Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you all for attending the session with Kathleen Quirk, the CEO of Freeport, which has been one of our preferred stocks for quite a long time. And fortunately, the stock has done very well. And Kathleen and the Freeport portfolio have a lot going on. So Kathleen, first of all, thank you for spending time with us here in New York and what is certainly a very busy week. We appreciate you being here.

And maybe, if you could just, kind of, give us your -- a general overview as to what's going on at Freeport, take us around the world to your different assets and what you're doing operationally and where things are heading for you.

Great. Thank you. And thanks, Jefferies, and thanks, Chris, for hosting the conference and Chris' long-term coverage of our sector. We really value his analysis and insights over many, many years. But -- it's great to be here in New York and have the opportunity to talk about what's going on at Freeport. As Chris mentioned, we have a lot going on, a lot of excitement around our business. Freeport is so well positioned. The focus areas that we have currently, as you know, we're focused -- our strategy is focused around copper. We benefit from having a very large-scale current production profile, diversified with embedded growth options in the business. And we're entering a period of growth for our business, which is very exciting, initially focused on some near-term opportunities we have in the U.S. But Chris mentioned, he asked me to, kind of, take a run around the business and some of the things that we're focused on, priorities for 2026, are around the disciplined execution of our plans, including on the Grasberg ramp-up, and that is going very well, and I'll comment more about where we stand there. We are actively working to crystallize a very large potential value opportunity on an innovative leaching initiative we've been working on for some time and really starting to gain traction on. And we're leaning heavily as a company, as an organization into technology and innovation that we believe will help us maintain a competitive edge, bring down costs, improve efficiency. So that's a real significant focus area. And then, as I mentioned, growth. And we've got a number of projects that we're teeing up. I'm going to start in Indonesia. And many of you know, it was about a year ago at this time where we experienced an unprecedented incident in our underground -- affecting our underground operations at the Grasberg Block Cave. We've been operating in Indonesia for 60 years, and have had, for many decades, experience in block caving. Freeport's viewed as one of the experts around the world and one of the leading experts around the world in block caving. And we had an unprecedented incident, a very serious incident where we lost 7 of our coworkers last year, which was heartbreaking for all of us. We're still grieving their loss. In fact, had a memorial service just this past week again for -- to remember those lost. We'll never forget them. And we're really working on the future. The team has made tremendous progress over the last year in the recovery effort, in the investigation. We understand what happened, what we're doing differently in the future to manage this risk and feel very good about where we are today. We restarted some of the operations last October and then restarted a large portion of the operation in March of this year and have been on our ramp-up plan. And that's going very, very well. We have a plan that we would be at about 65% of overall capacity in the second half of this year and then reaching 80% by the middle of next year and into 100%, approaching 100%, by the end of 2027. And that's all going very, very well. This is a very large, profitable ore body that, as I mentioned, we have a lot of experience in going back for decades. So that's going well. We also, just 2 weeks ago, started up our new smelter in Indonesia. We have 2 smelters, copper smelters in Indonesia, and one was operated since the 1990s, late 1990s, and now we're just starting up the new smelter that we constructed. So a very exciting time. Freeport is fully integrated in terms of upstream and downstream in Indonesia and globally. So that's a strategic benefit of Freeport having not only mining but also processing. So we're selling copper cathode. And one of the things the governments like about us is we don't rely on any specific country for third-party processing. And there's a lot of debate about whether China has too much control over processing, but Freeport does not have a significant reliance on others for processing. So Indonesia is going well. We're very, very excited about opportunities that we have in South America. We have a major project in Chile that we've just filed an environmental impact assessment statement on in -- earlier this year. And so we're advancing that. That's potentially a very large project that the industry does not have a lot of. And this is in a jurisdiction which it's a brownfield project. It's in a jurisdiction that we've operated in for years, very well defined by regulations there, and the mining industry is very, very positive about operating in Chile, which is about 25% of the world's copper production that happens there. But we have a very large project there, and that's going to be very attractive as we go forward. We have a very big operation in Peru, and that's going very well, called Cerro Verde. It's one of the largest concentrating operations in the world. So Freeport is so important in copper and particularly important in the U.S. And I'm going to get to the U.S., where Freeport supplies, produces refined copper and supplies 70% of the copper that is produced in the U.S. comes from Freeport. So very strategic business in the U.S. We have multiple mines that we operate where we've operated for decades. We have a really a franchise there in Arizona and New Mexico. We also have some primary molybdenum operations in Colorado, but really exciting growth opportunities in the U.S. And you can see from our financial results, if you're paying attention to the details in our financial results, the growing significance of our U.S. contribution to our earnings and cash flow. And because of the structure of the business, we own all of the assets in the U.S. We own the land in fee. So we don't pay royalties like you do in other countries. And the tax structure is attractive for us. So when prices move, you can see that drop, the leverage that we have to prices, you can see that drop right to the bottom line. And if you compare our results historically to where they are currently, you can see the leverage and the significance and the value of what's going on in our U.S. asset base. And that's exciting. The world is going to need more copper. It's going to come from places where there are established in the near term, established opportunities to invest in brownfield expansions, and that's one of the things we're doing at Freeport. We've got a very exciting development project in one of our mines in Northwest Arizona that we're going to bring to our Board for an investment decision later this year. That's going to bring more relevance to this asset. The asset currently today is undersized in terms of processing compared to its reserves, makes a lot of sense for long-term value. And at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do is make investments that move the needle in terms of long-term value for the company. And we've got a capital allocation strategy around investing in our assets, but also returning cash to shareholders. And we've got a capital framework to do that. 50% of our discretionary cash goes to investments in our projects and the other half to shareholders' returns. So we're in a great position at Freeport. Execution is key. We all know that. We all know that investors rely on our teams to understand the risk and execute reliably and responsibly. And at Freeport, we're really focused on doing that to deliver value for shareholders. So that, in a nutshell, what's going on around the company, Chris. And if you want to drill down or anybody in the audience wants to drill down and ask questions, I'd be happy to do that.

Yes. Let's drill down a bit. So a lot of people associate Freeport with Grasberg, high-profile mine always used to be the only asset the company really had in mining before the Phelps Dodge acquisition. But now you have sizable volumes in the U.S. In this higher price environment in the U.S. mines are profitable. You don't pay tax in the U.S. because you have NOLs. You make the point that with percentage depletion, the tax rate in the U.S. even without the NOLs will be lower than it is in most of the jurisdictions. And you're deploying capital into the U.S. now. So you actually have -- you're actually leaning towards growth in a low-risk jurisdiction when many others in the industry are growing more in high-risk jurisdictions, which puts you, I think, from a risk perspective, kind of, you're moving in a more favorable position versus the industry. So -- but Grasberg, obviously, is still a big part of the equation. So if you revised the guidance a couple of times after the initial incident happened, but it seems like things are now starting to go according to plan. Wondering impact of changes in weather there. I mean, we're hearing about less rain in Indonesia. Does that help you in terms of the ramp? Do you have more confidence? You reiterated the guidance again about getting to full capacity at the end of next year. Are there things that have happened recently that give you more confidence that you're going to get there? And just, kind of, talk about how that's progressing.

Yes. Well, the first part of your comments related to the risk profile of Freeport. Roughly 2/3 of the company's production is in places, North America and South America, and the rest of it is in Indonesia. Our gold is all in Indonesia, which makes Indonesia so important and special related to its profitability because it has high grades of copper and gold in the same ore body. But in terms of looking at the values of the company, during periods of when copper prices are low, you can look at Grasberg and say that is because it's very low cost, and it's going to be always valuable. But when copper prices are low, it's particularly important because of its low cost. And so it provides a baseline of cash flow for the company in ranges of prices. But really, the supercharge, and you referenced this, leverage that Freeport has is in the U.S. where it's mature. So the U.S., some of our mines have been around for over 100 years, but we're very efficient. And we have to be in the U.S. because the grades are low, and we have to be keeping up with inflation. We have to be on our game in terms of efficiencies. But when copper prices move and the world is becoming more copper-intensive, you've seen copper price today come down $0.30 or so a pound, but $6.50 copper is a very attractive price for us. And when you look at the U.S. business, if you're operating at a $3 cost and you've got that much of a margin and it drops to the bottom line, we've got a lot of leverage. Where we operate internationally, you've got tax -- big taxes and you've got other partners and noncontrolling interest, sometimes the government. So a big portion of what we generate in Indonesia goes back to the government, something on the order of 70%, whereas here in the U.S., it's a much, much lower position. But Grasberg is still very important. We dedicate a lot of our resources to it. I'm just saying that today, on a relative basis, when you look at the value of the business, we're driving a lot of value in our U.S. business, particularly with where prices are and where they could be going as we look forward as the world needs more copper and you've got this demand driving ahead of where supply can respond to. But in terms of the Grasberg ramp-up, I -- we had the incident -- and we did an investigation, thorough investigation. We developed a plan to a phased plan to restart it, and we've been executing under that plan. We did modify the plan in April to add some upgrades to our material handling system to have a more robust plan for the long term. This wasn't a safety consideration. It really was more from a efficiency planning. But what's happened, and Chris alluded to and everybody has been asking about El Niño, it's been very dry there. This is a place that's one of the wettest places on Earth where we get rainfall every single day. And we're used to that. We've got to manage it. We've got to develop our systems around managing the situation in any kind of weather condition. But it's been very dry. And so when we started mining again in March, while some of the material that we were mining was moist from having been idle for a period of time and from rainfall, with what's happened over the last few months, it's become much more dry, which is good for mining. But I wouldn't overly obsess with that. It is very helpful for us. But we don't want you worried about the weather as a long-term investor. So we're putting in all of the things that we've had to do to manage that risk. We understand the climate in Indonesia is going to be wet, and we need to plan around that and make sure we've got robust systems. But we feel good about where we are. We feel like there's been a significant derisking that has occurred over the last year. Mining still is going to have challenges, always has challenges. It's the nature of it. But we're dealing with a situation where we've got all the expertise, Freeport is really well respected in terms of its ability for block caving. We've got the best experts in the world working with us. And so we feel very good about our plans. And from a big-picture standpoint, on track. We'll always have issues to deal with. But related to the incident, we believe that, that's behind us.

So if we're trying to get Grasberg back to full capacity, obviously, a very low-cost mine when you include the byproduct. So that alone should take your weighted average net cash cost down in an industry where cost inflation is a structural problem due to declining grade. So you, kind of, have, kind of, going against the grain there with your cost actually trending lower than in the U.S., but that's just getting Grasberg back to where it was. And in a high gold price environment, obviously, very good. In the U.S., you're working on effectively transforming the business with new leaching, low grades, as you mentioned, mines that are 100 years old. But if you can succeed with your leaching initiatives where leaching production costs are $1 per pound rather than $3 or more, that could, kind of, transform where that business sits in the cost curve as well in a world, again, where costs for others are rising. So you have this, kind of, idiosyncratic unique opportunity to move down the cost curve, ramping up Grasberg and delivering on the leaching. So maybe you could talk about what's going on with leaching. I know it's been a big focus of yours, what's happening there.

Yes. So this opportunity that Chris is highlighting is -- when you think about our industry, a capital-intensive industry, this is an opportunity that you don't see -- you never see. I have never seen anything so exciting in my experience with the industry. This is a situation where we have material that has already been mined in -- a lot of it's in the U.S., but we've got some in Chile and in Peru, but most of it is in the U.S. It's already been mined. It's sitting in stockpiles. We use the technology of the '80s to recover a certain amount of copper from that material. But there is 40 billion pounds. And, I mean, that's 40 billion pounds is a big number. We produce plus or minus 4 billion pounds a year. And in the U.S., we produce -- say, 1.5 billion or so. So that 40 billion pounds is a lot of material that is there. It's not in our reserves. It wasn't under the technology of 30 years ago, it wasn't believed to be recovered. Now, with new technology, and we believe at Freeport that necessity is the mother of invention. And you've got a situation where there's not -- you don't have the availability of copper resources that you once had in this industry. A lot of the easier things have been done in our industry. So where can you go to get more? You need to go to innovation, to go to technology, go to places that you know you have resources. Exploration has been limited in terms of its success. There's been some pockets of success around the industry, but we can't rely on greenfield exploration saying that's going to bring us as much supply as we need in the future to fuel this secular growth around electrification. So what we've been working on as new technologies have evolved is how to get those 40 billion pounds -- a portion of those. We're not going to get all of them, but how to get that -- we realize that. And so we've been using technologies to put sensors and things into these stockpiles. And now we can see where there are areas that were undertapped into. And so we've been putting in targeted drilling, targeted injections to be able to get more copper. And so we built that up to roughly 200 million pounds a year through these initiatives, these new initiatives. And so now, when we look at all the stockpiles we have and the potential from some of these R&D efforts that we're analyzing, we think we can get to 800 million pounds a year. Now, that involves some proving of technology, but we've been investing in this over the last 3 years. And we are now in a position where we've identified some additives through our testing and chemical testing and laboratory work, some additives that could enhance the -- or we expect will enhance the recovery of copper from these stockpiles. We've got one additive we're using now that was readily available, and that's why we're deploying it. But we've got 2 additional additives that show very significant promise. And -- but those require us to find a manufacturer. It's proprietary to Freeport, is our recipe. So we've located some manufacturers that can produce this additive for us, and we should be receiving it later this year and some in early '27. But that's going to give us the ability to test it further. The other thing that we're doing to get more recovery is increasing the temperature within the stockpiles. And when you think about copper recovery, you think about a smelter, right, a very expensive smelter that has a furnace in it, that's heating up the material to get copper recovery. Well, what we're trying to do is apply higher temperatures within these stockpiles to get more recovery. But it's already been mined. So it's sitting there. It needs some additional processing. It's not capital-intensive. When you think about going from 200 million pounds to 800 million, that's 600 million pounds a year. Somebody is going to spend to get that on a conventional way to do it, billions and billions of dollars. Here, it's not capital-intensive. The incremental operating costs are low. Most of it's in the U.S. It is a huge value opportunity for our company and will differentiate Freeport, but we got to prove it, okay? So we don't have a huge amount put in any of our guidance at this point. But we're on the path to it. And I really do believe that it has the potential to transform our U.S. business, as Chris was saying, bring down our average cash cost and differentiate Freeport in terms of being able to -- and it goes right to cathode. So you don't need a smelter for this type of processing. So that's -- we're playing to our strengths. And this is one of our strengths. We've got long-term expertise in this area. We're bringing in additional expertise in terms of technology experts, chemicals experts and ways to take the old technology and modify it to what's available now. And so it's very, very exciting. More to come on that. It's -- there's not really value assigned to it. Chris can answer that question more than I could, but not really value assigned in the market, but something that we want to crystallize so that you can value it.

So we're seeing the U.S. government support critical minerals projects in the U.S. There's been talk of 45X tax credits, obviously, for copper in the U.S. And I'm just wondering on the leaching initiative, is there support for some of the technologies that you're deploying now? And can you get some government assistance and financing? Or, like, what other sort of -- and maybe talk about 45X as well, like...

Yes, the government -- the U.S. government has made critical minerals a priority, and there's been a significant amount of attention on critical minerals. And on what the government can do to help the U.S. become more self-sufficient in various critical minerals, including copper. Copper has been designated as a critical mineral. So there's all kinds of incentive programs. They're looking at permit reform, which is important. There's grants and financings that companies are tapping into. And we're getting some assistance on -- we've got a opportunity at our Morenci mine. This is a big mine in Arizona with this heat project to increase temperature in the stockpiles. One of the heat sources that we're looking at is geothermal steam on the site. And so we're getting some assistance with that. But government is very, very supportive of what we're doing. We've had a recent visit by Secretary Burgum at our smelter. We've got -- Freeport operates 1 of 2 smelters in Arizona, in Miami, Arizona. So a lot of support, a lot of interest in what we're doing, but it's going to take all of us. The other thing that the government is getting involved with, which is great, is education and attracting more talent to this industry. And that is a huge opportunity for this industry because it's a mature industry, but it's been relatively small. And so we haven't seen investments in technology like we have in oil and gas and other sectors. That could be -- I think there's huge opportunities to improve the efficiency and profitability of this industry through technology. And so the government is involved in helping us support talent development, talent in mining. We're working to attract more and more people. Not -- and it's not just, "Are you a mining engineer?" It's like, "Are you -- can you help with technology that will help this industry be more efficient?" Because we leave a lot on the table. I talked about this 40 billion pounds that we have already mined over many, many years, but we haven't figured out how to unlock -- it's low grades, but how to unlock the rest of the copper that's in there. So that kind of stuff needs to happen. If we're going to be able to keep copper supplies going, we need investments in technology and the government is backing that. But we're very, very appreciative of all the support that the government is giving to this industry and the priority on critical minerals.

And then 45X?

45X. That's a great, I think, I believe, a great incentive for our industry, particularly the government wanted to incentivize this processing. So for companies that have -- that are in the critical minerals business and have domestic processing, it's an incentive. And so it's a 10% production cost benefit. The first step for Freeport was to get copper on the critical minerals list, which has happened. And now figuring out how to get copper within the Treasury regulations that would allow us to take a 10% investment tax credit. And that is a big number for us, $500 million a year of potential incentive that would allow us -- would fund a lot of our investments in the U.S. And so we're pursuing that, advocating for that. It requires congressional action, but there is some support for it and bipartisan support for incentivizing companies that have downstream processing in critical minerals.