BlackRock World Mining Trust plc (BRWM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to BlackRock World Mining Trust plc Investor Presentation. At this recorded meeting [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Evy Hambro, Co-Manager. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Thank you very much for having us along today. So welcome, everybody, with regards to this update for the BlackRock World Mining Trust. We've got a few slides that we'd like to go through today, just capturing what's been going on, but also some insights into how we think the future is likely to unfold. Just to start with, we have want to remind everybody what we do inside the trust, obviously, a U.K.-listed investment trust with the goal of providing diversified exposure to the mining and metals sector on a global basis, actively managed. We invest in not just mining equities, but also mining corporate debt, royalties, which we'll say more about later on. And we also have some positions in companies that aren't yet listed and with the goal of getting liquidity events in the not-too-distant future from the time that we make the investment. We make full use of all of the tools that are available to us, such as debt, option writing. We're also able to invest in some of the kind of less liquid parts of the market given the kind of longer-term returns through the cycle that can be gained from doing that. As I mentioned, it is an actively managed portfolio where we conduct a whole range of company meetings. An important part of that is visiting the underlying assets and the team spends a lot of time out of the office going and kicking the tires of the businesses just to make sure that they're doing what they say they're planning to do. With regards to the team itself, the 2 managers of the trust is myself and Olivia Markham. We've been working together for many, many years in doing this, but we're much involved in a bigger and broader team than just the 2 of us. So you can see from this slide that we have a whole range of colleagues just on the materials side of what we do within the team, complemented with colleagues in energy and agriculture and nutrition and also thematic investing as well, which has been a really important part of some of the kind of research that we've done behind the macro demand trends that we'll speak about later on in the presentation. With regards to the fund itself and the universe that we invest in, there are about 400 liquid investable companies. That number goes up and down and probably trending higher at the moment given the stage of the cycle we're at, a whole range of different commodities that we can get exposure to in the listed space, also companies at different stages of development, companies looking in the exploration stage, junior developers, high-growth mid-cap companies through to the more mature, large diversified mining companies that many people are familiar with. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the royalty and streaming companies. These are companies that take financial positions exposed to resource assets. They get a share of the either the profitability or the revenue line of the production of commodities, but aren't exposed to the capital base after making that initial investment. So as the asset grows, expands or more material is discovered, they're a beneficiary. And it's really the optionality that is presented within the royalty part of the capital stack that presents a huge amount of value for investors. With regards to last year, it was obviously a disappointing year for the trust as a whole. The NAV was down, which was in contrast to the performance of most commodities, actually had a pretty positive year as a whole. The revenue for the trust was also down but ahead of expectations, which was pleasing to see. And really, the fall in revenue is a function of lower levels of payouts by the underlying companies. But despite our diversification of revenue sources, we were able to offset all of that. So the revenue per share of the trust fell by less than many of the underlying companies reported lower dividends. Still representing today a yield of about 5% on the trust as at the end of 2024. With regards to performance, the Board of the trust looks at a variety of different metrics to decide whether there has been good performance on the underlying portfolio. Last year was a difficult year. It was really a year of 2 halves. The first half was worse than the second half. A big recovery was made during that second half with some strong performance from different parts of the portfolio. So good to see that. And that has continued a bit into 2025, and we'll be able to report more on that when we get to our midyear results in August. With regards to the NAV and the discount that the shares trade up, this actually peaked not too long ago in terms of the short term. I think there's been a general trend in the investment trust sector of widening discounts, but it's really encouraging to see 2 things. First of all, the Board's response to this, which was buying back shares. And I think that was really sent a message to the market, and that's -- people have paid attention to that. And that discount to NAV has narrowed considerably over the last few months, which is really encouraging. I think a number of factors there. First of all, the performance of the trust, our exposure to gold as the gold price has done very, very well. And what looks to be a really rather exciting environment for copper, which is another key theme inside the portfolio is kind of driving people's interest in this space. And then if you look at the shape of returns over time, and this is an important part for investors to consider. When we think about this, we see very, very good returns through the cycle from the sector. But the majority of those returns over time come from the income side of the equation. And you can see in yellow on this slide, how much income has made up through time in terms of the total return of the trust since its inception, a very, very large component indeed, and therefore, trying to maximize the revenue potential of all of the assets in the portfolio really will enhance the overall total return through the cycle. And you can see how well the dividends have grown since inception, some really strong numbers here. Last couple of years have been weaker as we've seen lower levels of payout coming from the underlying companies, but that cumulative dividend return of just below GBP 4 a share over those years since inception is really rather amazing. And then the shape of income. And again, you can see the change we've had in the last couple of years where the fall in ordinary dividends from the underlying portfolio has really caused the largest part of that drop. But that has been offset to some degree by good special dividends in 2023, ongoing payments from our royalty investments, which continued to grow from low levels back in 2014 to that kind of GBP 5-plus million a year. And then last year was a particularly good year for options where we had a specific M&A opportunity that allowed us to maximize the potential there by selling volatility out to the market at a time where it was prepared to pay a lot for that because of the M&A that was going on, and we were really able to harvest a lot of money from that strategy, which boosted the auction component for 2024 relative to prior years. With regards to the shape of the portfolio, we try to be as diversified as possible. And you can see today, we've got a large exposure to gold as the kind of single largest asset in terms of the breakdown at about 34% as at the end of May. Copper, the second largest pure-play commodity at about 25%. And then that diversified section, that's made up of iron ore companies, copper producers, a whole range of different elements in there. So if you think about the likes of Rio Tinto or BHP, Anglo American or Glencore, which all feature in our top 10 holdings on the table to the left, they would tend to fall into that diversified section. And one thing we try to do is to think about this portfolio really as a kind of a mining company itself and what is that kind of see-through commodity mix that we have through time. This slide will also show you the level of gearing, which is lower than it has been historically. And that really is a function of a couple of things. First of all, the ongoing uncertainty with regards to Chinese commodity demand, which, as people know, is the largest component in the market. And we've been able to kind of think about that in the context of near-term commodity price moves. So over the last few years, gearing has been between kind of 10% to 15%, but there's more kind of subdued returns and the higher cost of borrowing, which eats into our income potential, have been 2 considerations we've taken into account when thinking about the total amount of gearing that we should have within the portfolio. Moving on to the outlook. I think there's a number of things to say in this regard. The first is when you look at the commodity graphs here on Slide #14, you'll see we've actually got some pretty healthy numbers. That copper price that we see today has been averaging above $4 a pound for the last 4 years and has continued to do so in 2025. If anything, copper is moving towards that kind of $5 a pound level, which is on the cusp of a kind of breakout in terms of lifting profitability. And I'll say more on that in a second in relation to gold. Iron ore prices have averaged above $100 a tonne now for many years. And to remember that most iron ore producers have very high levels of profitability in terms of their margins with prices of north of USD 100 per tonne. Aluminum has been relatively subdued. And obviously, the oil price outside of short-term geopolitical events have been on a much of a kind of declining trend for the last 3 or 4 years, which is obviously a bit of a tailwind for mining company profitability given the high component of costs that are linked back to energy. So when we think about the outlook as a whole, a couple of things to highlight. First of all, the uncertainty that we've seen in the market related to U.S. tariffs has increased volatility in commodity prices. There's certainly been some substantial moves in key commodities that the U.S. wants to lock in supply for. And we've seen obviously premiums being paid relative to international markets for those key commodities where tariffs have been introduced. And copper is a great example where the price in the U.S. is trading at kind of 10% to 13% higher than the international market level. And that's been a real driver in the first part of the year post the election of President Trump. The ongoing trend that we see continuing for many years into the future, in fact, many decades is that rebuilding of global infrastructure, increased electrification and the very large spending, which is obviously materials heavy in relation to AI and the rollout there. All of those 3 things really linked together. And we'll touch on that a little bit later on in the presentation. But we see a kind of a very, very long-term trend of materials heavy infrastructure investing designed to support all of those 3 factors. And that's obviously very important for commodities like copper and others in the mix that we have inside the portfolio. The last one is consolidation. There have been a number of M&A attempts over the last few years. We've seen some quite prolific ones in the kind of mid-cap area of the market also in the gold space. Last year saw some of an attempt at a larger transaction where BHP decided to make a move on Anglo American. That didn't work out as planned for BHP, but it has kind of raised the prospect of further consolidation as the industry seeks to gain control of assets that are important for the future supply of the world's needs. Moving on to the performance year-to-date. You can see some pretty strong moves with regards to the overall -- the resources sector, which is the line in red here relative to world markets. They're now -- they've been up strongly. The status through to the end of May, and so well ahead of world markets at that point. A number of factors, obviously, the ones that we've mentioned already, the big announcement from Germany with regards to their domestic infrastructure plans, huge financial number here, which will be converted into physical activity on the ground, which obviously relates to commodity consumption, pressures to reshore assets into the U.S., the supply side reforms that we've seen in China and the ongoing stimulus to support that domestic economy, and then the longer-term trends around data centers, power grid infrastructure and AI. I think with regards to tariffs itself and the kind of trade war that you could think about happening here, it is amazing to see the shift in China's influence in the world. As you can see that on the graphics on the right-hand side of the page, where China has become the kind of largest trading partner in many, many countries across the globe. And that role really is having a significant impact on the outward-looking approach to policy for countries like the U.S. and some of the European nations as well, especially when it comes to access to commodities, which are something that most people take for granted in terms of their supply, but many governments are now starting to worry about where they're going to get access to those materials that they need for their longer-term investment plans and to be able to support growth in their own economies. China's influence across the world continues to grow, and it is rather startling when you start to see this picture. What's been happening, I alluded to it earlier on with regards to some of the kind of geopolitical events, but obviously, those have moved around more significantly with the events in Iran over the last few weeks and the ongoing difficulties in Ukraine and obviously, the battles around Israel and Palestine. Politicians are very, very keen to be able to think about access to the security of supply in the context of not just geopolitical events, but their own domestic growth plans. And it's fascinating to see those play out as the kind of moves in whether it's in NATO circles or domestic investment into AI infrastructure-related rollouts play out on the screen in front of us. It's a pretty extraordinary environment. But I think what it does do behind the scenes, it just tells you how important access to mineral supply is to be able to reducing the risk around those internal plans. When it comes to the kind of big number I hinted at earlier on with regards to Germany's plan, this really is very, very substantial indeed. And is this the first domino to fall? Are we going to see other countries follow suit and launch their own domestic plans to be able to finance the investments that they think their countries need. If it is, then we are on the cusp of a major wave of commodities demand growth that is likely to kind of swamp the world economy. And whenever we think about that in the context of risks to supply, then it is actually very scary. The mineral sector is just simply unable to respond fast enough to be able to meet these very big plans that these countries have. Hence, why it's so important for countries to manage this risk themselves and to look to access long-term supply agreements that many countries are now trying to do. When it comes to China, I said earlier on that the outlook in China has been tough. We've seen some difficult numbers, especially in relation to home sales. But the picture is actually starting to improve. The rate of decline has started to reduce, although consumer confidence remains low, it hasn't fallen any further. And many of the domestic plans to support growth have been pretty positive in some very, very large numbers coming through. When we think about China, the kind of -- I guess, it's acted a little bit like a very positive factor for much of the first part of this century. And then obviously, declining rates of commodities demand growth in the second decade caused the sector to become weaker. And then this decade, despite the kind of overhang of the property sector, the data doesn't look like it's getting much worse. And I think that's the important thing to think about. If it was continuing to get worse, then we would have a difficult picture on our hand. What's been interesting, though, is this shift in the rest of the world. The first decade was dominated by Chinese growth. China actually represented more than 100% of the demand growth for commodities in many of those years. And so the world was really dependent on it to be able to support that mineral sector. But now obviously, we've got a much more diversified picture with growth in demand coming from developed economies as much as it is coming from other parts of the world. And that's actually quite exciting because if the sector does start to capture that tailwind of improvement, that should flow through into multiples as commodity prices reflect the tightness in markets. When we look at the kind of the other pictures inside China outside of the residential space, there's actually some pretty strong numbers again in materials-intensive sectors. Think about those new energy vehicle sales that we've seen, which is the bottom middle graph on this slide, when you see the renewable investments that are taking place, the growth in copper consumption that's coming through. So despite the fact that we've got a tough residential space, actually, industrial activity is pretty supportive towards commodities demand. And I guess it's just a question of time before those 2 things swap places in terms of their importance in the economy. When it comes to the AI sector, it's all very well talking about the fantastic virtual economy, but that doesn't happen without physical assets. We need to see huge amounts of investment made in concrete and steel and copper. We need the grid connections that need to be made. Where is the power going to come from? We're seeing a greater rollout of interest in the nuclear space. Cooling, how do we keep these data centers from overheating? Again, huge amounts of infrastructure-related support for the data centers themselves. And I think this really is a major, major demand driver over many, many years. And one of the interesting features of this is just the scale of investment in dollars and the concentration of those making these investments. One of the big commodity cycles of the past, the China-related one was driven by millions of individual consumers looking to improve their standard of living. And to move from the rural economy to urban centers. This one in relation to AI is a very small number of companies spending huge amounts of money, which they can afford to do in this very concentrated growth factor. So therefore, the probability of investment remains high, and therefore, the materials consumption is very tangible and real and happening right in front of our face. I mentioned supply constraints, and this really has been a feature for many years. The mining sector continuing to spend a decent amount of money, but the split of that capital, most of it going into kind of maintenance and support for the existing assets rather than building out growth has been a big factor. So I'm sure that companies would like to be able to expand their volumes faster and spend less on maintenance, but these are very capital-heavy assets that need to be supported to be able to keep production and costs at a level that is acceptable to the market. And so this has been a big factor in constraining the rate of growth in volumes despite the dollar numbers rising over the years. And you can see this really clearly when it comes to Chile. It's been found very, very difficult to be able to grow production over the years despite being the world's largest producer of copper, producing twice as much copper as Saudi Arabia produces in oil. And on the right-hand side of the page, you can see just how expensive it is now becoming to build new assets in the sector. We've chosen copper here as an example. Prior to the kind of China cycle of the early 2000s, the capital intensity, the amount of money invested for a tonne of new production was less than $8,000 a tonne. Today, it's over $20,000 a tonne. And the newest ones are moving towards $30,000 a tonne. So this really has become a very, very expensive sector to be able to build new capacity. And that hasn't yet been reflected in the commodity prices. So the price of copper in the super cycle got to above $3 a pound. And today, we're just south of $5 a pound. So whilst the capital intensity has gone up by 3x, the copper price hasn't gone up by anything like that amount. And therefore, the return on capital from new investments just isn't there. And so we need to see a higher price to act as an incentive to encourage that investment to be able to support the supply that's needed for the demand growth that the world is anticipating. Gold has been a feature of the market, especially in the last couple of years where we've seen a real breakout in the price. I think it's important just to remind everybody how difficult it has been for gold companies whilst prices have been kind of trending between $1,000 and $2,000 an ounce for the last kind of 10 years, costs have risen pretty substantially. And therefore, the companies, despite the higher prices, haven't really been able to show that leap in profitability to be able to encourage investors to take the businesses seriously as investments. It's only really in the last 18 months or so where prices have broken out upwards, prices now above $3,000 an ounce, and we've seen a real expansion in terms of profitability for the sector, making these companies more attractive. And you can see this in terms of the profitability on the bottom right-hand side of this page, the green chart, where we've seen a real increase in margins that the companies are able to get. And we should see further improvement in this in the first half of this year when the company announced results in the next month or 2. These prices are dramatically higher than they were last year. So the year-on-year change in profitability, assuming companies have been able to keep costs under control and deliver the production that the market is expecting, we should see a big, big change in profitability coming through. And also that cash flow has the ability to be able to be returned to investors. So maybe there's a room for a big growth in dividends, which will be well received by the trust. Another feature to highlight on this slide is the growth in Central bank consumption of gold. You'll see on the top right-hand side of the page. that the level of Central bank purchases has kind of doubled. It's been averaging kind of 350, 400 tonnes a year for the last decade or so. In the last 3 years, that number has been north of 1,000. And in the first quarter of 2025 alone, it was over 250 tonnes of gold that was purchased. So this has been a very, very important driver. And I think when we kind of speak to people around the world, there is a trend of de-dollarization going on, international investors looking to hold less dollars or to take those treasury bill returns when they hit maturity and reallocate away from dollar assets because of the ongoing loss of purchasing power of paper currencies, and some of the kind of domestic problems around interest bills and budgeting in the U.S. economy. That trend around de-dollarization is taking people to kind of move away from dollars and gold is a natural place for them to turn. I mentioned royalties earlier on. The portfolio today has exposure to a couple of royalties and also to 2 investments in private businesses. And I'll just say a couple of words about those. The first one, we've had this royalty in Brazil, which is exposed to copper, but predominantly gold since 2014. It's been a pretty good investment. We had all of our money paid back to us within 4 years. The royalty today is worth about GBP 20 million in the book value of the trust's accounts that was at the end of 2024, and that compares to the kind of $12 million that we invested at the start. The rate of return on that is very substantial. And with BHP as the operator, the production numbers continue to be okay, and the payments that are coming through with these higher commodity prices have actually been pretty attractive. So the ongoing return from that looks to be quite exciting. Our investment in another royalty instrument. This is a royalty instrument issued by Vale. These are actually technically listed, but with very low levels of liquidity, which is why we put them into this part of the portfolio in terms of description. We had a small exposure to these when the company IPO-ed. And then we substantially increased our investment in 2019. We've had about BRL 23 million invested into this then. And in about 5 years since the investment, we've had BRL 22 million of that paid back to us in distributions. So we've had -- I would imagine by the end of year 6, we would have had all of our money back. And we've got 5 decades worth of exposure ahead of us, if not more. Vale is also looking to improve productivity, efficiency and to grow production from assets where we have royalties exposed, which is actually a very exciting prospect for future royalty payments coming from a mixture of copper assets as well as the traditional iron ore assets that they have in that part of Brazil. We have 2 investments in private companies, one called Jetti Resources, which is a copper extraction technology, which is looking to have its kit deployed in a number of mines around the world. This has had a slower pathway to kind of scalable production. I think it's just been difficult to get the technology deployed at many of the assets. But I think we're on the cusp of some quite exciting ones coming through. So the prospect out there looks pretty good. Technology has certainly proven. It has commercial use of a number of mines already, but they continue to work hard to land the biggest ones of those. And the most notable of that is the world's largest copper mine, Escondida, where an investment is expected towards the end of this year to be able to have that technology running in the near future. The last one is an exciting exploration company in Colombia, where we have a number of very, very large targets. This company has announced some really outstanding drill results, which have attracted a number of majors to come and partner with them in those prospects. So the likes of Glencore, Rio Tinto, First Quantum have all partnered up on some of these targets. That company, I'm sure, is looking at some point in the near term to list. So we'll be expecting a liquidity event from this group in the next couple of years. So far to date, it's actually performed pretty well. And the company continues to raise capital at higher prices than prior rounds as that exploration success supports the ongoing improvement in valuation of the business. So just lastly, in summary, whilst we continue to be optimistic about the future, I'd say, I would cautious investors around dividends. The sector has paid out less for the last few years. And despite the kind of growth that we see going forward, this is an area that we're really focused on trying to maximize the potential for our shareholders. We continue to want to see an improvement in the outlook in China to really remove the kind of, I guess, the last remaining overhang on the market to allow those longer-term trends to be fully reflected in commodity prices and in valuations of the securities. And just to remind you, our goal continues to be to maximize the total return from investing in the resources sector through the cycle where income is a very large component of that. So thank you for your time today. I hope I've been on time, and I think we're going to take some questions.

Absolutely. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed by our investor dashboard. Look, we've received a number of questions, and thank you for all of those that have come through. Let's start with this one. The first one reads as follows. Why should investors consider exposure in mining and metal assets?

I think it's a question we've been asked many times in the past. And obviously, the resources sector, like any other equity sector has to compete for capital and therefore compete for investor interest. A key component of that is returns. Now as I showed you earlier on this year, the sector has substantially outperformed the broader market. And that's obviously one component. But over the long term, obviously, we've seen more and more capital being invested in technology, which has really sucked a huge amount of money out of the broader market and focused it into a very, very specific area. And that has left a number of sectors trading substantially cheaper than they have traded out historically. One of the things about the resources sector is that there isn't a global economy without it. There isn't the growth that we see in the tech sector without a copper, without the silicon chips, without the data centers, without the energy that goes into it. And therefore, the growth in tech is really very much aligned with the resources sector. So we would anticipate, at some point, the kind of tailwinds of capital and spending in that space flowing upstream and back into the demand for materials, and that should really start to come through once we can kind of remove that overhang related to China, as I mentioned earlier on. So for me, I like to build a portfolio for myself exposed to the things that I consume. So have investments in companies that provide power insurance and so on. And I think the resources sector is an area that's often overlooked because it's less visible to most people. You don't see the price of copper impacting your life, but you do see the price of, I don't know, food or fuel for your vehicle. And therefore, that in visibility creates complacency, and people kind of take the supply for granted and therefore, miss opportunities. And I think right now is one of those ones with low valuations, good yields and a very exciting growth outlook.

Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. And I think you touched on this in the presentation. But the question here, we've got is how do you actually manage the trust?

Well, we do it on an active basis, as I said earlier on. We have a big team that spend a lot of time researching the companies, trying to build the best possible portfolio. And I think the other feature that people don't really know that much about, which we hope to kind of lift the veil on at some point, and we're doing a bit of that on social media. I know my colleague, Olivia, has done a number of posts and some video clips in relation to doing the site visits that we do. So when our team goes out and visits mining assets around the world to gather that information firsthand to make sure the companies are doing what they say they're going to do and to operating as best they can within the rules and looking after local communities and so on. But we share that with our clients and shareholders. And so we're trying to get as much coverage on some of the things that people don't necessarily think we do into the public environment where we're allowed to do so. So that real active approach is actually boots on the ground, making sure that the businesses that we are invested in are delivering for us.

Next question here, interesting. Why invest in the trust rather than direct with Rio Tinto, BHP or ETS, for example?

Yes. That's another question that we get, and it's certainly something that's on the mind of the trust directors. And so when they look at our performance, they look to see as to what the alternatives are and how we've done relative to whether an ETF or to the other. And this is probably a more realistic assumption in terms of how we've done relative to the peer group. And so when you look at the big listed diversified mining companies, how have we performed relative to them is a key part of that assessment that they do. And I'm pleased to say that through time, we've done pretty well. And so that's why it would be a natural consideration. We also delivered a less volatile dividend picture and a higher yield than the underlying companies. And so I think those 2 features make us a candidate for consideration relative to investing in those other companies. And also a more diversified commodity mix. And I think the last feature, if we can do this correctly is we have greater levels of liquidity in adjusting our commodity mix through time. So for example, over the last 18 months, we've substantially increased our exposure to gold, and we've been able to do that by just selling the companies -- companies that don't produce it and buying exposure to companies that do produce it. It's much, much harder for those bigger companies to be able to adjust their commodity mix. And despite doing a number of deals recently, many of these companies are just simply unable to move the needle because the amount of money they need to deploy is so great, whereas we have that greater level of flexibility. So if we can get our timing right, is always a challenge, we should be able to harvest gains more rapidly than some of the large publicly listed alternatives.

That leads on actually to the next question. What's the current shape of the portfolio and why you so heavily invested in gold miners?

Good question, yes. So we've always had an exposure to gold inside the trust. It's a lovely diversifier. We get that kind of lack of correlation and so on, which is obviously -- that gives you that kind of insurance policy through time. I always like to have some gold exposure myself in my own portfolio. But I think we've increased it very, very substantially, as I said earlier on, because the gold price has really started to break out once it kind of got substantially through that $2,000 an ounce number, the company has started to show an improvement in profitability. And the price really hasn't looked back moving from $2,000 to $3,000 pretty rapidly and has held that kind of plus $3,000 an ounce number now for a number of months. I think if we end up averaging greater than $3,000 an ounce of gold this year, it's going to be pretty hard for most gold companies to be able to not deliver a big improvement in profitability for their own shareholders on the back of that. And what we're really hoping is that cash that they generate are able to convert that into higher rates of return for us as shareholders. So bigger dividends, and then I know a number of them are already doing buybacks in the market. So this improvement in price should relate into improved company returns.

Great stuff. Again, probably a topical question we've got here. Are tariffs and trade wars, good or bad, for commodity demand?

That's really more of a kind of political question. But I think all of those things seem to get in the way of economic activity and just increase the frictional cost of doing business. And I don't think anyone really wins certainly not the end consumer because life gets more complicated and more costly as a result. So I know that there are political goals attached to those and balancing economic activities that's not just all concentrated in certain parts of the world. And so these things are necessary. But when they become too onerous, it does have an impact on growth and economic activity until the market rebalances and absorbs those additional costs. And I think the first part of this year was uncertain because we didn't know the scale and the breadth as time has gone on, we're getting greater clarity. Some of the kind of the bigger numbers are being moved back lower. And I think as we kind of get towards the kind of the part of the autumn, we should have much more confidence and clarity around their impact, and that should be able to be reflected in the market valuations, and then we can kind of move forward from this.

Great. Next question we've got up here. Is demand for commodities for green purposes slowing?

No, I think it's going in the opposite direction. It's actually accelerating. It just depends on your definition of that phrase. So when you think about the rollout of non-carbon related power generation infrastructure, we're seeing the highest rate of deployment of solar panels and wind turbines that the world has seen. We're seeing high growth numbers in electric vehicles, big investments into the supply of green energy going towards everyday life, but also many of the tech companies that want these large data centers, they don't want to have high carbon footprints as a result of their operations, and therefore, looking for low carbon alternatives. So I think as the world moves away from fossil fuels, we're seeing more and more need for materials, especially the ones that enable that lower carbon footprint. So if anything, we're seeing an acceleration of interest in commodities in relation to this trend.

Great. I think you touched on this during the presentation, but what's the outlook for dividends from the sector, from the commodity sector?

Yes. As I said, it's been difficult for the last few years. We had some real bonanza periods where we had some spectacular levels of payments coming into the trust and which we're able to pass all of those back to our shareholders and reminding people that the Board has a policy of paying out substantially all of the income that is generated during the year, and that's what we've done. Also trying to make sure that we pay a covered dividend without dipping into capital. And I think that policy has been well received by our shareholder base. The last couple of years have seen lower levels of payments, and that's obviously been reflected in our dividend that we paid to our investors. But we're pretty comfortable now that with commodity prices where they are and costs going in the right direction, the levels of dividends that we should be able to pass back to our shareholders probably has less volatility attached to it than we've seen over the last couple of years.

Great. And one, you had a great chart on earlier, China, always a good question. What's your outlook for commodity demand from China?

Yes, I think we've seen a lot of measures to support domestic growth. Some of the kind of peak uncertainty related to residential is likely to be behind us. And if anything, the growth in the kind of industrial space continues to exceed expectations. So we're effectively going through a transition in China where the economy was so heavily orientated towards property. And over the last decade or so has been moving away from that and more and more towards industrial activity. And that transition that's taking place should become clearer to most people in time. And obviously, it's still very material intensive. And therefore, as people reflect the fact that the industrial side is growing faster than the residential side and is effectively overtaking them with regards to its impact on commodities picture and that should be reflected in terms of the sentiment towards China as well.

Great. And I think that covers off those questions we can. Thanks for taking all of those and answer them. Of course, any further questions that do come through, we'll be able to review those and publish responses where appropriate to do so. I just before redirecting investors to provide their feedback, it's particularly important to you. I just ask just for a few closing comments.

Yes. I think what we've tried to do today is to give people a review of what happened last year, also some insights into how we're thinking about 2025. It remains a year where we've got some very exciting opportunities ahead of us, some really attractive valuations, some good income potential from the underlying portfolio, especially on the gold side, where we're seeing more and more companies enjoying higher levels of profitability. And the opportunities in the kind of private area continue to be robust. We continue to review a whole range of interesting ones there, and sadly haven't been able to complete on a couple of them because the valuations aren't at levels we would like to deploy the money given our return thresholds. But we remain optimistic that we'll be able to put some more money to work in that space in the not-too-distant future. So an exciting outlook, some attractive valuations and some good yield potential.

Fantastic. Look, thanks so much for updating investors today. [Operator Instructions] On behalf of the management team of BlackRock World Mining Trust plc, I would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.