Anglo American reports strong performance and sustainable returns

Anglo American has updated on the Group’s sustained operational and financial performance during 2020. Anglo American maintained a strong performance during 2020, in the face of Covid-19 related and other operational impacts, and expects further performance improvement in 2021:

• Unit costs for 2020 expected to reduce by 2%, despite lower total production volumes;
• Mining EBITDA margin sustained at c.42%, supported by cost control and price strength across copper and iron ore;
• Forecast 2021 capex increased to $5.7-6.2 billion to reflect carry-over from 2020 deferrals, additional investment in new business improvement opportunities, and the targeting of critical path items for the Woodsmith polyhalite project; and
• Production in 2021 expected to increase by 14%; unit costs to decrease by a further 3%.

Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “This year has brought numerous challenges and I am immensely proud of how the 90,000 people of Anglo American have responded to every aspect of the pandemic. Our agility to protect our people and communities while sustaining our operations has enabled us to continue to improve the quality, resilience and performance of our business in 2020. At the same time, we have continued to enhance our long term business prospects.

“We expect to deliver sector leading volume growth of 20-25% over the next three to five years that includes first copper production from Quellaveco in 2022. Together with our P101 and technology improvement initiatives, we are on track to deliver our targeted $3-4 billion run-rate of incremental annual improvement by the end of 2022.

“Looking further out, our diversified portfolio of world-class competitive operations, development projects and undeveloped resources provide us with many further high quality and high returning growth options. With the bulk of those options in copper, PGMs, and now also crop nutrients, we are increasingly positioned to supply those metals and minerals that enable a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world.”