KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. (OTCPK:KGHPF) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 18, 2022 6:00 AM ET
Company Representatives
Marcin Chludzinski – President, Chief Executive Officer
Andrzej Kensbok – Vice President, Finance
Adam Bugajczuk – Vice President, Development
Conference Call Participants
Paweł Puchalski – Santander
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for your patience. Even such innovative companies as KGHM sometimes have to face technical challenges, but we are ready to start right now.
Welcome to our conference focus on the results of KGHM Group for the first half of the year. Welcome to the trading floor of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and welcome to all those who are following us online. The effects of KGHM work in the past six months of the year will be commented by Marcin Chludzinski, President of the Management Board; Andrzej Kensbok, Vice President of the Management Board for Finance; and Adam Bugajczuk, Vice President of the Management Board for Development.
For health reasons Mr. Marek Pietrzak had to be absent today. He is also Vice President of the Management Board responsible for Foreign Assets. Of course he will comment on this area for you, but if you have particularly detailed questions, just make sure that we’re able to answer you in detail, we will simply take a note of your questions and answer those questions in writing as soon as possible, but hopefully we’ll be able to handle all your questions.
We will start traditionally with the Management Board’s comments on the events of the last six months, then we will proceed to Q&A session. And any questions from chat that will not fit into our today’s session will be published on our website, including with a transcript of the whole conference. You can ask your questions at the email address of Investor Relationships department.
I’ll give the floor to Marcin Chludziński, CEO of KGHM.
Marcin Chludziński
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to give you a warm welcome on this scorching hot day in August. Last time we met on the occasion of the presentation of our Annual Results. Back then I told you that we believed and we were convinced that the long term trend related to demand for copper in the context of urbanization, increasing population worldwide, digital technologies, green energy and so on is a growing trend that is favorable to copper.
But I also told you then about the economic reality and macro and tactical dimension can not only surprise us, but it can also behave in a non-linear fashion, which does not mean that it does not change the global trend or that it stays within the global trend. We can see based on the results of the first six months of the year that the situation is quite good in terms EBITDA. Here we were able to maintain the result compared with the previous year, the same goes for EBITD impact. It is better 12% up from last year, PLN4.180 billion after the first six months of 2022.
Why am I saying that we faced in the first six months affected the situation. Well, for sure you have noticed the situation in China that has zero COVID policy resulted in slightly lower industrial output, but also lower Chinese exports. Also, if you look at the cost situation, there is something that has to be mentioned with regard to electrical energy, prices and fuel prices, fuel such as gas, plus variously interpreted symptoms of a certain economic slowdown or at least some question marks that appear around the world.
So we’ve looked at the cost factors that are dependent on the geopolitical situation or the situation on commodities market and I mean here gas, coal primarily. All those things affect our result, but at the same time this result is satisfying and very good given the circumstances.
In view of the macro economic situation we also take into account the possibility that the macro economic situation in China after political elections that will take place in the near future, as well as stimulation policy of China and other countries may lead to export levels being maintained at the same levels or may be certain trends will change, will reverse. This is something that we are considering as a possibility; however, we are very prudent.
In general we have been very prudent about managing this company for the last four years. At times of great optimism, we’re getting ready for more pessimistic circumstances if these come at all. At the same time we monitor closely the development around the world, which does not change the global trend, long term trend related to copper, silver commodities, raw minerals, raw elements. This trend continues all the time and does not change.
In a moment we will present financial and production results and I must say that I feel we are sailing those waters as flexibly and as cleverly as we can, doing our best given the circumstances, and let me remind you that the recent period has been probably the most dynamic in terms of volatility.
Trade was very low, prices of commodities during COVID, at the beginning COVID and then throughout the pandemic, difficult work conditions and then another crisis and some question marks brought about by the conflict in Ukraine. This supply chain is first during the pandemic and then at the beginning of the Ukrainian, Russian conflict.
So we can say that this macro-economic global, geopolitical economic rollercoaster is something that we have got use to, but at the same time it requires extreme alertness on our part, so the results we are presenting to you today have to be considered in this context.
And I will give over now to Andrzej Kensbok.
Andrzej Kensbok
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will represent both finance and production today, and foreign assets as well. Of course, I will do my best to answer your questions and present as many details as possible, but if any issues come up that I am unable to address, obviously we will prepare our responses as soon as possible.
The production in the first six months of the year has been good, stable. We completed all our production plans regarding KGHM Polska Miedz and KGHM International. As regards Sierra Gorda, we had a certain decline in production, especially in the second quarter, but I will dwell on it in a sec. As regards sales of paid copper, that is on schedule, and the first semester sales of silver now is slightly ahead of the plan, which also reflects to slightly better production result on silver. Maybe I’ll tell you more about Sierra Gorda in a moment.
First, production of metals, paid copper. Here production is basically in line with the results of last year with only 1% year-on-year difference and that is a composition of two factors. One is its slightly greater than planned production of copper in Poland, both in output processing and smeltering, and slightly lower production at our Robinson mine in the U.S. and other mines. Let me just remind you, our budget did not include output from Franke mine, so it is not reflected in the results.
But semester-to-semester comparison, although last year Franke output was included this year, it is not – it is slightly higher due to or thanks to a good performance of the Robinson mine. As for Sierra Gorda, I have a special slide dedicated to that, so maybe that will be a good illustration to a story about that. Production of silver is over the plan and that results from higher content of silver in the ore.
Our output and production of silver is planned conservatively, bearing in mind that we do not optimize our output in terms of content of silver and ore. We optimize output in terms of content of copper. Silver is a derivative of this approach. So silver output depends on what is actually the composition of the deposits that are primarily focused on copper and high content of copper.
In our metals, well also about the planned KGHM International, Robinson contribute very much to this also, a high content of precious metals and the ore and higher recovery, which is good news. Basically Robinson and its production of precious metals is based on the par with the production of precious metals in Poland.
Now, results of Polska Miedź. We have a slight overrun on the output, which means that our mines worked correctly. Our processing plans concentration also worked correctly. There was a high availability of copper. In all, production of electronic copper was higher than in the first semester last year, but this was achieved, mainly thanks to processing of third-party input through a lesser extent due to processing of our own input, and there are two factors that contributed to this, the first being that we had planted the increase in third party.
We bought scrap material and that went smoothly. Hence, we are completed including some allowances for whether problems and turbulent weather at the beginning of the year in Poland, were one. And the second factor was, lower usage of our own input. We are still analyzing the situation, but in fact we built up a stock of concentrates for Glogów II Copper mine, and that is why we processed greater amounts of third party input in other plans.
And the second element was that we had a stock of anodes. We maintained a high stock anodes in connection with refurbishment of Glogów II Copper mine, and the stock of anodes was also made using third-party raw materials. Now, if we will look at the structure of those anodes, now you can see that stock is 50/50 composed of our own and third party raw materials.
Till the end of the year, this structure is likely to improve, both in terms of input for furnaces and the consumption of anodes and the climatic processes. We think that by the end of year we will have made up for any differences from the budget and by the end of the year we will be in line with the budget. Profitability of our own raw materials is higher than profitability of third party input processing.
This is also linked to the situation worldwide. Third party scrap was more difficult to obtain. There was higher competition in terms of scrap metal around the world and on top of that there is industry and high prices, high prices also contributed to higher, increased in purchasing of scrap metals. Now price has decrease and also the availability of scrap metals decreased.
We can say that companies that are trading in scrap metal will probably wait for some time, but not for too long. These temporary changes, they do not have any material impact on annual results. I have already mentioned silver production is slightly higher due to better mining capacity.
Now production results, Sierra Gorda. You can see a decrease vis-a-vis the first semester of last year and there’s a few factors that come into play. The first one was that we had planned smaller output this year, because we knew that Sierra Gorda was going to explode push backs with lower copper content.
And the second reason for that which had not been planned but became reality was that the head grade, the copper content in the currently mined push backs is slightly lower than what we had assumed in our budget. This is a deviation that is consistent with geological standards, that have been adopted for such mines, but unfortunately this is a deteriorating trend. This contrasts with the fact that last year we were able to mine higher copper context push back than what has been assumed in geological evaluations. So we’ve got the effect of the contrast and the more complex outcome of the lower grade in the mining areas.
The second factor that came into play, especially at the end of quarter two were some lengthy renovation works of the crushing machine in Sierra Gorda. It has already been initiated. It works and also there was a malfunction on the conveyor, and the motors have been reinforced and Sierra Gorda in general has turned around from that little mishap. However, the output has been slightly impacted.
So to sum up, this was a temporary situation. The grade will be higher once we get the new push backs running, but the transition period due to malfunction and renovation has been completed now and we’ve spoken to the management and see that both July and August performance is high in beta and we are getting some updates that they planned. It’s making an effort to make up for some of the performance losses in the second half of this year. We could say that the performance in July and the preliminary performance results in August actually confirm that this is happening.
KGHM International has slightly improved its output year-by-year, especially due to the good performance of the Robinson mine, and we should especially draw your attention to the fact that there is more TPM, so gold, platinum, palladium and there is a higher output of these metals, which is especially significant for KGHM International and the general performance.
And the good news that we already mentioned last year and early this year, we are repatriating assets, we are repaying subsequent trenches of our loans. We have repaid PLN193 million, that’s about PLN110 million from Sierra Gorda and about PLN80 million from KGHM International. We are currently preparing the cash flow forecasts and we are looking at whether we can make further repayments before the end of this year, so we were watching this, and whenever it is necessary – it was possible not to keep cash abroad, we will be repaying those loans in order to decrease the level of indebtedness.
Now, going directly to our financials, the revenues of the Capital Group are higher by 24%, that is semester-by-semester and thus there is a few factors. First, is increase of the sales volume of the basic metals, of 535 million plus, and I wanted to emphasize at this point that we quite often mentioned that the important thing for us is for KGHM to have stable output and to be predictable and reliable and secure, so that there are no interruptions, reductions or some other serious disruptions in the continuity, and we have managed to avoid any of those.
We are stable in terms of production. We are predictable. We are able to comprehend our output and our sales volume and the situation of our clients, which is very important against a background of what our President has said. There is a slowdown in China indeed, but we are not really feeling that our orders for cathodes in China are going as planned.
In Europe, we are observing a trend, whereby certain customers are slowing down or suspending the reception of copper, but others are trying to get more of the material. So there’s a mix on the market. You can clearly see some sectors where we have favorable conditions, but there are others in which the current situation causes a certain slowdown.
What we are observing is that these phenomena neutralize one another, and as a whole they do not impact our capacity to sell and to generate revenues at KGHM. We are talking to banks, customers and institutions that have a good feel of the market in order to have the insight, and to be aware of any potential risks, even if the recession were to materialize, other than the forecast it has not released so far luckily, but we want to be able to make sure whether this might cause a decrease in demand for copper. So far there is – no such thing has been seen or can be forecast as a sudden event until the end of this year.
Another factor is the change in ratings. It was higher this year than in the first semester of last year. These things never last forever. We had a reminder of that in July and August and also a more favorable currency exchange rate; however, that’s a mixed message for the economy as such, but the złoty became weaker versus the dollar and euro earlier this year and in our case it has been good news, because our sales are 90% in dollar, denominated in dollars.
So we had 1.8 billion złoty’s increase in sale, another is the adjustment for derivatives and another historical moment you can recall last year, we settled the derivatives at minus-2 billion złoty’s more or less and this year we still have the negative balance, but at much lower level. So semester-on-semester we can see the positive impact of smaller negative settlement of all of these transactions. Now, these are the key factors that have impacted our revenues.
Going further, C1, the cost has increased. Per capital group is plus 16%, and going further into detail and KGHM Polska Miedź, this increase has been 13%. Most of that are increased material costs and energy prices in total, and that is the first factor.
In KGHM International, this has – the level has been maintained, but we are seeing a significant percentage increase in Sierra Gorda, which was the leader for lowest C1 costs. They have grown by – from $0.87 to $1.38, that is a 59% increase. And mostly costs, just overheads of operational costs, but mostly the cost of energy have contributed into that. Electricity has increased by 84% year-by-year, and even though some savings have remained in terms of consumption, the price paid for energy was the main contributor and the second one was diesel, and the price of that in Chile grew by 58% year-on-year.
Other materials also increased in terms of prices by 40%. So Chile was struck in terms of price increases for explosives. And another factor is a slightly – a significantly lower participation of molybdenum in the extraction and mining business, and that contributes to the increase of C1 costs. We can see long lasting factors, and some of those that are more volatile. We are working very hard to impact some of these factors. For example, we are trying to procure new electricity supply contracts. This might trigger savings in the future.
Also, we are aware that in subsequent years the contribution of molybdenum will increase and we will be able to retrieve the C1 costs of more about – more or less $1 per pound. The operational results remain unchanged semester-on-semester; PLN5.309 billion in the first semester of this year. The main positive contributor is Polska Miedź. Both, the increase of revenues and a better currency exchange rate, higher sales volume and lower negative adjustment of costs due to securities transactions and increased costs have still caused an increase, an overall increase in EBITDA. The case is similar for KGHM International. Sierra Gorda however has been a negative contributor. It’s minus PLN324 million semester-on-semester in Polska Miedź.
Slightly different factors have come into play. One of those clearly is the decrease in price at the end of quarter two, as well as an increase in costs, but the second important factor was one that I’ve mentioned already, that is the decrease in sales volume by 9%, and that is the equivalent of about PLN100 million. And there is a third factor that is often overlooked, but I did want to mention it as the valuation of mark-to-market transactions.
We sometimes mention the MTM mechanism, but its contribution is usually negligible. This time however, at the closure of the first semester its contribution occurred to be quite significant. There are two reasons for that. First one being that Sierra Gorda, who are creating its financial policy 10 years ago had concluded or included solutions whereby mark-to-market were part of revenues and costs on core activities, whereas in Polska Miedź, this is included into other costs and revenues. So it does not form part of the EBITDA calculation. Therefore this makes our operational results more volatile in Chile, but not in Poland.
And the second reason for that is, that indeed the mark-to-market calculated for Chile is a lot larger than in Poland, because the volume of those transactions is a lot bigger. Chile in fact trades almost exclusively with China on three months or sometimes even four month deals, so the volume of unsettled transactions as a lot higher. In Polska Miedz we will have all the transactions, all the deals paid and settled within the quarter, and only a very small number of those that aren’t then calculated using the MTM mechanism.
Another factor is the slide in prices back in June. So out of $10,000, it dropped to about $8,200 and towards the end of June, and that was the price. In fact that was adopted, because it is the closing of the last day of the month that issues the price. So as a concurrence of these factors, our estimated impact is about PLN100 million, PLN120 zlotys perhaps on overall EBITDA.
This is something that’s going to flatten out in the subsequent months once these transactions are actually realistically paid. So far we never paid attention to that, because the price trends was slow, and if the price differences change is slow, it doesn’t really impact that much, but if there are surges that are sudden, that could become more of an issue.
And this is also a matter of contrast. In the first part of last year we saw an increase and those transactions that were not closed, those deals that were not closed were then settled positivity and contributed to the first semester of last year. So again, by contract we can see that comparison is quite different.
Anything else about EBITDA? In the first half of this year we also had a reserve for increase in remuneration linked to the better financial performance and creating this reserve also cost the degrees of the expected EBITDA profit in the first half of this year.
And moving on to financial results, net financial results. We can say that historically the highest net result has been recorded, but this is not very good news yet. We are conservative, we show you our activities of that are focused not on maximizing the result, but on ensuring a stable and predictable functioning of the company. We can say that the key factors, keep drivers include a change in revenues combined with change in costs. The change in costs is greater utilization of third party input and cost by type, higher cost by type.
We also have those increases in cost by type in two areas, materials and energy. Cost of materials grew twice as much as cost of energy. Cost of materials now have a major impact; steel, explosives, tires, all other elements that are used to produce our products. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, all the prices of some materials skyrocketed and cost of materials grew much more than cost of energy.
The cost of energy also grew. I think that was a PLN330 million or PLN350 million semester-to-semester, but we are trying to counteract it wherever possible. This here is pretty well provided for in terms of energy, electrical energy, but in terms of gas, we focus on saving gas consumption.
We have already mentioned that we had discontinued production of heat in Polkowice. Our obligation to provide heating for the municipalities done through coal powered heat plant. We do not use our WTR furnace in Legnica. That is our second biggest place of consumption of natural gas. This is how we reduce our natural gas consumption this year, where from the plant – out of the plant 2.0 TWh of gas consumption. We are going to reduce that below to maybe between 1.7, 1.8. So we focused on saving not so much on price as on consumption.
Unfortunately this saving and consumption has some limits. We are bound by a contract that contains a take-or-pay clause. So we cannot discontinue gas consumption at all, but we reduced this conception as much as possible. Another second important factor related to joint ventures, minus 744 million. This is good news, because it means that we reversed write offs on our foreign assets, both in a foreign and Polish assets at 1.8 million.
We had the rehearsal at lower absolute value than last year, so before we make a year-on-year comparison, in absolute terms that is negative. However the good news behind it, that even in the current macroeconomic situation and with the current focus of output and production, we can and that is actually confirmed by the audit results, we can restore the value on shares in our investment vehicles, and this is reflected in the results of this year; positive impact of ForEx.
So in copper, that helped. We used the exchange rate of the last day of the first half year and here we recorded a profit. There was also a profit on selling a subsidiary Franke and Interferie and Interferie Medical SPA. These were solid, generating a positive impact. Especially with regard to the sale of Franke mine, we recorded a positive impact of exchange rates, but that was not book impact, it was cash impact. We simply got money transferred at better exchange rate to use a colloquial way of describing it.
As regards cash flows, there is one important point that I would like to discuss with you, change in working capital, that is the minus PLN 1.3 billion. This is the consolidated impact of increase in inventories. PLN 6.5 billion was an increase in those and that is particularly liked to production materials. I mentioned before that we intentionally increased the inventories of our raw materials. We wanted to avoid any downtime caused by the war in Ukraine, so this increase helped us stabilize the functioning of our plans. There is no doubt, I’m aware we wouldn’t be able to produce because of some failure or downtime in the harbors or problems in supplies.
Now we can see that the war has protracted, but the supplies are stabilizing. The markets found alternative sourcing. We also review very intensely our purchases under contract for purchases of materials and services. A special task force was established by decision of the management board and this team will review any discrepancies on consumption or issues, the clauses included in the contract in the light of the war in Ukraine, but also this task force will also look at possible ways of normalizing the situation.
Another growth was in pre-fabricates. Here we intentionally increased the inventories of – and anode materials for what we do. We at the same time maintained production of electrolytic copper and that required a greater input of anodes. Also in cathodes there was an increase in Legnica smelter. Legnica is now operating on the non-stop basis. The demand for rolling material is very significant, so here we also build up a stock of cathode copper.
We had an increase in receivables and payables from trade, but they offset to some extent. This is linked to increases in prices of copper and other materials that we buy, and also an extension in terms of payment for both, the materials that we buy and the ones that we sell. So those factors basically offset each other.
Debt of the growth: Now here there is not much to say. We keep debt in norm. We have not done any major repayments. We have not taken out any major debt. So the activities we have conducted were basically irregular, things related to servicing debt to be on the safe side. In terms of loan agreements, we also took some efforts to reduce our cost of financing. We do not use at all or we use only to a very small extent factoring, and we do so only when it is linked to payments with respect to such prominent customers at China in metal. We avoid using factoring to avoid costs of financing that.
That is it as regards my presentation. I’m available to answer your questions. Mr. Bugajczuk, could you please comment on our investments.
Adam Bugajczuk
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As regards our investments, I have positive and very good news, because PLN1.299 million is better than last year with similar CapEx, which is excellent news given that the circumstances were difficult, especially at the beginning after the outbreak of war.
Individual major investments program of making deposits available. GG-1, here we are finalizing drilling and we will be getting ready to exploit the shaft. We are now after the preliminary arrangements with Grebocice municipality. So GG-2, Odra, the first drills will be made still this year. Work is progressing just as well as regards a pumping station. Here we gathered momentum and as of today no key investment is at risk in terms of the time schedule and tasks.
We completed the next stage with regard to BAT conclusions. Four more will be implemented this year and one more investment will be left for the following year, which will leave us with old tasks completed. As regards waste disposal and utilize and recycling, everything is moving on schedule. I would also like to return to the slide in which we show you the developments on Glogow action as well.
The slight minus results from the fact that in the first semester we had to go through a layer of stone, hence this lower grade, but in terms of output the numbers are comparable and the pace of work is as we had assumed. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, to sum up, as I said, we – in the last quite intense four years we’ve been on this geopolitical and political roller-coaster, but we managed to stay on track and we have been able to show very good financial results at a difficult time.
And maybe a shot comment on energy transformation project. After the announcement related to nuclear energy as more energy, we made one step forward, quite a specific step forward and namely we submitted documents for impact assessment to the National Atomic Agency, and this is the first step before location efforts and we’re seeking construction permit.
You can see what is happening in the commodities market. Nuclear energy is basically the only logical response, a comprehensive response to the needs of heavy industry in Europe, so we are taking this road and we are going in this direction.
Also, a change to regulations regarding two wind farms locations and issues regarding distances is one more thing that unlocks our potential projects. We have sites where we can have such projects. So while certain issues had to be put aside for regulatory reasons for some time, now can be resumed, and this is good news because that opens new paths forward.
We are also in the process of decisions regarding licenses on offshore projects on the Baltic Sea. The main cost challenge will be answered by seeking strategic solutions to this theme. These are projects that will not last one year. Nuclear energy is something that requires 10 or five years. I’m talking about stages of construction, but for sure that is a shorter time in that, and the construction of large nuclear units, and so that gives us greater flexibility to the entire energy system in Poland linked to this potentially large nuclear power unit which is very much needed.
We are already in the second half of this year. We are monitoring developments worldwide. We are not attached to short term trends, we believe in long term ones and we do our best to operate flexibly in the macro economic reality, whatever it brings.
I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to Adam Bugajczuk, Vice President for the investment process and for purchasing policy in both areas. We managed to see a significant acceleration in the project works and also changes in the policies that will allow us to be more flexible in our purchases. So Adam, thank you very much Adam.
The end of August Adam leaves the company as a Management Board Member. Thank you very much and I wish you all the best.
Adam Bugajczuk
[Foreign Language] Thank you very much.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you for the comments regarding the performance. Now a question-and-answer session moderated by Janusz Krystosiak, the Investor Relations head. Now I’d like to be excused. Mr. Chludzinski, our President will have to go to other commitments, to fulfill other commitments, but we will remain with you, the rest of us, in order to take as many questions as possible. This is quite a busy time. I’ve got a lot of projects happening. Janusz, over to you please.
Janusz Krystosiak
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start with the question from Bank of America. Bank of America, Mr. Jason Fackler, could you review the current situation on contracting energy for future years. Spot prices are the multiplications of the levels in the years 2021. I believe this is a question to Mr. Kensbok.
Andrzej Kensbok
Ladies and gentlemen, early this year we have – we made some changes, administrative changes. We merged the area of securing prices of electricity, gas and ETS with the risk department that deals with securing the metal and currency prices. So we have a comprehensive attitude to all our performance here. We’ve got a team that has been appointed to analyze the energy situation on markets and our stock exchange is in Europe and this team takes decisions.
They have weekly analytical exercises and decision making cycles, so we can see that the spot prices indeed are definitely a lot higher than they were last time. God only knows how this will develop in the future, especially in the gas sector. For electricity, while there are no really factors that could forecast the decrease of prices, so the team has therefore decided to have a rolling security for the price over next year, and for a long time now outside of these already purchased for 2023, we are procuring new assets to secure the price increase. We are observing the development of prices and we are also taking a look off how secure our electricity supply is.
Now for gas prices and the factors that can impact the price, there are more of them here. Europe is starting to recreate its supply sources once limitations, shall we say, have been introduced, not embargo on Russian gas. We’ve got new sources coming up and new projects for pipelines or ports, and also French and German stock is filling up slowly. We are of the opinion that these were the main factors contributing to the sudden increase of gas prices, as well as a malfunction in one of the American LNG exporting ports. All of these are now about to be terminated and if there is an increase in gas supply in Europe, then we are hopeful that the current spot price will not maintain its high price for much longer, but will start to drop slightly.
We have secured next year in a manner of speaking, but the main factor for us is being able to flexibly react in terms of consumption levels, and this is where we view some of the potential reaction. But on the other hand let me clearly say that we have robust supply of contracting coal, but also stock, so our company that produces municipal heating has enough coal, which is necessary to provide heating this season. And we have secured contracts and continuous supplies, so the equivalence of coal per gas is a possibility for us, but we’re looking at also excluding gas consumption in Glogow [ph] and our plans that is an open issues still – we are still negotiating take-or-pay with PSE and we are yet to see the outcome of this.
We have secured ETS for this year and the next, so we are not expecting a lot of changes there. Some of the deals have been completed this year. So we have secured our right to CO2 emissions and we are using them. Thank you.
Janusz Krystosiak
Now if you allow me, before I give the floor over to people in the room, let me just read a few points around the turnover capital. There are some questions here from Mr. Dan Major, asks about working capital and I will now give the floor over to Mr. Andrzej Kensbok and relay the question.
KGHM continued to increase its working capital in the 2022, even though the renovation of the smeltering of plant was completed. It was over PLN4 billion over the last 18 months. Are you expecting a complete turnover? What can we expect in the second half of 2022? This was a question from UBS. There are few other questions relating to working capital that are similar. Over to you sir.
Andrzej Kensbok
Yes, we do want to turn this trend around. Whether it is possible to totally do, I cannot declare it fully, but technologically we will be using the stock of anodes. The renovation works were completed in July. Then there is commissioning, etc. So you could say that at the end of June it was not yet completed. It was in progress and the production was carried out using up the stock. But we will be turning around this trend in terms of materials stock. The war is still going on, but supply chains are becoming more predictable as we speak. So we might afford to work with a lower consumption of material stock.
Janusz Krystosiak
Thank you. Are there any questions in the room?
Paweł Puchalski
Good afternoon! Paweł Puchalski from Santander. I have heard the questions that were asked before, let me ask you about more details. There was a question concerning hedging. In the simplest terms, what is the percentage of electricity that you have hedged for next year and what are the prices.
Andrzej Kensbok
Well, it’s a situation that undergoes changes but the prices fixed of between 25% to 30% off electricity volume. Some of that was fixed last year, some earlier this year and some is in the rolling over deals.
Paweł Puchalski
The second question relating to gas, you said that you have suspended gas base production and have started producing heating using coal. You have stock of coal you said, how much of it, how long can it secure? I’m not talking about the contracted. This can be at any price, but for how long can you use the stock that you have if you do not get any more supplies.
Andrzej Kensbok
I cannot tell you quite precisely, but the stock that we have will be sufficient for this heating season, central heating season, but I’ll have to check that.
Paweł Puchalski
Thank you, that’s sufficient. And now my own questions please. I understand that you are maintaining the budget up-keeping and I’m not talking about volumes this time, but are you also upholding the cost 26,500. I don’t think there was an adjustment in the report for this semester. So I would like to know what you think about the cost 26,500 which was quoted in January for this year.
Andrzej Kensbok
We are upholding the budget. We are not preparing a new budget, but the total cost this year is higher, so the price factor is still coming to play and there is the issue of this zloty exchange rate which offsets the cost. So those two factors are of course things that we are looking at, but no decision has been made so far to prepare a new budget.
Paweł Puchalski
Alright. Now, a question regarding cash flow in quarter two. We’ve had questions regarding working capital, but also tax, quite a lot of tax was paid then, and I want to make sure whether this was tax that was paid for the past or was it a current tax which is going to be offset with a tax that’s a lot lower in the second half of 2022. So is it an actual state and now we’re calculating the tax again or…
Andrzej Kensbok
I’m looking at our Chief Accountant, but let me try and be as precise as I can. Yes, this is the tax on our profit from last year and we are preparing a current reserve for our tax on profit this year. So the cash out was due to paying the corporate income tax for last year.
Paweł Puchalski
You have also created a provision for – you have a high net profit, so there is a provision for bonuses for employees. I understand that all stakeholders will be equally treated and as we sit and look at each other, you can commit that next year you will be offering 30% cash out from the net profit as a dividend, right?
Andrzej Kensbok
Well, we have no changes to our collective contract, so it’s quite well known and we uphold our dividend policy. Thank you.
Marcin Chludzinski
I do apologize, but I am required to attend my subsequent meeting. The rest of the board remains available here during the session and after the conference. Many thanks and see you next time.
Operator
Thank you, sir.
Unidentified Analyst
Good afternoon, [inaudible]. Could you comment on the outcomes of the control of saying that salty water from the Glogow plant ended up in the Oder river?
Adam Bugajczuk
Let me take this question. This is as a matter of fact does not relate to our production. It’s related to CSR. Ladies and gentlemen, the controls, the inspections are carried out in many ways. This was a very general one, not too much data. Let me just quote a few facts.
Our water discharge, any of that takes place in Glogow, which is over 100 kms upstream. These are the Olawa [ph] where the contamination was detected; that’s fact number one, and we cannot pump water downstream, regardless of how innovative we are.
Another fact, this July and August, from the 1st of July to the 10th of August we’ve had a very small water discharge. In July this was 12% of the level of last year and in August also it was negligible, a lot smaller discharge than the maximum in our water license. We uphold all the environmental norms and literally every water discharge on a daily basis is tested at the point of discharge and 500 mts upstream – sorry, downstream. So it is impossible for us to address these allegations of the parliamentarian, but they are misleading.
Unidentified Analyst
[Inaudible] I have two questions. One, regards what was said over a year ago. Signals were sent then that KGHM intended to divest its foreign assets. Is anything still going on in this respect? And the second question concerns mining tax. At some point there was information that maybe in connection with the planned investments, including energy transformation, something positive could happen here to the benefit of KGHM of course. Has anything happened here?
Andrzej Kensbok
Thank you. As regards tax, mineral tax or tax on minerals decreased significantly this year, and I have to make a proposal. It is on some minerals, not on the copper. Sometimes it is just called copper tax and this is not the right name for it, because it only is imposed on certain elements.
That is a question that should be asked to the Minister and in the context of the new budget for the upcoming year that will soon be discussed, but lower tax on extraction of some elements which have a positive impact on KGHM cash flow and facilitate our energy transformation. I think this argument is appealing to a lot of people, but we do not know whether it will be reflected in the budget for next year, but we of course are trying to keep bringing up this point.
Please remind me your first question, foreign assets, okay. So we sold Franke mine. This was effectively completed. The transaction will rather complicated, but it was concluded successfully.
We still have a group of assets, group of mines in Sudbury Basin. These are now being reclassified as assets to sale, assets for sale. As the legacy system of ownership and corporate structure is extremely complicated in terms of who owns whom, and where certain legacy issues are parked, there are some elements linked to the purchases that KGHM made in connection with Quadra.
Once this ownership structure is clear enough, we will have a small group of small camp mines in Sudbury Basin and these will be put up for sale. The market doesn’t want to consider each small mining company separately, and it’s more convenient to have a comprehensive view of a group of similar players. This might be of interest to major mining players located nearby.
We also informed the public of the initiation of divesting Carlota mine, but this process ended without any binding bids being submitted by prospective buyers. So we are now considering whether we should read around this process on, and whether the situation changed substantially enough to justify a new effort to try and divest Carlota.
And in Poland we sold our hotel assets. We do now have much to do with the hotel industry. Specialized entities are much better to estimate the market potential, better invest and better manage such assets operationally, so we decided to sell those assets. Thank you.
Unidentified Analyst
[Inaudible] I had a question to Mr. Kensbok about ETS. With what advance does KGHM buy emission rights and until when you are ready with that?
Andrzej Kensbok
I will ask my colleagues to present a specific answer to this question. I will forward it to you. But just briefly, our key transactions related to ETS purchases were completed last year and they cover this year and the next year. This year we had some adjustment, smaller transactions taking advantage of the reduction in ETS prices. Now we are monitoring the developments, including the political dialogue regarding ETS monitoring, whether any speculation in this market would be admissible and what potential impact it might have on ETS prices.
We as energy intensive company, we had an allocation of free ETS which we are also using. But I will provide you with a precise answer, how many and at what prices, we will provide that after this conference. And of course all answers that have been given today will be posted on that website alongside with the transcript of the conference.
Janusz Krystosiak
And a quick question in the meantime, one that was asked online from Morgan Stanley. In this set of questions I can see that we have already covered taxes on some minerals and exposure to gas. And there was a question about nuclear reactor as regards CapEx budget of $1.5 million to $2 million for nuclear reactors. When do you expect that you will start spending significant amounts and are you planning to finance that with your own funds or are you seeking potential JV’s.
Andrzej Kensbok
We answered this question repeatedly. This yeah we are only spending money on early works. Above all, preparation of the document that has to be submitted to the national agency for nuclear energy. This is a very extensive detailed document and its preparation is expensive and time consuming, so this is what we are focusing on above all.
The next steps are envisaged in the nuclear energy law. Once we have this document, we will be able to start thinking about funding. It is premature to discuss this right now, but we have already engaged in a dialogue with financial institutions, with advisors, with markets and regulators in Poland. In a few weeks we will have the first meeting of the initiative group that will discuss the most efficient ways of funding small nuclear energy plants in Poland. In the context of funding of such projects in Europe, and we will focus on the risk element in this, our appetite for risk possibilities of obtaining funding, guarantees from the state treasury and so on.
This dialogue is only beginning right now, but we are approaching it with due-diligence. We first of all want to benchmark ourselves to other countries and other companies, but also we want to understand the appetite for funding nuclear energy in financial institutions and we want to understand the approach of the regulators and financial institutions.
Most – well actually all major themes recurring in the questions have been discussed, energy, working capital, energy mix, hedging, these have already been discussed. I do not see any new questions sent online. There was a question here in the room? Please introduce yourself.
Unidentified Analyst
[Inaudible] I have a question KGHM International. What is the share of international in the output of the whole group? And a question about Sierra Gorda. Does the output – is the output in Sierra Gorda profitable? What is that net results revenues and prospects for the upcoming quarters?
Andrzej Kensbok
Let me display once again the slide with the results of the international segment. Here it is, so let’s start with production. KGHM International output accounts for about 10% of the total output of the group. Sierra Gorda is positive, but with positive cash flow as well. In the past profitability of Sierra Gorda was negative. It was unprofitable in the past. But we made major investments under our debottlenecking program, increasing daily and annual throughput capacity after obtaining the parameters assumed and the debottlenecking projects Sierra Gorda became profitable and this profitability continues now, although it is lower than expected due to some operating and non-operating factors. But still, overall this entity is profitable and promising.
Valuation of 45 stake, 45% stake and readiness to buy this by an Australian group was proof to that. They concluded this transaction and they are our new partner in a JV.
Janusz Krystosiak
We have General Director for Foreign Assets in the room, Pawel Gruza and there are Directors of Individual areas within production division in Poland. We have the person responsible for nuclear energy as well as colleagues from finance. So if we have been unable to fully answer your questions or you need some more explanation, please feel free to ask us.
And there are no new questions. Let me remind you that the transcript of this conference, including all questions and answers, maybe with some extra questions because sometimes the questions are asked also after the conference, will be posted on our website as soon as we are ready and we will try to answer your questions in a detailed manner as we can. Thank you very much for the day. Thank you.
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