AngloGold Ashanti plc (AU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] He's been CEO for 5 years, extensive leadership experience across the mining and energy sectors. Thank you, Alberto.

Thank you. I have to start with an apology. I don't have any exciting M&A for you. I'm just going to deliver a bit of a boring thing. We consistently deliver on what we say we're going to do. We're going to meet guidance on production again this year. We're controlling our costs, which is probably what we do best. What we can control, we control. Of course, we can control royalties or inflation of oil, but the rest, we're always a little bit below. So that is it. Safety is our highest priority, like all of the great companies. There's the one in 1 million that happens, and we had, unfortunately, a fatality, and that's always devastating and reminds us that it's -- you just have to start every day with safety. I'll spend a bit of time on this one. So I was thinking how mining, I always say there's always issues, always. It's just the loss for all of us. But the scale, when you have so many Tier 1 assets and the breadth of the portfolio, that's what allows us to compensate. So if you look at this year, we had flooding in Iduapriem. It came from the rains, but it also came from the neighboring pit of our neighboring Tarkwa and so it's flooded our pits, our high 2-C, and that puts you off for a little bit. We're now on recovered. But yes, that affects us. And the fatality at Obuasi and basically, the closing of the KMS shaft really affected us for this year, but it doesn't alter the medium term of getting to -- we'll see it later, to 400,000 ounces in 2028. But then how do we, in spite of this managed to deliver on guidance, and we plan to be on the middle point of guidance because the other 8 assets are performing very well. The ones in South America are performing exceptional. Tropicana has been performing exceptional. So you balance out, and that's the benefit of a global high-quality portfolio. Let me add 2 things. We'll talk a lot about the Nevada one. I'll have 3 slides on that. That is the Star project. We had many of the analysts visit -- a great visit some weeks ago, but I'll talk a little bit about that. I'll talk about another one which we hadn't been talking because in Colombia, Quebradona, the copper project was basically on standstill with the previous president that we had in Colombia that was a lunatic. So now we have a very pro-business switched on. I just came from Colombia. I visited -- I talked to the -- everybody, which is easy over there, the Vice President, Minister of Mines, Minister of Environment, we're going to fast track this. They are as interested as we are in getting this project approved within about 18 months, maybe, let's say, 24 months and it's so developed that we probably could start production towards the end of the decade. So that's a very exciting sort of news in terms of adding another Tier 1. So currently, we have 70% of production is Tier 1. What does it mean or what is our definition of Tier 1? It has to be a minimal of size, 300, 350, but the costs are very important. I hear about many of our colleagues talk about Tier 1 assets with Tier 5 costs. That doesn't make it. All of these assets are Tier 1 in size, but Tier 1 in costs more importantly. So that leads to 71% margin assets. Now our ambition and where we're heading even inorganically is -- organically, I'm sorry, with the current assets is that by the middle of the next decade, we will be close to 80% on Tier 1 assets. And that's really -- and much higher production than today. So that is really a very compelling future for us. The Tier 2 assets are performing well. Their margin is 58%. It's not 71%. But we're very happy, for example, with CVSA. It's just a little cash machine. They perform well. I've said it in the past, they're so far away, nobody visits them from corporate. They're perfect. Outstanding performers. I won't talk a lot about these numbers. They've seen operational. We did about close to [ 1.5 million ]. The midpoint of the guidance for 2026 is 3 million. We should be around that 3 million. The cash cost, as I said before, when you -- you take the cash cost of 2025, adjust by royalties, inflation, oil and exchange rate, we will be roughly around there, which means we're controlling what we can control. So that let me move -- I'll try to leave for questions probably more time, so I'll move quickly. Capital allocation, it's very clear. We were probably one of the first very high. So we go first from cash flow operations, all the CapEx, then we have a 50% of free cash flow after everything at a minimum is to shareholders. And then how do we return it, dividends, long-term debt reduction. We did $660 million of which we bought from the market. So basically, we don't have any debt for this decade. That will be important because we are going to be able to fund both Arthur and Quebradona. They're not simultaneously, but some of it overlaps, and we -- all of our models indicate under reasonable assumptions of prices that we can fund that without any issues. And then we also announced a buyback. The buyback we've encountered a bit of an issue in South Africa. We needed their permission. We wanted to go at the same time, and they moved a little bit slower over there. But we'll get at some point to the buyback when we are in an open period again. But that is in place and will happen at some point in the future. Dividends, we talked about we have a policy of 50%, but more importantly, we go above that if we have excess cash. So last year, we returned in the second half, I think, 62%. And most probably in February of next year, if the gold price stays above $4,000, we will return in one way or another more than 50% of the free cash growth. I'll spend a little bit of time on this one. In November, we will go into much detail on the growth projects. I've said that in previous times. Basically, they are focused on 5: Geita, Cuiabá, Obuasi, Sukari and Siguiri. We believe we can go between 350,000 and 450,000 ounces within 3 years. And we will -- and it's not only -- it's not one jump. It's a gradual increase. Some projects are bigger. But most -- Geita we will have -- we will expand the plant, and we have some more CapEx. Cuiabá, very little CapEx. It is just the satellite and then some new ore bodies. Siguiri, pure just brownfield exploration, and we have spare capacity in the plant. Sukari will be underground mining. We go from about [ 1.3 to 2.4 ]. We are also -- the gravity gold project cost about $30 million, and that's already approved in the making. And then Obuasi, we expect to be, as I said, about 400 in 2028. More importantly, we -- go to Block 11. So Block 11 is really the big, big gold prize in Obuasi. Currently, our grade is about 8 or 9. Block 11, which will last about 5 years is 17. And so we will hit that around 2029. So a lot of growth above what we had in 2025 in the brownfields and then in greenfields. We'll talk about the rest. So Nevada. So that is going to be the largest project, the most valuable project of AngloGold in the 2030s. Its cornerstone is the Arthur Gold project. We started -- some years ago, we had nothing and now we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Beatty district. We now have a mineral reserve of 4.9 million ounces. And that is the tip of the iceberg. The whole district has about 20 in resource. But we had to do the PFS with something. And the interesting thing about that is that all these numbers and including very high IRRs at $2,000 are just with that 4.9 million ounces of reserve. We plan to convert another 1 million ounces in this year in 2026. So we're close to completing another 1 million ounces. And as I said, at $1,950 an ounce, it's a very profitable project and only with the 4.5 million ounces of reserves. So just to -- the magnitude of the project is quite amazing in my mind. The average production is around 0.5 million ounces. And this will start at 800,000. We now know that by then, let's say, if we start the first 3 years in 2032 and '35, we will have then done much more exploration, brought more into reserves. So we think that, that district between Arthur and North Bullfrog can stay between [ 700,000, 800,000 ] for decades to come. So a little bit more on Arthur. I've said most about this. So probably not much more an Arthur. And let me just go to the conclusion. This is a -- Yatish, who helped me with this, thinks it's a very good slide. I don't understand it very well, but I'll try to explain it. This is the fading. So the sector has derated with this thing of war today, peace tomorrow, war today. So this schizophrenic world that we live in, the sector has derated, and that shows on the bubbles from the faded to the more colored to the left. So that means less EV to EBITDA for the sector. Of course, the dividend yield goes up. At these gold prices, who doesn't. We have moved to the right, actually. So we're one of the few that have re-rated. So moved to the right and then stayed with one of the highest dividend yields. Why? And with this, I'll conclude and open to questions. There's many metrics that are important in gold. Cash costs are super important. All-in sustaining is important. All-in costs are very important. In the end, there's a metric that what is the bottom line. Free cash flow. After all is said, because some of these -- some companies have these massive things that they never put except in the appendix. But in the end, it's free cash flow per ounce. In this case, free cash flow per share in Q2, we grew by 36%, much higher than anybody else. That in the end is what matters. Okay. Thank you.

Yes, we do have time for questions. So if anyone in the audience has a question, please raise your hand, and we'll get you a microphone. Maybe while we're waiting for potential questions. I have one for you. So 5 years as CEO, you've had incredible performance and strong operating discipline. And now you're getting into more of a growth phase, it seems. So what do you think are sort of the key risks of this growth phase and the key opportunities that may not be appreciated in the market right now?

Look, I think that the -- I don't want to minimize things. But the beauty of both the Nevada project and the Quebradona project is there's nothing from a technology point of view that we don't know or haven't done. Take the Nevada, it's very similar probably in the end to Geita. We have many, many experts. Our leading -- our guy, Nick, who is the project guy who is doing an extraordinary job has done many of these projects. Simple carbon in leach, 7.5 million tonnes per annum, 5.5 million heap leach, nothing that we don't have or haven't seen. So there's always issues. But -- the environmental is the big one. We -- one of our main analysts is in the back, and she is always very hard on us and she says, well, the environmental is still an issue, but it's not an issue. It's still -- you never know how the Bureau of Land Management is going to do. But so far, what we have seen from this government is a lot of support. We're quite confident that North Bullfrog will be put into operation into -- we will get the approval and then we'll be in operation end of '27, beginning of '28. I think that will give a lot of confidence for what comes for Arthur, just bigger, but the same type of disturbance in the environment. I think we've learned a lot to deal with the water. That was the big, big issue. And that is what -- if you look at the North Bullfrog project in the beginning to now, it's completely changed from the water management. We learned that, and we have that in Arthur. So there's always issues, but I'm confident that we have the right people in the right place. You take that Quebradona, again, sublevel caving, one of the top experts in the world works with us. His name is Jason May. So nothing -- the big, big issue was the government, the license to operate, and we were in suspension with the previous government. Now we have a window of 4 years, and we're going to go very fast because the current government in Colombia understands that this project is probably more important for Colombia than even for AngloGold. So the circumstances right now, we have tailwinds, both in Nevada and in Quebradona. But there's always the unknown, unknown. So we'll park that for Dr. Rumsfeld.

We do have a question in the audience now. Hang on, John.

How many rigs do you have running in Nevada and Northwest of Vegas? Are you focusing on stepping out and increasing the 20 million ounces or the inferred versus the infill drilling to increase the 4-plus reserves?

That is a good question. There comes -- so the decision was taken by the experts to we have more resource than we will need. And we can't start -- there's an interesting graph. It's in the website, but we showed it in the visit. We were drilling, but for something else, and we found 3 grams a tonne or something like that, way out at Silicon. We know that it is a massive resource, but there's no point in going for more resource, as you say. This is about reserve this year and basically about the feasibility study. So there is -- I don't know how many -- there are -- I know what we spend, and it's this $300 million or something like that. But it's all about the right now, feasibility, preordering and putting this project as fast as possible.