Exxaro Resources Limited (EXX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome on this lovely Monday morning. And I'm coming to you from our corporate office here in Centurion in South Africa, just for those who may be watching us from outside of the country. My name is Mzila Mthenjane, and I'm the Executive Head for Stakeholder Affairs at Exxaro Resources. And it's a great pleasure for me and on behalf of the leadership of the company to welcome you on our Capital Markets Day 2021. This is our third Capital Markets Day, and it's one with a slight difference. For the first 2 Capital Markets Days that we had were obviously physical and they involved site visits. And unfortunately, this being a hybrid event, we're not going to have a site visit. However, we do have some videos for you. So something to look forward to there, I guess. It's always a pleasure to engage with yourselves, institutional shareholders, but I must also extend a special welcome to our shareholders from [indiscernible] as well as representatives from our employee share ownership scheme as well as our community benefit scheme. It's a great pleasure to have you all here. So my role here today will really be one of facilitating the question and answers at the end of the presentations that you will be seeing here today. But before we get started, let me just deal with some admin. So as I've mentioned, it's a hybrid event. We are here at the Centurion offices, which we fondly refer to as The ConneXXion. And we have present here senior leadership of the company, and the teams of each of the functional heads who will be presenting today, who will also be contributing to the discussion and conversation. And so from a bathroom perspective, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you all know where the bathrooms are. And then from an unforeseen incident in terms of fire that the -- you are familiar with those procedures. So if we can then get started and so I'm going to be doing quite a bit of work today with this clicker as well. So let me perhaps start off by giving you some context. And what you see from this slide is really a reflection of this tension between optimism and outrage. And this is an expression I'm picking up from a podcast that I was listening to earlier today. This outrage and optimism in relation to climate change. And so you'll be hearing today from our management team, led by CEO, Mr. Mxolisi Mgojo, and they'll be taking you through a series of presentations on how the company really has begun, and I need to emphasize that. But they'll also be taking in the presentations how Exxaro will continue in its response to the risks and opportunities presented by climate change. And as you will all appreciate, this has increasingly become an imperative for change and transition for our business and especially for the stakeholders who depend on it. And so with this reference, Exxaro's sustainable growth and impact strategy is an integrated, deliberate and a very well-considered strategy, if I may say so myself. And this has been absolutely critical given the current business model and the location of the company in South Africa. And here's why I say that. And I'm going to read to you a paragraph that I came across from BUSA and NBI in terms of the business statement on Africa's climate change and decarbonization response and the pathways to net zero emissions by 2050. And it says, "South Africa is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and will need significant international support to build resilience, transition its economy and to decarbonize. Furthermore, given the country's high rate of inequality and unemployment and the extent of dependence on a fossil fuel-based energy system and economy, this transition must take place in a way that is just, that leaves no one behind and that sets the country into a new and more equitable and sustainable development path, one which aims to systematically reindustrialize the country and build new and green industries, value chains and jobs on the basis of a supportive and aligned policy." And so this is the context within which we're coming with this presentation of the sustainable growth and impact strategy. In addition to that, I'd like to also remind you that prior to this, Exxaro had actually initiated a survey amongst our shareholders in late 2019, early 2020 to understand shareholder views and expectations from Exxaro around this very concept of the just transition. And here's some of what you said to us. And I'd like to highlight some of those excerpts in green, and maybe for the benefit of time, I'll let you just go through them yourselves. But what is clear in terms of these excerpts is that shareholders were very clear in terms of what they expected from Exxaro, that Exxaro should consider all perspectives, not only emotional, but really being pragmatic and practical and considering the need to balance the different perspectives from all our stakeholders. And so what we have then prepared here today in terms of the program. And you will notice that there's a change in the program from what we had provided you earlier. So how we will go about it is that rather than having Q&As at the end of each section, or 2 sections that we had previously anticipated, is that we will go through all of the presentations, starting firstly with a strategic overview from the CEO. And that will be followed by a deep dive into the renewable energy business, of which there have been numerous questions since last year, when we started talking about it. And that will be followed by the minerals presentation. And the renewable energy business presentation will be presented by Roland Tatnall. And Dr. Nombasa Tsengwa, our CEO Designate and MD for Minerals will then present the minerals strategy. And the sequence is important and how we've packaged them together because, as I said earlier, this is an integrated strategy. And hopefully, you'll be able to pick that up as we go through that. We'll then follow that with capital allocation, because these are strategies that have to be funded. And this has been one of the key questions from investors in terms of how we're going to fund this growth. Mxolisi will then come back and give some concluding remarks. And it will be at the end of that, then I'll be joined by the whole team here on stage, where we will together, and I will certainly facilitate the question and answers. So with context, I think I've been able to do well in terms of time. Let me hand over to our CEO, Mxolisi Mgojo, who will then take us through the strategic overview. Mxolisi, over to you.

Thank you very much, Mzila, and good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to all of you who have joined us today. In thinking through the decisions about our future, we have been strongly influenced by our purpose to power better lives in Africa and beyond. We will fulfill this purpose through a strategy of remaining a central provider of the resources that are critical to the sustainable development of South Africa and other developing countries as the world shifts towards a low-carbon future. The land we mine, the people who power our business and the funds invested have been entrusted to us by communities, shareholders and the country. To safeguard this value, we need to accelerate change in our business guided by our values and culture. It is a reality of our time that climate change poses a significant risk to business, capital markets and has a negative impact on ecosystems and societies. As such, stakeholder action is increasing in momentum. Investors are taking action to decarbonize their investment portfolios. Governments are increasing pressure on large emitters with various policies incentivizing emission reduction. Competition between communities and industries for natural resources continues to grow. The best talent is increasingly focusing on a company's externalities and impact on society. With this risk compounding, the world is now moving quickly and the net zero movement is gathering pace. There are a number of -- there is a narrow window to gain a foothold where we can create stakeholder value in the accelerating shift to a low-carbon world. To miss and ignore that window as a predominantly fossil fuel producer is to be left largely with managing dynamic risks. We do see a significant future opportunity for renewable energy in South Africa and beyond as well as availability and accessibility to develop minerals that are vital to allow carbon future. We have a clear duty to consider how the assets we operate can continue to create value for a broad range of stakeholders beyond current shareholders, management, employees and commercial partners. The choice we have made in the past, like investing in renewables and the core growth CapEx now provide us with the optionality as we embark on this transition to a low-carbon economy. These investments allow us the choice to manage instead of being faced only with the choice to divest or close the coal business. This choice to manage also enables the growth of Exxaro in new opportunities in a low-carbon economy. We have a coal business that is well positioned to maximize good returns. We have reevaluated our reserves and taken deliberate steps to reduce the risk of stranded assets. We have increased the proportion of high-quality coal in our product mix. And we are continually improving our cost and resource efficiency. We are talking to you today because beyond the moral need to reduce coal in our country, and the planet's energy mix, we need to do more to manage these dynamic risks presented by climate change in order to create value over the long term. Our broad ambition is to remain central to the cleaner, low-carbon economy and to shifting energy demand to renewable energy and low-carbon minerals. In relation to renewables, we have been deliberately building our capabilities in renewable energy, starting with our investment in Cennergi. At the same time, scaling our renewable energy business allows us to build on our position as a key anchor of energy security in South Africa, and a significant contributor to renewable energy solutions in other markets. Roland will speak about this more on how we intend to scale our renewable energy business. In relation to the Minerals business, we have deep roots in mining with a track record of operational excellence and delivering value. Nombasa will speak about how we intend to leverage our mining capabilities to create a select portfolio of minerals critical to low-carbon infrastructure. We cannot talk about a transition to a low-carbon economy without talking about a sustainable economy. We cannot embark on an injustice transition that leaves behind our communities. Our economy can be fully sustainable if it is equitable. Our journey to a low-carbon economy must support our country and our communities. We are collaborating closely with communities, peers and experts to drive change at scale and improve the lives of people to ensure sustainable communities. In relation to decarbonization, we have a framework and interim targets for decarbonizing our business. We have established a decarbonization team that is working through our TCFD-based approach to carbon neutrality and stress testing our reduction ambitions. At our March results, we will provide a comprehensive group-level report on progress and future guidance on our milestones and targets. Exxaro's strategic response builds on our previous objectives and our current capabilities. This anchors our ability to continue delivering value to our stakeholders. In terms of assets and operations, we have a portfolio of quality assets with the flexibility to meet changing market demands. We were an early investor in renewable projects, with strong availability and O&M services. In terms of people, experience and skills, we are a learning organization. In our long history, we have built skills in mining, energy and ESG. And lastly, we have an ESG and impact focus. We have and will continue to create impact well beyond compliance as demonstrated by, amongst others, the following activities. Firstly, our active participation on the regional collaboration platform called the Impact Catalyst, which we have partnered with Anglo American, CSIR, World Vision, Zutari and the IDC for regional development and support of provincial economic development plans in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape along with other members of the Minerals Council of South Africa. Secondly, our partnership with NBI on a municipal capacity building program, which is an outcome of the President's Job Summit, is to support the Waterberg district with their district development model. Thirdly, our Enterprise and Supplier Development program, which has been a key to supporting small businesses, which have sustained the livelihoods of more than 2,500 employees and their households. We are recognized for our ESG, our brand and culture in the mining industry and beyond. Our community and employee ownership schemes bear testimony to our holistic approach to responsible and inclusive growth. It is a strong base upon which to scale our impact efforts through natural resource and carbon efficiency as well as applying science and nature-based solutions as we transition to a low-carbon future. Looking ahead, our vision of a resilient portfolio is where -- is one where, firstly, we have diversified to robust growth opportunities that will evolve Exxaro beyond coal. Secondly, in positioning the business for a low-carbon future, we have leveraged our energy business to decarbonize and reduce our emissions. Thirdly, we have built an equitable and inclusive organization to drive effective and efficient governance, strategy and talent management through our diverse diversity and inclusion strategy. Priority areas for our leadership and staff in this regard include gender equality in terms of 50% women on management levels; fair pay targets achieved; new jobs opportunities created in energy, minerals and the digital areas; fully embedding the Exxaro leadership way across the business. And lastly, impact will continue to be at the heart of what we do through partnerships and facilitating meaningful impact funding to shape and scale sustainable development programs. Our proposition is that within 10 years, 70% of our earnings should be noncoal earnings. We should have reduced our emissions footprint by about 46%. And therefore, the portfolio will generate predominantly derisked and predictable cash flows. The respective teams will take you through the detail of how we intend to get there. We are mindful that capital allocation is a contentious matter in our industry, and that this strategic pivot makes that issue even more central. We have previously signaled that we are committed to rewarding investors for any value created. We are in a position to ensure a good balance between rewarding investors of our coal business, while also investing in creating a diversified resources business. Also key is the fact that we are building on lessons learned from our past mistakes. Also key is the fact that we are building on lessons that should enable us that we navigate our pathway in a responsible way. Koppies will take you through the detail of what that means in terms of capital allocation. But I believe that we are building a resilient and competitive portfolio for the present we are already in and the future that is yet to unfold. And with that, I will now hand over back to Mzila, who will take us through to the rest of the program. Mzila?

Thank you, Mxolisi, and thanks for a great and very insightful presentation. And I'm sure there are a few questions that are already gathering in the -- from the webcast and Chorus Call. But as I indicated, we will take those at the end. And I'd like to hand over to Roland, who will then take us through the renewables energy business. Roland, are you ready?

Mic's on. Okay. Great. [Presentation]

Thank you for that introductory video, Mzila. I think it gives a good but brief overview of the Exxaro renewable energy strategy and also the Cennergi business. I think it's important to note that this is not a new focus for Exxaro. This is a refocus on a strategy that has been in evidence that was started over a decade ago. The strategy that we are about to unveil now has been the culmination of at least 18 months' work for the team even before I arrived. And particularly in the last 6 to 9 months, we've been looking and focusing on starting to execute the strategy. So obviously, a key driver for us is making sure that we're working towards the sustainable growth in a decarbonized Exxaro. But our ambitions are not limited to Exxaro alone. We're aiming to take the existing business and growth path to become a leading international renewable energy solutions provider by 2030. Now obviously, our purpose is to drive carbon neutrality by 2050 and to provide better lives in Africa and beyond. We're also looking to power a clean world. So how are we going to go about this? We've already commenced with our own generation of projects and expanding our services business. We're utilizing the skills and networks developed at our mining and renewable cores. We want to develop partnerships and we're building on our skill base organically. We've already transitioned some of our mining colleagues through some renewable training so that they can integrate into the renewable team. We're looking to enter markets, new markets in a low-risk way through either partnerships or acquisition. And possibly, the last line is the most important line. Our strategy has been developed through rigorous discussion of what can and can't be achieved by Exxaro. And we'll execute it with the same focus set out in this strategy with a disciplined approach to the decisions we take. So how are we going about this? Obviously, we're starting with our own generation needs. We're expanding our South African footprint in services and distributed generation. We'll follow Exxaro into new markets, and we'll look at inorganic new market entry for distributed generation utility. We're already an existing, stable, sizable renewable platform and brand in South Africa. We're developing partnerships in our home country. We're also developing our skills internally. When we look to enter into new markets, we'll be acquiring new skills in order to help us formulate that growth path in the new market. And then, of course, we'll be financing a large proportion of the growth strategy through debt finance. Much of our finance that we're looking to raise will be project finance, which is nonrecourse or limited recourse in a ren-fenced manner with particular -- around particular projects. And this will enable us to make the best use of Exxaro's capital. So our goal is, obviously, to fast track decarbonization for Exxaro. We're looking to deploy ZAR 15 billion of equity by 2030. We're looking to add an extra 3 gigawatts of net renewable generating capacity. And this is potentially up to 6 gigawatts of catalyzed renewable energy investments depending on our shareholding on the individual projects. And then our target returns of 15% on a portfolio basis. And all of this will generate an extra ZAR 6 billion of EBITDA by 2030. So in order to execute with a fast-growing start-up culture, we've already established a separate working structure with strong governance frameworks, enabling a simple, lean, empowered and agile approach to this new business. And our 3 pillars are distributed generation, utility generation and services. So this isn't the start of our renewable journey. Aspiration started in 2009, and gradually, but continuously, we've been developing the business and knowledge in the years since then. In 2009, we signed our first MOU to develop a wind farm. By 2012, we created Cennergi in partnership with Tata Power, and we bidded into South African's renewable energy IPP program. By 2016, we had 229 megawatts of renewable assets in operations. And in 2018, we started development of 9 distributed solar facilities built through the Business of Tomorrow program. Now these are private-to-private businesses. So they were important for us to understand the regulatory process and how to enable us to develop future pillar of the business. Between 2019 and 2020, we bought out Tata stake to become 100% owner of the Cennergi platform. And then last year, we started studies on our own generation, and particularly our largest project, the Grootegeluk mine in Limpopo. This year, in addition to executing on the strategy and developing our own generation, we've been engaging with various mines in South Africa to provide them with bespoke renewable solutions. And over this whole period, Cennergi has been managing our assets from 2012 and when it oversaw the construction of the 2 wind farms through to now when it's also managing the 9 distributed solar facilities. So the result is actually South Africa's second-largest, locally owned renewable IPP developer. We have 231 megawatts of assets under management, about 200 net megawatts. We have the 2 wind farms in the Eastern Cape, and we have 9 solar facilities that are distributed in the northern part of the country. So we obviously have a strategic role to play in the Exxaro context, transitioning us to a carbon-neutral future, but we're not limited to what we can do for Exxaro. We want to build on existing renewable asset bases and our competencies in South Africa. And ultimately, we're looking to provide renewable energy solutions to the private and public sectors in select markets globally. And in order to do this, we're obviously going to leverage Exxaro's unique networks and skill sets to deliver portfolio diversification and long-term stability to Exxaro's cash flows. So the existing business has been reconfigured to focus on 3 pillars: distributed generation, utility generation and services. In distributed generation, we already have the 2 megawatts under management, 9 operating assets. We're developing our own -- 3 of our own projects for our 3 main mines. It's a sector that is a high-growth subsector. It's still at a nascent stage in South but it's also a higher-return environment. We're dealing with private-to-private transactions with bespoke solutions. And that necessarily involves higher returns than the utility generation pillar. We're targeting above 3 megawatts per project, scaling to over potentially 100 megawatts per project. And then utility generation, we have our 2 assets, 229 megawatts. We're targeting opportunities above 20 megawatts, and we're continuing to appraise the South African market. We looked at the REIPPPP Bid Window 5 and took a decision not to enter at this stage. We felt that the risk-adjusted returns for REIPPPP Bid Window 5 did not meet our investment criteria. But we are continuing to appraise the South African market from a utility perspective. Now utility is still the largest renewable subsector from an asset perspective. So we're assessing new markets for potential entry, the closer that meet our investment criteria. And in services, we have 11 assets under management already. We're going to grow this business. The business itself adds value to the asset base, but it can potentially be its own stand-alone business. It enables us to seek new customers and to broaden our customer base and deliver new services beyond just our asset base. And ultimately, in the future, we're looking to further horizontal integration of additional services and potentially disrupted digital models as the distributed power base grows in South Africa and beyond. And across all 3 pillars, we're looking at M&A activity. This will enable us to transition at speed and scale and will enable us to enter new markets in a low-risk way, acquiring the skill sets in order to do so. Now the focus for M&A will evolve as the company matures, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. So we're looking to solve real needs. And those real needs for customers are really, obviously, the first one, emissions reduction with the renewable solutions we provide. Then poor grid, energy security for companies particularly relevant to the South African context is expensive grid, where our solutions can provide a cheaper alternative. And then in more limited cases, off-grid situations, where assets or customers do not have access to the grid, and they're seeking a solution -- a holistic solution for their business. This off-grid solution -- situation has actually been pioneered in Africa. And 2 of the first projects supplying mines with renewable solutions at scale were actually in West Africa. So we're looking at proven technologies. There's going to be no piloting of technologies that are not commercially and technically proven. So fundamentally, this means that we're focusing on solar PV; onshore wind and maybe at a later stage, offshore wind; storage and then hybrid solutions, which are potentially a collection of any of the other solutions; and possibly also involving small amounts of thermal if we're needing to bridge the gap between the renewable solution for an off-grid customer. Now obviously, we're providing a pathway to fast track decarbonization and diversify. We're going to enable Exxaro to be carbon neutral by 2050 and allow it to diversify away from a coal-only business. But we want to capitalize on our existing business and knowledge base in a fast-growing market with many subsectors in which we think we have multiple competitive advantages. Just as an indication of the evolution of the market yesteryear, maybe 10 years ago, the only opportunity for asset investment other than if you are a manufacturer in renewable energy was really to invest in utility scale generation. That was the principal asset class for investment. Today, there's an explosion in distributed generation across the globe with South Africa really at the tip of the iceberg of its potential in terms of distributed generation in this country. As an example, Germany has around 50 gigawatts of solar installed capacity, much of it distributed on rooftops and providing power directly to industrial customers. This is more than the entire installed capacity of South Africa's energy production. And we're talking about nuclear, we're talking about coal, hydro, thermal and renewable energy. Germany has more distributed power than all of that put together in South Africa. In Vietnam last year, 7 gigawatts of distributed rooftop was put in place. So really, this is a huge opportunity. And particularly relevant to the mining industry in which we operate. Now tomorrow, there's going to be increasing demand for services to manage this fundamental shift in how we consume electricity. So services is an important pillar for us. But we wouldn't be executing on this strategy if we weren't well placed to do so. We already have the skills, networks and relationships. Our existing business, as I've said, is South Africa's second-largest local IPP. We have a reputation in Exxaro and Cennergi for project execution. We're also actively participating in both the energy and mining just transition movements alongside government and our peers. And then, of course, adjacency. Now this is just really a fancy word for saying that all Exxaro operations require renewable solutions. Our peers and our neighbors in the mining community also require renewable solutions. And Cennergi will also follow Exxaro into new markets. Our projects, our distributed projects are pathfinder projects in the South African context. And just as a reminder, we've done this 9 times already. We have followed the regulatory process. In the South African context, we're really at a unique and exciting moment in time for renewable energy. This is a unique point where a number of changes and irrepressible forces are converging. Obviously, we have the Eskom unbundling, which is due to have completed by 2023. But in parallel with that, we have the sector liberalization. Just in July this year, the licensing threshold for private-to-private sales of electricity was raised from 1 to 100 megawatts. Now this is a massive statement of intent from the government. There are still some issues that need to be sorted out in exactly how departments work together to facilitate this in a fast-tracked way, but the raising of a license threshold from 1 to 100 megawatts was a massive milestone in South African's renewables development. Just a few weeks later, the gazetted announcement was amended to include for the first time, expressly allowing wheeling to multiple parties on a private-to-private basis. This allows us to build a generation facility in one part of the country and direct that energy to customers, a single customer or multiple customers, in the other parts of the country through Eskom's grid. Then decarbonization. There's pressure on every country in the world to fast track its decarbonization. But South Africa is one of the world's most carbon-intensive markets. Indeed, I think in the press, it was announced that this week, Eskom is receiving a delegation from developed countries to discuss just this about how the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany can help Eskom decarbonize quicker. And then South Africa is an industrialized country with a significant installed base of industrialization, 40% of the demand comes from industrial companies. And roughly 1/3 of that 5 gigawatts is from the mining industry. Then cost trajectory. South Africa reached parity from a renewables perspective with the grid a number of years ago. And whilst renewable costs, prices, tariffs are coming down, the gap between the grid and renewable tariffs is growing even further. And if we look at our resources, South Africa has some of the world's best solar resources and some great wind resources, and it has the land in which it can execute on those resources. Our Tsitsikamma project, for example, gives a great example of how communities and renewables can coexist synergistically on the same land. So some countries have some of these factors occurring at this point in time. But for all of these factors to coalesce in South Africa at the same point in time, really provides for a unique opportunity in the renewables market. Now in terms of demand, our fellow emerging markets are also seeing strong growth. We're looking at CAGRs in the teens to 20s of percent. We're talking about 13% to 25% annual growth in wind and solar in most emerging markets. We're looking at an average fivefold increase over 2 decades of wind and solar installed capacity. We've gone from practically no wind and solar installed capacity in emerging markets to hundreds of gigawatts by 2030. And the growth is not projected to slow down. In fact, it seems to be increasing. Now on delivery. We've talked about our pedigree, our renewable pedigree, we talked about adjacency. We are a projects business. Complex capital projects are something that Exxaro has been doing since before it was even Exxaro. Cennergi is obviously a projects business. It's executed on renewable projects. We're perfectly positioned in South Africa. We're at the nexus of mining and renewables, and we have past and current partnerships or investments with a number of international miners who have operations around the world. We're also actively engaged with governments and peers in the energy transition on the Minerals Council and the Energy Council and other bodies. In terms of our international credentials, we have networks. We've executed projects or partnerships around the world. A prime example is Moranbah South in Australia, another country with vast mining opportunities that has similar characteristics to South Africa. Finally, innovation is in our DNA. We were the first in South Africa to develop a digital mine. We developed the ultrahigh dense medium separation technology that allowed [ the composition ] to extend its life of mine. We've recently entered into collaboration with the University of Pretoria to develop extended reality technologies for the mining industry, in particular, health and safety. And just this year, our mining and energy teams have developed a digital renewables tool that will enable us to get a competitive advantage in the South African landscape. And we'll talk about RRODA in a few slides' time. So our strategy is not just low-hanging fruit and what is in front of us. Of course, this is important, and we're executing on that. But we're building strong foundations for the future where the investment mix is likely to be different as yields compress on the assets. We're looking at a phased approach. Our foundations are utility and distributed generation assets at home and abroad in select markets. Now these return on capital business is much like the mining business that our investors are familiar with. Simultaneously, though, we're growing our asset management business, our service business, which enables us to offer a complete cradle-to-grave solution to our customers. Now capital-light businesses add margins to our assets and provide more direct customer interface and also different customer markets. So as our portfolio grows, our focus transitions. The result is, by 2030, we will have built a strong, stable balance sheet with yield-generating assets still growing, but with increasing focus on capital-light services in order to maintain our return targets. The road to technology is something that we've developed over the last 9 months. And we're just going to play you a short video to explain a little bit about how it works. [Presentation]

So thank you for that video. I think it provides a good overview of RRODA. It's a complex model and involves many parts. But I think if I were to summarize it in one sentence, I'd say that we think we're the only renewable developer to be able to combine mining and renewable data sets to optimize site selection. And as a result, we can also provision for high-level design parameters from the desktop. And this allows us to quantify tariffs and savings upfront. So examples of RRODA using our own mines, Grootegeluk, Matla and Belfast. RRODA plus our mining knowledge enables us to provide site selection and the inputs of mining tangibles, for example, production, life of mine, the offtaker, the creditworthiness of the mine itself and the offtake duration. The result is modeled renewable outputs that are customer specific, it's likely demand profile, the cost savings based on the solution that we determine and the tons of CO2 saved. And this is all from the desktop in advance of approaching the customer. So if we just look at the maps here, we're seeing the green boundaries of our mining rights on the 3 mines. And the red areas are the RRODA-defined optimal sites for renewable solutions. At Grootegeluk, especially we have significant potential for high-potential renewable development. And so this enables us to look not just at the mine itself, but potentially at developing additional renewable sites for wheeling or provision to other customers. And this is really an example of how we're using the competencies across both our mining and renewables businesses. So our existing businesses provide a great platform from which to expand our brand into South Africa. In distributed generation, we have 9 assets under management that have been through the regulation process. We have 3 projects that we're developing. And we're the only developer at the center of the renewables and mining communities, offering solutions to third parties. Now this is a solutions-driven business. And as I said, it's a higher-return business than utility generation. [indiscernible][indiscernible] And as I said, it's a higher-return business than utility generation. And in South Africa, we're now on the cusp of a gigawatt opportunity set. Services. We already manage 11 assets, wind and solar. We have strong local and empowerment credentials. And this business is much more driven by brand and value-driven. It's a margins business that adds value to our assets and adds value to customers independently of our assets. Now in terms of utility generation in South Africa, we analyzed and spent a long time looking at the most recent bid window for REIT for the renewable energy IPP program. And we decided that the risk-adjusted returns for this program, for this particular round were questionable from our perspective and didn't meet our investment criteria. So it's unlikely that we'll be participating in bid window 5 for South Africa. However, we are looking and assessing other markets where we believe that we can get risk-adjusted returns that will meet our investment criteria. And we will continue to assess and look at the South African market and appraise each round according to our investment criteria. So our own generation projects are internally generated solutions. Lephalale solar project is not just an internal project. We approached the project as we would with any other customer. Our energy teams and our coal team sat down together, we provided an initial assessment. We understood the needs of the customer. We provided options and ultimately, agreed on a solution. Now the characteristics of our customer in this case is a large, long-life mining customer. The requirements are a reduction of the cost of electricity, hedging of future potential grid tariff hikes and the allowance for future storage to reduce costs and carbon emissions further. What was most important was to be able to execute on a project quickly in order to bring the benefits of those cost reductions and carbon reductions as quickly as possible. So Phase 1 is a behind-the-meter solution, a 70-megawatt solar plant that will provide power directly to the mine. But in terms of looking at the project, we're not just looking at Phase 1. We've designed for Phase 2, which will incorporate storage. And we've also allowed in our design and permitting for an expansion of the site either for the mine's own user to potentially wheel or provide to other customers. And now the benefits to the customer are from a carbon reduction perspective, up to 36% reduction in scope 2 emissions for the mine itself. This is just from Phase 1 before we add Phase 2. From day 1, there will be a 12% cost reduction in terms of the cost of electricity for the mine. And this will only increase year-on-year as grid tariffs increase. Now Belfast is a different proposition. It's a smaller project, slightly shorter life of mine, and it presents us with different challenges. The customer requirements are basically the same, but we need a more creative approach in order to provide a solution here. The demand is around 3 megawatts, and we've come up with 2 solutions. One is on site. Similar to the Lephalale project behind the meter. It has the benefits of being a relatively simple project to provide to the customer. There are no wheeling -- there's no wheeling involved. There are no extra agreements needed and no extra costs according to wheeling. But because of the size of the project, it does have a higher CapEx and that results in a higher tariff for the mine. So we're looking at solutions to potentially increase the size of the project to provide for other customers in the region. Now wheeling on the other hand, is an off-site solution, obviously. It will be a simple addition to the Lephalale solar project. It will be a bolt-on modular addition to that project, but it needs direct Eskom connection. Wheeling costs and risks are incurred, but the scale does reduce the CapEx, providing for a lower tariff for the customer. However, wheeling is often not necessarily interpreted in the way that we think it should be in the South African context. There are 3 concerns and issues with wheeling, which doesn't mean to say that it's not a viable opportunity for many projects, but you incur additional risks, time lines, additional agreements need to be made and who takes the risk for a failure of the transmission system between the generator and the customer? Eskom's not going to do that. The cost is also something that is often misrepresented as talked about in the low single-digit sense. But in actual fact, when you take into account all the costs that the generator and the offtaker incur, it's more likely to be in the higher teens to $0.20. We've done a lot of analysis on point-to-point opportunities in wheeling to really understand how we can provide the best solutions involving wheeling. And then finally, there's cost variability. The cost of wheeling is fundamentally a consequence of great congestion, which you can't predict in the long term. So from a pipeline perspective, we're not just looking at our own opportunities. We have the 93 megawatts that we're looking to develop. So that's Lephalale for Grootegeluk. We have Matla and we have Belfast, so 70 plus 20, plus 3. But this year, we've been building on our relationships discussing with other third-party miners, potential solutions. And the chart on the right shows some of the discussions that we're having at the moment. It's really describing quite nicely how we're approaching this distributed generation business. We're looking at providing the solution, not just a sale. So the blue blocks are the immediate needs of the customer that can be implemented relatively quickly and easily, we can call it a pilot or a Phase 1. The dotted blocks, the ultimate demand that the customer requires and wants to solve for. But these may take time and introduce complexities and may be wield solutions, grid constraints, wind, the customer may require wind solutions, which are off-site storage pricing, et cetera. So our results and the way that we're approaching these discussions is a phased partnership approach where the customer learns, gets to know us, gets comfortable with a more -- gets comfortable, but also gets the benefit of more immediate cost savings and carbon reductions. The alternative for the customer is to go out on tender for a multiyear planning process to solve for what in effect is a mega project, where a customer becomes locked in from an early stage with 1 partner into a project that potentially is relying on changes to regulation in the future or changes to the demand or the supply environment. So South Africa is a base for our ambitions, but we don't want to limit ourselves to South Africa for 3 fundamental reasons. The first is that exposure to a single country introduces a systemic risk to a strategy that is predicated on regulation in a regulated industry. Just ask the independent participants in Bid Window 5 from 2014, 2015. The second is that to achieve scale and become a meaningful player in the renewable energy industry and benefit from economies of scale in procurement and other economies of scale, we need to look beyond the South African borders. And the third is that we obviously already have international footprint and relationships. I already mentioned Moranbah South. So we developed a country selection framework that allows us to apply a rigorous approach to choosing countries that we feel are best suited to our ambitions. We excluded the most developed renewable energy markets because the competition there is too high. The returns are too low. And of the remaining 171 countries we applied, effectively 2 filtering streams. The first you can consider to be the macroeconomic environment and the policy environment. We're looking at data sets that provide us information on, for example, currency volatility, the opportunity in the country, the auction processes that have gone before and the potential for growth of renewables in those countries, the risks and obviously, the returns. And then our second filter is to look at mining, countries with large mining industries that have characteristics that are similar to the industry that we're targeting in South Africa. The result is 65 countries that we could take a look at, but we've taken the top 20 countries of those lists. And we're looking to evaluate them further and looking at opportunities in those countries and to narrow down the opportunity set that we want to target. Now as we are assessing these markets and opportunities, we're likely to enter new markets, as I've said before, through the lowest risk approach we can, which is either partnership or acquisition. So our targets for 2030, we're looking to add an additional 3 gigawatts net of renewable energy generating capacity, that's 15x our existing installed capacity and up to 6 gigawatts potentially of installed capacity, depending on our shareholding and the individual projects. We'll be looking to enter by 2030, 3 to 5 new markets. We're targeting a return and equity return across our portfolio of 15% in rand terms. We're looking to deploy ZAR 15 billion of equity. And this means a total capital deployment of ZAR 45 billion if we assume a 66% leverage across the portfolio. The result of all of this is that by 2030, our peak EBITDA from the renewables business will be an additional $6.2 billion for Exxaro. Obviously, emissions are important for us as a target as well. but we're not solely looking at accelerating Exxaro's decarbonization, although, of course, that is a priority. But we'll be a significant contributor to the world's decarbonization efforts. If we look at Cennergi's existing assets, it's 2 renewable wind farms, we're already displacing 700,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum. Our own generation assets, the 3 mines I've talked about, just from a Phase 1 perspective, we'll be looking to offset around 260,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum for Exxaro. And then if we look at the total ambition of 3 gigawatts, this is not including the potential for 6 gigawatts, this is the 3 gigawatts net that we will invest into. Depending on where we look, we'll be displacing between 1.6 million tonnes per annum for a low-carbon environment like Latin America, up to 8.3 million tonnes per annum in a carbon-intensive environment like South Africa. And the result of this is that by 2030, we will have displaced on a per annum basis, somewhere between 2.5 million and 9.2 million tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide. Obviously, it's going to be neither of these numbers, but our carbon displacement will fall somewhere in between these 2 extremes. From an Exxaro perspective, our current emissions from a scope 1 and 2 perspective around 1 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. So just the Phase 1 of our 3 projects that we've been talking about will offset roughly 25% of those emissions 260,000 tonnes. Now the Just Energy transition is absolutely core to our strategy and our business case. We're developing an impact strategy that is aligned with Exxaro's goals but applicable to our situation, multiple smaller sites spread across the country. We want to sell for 4 outcomes. We want to engage multiple dimensions within the communities that we involve. We want our solutions to be sustainable. We want them to continue to grow after we've left. We want them to be repeatable, and we want to crowd in other actors to achieve the greatest impact. So we're leveraging Exxaro's model of impact at scale to really provide game changers in the South African context. So what are we doing? In summary, we're building out our own generation portfolio. Just this week, we -- just last week, we signed the term sheet between energy and coal that sets out the material terms on which a power purchase agreement will be ultimately concluded. We're in advanced stages on that project. We're developing the Belfast project and the options there, and we're looking at Matla and how we can introduce the renewable solutions to Matla. We're leveraging our relationships in the mining sector to develop further opportunities, multiple conversations, and we're looking at solutions in a different way. We're looking to partnership with our mining colleagues. We're growing Cennergi services. It's a company that we want to roll out to third parties in the industry, and particularly with Bid Window 5, there's going to be an increased market for asset management services and a cradle-to-grave approach. We're assessing opportunities in other markets. We've developed our framework. We have a risk framework in which we're trying to understand the risks of particular markets that we want to enter. And we're looking for opportunities to enter those markets to further our ambitions and diversify our portfolio. And then, of course, we're developing partnerships to accelerate our growth. So in summary, our strategy is to accelerate a renewable energy value proposition that started in 2009. We'll be future proofing Exxaro and enabling a sustainable future for our business. We'll fast track our decarbonization and our investments will generate predictable long-term cash flows and increased portfolio diversification. And ultimately, as the company matures, provide potentially for a future value uplift. But put in another way, this is not a strategy developed in reaction to market sentiment. We're building on an existing successful platform, leveraging our skills and differentiation with a long-term vision to develop a sustainable growth-orientated, value-driven company, a leading international renewable solutions provider by the end of the decade. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Roland. Fantastic presentation. I almost feel like giving you an applause, but I think I'll save that to the end. And what's interesting are just some of the questions that I'm beginning to get, which will really make for a fantastic discussion at the end given that we've changed the program around, and we'll have the whole team joining me on stage and we'll have quite an interactive discussion. And the questions range from just wanting to know about Exxaro's diversification, the issue of returns on investments, some really insightful questions that looking forward to exploring later on. So we will now be joined by Dr. Nombasa Tsengwa, who will then take us through her outlook on the minerals business. As often happens, technology fails you at the time that we need it the most, okay.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very excited to share the Exxaro minerals strategy with you this afternoon. We have promised to share this with the market for some time now. And today, we will demonstrate to you that there really is no better time to kick off this strategy than now. I'm sure that throughout this presentation, you will share our confidence and excitement in the road that lies ahead. Before we get into the details, I would like to give you a top-down view of what we would like to present to you. This strategy sets out a bold and ambitious target to bring minerals into our portfolio. For Exxaro, there is no better time than now. As we build from our position of strength to execute a robust strategy, which is fully aligned with Exxaro's core ambition, as we've heard from Mxolisi earlier on. I will also explain our plans to succeed along this journey and how we plan to continue to create value for our shareholders. And we plan to do this by making sure that we leverage our deep understanding of the markets and fundamental drivers of the commodities we're targeting. This strength is based on our proven market to resource strategy. That has seen us grow and diversify our markets over the years, along with an optimized thermal coal product mix. Using our track record and experience in creating value to liberate hard-coded lessons that will guide this journey and ensure that it is a de-risk implementation process underpinned by a focused and rigorous set of criteria to ensure that the selected commodities and targets are the right strategic fits for Exxaro. And lastly, in order to create or increase a likelihood of success, we will be playing close to our core, very deep from our routes by leveraging our strengths and competencies as a coal miner rather than diversifying away from them. So just taking you through -- just capturing the journey as well for your own imagination. And we've conceded a lot of questions that we've been asked as we were introducing this topic in the last few months. And I'll do this through 4 questions. Answering first question would be, what is this ambition that we're talking about? And second question is, why are we embarking on this journey? Thirdly, how are we going to win? And lastly, looking at the next steps for ourselves as a team and also you as our valued shareholders and stakeholders. The Exxaro minerals journey is a measured one with the purposely driven target, which is to build a minerals business that represents 50% of coal EBITDA within the next decade. This is an aspiration we hold on to, however, not at all costs. Our mission holds firm and is premised on 2 principles. Firstly, we aim to utilize our mining skills to supply minerals, the power or to power a cleaner world. And secondly, to provide our shareholders with superior returns while driving decarbonization ambitions also mentioned by Mxolisi earlier. We have strategic selected 3 minerals to start this journey, namely manganese, bauxite and copper. Later in this presentation, I will explain to you how and why we selected these commodities. But what is important to note here is that these 3 commodities offer the best risk-to-reward ratios to deliver on our board EBITDA target, an even bolder ambition to power a cleaner world was helping us leverage of our core competencies as a bulk miner. So now going to the second question as to why exactly are we embarking on this journey? And to put it simply, there is no better time. Given our fiscal performance over the last 5 years, Exxaro is in a position of strength. We can only be usefully leverage through an ambitious growth strategy. And if we look back, we have outperformed our target of 20% in ROCE by achieving an average of 25% over the past 4 years. We have thus proven that we can create value. Additionally, over the same period, we achieved an average net debt-to-equity ratio of [ 10% ], which proves that we have a healthy balance sheet which to leverage our growth. So overall, we are practically positioned to leverage up and exploit the minerals opportunity in front of us because Exxaro has proven that we can create this value, and we are in a good financial position to grow from at this time. Now building on our strong fiscal position, our foundation is solid. We have deep-rooted competencies built over decades across a number of commodities, which I think some of you will recall. And we believe with this experience, we are strong to grow. We have established core competencies as a core miner. We are an experienced bulk miner. We have mined mineral sands as well as base metals. We have previously operated iron ore mines, you will recall that Sishen and Thabazimbi, Rosh Pinah mine and our Zinco primary smelter plant. We have an existing portfolio of quality operating assets with flexibility, where Exxaro's acquisition of Energy, which is a renewable energy asset that affords us flexibility to enter the renewable energy market. And we've heard all of that from Roland. And if you look at routes #4 and 5, we are expanding our geographic diversity and nourishing our project cost and capital management skills. And you know that we've allocated about ZAR 17 billion to growth CapEx in the coal space. And through that, we've been able to generate the average ROCE of 25% since 2017. This has led to expansion successes and project execution experience, where we've built a world leading business sands business in Tronox. We also demonstrated that we could exit this business successfully and distribute the value created to our shareholders. At the same time, we have developed invaluable experience in JV and other investments. Not only have we excelled in creating monetary value, but Exxaro has also made the world a better place for all our stakeholders. Through our good track record on ESG that has been approved and also recognized by the market and our peers, including the Best Sustainability Reporting Awards in metals and mining category in the 2021 ESG Reporting awards. We're very proud of this. And you'll see in the backup slides, we did unpack how we approach our ESG and the impact itself and we're still looking at achieving. And all of these really lay a great foundation from which to grow. So at this point of the presentation, I would like to challenge you to consider this question. If not from a position of strength, while leveraging our core competencies, how else does a coal miner becomes a diversified player? We know that there are a lot of minerals that could power a cleaner world, but we are considering more than just your role in the cleaner future. Strategically, Exxaro is starting with manganese, copper and bauxite to focus our journey. And this decision was not made likely. We went through a rigorous screening of more than 30 minerals via phased commodity prioritization process, where a variety of factors were considered from a supply and demand analysis to an entry opportunity assessment. During each phase, different factors were considered and minerals were excluded that did not qualify. It is important to note that we are not excluding the possibility of other minerals during this journey. But these 3 are deemed to be the most strategic to Exxaro at this moment in time. And as mentioned earlier, we've got to start somewhere, and we've got to focus as we start this journey. Subsequently, manganese, copper and bauxite have been selected at the start, as I said of our journey. And these minerals are set to benefit from the decarbonization tailwinds. And as we will demonstrate, they score highly across the range of important criteria, which have been seen and selected on the next slide. So we've mentioned these 3 minerals that we have subject to a rigorous selection process. So what exactly was the selection based on? If we have to summarize our selection process, these 3 commodities scored the highest according to our 10 element risk and reward criteria. These elements were determined to be of most value to us. And subsequently, the mineral selection process was partly based on it. 5 elements of these rated the financial and strategic opportunity of each commodity whilst the remaining 5 ranked the commercial risk. You will notice that manganese, copper and bauxite not only offer a good market outlook, that is in large size or in strong demand, but also offer low price risk exposure. We did not only consider the fundamentals related to our selected minerals, but we also analyzed the distinct characteristic of the segments within each of these selected minerals. And we match those to our Exxaro competencies to ensure that Exxaro is best positioned for success. So now you know what our targets were and are and why are we starting this journey? The next question is, how are we going to win? The decision to select these minerals to launch the strategy was not taken lightly. We've done our homework. And we understand the fundamentals within each of these 3 minerals. We assess the value chain of each commodity market to understand where the opportunity lies as well as how Exxaro can make a success entry into each market. And this is where we spend most of our time doing this homework. So let's share with you our view of how we see the market playing out. So the key for us in manganese as we start with the minerals is that amidst any pending supply shortfall, Exxaro could capitalize on an opportunity in our own backyard with South Africa firmly in the production driver seat. Manganese offers sustained market potential through its anchor application in steel and upside growth potential due to its broad applicability across different battery technologies, especially as the electric vehicle market continues to develop. Over 90% of manganese demand stems from the steel industry. And with steel demand set to grow by 07% average growth on a year-on-year basis over the long term, this provides the anchor for manganese demand. Manganese is not substitutable in the production of steel, which is good news. China is the largest consumer and importer of manganese ore. And reliance own imports have increased over the last decade as China's own domestic ore quality has deteriorated. Other importers of manganese ore include India, South Korea, Japan and Europe. Rising prices coupled with an impending shortfall in the medium term and a high percentage of reserves in South Africa presents a key opportunity in our backyard as South Africa sits with 75% of global manganese resource. South Africa is a supplier of medium grade and high grade ore. On top of this, manganese has attractive margins and as production migrates to underground reserves. New price flows will be set driven by the South African producers, which we believe will sustain attractive margins into the future. Unlocking rail capacity in South Africa will be key to capitalizing on this opportunity and obviously, remaining cost competitive as well. However, we recognize that unlocking rail capacity does not come without these challenges. But we believe our experience in 2015 and 2016, when we were trying to unlock the volumes of the Waterberg will really come in handy in this journey. And looking at copper, we've listened a lot of comments around copper and how this space is playing out in terms of the majors holding on to some of the Tier 1 assets, but we had to think very carefully about how we enter this space, where we thought consolidation of emerging players could allow us to capitalize on attractive margins, particularly in the second and third quarter of the cost curve. Copper is one of the most diverse metals with application in construction, utilities as well as machinery and transportation. This industrial underpin to demand is set to grow exponentially as the drive to renewable energy and green infrastructure and vehicles accelerate. The expected growth in copper demand related to green energy is forecast to rise by 16.4x by 2030 and 22x by 2050. Driving growth in long-term refined copper consumption by 1.7% average growth year-on-year with the copper concentrate market segment growing at 2%. China accounts for over 50% of global refined copper consumption with the bulk of their demand being satisfied by imports from South America and Africa, with both these regions gaining importance given the current impact related to Australia copper concentrate in China. China consumes some 13 million tonnes per annum of copper, which is set to rise to 16 million tonnes per annum by 2035 with the bulk of the supply coming from South America, which is about 7 million tonnes and 4.1 million tonnes from Africa. The lack of project pipelines and the increased demand from not just China, but the rest of the world related to the transition to green energy and electric vehicles will see this industry struggling to meet its increased demand, driving copper prices higher. Exxaro is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities related to Tier 2 assets, as I've mentioned earlier, and capitalize on the attractive margins that these assets generate through the cycle. The fragmented nature of the copper supply market and the availability of opportunities well positioned, obviously, in the second and third quarter of the cost curve provides derisk entry into the copper market. Now looking at bauxite. And we believe there's an opportunity. And the headline for us here is a fact that there is declining supply in China. Aluminum, if we look at that, has a diversity of end users ranging from building and construction of transportation and electrical infrastructure, which underpins demand. Looking ahead, demand will be driven by the packaging sector as plastic is substituted for more environmentally friendly alternatives such as aluminum, which can be recycled indefinitely. Furthermore, bauxite has a strong market linked to the sustainability sector, where we see demand being driven by 2 elements: decarbonization, which will drive demand from the transportation and electrical sector and obviously, renewable energy, which will then drive demand led by solar PV market. Based on these strong drivers, bauxite demand is set to increase by 1.5x in 2015. This demand coupled with declining Chinese supply presents an attractive opportunity for Exxaro to enter this sector. Over 80% of all global seaborne bauxite is imported by China from Guinea, Australia and Indonesia. Bauxite imports currently accounts for 59% of total Chinese bauxite demand. And in the long term, the expectation is that this figure will increase to over 77% as Chinese own supply reduces reaching approximately 139 million tonnes by 2029. Over the long term, new bauxite mining capacity to fill the third-party supply deficit will be located in Guinea, Australia and Indonesia as these areas are the richest in gibbsite and will meet the demand for low temperature alumina refining in China. Exxaro understands the geographic risk of key supply regions, in particular, Guinea. And therefore, country risk assessment and timing will be critical in entering the bauxite market. And we will ensure that any entry will only be conceded if fully aligned with our strategic investment criteria and risk management reviews. Now we have considered the outlook of the market. So this journey is not new to us as Exxaro. As we have said, we have created value and learned from previous M&As that we have gone through in the past, which has assisted us in guiding and informing our approach as to how we should execute this strategy. So let's look into this. Over the last 14 years, we've made multiple investments that have given us extremely valuable experience in M&A, the digital transformation and value creation. As diversified asset owners, we have made some notable acquisitions in bulk, base minerals and mineral sands including the buying of ECC renamed from Total Coal South Africa in 2015 and the subsequent sale thereof a few months ago, the Namakwa Sands acquisition, which later supported the integration into Tronox Limited. This is a success story, which I will unpack later in this presentation. And lastly, the Black Mountain Mining acquisition of which Exxaro currently owns 26%. As leaders in digital mining, we have completed a range of digital projects over the years, including the construction of the digitally integrated Belfast mine in 2017, and that's where we had our last CMD as well as other digital projects that we can unpack in the future. But one of our greatest stories is the creation of our ops eye, which we call the middle eye, sitting on the pit floor of this building, where we can view the full value chain of our mining activities of every mine, and we get the single point of truth from that digital eye and making sure that we are able to visualize the mass flow of our call from pit to port. We're very proud of all of these. And therefore, as asset operators, we have achieved great success in unlocking the Waterberg in 2016. We have just completed our GG6 plant and obviously soon to be commissioned. A common theme that can be identified through the history of our investment is that of a good track record in deploying capital very well. We are seasoned operators with core mining competencies across different commodities, and we optimize our assets to create value for all our shareholders. Now that we have displayed our M&A capital allocation and digital experience, let's walk through our experienced numbers. We have a proven track record of driving returns from allocated capital. For example, I've mentioned that 25% return on capital expenditure in 2020. We have spent ZAR 17 billion on coal between '17 and 2020. We also concluded 6 mining pits deals since 2006, including Black Mountain, Namakwa Sands, African Iron Ore, Total Coal South Africa, Moranbah South and Cennergi. In terms of exits, we have concluded 5, namely NCC, Inyanda, Zinco, Rosh Pinah, NBC and recently ECC. Furthermore, we have worked hard on maintaining our operational efficiencies and have curtailed cost increases to below mining inflation rate between 2017 up to 2020. And we've been recognized for our digitalization and innovation journey by winning the 2019 South African National Business Award. All of the above supports the notion that we have the ability to generate value, and we will continue to do so going forward. Now we come to the great lessons that we have experienced. And when it comes to the execution of our mineral strategy, we need to be solid and alert in our approach. And if you look back, I can say that these many lessons over the last years will come in very handy. And 3 major lessons have become the backbone of our strategy. And the first lesson we've learned is that good data equals good decisions equals good deals. For example, we underestimated the difficulty of doing business in West Africa. If we had more boots on the ground, we could have predicted the infrastructure and bureaucratic hurdles. Looking back on how we assessed the asset, we were probably over optimistic in our assumptions, especially the first-mover advantage. The second lesson that we have to stick to roots, but we can't stop there. We also need to nourish these roots too, meaning we need to further develop any competency we built. Looking at our investments into mineral sands, we deeply integrated ourselves into the assets we purchased. And as a result, we nourished our routes enough to invest in new assets such as Namakwa Sands in 2007. And I'll expand a little bit on this in the slides to come. The last lesson we learned was that timing is very critical. Knowing when to buy and when to sell, when to walk away is of the most importance. We're manage to do that, obviously, with Tronox where we bought it at a low price. We knew when to buy there and sold it for a profit and we knew when to exit at that point. And these lessons presented to you were used to shape what the investor principles. And the principal 1 is to align each opportunity to our growth strategy, meaning we want to invest in assets with proven and long-term earnings. Principal 2, to set up our Exxaro minerals business close to our roots. We want to leverage what we're good at and not let it go to waste. The last guiding principle is to have the discipline to walk away if the proposed deal does not meet our minimum criteria. We are not afraid to say no. And if you push us, we can answer the question is when did we walk away. Our operator investor framework gives life to these principles by affecting our investment criteria and key processes as seen on the right of the slide. Looking at our key processes, we will complete further country risk and parameter assessments as well as a multiparty and multidisciplinary due diligences to ensure we have the necessary information to walk away from an investment if it does not make sense. We will also perform market layered integration processes from strategy to culture to systems to ensure that our investment remains as close to Exxaro's core as possible. All things considered, we have incorporated all our lessons and established a derisk framework. To ensure we remain focused in our target selection, we created a set of well-defined criteria that guides our assessments of targets. A qualified target for Exxaro will need to be sizable enough to contribute more than 20% of Exxaro's volume, measured on an equivalent unit of production basis with a life of mine greater than 10 years. The asset needs to be a key contributor to the annex of Exxaro, with returns needing to be WACC times 1.5 and contribute more than 30% of Exxaro core EBITDA by year 5. Furthermore, a qualified target will need to be close to our core with a key focus on open pits and/or bulk mining. We also want to ensure that the best ownership model for Exxaro is selected based on the level of technical fit with the target. And lastly, we aim to derisk our investment by investing in operational assets as well as balanced geographic risk with ease of doing business to ensure we have the best chance of success. In summary, we are focused and are aiming for the best reward to -- best risk to reward options out there. So when it comes to executing this framework, we are taking a phased and derisk approach to demonstrate one of our highly successful investments, I would like to use our Tronox purchase-based approach as a case study. In executing the first phase, we stayed close to our roots as a mining operator and we purchased a mining asset, which was a running asset. [indiscernible][indiscernible][indiscernible][indiscernible] And we purchased a mining asset, which was a running asset. These operating assets was the Ticor Limited a mineral joint venture with Tronox Western Australia. In the second phase, we nourished our roots. We were patient and measured and we created a deep and multilayered integration where we integrated skills of the culture, marketing and system of the 2 parties. We also established KZN Sands, a greenfield expansion and created Ticor South Africa. This helps us further develop our competency in mineral sands. Ultimately, our roots became stronger. As a result, we gained market and business knowledge, which we use as a stepping stone for further growth. So in Phase III, we established a global vertically integrated pigment producer through the purchase of Namakwa Sands and successfully integrated this into Tronox Limited. And we, along with our shareholders reaped the rewards as the Tronox sale generated over ZAR 9.7 billion in distributed shareholder value. So to increase our likelihood of success, we are targeting derisk returns. And here, we also review not just operational risks but ESG risk as well. So we don't want to make investments with the low chance of success. And we keep on reporting this but it's very important to us. So by targeting assets in the operational stage with proven value, we are actively derisking our returns by sticking to what we are good at. We buy assets, to optimize them with return value. These operational assets will typically have a life of mine of greater 10 years. However, given our operational strength as well as our proven ability to create value, we can access these opportunities that require last mile funding that is largely derisked from a discovery perspective. Our ambition does not stop there. Once Exxaro establishes its commodity -- sorry, its competence in the commodity, we will look at opportunities to expand our operational assets by focusing on assets across the life cycle, that present specific synergies to our existing operations. We believe we can develop these competencies to add value across the value chain, but we will remain patient and measured in doing so. So these 3 minerals play to the recipe that has made Exxaro successful in the past and today. We don't just want to stay close to our core because it's safe. We plan to capitalize off our core because we good at it. Subsequently, bauxite, manganese and copper have been productized to increase our likelihood of success given our ability to leverage our core competencies within each asset. With bauxite, there are parallel capabilities in the mining and logistics of bauxite and that of thermal coal that we can explore. That's why many bauxite producers are thermal coal producers, and we can see this in Rio Tinto. Regarding manganese, Exxaro is well positioned to leverage its bulk mining capabilities and experience in mining logistics. We have a history of this, even in the olden Eyesizwe days. Furthermore, Exxaro's strong balance sheet provide ability to enter this sector during low profitability and gain exposure to price upside making manganese a very attractive mineral to consider. And with copper, we have base metals experience through our stake in Black Mountain and we can leverage off our experience in zinc concentrate as well and the smelting thereof. Additionally, Exxaro's mining skills and logistics capability is proven and well suited to producing copper concentrate. So where does this lead us? And what are our next steps? So Exxaro has already begun engaging with the market and started preliminary due diligences on targets. Once target pass this phase, we aim to go through a rigorous due diligence process, much deeper and as far as technical, financial, ESG and commercial assessment. Of course, we are not afraid to say no once again to any asset, which does not pass our minimum threshold during these phases. And once targets pass our DD, we aim to move into acquisition and multi-layered integration. On Moranbah South, we have agreed with Anglo American as we've reported to you before, to complete our PFS to enable us to decide on our way forward. And we believe this should be around the second half of next year. So this is not a linear process. We remain open to the idea that new opportunities will arrive at different times. And we'll make sure we are ready to be in the driver seat once an opportunity presents itself. So now that we have gone through the next step for Exxaro, so what is the next steps for our shareholders? So to put it simply, your next step is to support us to create value for you. This strategy offers greater scale in geographic minerals and market diversity. In addition, we facilitate shareholders' investment in a cleaner future. Furthermore, we are offering strong growth prospects underpinned by strong fundamentals, enabled by derisk investment criteria. And I still want to repeat this. We understand the markets of these 3 minerals. Our market to resources worked for us very well in the past in terms of how we played with the product, and we have the capability to do the same for these minerals. So this is all underpinned by competent leadership of many years, driving operational excellence while applying responsible fiscal policies when it comes to capital allocation. In summary, our proposition is a simple one. We believe Exxaro minerals are at the very core to our diversification as a miner ourselves. That is why we want to build a minerals business with 50% of core EBITDA 10 years from now. We're also in the prefect position to do so. Our healthy balance sheet and ROCE sets us up perfectly to leverage up and take advantage of the opportunity in front of us. And we're not going in this blindly. We are going to take this opportunity through our in-depth knowledge of the market, as I've mentioned before. And our phase approach that is closely linked toward deep rooted competencies. We've done our homework, we've learnt our lessons, and we're ready to implement through our acquired skills. I thank you -- and over to you Mzila.

Thank you very much, Nombasa. I've got goose bumps sitting here. And following on from Roland's presentation, I think really an exciting future that is being presented here, not just about Exxaro, but I think about our stakeholders and particularly our shareholders and the country. We had perhaps at a natural point where we'll take a 5-minute leg stretch, bathroom break. And we are actually also doing very well in terms of time, and my clock shows me that we are exactly at 12:00. And perhaps after could do is take a 5-minute leg stretch until 5 minutes past 12, and then we'll come back and take this forward and listen to Riaan Koppeschaar as he takes us through his presentation, on how this ambition is going to be funded. There was several mentions of a strong balance sheet, and let's see if this balance sheet will be able to withstand this ambitious growth. So, ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you -- And let's make it 6 minutes plus 12, because I've just wasted another couple of seconds to. [Break]

Thank you very much, and welcome back. So we've heard from Mxolisi with the strategic overview where I think, he provided a great framework as far as what the strategy is about. Why we have actually embarked on the strategy, and I did say in my opening remarks that it's an integrated and well-considered strategy. And as strategies goes, one can have any strategy. But the bottom line is, what's in it for me as any shareholder, given the context of this discussion, would ask. And this is where Riaan's presentation will come in, in terms of giving you a sense of what other capital allocation decisions that will be supporting the strategy. Riaan, if I can hand over to you.

Thanks. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So taking into account the minerals and energy strategy, I will give you some insight on how we envisage applying the capital allocation process in the future. I will take you through our capital allocation framework, the potential sources of funding, how we intend allocating our free cash flow, the returns we're targeting as well as the investment process. On this slide, we look at the capital allocation framework. You will recall, we introduced this framework in 2018, but have now refined it following the substantial completion of the ZAR 17 billion coal expansion projects. And by doing this, ensuring that capital for growth in expansion is only allocated after paying our ordinary dividend. Also important to note, to the extent that we've got new investments in, for instance, minerals in future the associated stay in business capital will then in future, move into the sustaining capital bucket. Our sources of free cash flow. So that consists of the operational cash flow of the coal business and any future mineral and energy investments as well as dividends that we receive mainly from SIOC. From time to time, we also received proceeds from the disposal of noncore assets. And very important, we will continue to apply a robustness test on the coal assets, which I will highlight later on. So if you look at debt servicing, it's still our intention to maintain a strong balance sheet with our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, excluding project financing to be consistently below 1.5x cover. If we then look at -- coal remains an important strategic energy source. And in all our key markets over the short to medium term, it will still be very -- a key commodity. And therefore, we are committed to prudently maximize and sustain the value of our coal business through spending stay in business capital. So the next bucket, the dividend. That presents the minimum return to shareholders, you will foresee. You will recall, we revised the policy in 2018 passing the full SIOC dividend through to shareholders and applying a cover ratio of between 2.5 and 3.5x on the coal earnings. In 2021, we've revised the policy applying the cover ratio and how to group adjusted earnings. So then after dividends, we will then only look at growth and expansion. And in these buckets, obviously, new investments in energy and minerals will be included, targeting the minimum returns that we will come to later on. Then the last bucket is surplus cash. So to the extent that we don't have capital or growth opportunities that we can deploy the capital in -- there could potentially be dividends or share buyback to shareholders. If we look at the criteria for assessing the robustness of our coal portfolio. So also important, we use these criteria to decide whether we want to divest from noncore assets. So we look at, for instance, the position on the cost curve, EBITDA margins where we are targeting margins above 20% and also return on capital of above 20% and very important also in terms of our market to resource strategy, the product and market flexibility. So assessing the coal portfolio, we also have secondary criteria, including the life of mine, the payback period of investments and possible synergies with the rest of the business. And then lastly, also access to logistics, which is very pertinent taking into account our current TFR challenges. If we look at the Exxaro balance sheet, the sources of cash, we've got a strong balance sheet. And on this slide, we look at the liquidity position as well as our debt position. So on the left-hand side, you can see there we've got total available liquidity of ZAR 11.2 billion, consisting of a combination of term loans and also a medium-term note program that we've not fully drawn down as yet. In addition to these, we also have cash and cash equivalents of about ZAR 4 billion. On the right-hand side, we set out the debt profile, and we are pleased to report that we've refinanced our debt facilities at very favorable terms during the course of the year. In one of the backup slides, we also set out the maturity profile of synergies loans extending to 2031. If we look at the energy, Roland referred to project financing, I'm just going to give you a bit of insight what that may entail. So it is our intention to finance a big portion of the portfolio through limited recourse project finance as these assets are normally underpinned by long-term contractual cash flow with a high degree of cash flow predictability. If we look at the sources of funding that energy developers use you will see the cost of each solution increases down the list. So normally, large-cap developers effectively finance from their balance sheets and they make use of green or vanilla bonds. So no or little project finance is used at the project level. So this is normally the cheapest option and provides for the lowest cost of capital and provides an advantage in highly competitive large volume auctions, which we see in Europe and the United States. So developers producing projects at the medium to large end of the spectrum, that's normally 10-megawatt plus utilize non or limited recourse project financing at the project level. And then smaller projects in the commercial and industrial space, 1- to 5-megawatt normally cannot afford the cost of project financing. So they tend to equity finance with the intention of refinancing with portfolio debt at the later stage. New strategies or where timing is crucial, sometimes call for an all equity-funded approach at least in the early part of construction, and then you can always refinance with limited recourse term loans at the later stage. So Exxaro Energy, we look to utilize this full toolbox of funding, and matching the type of funding to the specific needs of the project. So very important stuff like bonds will only really be applicable once our strategy reaches a level of maturity with considerable cash flow generation. We also have a portfolio approach to our projects, which will diversify our risk base. We will typically require funding of between ZAR 150 million and ZAR 3 billion with the upper end project financeable and only the lower end requiring creative funding approaches. We've also seen during the recent years that the South African Bank sophistication have improved when it comes to structuring innovative solutions. Exxaro historically had strong cash flow generation. And here, we illustrate how we intend to allocate our cash flow in future. So in the indicative range column, the free cash flow includes the forecast cash generation from coal as well as new energy and minerals investments. So based on our internal projections, we expect debt servicing to be about 10% to 15% of the free cash flow, sustaining capital between 15% to 20%. Please note that this will also include sustaining capital associated with new investments. And then our ordinary dividend will be in the range of 30% to 40% comprising a pass-through of the SIOC dividend and applying our cover ratio of between 2.5 and 3.5x on adjusted group earnings then to coal new energy as well as minerals investments. Then on growth, the forecast is between 30% to 40% which will include new energy and minerals investments. So if you look at the numbers, they may not add up to 100% implying that there may be surplus cash available for special distributions to shareholders. If we look at the impact of our strategy on capital allocation. As pointed out, the coal business is still paramount. So we will continue with the early value strategy, ensuring we've got a robust coal portfolio with strong cash flow generation. We've now successfully exited the ECC investment and will continue with our disposal process of Leeuwpan. And to ensure the resilience of the coal business, we will continue spending stay in business capital, and we're targeting capital of between ZAR 2 billion to ZAR 2.5 billion per annum on average in real time. As part of the early value strategy, the GG6 expansion is now nearing completion, and the last capital will be spent in 2022. So on energy, as Roland pointed out, we're targeting additional capacity of 3,000 megawatts by 2030, with total capital deployment in the region according to our estimations of about ZAR 45 billion with approximately 1/3 of that equity contributions from Exxaro and 2/3 project financing, which could give us EBITDA of around ZAR 6 billion in real terms. And on this energy portfolio, we're looking at equity returns on a portfolio basis of 15%. So on the mineral side, the growth in the selected minerals will continue over the next 10 years, and we aim to achieve 50% of the Exxaro coal EBITDA in 10 years. So on this portfolio, we're looking at returns of our cost of capital 1.5x. When we look at our investments, SIOC, we will continue to explore ways to maximize the value of the investment. And with Black Mountain, as it remains noncore, we will be looking at the most efficient process to dispose of our investment. So to ensure we're able to deliver the foundation for all of this will be strong governance processes and thorough project methodology to evaluate, which I will discuss later on. A very important metric will be the cost of capital. And for us in decision-making, and we are currently reviewing the cost of capital for the minerals and energy business. But what we are very confident for the energy business, it will be substantially lower due to the higher gearing potential associated with project financing. Energy also has a lower EBITDA due to the higher predictability of cash flow, and we, therefore, expect the cost of capital for the energy business to be 3% to 5% lower compared to minerals. So on the energy front, as I pointed out, we're looking at equity IRRs of 15% on the portfolio as it is underpinned by long-term predictable cash flow and less volatile on a risk-adjusted basis. Minerals, we're targeting 1.5x WACC on the portfolio as we are looking at commodities with favorable supply-demand dynamics, and we are not looking to be exposed to high developmental risk. There also may be synergistic benefits associated with our coal business. However, we realized that the mineral business is a much more cyclical business with higher maintenance capital, therefore, warranting higher returns. It's also worth noting, especially on energy that returns are not the only metric we are considering as renewable companies are trading at substantially higher EBITDA multiples compared to minerals. And there are also societal returns and benefits like savings on carbon taxes and carbon reduction. In Exxaro, we've got a strict evaluation process for all our investments and projects. So all capital is allocated centrally. And we have a stage gate process through a delegation of authority, ensuring a robust review price is followed as we progress investments through the various stages. Reviews include both financial and technical reviews. Post-implementation reviews against the original investment proposal are also conducted to ensure our learnings are applied across the organization. A standardized evaluation process is in place for investments, simulating the impact in our financial models in terms of affordability, the returns, bank covenant testing as well as our internal target of net debt-to-EBITDA not exceeding 1.5x excluding project finance. This is done for the base case as well as various scenarios. Inputs like macroeconomic and price forecasts are developed centrally under finance and reviewed at least biannually. All projects are also evaluated independently from the sponsor. If we look at the group performance, this slide depicts our return on capital over recent years. You will recall that the ROCE is also one of the metrics in the long-term incentive scheme. Our target is 20%. And as you can see, as a result of the robust portfolio, we are exceeding the target. As we divest of the non-core coal assets, we foresee that the ratio will improve, especially on the coal portfolio in the future. Importantly, we don't think that return on capital will be an appropriate measure for energy. Therefore, the energy business will be measured on the return of equity of 15%, as I pointed out. However, in the medium term, we expect ROCE on the overall Exxaro portfolio to still exceed the 20% target. If we look at the dividend policy, as pointed out, we expect the dividend policy to remain the same in future. So on this graph, we depict dividends. We've paid historically as we progressed our policy to prioritize shareholder returns. We changed our policy from 2018 to pass through the full SIOC dividend to shareholders, resulting in the cover ratio improving substantially. From 2020, we've now also changed the policy and it is now not based on coal earnings anymore, but on group adjusted earnings. As a result of these changes, the overall cover ratio has improved from 2.9 to 1.3x cover. A detailed calculation is also included on the right, illustrating how this new policy is then applied to our earnings. The last block in the capital allocation framework is applying surplus cash either to special dividends or share buybacks. So from the proceeds of the Tronox divestment that Nombasa highlighted, we've returned more than ZAR 9.7 billion to shareholders since 2018. Part of that, we've also embarked on a share buyback program. And as of the end of June, we've repurchased shares to the value of ZAR 960 million. So in summary, we've now successfully concluded the ZAR 17 billion coal growth program on time and budget. We've got a very robust coal portfolio with high earnings potential, and we've made very good progress on the disposal of the noncore assets. Firstly, the monetization of Tronox, the disposal of ECC and also good progress on the disposal of Leeuwpan. And as I pointed out, we will be relaunching the Black Mountain process. We've implemented the revised capital allocation framework in 2018, prioritizing higher shareholder returns. We've got a robust process embedded to evaluate growth opportunities and also take into account the lessons that we've learned from the past. And as a result of that, we are confident that our dividend policy will remain unchanged. Thanks very much. Mzila?

Thank you. Thank you very much, Riaan. Really punchy, and you've done us very proud in terms of your time as well. Thank you very much. I think continuing from the previous presentation, a really exciting story from a financial performance perspective, and hopefully, something that shareholders will look forward to. So we will now move to Mxolisi to then give us his concluding remarks. And as he takes position, let me also let you know that what we'll do after he's concluded is take a lunch break of about 20 minutes. And then we will come back with -- and provide for questions and answers. And hopefully, that 20-minute break will give you time to reflect on even more questions that you can ask given what you would have heard. So Mxolisi, if you're ready, please continue.

Thank you very much, Mzila, and thanks very much to the team. Roland, Nombasa, Koppes for well-executed presentations. Now just to summarize what we have shared with you today, and add to what you see on this slide here are my key messages. Climate change is accelerating and imposing the demand to change and shift to new business models for a low carbon future. Therefore, our decision to change and shift is starting from a position of strength, which has provided options for low carbon growth and an ability to transition. We believe in the options we have created and choices we have made to create a business portfolio of the future, thus maximizing the value of the coal business, thus enabling the transition through creating a renewable energy business, to provide energy security and reduce emissions. Build on our minerals capability a diversified minerals business. Our approach to the transition will be responsible and accountable to our stakeholders, ensuring that we deliver financial value and empower people to create impact and create self-sustaining economic activity. Our impact strategy will ensure that communities that are dependent on coal are empowered for resilience and are able to transition as well. We do have a strong balance sheet and cash generative coal business, a strategy that builds off our core purpose and our core capabilities, and an executive and nonexecutive team that is fully aligned on the need to create a carbon resilient business that will create value over the long term. Our history and our purpose through our robust ESG framework will be at the heart of our governance and decision-making and we'll guide our transition within the context of our local and global realities. And so that -- with that, ladies and gentlemen, let me just take the opportunity to thank you all for spending your day with us. I do hope that you would have found it with your time to listen to our strategy. We look to the future with positive anticipation and conviction of our plans. And with that, we will then -- I will then now hand over to Mzila who will then just give us a bit of guidance as he has always done in terms of how we will proceed further with regard to the Q&A session and the closure of this session. Thank you very much. Over to you, Mzila.

Thank you, Mxolisi, for those concluding remarks and key messages. And perhaps if I could take a facilitator's liberty, and just give my own reflections from what I've seen now that we've come to the end of the presentations. And after the lunch, as I said, we will have an extensive amount of time to be able to go through these questions that have been put up on the webcast as well as questions that are waiting us on the Chorus call. So some of my key takeaways, despite being part of the executive team and participated in the development of the strategy, it's been a different experience sitting here and listening to the presentations in sequence. And so some key themes that have come out for me. The first one is that we see the certainty of climate change, but also have to accept the uncertainty of our future, if you look at how it has manifested itself. But the strategy, in my view, and from what I've heard, provide the sense of hopefulness, and particularly given its title of sustainable growth and impact strategy, a strategy which is starting from a strong base. There's a recognition of the size of the challenge or what I call the size of the task ahead of us, but the ambition that has been presented by the team strongly matches that. If you look at the balance sheet that has been presented, the skills and capability and perhaps what is not often seen and experienced or seen but -- what is often not seen but experience is the culture of the organization. And what we haven't spoken about, but we have made a remote reference to is land as a potential to be able to leverage for future social and societal benefit. What seems to be clear, Mxolisi, in terms of the strategy is that people are at the center of this transition. We could transition as a business, but what you will know is the brand. But it's about what's behind the brand in terms of the people of Exxaro and its stakeholders. And so all in all, what I'm seeing here is a strategy that is broad-based in terms of its impact. And therefore making Exxaro's reason for being impact at scale. And this -- it is about this integrated and deliberate strategy that will enable Exxaro to be able to have this impact at scale, leveraging off all its resources and capabilities. And then lastly, from a shareholder perspective, it's often said that ESG is a risk. And to a large extent, what I've heard here, we are aware of some of the material risks that we need to respond to as a company. We have developed thinking and strategy and some of those strategies will evolve and be shared with you in order to manage that risk. And if I were to describe these risks as a dark cloud over hanging Exxaro, the strategy that we've presented to deal with ESG risks. Certainly opens up blue skies for returns to shareholders and our stakeholders by applying our critical skills and capabilities. But I think it's also worth mentioning that it's not mere dealing of risks. It is a very response to these ESG issues that is providing societal solutions. And that is the essence of what I've heard from Exxaro's strategy today. And I'm not going to thank you as yet, because we still have some time together. But we have now come to 12:37, and I think that provides for a good 20 or so minutes for us to grab lunch. And we will come back at 1:00. So thank you very much for that, and we look forward to hearing -- to seeing you again at 1:00 when we go through our discussion and Q&A. [Break]

Thank you very much, and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. So hopefully, you had a good bite to eat and a break. And perhaps an opportunity just to reflect on the presentations and look forward to more of your questions coming through. So we're going to spend the next -- perhaps I'll say an hour going through the questions that we've received through the webcast. We also have an audience on the Chorus call. And on the occasion, I will invite them to pose their questions. And the questions are divided amongst broad strategy specific to energy and specific to minerals as well as some specific questions on the capital allocation. What I thought I would do is perhaps just as an icebreaker is just start off with the question that is -- the one question that has come up twice. And this is the question around SIOC, and I think it will be directed at you, Riaan, in terms of -- so where does this strategy play SIOC? What's going to happen to SIOC?

So one of the questions that I had a look at is whether SIOC is included in the EBITDA numbers. It's not. Remember, SIOC is not part of the EBITDA. But as we said in the past, we will always assess SIOC to see how we can enhance or optimize the value of our investment in SIOC and we will continue to do that.

Okay. Great. Hopefully, that then settles that question. And I will jump around between energy and minerals, just so that we keep it live, and then I'll also come to you, Mxolisi on some general comments. And if you wish to add to any of the responses that are provided, please feel free to do so. And maybe let me start off with the minerals because that's pretty fresh in our minds. And here's a question from your favorite analyst, Ms. Thabang Thlaku, from SGB. And she says, the minerals you have chosen are well positioned for the green economy. Have you identified potential geographies and assets for these? Let me read the questions. I'll come back. I'll give you a chance to respond. Would it be limited to mining? Or would you consider smelting and further beneficiation to capture a good portion of the value chain? And how do the developments in hydrogen steelmaking technology impact your view on Moranbah South? And I think you can start with anyone of those questions. And let me know if you want me to repeat them.

No. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Thabang. Very interesting question. In terms of geographies, we believe it's still too early since we're just going out testing our criteria with the different targets that we see on the market. So it's very difficult to give you an answer in this as far as the -- as far as the geographies are concerned. We, however, do have geographies which we have identified as no go. And those that are obviously I think the DRC being one of them. We said that we're really keeping an eye on Guinea. And we said that we will only make investments in that geography or area or country based on what we see from a risk perspective. So still very early. So on the hydrogen and Moranbah, where is Sammy? Sammy can talk to that. I think we need to comment.

Sammy, you can come and use this microphone behind. So maybe just introduce yourself and your role and then just respond to the question.

Hi, everyone. I'm Samantha Maharaj, working in coal, senior market analyst. So looking at the role of hydrogen and steelmaking technologies, we have done some work on this and we are aware, of course, the hybrid process that is being tested out in Sweden. Being in the pilot phase of test work and looking at a commercialization journey that only that will look at a time line of maybe over 20 years. There is significant technical challenges that will have to be overcome with this technology, and that's what's being tested in this space. But of course, it is a technology that does not use hard coking coal in the production of steel. But of course, one that needs to go through the paces in terms of testing and also the initial indications are that it is one of the more costly technologies in terms of producing steel. And it will also require green hydrogen. So in terms of that process, there is route to go in terms of proving that we can produce significant quantities of green hydrogen and be able to store that in terms of then producing your iron ore pellets and then producing your green steel via the EAF closes. But of course, that technology will not require hard coking coal, but still very much one that's in the pilot phase of testing and still a road down from commercialization.

Thank you very much, Sammy. So I guess the bottom line there is that it's a technology that we're watching. It's still in its early stages. And it's a field that we'll continue to observe as technologies evolve. And this is just one of many technologies that is being considered in terms of decarbonization. The other question was around whether it would be limited to mining or would we consider the rest of the value chain in terms of smelting and further beneficiation to capture a good portion of that value chain?

Very simple answer on this one is where we want to enter is a space of core competence, which is mining at this stage. And we do not rule out any diversification down -- if we feel that there is opportunities and we can build those capabilities. But for now, we enter on mining side.

Okay. And maybe one other question to deal with and to bench it is that you did speak in the presentation about lessons learned, particularly given our Mayoko experience. I think you actually specifically mentioned Mayoko. Is there anything else in addition to what you said in the presentation that you would like to add?

Yes. Thank you very much, [Motwana] will deal with the specific lessons.

So good afternoon, everyone. My name is [Motwana Mwais]. With regards to the question around Mayoko, you would have seen in the presentation that Nombasa gave that we spoke about the fact that we've got a clear investment criteria. That criteria is part of what we incorporated as a lessons learned from the Mayoko experience. Part of the lessons learned there was that there was no clear investment parameters on which the investment was pursued. So that's something that we have incorporated. The second lesson I think that's worth talking about is around country risk and lack of experience in doing deals. That's something that we are putting differently. We've also mentioned in the presentation that we will have a boots-on-the-ground approach and on the ground analysis in terms of the way that we do country risk analysis. But in addition to that, part of the approach we're taking now is leveraging partners in the way that we pursue countries, but also in the way that we pursue M&A in that space. The other thing that came up in the Mayoko lessons learned is the fact that there wasn't independence and objectivity. Or there was a lack of independence and objectivity in the way that the due diligence was done and the way that the inputs and assumptions that came along were treated. And part of the way that we are approaching the due diligence is to ensure that those who propose the investment and those that actually assess that investment. There's some independents and those are 2 different parties within the organizers to make sure that we have that independence and objectivity to vet inputs and assumptions that are included in the way that we assess the investment opportunity. And then there are other lessons, which I won't go through all the details, but we've incorporated. We've gone through all those lessons learned and incorporated a lot of that in the way that we are approaching this journey that we are on.

Thanks, [Motwana]. So that's reality check is always an important part of the step. Mxolisi, would you like to add anything to that?

No, that's fine.

Okay. Maybe if I can then go to Roland and just one simple question around is, I mean in terms of your mentioning of mining clients, somebody has asked a specific question if KIO is interested or you've had a discussion with KIO regarding renewal energy solutions. I think they're part of the family, I guess, maybe would be -- could talk about it.

I think it's -- I think I can say every miner is a potential client, but I'm not sure we're in a position to talk about specific opportunities and discussions we're having at the moment, unfortunately.

No, I think that's a fair response. There were quite a few questions around the wheeling if maybe we can go into those. And one of them is, what are some of the preliminary risk management processes that we have considered to mitigate some of the wheeling risks. And at what wheeling charge does it become unprofitable for Exxaro to transport it just to the buyer's location and the implication of that for the overall renewable business?

I'm glad you asked a simple question first, gave my brain a bit of time to warm up. But -- so risk management for wheeling, I think the first point to make is that it does add extra risk. So a lot of the solutions, and I think on Slide 20, when I talked about our pipeline, I was talking about opportunities or solutions that we could enact more quickly. And those are typically solutions that don't involve wheeling because of the risks of wheeling. The wheeling regime has really got to develop a little bit until the country really opens up for massive wheeling opportunity. And so most of the opportunities that we're focused on at the moment are on-site opportunities with a Phase II potentially of wheeling, unless a customer particularly requests or requires wheeling for a particular reason. Now I did mention that for Belfast, we were looking at wheeling as opposed to an on-site solution, but we were also looking at the on-site solution and try to manage ways in which we could bring down the cost. So the risk management approach to wheeling, I mean it's -- in the current environment, it's a difficult one, and it's really -- it's a cost question and who bears the risk of the cost of potential outages of the transmission. It's out of your control. So there's not a lot you can do other than factor it into the model and whether the off taker bears the cost or the generator bears the cost. And then -- sorry, the second?

And maybe I'll come back to the second one, there's a related question in terms of the impact of the expected investment in the grid on the wheeling charges. Could that have an impact on the returns?

Yes. So I mean the grid investment is typically the Eskom domain. Obviously, we will invest in short lengths of potential transmission or distribution to clients. But the network in general falls under Eskom's purview. So it's not just about investment in the system, in the network in the physical infrastructure itself. It's about investing in how that network is managed. It's a system overview of how that network is managed, particularly when wheeling becomes more prevalent. Because obviously, if you've got electrons flowing, turning on and off at different times, different customers requiring different types of solutions, it becomes a challenging environment in which the system operator has to operate. So these are some of the things that need to mature. It doesn't need to be a lot of maturity but need to mature in order to enable wheeling to really be a fundamental game changer of South Africa. But I think the other question was about at what point does the cost of wheeling...

Profitable.

Yes. So hopefully, all my answers aren't being seen as evading the question, but it really is a -- it depends. It depends on the point of origin and the point of delivery. So we've done a lot of modeling of effectively the whole system depends on the voltages of the lines. It depends on what you're adding into the system, what you're taking from the system, and it depends on where you are at each point as well. So there's a calculation for each of these variables. And so it's obviously a project-specific or customer specific. So it's not necessarily about one figure that makes a project uneconomical. It's about -- or makes the system uneconomical. It's about looking at the best location for a wheeled solution that brings down -- that minimizes the wheeling cost, but also minimizes the cost of the production of that electricity. And the 2 may not go together, so you may not get the optimal site for the production of electricity that coexists with the lowest cost of wheeling. So again, it's -- there's multiple dynamics involved that you have to solve. And I think this is one of the things that I was trying to highlight in that, whenever we're talking, whenever we're sitting down with a customer, and we're looking at on-site solutions, whether it's wind or solar, rarely wind on-site, wheeled solutions or whether we're providing to multiple -- potentially providing to multiple customers. We have to look at all of these variables to make sure that we have -- we scenario plan for the right outcome. So it's not one figure, it's project or is project-specific.

And maybe before I move over to the Chorus Call questions coming out of that response is this question around the extent to which wheeling or any other constraints could hamper your growth strategy?

Well, wheeling isn't -- we're not basing our growth strategy on wheeling. And as I said, we've -- a lot of the certainly, the initial projects that we're proposing, I think the -- I think it was Slide 20, where we had an example of some of the pipelines, and I talked about the immediate projects that can be delivered quickly, much like we're doing a Lephalale Solar Project, where we could -- we know we can implement a project quickly on-site. And we know that, that will bring quick cost reductions and carbon footprint reductions to the customer. And then potentially wheeling is the next solution. So we're not reliant on wheeling for our strategy. And I also talked about the risk of being exposed to a single market in a regulated environment. And this is precisely the kind of risk that I'm talking about. If we were reliant on wheeling to fulfill our strategy of 3 gigawatts in the next 9 years, by the end of the decade, then we'd be placing our phasing changes in the system. But we know we're not solely focused on South Africa, so we're going to give ourselves the opportunity to go into other markets where we can diversify and effectively allow that wheeling regimen to mature.

Great. Thank you very much. So I believe we've got some questions on Chorus Call.

The first question comes from Tim Clark of SBG Securities.

Congratulations. Thanks for outlining the strategy in quite a lot of detail, not just for renewables, which I think we expected, but also for minerals, which was pleasing. If I look at deals, and clearly, you're looking at a number of deals across both of those buckets, they take a long time and they're lumpy. So the question is -- there are 2 questions that come out of that. Firstly, Nombasa, just to sort of bite the hook that you put out there, which deals have you walked away from or what's your experience of walking away? But then secondly, if you're looking at -- I mean, I just did some very basic math on 20% of your copper equivalent volumes. I don't know it looked like a 90,000-tonne copper mine equivalent. It's a significant investment. So that's going to be quite lumpy, and it could take a long time to do. Does that mean that we should expect Exxaro maybe it's a real question and to build quite a significant war chest for lumpy deals that could come over the next 9 to 10 years?

Yes. Thank you very much. Whilst I call Marius to talk to that last question. Tim, you will recall that we were interested in South32 assets. And why we walked away, of course, because those assets just did not fit our investment criteria, so I will leave it at that. Are you happy that I have confirmed that?

All right.

Okay. Thank you. Marius?

Tim, yes, certainly, in terms of sort of deal size, you have rightfully sort of acknowledged that it's potentially lumpy. Having said that though, we've looked at the market carefully. And because of the fact that we've got more than one commodity that we are focusing on, there are some opportunities within those commodities that are not necessarily that lumpy, that fulfill our investment criteria, and that would be accretive from Exxaro perspective. So the intention is not necessarily to wait for the sort of lumpy opportunities. But to scale sort of very positive and sustained sort of manner in terms of building that business because we've got long-term and sort of medium-term targets in terms of the contribution that those businesses will make to the bigger Exxaro.

Thanks, Marius. Any other questions from Chorus Call?

Yes. Perhaps I can answer...

So maybe before you come back, Riaan, just wanted to add.

Look, so I don't think it's our intention to now hold cash for the next 9 or 10 years. Part of our strategy will be to opportunities. And as we pointed out to the extent that there are not opportunities, then we've got surplus cash. So I don't think the intention is to sit on cash now for 9 or 10 years. If there's an opportunities, we look to deploy surplus cash in the group.

We can take the next question from Chorus Call.

The next question comes from Brian Morgan of RMB Morgan Stanley.

Just if I may ask on copper, or potential copper acquisition that you spoke about. You're dealing with a higher cost of capital in South Africa, and it's made even higher by the fact that Exxaro is a coal producer. And so it's much higher than BHP's cost of capital and Rio Tinto and they're both in the market for copper assets and have been buying copper assets for the last 12 months. And their -- and copper is incredibly popular out there, everybody wants the copper assets. How do you compete with your high cost of capital against somebody who is paying with high currency?

Thanks, Brian, for that question.

Brian, indeed, it is a congested market as far as copper assets are concerned. But there are also opportunities in the copper space. As you would have seen, the market is relatively fragmented, and there is a broad range of assets in different sort of phases of development. I think we are very well suited given our balance sheet strength and our core mining capabilities to look at assets in that sort of Tier 2 sector, where the majors and some of the other players are not necessarily sort of focusing their attention. And there are definitely assets there that we see that comply with our investment criteria and that provide opportunities for us to do value-accretive transactions.

Thanks, Marius. And there's one other question before you walk away. And this is from Gavin Rabbolini. Great to see you on board, Gavin. And he relates to the Gravenhage manganese asset, is it Gravenhage, okay. Which was bought by Afrimat. And it sounded like it could have been a great fit in terms of the criteria that we've given. And wants to know if we did participate? If not, why not?

Yes. So Gavin, indeed, it was one of the ones that we had a very quick look at. But you would have seen in terms of our investment criteria, and our focus on sort of assets that are in that last mile of development or last mile of funding or operational and the Gravenhage asset is a greenfield brownfield development and therefore, did not fit our criteria in terms of our investment process.

Thank you. Thanks, Marius. And maybe numbers have come back to you. And this will not be a surprising question. And Shauaib said, the best acquisitions in the industry recently has been in the coal space, with the majors disposing assets with very little sensitivity to price. Why not grow your coal portfolio further and add with lower execution risk versus new commodities?

Thank you, Shauaib, for the question. And this is the question we've been really addressing quite a lot. And yearly, we always evaluate the risks that are facing the coal business, and you would probably remember, since about 2017, we've acknowledged the fact that climate change is really posing a significant risk to this business. And we have to really look at our coal business differently and strategically. And when we did an assessment of -- and unfortunately, you know the markets very well, where we think the growth is going to be and what kind of product we -- that sort of led us to really look to our assets differently in terms of what we believe is going to be required and what we think the so-called cold runway is going to be. And we said, look, every year, the so-called runway changes in short terms. Because as you would know from the markets that we've been targeting with our coal portfolio, the programs aligned or that are targeting coal-fired power stations has completely changed. The commitments of Southeast Asian countries has changed. We've seen that some of those power stations have not even been approved or they have been changed or even stopped. And we then came back and said just acquiring more coal assets, more of the same, we'd rather look at the assets we have and say, how do we best service the market with the assets we have, and we've found that we had enough coal on the ground. We have a lot of RB1 material in our operations. We've got a new RB1 mine in Belfast, as you know, that we can really use as defense for as long as coal is still utilized in these markets. So that's where our innovative strategy was born to really prioritize high value, looking at robust assets that can give us volumes of RB1 material. And some RB3 material obviously to play in the Indian market. And I think we've got enough of it given our intelligence of what we think the stretch of the coal runway is looking like. And we think that we'll be able service the escrow market for our long-term contracts that we have in the Waterberg, no issues there. So we don't need more of that. And with the RB1 and RB3 between our Belfast mine and also with GG and Mafube, we think that we have enough I'm not wanting to really go and get more of the coal assets.

Thank you very much. Very detailed response. And maybe a strategic question, which, Mxolisi, you may respond or anyone on the platform. And it's from [ Kateko ]. And she says, what are the risks of Exxaro becoming a pure energy business with a declining coal contribution as clean energy grows? Is the copper, manganese and bauxite space not becoming crowded, competing with already capitalized projects. But maybe it's a 2-part question. First 1 around energy.

Thank you very much, Mzila. I think both myself and probably also, Koppes, try to give an overview highlight of what we see the portfolio of this business looking like by 2030. And to that extent, it showed 3 areas of focus, which we see are going to be very strong, which we see are going to really balance the portfolio in a manner that we are able to diversify in terms of those returns, whereby coal still plays a very, very critical part of that. But we also see a big contribution that's going to diversify those earnings in renewable energy and also on the mining side. So we do not see a business which will just ultimately become adjusted renewable energy business. Obviously, way down the future, once each of these businesses become -- or these areas of focus become very strong, it is foreseeable later on once the portfolio for renewable is strong enough that it can actually stand on its own to be able to raise its own type of capital that talks to a particular investment focus -- investor focus could actually stand on its own. But it will have to actually gain a lot of traction, not only in terms of proving its ability to be able to have a robust renewable energy portfolio, but also the capabilities that we have to be building over the time and also the geographic representation with a good pipeline to enable a situation like that where you could possibly in the future list it separately, but are still way long along the line. So as it is right now, as we've presented today for 2030, we're going to have this balanced portfolio between these 3 focus areas.

Thank you. Carry on Nombasa.

Yes, I mean -- look, I think if you look at what we've said, we've done our homework in terms of looking at the markets of the 3 commodities. And we mentioned what we think the demand is going to be in the long term. And there's a lot of demand. So looking at investments going into new projects in those different spaces, we don't see much of that. And I think that's where we see opportunities. And we ask ourselves, given the skills that we have of mining and the opportunities that we see in the value chain, especially if we come into the bulk mining side of things, we think that there are still a lot of opportunities there, because there's a lot of scope. I mean, lots of copper that we're going to require by 2050. Where is going to come from if we don't join this group of miners who actually are contributing to this cleaner world. So I think the line to our ambition in terms of what we think we can do from an EBITDA point of view, it's aligned with our competences. From what we see from the market, Marius will tell you that we do see opportunities already. Obviously, they've got to be in line with the criteria at the end of the day, but we really don't see the crowded space.

And their ability to compete with those already capitalized projects as well.

And I think another very important aspect that about this criteria being a really focal point for decision-making process is that we have seen and been presented even on the renewable energy side, which Roland could probably talk about, where there were opportunities where we walked away because they didn't meet our criteria. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about that because it's not that fact that you know we have not seen opportunities and we've not been presented opportunities. But based on a very robust set of criteria, maybe, Roland, you can talk a little bit without probably mentioning names, but just highlight what made you walk away in some of those instances?

I'm definitely not going to mention names, but -- yes. So we drew up, as Mxolisi said, a robust set of investment criteria that really guide us in terms of what we're looking at and in terms of what we can do. And so we've looked at opportunities that -- the investment criteria, obviously, financial in nature, but size, concentration limits, thresholds in terms of size and maximum. So various investment criteria, and we've looked at some opportunities. We're continuously looking at opportunities. But we've got close to some opportunities, one in particular, where we felt it could add additionality to synergy services, and we decided that it was, a, too small and, b, it was in a particular sector of the market where we wouldn't have sufficient pricing power. And then another opportunity we looked at -- we looked at -- we spoke with everyone in terms of REIPPPP Bid Window 5. And again, we screened the -- not just the opportunities individually, but the opportunity overall according to our investment criteria. And turned down some opportunities to invest alongside some people who were bidding in to REIPPPP Bid Window 5 or walked away from opportunities that we could have negotiated further because we decided that, that particular bid window didn't meet our investment criteria. So I think even at this early stage, we're trying to be disciplined in the way that we approach the opportunities that present themselves to us and we find.

Thanks, Roland. And maybe whilst I have you then on the floor just to go back to some of the questions around the Energy business. And the first one around the types of services that you envisage the services business to specialize on, maybe to elaborate on that?

So synergy services at the moment is an asset manager for us internally. It manages our assets. And that's the offering that it's going to bring to the market. Now the asset management business, I mean, I think I talked about it when I talked about our positioning in South Africa in terms of services, we're well positioned across 2 dimensions effectively where we're local, obviously, we're empowered, but we also manage both types of technology, wind and solar and a significant number of assets. We have an asset base of 11. So synergy is particularly well positioned to enter that space in South Africa to offer to third parties. And when we go abroad synergy services will follow us there. But in terms of other services, it's a little bit too early to tell, but there are -- synergy services as an asset manager can move slightly horizontally into different services that will complement what it does at the moment. But for the first step, we thought were a little bit too high risk for them. They've been managing our assets, operational assets for 5 years now. And so that was the place where we wanted to start, and then we'll expand on the services as that momentum grows.

Okay. Great. And then here is an interesting question from Campbell. Just looking ahead to 2030 in terms of your plans, do you have an outlook of the split between solar PV and wind? And do you have a sense of what the capital intensity is based on megawatts for each one of those in the South African context?

So the last part of the question is the easier one. The rule of thumb is, it's a hard currency-based asset class, so it's $1 million per megawatt for both of them, give or take. I mean there's some variance and it depends on the scale -- $1 million converted into rand, yes. So that's how we work off and that's how contracts tend to be worked. They tend to be converted at a tariff -- sorry, I converted at an exchange rate. In terms of the split, 9 years from now, yes, I'm not sure. I mean I think -- we have -- our biggest asset class now is wind. And wind is an asset class that's slightly more complicated. And obviously, you add additional complexity when you go offshore for wind, which is sort of the next step for countries when they reach the limits of their onshore parameters. So I'd like to think that we'd have a significant component of wind because it is a little less competitive than the solar environment. But to be frank, I think in 9 years' time, they'll be different -- slightly different asset classes, not least battery storage that we talked about and maybe different types of battery storage. So in terms of the split, it's a little difficult to say, but -- yes.

And early on, we discussed the concept that's been raised around crowdedness in the mineral sector. It's coming up again on the renewable energy side. And given that the question is it will be a competitive market. What makes Exxaro more competitive than other players in this environment? And how will we diversify from Eskom as a customer, particularly given that they're a big customer on the coal side? And obviously, being a monopoly, if I can use that word, excuse me, from an off-taker perspective, they're the buyer of the renewable electricity as well.

Yes. So I'll answer the last question first again. So if I understand that question correctly, we're supplying renewable energy to ourselves and Exxaro is obviously supplying Eskom with coal, and I think that's the question. So yes, we've got, in Phase I, 93 megawatts for ourselves. Our target is 3 gigawatts. So the simple answer there is that there's 2,903 megawatts of diversification there, I suppose. But in the South African context and as we're building the opportunity set, we're looking to provide solutions on a distributed generation level, which is where we see our competitive advantage, which was part of the question to initially and particularly other miners, and they're obviously not all coal miners. So that in itself provides diversification, but we're going to be going abroad. We're not -- it's not just about supplying coal mines. It's not just about supplying ourselves. It's about building a diversified portfolio expressly to avoid that kind of concentration risk.

Okay. [ Are there any advantage ]?

Yes, I answer it a little bit, but -- so we have our 3 pillars. And again, the reason we have 3 pillars and not a single pillar is because we want to have the ability to grow in 3 areas. In distributed generation, in particular, I mean, we had a video on it. We really think in the mining market, and it's not so much a cost of capital play in the distributed generation sector. It's about solutions, certainly at the large scale where we want to operate. We have a significant competitive advantage as a miner and as a renewable energy provider. We go into conversations, understanding the other side of the table. And I know we've been told by other miners that we've had conversations with that they don't get those kinds of approaches too often. We also go with a solution to potential mining customers using our raw data and our knowledge of the mining sector, which, again, is not often provided by pure-play renewable developers. So in the distributed space, that's why we're trying to build that platform and that brand in South Africa, particularly looking at miners, not just miners, but large industrial players but particularly miners that we can take -- then take into other markets that have similarly large mining markets that we can leverage our networks in South Africa for, and we can also build on our brand into other markets. In the utility space, it's not so much about a competitive advantage. It is a cost of capital play and it's a risk-reward play, which is why we've been very careful about where we go for the utility spectrum of our business. And we'll be looking at markets that fulfill our risk-adjusted return requirements, and we get a good risk reward.

Okay. I'm going to give you a break now, but I'm going to come back to you. I don't know if we have any questions from Chorus Call?

The next question comes from Shilan Modi of HSBC.

I've got -- even though you did clarify your capital allocation framework, I've got further questions on that. So I'm trying to understand how do you decide on the -- so when you're looking at capital that's allocated to these projects, how do you decide on which projects to allocate capital to? And I'm asking -- so when you compare minerals versus renewables, if you have the same size type of acquisition or project, and they both meet all of your investment criteria and assuming you can only go -- proceed with one, how do you choose between the 2? And then also just on the mineral side, if you -- again, if you have the same investment criteria for all 3 bauxite, copper and manganese, same investment size, how do you pick between the 3? I'm just trying to get an idea of where you guys had that? And how do you -- what's the likelihood of proceeding in a certain direction?

So it's a bit around that prioritization, given the options.

So as Roland...

Carry on.

So it is also looking at the risk-adjusted returns. As we pointed out, in certain instances, the energy investments may be on a risk-adjusted basis preferred. But I also think to be realistic in many occasions, for instance, on the mineral side, it's opportunity based. I don't think there's a constant pipeline of projects going to hit your table every day that you have to say, okay, this one, I want to make an investment, and this one, I want to decline. So I think probably on the energy side, it will be a lot more frequent, smaller investments, whereas on the mineral side, as pointed out, it will be -- if we do something, a larger type of acquisition. But definitely, looking at the risk and then secondly, also fulfilling your criteria of diversify. Also taking into account the previous question, we don't want a situation where there were opportunities in the mineral space, but we allocated all the capital to energy. So it's getting that balance right.

And then I think maybe whilst I have you on the floor, Riaan, there's a question here I'm getting from [ Kateko ]. In your presentation, you gave a detailed discussion of the financing of energy. And she's just asking a question with whit in relation to the minerals in terms of how likely the financing of the -- of acquisitive growth is going to work out for minerals?

So for minerals at this point in time, it will be largely from your own generated cash flow and then to some extent, you may use debt facilities. I think the energy discussion why we specifically focused on debt financing is just to highlight the opportunities associated with project financing, which is I don't think that pertinent in the mineral side of the business.

And whilst on the minerals, are you able to share the long-term prices that you assumed for each of the mineral commodities?

So let's just talk to that.

So we'll ask...

With bauxite, copper and manganese, we start with [ Buceso ] on copper.

Thank you, Nombasa. On copper side, we do see on a real terms, long term are around $3.25 per pound, and we're looking really about $725 per tonne. And that's really driven by the energy transition, the supply gap that we see in the midterm to long term. And as the world goes green, so the copper prices looking really, or the copper market is looking quite bright. So those are the sort of prices that we see for copper.

And Ling-Ling will take us through the bauxite price outlook.

My name is Ling-Ling. I'm an analyst in Minerals. On the bauxite side of things, what we do understand is that, there will be a very long-term supply deficit. And with that, a very stable pricing environment. So what we are looking at is a bauxite price of $46 per tonne in real terms. And what we also have noticed is that as the aluminum price fluctuates with short-term volatility, there will be a long-term sort of deficit in terms of the aluminum and bauxite minus due to the long-term underinvestment in bauxite. The bauxite minus tend to gain from the upside in the aluminum price. Thank you.

And then lastly...

Manganese.

On the manganese side...

Can you get close to the mic.

A bit louder, yes.

Is it better now?

Yes. Okay.

On the manganese side, in terms of long-term forecast, we are looking at a price increase. So on the higher grade, we're looking at above $6 for the MTU. And then in terms of 36 to 38 the same manganese grade, we're looking at just below $6. The graph is also provided in the pack. And what's really driving those prices is the demand that comes from the steel sector. So in the long term that demand is expected to increase, and we are expecting a supply deficit that will drive those prices higher.

We have a few questions remaining, which, if there are no other questions on the Chorus Call, we'll take us to the close. And I want to finish off with a brief discussion on the capital allocation. But before I get there's some questions for Roland, on the Energy business. And the first one is around the typical margins for the distributed generation business because in the new presentation, you made reference to that business being characterized by higher margins. And let me let you finish the response to that, and then I'll come back to the second question.

I think in the presentation, you said that the asset-based business is a return on capital businesses. So we don't actually really look at the margins in these businesses, they're typified by long-term contracts. So it's more about the cash generation, the IRRs that you can predict from the long-term contractual nature of the cash streams. But if we look -- if we take the synergy -- current synergy assets as an example, the EBITDA margin there is about 80%, but it's not a driver for an investment decision.

Okay. And I think a related question from [ Rowan Goller ], where he asks if you can give a sense of the IRR for a self-developed project compared to an acquired project? And if you were able to achieve your IRR goal on the acquisition -- acquisitive growth alone?

So we've -- the 3 pillars, again, are there for us to provide a blended IRR. And if you read between the lines of what I've said in the presentation, the utility generation projects will, obviously, provide -- if you are looking at a spectrum of returns, the lower end of the spectrum, the bespoke solutions, the self-generation projects will be in the midrange and the services provide -- the capital-light businesses provide the highest returns, the highest margin. So margins with the highest returns. So those 3 pillars are there for a reason to enable us to deliver on a 15% portfolio IRR with different risk expectations for different types of businesses that we enter into. And then the question on, can we fulfill our aspirations with acquisitions alone? And I think that's -- I wouldn't say it's a certain no, but it's a pretty hard no. And obviously, if you're if you're buying into a developed project, you're expected to pay a higher price and get a lower return than if you develop it yourself. So the acquisition side of our strategy is really to enable us to enter new markets in a derisked way. And what I mean by that is by acquiring a platform that has a team with assets that are either generating cash flow or close to generating cash flow and a pipeline of opportunities so that you know that you're buying into a platform that is going to create value because it has created value in the past and you believe in the pipeline. So the acquisition itself is really for the market entry and the pipeline that it brings.

So I guess that talks to Roland's other question, which was around your risk appetite in the whole development process. Was that the response? Or is there anything else you would want to add to it?

So yes, I saw that question. So we've developed 11 projects that I spoke about, and we have 3 under development. So 14 projects that we will have developed from start to finish ourselves. So I think that answers the question that we're happy to be developing projects.

Okay. Thanks. And then I'm going to come back to you on the mineral side, and this is not getting into logistics. And I think we expected this question given our experience on the coal side. And to what extent does the diversification strategy take into account the possibility that TFR constraints may remain in place longer than expected, given that they play in the manganese sector as well? And maybe you can talk to the extent to which we have plans to avert the potential impact of TFR issues.

The beauty of sitting here and the people actually working with this stuff. And we're looking at one of them. I'm thinking to that answer or should he answer, and I think he needs to answer that, too.

Yes, maybe while he was...

When I'm with the analysts one-on-one, I answer all these questions, I think, that he must answer.

So Sakkie Swanepoel will contribute to that response, and Sakkie is responsible for logistics and marketing.

Thank you, Mzila. Yes. I think a lot of experience with transmit over the years, and we do understand it's a big beast that sometimes has its own way. We are battling really currently in coal and not just in coal, in [indiscernible], iron ore, in manganese. I think if we're going to start to believe that the TFR we know today is going to be the TFR of forever, we might just as well close shop in South Africa. So I think we truly believe that we will work through the issues that we do experience today. And also that the engagement between TFR and industry will render new operating models, new commercial models, even new ownership models. Coming -- putting that thing back to the manganese space, I think, it is already very clear in the manganese space with the development between the Transnet and industry, both in moving the current capacity out of [indiscernible] and ramping up in [indiscernible] to 16 million tonnes. But at the same time, even in [indiscernible], pushing back to the 6 million tonnes. I think that process is even further underway than, for example, in coal. And therefore, yes, our future considerations of any asset in that space, we'll have to definitely take account of that. I think you will really not do your due diligence properly if you don't do that. But we must also just look beyond the issues of today and look as to what are the strategic process as a foot to bring us to a better upcoming future.

Thank you very much. Happy with that. Okay. Any questions from Chorus Call?

Yes, sir. We have a follow-up question from Brian Morgan of RMB Morgan Stanley.

Maybe a question for Roland. You spoke about some regulatory issues with regards to licensing 100 to -- up to 100-megawatt projects. Could you just run us through what the challenges are there?

So the increase in the threshold from 1 megawatts to 100 megawatts is actually -- is a positive thing because it means anything beneath 100 megawatts doesn't need to be licensed, which for our own projects is a big boom. But they still need to be approved by the regulatory authority. And that process is very close to a licensing process. It's just a licensing process takes an extra -- a couple of months or so. So the regulatory process [indiscernible] and has stated this quite publicly that it's -- the DMRE has announced this licensing threshold increase, but it's not just DMRE that the project has to deal with -- has to deal with [indiscernible] has to get its environmental approvals. And [indiscernible] itself has stated very publicly that it's looking to streamline its permitting process and its licensing process effect with the ultimate goal of being able to do it online to shorten that process considerably. So I think the point I was making in the presentation is that the step-up from 1 to 100 megawatts is a huge statement of intent. And the other departments are following suit to try and make sure that the private sector will have a smoother process as possible to get projects permitted on a private to private basis.

Thanks, Roland. Quite encouraging actually to see how government is coming together to have that whole process. And I have a question on the energy side, and this looks like the last question from energy, you'll be happy to know. And it's from [indiscernible]. He says, for synergy on the 3-gigawatt generation target by 2030, is this a base case? It's the target. That's what you said, right?

Yes. Yes. So it's 3 gigawatts net potentially up to 3 to 6 gigawatts growth. So yes, we're aiming to have 3 gigawatts of -- to have invested in 3 gigawatts of additional supply by 2030.

Okay. And I think your previous response around the regulatory challenges answer his question of your confidence in achieving this target given the regulatory challenges. Okay. And then the last 2 questions. And the second to last one is around for yourself [indiscernible], in terms of what is the maximum amount in rand billions? Do you see Exxaro looking to spend in terms of any acquisition? And is it a measure that you would calculate in terms of percentage of our current market cap? Or what will be that metric?

Look, so remember, what we said is the specific target for minerals and also for energy. So as Roland also pointed out on the energy side, it is going to be smaller type of investments. I even mentioned in the presentation, projects in the range of ZAR 150 million, it could be up to ZAR 3 billion. So definitely smaller on the energy space. And then on the minerals space, it's going to be more expensive because by the very nature of it, if you want to buy a manganese or a copper mine, it's going to require more capital. So obviously, it will depend on what you pay on a multiple basis, what -- where you are in the cycle. But as we also pointed out, we're looking not to do category 1 transactions. It's category 2 smaller...

In terms of the JSE...

Yes. JSE requirements.

Okay. So if I may just add to that from an energy perspective. So there's really 2 types of investment for us. As [indiscernible] said, there's -- our investment in the projects that we organically developed and that's quite predictable. When you start to project what the time lines are going to be and what the eventual cost of the project is going to be at financial close. But we will also potentially have lumpy investments from an M&A perspective. And that speaks to the same answer that [indiscernible] were saying for minerals.

Great. Thanks [indiscernible] for adding that. And I think I have actually covered all the questions that we've received here on the webcast. Any questions on Chorus Call before this last question here?

No, sir. We have no further questions on the lines.

All right. And so this last question I've left it for last because it's around governance and it covers some key themes that have come through in the presentations around M&A, the lessons from Mayoko. And [ Shoaib ] has gone and dug up his archives to look at what we said at the time of investing in Mayoko. And his conclusion is that it sounds like it was a governance failure from the response which we gave in the previous question. And maybe it's a repeat, but perhaps it's worth repeating what would have said before in terms of what changes have we made to our approval process to ensure greater robustness in the future.

So I think the -- what we pointed out earlier is the project is being evaluated independently from the sponsor. So it's not the project sponsor presenting the project to the various approval authorities in the organization. There's an independent team looking at it and then independent due diligences from a technical financial perspective. And also a stage gate process.

And I think we've also really revisited our investment criteria.

Clearly.

We really have a balanced set of criteria that looks at risk and another one looks more at commercial opportunities, better than we've done in the past.

Yes. Now I think there was an extensive highlight from both presentations like that. And internally, for those who don't, we coined an expression that I suppose every mining company has had its Mayoko moment. And we've learned from those moments and you speak -- that refers to those days of market exuberance, you'll recall. So we've come to the end of our session and -- oh, sorry, Mxolisi.

I would just like to make probably closing comments before you sign off, Mzila.

Sure.

And I think the one aspect that probably was not focused on probably any of the questions is around the impact side of our strategy. This really talks to the whole notion and the whole conversation around our just transition as a country. It also talked to me just transition as a company, and it also talks to our purpose statement of powering better lives. It is an area which I think all of us as major CEOs from all sectors, whether you're talking mining, retail. If you are looking at and listening to the conversation that is taking place, whether it's in BLSA, whether you're talking about Boson, is around the fact that as we are responding as a country and as businesses to issues of climate change and the need to also transition to a greener economy into the future, it cannot be done at the exclusion of taking everyone along that. We have seen 6 weeks, 7 weeks ago, what has happened in this country as a consequence of not really paying serious attention to the real needs of the people on the ground. And we see now the cost of that to the economy, how that has regressed our growth, how it has contributed even further to higher unemployment rates and the fact that it has really become a destabilizing effect, which makes the country not sustainable from an investment point of view, which makes our businesses not sustainable if we don't address this. And so therefore, it is a call on us, all of us in terms of how are we going to, as we move forward as a country, as we move forward this business and broader society, to understand that the high levels of new inequality, the high levels of unemployment, the high levels of poverty, if left, not addressed are going to be the biggest risk of all of us, not only just in business. So it is something that we're going to have to really understand that how we're going to need to work together collectively. And that's what we are trying to look at how we can really deal with this socioeconomic challenges of this country in an impactful way. But you have to partner and work with others in terms of collaborating around addressing these issues. It is not a cost but it is in itself a risk mitigant for all of us. So I just want us to understand that not doing it is probably the biggest risk and the biggest cost is going to challenge us with going into the future. So I just wanted us to understand that because there's going to be more and more conversation from a country point of view and also from a business point of view in terms of how we're going to collectively have to deal with this high unsustainable way of going into the future if we don't address this. I just wanted us to understand that imperative.

Thank you very much, Mxolisi. I think that was a very, very important words for us to remember in terms of why we are doing this. So in closing, what I wanted to -- a few things that I wanted to say is that the first one is that when we had our workshop last year, one of the things that was mentioned by shareholders was the fact -- acknowledging the fact that Exxaro was actually engaging shareholders on this very issue of the just transition. And there was a request to continue to take shareholders and I think in the same breath, stakeholders along on this journey. And since then, as you have seen from these presentations, the team has been working hard in terms of putting together the strategy to respond to the risks and opportunities of climate change and in particular, giving attention to the very words that Mxolisi has just shared with us. And so we've reached a milestone in our journey of engagement. And we have yet so many more milestones and journey that we will travel. And hopefully, you will be with us on that. The other thing is setting up a hybrid Capital Markets Day, in certainly a new territory. I think I've done this well in terms of results. But I can only refer to it as having been near perfect. Because one of the things I was requested by the team is that let's maintain the human factor in that. And we've seen examples of recorded events such as this. And so hope you bear with us with the little glitches, if you experienced any. But I think overall, we've tried to put in the best experience of this event. And I think to assure you that we are real as we sit here and what you're seeing of me is the real me and not an artificial creation of what you may have seen on me before with [indiscernible]. But our things have changed and we're all human as [indiscernible]. So it's been fun to get to this point. It's been a lot of work. And what remains is to say, thank you very much, firstly, to the team. You certainly make my job easy. This is all I had to do sit here and click your presentation and complement your skills and capabilities they're presenting. But I think also to the teams that have really contributed to these presentations, I think, there's some fantastic work that's been done, some fantastic knowledge and information that has been gained by everyone, hadn't been part of this. And then lastly, to the team that made this event happen. It wasn't easy. We thought we wouldn't have enough time but we were able to do it, and we hope that we've delivered to your satisfaction. And you all know my e-mail address or the Exxaro Investor Relations address. If there are any other questions, please drop us an e-mail or you can call me. Thank you very much, and be safe here and further.