South32 Limited (S32) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. On the call with me is our Deputy CEO, Matt Daly, for his first call, our Chief Financial Officer, Sandy Sibenala, and our Chief Operating Officer for Southern Africa, Noel Pelé. I'd like to start with safety, where we're seeing improvements in key measures following our sustained effort to improve performance through our Global Safety Improvement Programme. During the half, we achieved further improvement in significant hazard frequency, which demonstrates improved hazard awareness and a more proactive reporting culture. We're also seeing positive reductions across our lag indicators. While the data is encouraging, we're determined to continuously improve on our safety performance. Turning to our financial results, I'm pleased to say that we have delivered strong financial results for the half, underpinned by our operating performance and higher prices for base and precious metals. Our FY26 production and unit cost guidance is unchanged across our operated assets off the back of our continued focus on delivering safe and reliable operating performance. This performance enabled us to capture the benefits of positive market conditions for our key commodities. We delivered underlying EBITDA of 1.1 billion US dollars with a group operating margin of 28.2% and growth in underlying earnings to $435 million. Group free cash flow improved to $57 million after growth cap and investment of $338 million at our regional scale Homosa project. Our balance sheet remains strong with net debt of $25 million at the end of the period, enabling us to invest in both high returning growth and deliver returns to shareholders. Looking ahead, commodity price tailwinds, coupled with a planned drawdown of entries at Moselle Aluminium, i...