Freeport-McMoRan Q4 2023 Earnings Report

Freeport-McMoRan EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.27
• Consensus EPS: $0.23
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.04
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.52

Freeport-McMoRan Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $5.91 billion
• Expected Revenue: $5.85 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$53.23 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +2.60%

Freeport-McMoRan Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2023
• Date: 1/24/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) is a U.S.-based natural resources company primarily engaged in the exploration, mining and processing of copper, gold and molybdenum. Its operations encompass large-scale open-pit and underground mining as well as associated concentrator and milling facilities. The company produces copper in the form of concentrates and cathodes, and also recovers gold and molybdenum as co-products; its business model includes exploration, development, mining, beneficiation and the sale of bulk commodities to smelters and industrial customers.

Freeport-McMoRan conducts operations and development activities across multiple geographies, with substantial assets in the Americas and Indonesia. Notable operations include major copper mining complexes in the southwestern United States and significant projects in South America and Southeast Asia. The company’s integrated approach combines in-country mining operations with regional logistics and marketing to supply global metals markets that serve electrical, industrial and infrastructure end uses.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Freeport-McMoRan has grown through successive exploration, development and acquisition activities to become one of the larger copper producers globally. Its organization includes experienced technical, operational and commercial management teams focused on long-life assets and resource development. The company has a corporate governance structure with executive management and a board overseeing operational, environmental and regulatory matters in the jurisdictions where it operates.

Freeport-McMoRan Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Strong operational performance in Indonesia: PT‐FI underground averaged over 214,000 tonnes per day in Q4, delivering 20% higher copper and gold production, while the new Manyar smelter reached 90% completion and is on track for full ramp‐up in 2024.
• Americas leach initiative exceeded its 200 million lb/year target by end-2023 with minimal capital, and Freeport plans to scale to 400 million lb over 2–3 years and potentially 800 million lb/year—equivalent to a large new mine at low incremental cost.
• 2023 financial results: $8.8 billion EBITDA, over $5 billion operating cash flow, net debt of $0.8 billion, and $860 million returned to shareholders in Q4 (totaling $3.8 billion since 2021).
• 2024 guidance calls for flat copper sales versus 2023, unit net cash costs of ~$1.60/lb, and capital expenditures of ~$3.6 billion (including $1.2 billion in discretionary growth projects).
• Copper market remains tight after a 2023 deficit and ~700,000 tonnes of recent supply disruptions, with low inventories and resilient demand in China and the US, suggesting upward pressure on future copper prices.

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Freeport-McMoRan fourth quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question during the Q&A session, press star one on your touchtone phone. If you require assistance during the conference, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Kathleen Quirk, President. Please go ahead, ma'am.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to the Freeport-McMoRan conference call. Earlier this morning, we reported our fourth quarter and full year 2023 operating and financial results, and a copy of today's press release with supplemental schedules and slides are available on our website at fcx.com.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Our conference call today is being broadcast live on the Internet, and anyone may listen to the call by accessing our website homepage and clicking on the webcast link for the conference call. In addition to analysts and investors, the financial press has been invited to listen to today's call, and a replay of the webcast will be available on our website later today. Before we begin our comments, I'd like to remind everyone, today's press release and certain of our comments on the call include non-GAAP measures and forward-looking statements, and that actual results may differ materially.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We'd like to refer everyone to the cautionary language included in our press release and presentation materials and to the risk factors described in our SEC filings. Also on the call with me today are Richard Adkerson, our Chairman and CEO; Maree Robertson, our Chief Financial Officer; Josh Olmsted, our COO of the Americas; Mark Johnson, Operating Officer for Indonesia; Mike Kendrick, who runs our molybdenum business; and Steve Higgins, who's our Chief Administrative Officer.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We'll start the call with some opening comments from Richard, and then we'll go through the slide presentation materials and then open up the call for your questions. So I'll turn it over to Richard. Richard, go ahead.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Okay. Good morning, everyone. As you can see, our first quarter was really a sound quarter and outstanding in several respects in terms of our operations. It was really led by PTFI during the whole year of 2023. You know, we began our ramp up in 2019 of the underground, and now we're fully operational, and the team has been setting records consistently out there and have just outperformed for the full year and faced some real challenges, which is just part of that business. But I'm very proud of our PTFI team at jobsite in Jakarta. We are making great progress in fulfilling our 2018 commitment to the government to invest in downstreaming and the copper concentrate business.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

In December, I was there for the inauguration of the expansion of the older smelter, PT Smelting, with President Joko Widodo, and that was a good event. And then, with our new smelter at Manyar in East Java, we reached an important 90% milestone at the end of the year, and we're progressing for physical completion of the smelter and ramping it up on schedule in 2024.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

A couple of words about the markets. You know, it continues to be the micro versus macro story. Notably, in 2023, the macro factors strengthened notably. 2023 had long been forecasted to be a year of surplus because of new mines coming on stream, but it ended up being a small deficit. And at the same time, there was stronger than expected demand for copper in the United States and in China.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Despite all the issues with China's property business, other sectors created, you know, notable growth for copper in China. Then there were the supply shortfalls throughout the industry, for some significant mines and these for a range of factors that are kind of common to our business. You know, the copper business, mining business is a tough business, but it was, political issues in some countries, community issues, and then operating issues.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

As a result of all that, inventories of copper around the world are at historically low levels, and the inventory levels are really inconsistent with the current copper price. The copper price clearly being driven by macroeconomic factors: the currency, the strong U.S. dollar, carryover effects of inflations, government fiscal policies, and there are concerns about economies in China and Europe. But, if the macro outlook...

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

I'll just say when the macro outlook improves, watch out for the copper price. Looking ahead, the world's gonna need significantly more copper in the future for a variety of factors. The world's just becoming increasingly electrified, and that's what copper is used for. And it's at a time when the industry is simply not investing to grow production, that the outlook indicates that will be required, for economic, operational, resource nationalism, a series of factors.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

But the facts are there’s an outlook for strong demand and supply challenges. That's why I am so personally confident about where Freeport is positioned and pleased with it. We have high volume existing production that's sustainable. We have large sustainable reserves and resources.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

We have growth opportunities that we will pursue prudently from this, really exciting leaching initiative that Kathleen will be talking about, and from brownfield expansions of our existing ore bodies. Before turning over to Kathleen, I just want to send a note of condolences to our friends at Rio Tinto.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

You may have seen the news, but they had a plane to go down in Canada, heading to their diamond operations there. Rio has been a special part of Freeport's history. Of course, they were our partners for many years at Grasberg. I've worked with six, seven, eight CEOs over my career.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Some of my closest colleagues have been with that company, and the toughest part of being a CEO is to lose people, and I'm just so sad to hear this news, and the whole Freeport family's heart goes out to our friends at Rio. With that, Kathleen, I'll turn it over to you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Okay, thank you, Richard, and I'll be covering the presentation materials, starting with Slide three. Our achievements for 2023 are summarized here. Our sharp focus on executing our plans in an effective, safe, and responsible manner, managing the controllable drivers, and navigating challenges successfully, all translated into solid operating results over the year.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

A big highlight for the year was the outstanding progress in Indonesia, where we grew production levels for the fourth year in a row. We posted several new operating records, and we continue to enhance values for this large-scale, low-cost, and long-lived resource.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We were also successful in reaching several milestones during the year, including our reaching our target run rate for incremental leach production in the Americas, enhancing optionality in the Americas for our brownfield growth projects, and reaching our targeted 90% completion milestone for the Indonesian smelter project by the end of 2023.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

As a leader in the industry, we were one of the first companies to have all of our operating sites certified under the Copper and Molybdenum Marks, and this demonstrates our performance and commitment to responsible mining practices. We ended the year 2023 in a strong financial position, a positive outlook, and as we work together to enhance long-term value for shareholders. On Slide four, we summarize the key results for 2023 compared with historical levels.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

After growing our volumes from 2020 to 2021 and 2022, we were able to sustain production of copper in 2023, despite a challenging environment for copper supply, as Richard discussed, and we reported another year of growth in gold production. Our unit net cash costs for 2023 were above the 2022 level, as expected, but they came in very close to our original guidance for the year. ,

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're continuing to actively manage costs and productivity initiatives to address cost inflation, and we'll be working on that as we go forward. For the year 2023, we generated strong EBITDA of $8.8 billion and operating cash flows of over $5 billion.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're continuing to carefully manage not only our, our operating costs, but also capital expenditures, with a priority on spending on projects to sustain production, improve efficiencies, and enhance optionality for future development options with attractive rates of return.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

During 2023, we returned $860 million to shareholders, bringing the total shareholder returns to $3.8 billion since we implemented our performance-based payout framework in 2021. We ended the year with net debt of approximately $800 million, and that excludes the smelter-related debt, which is being financed separately. I was going to move to Slide five and talk about the fourth quarter. During the fourth quarter, our sales were 3% above our estimates going into the quarter.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Our gold production was also very strong, but our shipments of gold in the fourth quarter were slightly below the previous estimates, and that reflected timing, and these shipments will be made in the first quarter. Unit net cash costs averaged $1.52 per pound in the fourth quarter. That was better than our guidance of $1.58 per pound and slightly below the year-ago period.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Notably, unit net costs, cash costs in Indonesia were zero in the fourth quarter, zero cents per pound, meaning our gold credits completely offset the production costs for copper. Average copper realizations in the fourth quarter were $3.81 per pound, and we generated $2.3 billion in EBITDA and operating cash flows of $1.3 billion. We go around the world and talk a little bit about our various operations in the fourth quarter.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In the U.S., we made progress in increasing our mining rates. That's been a big focus during the quarter, with a 9% increase over the year-ago quarter. We have a continued focus on improving our asset efficiencies and work, workforce experience levels. These are important initiatives as we seek to increase productivity to combat lower ore grades.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Our innovative leach initiatives met expectations and also helped to mitigate the impact of lower ore grades in the U.S. Labor market conditions in the U.S. continue to be tight. We're taking steps to expand housing options in our remote locations for recruiting and retention, and we're also continuing to pursue technology solutions to enhance productivity. Conversion of the Bagdad truck fleet to fully autonomous is advancing, and we're targeting to commence the transition in the second half of next year.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In South America, our ore mill was sustained above 400,000 metric tons per day, and our ore stacking rates increased at El Abra. Mill recoveries at Cerro Verde in the fourth quarter of 2023 were below the year-ago level because of the material types that we were mining in the fourth quarter. This is continuing for mining phases in early 2024, and we're working to optimize performance.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

As Richard discussed, the fourth quarter performance in Indonesia was exceptional. Underground ore mined averaged over 214,000 tons per day, and that was 8% higher than the year-ago period. Combined with strong grades and recoveries, our copper and gold production in the fourth quarter was over 20% higher than last year's fourth quarter.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We completed the installation of a new SAG mill at PTFI in December, and that'll provide additional opportunities for us going forward. The team is just doing outstanding work, sustaining and optimizing value from this large resource position. We thought it'd be good to look back in history of how the underground transition has gone. Slide six covers this. We show the history of the progression of the transition.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

As Richard mentioned, we stopped mining from the surface in the Grasberg open pit at the end of 2019 and transitioned to fully underground operations beginning in 2020. We have a long history in Indonesia, spanning over 56 years, and a great track record for building value over many years for all stakeholders. Extremely proud of the team's execution on this transition.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We now have the world's largest underground mining complex, and it's been developed in a modern, efficient operation. The Grasberg is the world's second-largest copper mine and one of the largest gold mines, even though gold is a by-product. High grades of both copper and gold make it one of the lowest-cost operations in the world as well. This took a lot of planning.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We began planning for this underground era over 25 years ago and commenced development activities in 2004. As you can see from the graph, the project is performing exceptionally well and generating strong margins and cash flows. As we look forward, we're continuing to make investments in this resource to enhance value and sustain long-term performance.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're working on the extension of our operating rights beyond 2041, and are increasingly confident about securing our long-term rights. That would extend the lives of our resources and open a whole new set of opportunities for this district. Richard touched on the smelter progress, and this is really important for us in terms of securing long-term rights. We reached two important milestones on these initiatives in 2023. The projects include a new greenfield smelter in East Java and an expansion of our nearby existing smelter, which was developed in the late 1990s.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Richard mentioned we celebrated in December the completion of the expansion project with the Indonesian government and our Japanese partner, and we also reached a really important milestone on progress of the greenfield project, with completion progress, achieving the target we set with the government of over 90% by the end of December.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We posted a video this morning on our website that shows the greenfield smelter project. You can see all the progress that's been made, and you can see the sheer size and scale of this impressive facility, and I hope you'll have a chance to look at it. Both projects have been executed very efficiently in the context of a challenging market for major project development.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

The internal team that we have working on this project, together with our contractor, have done an outstanding job containing costs and maintaining schedules. We're working to complete the construction by the end of May of 2024 and to start commissioning and to conduct the ramp-up period over the balance of 2024. This is a big deal for us. It's not very frequent that you see new smelters starting up, and we've done a lot of planning going into this startup process. Our teams are well prepared and really highly motivated to achieve a safe, efficient, and timely startup in 2024.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Turning to the U.S. and the Americas, where we've got an important leach initiative ongoing, we achieved our targeted run rate, where we were targeting approximately 200 million pounds of copper per year by the end of 2023. This is an exciting and innovative initiative involving new operating practices being applied to our traditional leach operations, and really working to get more out of our massive stockpiles that contain material that has been placed in prior years.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Remember, as we talked about on prior calls, the cost of this, the incremental cost of production, is low from both an operating and capital perspective, because we're targeting material where the material has already been mined, and we're largely using existing infrastructure to extract the new metal. The first phase of this initiative essentially involved four basic categories of actions.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

One, as we've talked about previously, we commenced the process to install covers over the stockpiles to increase heat retention and drive higher recoveries. Two, we gained access to areas in the stockpiles that had not previously had the benefit of leach solution, and this initiative we call Leach Everywhere.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Three, we started using drilling techniques to specifically target areas within the stockpile where solution was lacking. And importantly, the fourth area is developing more sophisticated models using data analytics to optimize the application of solutions to improve performance, and using this data as a valuable tool in guiding work in this important program. As we look at where the impacts came from, you can see most of the incremental production was from our Morenci mine.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

That mine has a very long history of leaching operations. We have a massive set of stockpiles there and a very large opportunity set at Morenci. As we go to phase two of the project, where we are working to essentially double the initial target from 200 million pounds to 400, we really are looking at just scaling these practices further.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And by continuing to scale the operating practices, we think we can double the next initial target over the next 2-3 years. And as we continue to work to sustain the production, we can add to our reserve position, and that's a real focus of ours, to capitalize the progress into long-term reserve additions. The first and second phase of this initiative is really operationally driven using existing technologies.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

The third phase, which is also very exciting, is really the work that we and others are doing to advance the leaching process using different additives and different techniques, and this is more of an R&D effort, but it's being advanced. We're commencing a large-scale testing activity to evaluate the response to new additives, and we're also evaluating opportunities to get more heat retention in our stockpiles, and heat really is an enabler of more copper production and higher recoveries.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In aggregate, these initiatives have the potential to reach 800 million pounds per annum, and that's equivalent to a large-scale copper mine. Notably, it's got very low capital intensity, and you've seen, you know, how much new copper mines cost.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

This is a very low capital intensity, low incremental operating costs, and a low carbon footprint. The value potential here is very attractive, particularly for a company like Freeport to take advantage of, given our large quantities of suitable material that we previously mined. Richard touched on copper markets earlier, and we have some information on slide nine. Physical markets have continued to tighten, inventories have declined, and demand is growing.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Despite the weak sentiment over the last several quarters on the Chinese economy and property sector, the reality is that China's copper consumption was strong throughout 2023, and this reflected the intensity of copper use in energy infrastructure, renewables, and electric vehicles. In the U.S., our customers continue to report solid demand for copper, with growth in several sectors. At the same time, supply disruption increased meaningfully in recent months.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In total, near-term supplies of copper have been reduced by over 700,000 tons in a very short period of time. The market was previously expecting that 2024 would be a small surplus market and turning to deficit beginning in 2025 timeframe and continuing for some time. With the recent supply disruptions and continued demand growth, the deficit market has been advanced into 2024, setting up for tight market conditions in the near term.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

While the fundamentals have become significantly more positive, macro conditions tied to U.S. dollar strength and sentiment about China have influenced copper price movements. Richard mentioned, we believe the fundamentals of the market will lead to significantly higher copper prices in the future, and that's supported by anticipated strong growth in demand associated with secular trends and the global economy's requirements for copper.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Also, the realities of the costs and time frames required for new supply development is an important factor when we look at the fundamental outlook for copper. Turning to how Freeport is positioning to try to grow production in response to this market demand, we really look at the sizable reserve position of copper and even larger resource position that Freeport has that supports a pipeline for future growth options.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Within the portfolio, we look for opportunities to get more out of what we have through innovation and operating efficiencies. We look for investments in projects where we have large resource positions and where we have established track records and opportunities to leverage the existing infrastructure, our people and capabilities, all with a drive focused on increasing value.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We categorized on Slide 10 our near-term, medium-term, and longer-term development options, and we've outlined identified projects totaling about 1.7 billion pounds of copper in the Americas. We've also highlighted on the slide the ongoing development of the Kucing Liar project in Indonesia, which is expected to support long-term production profiles in the Grasberg District.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

The opportunities that are shown on the slide in the 2-to-3-year category, they center around scaling our leach initiatives and achieving incremental production from our operational improvement projects. Together, the potential from these opportunities total 400 million pounds of incremental copper per annum and do not require significant investment or long lead times.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We discussed earlier the leach projects, but we're also dedicating significant resources to enhancing productivity and asset efficiencies, rebuilding the experience of our workforce, given the large number of new hires in recent years, and utilizing new technologies and automation to restore and improve on productivity metrics that weakened somewhat during the pandemic.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

As we indicated, we completed a feasibility study late in the year 2023 to evaluate a project to more than double the size of our Bagdad operation in northwest Arizona. The reserves at Bagdad are span for decades, and they support expansion of infrastructure at the site to bring value forward. The incremental capital costs to build a new concentrator and support infrastructure for significantly higher mining and milling rates is on the order of $3.5 billion.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

An expanded operation would not only substantially increase copper production, but would produce economies of scale and reduce unit costs. The project does not require major permitting and is relatively straightforward. But given the tight labor market conditions and general market factors, we're not making a decision right now on the timing of the project.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We'll continue to evaluate the timing of when we would go forward, but we are taking steps now to enhance optionality for the future by making some investments in the autonomous haulage for our mining operations, making some investments in housing, and also advancing investments in the tailings infrastructure that will put us in a position that if we make the decision, we could get the project online within a few years.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In Chile, at El Abra, we've talked about this, our resource is very large. We have a major opportunity to install a new concentrator on the order of magnitude size of the concentrator we added at Cerro Verde in 2015. We'll continue to work to retest the economics and updating our project capital costs in light of recent capital cost experience of other large projects.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And in parallel, we're starting work in preparation for an environmental impact statement that would give us the ability to advance the project and provide optionality for future development. We mentioned the Kucing Liar development project in the Grasberg District, which we've initiated development on.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

This is a multiyear development project, and it's proceeding on schedule, and we expect to commence production by 2030, ramping up to over 500 million pounds of copper and over 500,000 ounces of gold. We're also conducting additional exploration in the Grasberg District, where we have identified potential. We've got a big potential below our deep DMLZ ore body, and we expect to have additional opportunities in the future at Grasberg.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We have a major opportunity in the U.S. at the Safford/Lone Star District. We've identified a significant resource there. This year, we're going to work to complete metallurgical testing and mine planning and start a pre-feasibility study to assess future development options there. We continue to see this district as one that has big potential.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

and potentially being a cornerstone asset in the U.S. one adjacent to the Morenci operations. In Indonesia, we're focused on this extension of our rights beyond 2041, because that would open up substantial opportunity for reserve and resource expansion and a continuation of the large-scale mining in one of the world's largest and highest grade copper and gold mining districts.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're in a really strong position to continue our leadership role in supplying copper to a world with growing requirements, but we're going to continue to be disciplined in our approach and focused on executing projects where we can create value for shareholders. With a lot of history in developing big projects, we included a slide on page 11 that you can take a look at.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

A key strength of our company is the ability to execute projects successfully. This does not come easy. It requires a focused, hands-on approach, and we've got a business model of pairing internal resources with trusted contractors, and that has served us well. We've listed several projects that we've led over the years, and we've developed very complex projects around the world.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're going to continue to approach future projects with the same level of preparedness, rigor, and a focus on execution. As we look at 2024, turning to Slide 12, we've got our focus areas listed here. First and foremost, we remain committed to safe and reliable execution of our operating plans across the global business. Seems like a simple thing, but this involves discipline and hard work, day in and day out.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We discussed our focus on enhancing performance in the U.S. through our leach initiatives and productivity. This is particularly important to mitigate low grades and to manage costs, which have experienced higher inflation in recent years. We're going to have another big year in Indonesia.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

A key priority for us is to complete the smelter and ramp up safely and efficiently, and to finalize an agreement for extension of our long-term operating rights. We're also very focused on enhancing optionality, definition, and the value of our embedded growth options. On Slide 13, as usual, we show a three-year outlook for sales volumes of copper, gold, and molybdenum.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

For 2024, the copper sales volumes are slightly reduced, less than 2% below our prior estimate and are now expected to be similar to 2023 levels. The gold sales are 10% higher than our prior estimate and higher than they were in 2023. Higher sales in Indonesia for the year of 2024, offset by slightly lower sales from the Americas. In 2025, our sales estimates are similar to the prior estimates, and we've added 2026 estimates, which you can see are slightly above the 2025 levels. For 2024, we currently estimate our consolidated unit costs to approximate $1.60 per pound.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We've got some details in the reference materials, I believe on page 30, that you can look at the composition of those costs, but $1.60, very similar to what we had in 2023. On Slide 14, we put together our projected volumes and cost projections, and we model the results for our EBITDA and cash flow at various copper prices, ranging from $4-$5 copper. These models use the average of 2025 and 2026, and our current volume estimates and our cost estimates, and holding gold flat at roughly current levels of $2,000 per ounce and molybdenum flat at $19 per pound.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And you can see here on the charts that annual EBITDA in these periods would range from $10 billion per annum at $4 copper to over $14 billion per year at $5 copper. And operating cash flows under these price scenarios would range from $7 billion to over $10 billion. We've got sensitivities to the various commodities on the right-hand side of the chart.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're really well positioned with long life reserves, large-scale production. We not only have current exposure to copper, but all of our future projects and growth opportunities are well positioned to benefit from future metals-intensive growth. And this will give us the ability to generate returns on projects and enhance cash returns under our performance-based payout framework.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Turning to the capital expenditures on Slide 15, we show our current forecast for 2024 and 2025. We also show where we ended up for 2023, which totaled $3.1 billion, and that was slightly lower than what we had guided to in October of $3.2 billion. Capital for 2024 is currently forecast to approximately $3.6 billion, compared with the $3.9 billion previously. The 2025 estimates that are new here are currently estimated to total $3.8 billion. That includes $1.2 billion in discretionary growth projects, which totaled $2.4 billion over the 2024 and 2025 years.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

This category reflects the capital investments we're making in new projects to generate returns that, under our financial policy, are funded with the 50% of available cash that's not distributed. They're value-enhancing projects that are detailed in the reference materials on slide 33.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're gonna continue to be very disciplined around capital expenditures, carefully managing those. You saw we adjusted the capital expenditures down for 2024, and as we go forward, we'll continue to look at opportunities to do things to sustain our business and to do things on a low capital intensity basis.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And finally, before we take your questions, we just on Slide 16, we reiterate our financial policies, and those are prioritized, centered on a strong balance sheet, cash returns to shareholders, and investments in value-enhancing growth projects. Balance sheet is solid. We've got strong credit metrics and a lot of flexibility within our debt targets to execute on our projects.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

You may have seen that, Moody's upgraded our credit rating in December, and that just demonstrates our strong financial profile. Indicated on the slide, we've distributed almost $4 billion to shareholders through dividends and share purchases since the payout framework was implemented in the second half of 2021. And we have an attractive future long-term portfolio that will enable us to continue to build value, long-term value for shareholders.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

The global team, as we go forward, is really highly focused on our strategy of being foremost in copper, and we're driven to continue pursuing long-term value in the business and executing our plans responsibly, safely, and efficiently. I wanna thank everybody for their attention, and we'll now take the questions.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, press star one on your touch-tone phone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star one again. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the numbers.

[Operator]

We ask that you please limit your questions to one. If you have additional questions, please return to the queue. One moment, please, for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Hacking with Citi. Please go ahead.

[Alexander Hacking, Equity Research Analyst at Citi]

Richard, I guess my question is around Bagdad and the technical study. Now, I was a little surprised by how high the CapEx was, $3.5 billion for incremental 100,000 tons. That's about $35,000 a ton. I mean, in your view, is that the new normal for, you know, a, a concentrate project, or are there particular factors with Bagdad that are raising, you know, the CapEx above historical levels? Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Thank you, Alex. I think it is somewhat of a new normal for the cost of a concentrator and related mining infrastructure. When you do, you're dividing on the cost per ton, you know, you're looking at how many pounds of copper are gonna come out of that concentrator.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And, you know, our U.S. mines are characterized by relatively low ore grades, and Bagdad has a relatively low copper ore grades, but also has molybdenum kicker. So the molybdenum would add something like 10 million pounds of molybdenum with an expansion, so that'll be another benefit. But really what we need to do is focus on. It does bring down our overall cost per pound, so that's a big plus for us.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

When you look at an investment in the U.S., it may be to develop a relatively lower grade mine, but something important to point out is that we don't have the tax burden in the U.S. that you have in the international locations. So I think our projects in the U.S., while they're low grade, when you cut through all the economics and you look at the ability for us to, you know, to execute the projects and look at the risks associated with them, they're different than looking at a project in a different location.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So there's some pluses or minuses that go into the bottom line, but we, you know, started this work on Bagdad some time ago, and we've updated all of the capital costs in line with where current capital costs are. And so I think a reality of the market is that, you know, the incentive price to develop new copper, even if it's brownfield, is much higher than it has been in the past.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And that's, you know, another reason why we believe that, you know, the markets, if they need these copper units, are gonna have to adjust to the incentive prices required to get these projects going, because we don't wanna front run the market. We wanna be prepared, we wanna be, you know, have options to go forward as soon as we can. But we don't wanna be in a position where we're investing and making major capital commitments before the market prices are telling us they're ready.

[Alexander Hacking, Equity Research Analyst at Citi]

Thanks, Kathleen. Appreciate the color.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah, Alex-

[Operator]

Our next-

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Let me just add very briefly that Kathleen makes a really good point about these relative economics. No royalties in the U.S. U.S. tax rate is much lower, federal tax rate's much lower than outside the U.S. We have a net operating loss carry forward. Community support is strong in the U.S., and we have no minority interest there. So looking at global benchmarks needs to be adjusted for the site-specific factors that we have in the U.S., and they're very positive.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Carlos de Alba with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Carlos De Alba, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Yeah, good morning, Richard and Kathleen. Question is on cost. You know, the, the, I just wanna see if you can provide a little bit more color. The guidance for the first quarter of net unit cash cost of $155 per pound looked very, very good relative to consensus expectations and our own estimate.

[Carlos De Alba, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

However, for the full year, the guidance came at $160 and that is a little bit higher than the market, than again consensus on our model suggests. So what are you expecting? What the variability in these, were you surprised in the beginning of the year, but then maybe throughout the rest of the quarters is increasing? What is driving that, and to what extent this number for the year is conservative?

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In terms of the first quarter, we do have some gold that was not shipped in the fourth quarter. That'll be shipped in the first quarter. And so the relative, you know, gold-to-copper ratio impacts the first quarter and makes that less than what we expect the average to be for the full year. I don't know, Carlos, what you had in there for export duties, but we're assuming in Indonesia that those are continuing.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We are continuing to discuss with the Government of Indonesia the applicability of those duties. And I think the more that we make progress on the smelter, the better our case there is. But that's something we've factored into the estimate, but we are continuing to have that discussion. So if we are successful in reducing those duties, that would be a benefit.

[Carlos De Alba, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

All right. And just to clarify then, Kathleen, the cash cost guidance for the year of $160 includes that the duties in Indonesia, concentrate exports remain throughout the entire of the year, right? The full year.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yes. Our export, it only applies to export volumes, and so as we go through the year, the exports will decline, because we'll be ramping up the smelter. So, you know, our goal for 2024 is to get the full ramp-up completed, and so, that's not something that'll continue long term, the duties, once we get the smelter fully up and running. But it'll start to decline over the course of the second half as we ramp up and we produce more domestically.

[Carlos De Alba, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher LaFemina with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Christopher LaFemina, Managing Director and Global Head of Metals and Mining Equity Research at Jefferies]

Hi. Thanks, operator. Hi, Richard and Kathleen. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the kind of cost trends in North America, in particular at Morenci. So I know that you're guiding to a slight increase in your site production delivery costs in 2024, and I assume that is a function of volumes being lower.

[Christopher LaFemina, Managing Director and Global Head of Metals and Mining Equity Research at Jefferies]

But if we think about kind of where this business could be headed, assuming that Morenci can kind of get back to where it was 12 or 18 months ago, and I'm not sure if that's a good assumption, but let's assume that to be the case.

[Christopher LaFemina, Managing Director and Global Head of Metals and Mining Equity Research at Jefferies]

With the leaching ramp up, with the staffing and productivity improvements, with the new technologies, and potentially even longer term with the Bagdad expansion, where could that kind of site production delivery cost number trend down to? Could it get back to $2.50 or lower, or is $3 a pound sort of the new normal for that business? Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Well, we hope it's not the new normal, Chris. We're working hard. I mean, one of the things that's... You've got to take into account here is we are in a low-grade period in the U.S. You know, I think the grades that we had in 2023 were the lowest that they had been in probably 10 years or so or more.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So we are in a period, and that's continued in 2024, where we do have some low grades that we're going through, but that is why it's so important for us to bring on new units with a lower incremental cost. And the leach opportunity will help us there. And as we are able to get those pounds-...

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

put into reserves longer term, not just what you're mining that year or getting that year, but multi-year reserve additions for the leach. That spreads the cost, all the costs over more reserves, and so it does help us with driving the economies of scale and why it's so important. We're not in a position now to say where costs could go.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

There's been a number of other factors that have, you know, inflation factors and things like the cost of, you know, basic parts and materials and supplies has gone up from where it was, just, you know, two or three years ago. But we are very focused on it, and all these self-help things for us have very high rates of return. You know, there's not a lot of capital involved.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

It's focused resources. It's not an easy thing because it would have been done already, but it is an area we think we can make improvements. We can also focus, which we're doing now, on... You know, the last couple of years, we've had to rely more on contractors because of the staffing issues.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

But as we get, you know, the staffing set up and get more experience in the workforce, we can reduce our reliance on contractors, as you probably know, have gotten expensive, and Arizona is a very competitive market. So we're working on all those things within the things that we have within our control and are really going to be focused on trying to drive the cost down.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're also looking at Morenci, specifically, at different configurations. We're looking at whether it makes sense for us to be operating all of our equipment like we are today, and looking at if we cut back some things, would that be... There's cost and benefits to that because that could have volume impacts as well. But is that a better setup, a more efficient setup that will allow us to drive costs lower? So we've got some of those initiatives that are being reviewed right now, on what the right setup is, given the, you know, given how costs have risen.

[Christopher LaFemina, Managing Director and Global Head of Metals and Mining Equity Research at Jefferies]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Orest Wowkodaw with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Orest Wowkodaw, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank]

Hi, good morning. Given the costs, the capital costs involved and the timing of building new projects, and the strength of your balance sheet, I'm just wondering whether M&A of producing assets is something that's on the radar, because it certainly seems like there could be some assets available out there, especially in jurisdictions you're not currently in.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Well, you know, we are, we're constantly monitoring the market, and you can be confident that opportunities are available or presented to us, and we consider them. The facts are, we haven't found those attractive to date. We have such great opportunities to create value totally for our shareholders by focusing on internal growth.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Through the leach project, through the brownfield developments in the Americas, through the Kucing Liar project in Indonesia, and now with the expectation that we'll go beyond 2041, we're going to do additional exploration there to understand what the opportunities are. And success in any of those opportunities creates value where there's no value in our current share price.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

So it's all for the benefit of our shareholders, and that makes it much, much more difficult for external opportunities to compete with them. And my experience has shown that small mines get smaller and big mines get bigger. So, we really, we really are, as I said in my opening comments, pleased about where Freeport is positioned for what we believe is going to be a great future for our company.

[Orest Wowkodaw, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank]

Thanks, Richard.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Edward Goldsmith with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Edward Goldsmith, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Hi, Richard and Kathleen. Thanks for the presentation. Two questions from my side. So firstly, can you give an update on the status of the negotiations over concentrate export extension post-May? And secondly, can you outline the reductions to the 2024 CapEx? I think they were at the discretionary and the other CapEx bucket level. Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah. On the first part of the question, our current export license in Indonesia goes to May of 2024. And we are continually having discussions with the Government of Indonesia about the fact that, while we will be substantially complete on construction activities by the end of May, which is, was real important target for us and for them, that just the ordinary course of a smelter startup can take five or six months to get through.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And so we're having those discussions. They understand the situation, and they're encouraging us to continue to meet our targets and that those discussions will continue. We point out that the alignment that we have with the 51% ownership of the state-owned company, MIND ID, in PTFI's operations is really important here. That combined with tax revenues, et cetera, that the government gets from having consistent operations at PTFI, we're both aligned in that to have exports continue.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So the conversations have been constructive to date, but we've just gotta continue to progress it, and have those, you know, continuing to have the discussions with the government, and we're doing that on a regular basis.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Well, and Kathleen, just let me add, they're not negotiations over this issue. The mines... I mean, I've spoken in recent months on at least three occasions directly with the president about it. He understands it. The Mines Minister, who has a business background, clearly understands it. It's just administrative procedurally, they concluded not to grant that export rights beyond this date, to see if we complete the smelter as we've committed to do it. But beyond that, it'll just be an administrative action to get it approved.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

On the second question, with respect to capital expenditures, we always go through a process of looking for opportunities to push out capital if it's, you know, not required in the current year. We went through a process between the last update and this one to really look hard at what we could efficiently spend this year and cut back on some things. Some of that's showing up in 2025.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We'll do the same thing again, you know, because really what we want to do is deploy the capital as efficiently as we can and make sure we're sustaining the reliability of our operations, but also looking at, you know, we don't want to be doing too many things at one time, and so we always take a, you know, hard look at it. So we'll continue to do that, as we go forward and manage the capital very carefully. But there wasn't really one big thing. There was a number of things that we did, in looking at the prior estimate for 2024.

[Edward Goldsmith, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Dudas with Vertical Research. Please go ahead.

[Michael Dudas, Partner and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Vertical Research Partners]

Good morning, Kathleen and Richard.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Hey, Michael.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Hey, Michael.

[Michael Dudas, Partner and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Vertical Research Partners]

With regard to your proposed investments in the U.S., maybe even looking in Latin America, maybe you could remind us on an internal rate of return, risk-adjusted rate of return basis, what Freeport is looking for.

[Michael Dudas, Partner and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Vertical Research Partners]

Certainly, you mentioned on the U.S. investments, you get benefits from royalty and tax issues, but just on a general basis, even when you're thinking about your assets in Indonesia. And then on the follow-up on that, is the industry relative to a year ago today, is the industry ahead of the curve or behind the curve on meeting what the expected demand opportunities are in the market? Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

On the first part of the question, with respect to how we evaluate projects and returns, we don't target one number. You know, we look at what the specific project is, what the execution risk is, where it's located, and we run a range of commodity price assumptions around it to look at...

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

What we're really focused on in deploying capital is investing in putting our infrastructure and investments in places where we can execute the plan and in places where we've got long-term reserves. Because anybody that tells you they can get the copper price right is wrong because it's gonna move up and down.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So what we wanna have is a situation where we've got a very long life reserve, where you can make that capital investment upfront and realize cash flows over a long period of time and not have to get the price forecast for copper perfect in the first year or two. So when we look at returns, we're looking at those projects that have leverage to future copper.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And we may, you know, look at something outside of the U.S., we may apply higher risk factors, and we look to get higher rates of return than what we would wanna have in something like the U.S., where for reasons that Richard talked about, you know, have somewhat of a lower risk profile for us.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

But it's not one scientific number. It's a range of scenarios that we run around a project, and again, looking at the resource and the size of the investment and our ability to generate returns over a long period of time, that would be consistent, not that it would go away, it would fall off, you know, something that could be - it could be earned over a long period of time, has a long tail, which a lot of our projects do. And Richard may have some perspectives on the second question.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

I think it's obvious that there haven't been new projects sanctioned in our industry for some time, and what's happened recently, in recent years with the copper prices rallying and then falling off, you know, has just caused more delays, more cautiousness by developers in developing the project.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So, you know, I would say, in my opinion, the situation has become, you know, more significant because the projects are taking longer, not shorter, and, you know, we talked about when we started on Grasberg underground, we started planning—started investing 20 years ago in it. I mean, you really have... These are long lead time projects, and we really need to have started investments.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

That's why we're really focused on what can we do, continue to plan for these long-term projects, but what else can we do, and what can we do to take advantage of technology that's available to us, and what can we do to get more out of the resources we already have? But not everybody has that ability. And Richard, I don't know if you wanna add any comments to that second part.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Well, and I, I'll add a brief comment to the first part, too, Kathleen. The, my early experience in my career was in the oil and gas industry, and early on, Dan Yergin and I wrote a paper on oil price forecasting, which basically evidenced how wrong forecasts can be.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

And so we approach, as Kathleen described, all of our investment and business planning on a scenario basis, not trying to predict a particular price or range of prices, but to look at what impact investment decisions and operating decisions have on our overall portfolio. And we look to protect ourselves on a portfolio basis from downside risk and then structure investments to take advantage of what we have as confidence in a long-term price.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

So it's not any kind of formal rate of return kind of criteria that you see in a lot of industries, which work elsewhere. You know, I have this saying that figures don't lie, but liars figure. So, you know, we just really base these things, as I said, on scenario planning and portfolio impacts.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

The basic thesis, I believe, for the demand for copper is unchanged and continues to be supported. From the very start, my work with ICMM, where I was chairman on two occasions, but most recently, when all the issues about aspirational goals for carbon reductions were being considered and such promise, I've always said that there are a lot of unanswered questions, and the movement towards these aspirational goals will not be consistent, but they'll have issues, complications, and so forth. That's certainly what we're seeing.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

The future of copper is really influenced significantly by investments in carbon reduction, and I think it's something the world absolutely has to do. There are other factors related to global growth, connectivity, these data centers, and some of that's being driven by artificial intelligence. Just everywhere you turn, the world is getting more electrified, and that's why I think the fundamental long-term demand thesis for copper is just getting stronger and stronger.

[Michael Dudas, Partner and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Vertical Research Partners]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Thanks, Mike.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Thank you for the question.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Brian MacArthur with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

Good morning, Richard and Kathleen, and thank you for taking my question. It goes back to what Alex was asking and Bagdad. So I just wanna make sure, as I look at these numbers, so the project capital is $3.5 billion, and I would have to think you get some infrastructure benefit there, so it's not a true greenfield.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

So then you talk about a $3.50-$4 incentive copper prices, and I understand the benefits of no royalties and taxes. Does that sort of say that if you didn't have infrastructure, the capital cost would have been higher, and if you didn't have all these tax benefits, the incentive price would be an awful lot higher?

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

I.e., if anybody else had to do a greenfield there, you know, you'd probably need a incentive price, you know, well over $4 to make it work. i.e., those numbers include all the tax benefits and everything that you were talking about before? If I can ask the question that way.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah. So-

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

No.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Brian, if somebody else had the same situation, greenfield and the grades we have, it would be a lot more. A lot more expensive.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

A lot more.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

Right. You know, your $4 is absolutely right. I mean, you just look at recent projects and look at, you know, how costs escalate, and then what would it have taken from an incentive price to justify that project from the outset if the cost numbers had been known. So this is not that complicated. This is not a greenfield project.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

We've operated there for 80 years or so, and it's about as straightforward a project as you could have. But it's telling for the industry, even with this kind of straightforward project, the challenge you face. You know, it's cost, it's tailings, and we do benefit from infrastructure. This is just a mill expansion. It's not a building a new mine.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

But then there's a challenge of getting workers and housing for workers. So all of this is real telling on the supply side. I just talked about the demand side support for copper. This is a great example of a simple project in terms of the relative complexities of projects in our industry.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

This is relatively simple, and yet, you know, it faces these challenges of being economically justified in today's price. You know, at the outset, I said, "Today's copper price is not a price that's adequate to stimulate the kind of investments that are going to be needed for this industry." And that's why we're optimistic about future prices.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

Right. And maybe if I could just ask, just on the capital allocation, I mean, you've got lots of options, as you said, but if you're successful for phase three, I mean, you get as much production there as you would here at, I assume, a fraction of the capital cost.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

Does Bagdad get pushed in that situation? I mean, I get it, the world needs probably all of it, but would they get sequenced, or are they complementary? I mean, I know they don't depend on each other, but are they complementary, and you would do both at once if both work?

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're prioritizing the leach initiative. I mean, that is one that's a no-brainer for us. It's got very, very little capital that we're investing in it and very low increment. It's our lowest incremental operating cost of anything in the U.S., and so that's a no-brainer. We're pursuing that regardless.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

That makes a ton of sense, and we're pursuing that regardless. We think the world's gonna need something beyond that, you know, obviously. And so, on the Bagdad thing, we just want to get it to where, you know, continue to enhance the optionality in it, and we need to do some things anyway. We're doing some infrastructure on tailings that we would need to do anyway in the future.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Maybe not as quickly as what we would need with the new project, but we need to do those anyway, so we're gonna, we're gonna do those to the extent we can do that efficiently. We, we want this autonomous thing that we're, we're pursuing. You know, years ago, people thought you didn't really need autonomous in the U.S.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

But now we, we, particularly in remote locations, you really, really do, you know, when you consider the cost of the workforce and the housing limitations and that sort of thing. And, and the opportunities to upskill our employees, we, we think it checks all of, of those boxes. So autonomous, we want that to see how that, that unfolds.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

So we don't have to pull the trigger on Bagdad now, but we want to put it in a position where it can go forward. It makes sense if the world needs more copper to get copper from where we already have it. And so it does; it's a good project. It's not a barn burner from an economic standpoint right now, but it will have its day, and I think it will get done at some point. It's just we aren't predicting exactly when.

[Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James]

Great. Thanks very much for all the color.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Brian, we've got a strong enough financial position that we can, you know... capital is not a barrier for us doing projects that make sense.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Alan Spence with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

[Alan Spence, Senior Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Thanks. Morning. Grasberg, you highlighted the record performance in December. Is there anything that could potentially be staying-

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Alan, you're breaking up on us.

[Alan Spence, Senior Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

Sorry. I'll try again. Hopefully, you can hear me.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah, that's better.

[Alan Spence, Senior Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas]

The strong performance at Grasberg in December, is that a level you think could potentially be sustained through 2024, or was there something unique about what happened last month? And also, if you could just remind me of the timeline to get to 240,000 tons per day run rate.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

With respect to Gras-

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

We've got a great... Go ahead, Kathleen.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Okay. I was gonna say, Mark Johnson’s on the line. He can add to it if he wants, but with respect to December, you know, it highlights we got that SAG mill completed, that new SAG mill completed in December. So really, that gave us the ability to put more ore throughput through the concentrators.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And with the combination of higher grades and strong recoveries, we had, you know, a great month. Now, we have the ability to continue to have strong performance. We achieved a lot of records in December, but we do have the ability and some upside to continue that. That SAG mill was...

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

originally put in the plan, because over time, we'll need the additional grinding capacity, et cetera, to take the ore that will be coming. But right now, while we're in these higher grade sections, the more we can put through the mills, the better the copper production will be.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

In terms of the 240, right now, we don't have 240 in our plans, but over time, with the addition of Kucing Liar, we'll have that, we'll have that capacity to do it. But having SAG 3 does give us some more opportunities in the near term to, if we continue to have high rates of ore produced from the underground, it'll give us some upside.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

A mine we don't talk a lot about, but one that we're gonna try to keep improving on is the Big Gossan mine. It's a relatively small mine, but very, very high grade, and we've got some plans to bring in some additional. And that's reflected in the five-year guidance, but some additional throughput from Big Gossan that'll add copper production and gold production. Mark, I don't know if you wanna add into any of those comments.

[Mark Johnson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Freeport-McMoRan Indonesia at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah, Kathleen, the only thing I would add is, as part of the KL project, we also add some, over the shorter term, we add some ore flow capacity and optionality at GBC. That allows us to get GBC up from, like, 120 up to 140 thousand tons a day in 2026, and at that point, we'll be able to run close to 240 thousand tons through the mill.

[Mark Johnson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Freeport-McMoRan Indonesia at Freeport-McMoRan]

The mine and mill will be matched, and then, as you said, the KL come up, and then GBC and KL share portions of the ore flow system. But over the short term, we sequence that part of the KL ore flow that gives us the opportunity at GBC in the much shorter term.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Peterson with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

[Bill Peterson, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Hi, Richard, Kathleen, and team. Nice job on the quarterly execution. Thanks for sneaking in my question here. So I wanted to come back to the leaching efforts, the incremental 200 million pounds. I think you mentioned 2- to 3-year period. Is that a fairly linear ramp, or is that more back-end weighted? And you've consistently talked about low capital intensity. Can you remind us what the capital associated with this is, I guess, quantified, and has there been any CapEx creep in interim, similar to just other broader projects? And thanks.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

On the timeframe for the incremental 200, we have not given a specific timeframe. We do feel we can get it done within a couple of years, and we'll add whatever we can in the interim. We're... This Leach Everywhere initiative that we have, where we're accessing parts of stockpiles that hadn't been accessed before, getting access to some of the side slopes and some of the areas around the stockpile that we just didn't leach before. We're-- That's been a big driver of success and will continue to be. The other one that we're excited about is the targeted drilling.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

Through our data, we can see where you have situations where the solution that needs to get to the ore has been blocked for some reason over history, and this targeted drilling allows us to get access to it. We are testing this year some abilities to do that more at scale, and that is something that we're real interested to see how that develops and whether that will give us some additional incremental production.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We haven't factored that into our plans at this point, but we're gonna continue to use these covers. We still don't have everything. The stockpiles are so massive, covering, you know, spanning, particularly Morenci, just miles of area, and so we, we're still doing the covers.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We're still looking for other opportunities to get heat into the, into the, into the stockpiles. We're targeting some, some pyrite ores, in some of our operations that have pyrite in the ores. That is a source of heat as well. There are a number of things that we're, we're working on, that are, are, are not the big R&D effort, but, but things that we can do from an operational standpoint. but we'll stay tuned. we will.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

This is a big, big initiative, and stay tuned. We'll, as we go forward, look to give you a little bit more as we, as we go through 2024 in terms of, in terms of the timeframe. We haven't spent much capital on, on this initiative. we've already got, you know, the infrastructure, basic infrastructure, the, the tank house capacity.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

You know, this is copper that goes to a tank house, not a smelter. We have already excess latent tank house capacity. We've spent some money, but it doesn't round to anything really big. The operating costs, the incremental operating costs of this have been very low on the order of $1 per pound.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And so it's just a really exciting opportunity for us to generate value. And so we, as we go forward, we don't see huge amounts of capital either that'll come into play. When you get to this piece that's R&D, that's where we need to make sure that all these things can be applied and deployed at scale and can be economic. But that testing's ongoing. But the first 400 million pounds, we think that we can do that without spending a lot of capital.

[Bill Peterson, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Thanks, Kathleen.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

And, you may have noticed this, Kathleen, but importantly, there's no permitting issues, and that is a real challenge for any kind of project you do in terms of, brownfield expansions and really tough for greenfield expansions. So here, no capital, low operating costs, no permitting delays.

[Operator]

Our final question will come from the line of Lawson Winder with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Hey, Lawson.

[Lawson Winder, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities]

Thank you very much, operator. And, good morning, good day, Kathleen and Richard. Thank you very much for the update. I just, if I could just sneak in one and a half questions. One would just be on the current level of the dividend. I mean, is your, is your view that, you know, given the cash flow outlook, your view of the copper price.

[Lawson Winder, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities]

I mean, is this a comfortable level for the dividend for 2024? And then just my half question would be, is there any movement within your existing TCRC contracts to potentially, you know, renegotiate those or get the benefit of some of the really, really low spot pricing we're seeing today? Thank you.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

On the dividend question, our board reviews the financial policy on a regular basis, and we put in place the base dividend, the variable dividend, and we've been paying at that level for some time now. We'll, you know, continue to review that with the board.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

You can see from our results, you know, the financial results that we're projecting for 2024, you know, look very good. But we always, you know, gonna look at what's going on in the market and don't wanna put ourselves in a position of running up debt. But we have a good balance sheet, so I don't wanna front run anything.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

The board will look at this on a regular basis, but our financial position is in really, you know, really excellent shape. The second question on TCRCs, you know, we reach agreements, you know, as you know, with on long-term TCRCs that are done, you know, on fixed contracts once a year.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

And since then, you know, spot rates have come, you know, a lot lower, you know, given the tightness in supply. We do sell some things on a spot basis, but most of it is sold under these fixed contracts where we have the TCRCs fixed. The other, you know, the other thing is once, you know, once we get the smelter in Indonesia up and running, we don't have...

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

You know, we still do with Cerro Verde, still have with Cerro Verde concentrate that we, that we sell, but, you know, everything from Indonesia will be really just, you know, processed through our own smelters.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah. And our contracts are long term in terms of volumes, but the TCRCs are renegotiated each year. And you raised a great point, if for those of you who haven't followed it, but the situation right now with smelters where they can't get concentrate to process is a real strong indicator of where this market is and where it's going.

[Operator]

I'll turn the call back to management-

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

All right

[Operator]

... for any closing remarks.

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

We appreciate it, everyone.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Well-

[Kathleen Quirk, President at Freeport-McMoRan]

If there are any follow-ups, you feel free to call David, and we're available to continue to discuss. We'll report to you our progress throughout the year.

[Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO at Freeport-McMoRan]

Yeah, thank you for joining us today, and everyone have a great day.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our call for today. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Kathleen Quirk, President
• Mark Johnson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Freeport-McMoRan Indonesia
• Richard C. Adkerson, Chairman and CEO

Analysts

• Alan Spence, Senior Equity Research Analyst at BNP Paribas
• Alexander Hacking, Equity Research Analyst at Citi
• Bill Peterson, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan
• Brian MacArthur, Managing Director, Equity Research at Raymond James
• Carlos De Alba, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Christopher LaFemina, Managing Director and Global Head of Metals and Mining Equity Research at Jefferies
• Edward Goldsmith, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Lawson Winder, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities
• Michael Dudas, Partner and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Vertical Research Partners
• Orest Wowkodaw, Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Scotiabank