Nickel Industries Limited (NIC) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Thank you and thank you everyone for your attendance at the Nickel Industries full year 2024 results call. Could I please ask the slide moderator to move the slide deck to slide three please? Despite what has been a very challenging 12-month period with multi-year lows across global nickel markets, we still managed to deliver US$296.8 million EBITDA adjusted for H&I and R&I impairment and FX losses of US$17 million and a US$186.7 million gross profit. Unfortunately, accounting standards led to the US$205 million impairment of our oldest RKEF assets, H&I and R&I. These assets do not benefit from integrated power and they are older assets. However, both of those RKEFs HNI and RNI did generate positive EBITDA for 2024 and were mainly impacted in the second half of 2024 by abnormally high ore costs, where ore shortages drove premiums of up to US$22 a wet metric tonne above the nickel ore market price. These premiums are now subsiding and both HNI and RNI delivered positive EBITDA for January. These factors contributed to the reported net loss after tax of US$189.8 million. A final dividend of 1.5 cents per share of Australian has been declared bringing the full 2024 dividend to 4 cents per share. It's we believe to be a good result against the backdrop of many major global nickel producers either shutting operations or being loss making over the course of 2024. This is a greater than 5% dividend yield and is reflective of our strong underlying cash generation and robust margins across the different elements of our business. A decision was also made by the board to offer shareholders the opportunity to participate in a dividend reinvestment plan in lieu of cash, should they so choose. This will allow shareholders the opportunity to elect to take shares at a time when the ...