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ANGLO AMERICAN PLC - Anglo American plc - Annual General Meeting Address to shareholders

Release Date: 05/05/2021 17:35
Code(s): AGL     PDF:  
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Anglo American plc - Annual General Meeting – Address to shareholders

Anglo American plc (the "Company")
Registered office: 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AN
Registered number: 3564138 (incorporated in England and Wales)
Legal Entity Identifier: 549300S9XF92D1X8ME43
ISIN: GBOOB1XZS820
JSE Share Code: AGL
NSX Share Code: ANM

5 May 2021

Anglo American plc
Annual General Meeting – Address to shareholders

Anglo American plc held its Annual General Meeting for shareholders today in London and via
webcast. The following remarks were made by the Chairman and the Chief Executive.

Stuart Chambers, Chairman of Anglo American plc, made the following remarks:

Before I ask Mark Cutifani, our chief executive, to give you an overview of recent performance
and an update on what you can expect in the next year or two, allow me to share some of my
perspectives on your company, Anglo American.

In a year like no other, Anglo American showed considerable resilience, acting quickly to
safeguard our workforce and putting measures in place to help keep our people and our
communities safe, while sustaining our operations.

You may have heard us talk about our WeCare programme; this is the programme that Mark and
his team put together in response to the challenges posed by Covid-19 for our employees and
our host communities: working to protect physical health and mental health, supporting many
aspects of the lives and livelihoods in our local communities, while also helping to tackle the
scourge of gender based and domestic violence in many countries.

As we are often the major employer and economic engine in the areas where we operate, we
engaged widely to ensure we could also continue to provide the wide range of essential services
that many of our communities rely on, including the provision of water, electricity, housing and
food; support for teachers, students and small business; as well as additional hospital facilities,
medical equipment and PPE.

Turning to safety, lockdowns in various countries certainly put additional pressure on our mining
operations, with shutdowns followed by the re-opening and ramping up of operations posing
particular safety risks. It is testament to the integrity of our safety systems and processes that in
2020 we achieved our best-ever safety performance.

Against that backdrop, though, it was greatly upsetting that two people died in work-related
incidents during the year. That is two too many. We are putting increased resources behind our
Elimination of Fatalities Taskforce, which has urgent work to do and I am encouraged by the
headway it is making. Through its work, we are gaining a better understanding of how serious
incidents happen, which is helping us to prioritise actions to eliminate risk at the workplace, as
well as travelling to and from work.

Covid-19 notwithstanding, climate change is the major issue of our time, and we have a clear
role to play in helping to bring about a lower carbon economy. We already have in place a holistic
set of ambitious goals contained in our Sustainable Mining Plan. These goals include a 30%
improvement in energy efficiency, a 50% reduction in fresh water use, and a 30% cut in
greenhouse gas emissions, all by 2030. Last year, we added to these goals our commitment to
be carbon neutral across our operations by 2040.

Concerning technology, our employees are proud of Anglo American’s progress, and our
FutureSmart Mining™ programme is playing a major part in getting us to the targets I just
mentioned, introducing new technologies and digitised approaches that are making mining safer
and transforming our environmental and societal footprint. We are also helping to stimulate the
hydrogen economy, including through investments and partnerships to use platinum group
metals as the catalyst for new generations of hydrogen-powered electric transport.
Anglo American’s resurgence in performance led by Mark Cutifani and the executive team
continues. We now have a significantly improved portfolio of half the number of assets now
producing more product on a copper-equivalent basis, with production per employee more than
doubling. Furthermore, your company, Anglo American, has one of the industry’s most
compelling growth profiles across the truly diversified mix of metals and minerals that are required
for a cleaner, greener world and to satisfy global consumer demand.

Looking to the future, our new Quellaveco copper mine in Peru will boost our supply of one of the
modern world’s most-needed energy-transition metals, while the Woodsmith crop nutrients
project in the UK that we acquired last year further diversifies our portfolio. You will also have
noticed our announcement of a few weeks ago to demerge our thermal coal operations in South
Africa, subject to the approval of shareholders at the General Meeting that follows this AGM.

Mark will cover our financial performance in more detail but, just briefly, Anglo American
continues to generate healthy cash flows that we are using to re-invest in our business and to
deliver sustainable cash returns to you, our shareholders.

Looking ahead, there continues to be strong demand for the many essential metals and minerals
that we provide. At the same time, however, expectations of mining companies are being raised.
As the world also transitions towards a low carbon economy, we must continue to act responsibly
– bringing our employees, host communities, host governments and customers – and of course
our shareholders – along with us.

Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive of Anglo American plc, made the following remarks:

Thank you, Stuart, and good afternoon, everyone.

You will have heard others say this, but Covid-19 really has tested the world to its limits and we
know it’s not over yet. And so, 2020 was an extraordinary year and it reminded us just how
important it is that we look after each other and those around us, both in our personal and
professional lives.

As a company, we moved quickly this time last year to put in place a global and multi-faceted
response that we call our WeCare programme, as the Chairman touched on. We knew we
needed to help protect lives and livelihoods for our employees and host communities – both in
terms of their health and wellbeing, and their economic prosperity. Our employees are rightly
proud of what we did and how we conducted our business. There is no doubt our approach
brought us together as a company and in particular reinforced our relationships with many
stakeholders, particularly our local communities and our broader regional and Federal authorities.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted every one of us and I’m delighted how Anglo American
responded as a family of more than 95,000 citizens and community members; we absolutely
stayed true to our Purpose of re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives and to our values.
We stayed true to who we are.

Turning to safety, our determination to ensure that every employee returns home safely at the
end of each day drives our thinking and behaviours.

In 2020, we recorded our best-ever safety performance, with our lowest fatality and total
recordable-injury numbers. We have transformed our safety performance and, in the past five
years alone, we have continued the journey with another 40% reduction in total injuries and an
82% reduction in fatal incidents. However, we still have a long way to go as we are still reporting
serious safety incidents. In May last year, five colleagues were seriously injured in an incident
underground at Grosvenor in Australia, while two colleagues, both in South Africa, lost their lives
at work in 2020. While we have made real progress, we can never say we have had a good year
unless we have zero fatal incidents.

On the financials, our performance for the year showed the resilience and quality of our diversified
business. After a tough start to the year, underlying EBITDA of $9.8 billion reflected a remarkable
second half turnaround, a decrease of just 2% on the previous full year results,, while our mining
EBITDA margin increase to 43% - despite the lower full year production volumes. The full year
results reflected solid cost control, a strong contribution from our Marketing business, and price
strength later in the year. Return on capital employed of 17% exceeded our targeted 15%
through-the-cycle return, and we delivered a strong Total Shareholder Return of 16.2%. Total
dividends for the year, amounting to $1.00 per share, are in line with our policy of paying out 40%
of underlying earnings, again with a strong second half weighting. Subject to your approval today,
the second half final dividend of 72 cents will be paid to shareholders on Friday.

We remain absolutely committed to capital-allocation discipline and maintaining a strong and
flexible balance sheet. It is always about balance as we invest in sustaining and improving our
existing assets for earnings reliability and near term growth, repositioning the portfolio to improve
returns for the longer term and returning cash to shareholders on a sustainable basis. In our
business it is about consistent and sustainable Capital Returns and Returns of Capital to our
shareholders.

Operationally, we continue to deliver material business improvements, building on the stable
platform provided by our Operating Model. As you have heard me say before, the first step was
for the operating model to set a stable base, from which we push for P101 levels of performance,
or beyond best in class, to set new benchmarks across our operational processes.

More recently, the team has delivered another $2 billion in terms of annual EBITDA run-rate
improvement through our efficiencies and operational delivery. This focus on continuous
improvement is as much about improving returns as it is to protect the business from internal and
external headwinds like increasing mine depths and global inflation.

And then, off the stable foundation and enhanced performance, we are implementing a number
of technologies to drive additional value through cost efficiency, and growth in throughput and
margins – as well as delivering our growth projects – and we are on track to deliver our targeted
$3-4 billion annual run-rate improvement over the five year period to end 2022.

Panning out from the year behind us to looking at our broader strategic progress, let me touch
on each of our three strategic pillars, beginning with Portfolio.

We have re-shaped and upgraded the quality of our diversified portfolio over the last several
years, today providing us with a well-sequenced range of high quality and return growth options.
We have carefully sequenced the execution of our projects to protect our balance sheet while
providing significant margin accretive production growth over the next 5 years and beyond.

We have also continued to transition our portfolio towards those products that support a low
carbon economy and consumer demand trends, and our growth projects accelerate that
trajectory. Our transformation is not about diversification for diversification’s sake, the growth in
quality production in market segments with high growth and margin potential is the key driver in
our portfolio thinking.

Specifically, I am pleased to tell you that we are firmly on track to deliver first production from the
new Quellaveco copper mine in Peru during 2022. Last year’s addition of the Woodsmith crop
nutrients project in the UK, and the proposed demerger of our remaining thermal coal operations
in South Africa early in June, all take us further down that road – being a producer of high quality
products in favourable markets, that are also fundamental to decarbonisation and the demands
of a growing global consumer population – from food and everyday essentials to luxury and
special market products.

This is a very differentiated business when you look across our sector.

To our "Portfolio", we apply "Innovation" and, in tune with our Purpose, we have set out a very
different future for mining that we refer to as FutureSmart Mining™. Our integrated approach to
technology, digitalisation and sustainability is designed to drive step-changes in safety,
environmental and social – or community – and governance outcomes across our business. We
are applying technologies that more precisely target the desired metals or minerals, requiring
less water, energy and land along with capital intensity, while producing less waste. In parallel,
we are digitising at pace, transforming data into predictive intelligence, leading towards safer,
systemised and self-learning operations.

Our technology progress is part of why we have been able to add a commitment to carbon neutral
operations by 2040 to our already wide-ranging and stretching Sustainable Mining Plan goals.
Importantly, this is more than a target - we have plans to get there. And we have plans to get 8
of our sites (roughly a third of our business) to carbon neutrality by 2030. We are tackling the
challenges head-on, recognising that time is a commodity none of us have. To that end, you may
have seen last month that we have now secured 100% renewable electricity supply across our
South American operations, cutting our CO2 emissions at those sites by up to 70%.

The tools and processes we have today will not take us all the way to carbon neutrality – so, new
energy technologies, including hydrogen, will play a crucial role. In a first for our industry, we will
trial a hydrogen fuel-cell haul truck at our Mogalakwena PGMs mine later this year, proving up a
technology that can drastically reduce diesel usage and its associated emissions from mines all
over the world. This is another game-changer.

And the third leg of our strategy is, of course, our People – who represent the substance behind
all of our changes and transformation. That may sound trite, but it is an often-overlooked truth.
So, first, to all of our employees, I say "thank you".

We strive to create safe, inclusive and diverse working environments that encourage high
performance and innovative thinking. How we build a team-based culture is built on engagement
and participation. For every individual to give their best they need to know we mean what we say
and we do what we mean. I believe we made further good progress in 2020 – a year more than
ever when we needed to be engaging and listening, both for outbound communication and
inbound feedback and commitment.

I am also pleased to report that we are making good progress in addressing what has long been
a challenge in our industry – gender diversity. In the last five years, the proportion of women in
senior management roles has increased from 15% to 27%, as we head towards our 2023 target
of 33%. And across the company, women now represent 23% of the workforce, up from 18% in
2015. While it is important to have a target to aim for, this is actually about creating the right
environment to develop and retain the best talent – and doing so sustainably. Our low turnover
of well below the 5% level shows us we are getting this right so far. Progress, and still a long way
to go.

Reflecting on Anglo American today, I see a continuously improving business, building resilience
and delivering industry leading results, and well positioned to meet the high expectations of our
full breadth of business and societal stakeholders.

This is also a purposeful business, with strong values and leaders working hard to model our
values through behaviours. We all have a responsibility to work together to help rebuild
economies and protect our natural world. We believe that, through our mix of high-quality and
responsibly produced products, we are playing our part in building a more sustainable modern
world, and in ensuring mining has a safer, smarter future.

We have the resources and the assets, we have the innovative mindset and we have the people.
We have shown what we can do – delivering industry-leading returns since 2013. And we have
set the foundations to outperform to 2030 and beyond.

Thank you.

Check against delivery.

The slides used by Mr Cutifani to illustrate his remarks are available at
https://www.angloamerican.com/investors/investor-presentations

A recording of the meeting will be available on the Anglo American website at
https://www.angloamerican.com/investors/shareholder-information/agm/agm2021

The Company has a primary listing on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and
secondary listings on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Botswana Stock Exchange, the
Namibia Stock Exchange and the SIX Swiss Exchange.

Sponsor
RAND MERCHANT BANK (A division of FirstRand Bank Limited)

For further information, please contact:

 Media                                              Investors
 UK                                                 UK
 James Wyatt-Tilby                                  Paul Galloway
 james.wyatt-tilby@angloamerican.com                paul.galloway@angloamerican.com

 Marcelo Esquivel                                   Robert Greenberg
 marcelo.esquivel@angloamerican.com                 robert.greenberg@angloamerican.com

 Katie Ryall                                        Emma Waterworth
 katie.ryall@angloamerican.com                      emma.waterworth@angloamerican.com

 South Africa
 Nevashnee Naicker
 nevashnee.naicker@angloamerican.com

 Sibusiso Tshabalala
 sibusiso.tshabalala@angloamerican.com

 Nomonde Ndwalaza
 Nomonde.ndwalaza@angloamerican.com

Notes to editors:
Anglo American is a leading global mining company and our products are the essential
ingredients in almost every aspect of modern life. Our portfolio of world-class competitive
operations, development projects and undeveloped resources, provides many of the metals and
minerals that enable a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world and that meet the fast growing
consumer-driven demands of developed and maturing economies. With our people at the heart
of our business, we use innovative practices and the latest technologies to mine, process, move
and market our products to our customers – and to discover new resources – safely and
sustainably.

As a responsible producer of diamonds (through De Beers), copper, platinum group metals, the
steelmaking ingredients of iron ore and metallurgical coal, and nickel – with crop nutrients in
development and thermal coal operations planned for divestment – we are committed to being
carbon neutral across our operations by 2040. We work together with our business partners and
diverse stakeholders to unlock sustainable value from precious natural resources for the benefit
of the communities and countries in which we operate, for society as a whole, and for our
shareholders. Anglo American is re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.
www.angloamerican.com

Forward-looking statements:
This announcement includes forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical
facts included in this announcement, including, without limitation, those regarding Anglo American's
financial position, business, acquisition and divestment strategy, dividend policy, plans and objectives of
management for future operations (including development plans and objectives relating to Anglo American's
products, production forecasts and Ore Reserves and Mineral Resource estimates) and environmental,
social and corporate governance goals and aspirations, are forward-looking statements. By their nature,
such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which
may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Anglo American, or industry results, to be
materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding Anglo American's present
and future business strategies and the environment in which Anglo American will operate in the future.
Important factors that could cause Anglo American's actual results, performance or achievements to differ
materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, levels of actual production
during any period, levels of global demand and commodity market prices, mineral resource exploration and
development capabilities, recovery rates and other operational capabilities, safety, health or environmental
incidents, the effects of global pandemics and outbreaks of infectious diseases, the outcome of litigation or
regulatory proceedings, the availability of mining and processing equipment, the ability to produce and
transport products profitably, the availability of transportation infrastructure, the impact of foreign currency
exchange rates on market prices and operating costs, the availability of sufficient credit, the effects of
inflation, political uncertainty and economic conditions in relevant areas of the world, the actions of
competitors, activities by courts, regulators and governmental authorities such as in relation to permitting or
forcing closure of mines and ceasing of operations or maintenance of Anglo American's assets and changes
in taxation or safety, health, environmental or other types of regulation in the countries where Anglo
American operates, conflicts over land and resource ownership rights and such other risk factors identified
in Anglo American's most recent Annual Report. Forward-looking statements should, therefore, be
construed in light of such risk factors and undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking
statements.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this announcement. Anglo American
expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking (except as required by applicable law, the City Code on
Takeovers and Mergers, the UK Listing Rules, the Disclosure and Transparency Rules of the Financial
Conduct Authority, the Listings Requirements of the securities exchange of the JSE Limited in South Africa,
the SIX Swiss Exchange, the Botswana Stock Exchange and the Namibian Stock Exchange and any other
applicable regulations) to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement
contained herein to reflect any change in Anglo American's expectations with regard thereto or any change
in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based. Nothing in this announcement
should be interpreted to mean that future earnings per share of Anglo American will necessarily match or
exceed its historical published earnings per share.

Certain statistical and other information about Anglo American included in this announcement is sourced
from publicly available third-party sources. As such, it has not been independently verified and presents the
views of those third parties, though these may not necessarily correspond to the views held by Anglo
American and Anglo American expressly disclaims any responsibility for, or liability in respect of, such
information.

Legal Entity Identifier: 549300S9XF92D1X8ME43

Date: 05-05-2021 05:35:00
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