Anglo American plc (AAL) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Okay, good morning everybody. I think it's just on the hour, so we'll start. And welcome to you all. It's been a pretty busy half, and I'm pleased to say through all of that we've delivered a very strong result. Despite prices falling for us by 10% for the basket of the commodities that we produce, the revised plans that we put in place have delivered an excellent performance, especially in our copper and iron ore businesses. This, alongside some very, very good cost control, delivering significant progress on our cost-out targets, has led to an EBITDA of $5 billion. That was down just 3% on half one of last year. John will unpack that a bit later, however, The focus is now absolutely unchanged and squarely on those three key strategic priorities that I laid out for you all back in February of this year, which is operational excellence, portfolio simplification, and growth. Building on the reset of many of our mine plans of last year, The first half of this year. And I'm going to start there and talk a little bit about how that translated into the half one financial performance before moving into portfolio restructure and growth. So the first priority, operational excellence, has to be in safety. Ensuring our colleagues go home safely every day is my number one priority. Over the last couple of years, we certainly have seen a step change in our injury rate performance. It's now delivering a 23% improvement since 2022 and our lowest ever first half performance for the group. But clearly, it's still not good enough. Far from it, in fact, because we still had two fatalities at Amanda Bolt in June of this year. We are absolutely focused on putting a stop to this. And the fire at Grosvenor, I think, is a very clear reminder for us all of the potential hazards in this indu...