.12 across the operations that we control in 2024. And with our continued focus on sustainability, we released our 2024 climate change and nature report in December. This combines the recommendations of the TCFD and the TNFD to deliver an integrated report covering our progress on climate and the nature related aspects of our business. We will provide an update on all our sustainability performance in our 2024 sustainability report, which we expect to release in March. We continue to receive recognition for our sustainability leadership. Most recently, MediaCorp named Tech as one of Canada's top 100 employers for the eighth consecutive year. Forbes also named us one of the world's top companies for women for 2024. Turning to our progress at QB on slide seven. In Q4, QB delivered the strongest quarter so far, with mill throughput rates increasing quarter over quarter and achieving design throughput rates. This is a plant with a robust design and it continues to operate well. Recovery has improved to approximately 85% in the quarter and averaged 87% in November and December as a result of our successful improvement work on the grinding and flotation circuits in early Q4. Great in line with the mine plan. The improvement in our mining drivers led to copper production at QB increasing quarter over quarter to 60.7 thousand tons from 52.5 thousand tons in Q3. We also achieved record daily production throughout the quarter. For the full year, QB copper production was within our revised guidance at 208 thousand tons. Looking forward to 2025, we are well positioned for further growth in copper production at lower net cash unit costs at QB, setting us up for improved margins. Our 2025 guidance range of 230,000 to 270,000 tonnes at QB represents a significant increase from 2024. This guidance reflects an extended 18-day shutdown in January to conduct maintenance and reliability work and complete additional tailings lifts as part of the operational ramp up. We expect to continue to have regular quarterly maintenance shutdowns per our operating plans. In 2025, we expect to see an overall increase in average grade to 0.6% In line with the mine plan, we are processing more transition ores, which is lower grade material, particularly in the first quarter of the year. Grades are expected to increase into the second half of the year. Our focus is on achieving steady state operational performance with consistent online time, with design recovery rates of 86 to 92% depending on ore feed material. We expect a significant reduction in QB's net cash unit costs in 2025 to 180 to 215 US dollars per pound from 272 US dollars per pound in 2024. This reduction is primarily driven by a combination of higher copper production, cost discipline and increased molybdenum byproduct credits as the QB molybdenum plant continues to ramp up. overall we are pleased with the performance of qb and we expect to see the operation generate significant cash flows in 2025. looking at our copper segment in 2025 on slide 8 we expect significant growth in our copper production with improving margins this year our copper production is expected to continue to grow to 490 to 565 000 tons from 446 000 tons in 2024 due to the ongoing QB ramp up and improved grades at HVC. We also expect a significant reduction in our copper net cash unit costs in 2025 to 165 to 195 US dollars per pound from 220 US dollars per pound in 2024. We already saw an increase in our copper EBITDA margin in 2024 and expect this to continue to improve to 53% in 2025 based on consensus estimates. Slide 9 outlines our well-funded value accretive near-term copper projects including the MyLife extension at Highland Valley in British Columbia and our low capital intensity greenfield projects at Zafranal in Peru and San Nicolas in Mexico. These are attractive projects that are simpler in scope and complexity than our QB2 project with significantly lower capital intensities. We continue our work to define the most capital efficient and value accretive path for the expansion of QB both through the optimization of the mill and low capital debottlenecking opportunities, which could increase throughput by 15 to 25%. Through the execution of these projects, we have a clear path to increase our annual copper production to approximately 800,000 tons per annum before the end of the decade. I'll now hand the call over to Crystal to provide further details on our fourth quarter and full year results.